2012 — 15 December: Saturday
I wondered1 what I'd forgotten? Well, I found out the hard way. As I approached the first intended coffee break (at the Chievely interchange a mere 37 miles from home — I was already on track to be miles too early as Mrs Dominatrix-in-a-box was predicting an arrival time of 16:30 or so) I belatedly realised I wasn't wearing the jacket that my wallet lives in.
Since it contained both cash and cards for any emergency I felt I had no choice but to do a U-turn, go back home, top up the tank, and grab the coffee there. So that was the first 74 miles. Idiot!
It's amazing...
... how soon it gets dark at this time of year, and also just how many people hit the road2 on a Friday afternoon / evening. What had been a reasonably speedy initial leg of my expotition turned into a much busier and slower affair second time around. What's more, disaster struck again while I was enjoying my leisurely crawl along a section of the M42 that could just as well have been a car park. Mrs D-in-a-b came unstuck and landed in the passenger foot well, from where she could be heard but not seen.
I exited stage left as soon as possible, so I could stop and sort her out. Long story short, I also managed to dodge the toll section, very much at the last minute, and simply had to put up with her vocal whining while I concentrated on finding and following road signs suggesting they would lead me to Sutton Coldfield. This tactic got me there, and I even passed the cinema that I remember being marched out of in 1971 by my late Uncle on the grounds that "The Last Picture Show" (a fine film that I'd recommended to his family) was "pure filth".
I arrived...
... just as a late meal was being served, so no great harm done. And this jotting is now coming courtesy of some broadband bandwidth I'm leeching from my cousin's Sky box. I'm using the laptop rather than the smaller Android Tablet PC. But it's time for the festivities. Or it will be, after a period offline...
Consciousness having...
... returned, much assisted by a strong cuppa, I shall shortly be on karaoke device setup duty. Fortunately, I will have made my escape before its choir (of users) arrives on Monday :-)
Meanwhile, browsing the latest litany of insanity from around the world (collected in Ophelia Benson's "Butterflies and Wheels" newsletter) is quite enough to dampen the spirits, Xmas or otherwise.
Speaking for myself...
... I've always regarded Life as just a little too short to dally overlong with the apparently faulty pair of microphone inputs on my cousin's cheap and cheerful little "Digital Karaoke" Far Eastern amplifier. (Unsullied, as it is, by the faintest smidgen of a trace of digitalityness [if that's the correct technical term].)
Sorry, cous, but you're just going to have to settle for microphonic singing (if that's the correct technical term) via your Cambridge Audio amp's "Aux" input using your dinky little Maplin microphone pre-amp and its line-out going into said Cambridge. And the backing track music will come from your iMac. If you remember to unplug the minijack from the socket at the back with the illegibly small universally misunderstood icon for "headphones".
I can still occasionally...
... hear Christa saying "Good God!". Particularly at items such as this. Not so much KF Chicken as KF Brains, if you ask me.
[Pause]
Plenty to eat and ample to drink then, before you know it, it's 21:13 — mighty funny stuff, time.
Sensible chap
Alan Moore, that is. Source and snippet:
I've developed a theory that there's an inverse relationship between money and imagination. That if you've got lots of imagination then
you don't really need much money, and if you've got lots of money then you won't bother with much imagination.
You've got to be able to pay your bills, otherwise you're not going to sleep at night. But beyond that, the world inside my head has
always been a far richer place than the world outside it. I suppose that a lot of my art and writing are meant to bring the two together.