Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Tired
Waking up to the DT this morning, I think of the good old days when tired politicians in power woke up in the morning and thought sod it. The government is tired, I'm tired and the electorate are tired of me. I'll sod off to the Isle of Wight, walk the downs and let the other lot have a go. Perhaps it was never thus and politicians always clung on for dear life until painfully dislodged. But the idea that they could behave more gracefully appeals. What a nice surprise to have woken up to find that Tony had decided to take up golf, or to wake up now to find that Gordon had taken a leaf out of his hate-figure's book and taken up newts.
More prosaically, I am still confusing the Brita water filter with the kettle. I suppose they are both large white plastic objects with a vaguely similar shape. But when I am supposed to be doing something with one or the other, the brain seems to click in to the other or one, more or less at random. So this morning, fairly close to pouring water from the filter into the teapot.
Onto the new brand of green tea, with a slightly earthy taste. Very cheap from a convenience store in Crawley. £2.20 for 500 grams of the finest Lamchahar green tea, coming in little green pellets but nowhere near as explosive as the stuff called gunpowder, and with the nifty black box printed in English on one face, then German, then Arabic, then French. Not too sure about the Arabic. It is decorated with a camel which suggests that, but the script has a strong horizontal running along the writing line, that is to say beneath an a but above the tail of a y. Maybe Urdu. Certainly produce of China but could not find any clues as to where it was packaged for the purposes of corporation tax. (The Observer reported some months ago that international companies can largely choose which country in which to take which bit of tax liability. They all operate very important offices in various tax havens for these purposes).
Talking of Urdu, two snippets to report. The first was a lady on the bus talking fluently in what I assume was Pakistani - so probably Urdu. The point of interest was that she found it convenient to say times of day in English. Maybe times of day are a swine in Urdu. Maybe their clock is organised a bit differantly from ours, with the result that talking about our clock with their clock is a bit of a pain. The second was a rather younger lady walking in a Westerly direction down the Northern side of Garrett Lane. With Muslim gear on down to her waist - not the full performance, one of the lighter versions - and with a fairly short mini skirt on for the rest. One might think that a pious Muslim youth might get a bit cross about such a thing. Maybe they are not very pious in Garrett Lane.
Had a remembered dream for the first time for a while last night. Focussed on our living in a large house, partly drawn from our house in Cambridge and partly from bits and peices from yesterday, including, I think, scenes from Eyeless in Gaza. A large house, with a large sitting room with folding doors onto a large veranda overlooking the sea from some way up. The folding wooden doors - brown, varnished affairs - being rather ramshackle and being far from burglar proof. Large bolts only just reaching the rotting floor and locks not making it across the gaps between the leaves of the door. I remember thinking that this was yet another tiresome household chore that I really ought to get around to. And then there was a large spare bedroom (loosely modelled on the bedroom I occupied for much of my childhood) which I was thinking ought to be turned into my study. But very full of BH doing a very serious job of cleaning the room - serious involving piling all the contents - some valuble and fragile - to one side. Contents including the red folding picnic table which we acquired some years ago from my sister in law and which is now serving in our garage as a place to keep garage and garden things in play. Wall covering being some sort of blue carpetty material. Very heavy duty wallpaper which although rather unsightly would be far too much bother to change.
More prosaically, I am still confusing the Brita water filter with the kettle. I suppose they are both large white plastic objects with a vaguely similar shape. But when I am supposed to be doing something with one or the other, the brain seems to click in to the other or one, more or less at random. So this morning, fairly close to pouring water from the filter into the teapot.
Onto the new brand of green tea, with a slightly earthy taste. Very cheap from a convenience store in Crawley. £2.20 for 500 grams of the finest Lamchahar green tea, coming in little green pellets but nowhere near as explosive as the stuff called gunpowder, and with the nifty black box printed in English on one face, then German, then Arabic, then French. Not too sure about the Arabic. It is decorated with a camel which suggests that, but the script has a strong horizontal running along the writing line, that is to say beneath an a but above the tail of a y. Maybe Urdu. Certainly produce of China but could not find any clues as to where it was packaged for the purposes of corporation tax. (The Observer reported some months ago that international companies can largely choose which country in which to take which bit of tax liability. They all operate very important offices in various tax havens for these purposes).
Talking of Urdu, two snippets to report. The first was a lady on the bus talking fluently in what I assume was Pakistani - so probably Urdu. The point of interest was that she found it convenient to say times of day in English. Maybe times of day are a swine in Urdu. Maybe their clock is organised a bit differantly from ours, with the result that talking about our clock with their clock is a bit of a pain. The second was a rather younger lady walking in a Westerly direction down the Northern side of Garrett Lane. With Muslim gear on down to her waist - not the full performance, one of the lighter versions - and with a fairly short mini skirt on for the rest. One might think that a pious Muslim youth might get a bit cross about such a thing. Maybe they are not very pious in Garrett Lane.
Had a remembered dream for the first time for a while last night. Focussed on our living in a large house, partly drawn from our house in Cambridge and partly from bits and peices from yesterday, including, I think, scenes from Eyeless in Gaza. A large house, with a large sitting room with folding doors onto a large veranda overlooking the sea from some way up. The folding wooden doors - brown, varnished affairs - being rather ramshackle and being far from burglar proof. Large bolts only just reaching the rotting floor and locks not making it across the gaps between the leaves of the door. I remember thinking that this was yet another tiresome household chore that I really ought to get around to. And then there was a large spare bedroom (loosely modelled on the bedroom I occupied for much of my childhood) which I was thinking ought to be turned into my study. But very full of BH doing a very serious job of cleaning the room - serious involving piling all the contents - some valuble and fragile - to one side. Contents including the red folding picnic table which we acquired some years ago from my sister in law and which is now serving in our garage as a place to keep garage and garden things in play. Wall covering being some sort of blue carpetty material. Very heavy duty wallpaper which although rather unsightly would be far too much bother to change.
# posted by Jim @ 10:47 PM 
