2010 — 9 July: Friday
I've been listening to some material from Little Steven's Underground Garage — a radio show from across the pond. Excellent music. And the Denon is doing very well as a replacement power amplifier. But I'm also falling asleep at the keyboard, here. And, of course, I now have no music upstairs in my study.
G'night.
Barrings Acts of...
... the unbenevolent entity that runs the show, I now have until Monday morning to move as much stuff as I can into the smaller study so that, in turn, I can then move as much stuff as I can out of the kitchen so that, in turn, it can have a vinyl floor put down. Perfectly simple; just a hard slog up and down stairs. Not before a cuppa, though. It's 07:59 and not actually raining. Time for some after eight (Shlomo) Mintz and Paganini, says the jolly BBC Radio 3 announcer.
Speaking of unbenevolence:
Under Iran's strict interpretation of Islamic law, sex before marriage is punishable by 100 lashes, but married offenders are sentenced to death by stoning. The stones used must be large enough to cause the condemned pain, but not sufficient to kill immediately.
But then again "Women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes" says Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran. (Source.) Good job the chap (or do I mean "raving lunatic"?) has clarified that, as we might otherwise have blamed tectonic plates, and that would have been a dreadful mistake. Though earthquakes do tend to produce rubble in a goodly range of sizes — a ready-made stoning supply, indeed. That must be the plan, then. Mysterious ways, and all that.
Or, in simpler Pogo terms:
Time to get cracking.
Another suitcase in...
... another hall. A lady from a different hospital is trying to arrange delivery of a couple of items that will assist dear Mama when she's back on her nest. And I've been given a hint that the date of discharge may be 17th July, though that could be just this lady's target date for delivery in advance. We shall see. This is well-nigh impossible from 150 miles away which does help keep elevated all those lovely stress levels. Still, I've had a nice long chat with Mike, and Len (whom I haven't seen for five or six weeks) is taking me out for a pub lunch... I'd better sort out a fresh shirt by then. Keep going, David, it's only 10:59 and there's (far too) much to do.
High noon
Stuff the fresh shirt — I've had a fresh shower. And I've again worked up an appetite. I've been emulating Anne Fadiman's "Silkie", though with much heavier items, alas. Come on, Len. [Pause] His sage advice, having looked at what's been moved and what remains to be moved, is "Chill out with a cool drink, and wait until 3 in the morning when it's cooled down a bit." As of 14:49 the porch thermo says it's 29C out there. Remind me why I need a heating system.
Not just to provide hot water for the washing machine, surely?
Distinctions
I knew there must be a reason for my liking books so much. Source and snippet:
A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep, alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting
wisdom. Respect is paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.
A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian
England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the
old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.
Actually, I became a reader to avert boredom and because, when young, my myopia went unrecognised by my parents until I made my own pre-teen appointment to see an optician having looked through a diverging lens in an early science lesson — that was when I realised that it was possible to read the blackboard from the back of a classroom. Amazing discovery. I'd previously assumed that everybody existed in the same colourful visually blurred world1 that I did.
R.I.P. David Fanshawe
I'd missed this departure, but loved his "African Sanctus". Also "Pearl divers of Bahrain", and "Music of the South Pacific".
I also found yet another reason to miss Christa: her cheerful help in getting bulky items up and down the stairs was always a source of innocent merriment. Lugging the "Z"-bed2 up to her cleared study on my own a few minutes ago was a far less enjoyable experience. Tea! Now!!
Salaries
Having just spotted this list, I find it moderately amusing, from my current perspective, to recall that I was almost invariably assured by a string of IBM managers over quarter of a century that I was already being paid "above the market rate" during the annual raindance that was employee assessment, appraisal, and (forgive the wry chuckles) counselling.3 Even our new, saintly, Prime Minister only gets £142,000 per year. (What is the market rate for a PM these days, do you suppose? And why, for random example, do we need a Horserace Betting Levy Board Chief Exec at a cool quarter of a million per year?)
What a country.