Insomnia is is a fairly regular companion for me lately. When it bites my ass, as it is tonight. I like things like snooker and tennis.
Watching other folk working real hard, esp’ with the tennis – they just did a 23-stroke rally in set four after two and a half hours! – is strangely soothing.
At the start of this match, I was finding the ‘big serves’ a bit boring. But now it’s looking like two sets all, and a fifth to decide. And the play is decidedly more compelling.
Inability to sleep the night before my biggest teaching day feels like psychological self-sabotage. But what can I do? So I’m watching tennis!
Hopefully I’ll watch the whole thing and then sleep like a baby. Last Wednesday was a total washout. I can’t afford for that to happen again!
I woke up this morning, after a rough night of insomniac bullshit, to discover that my main iPhone was behaving weirdly.
I’ve been trying, with mixed results, to back up all the photos from said iPhone to my old iMac. I tried again last night, when unable to sleep. Tried again, failed again.
But then, checking my phones this morning, to find out what time it was, I discover that my main iPhone has decided to empty and renew my email inbox. Eh!? Why? HOW?
Surely such a drastic operation ought to be a multiple step process, ending with a confirmation? Are you sure you want to, etc? It shouldn’t be either automatic (and without my consent), or easily done by a mistaken press – or mere touch of a screen!? – of a button!?
It all adds up to wasting more time. And on an activity – going through administering emails – I loathe. Modern life, eh?
Teresa and I spent a few days and a couple of nights at dad’s this weekend. Claire and Sam were off to a wedding in, pig all places, Peckham.
Dad was home alone, not 100% well, and the Palmer family have two new kittens, Cosmo and Lyra. So we were looking after dad, the kittens, and the home, to some extent. Or just having a family break.
Cosmo, also just too cute! And won’t stay still.
We had a nice time. The kittens are, as kittens are, utterly gorgeous. Dad wasn’t as bass as we feared her might be. And we even had an old pal – Justin B – drop round Omar evening.
On the Friday we had a Chinese (brought over from our local March Chinese, J & B Fish Bar. Saturday Teresa cooked a delicious Thai curry. And Sunday, today – Father’s Day – er… I can’t recall what we had!!?
Lunch at Frankie’s. Mein Farter at left!
Oh yes, we are at the Turkish folk’s place, Frankie’s. I had a Greek Salad. Very nice too. Except too much raw onion upset my delicate digestion!
Today I discovered, thanks to an old pal, Justin, that Rev. Awdry, of Thomas The Tank Engine fame, was the vicar of a local village. That village, Elsworth, was Justin’s home for many years. And, for a period, the workplace and home of the clergyman and children’s author.
The Wikipedia page on Awdry tells us the following:
‘In 1940, he took a curacy at St Nicolas church, Kings Norton, Birmingham, where he lived until 1946. He subsequently moved to Cambridgeshire, serving as rector of Elsworth with Knapwell (1946-1950), rural dean at Bourn (1950-1953), and then vicar of emneth, norfolk (1953-1965). He retired from full-time ministry in 1965 and moved to Rodborough in Stroud in Gloucestershire.’
The Rev. Awdry.
As with so many kids of the last 60-70 or so years, Thomas and friends were a part, albeit a smallish part, of my childhood. It’s kind of nice to know Awdry wrote much of the series whilst living and working locally.
And not long ago, 2020, I believe, a blue plaque was added to the Elsworth rectory to commemorate this local connection. Sadly the Elsworth plaque isn’t quite as pretty as the one in Box, another location proud of its Awdry connections. But hey, never mind!
As an artist, writer and illustrator, I have a desire to perhaps get hold of the complete ‘Railway Series’, if it can be had? With the beautiful old fashioned illustrations by …
Well, it turns out there were a number of illustrators on The Railway Series. I garnered a bit more info on them, which I reproduce below, here:
C Reginald Dably
In 1948, the man who was to ‘set the style’ for the Railway Series books came onboard with his gem-like illustrations – read about him and his work here!
Reginald Payne
When Middleton failed to impress, Edmund Ward brought in a new illustrator, who went on to be the first artist to depict Awdry’s most famous engine – Thomas!
William Middleton
The original illustrator of the Three Railway Engines, whose artwork was replaced in favour of new work by C. Reginald Dalby – read about him here!
Clive Spong
Chris Awdry’s faithful illustrator across sixeen books, and encompassing the best elements of the three illustrators who had contributed to the series before him – read about his work here!
Peter & Gunvor Edwards
The Rev. Awdry’s final illustrators, husband and wife team Peter and Gunvor put a different slant on the style of the Railway Series books – read about their work here!
John T Kenney
Kenney took the Railway Series’ illustrative style in a bolder direction when he joined the team in 1957 – read about his work here!
After an Amazon Flex delivery shift, in some exhausting heat, it was home to chill with some Wimblers. First up a fantastic Federer vs. Djokovic match. And then this.
I like to call the Aussie Nick ‘The Prick’ Kyrgios, on account of his spoilt brat antics. He’s a pretty amazing tennis player. But what a farkin’ dildo!
He particularly likes to get into a spat with referees, bullying and insulting them. It seems to gee him up. But obviously it’s going to be counter-productive, inasmuch as the umpire can’t help but be irked by it.
At one point one of the commentators asked fellow pundits Boris Becker and, er… (can’t recall the Aussie guy’s name! Poss’ Todd Woodbridge?) why they thought he, Kyrgios, behaves that way. Boris more or less nailed it: it’s simply a question of maturity (or lack thereof).
I don’t know if it was in relation to this loss against Nadal, or poss’ another one, the following year, but apparently Kyrgios contemplated suicide, did actually self-harm (scarring his arm, later covered with a ‘sleeve tattoo’!), and wound up getting psychiatric help.
Read more on that here. If inclined to do so! As a depressive who has actually attempted suicide, I kind of sympathise. But at the same time, it all smacks of his ‘theatre of me’ ego tripping.
As one of the pundits commentating said, very rarely is there a match featuring Rafael Nadal in which most of the talk is about the other player. The ‘Kyrgios Show’ changes all of that!
At the time of posting, ‘air quality’ is 4. But what does this actually mean?
Insomnia biteth mine arse-cheeks again! So I’m up transferring thousand of photos from my iPhone to my ailing antiquated iMac.
This in itself merits a post, and maybe I’ll get into it a bit later? But my immediate reason for posting – apart from filling wakey-wakey time (that should be dreamy-snoozy-sleep time!) – is that I decided I ought to know what the ‘air quality’ numbers on my Weather App actually mean.
So I googled the topic, and found this, from defra.gov.uk. Tonight air quality is at 4 (and it feels very warm – and close, aka humid – to me, as well), which means folk certain levels or types of condition should avoid strenuous outdoor activity.
Fascinating! At least now I know 1 is ok, or best, and 10 is ‘don’t leave your home, the air outside is toxic’!
Meanwhile, in iMac land, my ageing ‘pooter fails to work consistently. I’ve had to resort – and indeed it’s not the first time – to using Image Capture, ‘cause Photos – the app that’s suppose to deal with pics and videos off my iPhone or other devices is totally crapping out.
I wanted to sit at the computer until all pics and vids were safely backed up. But that might take well into the daytime, by the looks of things. Movies can slow things down. And I have got a fair number on ye aulde iPhone.
Once everything is backed up, I want to have a major purge of said iPhone. I don’t need to be walking around with over 4000 pics in my pocket! And the lack of space on my phone is causing problems with certain other apps; Amazon Flex for instance, which sometimes can’t load properly.
And I need Flex running smoothly right now, as it’s become my main earner, in these recent and troubled times.
Anyhoo, it’s nearing 2.30 in the am, I think I’ll stick it till 3, and then go back to bed regardless. I think sun-up is around 4.30am? And I’ve got some counselling at 21am, and work (Flex, as usual these days) in the art’noon…
Well, many hours later, and the ‘progress bar’ seems to have gotten stuck about a fifth of the way across. So… no realistic hopes of sitting here till she’s done. I gots to get me some sleep!
It’s roughly 3.30 am. Back to bed. Perchance to sleep?
What a fantastic track! Great song, beautifully played. Proper music. I was reminded of this due to the current popularity of his recent track No such Thing.
The latter is good. And in terms of modern pop, great. But Gravity is a tune for the ages, in my not so humble onion!
It’d be nice to think that the occasionally quite attractive (but often quite repellent) inter-buttockary cleft was ‘the bottom line’, which we hear captains of industry and economists blathering about. Butt, of course, that isn’t the bottom line. It’s just a bottom line.
I googled the phrase, and the top result (I can’t be bothered citing the URL) ran thus:
‘What is bottom line? The bottom line primarily refers to a company’s net income, which appears as the final line on the income statement.* It’s the total amount of profit a business has remaining after paying expenses, expressed with the equation: Revenue – Expenses = Net Income.’
The crushingly dull reality.
* My italics. I.e. at the bottom of a financial statement. Rather akin to how musicians say ‘let’s take it from the top’, which refers to starting at the top or beginning of a score.
I post this in part as an afterthought to a previous post (about getting scammed buying apparel via Facebook), and in part because I myself – or perhaps Teresa and I? – well, in all honesty, more me really! Need to clean up my act, bottom line wise!
A while back I enthused over a selection of stylish funky green shorts and tops. I placed an order for three or four items. An eternity later, I negotiated a refund.
I can’t recall offhand if I got a complete refund or not. I think not? If that site (whose name I forget now) carries on like that in high volume, which I suspect they do… then they’re making lots of money out of chumps like me, whilst supplying nothing in return (except frustration disappointment and anger!).
Those items (see these posts) were, I later discovered, probably just photos of more expensive clothing blithely nicked off some other legit site, and then re-used to tempt schmucks like me into spur of the moment or impulse purchases.
And FB doesn’t effectively police such underhand dealings. Indeed, I expect the whole FB edifice is mostly built on scamming and exploitation.
Most users naively see FB and use it thinking of it as a fun friendly furry entity. But it is the giant behemoth it is because it has been a very effective selling platform or tool. And for the money folk, the bottom line is the, er… bottom line!
The shirt pictured at the top of this post perfectly captures a style I went with for my covers band, Capricorn. We played jazz funk soul and Latin, and our ‘colour scheme’ was essentially just like this shirt!
A review from Truspilot.
I’d love a shirt like that. But a quick check on ceballi.com returns too many ‘definitely a scam’ type comments. So I shall exercise caution and restraint. Damn nice shirt though!
