2012 — 7 April: Saturday
The online bank into which my IBM pension trickles, unlike the one1 that Christa used, goes in wholeheartedly for the mañana principle. Since Mr Postie generally adheres enthusiastically to the same principle I have no way of knowing, yet, the effect of what several of my chums tell me has been a small but welcome annual uplift in the amount of funds being flung gently in our direction from our collective pot of deferred salary. But I bet it doesn't counteract the current level of inflation...
In more interesting news, I fear I fell asleep reading just the 'Introduction' to my little set of HP Lovecraft stories last night. Not a good start, really. Time for cuppa #1, methinks. [Pause] Tee-hee. This just in:
If you want to sample Lovecraft, read his work. The intro is by Joshi, a well-known Lovecraft expert, pedant and bore. Generally his witterings are of interest only to students and the most diehard Lovecraft nerds.
The erudition of my chums always pleases me.
Now I know
Before I set to work on my next crockpot, I'm delighted to report that Mr Postie did his (de)liveried thing. So, I can reveal that my age-related pension supplement (whose Baroque formula I first described here) is now rising to a magnificent 27p per month. Result! :-)
Last Post
While I quite enjoyed Ian Jack's article, I very much enjoyed one of the comments it attracted:
"for a lot of older people who are not internet savvy the post still remains important."
Kind of you to say so. As I dodder my way over to my in-house SBS server to do a bit of web page coding I have to remember that as an OAP this stuff is beyond me. The fact that I've been sending email since before Tim Berners-Lee invented the web will not save me — I send letters, so my claims to know a bit about IT fall on deaf ears. Worse, I use a fountain pen with green ink. Last year I personally propped up the Post Office but now the end is nigh. All will be replaced by SMSs with sentences like 'c u 4 latte LOL'. It looks like Claude Shannon was right and information is going the way of all entropy — a random cosmic smear of meaningless spam.
Until embarrassingly recently (say, a decade ago) I still had a couple of bottles of Quink green ink up in my study. Now, I don't even know where I would find my fountain pens (plural, notice) — I have Parker 51 and Parker 61 models somewhere... one from each parent.
An interview...
... with Jonathan Lynn, talking about "My cousin Vinny". What's not to like? (Link.)
I don't know if...
... I was still feeling a little over-sensitive when I first revealed to the world (hah!) that I'd bought Virginia Ironside's excellent book "You'll get over it" back in June 2008 — though that could be why I made the image somewhat transparent, I suppose. Anyhowsoever, that and this "Which?" guide (which I bought in July 2007, and discussed2 parts of with Christa) are in my opinion two completely essential books for any household:
Guess who's been doing an overdue spot of tidying up? :-)
Weird scenes in...
... my crockpot. What with the failure (on the part of Waitrose) to stock their normal pot of lamb stock / gravy I was forced to make an experimental substitution this morning. Chicken stock / gravy actually goes very nicely with my diced lamb and myriad vegetable concoction. Or perhaps it was the extra-generous splash of red cooking wine? Or maybe the Bramley? Whatever it was, the final result may not win any prizes for aesthetic appearance, but it tasted delicious. Or perhaps, given that it's now 20:15, I was merely starving hungry?