2015 — 14 January: Wednesday
Close if bleary-eyed study of a recent flurry of snail and email photographic evidence — from the other side of the planet (where it appears to be quite summery at this time of year for some reason I don't quite grasp) — allows me to deduce that Big Bro's tribe (his oft-used term1) of young ladies and their partners have been keeping frightfully busy with all that being fruitful and multiplying2 business. Not that I catch more than half the geographical, cultural, and sports-related allusions, references and inter-sibling barbs being flung around.
Meanwhile...
... in these cooler climes, breakfast beckons. I shall then be risking the first real walk of the new year today as the weather isn't looking quite as apocalyptic as forecast. What's the worst that could happen?
Spirals
The (currently malformed) link on a Grauniad piece on Edmund Harriss would have taken me here.
Quite long pause...
... to encompass the preparation and eager consumption of a snack lunch and a cuppa or two, while I slowly warmed up somewhat after the +5C or so out there in the healthy sunshine and fresh air. Plus the time for reading today's delightful doorstep delivery, produced to accompany last year's "Art and Anarchy in the UK" exhibition at the British Library:
Contemplating — indeed, even merely trying to contemplate — dear Mama's likely reaction in years past to the idea of there ever having been an exhibition of 'cheap comics rubbish' at the British Library is quite enough brain-stretching for one day. This makes my fourth excellent volume from Paul Gravett. And still on its way to me in the second half of my same recent order is his slightly older volume...
... with, unless I miss my guess, cover artwork by Joost Swarte.
Arising directly from...
... a section of our walking chatter, on my return I interrogated IMDB for instances of the work of the attractive lady (Jacqueline Pearce) who played "Servalan" in Blake's 7 of, perhaps, over-fond (and none too recent) memory. To my utter delight, this brought me to Christopher Hampton's 1975 play for the BBC "The Philanthropist" (which I can still recall after just one viewing). To my further delight there was a link to "Buy the disc" from Amazon. But (to my horror) the asking price for this gem was £48 or so. Out of my league.
Nil desperandum, David. The currently-displayed IMDB "User review" from someone in Ireland mentioned the existence of a DVD box set called "Helen Mirren at the BBC" which, for 12.5 obvious reasons, is now en route to Technology Towers as fast as Mr Postie can manage it... given that I opted for my usual cheapskate "Free shipping".
It's now clouded over considerably and will, I suspect, be unleashing all that nice promised rain quite soon. It's also rather twilighty, considering it's only 16:15 or so. Because I'm too lazy to change channels, I've been listening to choral evensong, though mentally tuning out the gibberish chanted in sing-song fashion between the rather nice bits of music. (Religion also came up as a topic on our walk.)
Having enjoyed...
... seeing "Cookie's Fortune" again just before Xmas, I decided this...
... merited my next re-watch. So setting aside Robert Park's "Voodoo Science" for a while, and doing my best to ignore what sounds like some unpleasant winter weather out there, that was my choice.