But before I got there, I discovered that it was much easier to buy classy birthday cards in Earlsfield than it was in Epsom, although I learned afterwards that my mistake might have been not to go to Waitrose - a shop I had not thought of in connection with greetings cards. But that sourced at Earlsfield was very splendid and, instead of getting a little essay about the Alzheimer's Society on the back, which I think is a bit out of place, we got a statement about how this very splendid card had been designed, printed, foiled and embossed in England. So there. Nicola Sturgeon eat your heart out.
Rather nearer Tooting, I found the house with the brick skim again, illustrated above. Downstairs pillars still looking odd. The odd bit of white polystyrene poking out if you look carefully. The odd bit of untidy cutting in around windows and such like. Don't care for the pattern used for the bricks to the left. Not sure about the masonry above the ground floor windows and don't care for the white mastic at all. All in all, not the way I would go about smartening up the front of my house.
Getting down to saloon bar wisdom, the first topic was the wealth or not of Mr. Trump, a likely candidate for the presidency of the US of A in the upcoming election. The allegation was that it was all smoke and mirrors and that while the man was wealthy by the standards of the saloon bar, or at least the saloon bar in question, he was not seriously rich. I reserved my position and subsequent interrogation of google results in yes and no. That is to say, exactly how rich the man is is indeed lost in smoke and mirrors, in part, no doubt, to avoid paying tax, something that only little people do in the US. But I think I am satisfied that he does have hundreds of millions to call on, which is rich enough for me.
The second topic was the hobby of flying virtual aeroplanes from the comfort of one's own home. All you need is a few screens, a fancy keyboard, a reasonably serious PC and the software which emulates the cockpit of the aeroplane of your choice - in this case perhaps a Beechcraft (see reference 2) or something like that - and wherever it is you want to fly it. The interest does not lie in shooting missiles and dropping bombs, rather in being able to fly the aeroplane in question in the place of your choice, whatever the computer might throw at you in the way of weather.
For people who don't have the patience or skills needed to do that, a softer option is to do virtual paint jobs for other peoples' virtual aeroplanes. Which led onto an interesting discussion about exactly how one would go about this. The technology seemed to be to do two dimensional patches in something like Photoshop and then stick them onto the three dimensional virtual aeroplane, with a certain amount of fiddling about needed around the tricky bits, like the wheels. Which struck me as a bit tacky. Then quite by chance, a few days later, I came across a package called Lightwave which was probably quite up for doing something of the sort - but it would all depend on what, if any, standard had been used in putting together the description of the external appearance of the aeroplane. Further enquiries needed. In the meantime interested readers can explore reference 3, remembering to have their credit card handy.
The day closed with my learning about a new must buy brand, never before heard of by me, called Superdry. See reference 4 - another site which expects you to have your credit card handy.
PS: I wonder now why the Scottish leader is named for a sort of Russian fish. Does she come from a family of unrepentant, old-school lefties?
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/larousse.html.
Reference 2: http://beechcraft.txtav.com/.
Reference 3: https://www.lightwave3d.com/.
Reference 4: http://www.superdry.com/?gclid=CM3dj63k5ssCFUSVGwodACkLtQ&gclsrc=aw.ds.
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