Paper is read, grass is mown, time to think of something to post about. I admit to not feeling greatly inspired so this will be a short blog with no table of contents required.
We've had our first summer weekend for a few weeks but still not particularly hot. Yesterday I even used the watering can. What The Observer calls its 'European' forecast (actually a list of British cities) shows London as showery for Monday through to Wednesday with temperatures hardly rising above 20 degrees.
On Friday, I learned that my elderly relative's house sale has fallen through and I waited most of the day for a big piece of work to come through and it never came (it has now, though) so come the middle of the afternoon I took myself off for a walk to cheer myself up. Our three days of summer had already started so it was glorious. I went to a part called Hankley Common, near Elstead. The start of this walk I've been on before and at one stage it takes you close by the River Wey, which didn't seem especially full though it may have been running a little faster than normal. After that I was into unknown territory and it turned out to be a nice surprise. The common is very large indeed and you have the impression of being in a much bigger wild place because all the houses are hidden by trees. The heather is just coming into bloom and it felt really good to be outside. I was so impressed I took my partner back their for an evening stroll yesterday. We approached from the Thursley side and found a car park we hadn't used before.
On the work front, it's looking as if it's going to be busy next week with some interesting, stretching stuff to do so probably no walks or posts for a few days.
Last week there was an excellent 'file on four' about the efforts the Iranians are making to buy defence materiel illicitly. This includes spare parts for their F14s and material for their nuclear programme. I've also read that Iran has an excellent record of not starting wars. This is true but there are a lot of countries with a reputation for peacefulness. As far as Iran is concerned, I think it would be a shame if they were tempted to spoil their record because the UN weren't firm enough in preventing them develop nuclear weapons.
I'm on a 'one book at a time' resolution. The book that's on the go at the moment is 'The Fabric of Reality' by David deutsch. This is quite stretching for a non-scientist like myself but surpisingly interesting. I read about it in the postscript to Michael Crichton's 'Timeline', whch, I may have said already, was a whole lot better than the film of the same name. In fact I don't know why Crichton allowed his book's title to be used for the film. If and when I get to the end, I shall attempt to draw some conclusions.
