pumpkinstrokemarrow

The first public affair is an irritation. In that I read yesterday of an earl of retirement age, in possession of a reasonable chunk of our countryside (plus stately home), who was caught doing more than 100mph on the M27 in his sports car and who was not banned on the grounds that his stately home was not anywhere near a bus route. So the ban would constitute disproportionate punishment. The irritation arises from the fact that his standing, status and demeanour meant that he was able to charm the magistrate out of any banning disposition that he or she might have had. But what chance would a bog standard have if pulled up for the same offence? And if the earl really is possessed of rolling acres, why doesn't he sell a few to pay for taxis? Is it right that nice manners should be allowed to smooth over a reasonably serious offence?

The second is an amusement. The sight of the Guardian, the newspaper which is supposed to be above this sort of Daily Mail trivia and only concerns itself with important issues of the day, going on in excruciating detail for several days on end about the Cameron visit with the Obamas. Every last column inch has been dragged out of exactly how many humbugs Michelle shared with Samantha. Was it more or less than the sharing moments that were accorded to Cherie? Or perhaps, more to the point in these days of France being a bigger country than the UK, Carla?

The first private affair concerns my four feet stock of vinyl. Between two and three feet of this stock were inherited rather than purchased, and of that between two and three feet maybe one foot is choral. Of this choral I make some use of the Schubert songs but that is about it. The rest just sits there. But, very occasionally, I am moved to play a Bach cantata and I was so moved yesterday and played the one on the top of the box which I remembered from its rather memorable title of  'Geshwinde, ihr wirblenden winde' that I rather liked. So I sat down and enjoyed, thinking the while about the wonderful poise of Bach's church music. But then, I did what I never did before and consulted the crib at the bottom of the box and I discovered that the cantata was not church music at all, although to be fair a lot of the stuff in the box was. Rather it was entirely pagan in content, being about a musical contest between Phoebus and Pan. At least we did not get any flaying, the gruesome subject of many pictures of a similar tale. Perhaps the lesson, given that I rarely bother with the crib for Schubert's songs, is to keep it that way. Ignorance is bliss! But I know at least one person who disagrees; who thinks that knowing what a song is about is an important part of the experience.

The second was a different sort of learning experience, to wit the search capability of the current version of windows. This is a lot more powerful than it was, with the down side that I had never got the hang of using it. For example, I could not work out how to search for name of file rather than in content of file, which last seems to be the default. Partly for this reason, I got into the habit of keeping several copies of files, with each copy being filed under a different heading and this way I could usually get hold of a file I wanted. This morning I was moved to try a bit harder and started off by taking a look at the help. Which was not very helpful. But with a bit of poking about and with a bit of luck I rediscovered how to do a search on file name and I can now pull up a window containing the names of all the files with a certain sort of name. No further need to file multiple copies at all. Progress!