spring! (fingers crossed)
Well the month has flown by and the first trip out of Scarborough in 2017 has been and gone with a long overdue return to Waterloo, not least because the accompanying bustle does everybody good and makes a change from the gentleness and relative tranquility of Pimlico (which delightful though it is, serves mostly to make me lazy and eat too much). And just for comparative purposes I’ll be back in Pimlico at the weekend -yay!
As per the title, Spring is well and truly springing here – the snowdrops are out, evenings are getting lighter and in the annual tradition of keeping busy during the quieter weeks, 2017’s DIY projects are well underway and thus far have included a clearout and mass shredding of old paperwork that resulted in no fewer than five blue bags to go out (why I was hanging onto bank statements and receipts from 2007 will have to remain a mystery, but I’ve gained back an entire walk in cupboard I’d forgotten I had as a result). And I haven’t even started on the messy drawer yet.
In other long overdue projects, the oft-promised new pictures courtesy of the fancy Samsung phone and it’s handy voice control photo taker are finally on their way, if for no reason other than to prove that I look pretty much the same as I did in the last ones some fifteen months ago bar a touch thinner and in far less of a hurry. It’s all a bit of an experiment, but the going is so far good enough that I may pack the tripod this weekend and bring it along – in the meantime, there’s one above to be going on with, and another here (for fans of the candid) that caught me on the hop when I was playing nicely and learning the timer. Muppet.
I was immensely pleased to see justice done at the Oscars; having sat through La La Land a few weeks ago as a birthday treat with a similarly bewildered and unimpressed pal in tow I was completely at a loss as to what all the fuss was about (especially when it dawned on me that for my seven quid I could have stayed in and had fish, chips, peas and a can of Coke instead) but the saving grace was my first visit in years to the lovely Hollywood Plaza, which hasn’t changed a bit since I lived just up the road on North Bay and used to go two or three times a week. La La Land may have been two hours of my life I’ll never get back but Trainspotting 2 on the other hand was a joy, and – happily – is on at the Stephen Joseph from Friday which might mean my second visit this week after an evening at the (streamed) Sleeping Beauty ballet last night. I was feeling very cultured indeed until the first thing that came through my nice warm headphones when I left for home and my second set of pancakes was Centrefold by the J Geils band (damn you, Spotify shuffle) which made me cringe. I still listened to it, though.
It’s not gone unnoticed that almost a full year has gone by since my last New York trip and the next would normally be well underway by now if not actually been and gone; sadly, there isn’t any next happening any time soon. I have no particular wish to be interrogated by border security and then turned back anyway because I won’t countenance giving up my privacy by way of my device passwords on the way in, so like numerous others I’ll be making other arrangements. 6.8% of others, to quote the figure calculated by a travel company looking at the reduction in tourism bookings to the US in the last few weeks. As for the rest, even thinking about it is making my brain hurt so I believe I’ll stick with the pancakes.
So for now, I’m firmly in situ! The new pictures will all be posted soon and it’ll be Easter before we know it (I promise I won’t leave it that long for an update).
This week’s Song Of The Week is …you guessed it.
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