(no subject)

I don’t know what I did, but I spent most of yesterday either in bed or sitting very still, cos I’ve pulled a muscle in my back. It’s exceptionally painful, but only when I do something unreasonable - like cough, sit down or stand up. Aside from that, and the 2-odd hours of lying on the bed being sat on by Lyracat (presumably because I was warm), I had a very pleasant evening, watching first “the Man who would be king”, followed by “The Incredibles”, to while away a few hours. Most enjoyable. Especially Jack-Jack attack!

What else? Oh yes, we had a full-blown financial shock on Saturday when I found out that I was about €1,500 lower in the Dutch bank account than anticipated. Turns out that the bulk of it has been paid into Caroles UK bank, and the rest of it has quietly been taken out of the account in a quarterly bill. Ouch. Understandable, and kind-of expected, but Ouch nonetheless.

S

(no subject)

I watched a program on TV last night, about a motorway in Seoul being removed & allowing the stream that was under it to become a green water feature in the centre of the city. Apparently, it was covered up in the mid-60’s by engineers in part of their “lets cover the world in concrete” agenda & it (along with a host of house-renovation programs on Dutch TV) got me thinking.

Personally, I think that its excellent that we’re undoing the damage we did in the past, with the concrete cladding of beautiful buildings & places, but I have a gnawing doubt that we are almost certainly doing something – here & now, that, in 40 years, people will look at, shake their heads & go “Why?”, in disbelief. My gut feeling is probably the mass-provision of non-degradable plastic carrier bags from supermarkets fill this niche of blind stupidity, but are there any architectural monstrosities out there that we’re doing that really leap out to other people?

S