The Two Ritas

This morning around mid-day I felt in need of some exercise, and it was a sunny day, possibly the last for a while, so I decided on a walk along the prom towards West St Leonards and perhaps a meal out. On the promenade near the Azur restaurant I was stopped by two ladies, who turned out to be Jehovah's Witnesses. I'd met at least one of them before, having argued with her at the door of my home, and she remembered me as being a Humanist. We exchanged names and some banter. She was Rita, and so was her companion.

I carried on with my constitutional, which Rita had called "power-walking", as far as the end of the cycle-path. No sign yet of it being extended to Bexhill. Turning back there I noticed that the "Bridge Cafe" on the corner was open, so went in for a late breakfast and cup of tea. I didn't remember it being open on other times I've walked past, but apparently the people who run it have been there for ten years. While I was there a group of eight businessmen came in, though there's not much sign of business around there now, since the wood-store closed down.

Maybe I ate my sausage, egg, bacon, beans and tomatoes too quickly, or didn't rest long enough to let them digest, because as soon as I got back home I began to have a bout of hiccups. Once it starts I find it difficult to stop. After a rest it seems to stop, but as soon as I make some strenuous move it starts up again. I think I will call it a bout of "The Two Ritas" in future!

Trading Standards

I bought a bag of assorted biscuits on Saturday, which had an illustration of chocolate chip cookies and bourbon creams on the cover as well as plainer types. When I opened it however the only chocolate biscuits in it were a few fingers. Almost all the contents was shortcake. There is a disclaimer on the back that says "the assortment may vary ... due to product availability", which must be of dubious legality. The trader was unwilling to give me my £1.49 back and advised me to contact the manufacturers, a company in Rochdale. So I have sent an email to the Tradings Standards office in Eastbourne. The money of course is not important, but there must be a lot of people buying biscuit assortments at this time of year, so there must be quite a bit of profit to be made from such a cheap scam.

Also on the shopping front I've been looking for a waterproof or showerproof jacket, but why are they all so dull? There used to be a road-safety slogan: "Wear something light at night" and white jackets were readily obtainable. Now there is nothing. Maybe depression is the fashionable image, to match the weather and the financial climate.

A Day Out in Brighton

Yesterday, 1st September, I took the train to Brighton with the aim of attending the meeting in the evening of the Brighton and Hove Humanist Society. The speaker was Denis Cobell, a former President of the NSS, on "Why I am Not a Christian", though in fact it was mostly about his upbringing, in the Brighton area, within an Evangelical family.

Since the talk only began at 8 pm I spent most of the three hours preceding in the Odeon cinema, watching a very noisy film, "Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio which was about people who could set up realistic dream worlds, and dreams within dreams. Coming out at the end I wondered if I was back in the real world or not, especially as the way out of the cinema was something of a maze.

Another reason for going to Brighton was to visit the Apple store with a view to perhaps changing my computer for an iMac or MacBook. However the only address I had was Churchill Square which proved to be a large shopping mall, and despite walking round most of it, never found the Apple store, or any map of the place! I did get some fish and chips at the BHS restaurant, and a couple of cotton Oxford shirts at the M&S store opposite (since they don't seem to be available in Hastings).

I also found time to sun myself on the beach for a while, though Brighton Beach was indeed very crowded, as it is traditionally supposed to be.

More Random Thoughts

I spent most of Thursday journeying to and from Uckfield to attend the East Sussex SACRE meeting on behalf of Hastings Humanists. Since I have a Senior Railcard and a Buspass this was not expensive, just time-consuming. When I returned, and all next day, I had a headache. Whether this was due to bumping about on the bus, or waiting for it in the cold and wet, or some other cause I'm not sure, but at least it seems to have cleared up today. At any rate it stopped me going to the chess club on Friday evening.

While in Uckfield I chanced to go into a Health Food shop and bought a jar of Barley Cup as a possible substitute for drinkng too much Coffee. It doesn't have any distinctive taste that I can detect, just a smooth texture. I did try flavouring it with some Malt Extract, bought at the same shop, but Honey would probably be better. Since I arrived in plenty of time for the meeting I looked around to see what cafes were available and ended up in a Poppins restaurant, which provided a nice lesagna with baked potato and salad.

I'm still working on the knight's tours book. I had hoped to get it finished for my 70 th birthday, but there is still a lot to be done. At present I'm on the chapter dealing with tours on oblong boards. I completely rechecked the tours on the 3x9 board, finding 146 as reported on the KTN website back in year 2000, although there is a minor misprint there, the number of {1,1} tours, with ends a diagonal step apart, is 28 not 29. The next section to check is on the 4xn boards, where I did some work trying to generate recursion relations for the numbers of half-tours, which has never yet been reported on the KTN site.

Random Thoughts

I played another couple of chess games on Friday evening, at a slow rate without clocks, and won both of them against a player who seemed quite strong, so perhaps I'm getting back into the right frame of mind. One ended in a knight checkmate, the other in a queen against rook superiority. The more rapid play games which we played on previous weeks require one to react much more instinctively, rather than contemplate each move carefully.

Why are there no longer any malt-flavoured cereals being produced? I used to like malted shreddies when they were produced by Rowntrees, but as soon as Nescafe took them over they changed the recipe so that the malt taste was far less. I complained at the time, but got no helpful response. Now they have removed the malt altogether! This seems to be part of their policy of claiming that everything is "whole grain".

My article on "Howard Jacobson and the Temple of Darwin" appeared on the new HumanistLife website on my 70th birthday, 8th February, but has not attracted any comments. Perhaps this means that it is perfect as it is and doesn't need any further comments? Probably not! I'm glad to see that more articles are appearing with a greater frequency now. There are strong disagreements between Humanists on a number of issues, for instance the assisted dying question, and whether the burka should be banned. These have attracted the most comments.