2011 — 30 June: Thursday
All Good Things must come to an end. This morning's example, alas, has been provided by the itchy eyes and streaming nose that confirm not only that yesterday's walk must indeed have been through a high-pollen area (Mike commented that he could smell the stuff) but that I have not yet become quite as insensitive to some of the beastly stuff as had seemed to be the case. Blast!
Meanwhile, it was Oscar Wilde (in "The Importance of Being Earnest") who had his character Lord Illingworth tell Mrs Allonby that (in essence) "All women become like their mothers". Now that I've finally come to the end of my most recently-discovered cache of old family photos1 I shall bow out with a picture of Christa's mother, taken as she was sitting in the living room of our Old Windsor house — in 1978, she would have been just eight years older than Christa was when we lost her in 2007:
I enjoyed Mutti's company very much, and missed her when she died in 1991 on Peter's birthday. She had lost much of her taste for life by then, having lost her husband just over two years earlier. Christa always told me her parents were basically one person, just as we were, I guess.
Meanwhile, I can only apologise for last night's (sic) catastrophic apostrophe2 error. I shall leave it unamended for all to see my shame. Thanks, Tom!
It's (or should that be "its"?!) now 09:22 and I feel I could risk some breakfast. The ulcers are diminishing in their power to make my eyes water, but it's been slow progress. At least I now realise that microwaves can heat very unevenly.
Being very far indeed from...
... the least hint of stage-struckness, I'm amused to see the more "modern" costumes deployed in the production of "The Mikado" that I'm now listening to. I was a reluctant "Gentleman of Japan" in the chorus back in my Lower Sixth days, and yet I still know all the words. Weird. I also played quite a lot of cards when off-stage. My lack of enthusiasm wasn't helped by the refusal of the director to let me wear my glasses, so I literally couldn't see what was going on. I've often found that people who aren't myopic can be incredibly myopic...
"Are you in sentimental mood?" Hardly :-)
Spelunking revisited
I had a little fun with some spelunking imagery a week or so back. Imagine my surprise, today, to stumble across this. Source and snippet:
The case tells the story of a group of spelunkers (cave-explorers) in the Commonwealth of Newgarth, trapped in a cave by a landslide. As they approach the point of starvation, they make radio contact with the rescue team. Engineers on the team estimate that the rescue will take another 10 days. The men describe their physical condition to physicians at the rescue camp and ask whether they can survive another 10 days without food. The physicians think this very unlikely. Then the spelunkers ask whether they could survive another 10 days if they killed and ate a member of their party. The physicians reluctantly answer that they would. Finally, the men ask whether they ought to hold a lottery to determine whom to kill and eat. No one at the rescue camp is willing to answer this question. The men turn off their radio, and some time later hold a lottery, kill the loser, and eat him. When they are rescued, they are prosecuted for murder, which in Newgarth carries a mandatory death penalty. Are they guilty? Should they be executed?
Back-tracing my route, it all started innocently enough with this link, which was buried within a comment by "Janney" attached to this piece. And that was a link from the current news section of the "Butterflies and Wheels" weekly newsletter. What a web, heh?
Today's post...
... suggests that it's a long time since Natalie Portman appeared as the gamine "Mathilda" in Luc Besson's "Léon":
Impeccable timing. "The Mikado" just finished as Brian showed up to pick up a couple of goodies I had for him. We had a catch-up, at some point during which we failed to notice there had been a mains spike, or drop, that took out my ADSL modem, switch, and local Ubuntu web server, so that was fun. All is now restored, but it's a telling indication of our vulnerability to such simple glitches. Blackbeast soldiered on, as did the Terastation NAS, so it must have been a short-duration event. Even the hi-fi power amp stayed on, though the pre-amp died. I presume these items all have heftier capacitance in their power supply stages.
It's 18:34 and I'm starting to notice the odd hunger pang or two. By the way, I refrained from linking to Brian's travel blog until he was safely home. See what he got up to here.
When I turned on the hot water tap in the kitchen to wash up after my meal I discovered that the power glitch also took out the fancy new heating system. Still, at least resetting that is one simple button push rather than the former rigmarole of dismantling the case of the boiler just to get at the pilot light. And then (as often as not) playing hunt the matches. The water softener seems to have come through unscathed. As has my bedside clock/radio. It's 19:56 and I need a holiday!