Present and future tales!

At around midnight last night I heard geese flying over the house, in that noisy way geese have, honking all over the place, making sure none of them breaks formation and that their flying V reaches its destination in one piece. Where were they going at that time of night? Is such night flight normal? Perhaps they were escapees from some ancient fairytale and were looking for a way to regain their original shape. Or maybe they were just trying to escape the cold. Because it certainly went very cold in the night. I did not get out of bed to see where the geese were headed.

When I went out for a run this morning the air was that breath-taking, biting cold. But it could be worse. Some parts of the Uk are snowy and icy again. One driver was tweeting at 8.30 this morning about having being stuck on a snowy motorway in Northamptonshire for three hours without moving. What was he doing setting off st 5.30 am? I hope he was not on his way to sales somewhere.

Despite reports that people are spending less, there were still loads who got up early on Boxing Day morning to go and queue outside shops in order to bag bargains. There are some people who claim to buy clothes for the coming year in the Boxing Day sales. Of course that means that you have to guarantee that your size will not change over the year, you have to be unconcerned about wearing, not wearing, the very latest fashion, and, more importantly, you have to have the spare cash available! 

According to one fashion article I read recently, fashion, presumably mostly women’s fashion, has been influenced by two Margaret Atwood novels which have been televised this year, “Alias Grace” and “The Handmaid’s Tale”. So what we should expect to find in shops are quietly elegant but modest gowns, encouraging us to walk with downcast eyes. The Handmaid-look has apparently led to a lot of red clothing appearing on catwalks, while the Grace-look is more one of subdued and muted colours; a servant girl could not look better dressed than her mistress and, besides, wanted to avoid attracting the mostly unwanted attentions of the men in the family.

Incidentally we have also been watching “Black Mirror”, a series of short science-fiction films depicting dystopian near futures. Two of the stories we have seen so far involve fairly logical extensions of aspects of modern society: the game show (taking over the whole of society) and mobile phones documenting everything via photos and video (morphed into an implant in your head through which you can relive memories, sometimes with devastating consequences).

Cheerful watching for the festive season!

And now, with a vaguely science-fiction touch, our Firestick - the gadget that makes it possible for us to watch Netflix and BBC iPlayer on our tv set - has developed a mind of its own. Despite our having exited from the programme and changed the source on the tv, provoking a little message on screen “Exiting anynet device”, it suddenly switches itself back on. One morning recently I came downstairs to find that it had even succeeded in switching the tv set back on. Spooky and vaguely reminiscent of the computer in “2001, A Space Odyssey” taking control of the ship. Big Brother might be watching us!

We have taken to physically disconnecting the gadget from the tv set, hoping that it does not learn how to climb up and plug itself back in!