2012 — 12 December: Wednesday
The BBC Radio 3 news informs me that Norah Jones1 has just lost her father Ravi Shankar at the age of 92. A good innings. (Though I don't know if he played, or even watched, cricket.) Now, before the inevitable tribute of some sitar music, we're getting some Satie first.
Yesterday evening's batch of security patches (a little over 200MB of "important" gorp) seems to have helped make BlackBeast a little less sprightly this morning (or maybe that's just me). But at least it still ticks along without complaint (unlike me). Curiously, the faulty log-off screen of one of my banks now works without overlaying some of its text. Coincidence?
Recall from Ian Fleming's Goldfinger that 'Mob' saying:
- Happenstance
- Coincidence
- Enemy action
Now why can't I recall more useful stuff? :-)
For the time being, I shall assign my laptop's inability to find my wireless network this morning to the "happenstance" category. I've now wired it up and it's suckling quietly on the same series of updates. But I have my eye on it... Meanwhile it's way past time for my next cuppa to help battle the -3C out on my porch until the sun gets its act in gear.
True enough...
... but worth writing about?
A physical book represents closure, whereas ebook publication means becoming part of the eternal, energy-sapping flux of the internet. You have to do all your own marketing: blogging or tweeting about how
great you are in defiance of all those childhood injunctions to be modest; and there are people out there who aspire to pick your work apart electronically, 'remix' it in the name of some democratic hippyish
ideal...
Fortunately we writers, being writers, can write about this. Whereas I don't believe I have read a single work by a milkman lamenting that most people now buy their milk from a shop instead of having it
delivered, books fretting over the death of print form one of the genres of the moment.
Our milkman (we nicknamed him "Smim Jith" to add a little interest to his name) retired after a couple of decades, but then returned to work after a few months for another year or so. Since Christa's death and Jim's second retirement I now buy my milk2 from Waitrose, and seem to get through more of the stuff than ever before. Nobody else on this little estate seems to use the delivery service, either.
Note to self: must buy some more! [Pause] At 10:47 the outside temperature has soared to -1C so I shall (continue to) bide my time. [Pause] Still biding, though the porch reports 0C exactly. And it's still a while before noon.
Having scampered...
... quickly out to the shops in what looked like a seven-minute window during which there might not be too much ice left on the local pothole collections, I think I need my next cuppa just to restore my core temperature to near-normal. +1C really isn't very nice. Now that they've removed the road closure at the end of Chalvington (not that I knew they had until I was returning as I simply assumed it was still shut off) they've over-compensated by adding temporary three-way lights at the 'other' end of my little well-worn loop. Such good fun. My lady on the 'deli' counter said "You're late, aren't you?" as I delved among the crumbs...
My apologies if you were trying to read this diary in the last hour or so, though they appear to have put another shilling in the electricity meter over in Texas.
Brrr. If it's 21:36 (which it now is) I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see it's now -2C out there (which it now is). Horrid weather.