Unintelligent Design

...but, y'know, life is good.

Looking forward to Whitby, to the arrival of a quince tree for the garden (a couple of days post-Whitby) and to the next phase of the house redecoration (spare room gets a new ceiling, replastered walls etc w/c 11/11).

[Any suggestions for good places to buy carpets in/around Coventry, btw?]

Lemsip and sleep now, I think. I may make it out of the house on Sunday, but that's about my limit.

Which seems like a decent excuse to curl up on the sofa and watch various DVDs I've not quite gotten round to.

How many of you lot are doing Whitby but not the Spa this time? (either doing the Spa overflow/alternative events or avoiding it entirely)

This'll be the first time that I haven't had a ticket. Vaguely wondering who'll be about, and where...

Colin Powell backs Barack Obama.

Hmm.

Morning Routine

I've only done this once. So far. :)

The Tate Modern's new Turbine Hall exhibition

Interesting. I keep missing these - but this one may be the exception.

...was fun, but I'm a little bit knackered today.

My sister turned up in Coventry on Friday, which called for some sort of celebration. Inspiration failed to strike, so we settled on meeting colfish , blooddoll3 , pope_ant , mister_jack  and Kyle for beer. It seemed to work. :) 

Saturday involved a mob trip (I'm not going to list names; there were a lot of us!) to see a very special episode of Doctor Who. Well, ok, not quite... but, as noted, Love's Labour's Lost was extremely watchable, and David Tennant was nothing if not charismatic.

The set was fairly simple, based around a huge (and slightly stylised) tree at the back of the stage, which various people hid in (or behind) at various points. Costumes were more or less traditional, although a few of the songs had a more modern lilt to them...

...and there was an owl on a string. I liked the owl. There was also a man in a bear suit, but I think I preferred the owl.

Er, and Joe Dixon, playing Don Adriano De Armado, was definitely channeling Inigo Montoya... :-)

It was good. Not sure what I think of the play itself - I like it, and I do actually like the ending, but it's not a play I know well and I'm still puzzling bits of it out in my head. Hmm.

There was a certain amount of fun with transport arrangements - who was driving where, who was parking where etc. This wasn't helped by the mop fair, or by our usual meeting point being disrupted by the building works... but it all worked out in the end.

I definitely need a better ticket-distribution plan before the trip to see Hamlet, though...

There's been a lot of talk about the FSCS and the government's promise to protect savings if any UK banks collapse. Personally, I'm hoping that this is all rather hypothetical.

However, if you're one of the people who's seriously concerned about such things, there are a couple of clauses you might want to be aware of - specifically, amounts owed to the bank are considered before any compensation is paid.

This seems quite sensible for credit cards, loans etc. However, it also means that if you have savings and mortgage with the same bank, any savings will be counted against your mortgage debt, not simply returned under the guarantee...

Four Lions - "terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five a side football teams"

I'll be very interested to see what he does with this, assuming that the summary here is genuine. I find a lot of his stuff uncomfortable viewing, but he does tend to be brutally (or, at least, plausibly...) accurate when he skewers things...

Sometimes, even on cold grey Mondays, life is good.