test please delete

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday.

Dry.

Wanly sunny.

Cool in here at 19.4 deg, 21 deg in the kitchen, 18 deg in the leanto.

1013 mBar, 29.91 in Hg, 759.8 Torr, 14.692323 psi, (up from 1010 last night), 74% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 8th of November 2019 NF's conference had concluded & it was home again, home again, jiggety jig, whereas LM was finding it difficult to find somewhere to eat in that Dutchland, then found somewhere that was good.

Walk (unabbreviated) walked in the sunshine whilst it lasted.

Lunch: there was.

More gardening. Many nettles, brambles & ivy added to the pile.

Entertainment: Fringe S4 E20: watched this in bits for some reason. Think I'm Fringed out, which doesn't bode well for S5.

Sledge Hammer E23 to E30 or whatever.

The bits of the thing on Alec Guinness on Sky Arts that I missed yesterday.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Grey start again, though there doesn't seem to have been much overnight rain this time, if any at all. Cooler again, being 13°C with a high of 17°, while the barometers are up some more at 1006/1013mB

The lurgy doesn't seem to be any worse and maybe slightly better, though that could be the paracetamol still acting. Anyway, I feel like I'll be OK to drive up north for the wedding, so I'd better start getting packed and so on

[NickFitz]

The car has been checked over for tyre pressures (needed a bit of a boost as I last checked them during a very hot spell) and oil (fine, it doesn't use much just pootling to the shops and back)

And I removed the box for my parents' microwave from the boot so I have room for such luggage as I take. I'd left it in there for when I go down to collect it, which will have to be soon now

Back inside and various shirts have been ironed, ready for the packing which I shall have to start doing shortly.

A check of Google Maps suggests the journey north should go smoothly, aside from some roadworks on the A1 slowing things down a little. But that's just after the Greggs I plan to stop at for a break so if anything, it'll make getting back out of the services into the traffic a bit easier

The mystery of why Google Maps keeps suggesting the A46 rather than the M1 turns out to be explained by the fact that it's three miles shorter, so if the times are roughly the same, it favours that route. As the M1 is in general faster by up to ten minutes and never seems to be more than a couple of minutes slower, I shall take the M1

[xoggoth]

^Not that familar with M1, more often M25/M4/M40 but motorways usually involve long queques in my experience. 3 1/2 hr drive to my sister's has taken over 5 hours sometimes.

Too much on again this week, ll3 walk Mon, old fart art on Tuesday followed by ll3 walk again to look for purse she lost then karaoke in evening, U3A old fart meeting today, local history group meet tomorrow, ll1 walk Friday. Gordon Bennet.

[NickFitz]

^Not that familar with M1, more often M25/M4/M40 but motorways usually involve long queques in my experience. 3 1/2 hr drive to my sister's has taken over 5 hours sometimes.

The M25 is very much a special case in my experience! Anyway, once I get to Sheffield it's the M1 or the A1/A1(M) for most of the way, and they're about as bad as each other - if anything, the A1 is a bit worse

Time for me to go!

[NickFitz]

Made it to Greggs NW of Doncaster and had a nice steak bake. There’s a little lane off the A1 with an entrance and exit to the car park, where a magpie is taking advantage of the lack of traffic along there to grab bits of what looks like Burger King leftovers somebody’s chucked away there

Back to the A1 for me though, and about an hour more to drive

[NickFitz]

Made it! Very nice place, spread around a country estate

Now to find the Gin Terrace, where we are gathering for drinks and nibbles

[NickFitz]

We weren't on the Gin Terrace after all, for reasons of occasional light drizzle and more people than would fit; I think that was something originally suggested many months ago which was, when the time came, never going to work. So instead we were in a room inside the mansion with bookcases and a bar obstructing access to some of the bookcases. I think that's probably the only circumstance in which I'd object to the presence of a bar

Within minutes of arriving I'd informed both my nieces (the one getting married and her younger sister) that in the 1970s, Bedford Library had the same edition of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 as was displayed on a shelf about nine or ten feet up on the wall opposite the bar. I've never read it, I just recognised the spine of the dust jacket and the town library was the last place I remembered seeing it

My cousins from New Zealand, stars of many Zoom calls in the days when people took the ongoing pandemic seriously, are here!

Anyway, I've got to be up at a reasonable time tomorrow so I can pass judgment on the full English breakfast. Places like this usually have good sausages, so I'm looking forward to it

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all
Overcast and warm here.

[DoctorStrangelove]

I was musing only the other day on the large book on Magnetohydrodynamics that blessed the nonfiction section of Neath Public Library (may it rest in peace) back in the late 1960s.

When I graduated to the adult library I took it out one day & took it back the next. I still wonder at whoever requested that it be purchased for stock. Even more so whence it was disposed of when "they" changed all those lovely old oak shelves for the more modern steel tat.

Morning.

Thursday.

Dry.

Too early to tell if it's sunny or no.

Cool in here at 18.8 deg, 20 deg in the kitchen, 17 deg in the leanto.

1012 mBar, 29.884343 in Hg, 759.06 Torr, 14.6778 psi, (down a millitad since last night), 72% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 9th of November 2019 the weather was inclement, then suckered me into going for a walk by clearing up until the halfway point whereupon the deluge returned.

Could have done without waking at 05:55 this morning, even reading the current book failed to return me to the land of nod. Ho hum.

It rained a little.

Walk (unabbreviated) walked. It rained but not enough to require putting up the umbrella.

Lunch: there was.

Entertainment: Sledge Hammer S2 (continued).

Finished "The spy who came in from the cold". It didn't end well.

Tea: soup etc.

Entertainment: The remainder of Sledge Hammer S2. Off to Oxfam with it.

Trucking Hell S8 E17 wherein Dave Crouch doesn't use a winch.

Continued with the book about the Orange Moron, and started with "The looking glass war". I must have seen the film at some stage, though I have no recollection of reading the book previously.

Still looking for "A small town in Germany". I may have to order it.