9.00 Teleconference with my new boss’s boss and her team. Over the phone she sounds a dead ringer for my favourite radio presenter, Janice Forsyth. This is good.
10.00 The magic of written aims.
17.15 All ticked off.
19.00 Instead of music or thinking up reasons not to do music, I followed a chance link to some unusual plectrums and finally bought some from eBay after a ridiculous chase through American sites that don’t deliver to the US, changes to my PayPal account and God knows what. All for a wacky pleccy.
20.00 Left the study in disgust and watched the DVD of the film Nineteen Eighty-four, made I think in 1984. I re-read the book last year and with age and experience found it far more chilling than when I read it as a teenager. The film portrayed it well, although I don’t think you could have followed it if you hadn’t read it. John Hurt’s finest hour, and Richard Burton exuding silky reasonable evil. The scenery was masterful: it looked like the world had stopped in 1959. But the messages, particularly about ‘the point of the war isn’t to win, it’s to have constant ongoing war’ were hard-hitting and not the ones I’d have noticed when I first read it.