test please delete

[NickFitz]

Insomnia reading surely?

A man reading a manual - what is the world coming to??? and indeed

I'm now reading the manual for the oven

[NickFitz]

And I just sampled a small bowl of the Scotch broth. Very nice

[ladymuck]

The Super Monkey Car started!

[NickFitz]

I'm now reading the manual for the oven

Not sure if it was some kind of parting message from the previous owner, but it turns out the reason I couldn't get the fancy Bosch oven to do anything is that the "childproof lock" was on

[SueEllen]

I made the mistake of believing someone in my household and going to the supermarket.

It took an hour to pay.

During which time:
- children were sick in other queues
- people were arguing over queue jumping
- people were fighting over joints of meat
- the customer service people, who were all students were clearly pissed
- I talked to a nice OAP about nurses strikes, medical practitioners going on electives abroad and not coming back, and her charity collection for charities in Leicester.

After a dinner of meat balls I'm now drinking wine and eating mince pies.

[NickFitz]

I made the final shopping trip before Christmas, hoping that the evening would be considerably quieter than the daytime; and so it proved. Nice clear drive to the retail park, where I was able to get boxes of fancy chocolates (or maybe just fancy boxes of mundane chocolates) from M&S, then over to Sainsbury's for cards and wrapping paper. As always, I've forgotten Sellotape, or maybe it's packed away still, but I'm pretty sure I can get that locally. Quick stop on the way back to check the Super Monkey Car had recovered from its exertions and that the gate was shut (it wasn't; now it is) and that should, in theory, be everything done and dusted

And I put the scouse to cook in the InstantPot™ before I went out, with the Keep Warm setting activated. So I'm just reducing that a little bit before tucking in

[NickFitz]

The scouse turned out very nice again, accompanied by a thick end of plain bloomer because that's all Sainsbury's had

Accompanied by a bit of Trucking Hell

The car earlier was a Saab 9-3, and the gold diggers had their usual occurrences.

Now for a glass or more of wine to celebrate the start of the Christmas weekend

[WTFH]

TFBSZ

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday by all accounts. Amal fecking Rajan on the wireless which never gets the day off to a good start. .

Dreams of 37 way D connectors and IBM PC XT with 4 floppy diskette drives. .

Grey.

Dry.

Sunless though there are hints thereof.

Chilly in here at 13.1 deg, 12.5 deg in the kitchen 11 deg in the leanto.

1005 mBar, 29.677633 in Hg, 753.81199 Torr, 14.5763 psi, (up from 1002 last night), 69% RH (GDR hair), 69% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile back on the 30th of March 2019 I'd just bought the required 2nd copy of "Broken City" while NF was busy with some esoteric faffing about with iphones and itunes and such like to determine which films he'd watched or not watched or something.

Walk (unabbreviated) walked in the sunshine.

Lunch: baked potato with cheese & baked beans, red corner yog, blackcurrant jam and marmalade on 3 slices of Morrisons wholemeal sunflower and spelt toast, 0.91*1.63 pints of good Glengettie tea.

Entertainment: Moneybox. Dead Ringers. The Repair shop (with subtitles).

Freecell score: 90%, 100%, running average 85%.

Whilst getting ready to cook the next batches of bol and chilli con carne a distinct lack of chilli powder was detected, leading, in turn, to a trudge down to Morrisons to buy some more since the post office up the road was sadly lacking.

Batches of bol & chilli con carne duly processed: the chilli powder proved to be remarkably hot in the bol, feck nose what the con carne will turn out like.

Entertainment: the carols thing on R4. PM. Some other tosh about xmas. Bah! Humbug!

The final 10 minutes of "The Shootist" again. Now there's a chap who didn't bring a knife to a gun fight. .

Digging for HIstory with that Alice Roberts: Prehistory. Beaker folk et al.

Maigret: 1963: "Peter the Lett".

15 minutes of "Dirty Harry (1971)". up to the part where Albert Popplewell gets alarmed.

Castles on PBS. He's visiting White Castle in Gwent (is it still Gwent?) which I visited in 1992 with my then lady friend.

Stood at the top of that tower with the swifts/swallows screaming around us in a great flock. The moat had a horde of little golden frogs/toads emerging. Seems like a lifetime ago. Which is what it is.

[WTFH]

Morning all

Christmas Eve, in the drunk tank.