2014 — 4 March: Tuesday

The plums¹ for my cereal topping have just been zapped into a satisfactory state of thermal tizziness. The sun is shining (though it looks as if there's been a touch of frost overnight). Harvard doctors have asserted that the two hours after an outburst of temper put you at five times the risk of a heart attack and three times the risk of a stroke. Any half-awake apprentice² at Hawker Siddeley in the early 1970s could have predicted that, frankly. It was just yet another piece of the bizarre cocktail of "adult behaviour" that helped me conclude³ the world of UK manufacturing industry wasn't going to be for me.

Meanwhile, a previously-unknown virus found deep in the Siberian permafrost (where people intend to drill for oil, naturally) has, on thawing out in a French lab, become infectious again (though I'm vastly reassured to learn that "scientists" say, naturally, it poses no threat to my health).

Now that we've decided...

... to carry wellies with us, we're going to re-investigate the new walk we tried from last month that had thwarted us with an unexpected lake and flowing water right across our road route at the lowest point of all the contour lines. The spirit of intrepid adventure is not quite dead yet. Breakfast and a packed lunch beckon, therefore.

But not this map! (Thanks, Brian.)

As the flood water...

... only got to within 2" of the top of the wellies at the worst of two points where we needed to wear them we actually made it round our originally-intended route with dry feet. The remainder of the day is now, therefore, my oyster (as it were). First order of business: another cuppa while the rest of "Firebird" plays out.

That little pack...

... of sausages I froze at the end of last year for emergency snowed-in rations will do very nicely, with a salad, for my evening meal. "Use it or lose it" being my latest motto. Again.

Meanwhile, Chris has asked me to bring along a spare hdmi lead for him. I shall be fascinated to learn (and/or try to tease him [during lunch tomorrow at the rather regal-sounding "The Crown Inn" in King's Sombourne]) just exactly what he's getting up to.

Not hi-def, surely? At his age? :-)

I've been rationing...

... my exposure to Californication — it's so much fun I suspect it may actually be illegal. I'm just about to embark on Season #5.

Footnotes

¹  And almost the last of the post-Xmas cranberries.
²  Watching, in bemusement, the veins throb on the foreheads of normally mild-mannered middle-aged chaps in the Purchasing department as they yelled down phones on frustrating calls to recalcitrant or dilatory external suppliers. Or to "idiots" in the IT department.
³  I'd first started to gather such evidence while working for two summers in 1968 and 1969 at the Alcan Enfield aluminium recovery and smelting plant in London Colney. The various job(s) were fine, including the metallurgy apprenticeship I was actually offered, but some of the people were more than a bit weird. Computers struck me as easier to understand. And they were less likely to yell at me.