30September1997

30 September 1997
My dear folks,

What a pleasant little day I have to record after an equally pleasant night! I retired at 0200 when two pages of Richard Dawkins’s “Climbing Mount Improbable” (on the nature of evolution) were more than sufficient to tip me into Dreamland. Fascinating book! Today I bought his earlier work, The Selfish Gene, during a visit to Dillons bookshop.

I needed a really good walk &, since Cathy had faxed me a book request, I decided to walk into town. Dillons is the kind of place where you can easily lose yourself & a lot of money. I limited myself to two books & then walked back, listening to Tony Blair’s impassioned modernising appeal to the annual conference of his party. It was almost evangelical in its tone…..received an uproarious ovation from the faithful & bouquets from the political analysts. Will be interesting to listen to next year’s speech after a winter of hospital queues. The guy got a 96 per cent approval rating in one recent poll. Scary! The only way he can go, as one critic points out, is down. Will be really interesting to see how Hague is received by the discordant Conservatives, who’ve been reduced to the same ragtag & bobtail state Labour were in just a few years ago.

Midway I stopped at an extended roadside stall selling CDs & spent 30 minutes browsing the classical selection. Sharp-eyed assistants were seated at various points to keep an eye on Joe Public’s fingers. I came away with four CDs, all priced well below the levels typically found in the music stores. My collection is beginning to flow off the ends of the shelves! On the other hand, my tapes are gradually being thinned out as stretching & squeaking takes a steady toll of them.

Also had an hour in the garden (i.e. assorted flowers boxes on the patio), cutting back & cleaning up. Made me feel much better. Mavis came out to join me. I looked up from my labours at one point to find him scratching in the dirt on the neighbour’s patio & about to bless it. His sparkling personal loo didn’t take his fancy. I flung a shoe at him together with a string of epithets & he fled but only as far as the landing, correctly gauging that he wasn’t about to be pursued. He’s like the pigeons in Regents Park. They can assess within a millimetre exactly what threat approaching humans present & they never bother to fly away when a little nimble sidestepping will do. No such luck for the burgeoning Canada geese. There was an article in the Sunday press about the clandestine dawn shoots in parks across the country to reduce their numbers!

I stopped on the way downstairs to clear away the leaves congregating on the lower steps. It’s that time of year. In fact, today marks the three-quarter point of 1997. Millennium just 2¼ years away (or 3¼, depending how you calculate it!) It’s just scary. Meanwhile, the leaves carpet the pavement, mainly big brown scrunchy ones mixed up with dog poo & discarded cigarette packets. But there are also the occasional mottled & greeny-brown ones, glorious little works of art. One day I have to go to New England for the fall. But not this year.

Radio interviews underway about & with Britain’s women boxers. Turns out that there are hundreds of them. Recent coverage has shown them whacking into each other with all the gusto of their male colleagues. “Breast protection” is apparently optional. The Boxing Board, determined to avoid sexism, says it’s been advised by its doctors that there is no medical reason to prevent women from taking up the sport. Now two 13-year-old schoolgirls are about to fight under exactly the same rules as boys. Call me old fashioned but no thank you!

A retired acquaintance is coming around tomorrow for some coaching in Windows95. Another old friend has made the same request. It’ll give me good practice for the little computer school I may one day run for expats down in Portugal (or may not.) Sufficient unto the hour

Blessings
T