05/05/2007
Blast form the past
I used to play a computer game, in the days of DOS, called Veil of Darkness. I loved it. I would find myself bleary eyed and claw-handed at 4 in the morning, still hunched over the game, trying to solve just this last one puzzle before bed.
Well. I lost it when my computer blew up, and that was that. Except - I've just found it again. It's long enough ago for me not to be able to remember any of the problems or their solutions (of course, advancing age helps in this area also). And I can download it for free, but only if I plug the site on my blog. So here's the link:
http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com
I am now going outside, and I may be some time.....
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11/07/2006
Peeves
I admit it - I'm a lunguistic snob. which is not to say that I never get it wrong myself, just that of course I don't notice my own imperfections, whereas other people's stare at me and poke their tongues out at me and make me grumpy.
Take "of", for example. A neat, useful little word, that does not belong in the following sentence: "I would of done it." I do wish people would try to remember, it should be "I would HAVE done it." It's really not hard and it would do such favours for my blood pressure.
Then there's the refusal of most Kentish women of my acquaintance to conjugate the verb "to be" properly. "Was you at work yesterday?", "We was going to Bluewater". Makes my teeth itch, really.
The runner-up prize goes to "try and". One does not "try and", one "tries to". "And" does not go with "try". If you don't believe me, try saying: "I was trying and see where it went". Gibberish. Ah, but "I was trying to see where it went" - lovely!
The real biggy though - and it's getting more common by the day - comes from America. No huge surprise, and no real problem had it stayed there, but of course it has not. I refer to the improper mixing of "do have" and "have got".
"Have you got a sense of humour?"
"Yes I do."
I'm sure most people don't even notice it, but ooh it grates on me. "Have you got..." "Yes I have" or "Do you have..." "Yes I do". Either of these is fine. But "Have you got...." and "Yes I do" just don't go. You only really see this if you extend the sentence to answer the exact question asked, as in: "Have you got a sense of humour?" / "Yes I do got a sense of humour." You see, the question is either "Do you", in which case the answer should be "Yes I do", or "Have you", in which case it should be "Yes I have".
I know, I'm gibbering. But it gets me like that.
cj
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10/07/2006
Villa Road
BBC2, this evening, 7pm, "Lefties". A programme about the social revolution that occurred in Villa Road, Brixton, during the 1970s and 1980s (totally unbeknownst to me).
My parents owned the leasehold on no 6 Villa Road during the late 1950s/early 1960s, so I have an interest and watched the programme. Right at the start they showed a shot of no 6’s front door – a surreal moment. I have very few memories of the place, having moved away from Brixton when I was 4, in 1961, but as I watched the programme I did recognise the elegant facades of those beautiful three-storey-plus-basement houses, with their plaster mouldings and ceiling roses. I lived in Angell Road, Brixton, number 80, ground floor, from birth until we moved to Bognor in September of 1961(largely due to my feeble constitution. It’s fine now, thanks), and they were very much the same. Villa Road looks (looked) just like Angell Road, and the memories stirred something in me that I’ve not felt for a long time.
It’s weird, because I loathe bustle and traffic. But as I watched this programme, my instinct was to rush back up there and join the squatters and their struggle for social justice. But my parents were the landlords, the oppressors, the bad guys – surely?
No, not really. They were a young couple, bugger all behind them apart from a willingness to work, who were prepared to take on a property that was in the dying years of its lease and make something of it. I don’t know if it’s still the same now, but in those days if you bought a property with only a couple of years left to run on the lease, not only did you have to give it back when the lease ran out, but you had to put it back into pristine condition before doing so. My parents took a risk, and it paid off to the extent that they could afford to move to the south coast as a result. So they bought a house, ran it as bedsits for a while, then handed it back. I’m still in touch with one of the people who lived there.
Long live Villa Road. Most of the people who squatted there have moved on, rejoined the capitalist society and – if not quite admitted defeat, then at least recognised that theirs was a dream whose time had not yet quite come.
Husband said – "but you don’t want to live in London." And he’s right, I don’t. But what, really, would be the difference? A few doors away from my house the Co-op is going to erect 24 flats. At the other end of my road, an old lady has died and her executors have sold her house and the little field next door for 1.2 million squids to a developer who is going to kill her house and erect 48 warden-assisted flats.
I moved away from London 45 years ago, but it’s found me and encircled me and there’s no escape.
Who do I have to sleep with to become the Doctor’s next assistant?
cj
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09/07/2006
Annoyances
For some reason, spam comments appearing on my blog enrages me beyond reason. So I've changed my settings to close posts to comments after a week. If you want to say anything then either do it quickly or mail me direct. I don't know why this annoys me so much when there are so many more important things, but for some reason it really pisses me off. It's like nothing's private any more, you know?
Grrrr.
cj
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25/06/2006
More pictures
If you think that this blog is becoming a trifle single-minded, you just wait until we actually own the house! Until then, I have to make do with looking at a few pictures, which whilst undoubtedly very motivational, is also frustrating. I want to get out there and get stuck into making it mine. Er - ours.
As promised in the post-before-last, herewith a couple of shots that Steve took outside, just before his camera packed up. This first one is the view from the bottom of the garden (front garden - it's nearly all at the front).
We need to trim the hedge down a tad.
The next is a long shot of the outside, taken with his back to the front hedge . The garden is wider than it looks because it extends further than the hedge on the left, which hides the driveway.
Then, because, well, because it was there I suppose, we have a photograph of the totally featureless back wall of the house. I have no idea why.
Unless perhaps it's to illustrate how cutely the roof wavers from the horizontal. This is not a fault, it is a feature. Or possibly to record how the clay roof tiles are crumbling to dust. This is not a feature. The property is on a slope, which is why it looks even lower from the back than it does from the front. I think. Of course it could be subsidence.
Last but not least, we have a view of the side of the house. I think he took this because he was charmed by the fact that the previous owners had attached a tit-nesting box. Although of course it's possible that he was just camera-happy. That would get my vote. Perhaps if he'd been a bit less bothered about the side and the boring back, I might be able to show you some pictures of the bedrooms, or the living room, or the vertiginous "stairs". But no. Anyway, here it is:
Please do not ask me why the stones are a different colour beneath the drainpipe. I have no idea but my fevered imagination can only assume terminal rising damp.
I am not by nature a worrier (except when it comes to my animals), so although I am joking about such weighty matters as subsidence, damp and re-roofing, I am not actually serious. I think it's a cracking little house and will still be standing long after I am not. Accidents such as fire or lightning strike aside, of course. So I am still very happy about the whole business - I just wish that the purchase could be sorted and done now, so that I don't have to wait. Waiting is one of the things I am not good at. So I will now go and pour myself a drink to take my mind off the slowness of the French house-purchasing system, and possibly play another Michel Thomas "learn French in ten hours unless you're cj" cd. Bottoms up!
cj
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19/06/2006
derriere
Heart a-flutter, adrenaline readying me to run away, I stood waiting. The sound of someone answering the phone - the merest of pauses whilst I considered backing out entirely. Then I went for it.
"Bonjour. Je voudrais parler avec Monsieur Robillard, s'il vous plait."
Silence.
Then.......
"Good morning. Who shall I say is calling please?" in a charming French accent.
However did she know?
cj
ps - In case you're not much better at French that I, derriere is (polite) French for bum.
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