Reprieve

My days are enriched, my mind stimulated and, new worlds are opened up. After several years deprived of this luxury, it's impossible to overstate my gratitude for the return of this ability. No matter how frequently I'd tried, the effort was always a step too far, emotional and physical stamina were both quite markedly lacking; the necessary concentration span was far beyond my grasp.

For the present, I've been released from an irksome captivity; once again the pure delight of settling down to read, and be captivated by, a novel is a realized possibility!

Chilcot Domesticated

A man lives in a block of flats. The block of flats is in a neighborhood where many of the people don't share your particular values.

The man harms some of his neighbours. He refuses to comply with your set of values.

You blow up the neighbourhood!

Is your action lawful?

Ground Feeders

A Question Of Judgement

As I listen to reports of the proceedings of the Chilcot inquiry, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of frustration combined with infuriation. Today we heard from Jack Straw, who evidently always argued that we must observe necessary procedures to ensure the war's legality, in the full realization that to aim for regime change would not meet this criterion.

He acknowledged the paucity of good intelligence information but, eventually made a (mis)judgement, rather than finding proof, in favour of the bogus WMD claims and agreed to go to war in partnership with the USA, whose intention was always that of regime change. In my way of thinking, there's nothing honourable in colluding with international criminals. Whilst his expression of regret for lives lost seemed sincere, I doubt if he ever believed that wars could be fought without the loss of life!

Transitions

Yesterday, a (temporary?) reprieve from a snow-laden garden brought out my latent - albeit limited - energy reserve as I manfully retrieved a spade from its hibernation; the wheelbarrow was also rescued from its angled reclination as I set to work. The task I set myself was to transfer some of the contents of the compost bin onto the garden's flowerbeds. Fortunately, I had the good sense to limit this exertion to two barrow loads; my state of being, this morning, confirmed that any further exercise could have proved disastrous. Shattered-ness has been retained at a degree only marginally greater than is my norm. Pacing is all!

Meanwhile, a slightly more passive pursuit has been the commencement of a project to transfer some of my vinyl and audio cassette collection to mp3 format. For far too long these musical and dramatic artefacts have been squirrelled away in sundry, non too easily accessed, hidey holes. I must own up to my preference for the sound spectrum derived from vinyl rather than CD but, unfortunately the turntable that obtains the best performance is also the most temperamental! For the vinyl transfer I'm using this hand-built turntable via a USB powered and connected phono pre-amp; for the cassette transfer a USB connected tape2pc deck suffices.

The transfer operation has more to do with potential ease of access, to the performances, than the overall sound quality; it has certainly taken me long enough to embark on this mission and, I'm hoping not to be too disappointed with the result! First transfers have come out better than I'd anticipated but, there's still a long way to go!

New on Mal's Factory

A new poem, SNOW TREK, can be found on 'Mal's Factory' - MAL's FACTORY - Poetry & Prose Poems: Snow Trek http://bit.ly/8zS3c8

Communal Bathing

The Faith of Meteorologists

If only I had the faith of a meteorologist, I could move mountains; that's what I call blind faith.

Forecast heavy snowfall fails to materialize, predicted intensification of sub zero temperatures result in our first recent experience of temperatures at or above zero centigrade.

It comes as something of a surprise that they continue to present us with their forecasts, undaunted by their apparent inaccuracies.

This certainly is faith in the purest sense, bearing little relation to their falsified beliefs.

More on Mal's Picturebox

http://malspicture.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-icicles-hang-by-wall.html

Customer Dis-service from a bailed-out bank

Today, my beloved decided to check a current account online to ensure that a payment (due to go out on the 4th January) had been made. This check seems necessary since late last year one such payment failed to go out on time, to our cost. Quite strangely, this bank always finds it impossible to make an online payment with the same immediacy that another bank, used by yours truly, can always manage. On checking the account it was only possible to display transactions since yesterday, along with a message stating that the account had been RENEWED. No word of warning was issued, by the bank, that any kind of limitation was imminent but, evidently after 2500 transactions all transaction details are archived, and it is then impossible to access them online. It seems, according to a telephone conversation with one of the bank's staff, that it would be impossible for them to simply archive the bulk of the older transactions (e.g. more than three months old) but they have to clear them all. It also seems beyond their ability to notify the customer that the banks arbitrarily imposed limit is nigh. Methinks that their IT team should be sacked and replaced.

As a result, the only way we can check transactions before the renewal date is by telephone, where one is asked for a security number which we do not possess as we do not normally make telephone transactions. Admittedly we still do receive a 'paper' statement, a necessity for us to keep a check on our multifarious transactions.