2015 — 29 June: Monday
Yet another sunny morning. Crikey.
Yesterday's delivery...
... from Mr Amazon Logistics took up a chunk of my time.1 Compounded this morning by the fact that two of my three artwork scans had to be rotated back to the vertical to minimise the 'rainbow' streak effect I had to deal with once before. Ironic that this unwelcome occasional artefact of my new scanner is more noticeable on largely monochromatic material.
Author EL James is, erm, at it again. Her new book "Grey" is a disappointingly bland re-spin of volume #1 of her original trilogy from Christian's point of view. This is exactly what Stephenie Meyer's draft "Midnight Sun" did, rather better, in re-telling "Twilight" from Edward's point of view. The film of volume #1 is competently-made, but (again) very bland. However, both authors have become incredibly rich from their franchises, which is always enough to set Hollywood non-creative juices flowing.
Despite its title, I hasten to add that "Whiplash" could scarcely be a more different tale :-)
You may think...
... this all strays rather far from my preferred Jane Austen2 territory. Don't be so sure. Recall the end of chapter 12 of "Pride and Prejudice"? No? How about that chilling list of the young Bennets' primal primate excitements: dinners, a flogging and an impending marriage. (David Shapard's masterly annotated edition theorises that Austen intends to show "the crassness and shallowness of Lydia and Catherine by having them treat a flogging as merely a choice piece of gossip".) Who dares say Austen is boring after that?
I must get out even more. But not before breakfast.
While it's undeniably true...
... that dear Mama replied only once to the weekly stream of letters I sent her for 12 years until September 2007 — when I finally stopped from sheer exhaustion — I did find the occasional parental note scrawled on scraps of paper as I sorted out her estate. This one was from 2010, shortly before the tumble down her stairs that hospitalised3 her:
At least she wished me luck :-)
This is clearly...
... the season of the grand tidy-up. All dear Mama's more-obviously discardable paperwork is now in a heap ready for Big Bro's inspection (should he wish it) before I fire up the shredder. That heap is getting on for a cubic foot of dead trees smeared with information. But, as I remarked at the end of March: "I've been able to reduce the salient financial details of mother's life to a single sheet of A4. Not really all that much trace of 98 years on Planet Earth when you look just at the raw data, is it?" Of course, lots of people in various areas of our financial services community made a pretty good living extracting fees and commissions from her, too.
During her 40 years as a merry widow her best investment was almost certainly her little house in Wombourne. Over a 34-year period its value rose by just over 1,000% and thus paid for about half of her total care-home fees. In a sobering symmetry it occurs to me that I've now lived in my present house for 34 years, also. During which time its value has oscillated more than somewhat, but it is currently perhaps 750% or so "up".