2014 — 26 December: Friday
I can see clear evidence that that nippy blighter Jack Frost has been up to his cool tricks overnight.1 I suspect I shall be pottering gently around basking in the output of the new (actually, no longer so new!) central heating system today. I shall not, for example, attend the 'Boxing' day lunch over at the care-home.
I've no idea yet of all the other things I won't do today :-)
Having heard...
... Henrietta Lovell of the Rare Tea Company chattering away yesterday I note that she's not yet got me to change the way I boil my kettle. Although, while I was listening to her story, I did change the way I will in future craft my quarterly archive files for my 'molehole' diary entries. It belatedly occurred to me that I now have enough examples that a past year could act as a perfect template for the upcoming one. Subject only to some minor pieces of global editing the year 2009 is a perfect match2 for the year 2015.
Mind you, the David of 2009 and the David of 2015 are two entirely different chaps. The latter is older, but (alas) no wiser. As a chum of mine put it in his Xmas email, touching on the trials and tribulations of an aged P:
Fortunately, she is still reasonably compos mentis — though one occasionally wonders whether one is still fit to judge this in one's self, let alone in others.
It's a slippery slope.
Reasons to be cheerful, part "?"
That thinker Pinker continues his campaign to convince me the world is getting steadily more peaceful. Source and snippet:
Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading formula of journalistic narration...
An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits. It would calibrate our national and international responses to the magnitude of the dangers that face us. It would limit the influence of terrorists, school
shooters, decapitation cinematographers, and other violence impresarios. It might even dispel foreboding and embody, again, the hope of the world.
I'm sure he's right. After all, look how well evidence-based reasoning does here in the UK in the guvmint's perpetual "war on drugs".
I think I may know...
... a couple of the answers. In total. (Link.)
The early afternoon...
... temperature having shot up (to +3C or so) it's now doing its best to drizzle a bit. I can only hope any traditional fox-hunters out there get chilled to the bone. A thought prompted, in part, by my reading of various items in this delicious anthology...
... yesterday evening. By his own estimation, GBS reckoned he could have written about 20 more plays in the time he spent on the quarter of a million letters and cards he sent in reply to those who wrote to him. Actually, reading Holroyd's introduction also reminded me that in early 2007 I'd picked up — relatively cheaply — two of his own books about Shaw (#1 and #2) before I'd got into the habit of scanning such things for this ¬blog.
Fixing that — judging by the incipient shakiness — is going to have to take second place to a late bite of lunch. [Pause] Salmon, "cheese and pips". What could be nicer? [Pause] A cuppa, of course. [Pause] Now back to my scanner:
Back in May 2011...
... I picked up a mega-cheap copy of "Arthur" in Asda, never having seen the whole thing. This evening — since I'd just finished watching (and enjoyed) "10" (also for the first time) — I thought I'd take "Arthur" out for a spin. Pah! I ejected it within 10 minutes. Undeterred, I next loaded "Greenberg" (not least because it was basically adjacent in the CaseLogic folder. That stayed in for nearer 30 minutes, but I'm quite content to go to my grave without knowing how it ends. I shall make another cuppa and then resume my Austen.