February 28th;
Thursday. Michael arrives back from magical kingdom of Wakanda. Sadly, some of the old romantic folk skills such as filing seem to be dying out.
February 27th;
Wednesday. Asha Puthli spacing out again.
February 26th;
Tuesday. Just after I promised Michael two nights ago that nothing major had changed at the Szervita square hole-in-ground building site, this morning there's something new. A big green machine is helping the big yellow machine today, and a small stack of 3 or 4 portakabin container-sized offices has appeared. The green is the dark-leaf green that railway locomotives used to be painted in, not the fluorescent highlighter-green of another crane/digger I saw there a month ago.
Missing CEO with 150 million USD in crypto dies in fake-death zone.
February 25th;
Monday. Pop over to Robin's flat, natter with Bela & Letty.
French law now to use Parent 1 & Parent 2. No more mama/papa nonsense.
February 24th;
Sunday. Curtis Mayfield warns: If There's a Hell Below...
February 23rd;
Saturday. Brain snooping on the way.
February 22nd;
Friday. The fake that launched a thousand shills.
February 21st;
Thursday. Euro currency's bail-out frailties.
February 20th;
Wednesday. Chinese pills made of powdered baby.
February 19th;
Tuesday. EU copyright "law" augurs chaos and confinement.
February 18th;
Monday. More on the fake-face generators.
February 17th;
Sunday. AI creates fake people. New face, every click.
February 16th;
Saturday. Aeroplane seats spy on you.
February 15th;
Friday. Apparently face-recognition software gets sexes wrong.
February 14th;
Thursday. Today: the day of lurv.
February 13th;
Wednesday. Feeling a bit like Secret Santa - what's the equivalent? Undercover Valentine?
February 12th;
Tuesday. Brilliant, even warm, morning sunshine pours exactly down Petofi Sandor street turning it into a slot of liquid gold compared to still cold shadowy side roads. This rod of sun just misses the golden hoop floating over the head of Mother Mary atop her 18th-century stone pillar. Later, walking across the beautifully sun-glittered Szell Kalman square to catch my bus up to Crypto Hill, I see a bus with a symbol on its electronic forehead I haven't seen before. For about a decade the electronic number board on the front of the tourist bus that tours the Castle District has had a little lit-up castle-shaped silhouette, and the bus that goes to the airport has shown a generic aeroplane. Now a third one. Picked out in the orange dot-matrix display above the windscreen of the parked vehicle, are the Hungarian words for "Waiting for mechanic", next to an adorable little spanner pictured at a jaunty angle. We can rebuild him!
Meanwhile, the EU goes
"full Orwell".
February 11th;
Monday. Mild weather very much with a feel of spring. A quick reminder of how wonderfully odd Japan is.
February 10th;
Sunday. Two useful cryptocurrency articles: first
/ second.
February 9th;
Saturday. Rather sad confirmation from Finland: free money means people don't work. Just as the dismal science predicts.
February 8th;
Friday. A strange day of being given books. Marion at lunch lends me a copy of Simon's second book to read: Sweets From Strangers. Then in the mid-afternoon I pick up a whole box of books from kind Bianka, including Stamboul Train from Greene, and then in the evening over to Robin's, where a review copy of Parables for the Pouring Rain by Paul Sutton has arrived for me.
February 7th;
Thursday. German woman's love affair with aeroplane.
February 6th;
Wednesday. Should creator of the early global-warming data be prosecuted for fraud?
February 5th;
Tuesday. A few days ago the cute little lift in the office on Crypto Hill was restored to operation. It broke down a fortnight before Christmas. Now once again, papered inside with cocktail-cabinet cigar-box veneer, it can connect the four floors. It chugs up and down, through the barely noticeable central column of the seemingly endless spiral stairs of cappuccino-coloured marble slabs, like a covert coffin. It claims to fit four people. Two adults can just about share this lift without becoming sexually intimate. Two more adults would have to be circus acrobats pinned across the ceiling. A notice in magical-kingdom English on the ground floor sternly enjoins users not to "jiggle or make smoke", and to take care with the "fixenings", among other poetic prohibitions.
February 4th;
Monday. Here is a handy list (thanks, Diane!) of some candidates so far seeking the Democratic nomination for the US presidential campaign in 2020.
February 3rd;
Sunday. Rather lovely snow phenomenon seen in Wiltshire.
February 2nd;
Saturday. Cheese reduces chances of death, claim boffins.
February 1st;
Friday. Find myself trudging around the 14th district trying to find an audition, mistakenly going to two of Katalin's old offices before finding the newest one. Walking along Rona street under cloudy skies (a street one building's porter insists has a bus route along it, but doesn't) was strangely interesting. I kept being reminded of slightly bleak bits of suburban Manchester such as Princess Parkway when rain seemed imminent. New gates, low buildings, random strips of grass all had this odd suggestion of some alternative reality humming, shimmering just beneath the surface of things. Banal surroundings peculiarly infused with transcendent freshness. I get to the audition, Katalin is very kind about my lateness. We read through it but I can sense not a role I'll get.
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
markgriffith at yahoo.com
