2011 — 22 August: Monday
Today's the day for feeling charitably inclined.1 It's a nice, sunny morning, too. Today's lunch is currently aimed loosely in the direction of "quite an interesting eaterie on the Town Quay in Southampton" (says Len) so look out for a review from Lads who Lunch in Hampshire in due course.
Charlie is(n't) my darling
Speaking of the charitably-inclined, I'm amazed to find we can have professors of constitutional law when, as far as I know, (which obviously isn't very far) we don't actually have a written constitution. "What some people call meddling I call mobilising," says the "heir" to the "throne" (whose letters to Whitehall apparently cause a "frisson of excitement"). What a quaint and obviously incorruptibly democratic system. (Link.)
I, somewhat obliquely, mentioned the third book I bought by Simon Garfield here. I'm delighted to see it finally turn up in an amusing review here. ("Font wonks fight" indeed!)
Mysteriously...
... Time has ticked along to the point where my thoughts had to bend in the direction of an evening meal. This, despite a delicious lunch down at "Oxford's" after ditching the surplus PCs, and being thwarted by the restaurant on the Town Quay which had evidently closed some months ago. Meanwhile, I'm listening, probably for the last time, to an interesting pair of Blu-ray audio disks I was lent a while back (in exchange for that "Virtual Haydn" set of four from Naxos). They'll be going back to their owner on Wednesday as a trio of us will be up at Gecko listening hard to a new audio system from Steinway.
While I'd been out on my charity gig Mr Postie was kind enough to drop off on my doorstep the two American BDs I'd spotted a week ago. Happily, they failed to trouble any of Brenda's revenue and import duty collecting bruisers despite being (literally) just a few pennies over the "limit". Phew!
After a cuppa or several I then popped into TASS to say "Happy retirement" to its co-proprietor Lou — the chap from whom I've bought (inter alia) my last two plasma screens — and exchange jaundiced views with him on the current state of hi-fi and A/V in the UK. I then whizzed up to Asda to check out their bargain BD and DVD shelves, which are usually good for an item or two. In this case, I was able to add two more BDs: the new film from the chap who made the film so highly recommended to me by both Brian and Roger across the village and by Ian down in NZ and yet another "ultimate" version of the film that spawned an enormous amount of TV sequel material. Not bad for £7 each:
It's 20:12 and I think I shall start some heavy duty watching :-)