2013 — 28 December: Saturday
Surfacing, rather later than usual1 on a sunny but frosty morning, I'm reminded — as I make my initial cuppa — of a definition that I read a very long time ago:
A lady serves her milk from a jug on a tray, even when she is alone.
Yesterday evening's entertainment included the first three episodes of "Green Wing", which I found delightfully good viewing and even, on occasion, both clever and hilarious. I recall now that I'd tried it when it first went out on Channel 4 just over a decade ago but was put off by the visual style and switched off after (probably) less than a couple of minutes. Bite me.
Losing interest
I have two further months of collecting 5% on my shiny newest current a/c before it drops to a mere 1% (though that will then still be 10x higher than the Spanish shysters I'd been with). At least I can then stop juggling the balance to play the monthly "maximise it" game. Never really been my sort of game...
Now, why does...
... Windows suddenly decide to redraw all the icons of applications (both running, and currently quiescent) that I've pinned to the taskbar while I'm editing a simple text file? Weird!
Grrr!
I'm a simple chap, with simple interests. While digging around for other stuff, and having a bit of a sort out, I recently2 unearthed one of the 100-pocket "display books" into which I'd crammed a lot of magazine articles and interviews that I'd clipped for that proverbial rainy day when I hoped I might have more free time. Some I'd been keeping for their intrinsic interest. Some to re-read before culling. Some, possibly, to OCR and save digitally.
It's a bit rainy. I have some free time. Can I find the damn' display book again?
I swear there are times when I suspect all the shelves in this house are starting to emulate the sort of 4-dimensional network in that AJ Deutsch 1950 SF story "A subway named Moebius", or perhaps it's more akin to the nightmare depicted in Heinlein's "..and he built a crooked house..." from a decade earlier. Not that I recall an earthquake hereabouts recently:
I have never been so fortunate as to be conscious of having experienced the least shock of an earthquake, although, when a town had been destroyed in Ischia I hastened on from Rome in the hope of getting a slight shake. My passion was disappointed, so I consoled myself by a flirtation with a volcano.
And now there's only 20 minutes until sunset. Another day disappears...
A mere 35 minutes...
... later, I could have been seen, only slightly dusty, triumphantly clutching the errant volume. It contains interviews with, or feature articles about, the following:
You can probably now deduce at least one of my magazine subscriptions in the 1970s and 1980s. Thing is, I was so busy being a husband, a father, and an IBMer that I never really seemed to get a chance to catch up. And this, alas, is just one of the little hordes of potential reading treasure.