2013 — 11 November: Monday

When you're five years old, with six years ahead before you even get to the "big" school1 to join your Big Bro, there seems to be all the time in the world. However, just let half a century elapse. What's left of your hair is grey (if you're kind) and white (if you're honest). Your son is "all growed up" and left home.2 You've retired from "work". And the amazing girl you didn't even know existed when you were five has already been your wife for just over 33 happy years.

But now she dies, quite ruining your selfishly-unadmitted plan to be the first to go. There are some ways in which the next six years whizz by in the blink of an eye, trust me. Time is slippery stuff, Christa!

It's already time for my next cuppa, after all :-)

But that minor...

... elder statesman Sir John Major remains reliably entertaining. If the news summary on BBC Radio 3 can be trusted — and I harbour the occasional doubt — he's just blamed the "Labour party" for the collapse of social mobility in the UK, and apparently thinks it's shocking that people educated privately and the affluent middle class remain "in charge" of things. But then, he probably still thinks that that nice Tony Bliar and his reworked "New Labour" had something to do with socialism.

For some reason, it brings to mind that Neil Innes song "How sweet to be an idiot". Can't think why.

Surfacing from...

... Harry Shearer's "Le Show", I noted it was still raining but — oh, joy! — that will be replaced, this afternoon, by fog.

Nipping smartly out, therefore, before the fog descends, I've just returned clutching a couple of goodies (I hope)...

Films

...snaffled cheaply in Asda. [Pause] And after a welcome cup of coffee over in the "bung", and a light but tasty lunch, where's the promised fog? The "composer of the week" (Bill Evans) made a very pleasant change from the usual run of more classically-oriented folk, while the news coming in after the typhoon in the Philippines is very horrid.

I (still) need...

... a system. Having just added today's little bounty to the DVD Profiler online database, uploaded it, then downloaded it back down to my high-IQ smartphone I browsed the profile of "Admission" and noticed Lily Tomlin is listed as one of the cast. Let's just see what else I've got that she's in, shall we? Hang on! I know damn' well she's in Altman's "Short Cuts". Heck, I even bought the two-disc Criterion edition of that to replace my NTSC LaserDisc. So, erm, why isn't it in my DVD Profiler database?

Answer: I (still) need a system. [Pause] It is, now.

Just to prove...

... I can, I've switched off BlackBeast and am currently reliant on the Laptop PC's Linux Mint 15 system. Scary, heh? :-)

Not quite as scary as trying to persuade it to open .shtml files with the gedit text file editor. Though drag and dropping my file on to the desktop 'shortcut' to gedit works — if it is a shortcut. All I did was select gedit in the list of accessories and specify I wanted it added to the desktop. Windows could do well to emulate that trick. RISC-OS learned how to do it years ago.

  

Footnotes

1  Where the UK educational system finally began to get vaguely serious, it seemed at the time.
2  Even if he still shows no sign of relinquishing ownership of "his" room.