Nothing Important

I found the website that is linked to in the title above by one of those serendipitous chains of events that are so much more apt to occur during web-surfing than in any of life's more tangible experiences. I am still undecided regarding my distinct lack of awe that philosophers and mathematicians are still arguing so fiercely over the status of zero. Why the hell is it so problematic? You have to have a number that fits between plus one and minus one and, for want of a better candidate zero is not only the best choice, it's the only choice. Mind you, Constant Reader, it just about freaked my chicken to read those pages and find that (a) the universe's existence is in doubt and that (b) I am not the only one to have figured this out. God knows what'll happen if everyone else comes to the same conclusion; maybe so-called reality is only actually held together by the faith of its own compenent ephemera. Oh now I have a pain ... no hang on that's a real one.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. This afternoon I returned through the unseasonal (read: too early) snow in triumph. I had secured a superb coat for a mere thirty five of my English Pounds and inside its perfectly proportioned pocket I located a printed brand card bearing a bar-code and the information that the product's intended sale price was €232.41. How's that for precision? (In case you have a gas-powered browser that was 232.41 Euros ... get Firefox now and see the web as it is meant to be seen ....) Precision European pricing aside it was a double bargain because it came as two full coats that can be worn zipped together or individually according to season. I am so pleased I feel like going outside to play in the slush —

— or I would be if my left upper second premolar hadn't chosen this afternoon to have a pet of the peri-radicular septic variety. If I do not now need to submit to some urgent root canal work I may as well mail my certificate of competence back to the Royal College ... not that I was planning upon relying on the thing anyway, although it does look awfully pretty with all that copperplate script and wax seals and the heavy striations of machine-made cartridge paper. Having said all of that the pain has become bearable and (she asserted with the baseless confidence of a true professional) another couple of aspirin will be sure to do the trick. Although the bottle of red Californian plonk may also have assisted in the dulling of senses, if not of my wits.

Meanwhile I am in for a stormy night. Little Mad is slightly discombobulated. So excited was I with my bargain acquisition that my subsequent tour of duty in the nearby Asda was less focussed than it might have been. I returned home with all the accoutrements of a successful hunt but a closer examination of the spoils revealed a shocking omission. No cat food. I attempted to gloss over my sheer stupidity by gaily bringing forth a box of Go Cat from the cupboard by the back door where it had been consigned since the time, six months previously and another house entirely, when it had first been the subject of a refusal by the "Lady of the House" who, then, deigned to approach it closer than a cautious sniff-distance. I shook the package with as convincing a display of candorous "I'm not trying to con you"-ness as I ever imagined I could muster. Little Mad wasn't fooled for a second. She is on hunger strike and my bad tooth must take second place in the agenda for tomorrow.

I know. It's my own fault. It's that old rascal, Beadle Bumble's assertion in paraphrase rearing up to bite my arse. She knows what she likes and that's what she eats. All the same I wish she would stick to her diet and not supplement it with spiders, mice and birds. I am neither squeamish nor overly sentimental and for all my capacity for enduring messiness I really do draw the line at treading, barefoot, in a litter of the discarded and inedible body parts of a sampling of my locality's vertebrate and invertebrate fauna.

I think I'll have another glass of that vintage the Joad's were hoping to stamp out ....