Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Philrite
As it turned out, FIL was right and the snow tower did fall over. Took a little time about it, slowly bending over until the top bit was more or less horizontal, at which point I intervened and the top half fell off. Emergency repairs in the gathering gloom, but never quite the same again and the snow this morning did not look so inviting.
After two phone calls, a wait to let the router cool down (in case overheating was causing the connection problem) and then a wait while 'we will call you, don't call us', back on the air at 1430 today after an 18 hour outage. I wonder if there is an element of there only being so many slots available in the public infrastructure (as opposed to that bit which is private to me) to make these connections and their running out of slots at busy times?
I did not make it to the baker yesterday, but it seems that the baker did. Overwhelmed by people who never usually use the place and were a bit put out that he had run out. However, I made it today and supplies were fine. Maybe he had been up all night getting supplied for what he hoped would be another rush. The roads were worst leading out of our estate and then got progressively better as one got nearter London. Sudden improvement as one left Surrey for the London Borough of Sutton. Rather looked as if the London snowplough simply turned around at the boundary marker.
Current buns very good today, well risen and not overcooked. But nothing like the current buns obtained from Crouch End last week, possibly from a shop which used to be a proper baker which I used to use nearly 40 years ago and which has now transformed into a nifty little patisserie cum coffee shop. Their current buns were a sort of hybrid drawn from the English currant and Chelsea buns and a continental croissant. Very nice they were too.
Interested to hear that the National Trust is adding to the store of political correctness and banning the use of the word deaf on their signage and by their trusties. They now have to use persons with hearing impairment or some such other long winded euphemism. I wonder how many deaf or partially deaf people could give a toss? And then another branch of the heritage industry is making some poor sod who happens to have an ancient windmill on his land, pay for repairing it. Some £30,000 or something. Now supposing he has had the land since long before the heritage folk got underway, this seems rather unfair. If the country at large wants to go nuts about heritage, fine. But they should pay for it, not dump the costs on unsuspecting people who have become heritage owners through no fault of their own.
And interested to see a couple of bits of Hamlet in an entirely new light, during an advertising break on telly, after a few libations at the BH. Firstly, the bit where Hamlet has the chance of doing for Claudius, but does not because he is praying and would therefore go straight to heaven if murdered at that point. What I had missed before was that the chap really was repenting as well as praying, or at least there were tendencies in that direction. The man was not unmitigated evil. So what about a bit of Christian forgiveness? And the famous speech about being or not being. What I had missed there was that one might as well cop out of all the troubles in this world - if it were not for the risk of catching it in the next. Whole argument falls if one is not bothering about the next world. Maybe the trouble is that these hard core episodes have become so iconic that one doesn't actually listen to the words any more. In any event, reminded that the original audiences must have been very quick to take very much of all this stuff in on the hoof. A good deal quicker than me at any rate.
After two phone calls, a wait to let the router cool down (in case overheating was causing the connection problem) and then a wait while 'we will call you, don't call us', back on the air at 1430 today after an 18 hour outage. I wonder if there is an element of there only being so many slots available in the public infrastructure (as opposed to that bit which is private to me) to make these connections and their running out of slots at busy times?
I did not make it to the baker yesterday, but it seems that the baker did. Overwhelmed by people who never usually use the place and were a bit put out that he had run out. However, I made it today and supplies were fine. Maybe he had been up all night getting supplied for what he hoped would be another rush. The roads were worst leading out of our estate and then got progressively better as one got nearter London. Sudden improvement as one left Surrey for the London Borough of Sutton. Rather looked as if the London snowplough simply turned around at the boundary marker.
Current buns very good today, well risen and not overcooked. But nothing like the current buns obtained from Crouch End last week, possibly from a shop which used to be a proper baker which I used to use nearly 40 years ago and which has now transformed into a nifty little patisserie cum coffee shop. Their current buns were a sort of hybrid drawn from the English currant and Chelsea buns and a continental croissant. Very nice they were too.
Interested to hear that the National Trust is adding to the store of political correctness and banning the use of the word deaf on their signage and by their trusties. They now have to use persons with hearing impairment or some such other long winded euphemism. I wonder how many deaf or partially deaf people could give a toss? And then another branch of the heritage industry is making some poor sod who happens to have an ancient windmill on his land, pay for repairing it. Some £30,000 or something. Now supposing he has had the land since long before the heritage folk got underway, this seems rather unfair. If the country at large wants to go nuts about heritage, fine. But they should pay for it, not dump the costs on unsuspecting people who have become heritage owners through no fault of their own.
And interested to see a couple of bits of Hamlet in an entirely new light, during an advertising break on telly, after a few libations at the BH. Firstly, the bit where Hamlet has the chance of doing for Claudius, but does not because he is praying and would therefore go straight to heaven if murdered at that point. What I had missed before was that the chap really was repenting as well as praying, or at least there were tendencies in that direction. The man was not unmitigated evil. So what about a bit of Christian forgiveness? And the famous speech about being or not being. What I had missed there was that one might as well cop out of all the troubles in this world - if it were not for the risk of catching it in the next. Whole argument falls if one is not bothering about the next world. Maybe the trouble is that these hard core episodes have become so iconic that one doesn't actually listen to the words any more. In any event, reminded that the original audiences must have been very quick to take very much of all this stuff in on the hoof. A good deal quicker than me at any rate.
# posted by Jim @ 6:51 AM 
