2014 — 12 September: Friday
I received proof this morning1 that the secret of Christa's cat-deterrence system on the side garden gate is out of the bag, having been worked out by at least one slinky (and necessarily acrobatic) feline. No matter, I feel the same way about cats in the garden as I do about the ants I saw out there on my pear hunt yesterday. In here? That would be a different matter.
Let stalking cats lie, and all that.
Those poor...
... hard-working, dedicated, incorruptible people who tirelessly (tiresomely?) legislate on our behalf — when they're not busy telling porkies and being on holiday — managed to claim more in expenses last year than at the peak of the expenses scandal five years ago. I note the subtly-damning claim that the figures wouldn't be higher if inflation were taken into account, too. That's OK, then. (Link.)
That poor...
... hard-non-working retiree2 opportunistically snaffled one of the convenient packs of 'winter' root veg that appeared in Waitrose first thing this morning and decided — on the fly — it must be about time to resurrect my crockpottery skills. Delayed by a minute for an "age check" on the small bottle of cooking wine (from which, let me add, 99% of the alcohol has been cunningly removed) and for slightly longer by the long queue of people exiting Hursley Road on to the roundabout 'ahead' of me, I'm still back in perfect time for my next cuppa before thoughts of breakfast start to recur.
Stage two...
... of the enhancement plans for my recent SHIELD Tablet PC are now in progress: a proper cover/case for it and a 64GB MicroSD card to boost its memory without much effect on its weight. The first memory card I ever bought was a 4GB Compact Flash for my Canon digital SLR. I still feel amazement at the idea of something smaller than one of my finger nails having as much capacity as my Acorn RISC PC desktop machine just a decade ago.
News of...
... my latest over-burdening of Mr Postie can wait until I've renewed my car tax disc (the guvmint is saving money by no longer sending out printed discs, but is still wasting money sending out snailmail reminders despite having my email details from the last several annual renewals). And recovered from the shock of my bank reducing the interest rate on the "Loyalty Saver" account they encouraged me to start up a year ago from a not very interesting 1.50% gross to an even less thrilling 1.30% gross. How gross is that?
Filmic rambling
As Flanders and Swann sang it: I once had a whim, and I had to obey it... In this case, it wasn't to buy a French horn in a second-hand shop. Rather, I've for a couple of years now wanted to rewatch an excellently twisty 1998 film by Roland Joffé — it's called "Goodbye Lover"...
... it has a fabulous cast, and the only tiny problem is that I've lent my original NTSC DVD of it to somebody, but all my usual suspects deny still having it. So I finally caved in and bought a PAL DVD. (I would have bought it on Blu-ray had it been available, but a casual search failed to turn up a copy on that format.)
Filmic rambling II
Having just watched (and very much enjoyed) "Goodbye Lover" I have the following three newly-arrived contenders, erm, contending for my next choice:
That's if I don't weaken, and simply resume Lev Grossman's second 'Magicians' tale.