everyone has gone to the beach.
Boynton recently bought Boswell's London Journal at the op shop.
"He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised. He said it would be a very good exercise, and would yield me infinite satisfaction when the ideas were faded from my rememberance...I told Mr Johnson that I put down all sorts of little incidents in it. "Sir," said he,"there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible" 16 July 1763
Famous Diarists as proto-bloggers has been explored (by blog - where else) - but Interconnected points to a new project that puts Pepys on line as blog.

Another light Summer link is this Guardian quiz. (via Plep)
This is the level of Trivia Boynton would like to see happening at the local tournament... There's a darker tale of pub trivia at bluejoh

Through the gap...bit under the weather today. It's that Boxing-Boxing Day feeling. Boynton has long believed that Boxing Day runs well into three days. Longer than the average Australia-England Test match. Such a beautiful day in Melbourne, she's half tempted to stroll down the road to catch the cricket gratis, through the gap. According to the Age , yesterday
By early afternoon, about 50 people had gathered on the footbridge between the MCG and Melbourne Park to watch the game through a gap in the ground where a stand once stood, complete with binoculars and transistor radios.
"It's the best seat in the house," said Darren Bond, of East St Kilda. "You can see absolutely clearly, and you get the video replay and the scoreboard as well."
This is not the first time cricketers and patrons will experience a large gap in the stadium's structure More gap info for patrons here

All the small pine trees next to the trailors and gas cylinders for hire had gone, but waiting in the car by the bowsers at the caltex on Christmas night, Boynton spotted santa. Behind the counter. Jolly. Smiling to himself between transactions. At ten pm after a long day, this generous-girthed geniality made weary punters smile and do a double take. Maybe he was like this bloke whose life turned around when he let his beard grow out white and wavy. In fact, after he started looking like Santa Claus, John said, his whole personality began to change. He became friendlier, more outgoing. Life became full of small, amusing incidents...Or maybe it was just the nearness of the coke machine

Like trotting out last year's xmas decorations, here is some perennial advice from 2001 about a natural treatment for Christmas depression. Of course, Organs.
Before Boynton moves into serious antidote mode, she should remember:
"Listeners experienced significant reductions in tension, depression, anger and fatigue," Professor Marley says. "However, we didn't find any significant changes in listeners' levels of vigour, or confusion."
Looks like pretty good therapy to me.

Decorating for Christmas 1950's style (via PopCulture Junk Mail via Quiddity) Also featuring on David Claudon's site is the excellent Decorating 40's style, "a visual source-book of ideas...". Quiddity links to 1950's childrens' records, one in the Christmas genre, and one general -some records of which Boynton recognised from the storehouses of memory or imagination.

Boynton went to the Boulevard Christmas lights last night – this is a (grand) street in Ivanhoe that was the original themed street in what has now become a rather overheated market. Even Boynton’s own flat street has houses with hose lights and the odd reindeer. But the big old Ivanhoe houses on the hill are better suited to the sport. The road is generous in its contours and dimensions and socio-eco profile, and can handle the throng of the thousand strong pilgrimage even if the nature-strips are worn bare by soles and strollers. On the low side you get the city skyline framed by lemon-scented gums, on the high side you get the sweeping vistas of grand old decorated Deco houses. Last night was a perfect warm evening, with a big yellow moon that looked exactly like the classic art nouveau sheet-music variety.
To best view the lights, you should really borrow a child. Boynton volunteered, and her inner child gasped and whooped and jumped up and down excitedly, and stood awe-struck at some mystery in the electricity invisible to adults. Not as good as one little girl who went into joyous overdrive at the sight of a plastic elf. Children were adorned with pink and green “glow lights’ that were being hocked by scouts on corners, the most desirable being the round collars, that glowed on in the back seat of dark wagons driving slowly past. One hapless toddler put in a request. His mother snapped. “We can’t always get what we want…If I were you I’d be very worried because Santa can hear everything you’re saying, and he’d be disgusted. And he’d be going into his workshop and taking all the toys out of your sack and putting them into some other child’s sack!…”.
There was the usual mixed iconography of Jesus and Santa, desert and snow. One house had the trinity of Santas, next door had the snowman under a palm tree. There were asbseiling santas, creepy miniature-doll santas, a nativity group in a gazebo moving at tai-chi speed, and a Joseph who looked like more like Josephine, in his mock Tudor style frock. On the low side of the street, Boynton was interested in the shadow play of hapless owners caught inside their homes, moving around like un-lit figures in the annual Christmas fish bowl.
No link found to Ivanhoe, but here is a South Australian page. And a thread from a US forum indicates some of the pressures involved.