Random Observations on a Friday

Some random observations on a Friday evening.  After a week off of work, it has become clear that the job is definitely not good for my health.  Even taking nine pills a day to manage my various (work related) medical conditions obviously can't obviate all of the problems being caused by work.  Something evidenced by the fact that, in spite of still taking four metformin tablets a day, my stomach has significantly settled down this week. Indicating that all the stress and anxiety I experience in the workplace are as much to blame for my, often violent, stomach upsets as my medication.  I've also slept better and experienced far less fatigue this week.  I think that my body is definitely trying to tell me something.  Thankfully, I've still got a couple of weeks of this leave period to go. 

I was shocked and saddened to learn this week that Keith Brown, author of the 'Giallo Fever' website had died.  In fact, as it turned out, he'd died at the end of 2016.  I suppose the fact that the site hadn't been updated since 2016 should have been a clue, but he was never the most prolific or regular of posters.  That said, what he did post was always thought provoking and well worth reading.  I learned a lot about Giallo movies at his site.  Not that he confined himself to just this genre, with posts covering a whole slew of cinematic genres and approaches to film criticism.  It's one of the vagaries of the online world that we never quite know the status of the author of any blog or site we visit: just because there hasn't been a recent update doesn't necessarily mean that it has been abandoned - I've known sites where there are sometimes years between posts.  On the other hand it might mean, as in this case, that something has happened to the author.  While many sites with deceased authors will vanish once the web hosts stop being paid, those hosted on platforms like Blogger, as is 'Giallo Fever', the site will stay up indefinitely, conferring a kind of immortality to their creators.  While sad to hear of his passing, it's comforting to think that we can continue to enjoy Keith Brown's excellent work posthumously.

I learned of another online death this week: Laurence Hogg apparently passed away in June.  I knew him through his website, which sold a range of transfers for restoring Wrenn and Hornby Dublo locomotives.  They represented remarkably good value for money - up to three locomotives could be restored using a single sheet.  I'd been interested in obtaining one of two sheets he had produced for the Dublo West Country, (which included decals for three alternative names and numbers), two of which I'm currently working on.  One is being completely repainted, so will require full lining, the other will be renamed and numbered.  Hogg's transfers would have simplified these processes significantly.  With his death, however, his website has vanished and I'm going to have to resort to the more expensive expedients of etched brass nameplates and separate sets of Pressfix number and lining sheets.  The availability of the name plates are going to dictate the locomotives' new identities: I've found a supplier with a limited range of reasonably cheap nameplates for rebuilt West Countrys - I've just got to try and buy them before something happens to him...