(no subject)
Aug. 19th, 2003 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanBlah. My laptop is playing up, my email accounts are, I suspect, doing so on their own account as well.
I'm also trying to shake off a summer head-cold type thing.
Never mind. I have just this moment converted the majority of my liquid assets to euros, and the day after tomorrow I am off for two and a half weeks of sun, sea, sand, and, um, Byzantine churches. Yes, that's me.
I'm not sure whether it's a good thing that so many books that were on my mental "buy immediately" list have suddenly appeared. Obviously expensive hardbacks aren't the most sensible thing to stuff in a rucksack and cart round Greece, nevertheless....
Dan Simmons Ilium is definitely coming, as is Robert Silverberg's collection Roma Aeterna (the Roman Empire never fell, but went onto conquer South America, most of the rest of the world, and then space, and I love Silverberg's writing anyway: I've been waiting for this to come out for years, ever since I read one of the short stories more than a decade ago). Also it seems I was right after all about the third Dart-Thornton, The Battle of Evernight: it is available.
Then there's a variety of non-genre stuff I want to read as well. I have a sneaking suspicion that once again I shall be walking a very fine line on the weight limit for my luggage.
I didn't make the Proms last night, unsurprisingly. I could have done it, by the skin of my teeth, once my opponents and I had agreed the form of the order, but by that time I was just too tired for a fairly heavyweight and "difficult" prom (Nielsen and things). In all honesty, I was also in my usual foul post-losing mood.
Friday I did make though: an uninspiring first half (I'm afraid that heresy as it is, I find Mozart Symphony No. 40 boring at the best of times, and this wasn't it) more than made up for by a brilliant performance of Brahms German Requiem. That seems to be the way of this season. Saturday I did absolutely buggerall save sleep all day, and read John Mortimer's autobiography.
There were other gems, nay, nuggets of wisdom and charm in the post I lost yesterday, but you'll just have to take my word for it, as I have to get on now, there are still a million and one things I have to sort out before I go. Expect little from me until September, see y'all around.
Oh, just one thought.
An email dated 17th September 2002 from Jonathan Powell, Chief of Staff at Number 10 (a man whose brother was one of her Thatchness' chief minions, bizarrely) says " .. it [the raw version of the dossier] does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the west. We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat."
On 24th September, when the dossier is published, Blair talks in his foreword of a "serious and current threat." The Government is now expressly relying on a distinction between "imminent" and "serious and current" to support the assertion that it is in the right, a distinction which I find to be one without a difference. And yet the Sun continues to claim that the Government is clearly winning this one hands down. Rupert, making your papers look ludicrous isn't going to do you any real favours in the long run, no matter how much it makes the Government of the day happy in the short run. But then I suppose the Sun looks ludicrous anyway (The Times is far more obviously hedging its position, rightly: I don't think the BBC are obviously in the clear either). Are the body of Sun readers really stupid enough to fall for this? Answers on a postcard to the Island of Syros, The Cyclades, Greece please.
I really wish I had time to see Geoffrey Robertson (or is it Mike Mansfield, I always get them confused) cross-examine Campbell...
Toodle pip.
I'm also trying to shake off a summer head-cold type thing.
Never mind. I have just this moment converted the majority of my liquid assets to euros, and the day after tomorrow I am off for two and a half weeks of sun, sea, sand, and, um, Byzantine churches. Yes, that's me.
I'm not sure whether it's a good thing that so many books that were on my mental "buy immediately" list have suddenly appeared. Obviously expensive hardbacks aren't the most sensible thing to stuff in a rucksack and cart round Greece, nevertheless....
Dan Simmons Ilium is definitely coming, as is Robert Silverberg's collection Roma Aeterna (the Roman Empire never fell, but went onto conquer South America, most of the rest of the world, and then space, and I love Silverberg's writing anyway: I've been waiting for this to come out for years, ever since I read one of the short stories more than a decade ago). Also it seems I was right after all about the third Dart-Thornton, The Battle of Evernight: it is available.
Then there's a variety of non-genre stuff I want to read as well. I have a sneaking suspicion that once again I shall be walking a very fine line on the weight limit for my luggage.
I didn't make the Proms last night, unsurprisingly. I could have done it, by the skin of my teeth, once my opponents and I had agreed the form of the order, but by that time I was just too tired for a fairly heavyweight and "difficult" prom (Nielsen and things). In all honesty, I was also in my usual foul post-losing mood.
Friday I did make though: an uninspiring first half (I'm afraid that heresy as it is, I find Mozart Symphony No. 40 boring at the best of times, and this wasn't it) more than made up for by a brilliant performance of Brahms German Requiem. That seems to be the way of this season. Saturday I did absolutely buggerall save sleep all day, and read John Mortimer's autobiography.
There were other gems, nay, nuggets of wisdom and charm in the post I lost yesterday, but you'll just have to take my word for it, as I have to get on now, there are still a million and one things I have to sort out before I go. Expect little from me until September, see y'all around.
Oh, just one thought.
An email dated 17th September 2002 from Jonathan Powell, Chief of Staff at Number 10 (a man whose brother was one of her Thatchness' chief minions, bizarrely) says " .. it [the raw version of the dossier] does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the west. We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat."
On 24th September, when the dossier is published, Blair talks in his foreword of a "serious and current threat." The Government is now expressly relying on a distinction between "imminent" and "serious and current" to support the assertion that it is in the right, a distinction which I find to be one without a difference. And yet the Sun continues to claim that the Government is clearly winning this one hands down. Rupert, making your papers look ludicrous isn't going to do you any real favours in the long run, no matter how much it makes the Government of the day happy in the short run. But then I suppose the Sun looks ludicrous anyway (The Times is far more obviously hedging its position, rightly: I don't think the BBC are obviously in the clear either). Are the body of Sun readers really stupid enough to fall for this? Answers on a postcard to the Island of Syros, The Cyclades, Greece please.
I really wish I had time to see Geoffrey Robertson (or is it Mike Mansfield, I always get them confused) cross-examine Campbell...
Toodle pip.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-19 08:38 am (UTC)And thanks for supplying another name to bug the bookshop owners with....
no subject
Date: 2003-08-20 12:31 am (UTC)I find the Sun makes much more sense if one assumes it is intended as entertainment rather than news.