2012 — 9 June: Saturday

I'm assuming something has gone dreadfully wrong this morning. I mean, it's not raining, the sun is out, the sky is blue, and we've arranged a walk. How much wronger1 can things get? Since it's only 07:47... better not answer that. Still, a nice quiet piece of deceptively simple Satie on BBC Radio 3 to battle the early morning extra 'stuff' pickup by the council lorry that threatens to collapse my little bit of pavement.

Oh me of little faith

Despite one of my early nicknames ("Why?") I was curiously incurious, as a child, about some aspects of the 'grown-up' world. At around age 9 or so I was more interested in showing a visiting vicar (whose lack of interest I couldn't understand... how could anyone not be interested?) the steering mechanism on my Meccano model of a bus than I was in responding to what I only later found out was his pitch to join a church class leading to confirmation.

I had no clear idea2 what 'confirmation' meant, but I didn't like the sound of it and flatly refused. I was having similar difficulty in taking seriously the so-called 'Religious Instruction' lesson, once a week, in the Junior School section of Cheadle Hulme grammar school. The material raised too many questions that the lady teacher had absolutely no intention or apparent ability to answer. This was very different from the attitude I found towards my questions in every other subject.

My attitude didn't translate into good end of term reports in the "subject", that's for sure. Of course, when you ask questions in the only subject where the only permissible answers are pre-cooked in a sacred text you can end up tied to a stake and cooked on a bonfire — or stoned, but not in a good way.

Doesn't mean I didn't extract humour — then or now — whenever I saw an opportunity. I'm on the mailing list of the Chris Beetles gallery (though, come to think of it, it's been a while since their last mailshot). Here's the HM Bateman cartoon used for their 2007 "Having a laugh!" exhibition. I had other things on my mind back then:

HM Bateman

Death, and taxes. Life's eternal verities...

A Unified Theory...

... of Muppet Types? Yeah, right. (Link.)

The start of our walk — a 6.02 mile stroll around Hinton Ampner — was delayed while my chum Brian the plumber put the finishing touches to Mike's new Boiler installation. So now it's 14:30 and I'm just finishing a light lunch. The weather was essentially perfect and the motorway was a lot less busy on my return journey.

If there's a Saturday that feels any less like a Saturday than this Saturday, I've yet to meet it. Must be the malingering afterburn from the double Bank Holiday. I think I shall spend / waste / enjoy the evening romping through another batch of "Mentalist" episodes... Light, frothy, amusing... just what the doctor ordered. I have a new hobby, too: picking out actors and actresses who appeared in this and/or "Castle" and/or "Bones". I also note that creator Bruno Heller (who worked on "Rome" — a series that Christa enjoyed) is Zoe Heller's brother. Zoe wrote that nasty "Notes on a scandal" that Mike insisted I watch quite some time back.

It's 19:33, and I've just enjoyed my second permitted cup of coffee for the day, so on with the show(s). [Pause] If I didn't know better, and if I hadn't just sneezed my watering-eyes-way through two hankies. I might suspect the pollen count is locally very high. I'm off to bed. It's 22:47 and my eyes are streaming. Grrr. (Wonder if I've become over-sensitive to freshly-ground coffee?)

  

Footnotes

1  "Wronger" has a nice ring, don't you think? I was always bemused as a child by — among many many other things — the crazy irregularity of English verbs, nouns, and comparative forms. For a language supposedly worthy of planetary status it's devolved a long way.
2  Then, or now — though I can hazard a guess.