2013 — 2 May: Thursday
The dawn chorus gives no clue1 to the conditions for today's walk. Nor is there much cheer from the relentless parade of news from the BBC World Service. Music and a cuppa; that's the trick.
Are you mad?
Getting up so early, you mean? No, not really. Darker thoughts tend to predominate, I find, if I stay abed once sleep has fled. These thoughts are much more easily dispersed by a simulation of normal activity (which is about my 'norm' these days in any case). Besides, if I wasn't conscious at the moment, I wouldn't know that my broadband had just dropped its connection, would I? Perhaps it does so every day at this time. More to the point, how am I supposed to recover it? [Pause] Five minutes of patience seems to have done the trick.
Speaking of recovery...
... remember all the fuss2 about endowment mortgages and repayment shortfalls? Well... although there is a plethora of pretty-coloured bar charts in this fancy 'report' on interest-only mortgages, the bottom line (figure 6.17 on page 45) is that currently nearly a quarter of households with such mortgages are predicted to have a shortfall that is more than 3.5 times their annual household income. And that shortfall averages £137,000.
Mind you, the BBC report on this story by Kevin Peachey has a more optimistic spin, suggesting not that everything is 'peachy' but that the average shortfall is a mere £71,000 across some 2.6 million households. Either way, some misguided lunatics still think that ever-rising house prices remain the key to prosperity.
Do I dare to tease...
... my chum Ian (who contributes to Wikipedia)?
It's fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever did.
More here.
A batch of fresh fruit and a few more bits'n'bobs and that should be me catered for until after the Bank Holiday, with luck. It's amazing how quickly traffic builds up at this time. All those legless kiddywinks for one thing. Still, the sunshine bodes well for the upcoming walk. It's pretty damn' cool out there, too.
I occasionally used...
... my weekly letters to dear Mama as an excuse to have a bit of a rant. Here's one that still rings true, as it were:
In the wider world, of course, financial shenanigans and their inevitable uncovering help keep the punters in a state of alarums... As for the sharpness of the teeth of the so-called regulative bodies and oversight committees, let alone the ethical standards of the (sick joke) auditors, or the — shall we say? — flexibility of the spinal columns of the politicians (said flexing improved by much practice at bending over to place snouts in troughs, it seems to me)... well, don't even get me started!
Given that much of this self-serving behaviour (which is, of course, entirely justified at the time by the rationalisation that "everyone's doing it, so why shouldn't I?") stems from the various heaps of profit-motivated deregulation that featured large in the policies of both the sainted Baroness Thatcher and her thick, sycophantic buddy in the White House in the early 1980s onward, it seems to me that many obscenely large chickens are now staggering home to roost. Meanwhile, of course, it's the poor working saps such as myself whose pensions funds have whizzed from surplus to deficit who end up footing the bill, in every sense of the word and at every stage of the game.
Liberal though I am, it would be enough to turn me socialist were there any honest ones left.
Right! Time I wasn't here.
Pleasant Mr Postie...
... (while I was out walking) dropped off the nice little cheque from Brenda's apologetic guvmint that I was told about on Monday (for 22.4% of my loss due to their disgraceful maladministration of Equitable Life) and these two Blu-rays, of which "Studio 54" is new to me — the film, not awareness of that club itself:
I originally had "Parenthood" on LaserDisc.
Before I set off this morning...
... I captured a trio of colourful tulippery.
Closer view available here.
Closer view available here.
Closer view available here.
This rare bloom...
... is, I assume, native to King's Sombourne.