2015 — 8 September: Tuesday
Books and music are far more reliable mood- and life-enhancing drugs than typical Hollywood productions. So I've been humanely exterminating1 all the shelf-filling video dross I have no desire (or time) to re-watch. Also to go have been a few titles bought purely for Christa. It's been an interesting, and strangely liberating, exercise. I prefer some of the longer-form TV series to many of the films, too. I like multiple-character arcs that have room to develop. Examples: "Orange is the new black", "House of Cards", and the ineffable "West Wing" and "Northern Exposure".
The overall reduction...
... has been about 330 titles. All that remains is to "defragment" my CaseLogic folders to close up the gaps, making additions a whole lot easier to manage. If history is any guide, there will be the occasional addition. (One of the titles in transit right now is David Hare's Worricker trilogy.)
Now it's time to nip out to re-stock a food shelf or two. Good job the pension arrived.
I gather...
... a new "national living wage" of £7-20 per hour for over-25s comes in from next April. Compare and contrast the situation (plight?) of 18-year-olds in the UK in 1945:
The ability to draw on conscript soldiers was one of the reasons why Britain was able to avoid [post-war, post-colonial] retrenchment — it is easier to deploy men if they cost only 28 shillings a week and if the majority of them are too young to vote. British planners were not forced to present a realistic balance sheet of what their defence policy cost...
For my younger reader, 28 shillings then is £1-40 now though 70 years of inflation (or do I mean "quantitative easing"?) wreaks havoc in any direct comparison.
"Fibbing for God"
The legalisation of assisted dying? — dear Mama was a keen supporter of that at least until her dementia fully kicked in and her mind went completely AWOL. But this attempt to change the law faces "formidable" opposition. The phrase "Fibbing for God" tickled me. (Link.)
It just may be...
... that this 2014 CD of a live-audience (Dutch?) mono audio TV special — first broadcast on 28 December 1979 — is actually a bit of a bootleg. It predates her third album:
Not that her voice sounds any less ethereal... [Pause] The same delivery yielded my Worricker trilogy, but my attempts to scan the (first of the three) individual pieces of cover artwork without some unpretty awesome striped artefacts fell at the first hurdle, so I've settled for just the cover of the box instead:
