2013 — 16 July: Tuesday
Today, I gather we will be finding out just how crappy and dangerous some of our hospitals1 have become. With soundbites like "These investigations are welcome but well overdue. The problems at these trusts were known to the authorities well before any decision to look into them" I can't help thinking that a growing number of smelly Thatcherite chickens (ably nurtured in later years by Bliar, of course) are now coming home to roost in various sectors of the UK's crumbling infrastructure.
Is it any great surprise I sometimes prefer to take refuge in tales of earlier times?
I don't deny...
... the world could use a few more brain waves. I'm not convinced this is one of them. Theta-Beta ratios, my Aunt Fanny! (And I haven't even got an Aunt Fanny.) (Link.)
Or, perhaps, we just need a few more poets operating among politicians?
I have no idea what an étoufée is. Hominy grits, though, I do know. And detest. [Pause] Dear Mama has once again been more favoured by our Uncle ERNIE than I have. 'Twas ever thus.
Getting a bit fed up of the warm weather, if I'm honest. It's 27C indoors, which is more than enough. Now back to the rest of the afternoon.
My memory...
... can be irritatingly perverse at times. Radcliffe and Maconie have just played John Barry's haunting (and unforgettable) theme to "Midnight Cowboy" and I glanced at my DVD artwork just to confirm he was indeed the composer. There it wasn't. The artwork, that is. So I next inspected my video (you-should-pardon-the-phrase) database. There it also wasn't. I couldn't believe it.
Obviously, somewhat like the film "Gattaca" — which I saw with Christa in the cinema, bought (but never watched again) on LaserDisc, rebought (but never watched again) on DVD — it's so deeply embedded somewhere in a couple of my remaining neurons that I've actually never got the round tuit needed to add it to my little collection. Amazing. The Blu-ray is now on its way; it includes a documentary feature looking back after 35 years (44 now!) of this extraordinary John Schlesinger film.
Wagnerian mini-drama
I should know by now that, when I'm sitting at one end of the living room reading a book, and the radio is nicely entertaining the rest of my cortex from the other end of the room, the chance of the sound of my mobile's ring-tone penetrating deeply enough and in sufficient time to trigger the neural interrupt needed for me to realise, parse the meaning of the sound, identify it, bestir myself, remember I first have to find, pick up, and unlock the damn' thing, and then have the right glasses on in order to be able to see well enough to press the right key... the caller has usually given up, or perished from old age.
Still, at least I'm now an adept at the menu functions needed to find the caller's number, identify it as a totally ignorable 0845-whatever, and then put the thing back on its piece of electric charging string ready for the next, wait for it, Ring Cycle.
Don't fear the Reaper
I forgot to mention that I took the plunge(r) and picked up this little charmer for the proverbial song (£1) on Saturday afternoon:
He's supposed to be placed in a fish tank, with air pumped into his articulated "pet" so bubbles do what bubbles do in such a situation. I've long been interested in kitsch :-)
Now Marc Riley has just played the final track on the 1979 début album by The Roches. It doesn't get much better than that.