2014 — 14 July: Monday
I've caught the missing sleep1 wherever it had been hiding, and thus now feel readier to face the new week. Mind you, I find retirement nicely blurs the boundaries between weeks and weekends.
I always thought...
... Kingsley Amis was much better at picking individual SF stories2 than he ever was at observing the field more generally and from a greater height.
With Verne we reach the first great progenitor of modern science fiction. In its literary aspect his work is, of course, of poor quality, a feature certainly reproduced with great fidelity by most of his successors.
And what's this mysterious "literary aspect"? There's good music and bad music. Similarly, there's good writing and bad writing. Simple as that. Though I have to admit I would now (I'm sure) find Jules Verne hard going. Even as a retirement hobby. Of course, if dear Mama hadn't thrown out my little set of hardback 'classics' when I wasn't looking...
Me? Bitter? Perish the thought!
Cool title
I eat healthily...
... (a moving target, of course, were I stupid enough to read the Daily Mail's endless supply of "X causes cancer" stories). I don't smoke. I can eke out a small bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey for well over a year (sometimes a decade). I exercise moderately (if about 12 miles a week walking in the countryside counts). I keep my mind active (last night's X-men film notwithstanding). I socialise to a greater extent than I ever did when I could chat to Christa and she was still alive to answer. I have taught myself (to a greater or lesser extent) the whole gamut of domestic administrivia. Though I refuse to do any ironing.
Nobody lives forever. Not me. Not Christa. Not even an imaginary sky-pilot. I know I am going to die, and am just not particularly keen to be there when it happens. Nor to read endless unsolicited snailmail invitations to be 'screened' for PAD. A halfway-competent Intelligent Designer would have filtered that out while performing said design, surely? Or was the job of Universe and Life creation simply handed out to the lowest bidder?
And, if so, by whom?
Meanwhile, now that...
... I've re-acquainted myself with the modus operandi of my little "Braun citromatic" I've laid in a supply of squeezable citrus fruit. I shall doubtless now die of a fructose overdose, and be discovered in a pile of dried pith.
I suspect...
... ex-High Court judges are capable of being no more aware of the 'Establishment' ether they swim in (until they read the popular Press) than a goldfish is aware of water.
Golly. What will the Home Affairs Committee make of it all?
Later
I realise that I still miss "Humph" while listening to a remarkably unfunny "I'm sorry I haven't a clue". Mind you, BBC Radio 4 is pretty much a comedy-free zone. I dropped off the care-home's latest silly questionnaire this afternoon, and then swung by Mike's on the way home for a welcome cup of jasmine. (It was bright, sunny, and quite breezy. Wonder what it will be like for the next couple of days as plans are now afoot for another walkabout.)
Oh, good grief!
I noted the similarity between "Cashback" and Nicholson Baker's 20-year-old novel "The Fermata". Now — how appropriate! — Robert "Back to the Future" Zemeckis is apparently to produce a TV 'drama' inspired (if that's the right verb) by the same material. What goes around...