2011 — 10 October: Monday
My pre-breakfast final home-grown pear just had a lute accompaniment. Next, the all-important cuppa.1 Then, if there's to be much more eating around here there will have to be a certain amount of supplies shopping this morning. And so the new week starts...
Calabria
What can one possibly say?
Priests in southern Italy have long been accused of being soft on the mafia and giving mobsters the prized task of carrying statues of religious figures through the streets during local festivals, thus handing the clans respectability.
Mind you, the first time I ever heard of "Calabria" was in Park Yunnie's excellent memoir of life in Popski's Private Army. The plastic explosive those rogues in jeeps scattered on the roads to discourage pursuit were soon dubbed 'turds Calabrian'.
Masiakasaurus knopfleri
This made me smile:
Mark Knopfler is the only official rock dinosaur in the world. The Masiakasaurus knopfleri, a theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, was named after him in 2001. And if that isn't cool, I don't know what is.
And I bought my copy of BiA as soon as it came out on CD.
Perhaps...
... with Mrs Google's photographic cartography the map has indeed become the terrain? Since I haven't read "Sylvie and Bruno" I've been going through life thinking that it was Borges who first came up with the idea of a map on the same scale as the country. I was wrong. (Link.)
Glowing with the...
... inner virtue of one who has a) done his supplies shopping, b) done some minor-league housework, c) checked, and arranged to top-up, dear Mama's account before the care-home raids it in two days time, and d) renewed his annual car insurance in a timely fashion, I can now relax and listen to the 'free' CD that came with the November issue of "Word" magazine while pondering the quotidian question of what to make for lunch. I think I'm feeling fishy for a change.
And I've just learned I have a post-birthday lunch treat to look forward to next week from Gill and Chris. Excellent!
I live in hope that this new arrival will prove...
... more entertaining than the disappointing "Red Riding Hood". It's written by the chap who did "Babylon 5".
Somewhat later...
... I'm back from a dispiriting hour or so with dear Mama spent/wasted on the 'usual' conversational loop.2 She doesn't remember any of the answers — good, generic ones including "She's dead, Mum" or "He's dead, Mum" or "That's your other son. He lives in New Zealand." It does occur to me, from time to time, simply to lie but that's not how I was raised. Though it no longer works to her advantage since she now learns afresh each week that her sister has died (etc etc ad-bloody-nauseam).
I cheered myself up by blagging a cuppa with my main co-pilot over in the bungalow, and am now preparing my evening meal in good time to catch the Joe Bonamassa programme.
And — as bedtime thunders toward me — I have to say I also cheered myself up very much further with the hugely enjoyable "Thor" and some of its fascinating extras. Great fun.