Start the week #80

A whole lotta stuff

Sep 10, 2024

Greetings!

Sorry this is later than usual, but we went to IKEA on Wednesday and only managed to find the way out this morning.

But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter.

Oh yeah?

Yesterday we went to a rather crowded café for lunch. While sitting there, I noticed a young man holding his plate of food and looking around for a place to sit.

Me: You can sit here if you like, we’re going in a minute.

YM: Thanks. People will think I’m your grandson.

Well, this brought out my inner skinhead:

Me: Grandson? You want a knuckle sandwich to go with that?

Grandson indeed. I know my rights.

London

London is vibrant as usual. A few days ago I went to the Barbican to return a library book.

We also went to the Guildhall Art Gallery, where there is an exhibition called Kaleidoscope, a collection of works by Anne Desmet. It comprises works created with lino cuts, woodcuts, engraving, water colours and collage. It was pretty good. Here are a few examples:

Tube maps

I came across a website containing examples of different versions of the London tube map. It reminded me of a website

Rebecca Holden

wrote about a little while ago, in her letter to me.

Sign seen on a station platform

View from the top of a Superloop bus

Inside Freedman Towers

The grand clear-out continues. I think I’ve found a solution to our book storage problem, courtesy of IKEA:

Healthy eating

I don't understand all the fuss some people make about getting your "5 a day". It's easy:

1. Hash browns for breakfast. These are made from potatoes, which is a vegetable, and therefore counts as #1 of the day.

2. French fries for lunch, smothered in tomato ketchup. These are therefore #2 and #3 of the day.

3. Supper consists of a mashed potato sandwich. That's #4.

4. Finally, an evening snack of potato crisps brings the total up to the requisite 5 a day.

Obviously, there's more one can do to be on the safe side, such as having a banana milkshake and an orange squash, but I just wanted to point out that healthy eating is not as hard as some people make out.

Sax chronicles

Not much to report, sadly. I was practising every day, and making headway, but then I had to have a tooth extracted and wasn’t allowed to play for a week. That got me out of the habit, so when I started again I became breathless very quickly. Then I tried using the digital sax (YDS-150) because I thought I can at least practise the fingering — but it plays all the wrong notes! The C major scale has become a C minor scale, and nothing I’ve done in terms of restoring the original fingering (not that I deliberately changed anything) has worked. I’m pretty disappointed. If I could find out how to do a factory reset I’d try that, but there seems to be very little comprehendable information available.