Yesterday I was working from home (because of a cold) and the music player was set to random. Up popped Beethoven’s 8th. I haven’t listened to it for ages, so it was a treat to hear it again. The Executive Summary is ‘jolly and short’. The total track time for all four movements is 27’6″ [...]
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Posted 30 November 2011
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music
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When I bought replacement heads for my electric toothbrush recently, they came with a free sample of new Oral-B toothpaste. I rather like the toothpaste – it tastes of root beer. For anyone not old enough to have tasted root beer way back when McDonald’s used to sell it (along with “McDonald’s Cola” – remember [...]
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Posted 10 November 2011
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health
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Ruth and I were lucky enough to share an afternoon tea at the Runnymede Hotel with Chris, Alex and Linda last Bank Holiday Monday. The Runnymede is conveniently located very close to junction 13 on the M25 motorway, near Egham. I understand from friends that the spa facilities are extensive and quite marvellous We had [...]
I’ve come to the realisation that most of my favourite tunes are building songs. Not so much manufacturing tunes, or even self-assembling songs, but songs which build from a small beginning to a huge finish. To a greater or lesser extent they all start softly and keep building and building to some kind of climactic [...]
Today I’ve been working in Copenhagen, Denmark. I like Copenhagen (and Denmark for that matter). In my limited experience, Denmark is just a bit more grown up and civilised than almost anywhere else. Sweden shares the honours, but as that is the limit of my experience of Scandinavia, I suspect there may be other worthy [...]
Yesterday whilst driving to work I had to perform a full-blown emergency stop. Another driver pulled out just in front of me when I was doing maybe 40-50 m.p.h. I slammed the brakes on. As my speed decreased I felt the ABS anti-lock braking system operate (the brake pedal pulses under your foot). I stopped [...]
I recently finished reading ‘The Luckiest Girl in the School’ by Angela Brazil. I’ve been using the mobipocket e-book reader on my Nokia N95 smartphone. The book is set during the Great War of 1914-1918, and seems to have been written about the same time. I imagine that at the time it may have been [...]
Last night I went to the last of this season’s late-night (starting at 22:15) Proms at the Royal Albert Hall to see Penguin Café. In a previous life and a previous generation, this group was known as the Penguin Café Orchestra. Whereas the PCO was led by Simon Jeffes, the newly reconstituted PC are led [...]
I realise that this post may not be relevant for many people, but if you should find yourself in Milan’s Linate airport with access to a lounge, the Priority Pass lounge has moved and is now called the Leonardo lounge. The good news is that the new lounge is much nicer than the old one, [...]
For the first time I was on the Eurostar and it was still light outside. This means that you can see much more clearly just how fast you’re going. 186mph/300kph is Properly Fast! Speaking to a colleague at work, I’m told that making phone calls on the Eurostar when it’s at full speed is problematic [...]