2012 — 12 October: Friday

A nice, sunny start this morning. The only downer so far being the five-minute news item on the ever-growing gap between the number of elderly folk in need of care of whatever sort and the funding of that care. Oh, and a nice set of whinges from Joe Public about ever-rising1 energy costs...

Happy 5th birthday, dear Yaris! You and I have come a long way together, it seems to me, and all without Christa... an inescapable truth that still strikes me as both strange and unfair, but that is indeed the way the cookie crumbles. [Pause] Time (09:35) for breakfast and another cuppa ahead of today's pre-birthday lunch expotition/treat with my equally pre-birthday 'twin', Christopher. Gill, bless 'er, will be playing the rôle of designated driver.

All at 'c'

But is it science, Jim? Not being a Fellow of the Royal Society, this is all I have to go on. (Link.)

I've just improved the shining hour by paying in Uncle ERNIE's little Postal Order and then shaking the dust out of some of my bedding. I was up — and wheezing — in the wee small hours in a way all too reminiscent of the last time I slept in Christa's parental home where the dust was both venerable and pervasive. Not to mention, furrin' :-)

Later

My visitors have just departed, and I'm now listening to Michael Morpurgo recommending the lovely tale "The Man who planted Trees", which I noted here when I finally found and bought the film version nearly two decades after having bought the original book.

Currently (19:37) the omens and entrails are showing (as it were) a dry — and possibly even sunny — Saturday so we've made our plans for a burst of local fresh air'n'exercise. There's a Sumach tree hereabouts that we like to keep an eye on. Meanwhile my son, having remembered what it was we'd decided to get me for my birthday (which is more than I did) now simply has to get it so he can deliver it next weekend. He insists I'll ("probably") like it... we shall just have to see. It's something about "Avengers" but I doubt very much it features a leather-clad Emma Peel. More's the pity, of course, but you can't really tell your son that, can you?

  

Footnote

1  Say after me, children: These are finite resources, being consumed ever more greedily. What did you expect was going to happen to prices?