test please delete

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been a few bits of leftover chicken 65

I wasn't too hungry as I also had a leftover sausage mid-morning

[NickFitz]

Much of the afternoon has been devoted to working out this stuff for my sister's website

It's proved to be quite an interesting problem, which is a polite way of saying it's been driving me up the wall

All good now though, in the sense that I'm finally in a position where I can get started on the really tricky part

[xoggoth]

stuff for my sister's website

Yeh, been there. Pain in the ***, sisters.

Cinema this afternoon with not so loony lady 3.

[NickFitz]

Yeh, been there. Pain in the ***, sisters.

Ah, she's OK - she hasn't been nagging me about it, but I'd like to get it done

Tea has been curried mince and chips

And to go with it, the start of a NEW! two-part 24 Hours in Police Custody

I think this is the second time those tower blocks in Luton have featured in it as the scene of the crime

[NickFitz]

The case in 24 Hours in Police Custody is pretty grim. I get the feeling it'll get grimmer in part two

Later, I started reading Fifth Planet. The Hoyles acknowledge in their introduction that it's hard to predict what a society will be like in the future (the book is set in 2087) so they extrapolated from apparent social trends at the time of writing (1962). They would have been better off glossing over wider society and sticking to the spaceship stuff, as their vision of the future would have been looking pretty ridiculous within twenty years or so, and certainly does now. Husbands having to live off sandwiches when their wives are away because they're incapable of cooking anything for themselves is just one example

Mind you, they don't fare much better with the spaceships. There are two, Russian and American, and the Russians score a great PR coup by sending up a female cosmonaut, the first woman in space. While the book was written in 1962, the introduction is dated 6 April 1963, so just ten weeks before Valentina Tereshkova went up in Vostok 6. Only about 125 years out, then. There's also a bunch of stuff about the Russians having to develop special techniques because women are physically incapable of withstanding the acceleration of a normal launch!

So yes, showing its age a bit. Maybe the stuff that happens off-Earth, which is just getting started, will make up for it

Loads of fireworks over the weekend and an absolutely crazy amount tonight, which are still going on. I was wondering why there were so many on Saturday night, and of course it's Diwali, the most important day of the celebrations being today!

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all
Starry skies on our walk earlier, with a few clouds coming in now.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Tuesday.

Damp.

Grey.

Sunless.

Chilly in here at 18 deg, 17 in the kitchen, 16 in the leanto.

988 mBar, 29.18 in Hg, 741 Torr, 14.33 psi, (up from 987 last night), 64% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 25th of February 2020 Churchill, and BR14 popped in, LM thought "Woman's Hour" was on Saturdays at 10:00 when it's actually on at 16:00, I was in with the hoi polloi, and it was, as usual around here, raining, though it did manage to hail on me on the way back down the hill, whereas NF had some zingy chicken soup.

Freecell score in the grey gloom: 89%, running average: 84%.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Y&Y <click>

Walk (abbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. Quite pleasant. Picked with rain a little.

Timed that right: raining again now. .

Tea: soup etc. Entertainment: PM. Yet more Andy fecking Randy. <click> Book.

Dial 999. More stuff about WWII. The Eagle's Nest.

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder. S1 E8 "The Investors (1969)". John Le Mesurier as a Bad Man.

Yet more stuff about WWII: Normandy and The Wolf's Lair.

Book.

[ladymuck]

^^ Crazy notion. It's Saturday Live on Saturdays at 10 am. Used to have the Reverend Richard Coles as a presenter who quit when the BBC moved the studio to Wales.



Morning all

There's some blue sky visible through the cloud. Wet, rather than damp, on the ground. Currently 12 degrees ('feels like' 10) with a high of 14 expected. There may be more showers early-mid afternoon. Barometer up a bit to 993 mBar.

Sunrise 07:36; Sunset 17:55 BST

My clients are usually very good at paying on time. However, one of them is late and I have had to issue a reminder. Now I'm trying to keep calm about more chasing for payment.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It's a day of overlapping layers of cloud out there, but here and there are gaps where occasional sunny spells are getting through. It doesn't seem exceptionally windy from the movement of the trees but there's a bit of a breeze which is apparently having an effect, as the current 11°C supposedly "feels like" 6°; the expected high this afternoon is 14°. The barometers are up a trivial amount at 978/986mB

[NickFitz]

I needed some bits of shopping, in the sense of having run out of some stuff, but I didn't fancy going all the way across town and doing the planned getting-of-special-things from M&S then crossing over to Big Sainsbury's. I've got some things I want to do here, and by the time I was ready to set off, I was in danger of ending up there at lunchtime. So I popped down to Not-as-Big Sainsbury's instead and did a stopgap shop

The wind's getting a bit stronger now, judging by the shimmy on the big sycamore