2015 — 25 November: Wednesday
My choice of bedtime reading1 (and I highly recommend it) was the slender Julian Barnes title I found yesterday in Soton. As I did with Viktor Frankl's "memoir" (eight years ago now!) I dove in at approx. the halfway point and — though it may sound odd — I found his memories and observations of his own bereavement both insightful, and (at times) even amusing. A very good writer. Your mileage will vary, inevitably, depending on your experience of loss and the characteristics of your relationship. Just sayin'.
Until I climbed...
... those stairs to Bedfordshire, I'd been spending an enjoyable hour or so copying across various radio downloads to longer-term (NAS) homes — partly just to stop get_iplayer from nagging me to delete stuff. And, once again, picking away at a long-running little task... trying to assemble a small collection of my very "favouritest" Desert Island Discs tracks into a folder readily to hand. The task is a slow one, as even my Top 100 has probably two or three thousand contenders jostling for my renewed attention at any one time. That's part of the fun, of course.
Today's walk...
... needs to begin a bit earlier than usual, but will be very welcome nonetheless. Those cobwebs keep accumulating, and need regular blasts of fresh air to disperse. Meanwhile, here's another "Guess the source" item, also from one of yesterday's trove:
Not having experience with many fathers, I didn't realise how remarkable he was.
I'd been wondering if she would tackle that topic.
My father...
... was a huge fan of "Francis Albert"... me, not so much. Here, Mr Gopnick, reviewing Kaplan's second volume of bio, gets momentarily discursively side-tracked by "the King":
Peter Guralnickâs two-volume account of Elvis Presley was the pioneering model of the genre. Designed in some small part to defuse Albert Goldman's ugly, contemptuous — but often insightful — biography of the King, Guralnick worked through the details of Elvis's life with more studious patience than Leon Edel devoted to Henry James's (Guralnick's long endnote arguing through who actually worked the lathe on Elvis's first recording, Sam Phillips or his assistant, is a stunner).
Meanwhile, the idea...
... of a writer of a memoir called "Blackout: remembering the things I drank to forget" getting the gig of reviewing a survey — by the ex-alcoholic daughter of an alcoholic father — of North America's complex relationship to booze strikes me as amusing. (Link.)
You drink too much. You should stop. I know. I know. But I only drink to help me forget. Oh, you poor man! Forget what? I can't remember.
(From an ancient "National Lampoon" cartoon.)
Setting off earlier...
... meant getting back in time for "Composer of the Week", in time for a bunch of snailmail from Mr Postie, and in time to dodge all the rain that's been the main climatological feature this afternoon. Not surprisingly, when I saw a sinister brown envelope from the Dept. for Work and Pensions I naturally assumed it would be their response to my recently-supplied news that I was not actually the manager of the care-home in which dear Mama breathed her last. No. It was much more exciting.
My Winter Fuel Allowance has gone back up to £200 since DfWP — or, at least, one bit of their vast and intricately-unlinked organisation — have correctly put two and two together and concluded I am once more a single occupant household.2 Every little helps, though that lovely Mr Osborne seemed surprisingly well-intentioned towards us pensioners (the Grauniad asserts it's because we're more likely to vote Tory!) in his Autumn Statement. I gather the basic state pension is to rise by £3.35 to £119.30 a week from next year, which is when I become eligible for it.
I also now know...
... why the Blu-ray of "Keeping the Faith" was a tad costlier than usual. It's come from Australia (a clear breach of the small print Ts & Cs).
A bit worryingly, it claims to run for 124 minutes (1080p) whereas my original NTSC DVD claimed 129 minutes. Such a discrepancy is usually accounted for by the 4% speed-up of PAL over NTSC, but that shouldn't be the case in our Brave New (digital) World. At least it still has all the same extras and director's commentary. I shall renew my acquaintance with it this evening, methinks. And this evening is almost upon me already.
[Pause, of 129 minutes and 18 seconds]
Lovely film.