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[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[NickFitz]

Tea was brought to me from an Indian restaurant in town, near the theatre, that people speak highly of. It was very good

One minor issue is that they do deliveries using their own driver, meaning you don’t get to watch on the map to see when they’re getting close. So I ended...

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

It’s a grey sort of day here, though not in a rainy way right now. Some showers are expected around teatime though. It’s 12°C but “feels like” 8°, which is as good as we’re getting, and the barometers are pensively steady at 995/1003mB

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was The Spy Gone North (2018), a Korean film about espionage between the North and South parts of that peninsula in the 1990s. This was said to be an “edge of your seat thriller” but it isn’t anything of the kind, unless complex subtleties of political interaction...

[NickFitz]

The bed has been made!

I’ve been waiting for Royal Mail to deliver the lead cutter I bought off eBay. It was supposed to arrive any time after half four this afternoon, and past experience of that timeslot for parcels suggested some time around half seven was likely. Finally,...

[NickFitz]

Tea has been a rack of ribs and chips. The ribs were from M&S this time, with a Korean chilli BBQ glaze. Very nice as it turned out, though not as fiery as one would expect from the Koreans, who probably weren’t really involved at all

I left the bed to air earlier today, but...

[NickFitz]

Just logged on to the work machine for the farewell meeting for the other dev. Just me on this project now

I’m still not entirely clear what’s going to happen, and I don’t think anybody else is either. This service is supposed to be going into maintenance mode and will then...

[NickFitz]

I took three bags of cut-up corrugated cardboard, the packaging of the new desk, over to the bins; I hadn’t been able to get rid of them till now due to Bank Holiday bin shenanigans. It turned out that other people must also have been hoarding as I filled the space that was left in the next-to-last...

[NickFitz]

Shopping done!

I went over via the old flat to avoid the roadworks. The chestnut trees have their pink candles on

This fits in with their pattern of flowering a few weeks later than the one with white candles down at the end of next door’s garden here (or possibly...

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s rather grey, though there’s some blue sky to the north and west - I haven’t checked whether it's arriving or departing. There was a fair bit of rain off and on yesterday evening and maybe even overnight, and the air is still damp. Today’s expected to...

[NickFitz]

I finished reading XPD, in which - as predicted - nobody ended up getting what they wanted, except perhaps the head of MI6

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been sausages with chips and beans

I keep buying sausages to make a sausage casserole, then not feeling like sausage casserole when they need to be eaten

This was accompanied by the rest of last night’s Police Interceptors

[NickFitz]

Another week done!

Though I’ll log onto Teams briefly tomorrow afternoon, as there’s a short meeting to say farewell to the other dev

I was considering doing the shopping this evening but it’s Viz week which involves going to Big Sainsbury’s, so I think...

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been Heinz tomato soup with toast

Quite sunny out, but there’s a lot of cloud and the trees are shimmying a lot

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s cloudy but with some blue patches towards the west, and there seems to have been more rain overnight. It’s expected to stay cloudy all day, and the breeze must persist as the current 6°C “feels like” 3°; the day’s high will be 12°. The barometers...

[NickFitz]

This evening’s viewing was a bit of a new Police Interceptors

And later I read more of XPD but didn’t quite get to the end. British, American, and Russian intelligence are all treading on each other’s toes, and I daresay it’ll end up being a fiasco for all of them ...

[NickFitz]

Tea: pork cutlet with chips and beans

The weather’s been very changeable today, including a thunderstorm this afternoon! It seems to be turning reasonably pleasant out there now though