2015 — 22 March: Sunday
Almost equally annoying as yesterday's bounced email is the slowly-dawning realisation1 that — when I last had to go chasing after the grant of Probate, for Christa's estate in early 2008 — I had actually let her bank's firm of solicitors do one early but crucial part of the process before (on seeing the preliminary bill and contrasting it with the work2 actually involved) I decided to wrest control of the remainder of the process back from them.
Why annoying? Because it's only a little tedious, seems simple, and yet they charged several hundred pounds on top of the £217 or so that Brenda's gang already demands upfront for what looks do-able in little more than a single evening.
I must, of course, remember...
... to justify my own very minor-league charges for expense against mother's remaining (but sadly-diminished) little pot of gold. I shall tell Big Bro it takes several months and requires a huge firm of solicitors attached to a large, multinational bank that — naming no names, of course — last made headlines and was variously fined or otherwise mildly chastised both here and abroad for a series of behaviours including (but, for all I know, not actually limited to) drug money-laundering, with alleged hints of insider bank rate fixing, and for perhaps helping to facilitate what (to a mildly suspicious eye like mine) might just, in some light, on occasion, look vaguely like something akin to industrial scale tax-dodging by means of secretive bank accounts held by clients in the vicinity of the Swiss Alps.
Recall, again, what Barack Obama said before he was elected:
"those with money, those with influence, those with control over how resources are allocated in our society, are very protective of their interests, and they can rationalise infinitely the reasons why they should have more money and power than anyone else."
Meanwhile, I note Gerard Hoffnung would have been 90 today. Amazing.
My new pair of...
... "print on demand" collections of previously unread SF short stories by Arthur Porges duly showed up yesterday. Their covers, sadly, are far too bland to be worth scanning... except as examples of covers that are far too bland to be worth scanning.
Trust me :-)
I shall also...
... be mildly annoyed if I get so used to working on this (perfectly acceptable) little 27" screen — not forgetting the lovely set of six3 Virtual Linux Deskspaces I permit myself — that I no longer feel the need for the 40" 4K Philips sitting on the naughty step out in the dining room. Though, if that happens, I seem to have a son who was rather taken by it.
This was my morning's pre-breakfast working set. Of which I've so far used seven :-)
How very appropriate...
... that Guy Garvey was playing Brian Eno's "Ending (an ascent)" — as I did at Christa's funeral — just while I was finalising notes for my own use about Things To Be Done in the coming weeks.
As part of my estate valuation...
... I've just looked up the BP share price immediately after Mother's death. It was £4-17 (give or take) for each $0.50 ordinary share. The ol' dear has a wodge of them. I still remember the scepticism expressed by the three males in her family when she first showed an interest in (North Sea) Oil and Energy shares in the mid-1960s. (Quite possibly after reading an article in "The Lady" magazine.) Dad funnelled some seed money her way for experiments. She was right4 and we were all wrong. I admit it. Investment genius genes, remember? Just like Christa. If you don't have 'em, son, marry 'em!