Free Time

It's nice to have some free time. It's nice to relax a little after periods of great stress, and finish off a jigsaw or go for a walk. It's simply nice. The GCSE season is almost over, the last of the OU assessments is done for the academic year, there is no pending election or referendum to try the nerves and sap the concentration, and Quirky Muffin 900 is well in hand.

It's hard to remember what it was that free time was used for back in the old days, before everything erupted into that furore. There was more reading, right, and more of the grand 'Watch Every Disc' project? Yes, that must have been part of it. 'Watch Every Disc' has already kicked back in, with a feast of series spinning around in eccentric DVD rotations. There is 'Lovejoy', 'Dear John', 'The Flintstones', 'Star Trek', 'Taxi', 'Quincy', 'Garfield And Friends', and many more. Never all at once, of course, and sensibly spaced out, but still a great variety of shows. There are surprisingly few duds in the grand collection, which is surprising. 'Supergirl' is proving to be often brilliant in its first season, but with occasionally stupid 'fighty' episodes. Well, we can't have everything.

There are spells of origami to come. There's nothing quite so meditative as folding bits of paper and then frustratedly sticking them together with tape that won't come off your fingers, and then your clothes, and then passing oxygen molecules... Yes, it's a barrel of laughs. By far, the most enjoying geometric origami is the sonobe cube, which is beautifully elegant and very pretty if several colours of paper are employed. Yes, six sonobe pieces make a grand cube. It's recommended.

This has turned into a total load of random nonsense, hasn't it? It's just like the good/weird/orange old days! Any moment now, we might segue into a long spiel on the joys of air conducting to the 'Final Round' track from the soundtrack to 'Real Steel'. Ah, it's a grand movie, all about artistry versus brutality and man's plight in the age of automation. Hopefully, they knew that was what it was about when they were making it, and it wasn't just a robot boxing movie to make money. Hopefully.

Roll on, post nine hundred, you're only ten away. Don't get lost on a country walk, like wellies in a mud wallow.

O.