test please delete

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Dull, overcast, damp. Currently 7 degrees with a high of 8 expected. Rain in the air but not necessarily forecast. Barometer up to 1035 mBar.

Off to Send to meet Mum's siblings and wider family for lunch, via the cemetery to pay our respects to my grandparents. After lunch I'll be heading home and my brother will bring Mum back home.

[xoggoth]

Yeh, I've got a family do in London on Saturday. Groan! Gotta pay that darn ULEZ charge thing.

[sadkingbilly]

Morning denizens

Not all retirees are early risers

That's for certain!

Morning people
BBC say it's sunny.
Lying bastids.
vis <> 30 meters.
and closing.
sea haar's a great thing (unless you have to sally forth, of course).

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning Afternoon.

Thursday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky from horizon to horizon.

Chilly in here at 13.2 deg, 12.5 deg in the kitchen, 11.5 in the leanto.

1030.3 mBar, 30.424 in Hg, 772.788 Torr, 14.94 psi, (up from 1029 last night), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 14th of December 2019 NF was stuck on a train coming back from that Manchester due to a broken rail, plus it was snowing, whereas I found the library computer room even more malodorous than usual & left quickly.

Walk (greatly augmented) walked in the sunshine.

Timed that right because the haar came in & it's wall to wall grey, misty, foggy, cold, & unpleasant.

Lunch: brunch.

Entertainment: The Infinite Monkey Cage (end of current season). book of the week. Thing about Abs Fab which is sommat I've never watched & don't really know why I'm listening to it.

In other news the wrinklies who went to that Narbonne in that France to spend Xmas with my niece have all come down with the plague, presumably the chinese bat variety though this is unconfirmed at present. Looks very much as if my concept of avoiding everyone is preferable. Though I'd suspect they'd get better treatment in that France should it prove necessary.

Tea: beans on toast with added boiled eggs etc. Nice enough.

Entertainment: PM.

Book.

Looks like the £5.95 on The Radio Times was a complete waste of money since I've barely looked at it and it's a third of the way through already.

[NickFitz]

Home again!

It's rather foggy out and was so for much of the journey back, but not so bad as to cause any delay

I had to wait to leave until my brother had come back from his morning walk, as he'd forgotten to bring a coat and had borrowed mine (with permission). He lives in the Peak District and doesn't seem to feel he's started the day properly unless he's set off for a five mile hike at eight in the morning

I stopped off at Big Sainsbury's Down There for a few bits; it was pretty quiet. But when I saw the sign for Pies and Quiches, I suddenly remembered that he'd given me a large pork pie from his local delicatessen and coffee shop, said pies being very good, and it was still in my sister's fridge! So I set off back there. Just as I did, my sister phoned to tell me about the pie and I explained that I was coming back for it. Once I got there, I found out that my brother was going to suggest that I head out to Leicester Forest East services at the time he expected to get to that stretch of the M1 on his journey north, and he would stop off to hand the pie over!

Anyway, it only added about ten minutes to my journey to head back for it, so we were saved the trouble of acting like people making a cocaine delivery but with savoury baked goods

In Sainsbury's car park, a couple of rows away there was a Corolla identical to mine - same colour, variant, year of registration! Always nice to see somebody else keeping the faith rather than getting distracted by those fancy new cars

Among my presents were a couple of my father's unpublished novels, now available via Amazon print-on-demand

I was aware of The Hunting of the Queen, said queen being the ocean liner Queen Mary, the story being set in the North Atlantic during the war when she was being used to ferry troops. This was the third book he wrote but Hodder & Stoughton passed on it, so I've never read it as he wouldn't let us read anything until it was in print. I didn't know about City of the Eagle though; I believe he wrote this some time in the 1980s. Sounds like a cracking plot that would make an excellent movie. Apparently he revised both of them and sought a publisher in the late 1980s once he'd retired, but couldn't get any takers. So that's two books that are going straight to the top of the notional "to-read" pile, ahead of the other volumes received

Just realised I forgot to do Wordle et al. yesterday

[NickFitz]

Just realised I forgot to do Wordle et al. yesterday

Ooh - the tab had reloaded yesterday so Wordle was there and, having completed it and reloaded again to get today's, it retained my streak!

I've lost my 209 streak on Globle and Globle Capitals though

[NickFitz]

Lunch: pork pie, and extremely nice it is too

Followed by a few Quality Street, just to tide me over

[NickFitz]

There's a new series of Inside the Factory, without Gregg Wallace!

IIRC he "stepped back" from the programme a year or so ago after he'd insulted the female members of the pie factory workforce, so well before the latest round of allegations

[DoctorStrangelove]

Among my presents were a couple of my father's unpublished novels, now available via Amazon print-on-demand

I was aware of The Hunting of the Queen, said queen being the ocean liner Queen Mary, the story being set in the North Atlantic during the war when she was being used to ferry troops.

Ambrose mentions that The RMS Queen Mary sank the HMS Curacoa with the loss of 337 lives in one of those remarkably dumb accidents during said troop transports.

[NickFitz]

Ambrose mentions that The RMS Queen Mary sank the HMS Curacoa with the loss of 337 lives in one of those remarkably dumb accidents during said troop transports.

I wonder if that made it into my Dad's story?

Tea has been homemade pork chow mein, which turned out nice again