I slept quite well last night and woke up at six thinking I had an hour and a half to snooze before listening to 'Thought for the Day'. The next time I looked at the clock it was eight fifteen, half an hour too late to hear it live. I'm most thankful for the BBC Sounds app, enabling me to catch-up. It's go easier and easier to use as it has developed over the past decade. Streaming BBC broadcast content, audio and video began fourteen years ago, and has become very comprehensive and sophisticated beneath its several changes of name and appearance since then. A triumph for free public service broadcasting. I'd be lost without it.
For lunch, I cooked a spicy chickpea and veggy stew with potatoes, then walked for an hour and a half around the Fields. Another overcast but mild day. Outside the SWALEC stadium were were lots of parking stewards in hi-viz jackets hanging about, waiting for cars to arrive and park for which I presume is an evening cricket match. There were no signs yet of spectators arriving on foot. BBC news is driving me crazy, obsessing about tonight's soccer game between England and Germany. Meanwhile, Wimbledon and cricket get relegated.
It's as if we our faces are being thrust into the hype around the Big Game, as if it represented something significant for the future of the country post-brexit. There's been so many backward glances at the 1966 World Cup final in which England beat Germany. I find it quite disturbing, subtle propaganda surrounding justification for leaving the EU, insinuation that Britain is better than all of them over the Channel, as the heavy price for departure is already starting to be paid, politically and economically. A slow awakening is taking place to the reality of the deceit. You can't fool all of the people all of the time.
We had a call from Owain this afternoon. He's taking a few days of his week's leave making techno tracks with a mate in a recording studio with a view down in Devon, then coming to us to celebrate his birthday on the weekend. At least, that was the plan. His NHS app pinged him for having been in contact with a covid infected person - he thinks it's a vinyl record store owner in Bristol. He now has to self isolate for five days when he returns to Bristol tomorrow, and won't be with us for his birthday after all. We're all disappointed. Another Zoom or WhatsApp birthday party instead, but no means to get a cake to share with him on the day. At least, he doesn't think he's infected, but he'll have to get tested at the end of his quarantine period, before normality can take hold again. What bad luck.
Since I bought the Honor laptop the Friday before going to Aberaeron and installed the essential apps that I bought it to be able to use better, I've not switched it on and used it, despite taking it with me. Doing a full Windows 10 setup with one's own accounts take time and concentration. On purchase, the laptop was set up for a single user, independently of any Microsoft account, an option when a factory reset is done if you don;t want to commit the device to an account holder with an established file system. The task I have been putting off since setting it up initially was to make the laptop an account holder to the same account as I have on my desktop machine. It took me over an hour to work out how to do this and get it to mirror my desktop.
I'm pleased with it now. It's quick and has a beautiful crisp display. I can now consider converting my desktop machine to Linux Mint. It will never run Windows as quickly as the laptop unless I change the hard drive for a SSD, I'm not sure how to do that. Besides, it's unlikely to run as fast as a much younger laptop with higher specifications. On the other hand, I've already found at that the desktop will run much faster using Linux Mint, as its not as dependent on high specification hardware. Windows 11 is about to be released, and I get the impression that it may not work or maybe work less well on my desktop device, but I'm confident of a better outcome and a longer life for a five year old machine using Linux. It's a matter of finding time to do the job.
Clare returned from her afternoon walk with four pounds of strawberries, on special offer at the Co-op. After supper I got to work preparing them for cooking, a very pleasant task enveloped in the aroma of fresh summer fruit. Fruit is now stewed, jam tomorrow!
After supper I finished watching 'Time is the killer' - not so much a psychological thriller as promoted as a complex whodunnit with some surprising twists. The whole story could have been told in six rather than eight episodes, to prevent boredom setting in. The worst aspect was actually the implausibility of the central narrative thread, entailing the forcible abduction and incarceration in isolation of an innocent bereaved mother presumed killer for 25 years, without her going insane or succeding in escaping. Worse still, her face has no sign of ageing despite her long grey hair, and she looks acceptably clean and tidy in her secret prison. Totally incredibly ridiculous. And this key element of stupidity was evident from episode five of eight. Pathetic.
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