William Essex
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Water

29/8/2011

 
Morning. Sunshine. Still haven't cleaned the windows. Yesterday's rain was furtive: hang out the laundry in bright sunshine, go inside, come out again and there'd be bright sunshine and wet laundry. [Good to see you, boy, and I hope you hung all that wet stuff on the rack I gave you.] But it was enjoyable, around lunchtime, cooking soup from the available vegetables (this year it's mainly runner beans and courgettes/marrows) plus a courgette/cheese baked thing actually to eat. Adapted from Delia, whose book contains a section on How To Boil An Egg but not on How To Make Soup. Now, soup and remains of thing in fridge; with everybody back from Scotland, let's see how long they take to go.
    Nature, nurture, surroundings. What is the English word for feng shui? Notable, how the atmosphere lightens as the room, the house clears; also notable how some pieces of furniture, et cetera, are in the right place, but others just seem to nag slightly. Not nag so much that it's really a conscious thing - it's easy not to notice - but they're where they should be but still not right. 'Should' never works, and I supppose the feng shui skill is having the clarity to see what is and could be, as distinct from what was on the plan. I wonder how much architecture exists because it looks good on the plan and/or in the architect's drawings. Not just modern: the huddle of chairs and screens around the fires in country houses, the high-ceilinged rooms, the long corridors. Cold rectories.
    This paragraph return is long overdue. Bought a Kindle the other day. Interesting device. Everything I load onto it is duplicated in my account record on Amazon; if I lose it or drop it in the bath, I can reinstate everything on a new Kindle. George Orwell had Big Brother watching (what was his name?) Winston Smith in a negative way; I have Jeff Bezos and his people watching over me with the positive intent of making sure I keep what's mine even in the event of bathwater. That kind of oversight, for better or worse, seems to be a distinctive modern experience: the world around us is becoming a day-care centre.

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    In a desk diary scavenged from a house of the dead, a man records his own experiences of the end times: what he has to do to survive; how he came to be marooned where he is; how he reacts to the discovery that he is not alone.

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    Where are we now? We're hurtling round the sun, held to the ground by a weak force that we don’t begin to understand, arguing about trade deals between the land masses on a planet mostly covered by water.
       The dolphins must think us ridiculous. No wonder they only come to the shallow water to play with us, not to signal their most complex philosophies. More.


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    Roads without end

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    State of the Union

    Several commentators today saying that they've lost confidence in the US. Making their point by talking up the glories of the past. After two weeks of this administration, they're not going back.
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    Kitchen parenting

    I have teenage children. When they're home, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: "Dad! We're going to make a mess in the kitchen!
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        "We thought we'd slice up some peppers and onion and bits of chicken and leave them glued to the bottom of the frying pan. Burn something in one of the saucepans and leave it floating in the sink."
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    Looking at both the US election and the revived Brexit debate in the UK, the question is not: who wins? but: how did we get here? More.

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    On the day that I wrote this, the early news told us of a parade in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Crimea remained annexed, and the Russia/Ukraine crisis was not resolved. At around half eight, the BBC’s reporter in Moscow was cut off in mid-sentence summarising the military display; the Today programme on Radio 4 cut to the sports news. More.

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