Catch 22

Poor Yossarian!

Heroes

The new season of Heroes is being released one episode at a time on BBC iPlayer. A dangerous set of circumstances indeed.

Paddington Station

I took a trip in to Paddington today to collect my mother-in-law and her friend Tina. They had just arrived from the United States that very morning, although not by train. The vast majority of their journey was conducted under the auspices of North West and took place within a shapely aircraft produced by those wonderful people at Boeing. Specifically a Boeing 767 which, confusingly for many, is considerably smaller than a Boeing 747, a true jumbo jet if ever there was one.

My own travel was almost as easy as being flown. At least it was after I discovered that my mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson C903, includes an efficient route finding programme called, easily enough, Navigator. It was that discovery that brings me to my topic for today. Satellite Navigation systems or Sat Nav’s.

Do Better

There are so many service providers in the world, some good some bad. There’s no way you could possibly know the quality you can expect from an individual provider unless you try their services or someone else recommends them. Or warns you. Today, I bring you a warning.

Portraits

You may remember that earlier in the year I mentioned CreativePhotogenic. What I said before was all true; now I have more to say.

Spice Island

Every now and again you find a local restaurant which is genuinely reputable. The sort of establishment to which you look forward to returning. Don’t mistake me, I’ve not yet joined the ranks of the grand-a-night diners! However, I do enjoy good tasty food, professional service, consistency and value. I suppose I ought to have put consistency first on that list as to my mind knowing what you are going to get is very important. Perhaps my sense of adventure is deficient but I like knowing that my lamb dansak will taste very similar to the last one.

Photography in London

At a friends daughter’s birthday party I was introduced to Andrei Razumov. For a while I thought he was just another parent but when the usual preliminaries were out of the way he produced one of those nondescript black bags which always contains a gem of a camera or some other technological marvel. I hadn’t realised before, but the practised ease with which a professional handles their camera and equipment is readily apparent. I didn’t need to be told that Andrei was good at his craft. As soon as he started looking for angles and backgrounds I realised that this man clearly had the photographers eye for colour and composition too.

The Bostonians

What an epic sense of relief? Not relief to have finished; relief to have begun. Henry James has, to my view, climbed to sit in the lonely company of the other authors who are, I consider, capable of ending a book appropriately. The Bostonian’s gentle paragraphs, characters, scenes, ideas and plot fell, with delightful tenderness, through my eyes like rain on the desert. I cannot say enough to recommend this book, nor to express my personal sense of gratitude that I have been led to return to the literature of this period. You don’t find too many identified as an interlocutress in the popular fiction of today!

Data Protection Day

Today is Data Protection Day. After the unremitting years of divisive persecution, estrangement, and torrid treatment of the poor, helpless, inanimate stuff, a special body has been created within the European apparatus to protect the recently determined rights of data. After some initial confusion, revolving around what some considered the eponymous personage at the focus of this event, a character from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the luridly absurd proposition that this celebration of warnings and hyperbole could in some way involve helping to control practically the access to personal information submitted to government bodies in good faith.

Erewhon