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Monday Miscellany
17 November 2014 18:49


1) Well, Christmas shopping wasn't too bad - if by "not too bad" you mean out before 8.30; not back until 4.00; and crossing two county borders (OK, technically it was two different parts of the same county border). But I did meet my primary goal of Christmas shopping: find something in the first shop I go into, otherwise I get disillusioned and grumpy.

2) It's a good time to do Christmas shopping. The shops have their Christmas stocks in, but the crowds haven't started so there is no frantic rush for the shelves or queues for the checkouts. And you (well I) have a more relaxed attitude to the whole ghastly rigmarole in a "there's still heaps of time so it's not the end of the world if I don't find anything" kind of way. And - best of all - most of the shops haven't put their Christmas music on yet.

3) Getting to Basingstoke just after 9 meant that there was plenty of space in the car park. Basingstoke car park reminds me of how, when I was a kid, I used to make long and complicated routes across the floor to push my toy cars through. It's quite fun to drive round, but impossible to find the exit.

4) After a few hours in Basingstoke we had bought a good haul of booty. We then drove to Newbury to pick up an order from Lakeland. I'd never been to Newbury town centre before - despite it being only a few miles from home. Well, it's in a different county - there there be dragons. It's not too bad, as shopping centres go, and I might visit again one day.

5) Finally home for a rest, then in the evening we were out again. To, er, Basingstoke for a 50th birthday party (or 5th birthday party, as the hotel signage had it. Maybe they had run out of zeroes). It was to have been in Southampton, but the hotel caught fire on Saturday morning so was moved to Basingstoke at short notice. The fire also (but not nearly so importantly) meant that the Eastleigh United football match had to be cancelled because the opposing team couldn't collect their kit from the bedrooms.

6) I've bought some Christmas presents from Amazon. Apologies if you are more techy-savvy than I am and already know this, but now when you buy a CD from amazon you get the ability to download it for no extra cost. So now I no longer need to open CDs I order as gifts for people to rip them (not that I ever did) as I can download it quite legally. Not only that but Amazon Music automatically loaded all CD purchases I have made (or all those that qualify for this function - which may or may not be all the CD purchases I have made).

7) What have fastening a bow tie (a ready-made one, not one you tie from scratch - I'm not that clever) and fitting a car headlamp bulb got in common? They are both easier if you don't look at what you're doing but work it out from what you feel. Apparently, the same applies to undoing knots.

8) CGF Sprog 3 asked what a cosine is. "It's the ratio between the side and hypotenuse of a triangle. You'll probably learn about them later this year, but don't get too excited as they're not that interesting and you'll never use them after you leave school" was my response. I think it was pretty accurate, don't you?

9) Because students now can just press a button on a calculator to get the sine/cosine/tangent they don't fully appreciate how the values change as you move from 0 to 90 degrees, in the way that we could when we had to look up the value in books of tables.

10) Walking past the Baptist church yesterday morning I heard the congregation signing a hymn to the tune Abbot's Leigh. I expect they sang the last three notes incorrectly as everyone does.

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