November

Mouse pad

1st. Sunny day. Walked into the town centre and bought a mouse pad with a gel wrist-rest for £11. Don't like it: the wrist-rest just gets in the way.

2nd. Returned the £11 mouse pad with wrist-rest and bought a £1 economy mouse pad. Much better!

8th. First really cold day this autumn, thanks to an icy north wind. Walked to the beach and back. Was not tempted to linger.

Buffy film

Watched the middle segment of the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy (played by Kristy Swanson) is good but the grinning, growling vampires are just laughable. It's amusing how ropey the film looks in comparison to the slick presentation of the TV series which followed on from it. I enjoyed it nonetheless and look forward to seeing the last segment when the film is next shown on TV.

Squirrels

Walked to the gardens behind the church and saw six squirrels foraging. Threw several peanuts to them, which they ignored. Walked on to the park and threw more peanuts to the squirrels there. Same result. Food must be plentiful at the moment.

Streaky Strips

Tried Morningstar Streaky Strips for breakfast: they're a meat-free bacon substitute. Before cooking they look something like uncooked rashers of bacon, albeit rather narrow ones, and have much the same texture and smell. After 1½ minutes in the microwave or 5 minutes frying they do taste quite bacon-like. A successful imitation in my opinion.

The Simpsons

Watched the episode "Realty Bites". There was a good quotable line from Homer:

Stephen Hawking

I remember seeing an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data plays poker with holograms of Newton, Einstein and Stephen Hawking. I assumed at the time that Hawking was played by an actor. However I have now acquired a copy of Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell and from the chapter entitled "Our Future? Star Trek or Not?" I learn that he played himself in this episode. I suspect this is a unique accomplishment: I can't think of anyone else who has played themselves in Star Trek. I'm impressed. I mean, being a world-famous physicist is not bad, but appearing in Star Trek—now that's really something!

17th. Received an appreciative e-mail from an ME sufferer who also loves Kai Lung stories. Finding The Tribulations of Liu must have been quite a surprise for her.

Birds

There seem to be more blue tits using the bird feeder now and I've also seen a coal tit using it. It may be because some of the house sparrows have migrated to the countryside to fatten up for the winter so that the tits have less competition at the feeder. Saw a blackbird sitting on the pyracantha, eating its bright red berries.

Harry Potter film

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on the 16th and my sister took the kids to see it that very day. She tells me in a letter that it's well worth seeing, though if you hadn't read the book you'd be a bit bemused at the pace, as there's a lot to pack in. She also says that it has very good flying, transfiguration etc. and is quite scary in places. I shan't be going to the cinema to see it: I would only be able to watch about half an hour before it gave me a headache. I'll wait for the DVD to come out.

September: harrypotter.co.uk

Sorcerer's stone?

I've never understood why the first Harry Potter book and film are called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US. The philosopher's stone was the hypothetical substance sought by the medieval alchemists, who believed that it could transmute base metals into gold and create the elixir of life. Surely American children are taught that in school just as British children are?

The "sorcerer's stone" title seems to be peculiar to the US, which surprises me a bit: usually once the US does something, other countries tend to follow suit. But in this case most other countries have used "philosopher's stone" or the appropriate term for the substance in their own language. The one exception I've come across is France, where the title is Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers.

Above: Harry Potter film
Next month: Ban Harry Potter?

Flowers

Dad gave me four primulas for the flower box. I planted them one by one over a period of two weeks when energy and weather allowed.

Got the hyacinth bulb in its special vase out of the fridge. (I put it there 10 weeks ago because it needed to be kept cold and in the dark.) The shoot is now 7.5 cm high.

September: Hyacinth
Next month: Hyacinth

Snail e-mail

Sent a test e-mail to my mail.com address.When it didn't arrive I sent another...and another...in fact I lost count of the number that I sent. None of them arrived that day. The next morning two of them turned up, having taken 4 hours to reach mail.com. I thought that was pretty bad, but over the next few days the others arrived one by one. The last one took 14 days to make it across the Atlantic to mail.com.

Meanwhile a test e-mail that I sent to my FreeUK address at the same time arrived almost immediately. Perhaps using a US-based mail service is not such a good idea.