[Sarah Marchant wrote to me on Feb 15: "I'm Sarah, not Susan. That's my Mum!" Thanks. I've set this to rights.]
WARNING: Ramble and thickets ahead.
The more observant of the Loyal 5 ¼ will have spotted how sex is rearing up again on this log.
There was Meg Ryan's film -- clearly not the exploration of feminine sexuality one or two reviewers thoughts it was (Rotten Tomatoes for a rich mix).
There've been hints here, after events. There was a brief encounter yesterday with a young stunner who quite turned my head (though it was my head that said "Don't be silly!"), while last night somebody called me a womaniser. Me!
And there's just been a latest session with the psychosomatic Mind Juggler, who has inevitably brought it all up; more of that only too soon.
Sublimate, sublimate!
I woke up very early again, felt hungry for once, would have loved to have been brought a light breakfast in bed or even made it for somebody then equally keen to spend a happy hour or three having sex. And instead there was nothing but the radio and more sleaze from Washington, with 'O'Neill's careless talk?' (BBC).
Even such dull crap and cleaning up last night's heavy thunderstorm legacy via the hole in the roof failed to calm the ardour with which I longed to put recent insights to the test, like at once and virtually anywhere!
Unable to work out how and with whom I could do this, I sighed after lunch and decided to face last year's accounts and the 2004 forecast, a very cold shower guaranteed!
I figured it would take less than two hours. But my bank's year-end statements differed impossibly from my computerised version by all of four teeny cents of a euro.
It took nearly 50 minutes, almost seeing stars instead of columns of figures by the end, to track down two tiny mistakes. Yet I was obsessively compelled to find the error!
All the mental arithmetic I excelled in at school vanished in my 30s, leaving me dazed by the Kid's homework. My accounts went on to computer in 1998 and are also backed up obsessively, for fear of being cast back into nightmare years when doing the sums could take me the best part of a day.
The absurdities got me thinking of 19th-century banking, Dickensian clerks and ledgers and how much was achieved in the physical sciences with the calculating machines available before the advent of the computer.
With last week's discovery that scientists until recently lacked the computing clout to make the models now used to monitor and forecast global warming, I've enlarged my online Safari Bookshelf to artificial intelligence, nanotech and the interaction between human beings and machines.
As the wind began to rise this weekend, Jacques the engineer gave me instruction at the Canteen in plumbing, a trade rendered trickier by stupid things. Apart from that ceiling leak I'm not legally allowed to fix as a mere tenant, some piping needed work.
Jacques was made half-mad by T-joints, where the gauge of parts which need screwing together is routinely measured in fractions of inches, while the variable sizes of the thread of the screw bits is in millimetres.
I couldn't credit this nonsense until he dumped the evidence on the table. "In Germany," he said, "it's not quite so bloody insane!"
Jacques used to work for Caterpillar motors. I was soon being told how US automobile engineers have also adopted an absurd precision mix of metric and "imperial" or other measurements.
It's the storm wind, however, that gets to us most.
My street runs north-south. Weak sunshine was coming in from the east at last, encouraging me to air the flat, but out of the western windows all was dark cloud. Papers and light objects went flying across the apartment as often they do on such days, but the place needed refreshment.
It was Jacques who told me about the Föhn.
I have heard before of dry, violent Foehn winds given different names worldwide as they rush down the leeward side of mountains. Surf the Net and you'll find material asserting that people affected may be prone to deep-vein thrombosis. You'll even find Mike Ryding's 'Whirling Winds of the World'.
But it would seem that the original Föhn has Romansch from Latin roots, sweeps down eastwards from the Alps in winter and is one of those winds that can make people mad.
Austrian musician Hubert von Goisern -- "a denigrator of my own country" -- made an album called 'Fön' and did the 'Fön Interviews' (English; tied in with Wienweb & others, Ger.) to talk about his loves and hates.
What I can't yet find is proof of the wonderful tale Jacques told me. I would love to believe it. When thousands of Napoleon's soldiers took control of this part of Europe and occupied it, there were crime waves at the height of the Föhn, between December and February, he says. Still apparently are.
The French troops hated the season and the loss of reason that it brought. Yet, just as France enjoyed a reputation for turning a lenient eye to crimes of passion, Jacques claims that crimes committed during the Föhn were systematically pardoned, put down to insanity brought in the wind.
Much foul-tempered jostling ruined the streets yesterday just around the most evil wind-trap in Paris, the black Tour Montparnasse. Wherever you turned, chill gusts of rain slapped your face in that whirlwind place, exacerbating madness brought on by January sales, the big stores open on Sunday.
Eyes got poked, umbrellas cracked inside up, heavy shopping bags thumped shins. I'd thought of dropping into a record store on my way to the cinema, but changed my mind. There was wickedness in the air. Whether weather like that really makes people go barmy, I don't know.
The Mind Juggler thinks it's a matter for Jacques Brel songs, poets and writers. She doubts there's been a detailed psychological study, because accumulating the statistics would be very expensive.
As for Von Goisern (the stage name of Hubert Achleitner), his very mixed feelings about his homeland set him dropping his band, the Alpinkatzen, and travelling far abroad, to Africa and Tibet.
The site about this adventurous artist has been put together by Sarah Marchant (now (July 2004) on Dreamdust, no less), a young English woman fan -- "not unique, but certainly unusual."
This is much more interesting than the search for WMD (a wonderful page if you've not seen it already).
If I have no immediate inspiration regarding my tests, at least I have the consolation of Liane Foly on the iPod: two CDs which are not copy-protected (Dec 21 protest entry).
This superb singer is very sexy indeed on 'The Man I Love,' especially in some of her own work co-written with Andre Manoukian. She also makes an amazing job of 'Put the Blame on Mame' and ... 'Stormy Weather'.
11:01:03 PM link 
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