Sushi For Breakfast

As before. More TV Trivia (see previous post on Movie Trivia):

( Ten More TVings )

That's it for trivia for today, though this has got me into playing around on IMDB again for the first time in ages.

I visited Birmingham having high hopes of buying some DM boots, preferably not in black. Didn't see any so will be venturing online and hoping I choose the correct size. Bought a Gap T-shirt, some Jellybeans (they've replaced the lever things with little shovelly things, and removed the Ice Cream flavours, boo) and some sushi.

On the train towards Birmingham I was sat across the aisle from two middle-aged men on their way to a business meeting. One of the men was very upper-middle-class looking and sounding, the other was more a standard guy in a suit. UMC guy was talking about how he had no plans to see The Iron Lady, he was definitely not a Thatcher admirer, even though not seeing the film meant missing out on seeing Meryl Streep. Other Guy looked rather crestfallen at this anti-Thatcher revelation, and talked about how she did this or that and you can't argue it wasn't successful. UMC guy then started talking about watching TV news reporting of the Leveson Inquiry, and what a horrible man Richard Desmond was, I think Other Guy was a secret Daily Express reader cos he was not impressed by the direction of the conversation.

I must have been in a train carriage near the end, because when I got off at New Street I was near the signage for the exit to Victoria Square, so I thought that would be a good opportunity to visit the da Vinci exhibition at BMAG, which opened today. I'd only heard about it a couple of days ago so I wasn't sure if I'd be visiting, especially given the queues there'd been for the Staffordshire Hoard, but the queue this time was officially half an hour and actually more like 20 minutes at 11am. The pictures - mostly studies da Vinci made for paintings, anatomy drawings - are wonderful, very detailed, and accompanied in many cases by his famous mirror-writing. There's also lots of stuff alongside about the materials he used, and the papers. There's only ten items in a single room, but well worth a visit, to see with one's own eyes the works of one of the greatest creative minds of Western civilisation is too awesome to miss.

I bought some da Vinci postcards from the giftshop, and a three-colour pen, which seems to have vanished :( I came back into the main shopping area via New Street, I went in Shared Earth, which is undergoing a liquidation sale - sad, but I was surprised it had lasted this long. There were two women in there accompanied by a guide dog, a beautiful creature apparently called Rupert-No who had to sniff everything on display within nose height.

I stopped at the food court for lunch, but for a veggie taco bowl rather than my usual jacket potato, as I had a jacket potato for dinner last night. Waterstones had lots of children's Christmas books on sale, and I was tempted by a pop-up book about How Santa Works, which tells how the elves read letters from children and check on a computer to see if the children have been good, and how after the party Santa throws for his elves on Christmas Day, everyone sleeps until the spring. However, I managed to resist this, and a copy of That's Not My Puppy - if I start buying books for Bean every time I visit Waterstones, she's going to need a separate library as well as a warehouse to store all her toys.

As well as looking online for DMs I might also look for soaps. I found out that Lush have moved from Corporation Street to somewhere else I didn't see, and The Body Shop only had the same stuff they always have in. I prefer soaps to shower gels, will see what Lush have on their online store but am also interested in looking up some natural ingredients soaps, can't remember if it was Oxfam or Greenpeace or someone else but a while back one of the major charities used to sell a big box of assorted cubes of soap made with olive oil, sage, rosemary etc. Something seasonal, preferably.

If you celebrate the day, Happy New Year. If not, today is Sunday, which I know because I received an Observer today.

I still don't fully understand what celebrating new year is about. It seems to be an ancient celebration thing (eg first-footing) which completely got replaced by fireworks, texting people and watching Dinner For One if you're in a country which broadcasts it. One would expect some kind of continuum of old traditions staying around for a while, but no. The only new year celebration I've been to as an adult involved us playing Twister and eating Pringles, and was hosted by friends as a way (I thought at the time) to tell all their friends they were expecting a baby (turned out I was the only friend who learned this that day).

From what I can gather on Twitter etc, no-one goes out on new year anyway, people stay in and celebrate, but then most people stay in for Christmas Day, is there something I've missed here? I suppose if you live in a World City there are fireworks, but it's impractical to go and see them if you live more than a mile outside the city centre as there's no such thing as public transport or secure car parks that time of night. TBH they're looking rather meh anyway, at least the Sydney fireworks always look the same since they removed the Olympic rings from the Harbour Bridge.

Now I need to think what to do for Yuri's Night, which this year is a Thursday I think. No doubt we shall have heavy cloud, but if we're lucky the skies will be clear and there will be lots to see. As for today, I have to attend my uncle's new year tea thing, for which Mum has given him orders to move the furniture so that everyone can get in the room at once. But I will need to eat before I go, as a plain white roll with lettuce and salad cream accompanied by tea or water (no coffee, no cold beverages, he doesn't drink them so he sees no reason why anyone else should, even guests or visitors) isn't my idea of nourishment.

I've mentioned this before - a Two Ronnies TV film (approx 50 minutes long) called By The Sea, about a group of relatives and friends who spend a Bank Holiday weekend in a seaside town. A few comedy cliches of the time (early 1980s), but fun nevertheless, and it made me want to stay in a hotel when I go on holiday. Still no sign of an official DVD release it seems, but someone has YouTubed it in five parts, so I've put it all together for your viewing pleasure. I hope you like.

( To Tiddley Cove )

You can also read about this in Ronnie Barker's book "All I Ever Wrote" which is must be the thickest book I have. And that's just the paperback version.

Happy Thanksgiving, or if it's not for you today, Happy Thursday. I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving food if you're partaking of the tradition, meanwhile I am about to partake of this:



Yum :)

Did anyone else on my f-list play the recorder at school? I don't know how or why, but recorders suddenly popped into my head a few days ago and I found myself looking at them on Amazon. You may have seen a few tweets, I ended up having a conversation on twitter with a space-tweep friend about the recorder - which sizes we played, favourite music, and why are recorders brown?

I started learning the descant (aka soprano) recorder at 6, then at 10 I started learning the treble (aka alto) recorder, and continued playing both until I was about 12. I don't know why recorders have these alternate size names, I guess descant is used so that little children don't get confused between soprano and sopranino, but I used to mix up treble and tenor, so I think using the name alto would've been more sensible there. Both my recorders - bought via school - were Dolmetsch, like most schoolchildren's recorders seemed to be then. Sometimes you saw kids with more expensive-looking Aulos recorders, which seemed to have more of a flourish in their curves and had more parts highlighted in cream, the Dolmetsch recorders being dark brown all over except for the mouthpieces.

I loved playing the descant best at the time, most of our year-group who took recorder lessons were a big group of most of my friends. I wanted to learn the treble for a long time, at first I wasn't able to (maybe we couldn't afford it at the time, or because I was also having guitar lessons, which I wasn't interested in, but I had a guitar left from when our cousins emigrated so I was going to learn to play it whether I wanted to or not) but eventually I was allowed to, I loved how different it sounded. My cousin, three years older than me, was learning descant and treble recorders, and her teacher brought in a tenor recorder to one lesson and said each girl in the class would be able to take it home for a week to play it. Luckily, we visited on the weekend she had it, and she let me play it - a bit of a stretch for my seven-year-old fingers, but I thought the key for the bottom C was so cool.

I don't know where my recorders have got to, they're probably buried under piles of stuff in a cupboard or in the loft somewhere. The good brands of recorder on Amazon - Aulos & Yamaha mostly - sell for around £10-£15 for trebles, descants & sopraninos, so don't be too surprised if I decide to buy one. Tenor recorders are more expensive, £60 or so, and there are keyless models available - but I'd want a one with a key. There are more expensive recorders made from applewood for a few hundred pounds, and professional ebony-wood recorders for near to £1000, which probably explains why dark brown is the colour for cheaper recorders. I'm pretty sure I won't be buying a bass recorder, due both to expense and the fact that they all seem to be bent-neck models rather than with a curved pipe mouthpiece like a bassoon. But the thing that surprised me most is that the recorder book I started out with in the final year of infants' school is available on Amazon, still in print.

I have the week off work, and yesterday was spent with a visit from my sister and Bean, who is now fully walking (except when she crawls for speed). I read one of her books to her - That's Not My Dragon - and she was dancing to the sounds on her Chuggington book.

Today I had thought of going to Birmingham, but I have thought since 'What for?' The highlights of a visit to Birmingham tend to be buying JellyBeans, buying something from Hotel Chocolat, and a jacket potato for lunch. Not a lot for a minimum 60 minute bus-and-train journey, especially when the first two aren't totally healthy.

One idea behind having this week off was that I could start Christmas shopping, which might have been underway if my local branch of Dunelm hadn't burned down. I know a few shops have started getting in gift stuff in store, but it's generally not the stuff I'd planned to get. I have quite a few ideas now about what to get people, mostly my cousins & their kids, hence the original plans to go to Dunelm for double-sized throws. They have an online store but I might wait to see if M&S or somewhere similar has anything good in stock.

So apart from catching up on House, not sure what I'm doing today. It's nice not to be under the treadmill of work so I'm taking advantage by not getting up early. I've thought of walking to the big Tescos for some exercise and some sushi, I'll see what the weather forecast looks like. Or maybe staying in will push me to get out just for the change of it. I'll see after breakfast.

I was up late last night watching Ron Garan's departure from the ISS, and set my alarm for 5am this morning to watch his landing back on Earth. They showed the farewell speeches live on NASA TV:



There was also this pic of the three crewmembers just before the hatch was closed - everyone had their version that they tweeted it seems:



I woke up at 5am, their expected landing time, and got the HD feed of NASA TV up & running about 1 minute after the Soyuz had landed. It would've been nice to see the actual landing, but the first commentary I heard was them saying all three crewmembers are well. I then watched and saw them being lifted out of the Soyuz and carried to their recliners, it was nice to see when Ron Garan was pulled out he had a big smile on his face, he has such a wonderful smile :)

This pic was shared on Twitter by Elyse David, who's a major person at Fragile Oasis:



It'll probably be a few days before we hear from him again, either on Twitter or his blog, but I'm sure it won't be too long. Apparently he has lots of pics to share online that he took from the ISS, so I'm looking forward to hearing from him again soon.

Not sure when autumn officially starts, but I think today is the last day of summer in a way. The schools start back tomorrow, which means I can no longer take the relaxed attitude towards getting up, getting ready and going out to work that I've had for the past few weeks. Pedestrians and traffic will be back in great numbers.

Also it's one week until my uncle arrives from Australia for a two-week visit. They'll all be decamping to Cornwall for a week during the visit, so I'll get the place to myself for a bit, but the visit itself was only sprung on me a week ago, I don't know how long it's been planned for. My concern is getting enough sleep during the weekdays my uncle is here - the neighbourhood dogs' recent tendencies to bark late into the night, coupled with my uncle's jetlagged early rising mean less hours for me to get a decent night's sleep. I hope both can be contained to a minimum.

Am hoping to take some time off while they're all away, but this month we have major changes at work and it's also blood donation time in a couple of weeks, so there's limited flexibility for taking time off. However, Fridays are more fully available again as we've had notice from our Yoga teacher that classes aren't going to restart after the summer break - not surprising, I think it was getting to a point where she wasn't making any money from us, too many people had dropped out for health reasons or long-term leave or had left the organisation. Her company's classes are generally held around my area, so I'm going to see what she has on and when. I'd like to go to Kettlebell classes, she used to teach them but had to find another venue, if they're back on again and not on a Wednesday I might sign up.

It's also definitely the end of Summer because the Autumn TV programming is starting up. This includes QI, which is back next Friday, despite the first episode having Lee Mack on the panel. Ugh, he is not funny at all. He's like the one in a new crowd of people you meet who thinks he's "the funny one" when actually he's just very annoying and totally unfunny.