2012 — 13 August: Monday

I gather1 the Olympic spasm is now over, apart from the great tidy-up. Did we win?

Rain later, it seems.

In search of...

... the lost TV worth watching, I've caved in and treated myself to season #1 of L.A. Law. After all, Christa and I both greatly enjoyed "Boston Legal", and I've now romped joyously through seasons #1 and #2 of "The Practice" from a decade earlier. Whether I will yet go back as far as "Hill Street Blues" remains to be seen, as it were. And my other treat is Sandie Byrne's book about Saki (first noted exactly four years ago when I read a review of it by Christopher Hitchens), even though I suspect HH Munro is more for reading than reading about.

Happy 8th birthday, Mr Fridge-freezer! I now recall that we bought it in John Lewis in West Quay.

I don't read as...

... widely as I should, perhaps. Hence I missed this delightfully-presented (but not terribly authoritative?) list when it appeared a year ago. Though I have read about half the entries on it, he added defensively.

Nor do I rip and file...

... my CDs into MP3s quite as systematically as I could, it seems. Today's example... It wasn't until I heard Josh White's version of "House of the Rising Sun" on the first CD of the delightful compilation This Record is not to be Broadcast2 a few minutes ago that I belatedly realised I hadn't yet got around to ripping the CD. Yet it's not as if I haven't had the time to do so since buying it in November 2010.

Judging by how much I need a shower, and how little green biomass I actually managed to uproot and relocate to my little staging area (aka the front garden) in the last 50 minutes or so, I think gardening should be entered (as it were) into the Olympic lists for the next sporting spasm.

Of course, I could be just massively unfit. Is it time for lunch, yet? [Pause] In earlier days, I would have been badly affected by all the pollen. These days I can simply smell the various garden scents. Amazing.

I'd just finished 'work' when Mr Postie dropped off this title...

DVD

It's an American DVD but with original French dialogue and subtitles, which is pretty unusual. The synopsis intrigued me.

Yesterday's MP3...

... download — "Devil in me" by Natalie Duncan — does indeed have a track on it ("Lonely child") that reminded me powerfully of Pink Floyd's 1975 "Shine on, you crazy diamond" when I heard her performing live on "Loose Ends" recently. It wasn't what prompted me to buy the album, however.

And down comes the rain, at 14:47. Quite a summer.

Rather later

Meal eaten? Yes. Ready for the Prom, and Bartok's sublime "Concerto for Orchestra"? You betcha! As I said (here) it's been a favourite since buying the digital version (initially on vinyl, of course, in 1979) with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Solti. Magic.

  

Footnotes

1  Merely from the cultured tones of the lady on BBC Radio 3.
2  A three-CD set of 75 records banned by the BBC between 1931 and 1957.