Sunday, not in the park, without George

Not yet at least. If the weather holds fine, I shall walk down to the river this afternoon.

I bought a pair of pyjamas yesterday, the first that I've worn in thirty-three years if not longer (though I do wear a t-shirt in bed, and often socks, and in winter sometimes even long-johns). I got into the habit of sleeping naked when I was in Italy on a summer study session, learning how to drink alcohol and coffee and a few quite fascinating things about the human anatomy, and carried on until fairly recently. It was only after moving here that I started wearing t-shirts in bed, because of the miserably damp winters; they bothered me even more here than in London which is not known for aridity.

Interrupting myself for a moment: I have a Norman Stove*. The four burners and single oven are controlled by a total of six rotary knobs, and at least once a month I nearly burn the house down by turning the wrong one on. I've developed the habit of checking and counterchecking which burner is on, but this doesn't help when I turn the knob in the wrong direction, causing the water in the pot to boil away rapidly rather than simmering slowly—as I just did. The year is 2007 CE, nearly 2008. Why is this still so damned difficult? Do the people who make ovens never cook for themselves? Have they no wives or husbands or parents or children? Have they never even watched anyone cook anything? Or have they merely no commonsense? Bah.

So, yes: pyjamas. It was purely wonderful, I was toasty warm practically in the instant that I put them on cold from the drawer. Those were by far the best 30 Euros I've spent lately.

"Cold" being the operative word. The heating seems not to be working properly, apart from the living room = office and bathroom, the radiators appear not to be receiving any hot water from the boiler. I thought this might have been due to low water pressure, but having topped that up this morning I realize that it's not the case. Something is grievously wrong.

And how has your weekend been?

* Named for Donald A. Norman, useability expert and author of "The design of everyday things" (among other books), in which he discusses (among other things) the particularly egregious and all too common form of bad design that has come to be known as Norman doors: doors that cannot be opened by performing the visually-obvious operation. Things that don't work the way that their appearance indicates that they should, or whose appearance gives no clues to their workings, are now generically known as Norman Whatevers.