2011 — 5 November: Saturday
Because news of the M5 crash near Taunton was just coming in last night as I set off up the stairs to Bedfordshire I perhaps morbidly decided to listen to the main 8 o'clock BBC Radio 4 news for a change this morning.1 I lasted for less than eight minutes. I find I definitely prefer music.
Given the fact that it's not actually pouring with rain, Mike and I have tentatively planned to walk somewhere. We have yet to decide on the exact somewhere, though — given the amount of recent heavy rain and our mutual dislike of excessive mud — our options are fairly limited.
Mercy me. I've just realised this is the sixth time I've written one of these diary entries on Guy Fawkes day/night. Meaning, of course, I'm now in my sixth year of retirement :-)
And I see that John Opel — the chap who was boss2 of IBM when I joined that little company in 1981 — has just turned in his badge. I used to wonder what he made of IBM after his stint there. I, for one, was underwhelmed by his successor. (Link.)
No walk today
It's just insufficiently enticing out there. No matter.
Browsing an essay (Freaks of memory) by EV Lucas in "Modern Prose" (not all that modern — it was published in 1922), I found this delightful exchange:
"Father, I have spilt the butter. What shall I do?" "Rub it briskly with a woollen fabric." "Why?" "Because friction generates caloric, which volatises the oleaginous particles of the stearine matter."
Lucas claimed to have found this in a book called "The World of Wit and Humour" many years earlier. The wonderful Mrs Google turns up (via the national library of New Zealand) a hit in the Hawke's Bay Herald, 1859, on page 4 under "Miscellanea".
Brrr!
I've just done the evening blinds and curtains round. It is both dark and cold out there. And the idiots with their bangers are just getting warmed up. Time for a nice tum-filling prawn curry, methinks. [Pause] And here (just about) endeth the next day. I started watching "The Way" but, alas, it failed to grip me as much as I'd hoped. It did start with a trailer for "Project Nim", however, and that looks fascinating. Just remember not to confuse Nim Chimpsky with that well-known one-time linguistics theoretician :-)