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For those of you in the UK: vote, or lose the right to complain when your council is controlled by the BNP.
Dance with me, pretty boy, tonight
Jan. 13th, 2014 07:44 pmNew Year's day, when I was little, always began with heading up to my Grandad's house to watch the New Year's concert broadcast from Vienna. Watch on the telly but listen, of course, on Radio 3 because telly speakers were rubbish and the sound was broadcast simultaneously on the radio[*].
My earliest memories of the concert are of Grandad telling me about Lorin Maazel, who first conducted the New Year concert in 1980 and went on to become a fixture. To this day, if I hear the Radetzky March anywhere I'm back in my Grandad's front room[**], clapping along with the great and the good of Vienna.
Anyway, as I mentioned last year, I've been trying to reinstate watching the concert as a new year tradition and it seems to have stuck. Vital components of this tradition are: brunch (it was bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon this year), dressing gowns, sofas, and an argument about how they synchronise the ballet performances with the music.
( Argue! )
My earliest memories of the concert are of Grandad telling me about Lorin Maazel, who first conducted the New Year concert in 1980 and went on to become a fixture. To this day, if I hear the Radetzky March anywhere I'm back in my Grandad's front room[**], clapping along with the great and the good of Vienna.
Anyway, as I mentioned last year, I've been trying to reinstate watching the concert as a new year tradition and it seems to have stuck. Vital components of this tradition are: brunch (it was bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon this year), dressing gowns, sofas, and an argument about how they synchronise the ballet performances with the music.
( Argue! )
All week I've been reading NI in the papers as Northern Ireland, and constantly getting confused.
For today's BBC headline, NI riots leads to 26 arrests, I finally managed to remember to read it as News International.
(And while we're on, shouldn't it be "riot leads" or "riots lead"?)
For today's BBC headline, NI riots leads to 26 arrests, I finally managed to remember to read it as News International.
(And while we're on, shouldn't it be "riot leads" or "riots lead"?)
Hello. I'm not dead. If you're one of the very, very many people to whom I owe an email, a phonecall, a visit, or anything like that then my sincere apologies. Life has been getting in the way considerably of late.
However, in lieu of proper communication, why not read all about ( my Old Testament prophet confusion )
However, in lieu of proper communication, why not read all about ( my Old Testament prophet confusion )
Yesterday I was writing here about someone reading text on a phone. The text appeared in Arabic, I originally wrote, but the numbers appeared in Roman numerals.
No, wait. I, II ? I don't mean Roman numerals. What's the word for ordinary, normal numerals? They're...
Oh yeah, they're Arabic numerals. I remember.
I mentioned this last night to someone who's just got back from a holiday in Beirut[*]. Aha, she said! But people writing in Arabic don't use those numerals. At least, not in the Lebanon. During a very, very long traffic jam she matched the Arabic numbers (by which I mean the numerals as used in England) on the car licence plates with the Arabic-looking squiggles on the other half of each car's licence plate, and deduced that they use a complete different set of symbols to represent numbers.
Apparently it all depends whether you're using Eastern or Western Arabic numerals, and whether you are East or West of Egypt.
Today, I have learned something.
( And I bet programmers hate Arabic )
[*] She's a travel journalist. She does things like that.
No, wait. I, II ? I don't mean Roman numerals. What's the word for ordinary, normal numerals? They're...
Oh yeah, they're Arabic numerals. I remember.
I mentioned this last night to someone who's just got back from a holiday in Beirut[*]. Aha, she said! But people writing in Arabic don't use those numerals. At least, not in the Lebanon. During a very, very long traffic jam she matched the Arabic numbers (by which I mean the numerals as used in England) on the car licence plates with the Arabic-looking squiggles on the other half of each car's licence plate, and deduced that they use a complete different set of symbols to represent numbers.
Apparently it all depends whether you're using Eastern or Western Arabic numerals, and whether you are East or West of Egypt.
Today, I have learned something.
( And I bet programmers hate Arabic )
[*] She's a travel journalist. She does things like that.
