Reply to: test please delete

[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

[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

[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 ****.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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

[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 up spending nearly ten minutes hanging around down by the front door, as it’s a hassle to rush down once they’ve arrived. But it was nice enough that I’ll probably tolerate the additional inconvenience and get stuff from them again

[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

[ladymuck]

Morning all, local time 10:10

Sunny, some wisps. Currently 18 degrees with a high of 19 expected. Barometer up to 1016 mBar.

Sunrise 07:18; Sunset 21:26 CEST

Had a lovely mooch around yesterday. Might go to a castle todday. Generally, a very relaxing time being had.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday apparently.

Dry.

Grey.

Sunless.

Still verging on chilly in here at 16.4 deg, 15 in the kitchen, 14 in the leanto.

1004 mBar, 29.65 in Hg, 753 Torr, 14.56 psi, (down from 1005 last night), 60% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 27th of March 2020 LondonManc and NF managed to get a post or two in amongst Brillo's drivel.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the grey gloom. Chilly out there today. The may may be out but I'm not casting a clout any time soon, in fact layers are going back on.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Moneybox <click>.

Rained. Timed the walk correctly once again.

Sun's out.

Grey again.

Today listened to Hawkwind: "Do re mi", "In search of space", "Warrior on the edge of time". And dozed whilst doing so.

Book.

Still raining.

Still still raining.

Tea: soup etc. Nice enough. I like that one. Entertainment: Robinson interviewing someone.

Tina Turner in Concert in San Bernadino. 1993.

Scotland Yard "Wings of Death" with Steptoe the younger with a cod Scottish accent.

Tina Turner Live in San Bernadino 1993: "Legs" cover. I like that one.

Maigret S4 E8 "The log of the Cap Fagnet (1963)". The trawler with the lost cabin boy one.

Last 5 minutes of "The flight of the phoenix (2004)" wherein, rather than an actual cobbled together plane, there was an animated plane and radio controlled models. But at least the animation didn't kill anyone unlike the prior venture in 1965, though the model nearly killed a camera person.

First hour of "Darkest Hour (2017)" with that Gary Oldman.

More Blazian bollox: Holy Marvels with Dennis Quaid. Ark of the Covenant (the one that buried in the money pit, apparently). The Holy Grail, of course, being stored along side said ark in the money pit. The Holy Spear. Excalibur. etc. etc.

Battle Treasures: Parachutists Caterpillar club. Martin Baker ejection seat presentation watch. Mention of the Goldfish Club.

Battle Treasures: gas mask used in the Iranian Embassy siege. Gold plated "Dragunov" rifle from Sadam's collection "Al Kadesih". Umbrella and cross drilled sphere similar the one used on London Bridge in the late 1970s to kill Gregori Markov.

Cold War thing on Alba. Atoms for Peace & all that bollox.

Well there we are: the zionists didn't quite get their act together this time. No doubt they'll bomb Gaza and Lebanon and oppress the Palestinians in the West Bank to make up for the disappointment. I'm with the Irish et al on this.

[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 drive you to a frenzy. It’s good though, albeit probably more interesting if you’re Korean, and based on a true story - though I think the filmmakers had to be careful not to upset governments on both sides by adding an extensive disclaimer at the start. Is it really true that the government in the South paid several million dollars for Kim Jong Il to fire mortars into the DMZ a few days before an election? Would he really have accepted such a deal because he wanted to ensure the conservatives won so he had somebody against whom to rattle his sabres? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me

This was followed by a rewatch of Jupiter Ascending (2015). Spoiler alert I suppose, but I like the notion that the planet Earth is, in fact, owned by a stateless illegal immigrant

And then the next episode of Pluribus in which certain recondite limitations of the invaders are suggested if you pay attention, and the chap from the cold open several episodes ago moves closer to becoming a player

Goodnight all

[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, around quarter to nine, I refreshed the Royal Mail app to see if there was any update that would explain its non-appearance - and it turned out it had arrived an hour earlier! There was even a photo of it just outside, on the doormat. I can only assume they must have tiptoed up to the door to leave it there, despite it being pretty large, because I was watching S2E1 of the documentary about the ferry Estonia in Swedish with subtitles, so the TV wasn’t turned up particularly loud and I’m sure I would have heard if he’d knocked

Anyway, I decided this was no time of night to start unpacking vintage letterpress machinery, so I shoved the box out of the way in the study and got on with finishing making the bed

[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 it’s been partly remade. I just need to re-cover the duvet and encase the pillows

[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 become redundant when a new whiz-bang thing goes live next year. But we all know how those big this-one-does-everything projects tend to go