test please delete

[NickFitz]

The weather app is of the opinion that it's raining. Looking out, I see a pleasant 22°C afternoon, dry, with a fair bit of fluffy cloud but sunny spells

Just stripped the bed then, in a fit of enthusiasm, flipped the mattress; now leaving that to air for a while

While flipping, I took the opportunity to examine the bed itself. It's about twenty years old and cheap when it was bought, one of those wooden slat things, and TBH it seems a bit past its best and saggy. This probably explains why the mattress is dipping slightly in the middle when I sleep despite itself being not very old and generally in good nick.

So I need to get a new bed before too long, I reckon. An ottoman bed adding much-needed storage would be the best idea; less space for crap and spiders to accumulate beneath too. There's one Ikea do that might not be too hard to get upstairs as it comes in bits anyway, and I'm not too bad at assembling their stuff.

[NickFitz]

Bed remade to avert any unpleasant surprises at bedtime

[DoctorStrangelove]

While flipping, I took the opportunity to examine the bed itself. It's about twenty years old and cheap when it was bought, one of those wooden slat things, and TBH it seems a bit past its best and saggy. This probably explains why the mattress is dipping slightly in the middle when I sleep despite itself being not very old and generally in good nick.

I think the bed in the front bedroom has this sign on it somewhere:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC41

It's older than I am.

I'm not sure it's not more comfortable than the divan in the back bedroom, though, as observed, detritus does tend to collect under it, in this case a Philips N1500 VCR, a Philips N1502 VCR, a Philips N1700 VCR, and an assortment of other junk.

[NickFitz]

In the Chinese

[NickFitz]

In the Chinese

And very nice too

The long-time drivers appear to have gone, and a new one was, to my extremely minor irritation, sitting in my usual seat by the fish whilst waiting for an order. But you get a better view towards the Co-op from the other bench, so not to worry

There's a sign in the window advertising for a driver, part-time. But the chap who appears to be the main man and usually staffs the counter was having to do deliveries, though he popped in briefly and remembered me well enough to say hello as he scuttled past.

So my order was taken by what I assume is the teenage daughter. Give it forty years or so and she'll be sighing heavily and declaring things aren't busy for some specious and unlikely reason

[ladymuck]

I thought at first the forum was having another senior moment in not letting me like posts. It was only when I went to reply to a post that I realised this was due to not being logged in.

Had a lovely afternoon at The Goring Hotel having lunch and many drinks with friends. TdF highlights caught up on and some form of kicking a ball of air about seems to be ongoing.

[NickFitz]

Had a lovely afternoon at The Goring Hotel having lunch and many drinks with friends. TdF highlights caught up on and some form of kicking a ball of air about seems to be ongoing.

The road to the Chinese* and back was busier than I expected, given the ball stuff going on at the time. Maybe people are finally losing interest in it

*starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby

[DoctorStrangelove]

Maybe people are finally losing interest in it

I wouldn't lay money on it.

Sadly it continues.

Can't even rely on the Germans any more, not to mention the Ukrainians.

[ladymuck]

Decided that this evening's ents should be light hearted so Mars Attacks (1996) has been selected.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was The Tomorrow War (2021) which is one of those things Amazon spends a fortune on to get people to sign up for their parcel delivery service, aka Free With Prime. It's fairly mediocre.

The first thirty minutes could have been cut down to ten with some judicious editing of the script. But I suspect that, if anything, that part of the script was made longer at the behest of a studio executive; those people who are notorious in Hollywood for having no idea of how to make a good film, but think that "customer research" will tell them all they need to know.

Anyway, after that it picked up and wasn't too bad (other than very obviously ripping stuff off from Edge of Tomorrow and virtually all of the Alien and Alien-adjacent films) until it got to the end and was brutally coerced back into studio-exec land.

And while I don't want to get into spoilers, here's where we get into my major objection, and as it doesn't spoil anything important, I'm going to go ahead anyway. The early bit makes a thing of our hero having a child and not wanting to have anything to do with his father, the child's grandfather. At the end, hero+father are reconciled and child+grandfather are introduced and it's all very what-Hollywood-execs-think-is-touching with the child being overjoyed at suddenly meeting a new grandfather.

This is bulltulip. I have lived this, and it is absolute bulltulip.

When I was about six or seven, I found out that my mother's father was still alive, and lived about a mile up the road from us; not far in a city like Liverpool. But it was obvious that my mother didn't want to have anything to do with him. So being a kid, I did what kids do: I accepted the world as it was presented to me, and thought no more about it or him.

I finally met him once when I was nineteen or twenty and we were up there for Christmas and my mother was a bit reconciled with him; not totally, but a bit. And I didn't feel "OMG I finally meet my grandfather whose absence has hitherto been such a huge gap in my life!", I just met my grandfather who my mother had justly despised for the way he neglected her after her mother died of cancer when she was eight, but had now forgiven a bit.

So when a film makes a big thing about this grandparent reconciliation stuff, I call bulltulip. Life isn't like that, and kids aren't like that, and grownups aren't like that. It's all Hollywood bulltulip.

And it would have been a better film (though still not very good because it nicked so much from other films) if they hadn't stuffed that bulltulip in at the beginning and at the end.

So there

And after that I watched Downfall again, because it's always worth watching

Goodnight all