TV here is quite hard for the casual viewer. There is such a high proportion of adverts that you can't really channel-hop till you find what you want. I would be quite happy to watch CNN in the morning, if I could remember which channel it is. But I can't, and I'm not willing to take the pain of hanging about to find it. So, since I read a book at breakfast rather than a paper, I can quite often get to the library (or whatever) without knowing what day it is.
It wasn't till I got back in the afternoon, and put a classical NPR station on on my computer that I remembered. It was playing what I immediately thought of as "solemn music" from the old east European communist days, and I thought "oh, someone's died". Then I remembered it was Remembrance Day. In fact, they told me. I hadn't appreciated just how important a signal all those poppies are. Of course, all the public building flags were at half-mast, but that's been true for some days, since that awful event in the army camp in Texas.
The Philatelic Society Library continues to impress me: they found me some Glasgow postmarks and cancellation stamps (these are different things, you know), and found some dealers and their web sites where I could actually buy them, quite cheap. "Cancellation" was to mark the stamp, so it couldn't be used again. Here is one, from Glasgow Missouri, known as a "fancy" stamp:
[n0398]The page listing it shows, for those of us old enough to remember, that typewriters didn't use to have a 'one' key, because they didn't need it:
[n0399] Later that night, I am reminded of the effect recessions have on pubs. They really are bellweathers, particularly on Wednesday nights. I should just stay home and read. Perhaps I should write to the Immigration Service and remind them that pensioners are true capitalists, and are still spending: wouldn't they like me to spend in their country, rather than another one?
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