2014 — 5 May: Monday
I hope this morning's stubbed toe1 is the last bit of domestic displacement — it took me a while to discover where my preferred food tray now lives — in the wake of a very pleasant weekend visit. Peter's muttered remark at one point about "You're all I've got left" and his g/f's equally heart-felt remark at another point about their both being unwilling members of the "Dead Mother's Club" brought me up a little short. A salutary reminder that people all around me have their own stories.
If one makes sufficient effort, one can still learn very useful lessons from one's offspring :-)
We also discussed...
... a variety of domestic decoration and maintenance topics both inside and outside the house. Also holiday travel. Though nobody ever really groks the depth of my life-long indifference to being wrenched from my home comforts and toys for the dubious pleasure of journeying to furrin parts simply to encounter exotic e-Coli cultures (and peoples).
Today's "plan" ...
... includes, so far, a walk in the vicinity of Exbury that's to be followed by a careful assessment of what Mike's 5.1 remastered Blu-ray audio of "Tommy" actually sounds like on my system. We both appreciate good-quality hi-fi, but have diverged in our efforts to achieve it. His choice is a multi-channel one with careful digital calibration of his cinema room. Mine is the lazier "connect power amp to loudspeakers" Zen approach.
We agreed that my recent Modern Mandolin Quartet Blu-ray audio, while beautifully recorded2, was essentially a one-off listening experience akin to 1950s stereo demo recordings of chuffers and ping pong games. Or my 1976 binaural recordings. The surround mix, heard on his full-blown 7.1 system, simply puts one player in each corner (as I'd predicted it would). I could stand to hear again the Philip Glass extracts from "Mishima", but more as a novelty. Still, at less than a fiver...
Later, I shall finish watching last Friday's "Butter". I was enjoying it very much, but was just too tired last night to stay awake.
I like this
Sensible chap, for a Bavarian:
At 66, the moustachioed psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer exudes strapping good health — but that's not because he goes regularly to the doctor for checkups. "I follow the evidence," he says. "People who go to checkups: do fewer of them die from heart disease? From cancer? Or from any cause? The answer, three times: no. They just get more treatment, take more medication, and worry more often."
It aligns very neatly with Lynn Barber's piece of art I'd noted last Friday.
Memo to self:
- Don't attempt to drive down to Exbury on a Bank Holiday that coincides with the second day of the Hampshire County Fair. After being trapped in an almost motionless double lane queue we did a U-turn on the first available roundabout and diverted to the Newbridge scene of my very first New Forest walk with Mike back in November 2007, just a few days after Christa left us. It's only five miles, but five miles along mostly quiet little roads is a lot better than two hours in a piece of gridlocked traffic.
- Don't bother with the (frankly, godawful sounding) 5.1 remix of "Tommy". It's a travesty. Even on my simple stereo system. I shall be sticking to my nearly 30-year-old Polydor CDs, thanks all the same.
However, I've now ordered my own copy of the last Genesis album made before Peter Gabriel fled the group: "The Lamb lies down on Broadway". I have never heard all of it because I was quite sure it was a live recording. Had I known better, I could have been listening to it for the last 40 years. Twit!
The average human...
... is 29 years old, apparently. Heavens, even my son is older than that.
"Butter" is very funny. "Frozen", I'm less sure about (so far). A little bit of Disney can go quite a long way. In parallel news, meanwhile, I've just accidentally discovered that I can actually play the same music file from two different points — at the same time — when using both the Oppo and BlackBeast feeding themselves from the one music file stored on the NAS. Useless? Perhaps. But undeniably rather cool.