2013 — 4 April: Thursday
In the face of a theatened nuclear exchange, it's always seemed to me the only sane response is to carry on as usual1 so, first my initial cuppa, and then I shall attend to the stuffing of my next crockpot. What else can you sensibly do?
Besides listen to Tory sabre-rattling MPs suggesting that now is a good time to renew the UK's nuclear weaponry. I truly don't understand the point of having a 'defence' system which, if and when deployed, is likely to render the biosphere unfit for continued human survival — particularly when we have no idea how to 'escape' to another suitable biosphere to start the whole stupid business over again.
Let the ants try.
Remembrance of Springs Past
What? No, I've never read Proust. Why do you ask? :-)
As I once remarked, one of my hobbies in earlier years was writing weekly letters to dear Mama, in a foolishly-doomed attempt to get her to take an interest in either or both her grandson and the industry her younger son worked in. In April 1995 we'd been one of the local families hosting a hungry school exchange student for a couple of weeks:
One more day, and the house gets back to what passes for normality around here with just the three of us. Peter has, of course, now started his two-week Easter break, so Christa and I will each try to take
some time off too. I find that German teenagers are, if anything, even larger and more demanding than the UK ones, and rather more affluent (if marginally less fluent in English). The 10-day exchange hasn't
been a total success, perhaps partly because Peter underestimated the amount of time the visitors wanted to spend in their own company — but it's all useful experience for him.
The sunshine means the garden is Springing up all over the place, including the pear tree with nearly a dozen blossoms on it (it last year yielded just one, huge, pear). The fish are multiplying, the water
is turning daily soupier, the midges are swarming, the pampas grass has had to be hacked back, the bees are back, and our resident jack-booted starlings have once again renewed their lease on part of the
eaves and on their parade ground along the guttering and up the tiles.
Tomorrow, if I get a spare minute, I may try to establish electronic contact with a former ICL colleague as I spotted (by rather a circuitous route involving the fan club of American performance artiste
Laurie Anderson on the World Wide Web) a piece of e-mail from an ICL chap from Bracknell who may be willing to put me in touch. The last similar electronic contact I had with another ex-colleague (my
ex-manager, as it happens) came when he turned up in Perth, working for IBM as a freelance. Perhaps we should kit you out with a small PC and a modem... That's all for now. So all the best from all of us,
including the starlings (who finally seem to have jack-booted it in for the day)...
Just time to slurp a post-crockpot-prep cuppa before wrapping up extra warm and making a mercy-dash (with a bunch of video signal gender-bending socketry) over to Brian to see if we can sort out the twin (or more, probably) monitor 'situation' that has arisen in his Radio Shack. One does what one can.
Quite why it's...
... necessary for light snow at this time of the year puzzles me. None of the socketry was quite the ticket, so it's a good job I'd also taken over the two-port all-DVI KVM of (how can it be exactly five years ago already?) not so recent times as that turned out to be a perfect match for his switching needs. In exchange, I got a freebie cuppa (thanks, Liz) and tipped off2 about this weather site.
I'd passed Mr Postie on my way out, hinting to him that if he had anything for me he should feel entirely free to leave it on my doorstep. Good call, as I discovered on my return:
Having just asked unwicked Uncle ERNIE, he has very kindly promised me another three tiny shavings from his little pile of beneficence this month. Sweet! (Mind you, dear Mama picked up another four herself last month. I would tell her, but...)
I'm no expert...
... but I suspect these should probably just go into the bin without first getting the tour of my gastro-intestinal tract:
Bang goes the next wonder drug, I guess. [Pause] "Silver Linings Playbook" is going to need a second viewing before too long. Quite a wild ride.