2011 — 8 June: Wednesday
Did I ever mention Christa was the factory-owner's daughter? The factory (latterly, furniture-oriented, and at one time the main employer) was in the (then West German) city of Meisenheim am Glan.1 Despite housing less than 5,000 citizens, it was a city by virtue of ancient charter, by the fact that it contains a cathedral (not to mention a Roman Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue — the regular cacophany of bells was a delightful feature once you got used to it), and by the fact that it had been the medieval admin centre. It also kept bouncing between French and German "ownership"... it's a long story.
Christa's parents built their house (more of a mansion, to be honest) in the very early 1950s across the square directly opposite the main gates of the cathedral, which is by some margin the largest and tallest building in the picture here:
This elderly block print was a favourite keepsake of hers during her happy UK "exile". It's a view of Meisenheim from the East in somewhat earlier times. The locals' name for this area of Germany translated as "beyond the back of the moon" — the UK equivalent would probably be a remote Welsh valley — though a couple of motorways were extended through the region in the 1980s. Perhaps surprisingly, closing the railway2 line led to a new and very popular form of tourism using hand-operated trolleys similar to the sort Buster Keaton drove across Canada in his 1965 film the Railrodder.
Here endeth the history and geography lessons 'cos I'm tired and am now facing a busy day tomorrow! G'night.
It seems like a...
... suitably cool, gloomy day for me to imitate a whirling dervish as I move a whole load of Christa's unsorted stuff from "A" to "B" and see what I can do to make a comfy sleeping space available, if only temporarily, for my young offspring and his mate. I suppose I always knew procrastination would eventually3 catch up with me.
While my pre-breakfast cuppa has been cooling, I've had another stab at processing the rather tricky "mirror in the bathroom" shot of Christa that I published in February 2009. I think I've got the colour balance a bit better this time, working (with my latest scanner) from the original 35mm slides that I was moving from "B" to "C" last night:
Christa doing bedtime "hair" things in Old Windsor
Phew
It's 11:12 and I'm taking a breather. Following advice and guidance from my subconscious — I've learned to trust it to come up with optimal lines of least resistance — I've been shifting stuff out of Junior's room to the point where I should now be able to manoeuvre the folding "Z"-bed into it. Meanwhile, all the displaced stuff is piling up in the living room where it will constantly nag me to sort through it rather than lug it back upstairs. Clever, heh? I think, for example, it's possibly time to get rid of the three (count 'em) disassembled office desks. Heck, I may even part with the ICL office chairs that date back to 1975 or so.
Geoff Robinson told me long ago4 how intractable were the problems posed, not by software technology, but by the physics (and psychology) of moving bodies.
Grumpy? Moi?
While letting my lunch ascend slowly in temperature before I eat it, I thought I'd nip quickly out to the shops to grab a few more salad and fruity type things and some cow juice. A simple task made unnecessarily awkward by the builder next door who has parked his van halfway across my driveway. And now (12:32) it's just briefly rained, too. [Pause] And again, while I was out. And again as I drove home (flowing out of a storm drain halfway down the local hill above our local "weak" bridge). And, after my lunch just minutes ago, the rain briefly became hail.
An email this morning from another of the nine people who can call me "Uncle" suggests a visit from niece #4 (Heather) is on the cards for what would have been my 37th wedding anniversary. She's doing the usual NZ thing of 12 (European) countries in 40 days.
Sadly, I realise I'm no longer intelligent enough to be sure I know what this means:
If you know me...
... you will probably also know my liking for the music of Pink Floyd. A while back (in March 2009) I tried, and very much enjoyed, a dub remake of "Dark Side of the Moon". (My fellow Floyd enthusiast over in Winklechestershire took a very dim view of this.) And now those nice people at Amazon have just told me the following variant...
... by the 'Flaming Lips' is on its way toward me. My only previous exposure to this popular beat combo was "Yoshimi battles the pink robots", but I heard their track "Great Gig in the Sky" a couple of nights ago on BBC 6Music and immediately decided to give it a try. No, Mrs Landingham, I'm not slacking. If you look upstairs you'll see I've managed to fit the second bed into the almost unrecognisably empty space I cleared in Peter's room, though I do seem to have got it the wrong way round :-)
I wonder where Christa kept spare bedding, pillows, sheets, blankets, quilts. "It's a mystery to me."
I have a minor...
... medical emergency: I've just watched the final episode of the final season I have of "House M.D." and am now left to wonder just how acute the withdrawal symptoms are going to be. Perhaps a fresh cuppa will help? On the other hand, it's approaching midnight — maybe I'm not thinking straight :-)