Sunday, 29 July 2012

22:43 hs



I have discovered a kind of recipe for living my daily life. The ingredients, when generalised, are simple: food, reading, cinema, walking, writing and teetotalism.

Today began with coffee with soya milk. The youtube video was wholly unnecessary, and that is why I watched a Peter Singer lecture, in which he discusses the relationship between ethics and Evolution: a bit like listening to a serious audio-book. I also ate some Scottish rough oatcakes with olive oil spread. Then I lay in bed again and read Frege. Gottlob Frege. Tough. I wish I had been a better maths student. I'm actually considering doing an Open University course in maths.

Being able to access the internet on my mobile phone (something that, all of a sudden, seems so prosaic) means I can't help checking my inbox every ten minutes or so and taking a peek at my facebook page. Things which, again, I could very well do without.

Just after twelve noon I decided to prepare noodles with broccoli and tomato sauce. But first I turned on my laptop and went online. Then I chose a film to watch on the lovefilm British website: Chocolat. I began watching it while the water was progressing towards boiling point. It bothered me that the French congregation, at the little French church in the pretty French town, chose to sing an English hymn, in XVI century English. The film was clearly not set in the XVI century. I had to put the film on pause, chop up the broccoli quickly and throw it with the dry and hard noodle into the boiling water. I ended up adding a huge dollop of Philadelphia to the tomato sauce when I was heating it up. It took less than five minutes for me to find myself again in front of the laptop watching Chocolat. As I ate, I was further annoyed by Judy Dench speaking English with a phoney French accent. I ate my lunch quickly and stopped the film. I turned off the laptop, lay in bed again, with my stomach more than filled with noodles, broccoli, tomato sauce and Philadelphia, and wrote a post on facebook from my mobile decrying Chocolat.

I read more Frege and, eventually, went out for a long walk, glad that the English summer had gone rather cool. I had a single espresso at a cafe called Nero near the Turnpike Lane tube station.

When I got home I realised I had to wash my clothes.

My dinner was an interesting concoction made up of kidney beans cooked in water with salt and garlic, half a cup of rice, baby sweet corn chopped up, peeled and chopped up potatoes, a vegetarian imitation of minced beef and two vegetable Knorr cubes. This must sound horrible, but it suits me to the hilt. I ate this, as it were, dish with lettuce, red cabbage and lots of Greek olive oil.

I couldn't help watching a new Noam Chomsky video on youtube while I ate my dinner. And I went on to watch a debate between Professor Chomsky and a guy called Alan Dershowitz. Actually, most of it I just listened to, lying in bed.

I should have read more.

I forgot to mention another video, about a teenager who denounced his Christian fundamentalist history teacher to the head teacher of his school. The guy had been telling students that they should believe a lot of religious mambo-jambo. Everybody seemed to be against the poor teenager, but American law wasn't. Happy end for the lad (to cut a long story short).I posted it on facebook too and suggested it to one of my facebook friends, who liked it very much and reposted it.

Too much youtube, too much facebook, too little reading, enough walk, a bit too much food.

And this is all I have written all day.