test please delete

[NickFitz]

As a change from Deighton, tonight’s reading was The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe by Martyn Rady. I got this because of a few snippets posted on Bluesky by somebody recently; though it’s an academic work (the author is Professor of Central European History at UCL), it’s also replete with amusing anecdotes, and generally written in an engaging style

Goodnight all

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Sunday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky in parts.

Cooler in here at 16 deg, 15 in the kitchen, 13 in the leanto.

1006 mBar, 29.7 in Hg, 754.6 Torr, 14.59 psi, (up from 1003 last night), 63% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 27th of March 2020 Brillo popped in a lot, with BR14, LM, eek, and little old me managing to get a post in edgeways.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. Only took 3.5 miles to accomplish something verging on warmth. Pointed out the orchids on the canal bank to a lady.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: thing on R4 about some chap who lives in Thailand and gives lots of money to rightwing nutjobs. The unbelievable truth <click>.

Assorted Hawkwind CDs too many to list.

Tea: beans on toast with scrambled egg. Nice enough. Entertainment: thing about an Irish priest who built an airport. Thing about reading: someone mentioned how she found it difficult to read some book she'd loved 30 years or more ago and it took a fortnight to re-educate her brain before she could get as immersed in the story as she had back in the day.

I seem to have found much the same sort of thing with those Asimov books*: the doorstops are definitely more difficult for me to read than they were 40 years ago. That T.H. White thing (which I'd never read before) seemed interminable & not very inneresting. Probably because it was intrinsically fairly tedious to start with.

*Not just the doorstops: "The Alternative Asimovs" ground to a halt & shows little sign of restarting since I look for sommat else before burrowing down through the half read pile.

TPTV: The Directors: Sam Peckinpah. More ultra violence.

History's greatest mysteries: Searching for El Dorado. <spoiler> They still haven't found it </spoiler>

Sergeant Cork S4 E3 "The case of the African murder". Ah, the White Man's burden in Africa, in what became Nigeria. The "Race for Africa". The white man's graveyard (this last being no joke: average time to demise was about 3 months in the early days which is why the slave catchers weren't white).

Hazardous History with the Fonz: Mad Medicine. The dear dead days beyond recall when the "Heroin" brand was sold as "the non adictive morphine substitute". . Cigarette smoking was recommended by doctors. They missed a trick by not relating the brand with blue asbestos in the filter. Soothing babies with syrups full of morphine. etc. etc. Using animal skin for skin transplants (instant rejection). Frog skin was popular.

Book. Other book.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Sunnier start today, though more rain is expected this afternoon; the helping we got around teatime yesterday was pretty heavy. It’s 11°C (“feels like” 6°) and only getting to 13°, with the barometers up a little at 997/1005mB

One of the crows has been trying to bully one of the squirrels down on the lawn; I assume it’s the same two that it always is. The squirrel didn’t seem to be in much of a mood for it, occasionally feinting a run at the crow to throw it off kilter, but then just moving further away and leaving the crow to it. This sensible policy wasn’t good enough for the crow, which insisted on following it over the drive to one of the small lawns at the front of the adjacent block. It was at this point that one of the magpies seemed to get involved: having been keeping an eye on proceedings from the tree in the central flowerbed, it flew over and casually landed on the lawn, up against the hedge that gives the ground floor flats a bit of privacy. This position was off to the side from where the crow was trying to have a staring contest with the squirrel, and distracted the crow, which then tried a rush at the magpie! The magpie just flew straight up and perched on top of the hedge, while the squirrel casually headed underneath it as if that had been its intention all along. This left the crow in possession of the lawn, but wasn’t really much of a victory; it pecked around for a couple of minutes in a disconsolate sort of way before flying off. And shortly after that, the squirrel was back in the middle of the big lawn

[ladymuck]

Morning all, local time 11:40

Sunny with occasional wisps again. Currently 18 degrees with a high of 19 expected. If yesterday is anything to buy that'll be a 'feels like' 25 by this afternoon. Barometer up to 1017 mBar.

Sunrise 07:17; Sunset 21:27 CEST

This morning I had a hankering for churros so we went to a local cafe which has a bit of a reputation for them. sadly they were having a bit of a technical issue so the churros were takeaway only. Still very good but that meant we then had to find somewhere to get a coffee. We ended up in a modern coffee shop and thus had our first 'bad' coffee of the trip (we're not fans of modern roasts).

I see the UK got its usual Eurovision result.

[xoggoth]

Took ghastly ll3 to a car boot this morning. Total waste of time. Advert said they ran until 1pm but they had mostly packed up when we got there just before 11.
PS Checked the Eurovision winner online just now, Gordon Bennet, modern music is such total ****.

[NickFitz]

Lunch earlier was leftovers from last night, and tea has been shepherd’s pie

To go with the latter, I started watching the first episode of the new series of Surgeons: At the Edge of Life on iPlayer. This is usually fine but on this occasion, I did find the sight of a scalpel cutting into a blue-dyed penis to be mildly off-putting

[NickFitz]

Tonight I continued reading The Middle Kingdoms. Turns out Europe was totally disorganised during the first millennium. Also, the Cyrillic alphabet was invented by a chap called Cyril as part of a programme of converting Bulgarians to Orthodox Christianity

Monday again tomorrow. Ah well, at least next week is a Bank Holiday

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s rather cloudy out again, with suggestions of there having been a shower or two overnight. It’s a mere 8°C at the moment and “feels like” 4°, with an expected high for the day of 14°; the barometers are slightly up at 998/1006mB

Just worked out that in five weeks, we’ll be halfway through the solar year, having passed the Summer Solstice. Where does the time go?

[WTFH]

Big dog walk done. (Not the Max is a big dog, but that the walk was over 10,000 steps). The rain that was falling at 4:30 had stopped by 5:15, and the sky is clearing now.