test please delete

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

It's a bit on the sunny and Simpsonesque side out there today

Currently 14°C with 16° on the cards. Barometers very slightly up at 1012/1020mB. But despite that, rain is due to return overnight

[NickFitz]

Today's Kantar diary fact is:
Using waste energy it had generated, 'Pete the Fern' becomes the first plant to take a self-powered 'selfie' at London Zoo 2019

That's a good fact

[xoggoth]

It was raining earlier but has brightened up now

Opposite here, will be getting wet with loony lady 1. Company of 4 loony ladies yesterday, I never seem to be with any blokes these days, maybe I need a sex change. Sure I've got some suitable tools in the garage.

[DoctorStrangelove]

It may have been the NZ one - Pick seems to be running both at the moment, and I wasn't really paying attention

Pick are running the NZ one, the Oz one, the Canadian one, the Irish one, the UK one, and possibly the USA one.

It gets quite confusing.

I stick with the NZ one because it's calmer and people get fined $400 for a forgotten orange in their baggage.

I love the cash sniffer dogs.

And the food sniffer dogs.

And the drugs sniffer dogs.

I think I've seen the bug sniffer dog, though I'm not quite sure.

[NickFitz]

I just looked out of the window and saw three middle-aged guys walking by, and a couple of older guys about ten yards behind them. I don't know what it was about them, but I immediately thought "Football" - and yes, turns out that's happening this afternoon

[NickFitz]

Bacon butty for lunch

[NickFitz]

I used their contact form in the end, and was told it had been damaged in transit

The customer service person wanted to know if I'd like a refund or a replacement, so I replied to the email asking for a replacement to be shipped. I got an autoresponse, so despite the email hassle this week, I know my reply got through to them. Then… nothing

So this morning I used the form again, and this afternoon another customer service person confirmed that it showed as damaged in transit but nothing had been done, so they'd requested a replacement. The system now shows that a replacement is being dispatched to the store and should be there on Sunday. I'll believe it when I see it

The coat arrived at the shop this morning. I'm not going down there now, what with football traffic on top of the general hell that is Saturday afternoon in a retail park, but they're open until eight this evening so I could pop down later. Probably won't though

[NickFitz]

In the Chinese

[ladymuck]

Date night tonight. Drinks at the bar in the Mandrake Hotel followed by delicious dinner at Akoko.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was Iceman (2017), being a biopic of Ötzi the Iceman, or at least an imagined story of the last few days of his life before he was frozen in a glacier for over five thousand years. It's pretty good, I thought

Worthy of note: all speech is in an archaic language, and no subtitles are provided because translation was thought by the filmmakers to be unnecessary for an understanding of the story. This turns out to be correct; it reminded me of the way I've happily watched La Cabina for twenty years or more without subtitles and without understanding a word of Spanish. The words can be the least important part of a film

And then I rewatched the extended version of The Martian (2015) because it must be a week or two since I did that

Finally, a couple more episodes of The Americans: S6E1 Dead Hand (TV Episode 2018) and S6E2 Tchaikovsky (TV Episode 2018)

Goodnight all