2016 — 1 August: Monday — rabbits!

One day1 I will understand the subjective and objective "flow" of time — if "flow" is even le mot juste — well enough to understand it, rather than continually being shocked by it. I was listening last night to "Fit the First" of something (not "The Hunting of the Snark"!) that I still vividly recall first hearing on 8th March 1978 at 22:30 in the evening. Certainly not an outlier in terms of my usual choice; I bought a luxurious box set of CDs a mere decade after the BBC's first transmission:

Hitch-Hiker's Guide CD case

Though you can see I clearly mislaid its protective towel at some point since then. And it's always a bit of a lost cause to use a flatbed scanner to handle shiny material against a dark background. Better to photograph the object at an angle and correct the perspective by adroit use of (nowadays) a GIMP perspective transform tool. Just colour me "too lazy" for that before breakfast.

Second attempt

I was only...

... vaguely aware of who de Gaulle was, let alone what he was saying, on 14th January 1963:

[Britain's entry to the six-nation Common Market would create a]
"colossal Atlantic Community dependant on and led by America,
which would soon absorb the European Community."

I guess we'll never know now, will we? (Link.) Oh, and it's "Prospect" magazine that spells "dependent" that way...

Despite giving...

... my car insurers feedback at the time I renewed, they now want Yet Another Survey. Were I to fill it in, it might well say "Next time you survey me, I will not renew with you."

Ironically, I nearly needed...

... to invoke the insurance as I came unpleasantly close to mowing down a pair of well-dressed god-botherers on my own driveway as I reversed out of the garage this morning. I don't really expect this sort of mobile hazard at that point, of course. But if chaps choose to wander across my blind spot in hot pursuit of the salvation of my immortal soul while I'm busy dodging the sides of my garage, well, that's more their problem than mine.

Feeling mischievous, I engaged them briefly in conversation. I said I had no need of their hypothesis, but hinted that if their god could explain and justify cancer I might listen. There was a pause.

"Answers are all in the bible."
"Oh, and who wrote that?"
"Men of god."
"But what is this god you speak of?"
"He created everything."
"Well, for a start, she's black. But, more importantly, who created god?"

Blank incomprehension on their part.. But the darker-skinned of the pair expressed the wish that I should "have a nice day", so I smiled at him as I drove off. I suppose I was lucky not to be struck by lightning.

In earlier times...

... say, perhaps, 35 years ago (!) my little expotition into Eastleigh for my semi-regular "fix" would have entailed either synchronising carefully with Christa and then babe-in-arms Peter to hitch a ride, or walking briskly there and back in perhaps 80 minutes or so. Today, a five-minute drive each way, a parking fee of £1.30 for less than 15 minutes, and a contactless "payWave" unverified card transaction2 of £23.01 yields a wealth of entertaining and (I hope) informative reading.

On topics that were simply undreamt-of in 1981. But are a whole helluva lot easier to understand than the fixed ideas of the god botherers.

Hobby interests

I'm now rather better informed on UltraHD and the issues surrounding extra colour depth. I've been vaguely contemplating stepping down the size3 of my TV screen slightly, but also tweaking its resolution up while (possibly) also opting for the same sort of curvature that works so beautifully with my 34" Dell monitor on my desk. After all, there's only me (and the invisible god?) viewing the thing for 99% of the time.

I've just yielded...

... to temptation and dropped 89p on a FLAC download of the wondrously entertaining "Three Fables" by Stephen Montague. #1 deals with a bet between the sun and the wind as to which of them can more quickly remove a man's cloak. #2 is the tale of a bird with a bird brain breaking its promise to a tasty worm.

Three Fables

But Fable #3, which I recall made me laugh, a lot, is all about midges. I first heard it two years ago on BBC Radio 3 and although I'm reasonably sure I still have — somewhere — a digital file of the programme in which it featured... for 89p it's worth the time saved by not fruitlessly searching for it. Unless and until I can index the contents of my archive, this is a satisfactory solution, and helps a Good Cause. (NMC Recordings is a registered charity supporting British composers and artists.)


Footnotes

1  Though probably not soon.
2  An eye-watering sum by the standards of 1981 that includes the obligatory 5p "fine" for a plastic bag.
3  The 60" Pioneer Kuro plasma is impossible to manoeuvre safely single-handed, and is also very power-hungry. That said, its black level display is only now being reached by these fancy newer technologies. Hard to believe that I've already had the Kuro for over seven years. With "average" use, its brightness should have dropped by 50% by now, so I'm clearly not the "average" user.