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Aug. 4th, 2003 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanAs a change from the usual diet of ho hum, here's a heigh ho. Just random wittering and long winded burblings follow again, I fear.
It's sweltering hot in London, the forecasters claim it may hit 100F today. As a result, my brain is somewhat somnolent and treacly. Moreover, the internet seems, from where I'm sitting, to have a similar problem.
Whatever, for what it's worth, here's what I've been up to.
I dropped into the Culture drinking in the City on Friday, though sadly only for a short while. Managed to catch up with Rik; Lal; Steve, guardian of the CDR on earth; and various of the usual suspects not appearing in this forum; and to meet Martin, visiting from the land of kangaroos, barbecues and Neighbours. I seem also to have managed to fit in a fair amount of whiskey.
Somewhat more the worse for wear than I had expected, I tottered off to Waterloo at around half eight, leaving them to their revels, and caught the train down to Hampshire.
There followed the one not-pleasant bit of my weekend. Not, for once, the fault of any child of British Rail, at least no more than usual. The smoking carriage contained a group of about six Leicester City fans, ranging in age from about 18 to 45, at a guess, a couple with a baby and a guy who was fairly evidently a refugee (Kosovan, I would guess).
Nothing actually happened save constant muttered snide remarks and a brief altercation when the refugee chappie misguidedly decided to make faces at the baby (at least, that's what I think he was doing, the parents seemed convinced he was about to make off with it) but it was a decidedly unpleasant atmosphere, and frankly depressing, particularly after the chap left and a discussion on the lines of "free council houses and we only get one room" broke out. I'm vaguely ashamed to admit that tiredness, cowardice, and the surfeit of whiskey sloshing around inside me meant the most I did to counter all of this was to offer the guy a cigarette and otherwise hide in my book. I fear this is all going to grow as time moves on, and the final irony is that there is, in my opinion, little substance to the perceived threat of refugees.
Anyhow, enough of that...
I reached the village station and walked down, it's a fair walk from there to my parents' house. It's always a shock after London and a busy train to walk along silent roads with nothing but fields on either side. At one point a hare broke from the bushes in front of me, which was the first time I remember seeing one in ages, despite going down to rural Hampshire or Oxfordshire reasonably often.
My brother and his wife had already arrived but frankly I was exhausted and buggered off to bed sharpish.
Saturday we all went off to the New Forest, specifically Exbury, where I bought my brother a rhododendron for his delayed birthday present and my sister with her husband and baby joined us. It's a large house with gardens open to the public on the edge of the Beaulieu River, and with a private steam railway running round much of the gardens. To my brother's amusement, the train was driven by Lord Rothschild, who owns the place (it's the branch of the Rothschilds that decided gardening was more exciting than banking). It made sense to me, unlike my brother and my father I am neither a gardening fan (I can appreciate good looking gardens but so far as I'm concerned I'm happy for someone else to do the work) nor a steam buff, but I suspect if I owned large grounds with a private steam railway I'd drive it around too.
And I lay on my back in the grounds while Dad and my brother and brother-in-law took the baby on the train, and looked at the blue blue sky and thought deep thoughts.
And then looked at my red red legs. Nevermind.
Sunday I sat in the garden while the others went to mass (I don't do morning mass, even when I'm in the mood to go at all) and evened out my sunburn, then put some vague effort into preparing Sunday lunch. Sat around on the terrace drinking iced coffee all afternoon, and read the papers.. Richard Ingrams astutely notes, incidentally, the shift in the Blair and Bush rhetoric from talk of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (ie canisters of VX, though I learn now that the answer to the very real question of what happened to all the VX we know Iraq had in the 1990s may well be that it has a relatively short shelf life) to "Weapons Programmes" (which presumably means paperwork) and asks how one "deploys" a "programme". Good question....
As the sun went away from its peak and the thought of movement became tolerable, I went for a walk. Hampshire is very beautiful on a hot August day, as the green hills turn slowly gold and the shadows lengthen. I occasionally feel almost English when I'm there...
Eventually though, I had to come back to the grime. It wasn't so bad though, as Rob, Alan, and Kate with her boyfriend were drinking in the Hays Galleria. So I went over to join them as the sun went down and, for all of ten minutes, the Thames went from its usual grey to the deepest blue, and gaze across at the City, which, we generally agreed, actually looks pretty good these days, so far as architecture is concerned. Central London is a horrible place to live and work in August, but on a Summer evening it's a magical place to look at, with a long glass of gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
And thus it went. Two weeks and three days before the holiday.. can I make it?
Proms tonight is Strauss, Die Fledermaus. I like it, but frankly not enough to stand through it in a packed Albert Hall on a day as hot as today, so once again I think I shall give it a miss...
Everyone here is rather somnolent. Law term is over, though that doesn't actually mean very much in itself, contrary to what the general public seem to think. Outside someone is mowing the lawn, which I always find one of the most sleep-inducing sounds and smells imaginable....
It's sweltering hot in London, the forecasters claim it may hit 100F today. As a result, my brain is somewhat somnolent and treacly. Moreover, the internet seems, from where I'm sitting, to have a similar problem.
Whatever, for what it's worth, here's what I've been up to.
I dropped into the Culture drinking in the City on Friday, though sadly only for a short while. Managed to catch up with Rik; Lal; Steve, guardian of the CDR on earth; and various of the usual suspects not appearing in this forum; and to meet Martin, visiting from the land of kangaroos, barbecues and Neighbours. I seem also to have managed to fit in a fair amount of whiskey.
Somewhat more the worse for wear than I had expected, I tottered off to Waterloo at around half eight, leaving them to their revels, and caught the train down to Hampshire.
There followed the one not-pleasant bit of my weekend. Not, for once, the fault of any child of British Rail, at least no more than usual. The smoking carriage contained a group of about six Leicester City fans, ranging in age from about 18 to 45, at a guess, a couple with a baby and a guy who was fairly evidently a refugee (Kosovan, I would guess).
Nothing actually happened save constant muttered snide remarks and a brief altercation when the refugee chappie misguidedly decided to make faces at the baby (at least, that's what I think he was doing, the parents seemed convinced he was about to make off with it) but it was a decidedly unpleasant atmosphere, and frankly depressing, particularly after the chap left and a discussion on the lines of "free council houses and we only get one room" broke out. I'm vaguely ashamed to admit that tiredness, cowardice, and the surfeit of whiskey sloshing around inside me meant the most I did to counter all of this was to offer the guy a cigarette and otherwise hide in my book. I fear this is all going to grow as time moves on, and the final irony is that there is, in my opinion, little substance to the perceived threat of refugees.
Anyhow, enough of that...
I reached the village station and walked down, it's a fair walk from there to my parents' house. It's always a shock after London and a busy train to walk along silent roads with nothing but fields on either side. At one point a hare broke from the bushes in front of me, which was the first time I remember seeing one in ages, despite going down to rural Hampshire or Oxfordshire reasonably often.
My brother and his wife had already arrived but frankly I was exhausted and buggered off to bed sharpish.
Saturday we all went off to the New Forest, specifically Exbury, where I bought my brother a rhododendron for his delayed birthday present and my sister with her husband and baby joined us. It's a large house with gardens open to the public on the edge of the Beaulieu River, and with a private steam railway running round much of the gardens. To my brother's amusement, the train was driven by Lord Rothschild, who owns the place (it's the branch of the Rothschilds that decided gardening was more exciting than banking). It made sense to me, unlike my brother and my father I am neither a gardening fan (I can appreciate good looking gardens but so far as I'm concerned I'm happy for someone else to do the work) nor a steam buff, but I suspect if I owned large grounds with a private steam railway I'd drive it around too.
And I lay on my back in the grounds while Dad and my brother and brother-in-law took the baby on the train, and looked at the blue blue sky and thought deep thoughts.
And then looked at my red red legs. Nevermind.
Sunday I sat in the garden while the others went to mass (I don't do morning mass, even when I'm in the mood to go at all) and evened out my sunburn, then put some vague effort into preparing Sunday lunch. Sat around on the terrace drinking iced coffee all afternoon, and read the papers.. Richard Ingrams astutely notes, incidentally, the shift in the Blair and Bush rhetoric from talk of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (ie canisters of VX, though I learn now that the answer to the very real question of what happened to all the VX we know Iraq had in the 1990s may well be that it has a relatively short shelf life) to "Weapons Programmes" (which presumably means paperwork) and asks how one "deploys" a "programme". Good question....
As the sun went away from its peak and the thought of movement became tolerable, I went for a walk. Hampshire is very beautiful on a hot August day, as the green hills turn slowly gold and the shadows lengthen. I occasionally feel almost English when I'm there...
Eventually though, I had to come back to the grime. It wasn't so bad though, as Rob, Alan, and Kate with her boyfriend were drinking in the Hays Galleria. So I went over to join them as the sun went down and, for all of ten minutes, the Thames went from its usual grey to the deepest blue, and gaze across at the City, which, we generally agreed, actually looks pretty good these days, so far as architecture is concerned. Central London is a horrible place to live and work in August, but on a Summer evening it's a magical place to look at, with a long glass of gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
And thus it went. Two weeks and three days before the holiday.. can I make it?
Proms tonight is Strauss, Die Fledermaus. I like it, but frankly not enough to stand through it in a packed Albert Hall on a day as hot as today, so once again I think I shall give it a miss...
Everyone here is rather somnolent. Law term is over, though that doesn't actually mean very much in itself, contrary to what the general public seem to think. Outside someone is mowing the lawn, which I always find one of the most sleep-inducing sounds and smells imaginable....
