Cold

Oh joy.

I seem to be developing this cold that's going around. Torrential snottage followed by bunged nose and repeat. No sore throat as yet and hopefully not at all.

I have taken two 500mg paracetamol and am hoping they will dry it out so I can sleep. Nothing so far. Grumble.

Cold

Oh joy.

I seem to be developing this cold that's going around. Torrential snottage followed by bunged nose and repeat. No sore throat as yet and hopefully not at all.

I have taken two 500mg paracetamol and am hoping they will dry it out so I can sleep. Nothing so far. Grumble.

It no work...

So last night Furtle's MacBook died. The OS seems to be working, but the hard drive has expired, occasioning much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The damned thing is only about three years old.

Anyway, on the way home tonight I shall find my way to Maplin's on Tottenham Court Road and purchase a set of the teensy weensy screwdrivers we need to get in and remove the offending disc so we can identify it and purchase a replacement. Hopefully a bigger and better replacement. We are hopeful that we can get one at a reasonable price off the web, or at least from some store in Tottenham Court Road. If we go direct to Apple we will have to sell our souls to buy new kit.

Luckily there is nothing on the MacBook hard drive that she cares about or can't replace. Also, of all the bits that could implode, the drive is at least something we can sort and reinstall without taking a ticket and queuing up for help in the Apple Store...

It no work...

So last night Furtle's MacBook died. The OS seems to be working, but the hard drive has expired, occasioning much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The damned thing is only about three years old.

Anyway, on the way home tonight I shall find my way to Maplin's on Tottenham Court Road and purchase a set of the teensy weensy screwdrivers we need to get in and remove the offending disc so we can identify it and purchase a replacement. Hopefully a bigger and better replacement. We are hopeful that we can get one at a reasonable price off the web, or at least from some store in Tottenham Court Road. If we go direct to Apple we will have to sell our souls to buy new kit.

Luckily there is nothing on the MacBook hard drive that she cares about or can't replace. Also, of all the bits that could implode, the drive is at least something we can sort and reinstall without taking a ticket and queuing up for help in the Apple Store...

No, really!

Former Home Secretary and proto-fascist, David Blunkett is to leave his brain to medical research to help with the prevention of dementia.

Presumably it will be dried out and used as a paper weight. There is no mention as to whether this needs to be done post mortem; it's not as if he uses it for anything useful.

No, really!

Former Home Secretary and proto-fascist, David Blunkett is to leave his brain to medical research to help with the prevention of dementia.

Presumably it will be dried out and used as a paper weight. There is no mention as to whether this needs to be done post mortem; it's not as if he uses it for anything useful.

Read All About It!

For the second day on the trot I have been unable to find a copy of The Times in the small part of Victoria I inhabit during the day. I’m sure that I could find one if I ventured further afield¹, but frankly I don’t need a newspaper that badly. It’s just something to peruse during lunchtime and to keep me abreast of major developments in world events. I rarely read it fully and mostly just the odd interesting article. I could, probably, live quite easily without a paper.

That said, the absence of my paper of choice, combined with the fact that I am not quite ready yet to do without something from Fleet Street² while I eat my sandwiches has had me casting around for an alternative.

Yesterday I tried The Independent. It was okay, but I didn’t enjoy it overly much. It was fine for a couple of months after it was founded in the 1980s when all the journalists from The Times quit en masse when Murdoch bought the old Thunderer, but then they were all discretely hired back after a decent interval and the Indie hasn’t been quite the same since. It’s not a bad paper, but it’s still in partial shell shock, a bit like the stalwart old war veteran who, despite being in all other respects normal, still dives under a hedge every time a propeller-driven aeroplane flies by.

Today, largely on account of the Carter-Ruck attempted gag on it, I bought The Guardian. I still don’t like the Grauniad (no, really, who does deep down?); less so since they bought a spelchekr and it no longer even lives up to its nickname. I find and have always found the Grauniad to be too smug for words in its trendy leftie, champagne socialist, superior attitude. On the other hand, there’s a fine piece in it today sticking twigs in MPs over the continued expenses scandal and the fact that they still don’t get it. The piece on the Carter-Ruck gag (which has collapsed, by the way – witness the power of social networking) was exceptionally well-written, too.

No, I like my news to be crusty and with a hint of Empire about it, so I still buy The Times. It tries hard to be modern – there is colour, it’s gone ‘compact’ (that’s posh tabloid to you, Squire) and carries the occasional bit about rock music – which it always labels pop and has reviews, almost uniformly negative, about the latest blockbusters – but not-so-deep-down, it knows it’s the oldest daily paper in the country and that it was the paper of choice for 200 years in all the best places. There is something faintly patrician about it in the gentlest way, which the Daily Telegraph simply doesn’t have, The Torygraph is just a little too obvious in its bias despite having the indefinable prestige that comes with being the last daily paper obstinately to remain a broadsheet. Treasure it for that, if nothing else. People who can stand on packed commuter trains and fold a broadsheet in one hand are becoming an endangered species; it is an altogether different skill to read and fold a compact with one hand. You need muscles for that, not nimble dexterity.

As to the other papers, well we’ll just draw a discreet veil over those, shall we? The Daily Mail and the Daily Express are just penny dreadfuls in their Sunday best. The red top tabloids are, well, comics for people who have grown out of cartoon books.


¹I am rather surprised and vaguely annoyed that the Word spell checker does not recognise the word, “afield”.

²By which I mean of course, Docklands, if not necessarily Wapping

Read All About It!

For the second day on the trot I have been unable to find a copy of The Times in the small part of Victoria I inhabit during the day. I’m sure that I could find one if I ventured further afield¹, but frankly I don’t need a newspaper that badly. It’s just something to peruse during lunchtime and to keep me abreast of major developments in world events. I rarely read it fully and mostly just the odd interesting article. I could, probably, live quite easily without a paper.

That said, the absence of my paper of choice, combined with the fact that I am not quite ready yet to do without something from Fleet Street² while I eat my sandwiches has had me casting around for an alternative.

Yesterday I tried The Independent. It was okay, but I didn’t enjoy it overly much. It was fine for a couple of months after it was founded in the 1980s when all the journalists from The Times quit en masse when Murdoch bought the old Thunderer, but then they were all discretely hired back after a decent interval and the Indie hasn’t been quite the same since. It’s not a bad paper, but it’s still in partial shell shock, a bit like the stalwart old war veteran who, despite being in all other respects normal, still dives under a hedge every time a propeller-driven aeroplane flies by.

Today, largely on account of the Carter-Ruck attempted gag on it, I bought The Guardian. I still don’t like the Grauniad (no, really, who does deep down?); less so since they bought a spelchekr and it no longer even lives up to its nickname. I find and have always found the Grauniad to be too smug for words in its trendy leftie, champagne socialist, superior attitude. On the other hand, there’s a fine piece in it today sticking twigs in MPs over the continued expenses scandal and the fact that they still don’t get it. The piece on the Carter-Ruck gag (which has collapsed, by the way – witness the power of social networking) was exceptionally well-written, too.

No, I like my news to be crusty and with a hint of Empire about it, so I still buy The Times. It tries hard to be modern – there is colour, it’s gone ‘compact’ (that’s posh tabloid to you, Squire) and carries the occasional bit about rock music – which it always labels pop and has reviews, almost uniformly negative, about the latest blockbusters – but not-so-deep-down, it knows it’s the oldest daily paper in the country and that it was the paper of choice for 200 years in all the best places. There is something faintly patrician about it in the gentlest way, which the Daily Telegraph simply doesn’t have, The Torygraph is just a little too obvious in its bias despite having the indefinable prestige that comes with being the last daily paper obstinately to remain a broadsheet. Treasure it for that, if nothing else. People who can stand on packed commuter trains and fold a broadsheet in one hand are becoming an endangered species; it is an altogether different skill to read and fold a compact with one hand. You need muscles for that, not nimble dexterity.

As to the other papers, well we’ll just draw a discreet veil over those, shall we? The Daily Mail and the Daily Express are just penny dreadfuls in their Sunday best. The red top tabloids are, well, comics for people who have grown out of cartoon books.


¹I am rather surprised and vaguely annoyed that the Word spell checker does not recognise the word, “afield”.

²By which I mean of course, Docklands, if not necessarily Wapping