Gutenberg

Current view is that this blog will open for business on October 26th, by which time its predecessor (http://www.pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/) will have run for just six years. The trail of dates down the left hand margin has got quite long enough. It might have been better to stop at five, given that most of our numbering is orientated around ten, but it is too late for that. Service testing will continue in the meanwhile.

So, today, against the Old Vic next week, I have been scouring the book cases for a copy of Hedda Gabler. Spent maybe twenty minutes on the scouring before deciding that Ibsen must have been retired in one of our culls. Chekov seems to have survived the cut but not Ibsen, although to be fair there was a lot more of Chekov in the first place. After a while it occurred to me that maybe it would be quicker to leverage the investment in Kindle and Broadband and get a copy off of Gutenberg, an operation which took about 2 minutes, rather than the 20 already spent.

A plus is that I get a scholarly introduction, a minus is that the formatting of the stage directions has gone wrong, with new lines where there should not be. But the text of the play proper seems to be OK so the thing will meet the purpose, that is to say a quick skim before the off. More of that in due course.

Another plus is that I have spotted maybe two feet of stuff which can be culled in favour of the Kindle, mainly parental Russian classics, all of which I assume to be available on Gutenberg. This should ease congestion in the upper regions. Assuming that is, that I don't get sentimental about the Russians.

Bake date

A remarkably steady (bread) bake rate, with at most a very modest increase over the period. And no evidence that the switch to brown loaves at the end of 2011 affected the rate.

Most of my fads are either short-lived or more irregular. I guess the discipline of not buying much bread while maintaining consumption is the driver here - with most fads having weaker connections to the real world.

But the kink in the Spring of 2012 is visible, a relic of my visit to the bag people. See March 24th 2012, Volume 1.

Getting warm

One of the outdoor ornaments of our recent holiday home in North Devon. To wit, a working Fordson Tractor: we saw it puff and and we saw it move. We were also told that it is was painted RAF blue and probably started life hauling bombers around a Lincolnshire airfield.

Not much good for anything much now as it only sports a rather primitive tow bar and the power takeoff comes in the form of a wheel around which you can run a belt, rather in the way that a traction engine drives a threshing machine. No doubt H&S would be down on you like a ton of the proverbial bricks if you even so much as thought of giving it a go.

Current thinking is that maybe I will properly activate this volume 2 of pumpkinstrokemarrow at the beginning of October, when volume 1 will be just six years old and the list of months going down the left has reached maturity.