2011 — 16 October: Sunday
It may only be 07:18 but I've already been hard at work1 and can now turn my attention to the next cuppa.
There's a cobweb-dispelling walk lined up for later this morning, to be followed by the unloading of freezer #1 into freezer #2 (once all Mike's icecream etc has in turn been unloaded from freezer #2 into his newly-delivered2 fridge freezer). Then I can defrost freezer #1 for only the third time since Christa's death. Oh, I'm such a domestic god these days. I've been keeping freezer #2 both empty and switched off. It's the older sibling of freezer #1 but, with just me in the house for most of the time, I don't need its capacity except for these infrequent episodes of defrosting.
It looks and feels as if it's rather autumnal out there this morning.
What are the odds?
I was permanently put off gambling many years ago by a young gentleman scholar at my school who cheated at cards.
The term "over-the-counter," which calls to mind the purchase of antihistamines or aspirin, is vaguely baffling and, in that sense, perfect: it essentially refers to customized securities that are privately negotiated between two parties. Side bets, as it were. In 2007, a year before the full extent of the financial wreckage became a taxpayer's calamity, the Bank for International Settlements was estimating the value of listed credit derivatives at $548 trillion, and over-the-counter derivatives at $596 trillion. (Together, the entire derivatives market stood at $1.144 quadrillion — a unit that would be comprehensible maybe to an astrophysicist or a five-year-old playing make-believe.)
Breakfast beckons.
6.1 miles later...
... I await news of the state of Mike's freezer as I sup my refreshing post-walk cuppa. It became surprisingly warm in the later stages of our little ramble, though still a little misty.
While transferring "stuff" drunkenly from freezer #1 to freezer #2 in the wake of Mike's visit — he'd brought along a bottle of some excellent Greek port made, if I understood, from sultanas — I found the last few wrapped slices of what could well now be called a "Late Bloomer" loaf that Christa and I bought quite some time ago:
I'm sure it will make a cracking bit of toast, Gromit, now that I've scraped the ice off it. Hic. Domestic god; that's me.
Quite a long pause...
... given that it's now somehow become 23:25, before I report that it did.