2011 — 5 September: Monday

I really should know better than to listen to the main BBC Radio 4 news in the morning.¹ It's reasonably sunny, but plenty of clouds up there. I may be handing out that external SATA drive cradle to Len again this morning. He thinks his Super PC's power supply has run out of dilithium crystals and needs to retrieve data from its main drive. Been there, done that. Then Mike and I have agreed our rendezvous for a local stroll, largely road-based and thus mud-avoiding. That will be followed by another supplies run if I'm to have anything tasty and fresh in the food department.

So that's the current shape of my funday Monday.

After noon

The 6.3 mile stroll got off to an unnecessarily late start as I had to drive back to collect the boots I'd forgotten to pack. But 99.9% dry, and even sunny at times. Lunch has been scoffed, and now I need to hit the supplies trail. Mr Postie dropped off both the October issue of "The Word" and a new Blu-ray to add to the collection, filling the gap in the shelf left by an elderly LaserDisc copy of that implausible 1993 romp "Demolition Man". It will be fun to re-acquaint myself with a young Ms Bullock in due course.

Judging by the heavy black clouds skulking around out there as I shopped, returned to dump stuff in the fridge/freezer, and then went out again to treat the Yaris to its most expensive drink ever in nearly four years (£44 in one gulp, with 306 miles since the last lot, and just two 'blobs' left on the gauge) my afternoon visual entertainment may well turn out to be a spectacular shower, with or without Donner und Blitzen, even though my little Teutonic barometer in the hallway when last tapped was still of the opinion that everything is "Schön".² We shall see.

Aside to Christa

Your strawberries have either emigrated or given up the ghost, but I'm still getting some splendid pears. I've just shared one with something that had burrowed inside it, so I cut my way carefully around... I still remember the shock of biting into a "goosegog" as a kid, and finding I'd sliced through a little worm of some kind. Not as shocked as he was, I suspect.

Time for a cuppa, Mrs Landingham? It's 15:25 and thoroughly grey out there. A heavy rain shower has just started.

Suddenly, it's rather late

And I'm hungry. That's what happens when I devour "The Word" followed by Len's morning contribution, the September issue of "Custom PC", all to the audio accompaniment of the "Awards for World Music 2004" double CD. I particularly enjoyed CD #2, track 14: Warsaw Village Band - Do ciebie kasiuni (To you kasiunia) with its deceptively quiet opening stringed thing. 90 seconds in, it sounds like a whirling dervish of high-energy sound.

I shall hastily defrost and set a pack of "lamb rogan josh" to "stun" in the microwave and see what pops out. Haute cuisine, or what? ("I'd say this falls into the 'Or what?' category.")³

My word! Ms Bullock was indeed young, back in 1993. Dammit, I've just found a faulty MP3 file, and it will nag me until I've retrieved the CD from the loft and re-ripped it. And I've only just realised I uploaded the image of today's Blu-ray delivery to the wrong server. <Sigh>

Footnotes

¹  Indeed, I've already beaten a retreat to the classical music haven for the overture to "The Mikado" where casual talk of torture, and obscene company boss bonuses, (to name two random examples) is conspicuously less to the fore.
²  I knew what "Schön" meant several years before I could have asked Christa, of course, because by that time I'd already read that interesting SF novel Macroscope though I didn't buy my own copy until August 1976.
³  Dialogue stolen, of course, from very near the end of "Into the night". A criminally-neglected film by John Landis.