2012 — 1 November: Thursday
I awoke this morning1 with the opening line of a promising story rattling around my head: "Few men live to see their own dead body." I wonder what I can find to do with that...
Meanwhile, the weather for our planned walk currently seems to be on track. [Pause] Personally, I can't think of any good reason to revisit Chris Mullin's excellent novel — A Very British Coup — as the late Alan Plater already did such a fine job. But I may just find myself watching Channel 4 next Wednesday at 22:00 if I remember. And this came in overnight:
We're weathering the days in the dark city. At present I'm in Brooklyn, where toilets flush and lights burn bright. We can see the row of the dark monoliths that constitute downtown Manhattan from here. I'll return to my campsite on the 11th floor tomorrow, after St. Vincent and I do a song or two on Colbert. No elevator service south of 31st St. or so, which means 11 flights with a flashlight up a dark stairway — but it's home.
I've noticed we tend not to get hurricanes in Hampshire, though that may yet change.
Right. Breakfast munched. Lunch packed. Clothes next, and it will be time for the "off". The more I read (in the current "Private Eye", for example) about the shambolic buck and blame passing culture inside the BBC, the more grateful I feel that my application to them for a job as a Corporate speech writer got nowhere in the early 1990s. Narrow escape, if you ask me.
Later that day...
... having dodged the showers and walked our 7.5 miles or so, I called in on Len to borrow a new US TV show from him, washed all the accumulated junk off my windscreen, and am now, finally, about to stop and put my feet up. It's 15:57 and bright but — obviously — horribly autumnal.
Priceless
Probably better not to read this while drinking within (as it were) firing range of your monitor or keyboard. Quivering puppies?! (Link.)
Inaudible
I've decided the time has come to cull some of my over-large collection of MP3 files. Anything I don't recognise or like the sound of can vamoose as far as I'm concerned. Should have done this before things got out of hand rather than after... (It's called being wise after the event.)