2012 — 8 January: Sunday

Good grief. It's been tomorrow for over an hour already. When did that happen?1 I was listening to the album I know least well (of the four that I have) by Enigma — "The screen behind the mirror". It grew on me to the extent, in fact, that I've just checked for anything new in what you might call the enigmatic line, and have downloaded2 the "Seven lives many faces" album...

MP3 album

... after skimming the reviews of both it and a couple of poorly-received predecessors. So far, it sounds like a welcome return to form. But (my need for) sleep is starting to become an issue, so I shall resume in a few hours. G'night.

Good fences...

... make good neighbours. It isn't raining, and is not too chilly. But the earlier winds have done their damage. I'm now faced with a repair to at least one of the fence posts in the narrow gap between my house and the empty-for-a-year neighbouring one.

My original neighbour — a one-time IBM typewriter3 technician — didn't see the point of using expensive concrete posts all the way along, so we compromised and only replaced the posts along the length of the garden. Needless to say, all the panels between these posts are still securely in place but the original wooden posts in the gap are (after 30 years) showing their age. I know the feeling.

Paperweighty promises

Speaking of vast age, today is (or more nearly was by now, down in sunny NZ) Big Bro's 40th wedding anniversary. Christa and I only just made it through our 33rd, of course, falling sadly short of the "deal" she had engraved on to a paperweight for me in 1992.

Paperweighty promise

Oops. I can see I need to do some dusting!

Apparently, I'm an Oppressor:

For, in the 1980s, PC was very serious. It didn't do jokes. It agreed political motions, usually after hours of grim huffing. And it came wrapped in a peculiarly British social anxiety. As a PC person, what you really didn't want to do was offend anyone, especially those who had it tougher than you. If you were guilty of any of the following character crimes: being white, being able-bodied, being middle class, being heterosexual, possessing a penis, you were, by definition, an Oppressor...

Miranda Sawyer in The Observer


I find I don't miss newspapers at all. Wonder why? [Pause] The new Enigma album is delightful, by the way. Oh well. Time to do the curtains and blinds round again. It's already 17:01. Roll on Spring.

To assuage the...

... intense disappointment that was "Cryoburn", I've reverted to the earliest tale of the saga. Much more satisfying, some 70 or so pages in. Cordelia and Aral are getting on nicely :-)

Book

Now all I need is a little something tasty for my evening meal... [Pause] Next reading stop will be Barrayar, but that can wait until tomorrow. And I don't mean the tomorrow that started about 18 minutes ago.

  

Footnotes

1  Probably at midnight.
2  Given the fact that, these days, my first act on getting a CD is to rip it to MP3 (just as, for many years, my first act on getting a vinyl album was to transfer it to cassette, or later to minidisc) and the fact that the MP3 download is slightly cheaper than the actual CD (but seems to be of the same quality as I use when ripping) I see no reason not to take this environmentally-virtuous 'virtual' route.
3  Say what you will about IBM computers, but you cannot deny the company made superb typewriters :-)