2011 — 12 June: Sunday
I'm continuing the thermal agitation for one more night. The sections of the floorboards that Brian cut out could benefit from being less moist in case he decides to re-use them. Besides, I could get used to the noise.1 It's 00:37 or so and I'm about to call it a night for today. I can't believe we're almost at midsummer. Just think: another week and the nights start drawing in!
My photo this time is of Christa and Peter in the Old Windsor kitchen in mid-1981. I'd begun working at the IBM Lab, and was commuting home each weekend. I'm amused to see how clean and new the gas cooker looked at that stage of its "career". But then I probably looked clean and new, too.
G'night.
Getting off to a literary...
... start, this dull and extremely damp morning, I'm wondering whether to buy2 this book:
The reviewer (Miranda Seymour) recently wrote a totally fascinating book on "the life and loves" of Virginia Cherrill. I parked that, appropriately enough, next to Charlie Chaplin's equally interesting autobiography.
Our decision to walk yesterday was (weather-wise) a good one. Better get me some breakfast, I suppose. It's 10:18 and Cerys is in fine fettle this morning. On a day as lousy as this, is it legitimate to curl up in front of a large plasma screen? After all, my Amazon order is going to take several days to get here :-)
Fontastic
I have what some people (ill-informed folk, that is) might occasionally regard as an unhealthy interest in fonts. My main reason (for example) for buying an Acorn Archimedes RISC machine back in 1989 was its System DeltaPlus relational database, but high on the list of secondary reasons3 was its scaleable font manager as I've been interested in typography and DTP since the mid-1960s. I buy my fonts from the range carried by the Electronic Font Foundry. (And the footnote here goes some way to explain my unswerving loyalty as a customer.) One of their just-for-fun fonts is "Fancy Dress":
I was reminded of this by the apostrophe (Charlie Chaplin's iconic hat) used on the front cover of Miranda Seymour's book:
Pre- and post-prandial pottering
Successes so far today include a visibly less wet cavity under the hall floorboards,4 and the tracking-down and printing out of the service manual (online) for the flueless gas "plasma" fire we fitted in April 2007. It actually instructs the installer to leave the manual with the customer. It's already a discontinued model. I've also received an email from my friend Val in (now) hot Stockholm. So the only real failure is that the weather can't seem to stop its dismal raining (this has probably not enhanced the festival experience on the Isle of Wight for Peter and Peter's g/f).
I'm even making partial headway in my attempt to clear things out of the way so that Brian can service the boiler and said gas fire tomorrow morning, as well as replace the hallway carpet and floorboards. ('Twas on the Monday morning that the gas man came to call...)
It's 17:19 and I have to say that the living room carpet has not been so clear for many months. Heck, I may even use my newly-cleaned Dyson on it. And to have Marianne Faithfull sitting in for Jarvis Cocker? Bliss!
It's been a very long time...
... since I last tuned into Harry Shearer's "Le Show" on NPR. Good to hear he hasn't changed the basic formula. But now (18:59) it's time for my evening meal. Still raining, by the way.
Very sensibly, Peter has decided (as he waits for the car to be loaded on to the 21:00 ferry) to head straight back to the smoky old capital city rather than calling in to pick up the iMac from me. I gather both the car, and its occupants, are somewhat soggy. I'm not surprised, either. Still, they're young. Mind you, it was pretty soggy here, too, underneath the hallway floorboards. My little fan heater has once again done a perfect job.
How about another dose of "House", Mrs Landingham?