2015 — 15 May: Friday
For the duration of my central heating "outage" my initial morning cuppa now has two equally vital jobs: wake me up, and warm me up. My lovely but now late mad aunt from the Midlands went through her 96 years without ever having central heating in her detached corner house, so I should be able to manage. Mind you, if I'm feeling somewhat cool in this morning's internal 17.9C have pity on my poor little car1 on whose behalf I'll be contacting a fairly local garage door repair/replace specialist later this morning. Another in an ever-growing line of "firsts" for me.
Besides...
... there's always a silver lining. From the peace and quiet out in the kitchen, the fridge/freezer now feels entitled to a bit of a break. That will cut my leccy bill still further.
I no longer...
... subscribe to anything2 these days, though Private Eye was the last magazine to fall by the wayside — and that was the bank's doing, not mine, as they failed to transfer a long-standing annual direct debit. I did, however, read each issue of the LRB and the New Yorker that came my way. I was a lot less convinced by the Economist. As for the Beano? No brainer. (Link.)
Actually, I've never subscribed to the guff about royalty, either:
I can understand earning respect. But inheriting it is a whole different issue.
The manufacturer...
... of my smartphone continues to reveal a grotesque misunderstanding of my interests in life:
I would be hard-pushed to find a survey whose results are of less interest. I must be very odd. But then I did buy the thing primarily for use as a mobile computing toy. My equidistance from the two nearest masts ensures the last thing I can actually use it for here in Technology Towers is making phone calls.
My ailing...
... garage door will be inspected this afternoon, probably while I'm scrounging tea and a biccy across the village with Roger & Eileen. Now all I need is that new wireless receiver to switch my central heating back on and I shall be one very happy bunny.
Central heating...
... is back in business. Next, I hope, will be the garage door.
Big Bro agreed...
... with my decision to leave dear Mama's little pile of eligible Premium Bonds in Uncle ERNIE's prize draw for the 12 months following her death. Hence my jaunt into Eastleigh at lunchtime to pay in the £75 tax-free prize Mr Postie delivered. Winnings that occur after her death are no longer added to her accumulated Bond total, but instead have to be paid out immediately to the Executor. (That's me, with my Executor's hat on, of course.) I find myself idly wondering what happens if one of her Bonds wins the semi-mythical £1,000,000 jackpot. Since that would push the value of her estate over the Inheritance Tax threshold I half expect there may be a "special case" that kicks in!
Interesting viewpoint...
... and plentiful comments, too. Source and snippet:
The substitutions made in the dictionary — the outdoor and the natural being displaced by the indoor and the virtual — are a small but significant symptom of the simulated life we increasingly live. Children are now (and valuably) adept ecologists of the technoscape, with numerous terms for file types but few for different trees and creatures. A basic literacy of landscape is falling away up and down the ages. And what is lost along with this literacy is something precious: a kind of word magic, the power that certain terms possess to enchant our relations with nature and place.
Good to know:
