test please delete

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Wet and windy. Currently 10 degrees ('feels like' 6) with a high of 12 expected. Rain and wind set to continue all day. Weather warning still in place. Barometer down to 1012 mBar.

Working today, only half a day though. Clocking off around 2pm.

[NickFitz]

Links are up

[NickFitz]

Big Sainsbury's has been gone to, so I should be able to avoid starvation for a few more days!

I wouldn't have bothered going there rather than the not-as-big one if I'd remembered that the traffic to the adjacent retail park is always massively congested at this time of year. It took a good fifteen or twenty minutes to get through a junction fed from the motorway that normally takes, at most, two minutes or so to get past

Some good came of the trip though. I'd thought the other day (Christmas Eve, I think) that one of the Christmas things I hadn't encountered in quite a few years was the Scottish shortbread assortment, usually in a tin with a picture of a stag or a man in a kilt tossing a caber on the front. I'd been looking out for such a thing, but neither M&S nor Sainsbury's seemed to have anything in that line except smallish packets of shortbread fingers. But wherever they'd been hiding them, the assortments are now being disposed of at a knockdown Nectar price - several shelves full of them, albeit not in tins, and with use-by dates in July! So I got a couple of them, as I like a bit of shortbread now and then

Perhaps if they'd put them in their present position at the posh end of the biscuit aisle, rather than somewhere else in the store where I couldn't find them, they might have sold some at full price in time for Christmas

Getting back, I was taking the lift back up and my new upstairs neighbour appeared, going up carrying something heavy - he's clearly moving in gradually, like I did. He politely asked whether the noise of Ikea stuff being assembled and so on had been disturbing me, and I assured him it hadn't. I should have said "Yes" as he's spent the last few minutes very noisily drilling something which appears to be located directly above my head

[NickFitz]

Tea has been KFC leftovers

And as I neglected to note the fact earlier, let it be recorded that lunch was a leftover pork cutlet in a wholemeal bap with apple sauce

Tea was accompanied by The Secret Genius of Modern Life on the subject of how bank cards work. Turns out contactless (RFID) uses exactly the same technology as The Thing, the famous bug created by Comrade Theremin that the Soviets planted in the US Ambassador's office in Moscow, whose workings were explained by Peter Wright in Spycatcher

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was Twisters (2024). This isn't a sequel to the other one, so presumably it's supposed to be a "reboot" or whatever they call these things when they don't want to admit that they just remade an old film. Like the one it's not a remake of, it's not a groundbreaking work of art but it's entertaining enough

And then the penultimate episode of Chernobyl

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It's a morning of wan sunshine filtered through bands of thin cloud near the horizon. There are clearer areas of sky higher up, but the sun won't be getting there. It's a bit breezy too, so the current 7°C supposedly feels like -2°, though it's one of those times when it'll get to 9° later this afternoon and then continue to rise through the evening and night, reaching 10° by the end of the year - though with a 40% chance of rain to see 2024 out. The barometers are continuing to head slowly downwards at 1005/1013mB

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Very, very wet. Breezy. Currently 10 degrees ('feels like' 7) with a high of 11 expected. Rain set to continue all day in varying levels of enthusiasm. Barometer down to 997 mBar.

Following the revelations announced by BA about their changes to the Executive Club from April 2025, I have been re-evaluating who I will choose to travel with in future.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning Afternoon.

Tuesday.

Dry.

Grey.

Sunless.

Windy.

Chilly in here at 12.1 deg, 12 deg in the kitchen, 11.5 deg in the leanto.

1015 mBar, 29.97 in Hg, 761.313 Torr, 14.721 psi, (down from 1021 last night), 69% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 15th of December 2019 Brillo had a shower & discussed respective other halves cooking with LM, scruff popped in & popped out again, and I was wondering quite why I was impressed with "Joan of Arcadia" back in the day because it certainly wasn't doing the job currently.

Walk (greatly augmented) walked in the grey gloom & wind.

Should have done the washing today since it'd dry well on the line.

Mouth still sore. .

Lunch: brunch. Nearly half the Weetabix BBE 2014 now consumed.

Entertainment: R4 book of the week: leveret & hares.

Book.

Freecell score in the grey gloom: 100%, running average: 81%.

Tea: Tesco battered haddock etc. Nice enough.

Mouth even more sore. .

Entertainment: PM. Wombles.

Book.

If there's owt to watch I ain't found it.

The Talking Pictures TV version of CUK's dead celebrities thread. Never heard of some of them.

Last 15 minutes of "Unforgiven (1992)" again. You can never see too much of Eastwood blowing people away.

[NickFitz]

One of the tasks I've been putting off for ages, but particularly during my extended Christmas break, is moving the dining table and chairs that I never use to the storage unit, pending a decision on whether to just get rid of them altogether. I've already disassembled the table to make it easier to get the new recliner in, so it's all just stacked near the living room door waiting to be moved.

I just finally managed to motivate myself to get it done. Not too complicated: take two of the chairs down to the car, get the sack truck from my storeroom while I'm down there, take the other two chairs, then use the sack truck to take the rather heavy tabletop down.

So I shifted other stuff that was in the way, grabbed two of the chairs, went out to the landing, and… the lift's broken

It's stuck just above the ground floor, and I assume the chance of an engineer showing up before Thursday is minimal

Ah well, I tried

[eek]

Morning all

Very, very wet. Breezy. Currently 10 degrees ('feels like' 7) with a high of 11 expected. Rain set to continue all day in varying levels of enthusiasm. Barometer down to 997 mBar.

Following the revelations announced by BA about their changes to the Executive Club from April 2025, I have been re-evaluating who I will choose to travel with in future.

Given that I'm never going to do enough flights to retain lounge access with KLM I just got the Lloyd's / Halifax World Elite Traveller card.

That gives (basic) lounge access and priority security at most airports which is all I really need.