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2012 — 3 April: Tuesday

There are mornings¹ when, no matter how early you wake up, it's obvious sleep has 'dispersed' for the day (as it were). Which is why, after a few surreal minutes with my mind wandering through some of my apprenticeship experiences (and even earlier) here I am, clutching a cuppa and being amused to recognise a track by the Cocteau Twins after a sample of less than a second. (Somebody has probably already worked out the survival benefits, in evolutionary terms, of such a trick.)

I was pleased to watch a YouTube trailer for Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom", though I gather HBO output is currently "assigned" to a satellite channel called Sky Atlantic (which, needless to say, "I 'ave not got"). Mind you, the idea of intelligent, articulate TV being shown by the same mob that owns the Fox News cloaca is as surreal as any of my apprenticeship experiences from 40 years ago. (Link.) NPR has also expressed a few opinions :-)

CH₃CH₂OH

This strikes me as rather wonderful. A form letter of apology, prepared in the 9^th Century, but equally useful in these less enlightened times:

I shall be keeping an eye out for the book. [Pause] Western civilisation appears to be on the brink — I mean, no salads in Waitrose? What's the world coming to? I suppose it's possible I was too early for their shelf-stocking, but the carpark was practically empty, too. I shall have to make a second sortie, it seems.

Second sortie successfully concluded, and (killing two birds, as it were) combined with a visit to the care-home, where dear Mama was in her usual gentle state of befuddled² puzzlement — this time over the 'Kit-Kat' Easter egg sitting on her bedside table. Right. Time (15:35) for my next cuppa, wouldn't you agree, Mrs Landingham?

I notice it's been raining, on and off. (Currently — 18:59 — 'on'.) Whether this will clobber our planned walk tomorrow remains to be seen. Time for my evening meal.

You know when...

... the baton has been passed to the next generation when your son calls with news of the house he wishes to buy and starts complaining about the financial pain and gouging entailed within the mortgage system :-)

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Footnotes

¹  This is apparently one of them.
²  Actually, she befuddled me too, briefly. She'd been mildly lamenting her loss of memory, while I noted the accompanying loss of vocabulary. But when I once again took her down Memory Lane through the little 'family book' that my sister-in-law prepared for her 90^th birthday I noticed that it's the first time she offered up the fact that she'd been "heartbroken" when Big Bro emigrated to NZ in 1970. She played that little card very close to her chest for 42 years.