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After cleaning up some overnight dog diarrhoea from the kitchen floor (Wolfie had kindly gone right in a corner so splatted some of the cabinets) I went out for an early morning stone clear.
You can hear all about it here. I am not losing my mind.
I think Wolfie is OK, though she was looking a bit sad and low energy today. I don't know what I'd do without her. No one loves me like she does.
I went into Hitchin to do some shopping and try and work in a cafe. I tried to park in the main square car park but the app kept bumping me out. I didn't have any change on me and the machine didn't take credit cards so I had to go and park in Waitrose instead. A case of archaic tech and futuristic tech both failing me and there being no middle ground. Could I argue that it wasn't my fault if I got a ticket? I wasn't going to risk it. Catie stayed over 10 minutes too long after paying for four hours and got a ticket to the same value as if she'd not bought a ticket at all. It's very much like Jesus trying to teach some kind of parable, but surely there should be a different level of fine for people who don't pay at all and those who do but miscalculate their return time.
I'm listening to the Time Machine by HG Wells as an audiobook at the moment - hoping to get HG on the podcast. He's obsessed with people living underground, but other than that he's pretty good. This was one of my favourite books as a child, but coloured by the various film versions it's still a surprise that the traveller goes straight to the distant future without stopping anywhere first. At the very least, had I been him, I'd have checked that I could travel in both directions first of all, by going forward a day or two and then seeing if I could get back. Clever enough to build a time machine, but not clever enough to strand himself in the future with a one way transporter.
It's sort of surprising how little HG explores the idea, keener to make his point about society dividing into two species, the rich and the workers and where that might lead, rather than the fun that could be had with seeing stuff in the nearer future or the huge amount of fun that could be had by going into the past. It's quite a slight book really - he could have done a whole series about this guy. But there's no hope in waiting for the prick to come back at the end. He's got a time machine. He can come back to the second he left or even just before. Also he should see himself in the room where the time machine is when he leaves and returns, but let's not split hairs. This book has more Morlocks than a stone-clearing podcast and it's proper genius. Even if HG Wells is unnaturally interested in underground civilisations (War of the Worlds, First Men in the Moon, Time Machine).
I thought today how weird it is that we're all going to die and no one seems to be doing a thing about it. Why are we just all accepting that? I don't want to die. I mean I don't want to live for eternity, that would be bullshit, especially if my body keeps degrading, but I still don't want to die.
I dated someone in the 1990s (very briefly, I think we had two dates) who was fairly confident she would never die. It didn't work out because I wasn't prepared to make that kind of commitment. She is still alive so she may be right. It's the kind of claim you can make without any fear of comeback. If you're alive then you weren't wrong and if you're dead what can anyone say to you?
I've added a few more cool items to the ebay page - including a one off prototype RHLSTP guest mug - you can pretend you've been on the podcast! All money goes to making more podcasts. And I am gratified to see that most of the kickstarter items we're made over the years are proving to be worth more than people paid for them. I'd always hoped that woudl be the case. Everyone's a winner.
Bid here.
