2011 — 20 October: Thursday

If the (atomic) clock on the desk is any guide1 I'd better get me some more of that sleep stuff. And if its built-in thermometer is any guide, I may have to start searching the loft for a heavier quilt for the next few months. Brrr.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I spotted one of those small, homeless, snails2 in a corner of the downstairs cloakroom earlier, but I dispelled the little menace with a small but lethal dose of sodium chloride. (Is that a form of assault?)

The current temperature...

... is almost as unbelievable as the equally uncool news that "Downing Street" is again planning for a referendum on either or both continued EU membership and the exact nature of the relationship with that fine (and very local) collection of countries. It's 07:51 and tea is urgently needed.

Speaking of cool, there's an amazing quantum levitation3 video clip (and other nice stuff) here.

Fans

I was still reeling from the recent shock of learning that the House / Cuddy relationship is "Huddy". Imagine how I felt this morning when I learned that the Castle / Beckett ditto is "Caskett". Very clever.

Having just broken a pair of Christa's scissors (is there such a thing as a singular scissor?) while harvesting one of the last bunches of grapes out there in the cool bright sunshine, I suppose I'd better get out for my next round of supplies. It's 10:30 so the roads shouldn't be too bad.

Which is more worrying?

  1. Non-arrival, after five weeks, of my replacement debit card?
  2. Non-awareness, on the part of the humanoid behind the counter, of reasons why this could be a Bad Thing?

I guess it's not their money. Perhaps if customer losses in such cases came out of the paypackets of the branch staff their level of customer concern might twitch upward. Slightly. For a while. Sometimes.

Nah, I didn't think so either. I've a bad feeling about this, Obi-Wan. Still, at least the new new card won't have the same number as the old new card. Assuming it ever gets to me.

Peel me a grape, Mrs Landingham.

Typical

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. Or, to put it another way, today's battered but intact envelope from Mr Postie contained — you guessed it — the old new debit card that's been on its way to me for five weeks. All I need now, of course, is for the new new card to fail to show up before the original card expires, because the old new card has now been "discarded". "Bother!" said Pooh.

From a music newsletter

The Smerin's Anti-Social Club Autumn News, to be precise:

We deducted (sic) that Europe's number one chicken sausage must have earned the title by dubious means. It's like eating a pink, garlic-flavoured stool. They should've called it the 'number two' chicken sausage. Oh, and moving on to small pink things of a much more pleasant nature, big congratulations to our trumpet player Tom and his girlfriend Sally on the birth of their Bonnie new daughter!


I've just finished hooking up a cheap and cheerful Freeview box down here to dedicate to digital radio and hope it will thus be better synchronised4 with the one I use upstairs. Oh for a quiet life.

  

Footnotes

1  It's suggesting it's way past midnight.
2  Slugs. Only a mother could love 'em. Though, since (I believe) they are hermaphroditic, perhaps only a father could.
3  Superconductivity plus quantum trapping of the magnetic field in quantum flux tubes, if that means anything.
4  Worse. Murphy's Law is being rather spiteful today.