2012 — 27 February: Monday

A blast of Haydn1 as the first cuppa is still brewing. And I already now know that Borodin died 125 years ago. That's the ticket. It's just crawled past 08:31 and the sun is conspicuously absent.

I'm thinking now's a good time for a little outdoor expotition. It's 10:10 or thereabouts and I'm retired, you know.

Who would have guessed...

... that our benevolent guvmint is so worried about interference from the latest mobile telephone 4G masts that it's prepared to cough up some quite serious dough in a few cases?

Subsidy

Why is TV reception so important? Ludicrous.

After lunch...

... let's see what I found in Waterstone's:

Book

Much easier reading than yet another latest "Rates" leaflet from one of my financial outfits... they seem to have a different set of products every two or three months and, of course, always a compelling reason why I should change to one of them. Immediately. I don't doubt they're right, but I can't be bothered.

Firebird

I'm listening to my CD2 of the Boston Symphony with Seiji Ozawa waving his magic wand — this being the 1984 EMI digital recording, pressed in Japan, and bought for £10-95 from a London branch of Waterstone's on Saturday 26th May 1984. That was actually my first shopping treat in London since Peter had been born (in 1980), and was the day before we took him to see Return of the Jedi3 — I can't help thinking "Hang on! Where did those 28 years go?"

  

Footnotes

1  Yes, I'm back with BBC Radio 3 for a change this morning.
2  To be more precise: one of my (six) CDs of Stravinsky's "Firebird". This was my third "Firebird" on CD. [Pause] Oops. To be even more precise, one of my seven. I had mysteriously overlooked the Robert Craft CD I bought less than a year ago. My mind must be going. Don't you hate it when that happens?
3  And if you're thinking "Wasn't Peter a little young for 'Star Wars'?" I could point out that by then he'd seen the first film of the original trilogy many times as he was in the habit of loading it into the LaserDisc player I'd hired just about every opportunity he got. And he was now four and a twiddly bit, after all. Aah, the joys of a precocious small person. I could write a book.