2011 — 21 August: Sunday
If I've learned anything1 in the last four years or so of this (frankly, still strange) widower state of mine, it's that there's no point staying "abed" when wide awake, even at 05:00 or so on a Sunday morning. So I've been pottering gently around, and amusing myself with stuff like this extraordinarily honest Op-Ed piece from last week, which bears the name of one of the richest chaps on the planet:
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment
managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as "carried interest," thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10
minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they'd been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It's nice to have
friends in high places.
I somehow doubt he's in negative equity, too.
Meanwhile, I'd already agreed on a walk later this morning up near Highclere. Haven't been there for quite a while. Ever onward. (I shall shortly have to get a new pair of walking boots; my current pair are not only down at heel but even sport a small hole. I shall have to excavate a pile of "Amazon" orders to see what I bought last time and repeat the order. Hi-Tec, I suspect.)
Who would think ...
... that "Duckface" had a vagina that needed rescuing? Not me! :-)
On that thought, I shall get some breakfast inside me.
Damp thoughts
Having peeled off an exceedingly sticky shirt (etc) and shovelled everything into the washing machine, swilled self under a shower, made and already drunk a welcome cuppa, and even curtailed the length of the talons growing on the fiddly bits at the end of my feet, I'm feeling almost civilised again. It was a pleasant walk of nearly eight miles during the lunch break of which (sitting on a church bench in Faccombe) we discovered we were still in the Test Valley (unless the vicar had nicked his wastebins). We also shortly thereafter discovered we'd both repressed the memory of the contour lines that make up the bulk of the last mile or so — all against gravity, needless to say — back to my car in (or near) Ashmansworth.
It's 15:42 and the afternoon awaits.
Road signs...
... in some of the deeper rural depths of Hampshire show a charming disregard for the Highway Code...
I think this was the only shot taken. In general, views from the Wayfarers' Walk were not very spectacular, and nor was the visibility until fairly late in the walk. I shall be returning to Winchester this evening for a video double bill. I'm providing the "B" feature (Christopher Nolan's early film Following) and we've whittled the "main attraction" down to a shortlist of three. Watch this space.
After the Nolan, we opted for something a bit easier on the brain: Surrogates with the inimitable Bruce Willis. It was surprisingly enjoyable. Plus the motorway on the way home was much quieter than the three lanes of 40 mph horror earlier in the evening.