Dawn

Dawn

Friday, March 15, 2013

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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