Re: solution

Okay, here it is, then. How can Chaz conceivably lie still and listen to someone saying "three or less", and not scream in outrage?

The answer is that I think - I think (but am very open to correction on this) - that he was right to say so.

Okay, this is how it was. I was lying still and listening to the radio: ergo, I was in bed. Ergo, it was late night or early morning. What happens on Radio 4, late night and early morning? Yes, O my beloved 'earers: the shipping forecast.

This was a measurement of wind, on the Beaufort scale. He said - as it might be - "German Bight, northeast veering easterly, three or less," and I assert that he was right to do so. You couldn't possibly say "three or fewer," when you're talking about the strength of the wind. Could you...?

Bah, humbug

I was all fired-up this morning, despite ongoing headcold issues: wrote a couple of pages, end of the chapter in sight, story coming together, all of that. Then I went to the press show of "Beowulf" with friends, with all that that implies about going to the pub afterwards to dissect same, etc.

So here I am home again in the late afternoon - and it's gone. I have no fire, no application. No words. I despise myself.

And I didn't even like the movie much. I do not get this thing for making movies look like comic books. I don't know what the technical term is for making live actors look less-than-live, and I don't understand why they do it. You lose - well, the best of acting, which is reacting, because their faces have been deliberately rendered unreactive, almost mask-like; and I don't see what you gain. I just find the whole process distancing, the opposite of engagement.

So despite the pleasures of friends and pubs and such, it's still starting to feel like a day lost. I shall drink a pot of tarry lapsang crocodile, and see where we go from there; but I may well be disgruntled.

Laundry baskets

I bought a new laundry basket on the way home today.

Thing is, it's not that long at all since I bought the previous laundry basket; but - as I have reported here before - first Barry and then Mac applied themselves with rigour to its utter demolition. As someone else commented here, cats hate wicker. Hatehatehate! And cats are smarter than wicker. Smartsmartsmart! Hence my house is full of little bits of wicker, and the basket-as-was has lost both its handles and the whole of the rim/hem thing around the top and can be frayed away in entire courses at once, hurrah! *cat pokes Chaz with long curl of wicker*

So I bought a new one. It's plastic. Also, it's significantly taller & thinner than the previous. When I bought it, I thought, "it'll be a smart cat that can jump into this. Or jump out again."

I left it in the bedroom with the old one. Went back twenty minutes later. Barry sitting in the old one; Mac sitting in the new one. Which has almond-shaped holes in it, just big enough for a paw to poke through. They had lots of fun, poking. In and out. I'm still impressed that he managed the jumps in and out without knocking it over, but hey. He's a cat.

Thing is, though, I can't quite bring myself to get rid of the old one. Not in any hoarding it-might-come-in-useful kind of way - it is long past any use at all - but they're still having such fun with it, every night more demolition. And the house is already full of wicker splinters, so it's not going to make anything worse if I just leave it till they're done...