theoddsock.com

By looking at his wikipedia page.

I don’t know if it is my age, but for the last few years I’ve been a lot more aware of people I know about dying. Other than, I am ashamed to say, John Peel. I was not  a BBC Radio 1 or 2 listener, having grown up in Ireland where we also have our own radio stations to conten and also since my father is not musically inclinded so is more of a BBC 5 live / Irish sporting events in Irish listener, and my mother likes her classical music. My husband, an English man through and through, was shocked.

Lately I’ve taken to reading wikipedia’s page of recent deaths to see who I have heard of has passed away, and the number of people I recognise has increased. Some ot this due to my love of old films.

My own particular John Peel like shock was when Linda Smith died not too long ago. This did leave me reeling as she was one of my favourite panelists on The New Quiz.

I think the first person of note I remember hearing about dying was Roald Dahl. I remember I heard about it one morning from my parents. I dealt with it by immediately retiring to my room and reading all of his books that I had on hand.

Yesterday evening, I was doing my ususal evening rummage around wikipedia which involves me picking a person at random, and seeing who they link to. Ella Fitzgerald linked me some how to ‘That’s Entertainment’ which led me to Eleanor Powell, who had at one time been married to Glenn Ford. I noted to my husband that he was still alive, and we both saw the irony that he was still alive whereas Christopher Reeve was not, especially given the light of his character’s fate in Superman.

Imagine my shock this morning when I logged on to BBC news and saw that he had died!

I probably should put a warning out to any actors and actresses such as Mel Ferrer - I have been looking at your wikipedia entry but I didn’t mean anything by it!

Well it was bound to happen. Since it does so every year.

Today is my 27th birthday, don’t know what that makes me but there it is. So far today I’ve not done a huge amount of celebrating unless consuming a 250g bag of peanut M&Ms out of nervous frustration could be called celebrating. I’ve now moved on to a tin of Pringles….

But why the stress? Well, to get right donw to it, it is because I’m currently doing a repeat of the plate spinning act with IT stuff, beading, drama that I keep saying I’ll avoid next time…

You would think I would have learnt by now, or be old enough to know better! Seems not. So mad scrambling to fill orders, complete websites by a week last Tuesday is in order. At least I know that come the end of September the play will be done, dusted and performed and some of the decks will be cleared and I will jsut have my beads and my regular consultancy work to deal with. The work I, thankfully, can not do from home.

And then I should be able to enjoy some of the nifty pressies I’ve gotten so far. My very nice husband bought and nearly crushed me with the boxed, hard-back complete Calvin and Hobbes. There also were a number of dvds. I know from devious peeks at my Amazon wishlist that I should have some more Asterix by Sunday.

As Jon’s birthday is the 28th we tend to split the difference and have the family-mandated serving of tea and cake on the nearest Sunday. We also have the added bonus of the (UK) August Bank Holiday so we get the gift of a long weekend! Lots of time for recovering from too much cake and slumping in front of the dvds we have been given to further increase the mass of the collection.