After
coughing without cease for 6 days, my mother yesterday finally
retired to her bed and called the doctor. Being of The Age of
Deference and of the Everyone-Before-Me tendency, when the doctor
arrived my mother firstly apologised for calling her out and then for
the probate papers untidily littering her desk. And when she left, she thanked
her profusely for taking the trouble to come and then castigated
me for getting shut of her too quickly. “You mean a busy doctor who has
lots of other sick people to attend to?” I asked, and got a malign
stare in return.
My
mother has still coughed throughout today. I'm full of sympathy of
course, but have to admit that listening to someone cough non-stop
for 7 days can be a tad wearing. Fortunately, tonight has seen some
let up.
Talking
of probate. The process is simple enough but it involves completing a
form for the tax authorities, in case there's any inheritance tax to
pay. This is 4 pages long but the guide to it comes in at 42.
It's
a defence which is possibly even less plausible than that of Oscar
Pitorius – An Englishman who's accused of starting the fire which
killed his 5 kids, claims that his clothes smelled of petrol because
he hadn't bathed for 3 months. As he's fond of threesomes and
dogging, he must have been quite something to be with during this
period. Assuming he's telling the truth, of course. Which I rather
doubt.
Ads
on British TV have long urged people of advanced years to think of
spending money now so that their loved ones can get something later
on. But, to my astonishment, this approach has now been extended to
cats. You can actually pay for someone to look after your bird-killer
once you're dead. I say 'astonished' but my guess is it's been a
feature of US TV for a while.
Credit
where credit is due – This is the opening paragraph of a
description of the Valencia fallas from a web page called Spanish
Fiestas:Today marks the beginning of the 'Festival of Fire' in
Valencia. It runs from 15th to 19th March and is without a doubt the
noisiest of Spain's many fiestas. Historically the event celebrates
the Feast of San José, the patron saint of carpenters, but the
festival has grown over the years to become one of the country's
biggest fiestas which attracts visitors from all over the world. The
video at the end of the post gives you some idea of the madness of
this event. You can read all of it here.
I
seem to have lost my battle to stop Facebook from forcing me to use
their new (Timeline?) layout. In addition to that irritation, there's some nuisance called 'Pinned posts'. I edge closer and closer to exiting the whole shebang.
Talking
of web pages, you may have been told that Google Reader is being
killed as of July. Which is a shame. Researching alternatives this
evening, I came across this bit of unintelligible jargon . . . I
think users are worried they will lose handcurated feed bundles of
their favourite content. Yes, very probably.
Finally
. . . At 65, Emmylou Harris looks almost as stunning as she did at
25. Can this be possible?
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