Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight I started reading Heathern by Jack Womack, which may or may not be the next book in the Dryco series after Random Acts of Senseless Violence. William Gibson thinks it's a different one that comes second, but other sources reckon this one is second and the Gibson one is third. And to make things a little less clear, this one was the third to be written, while the Gibson one was first, and Random Acts… was fifth to be written but is, everybody agrees, first

Anyway, it seems OK from the first four chapters, though not as immediately engaging as Random Acts… was. Good enough that I shall persevere with it

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

Busy afternoon but I don't feel like much was achieved. Especially as I didn't get done the things I was hoping to do. Maybe tomorrow will be more productive.

[ladymuck]

Was pleasantly surprised to get a letter saying I will get the winter fuel allowance, thought they stopped that. Then did a Google and found that HMRC will just claw it back by changing my tax code as my income is over £35k. Grrr!!!!!

You could have opted out but the deadline for that has now passed. That would have prevented HMRC tinkering with your tax code.

[xoggoth]

Was pleasantly surprised to get a letter saying I will get the winter fuel allowance, thought they stopped that. Then did a Google and found that HMRC will just claw it back by changing my tax code as my income is over £35k. Grrr!!!!!

[NickFitz]

New series of Ambulance on iPlayer klaxon!

Tea has been pork cutlet with chips and beans

This was accompanied by the rest of the Police Interceptors I started watching last night

And the bed is made, all but the pillows, which I shall sort out shortly. This involved switching to the two-thirds duvet, as it seems unlikely we'll be getting any further heatwaves this year

[NickFitz]

Lunch was a Pukka steak slice

Change of plan on the laundry front, as I can't be bothered doing a jeans wash and there's no need to today

I have, however, stripped the bed and left it to air. So I might stick the bedding in the wash later

[NickFitz]

Says the man Who Went For A Country Walk, where, as we all know, he might have been abducted by aliens, crushed to death by rampaging cows, or fallen down some unmapped mine shaft.

You can't be too careful Out There. .

True! Though at least there weren't any other people out there and that's worth taking a few risks for. That footpath doesn't seem to be used much, possibly because of the treacherous bridge

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It's been raining all night and into the morning, but seems as if it's petered out now. It's been quite windy too, enough that the current 9°C "feels like" 1° though; the expected high is 11°. Unsurprisingly, the barometers are down at 975/983mB

The mundane laundry is on. When that's done, I shall pop some jeans in - the ones I wore yesterday are a bit muddy in places

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Overcast. Wet. Windy. Currently 9 degrees ('feels like' 6) with a high of 12 expected. Rain will come and go for much of the day. Barometer down to 982 mBar.

Sunrise 07:39; Sunset 17:51 BST

Busy day expected as I need to do things that I've been avoiding. One requires me figuring out how to graphically represent some data, and another is figuring out an approach for measuring a project's benefits.

[DoctorStrangelove]

This is why I don't go anywhere or do anything

Says the man Who Went For A Country Walk, where, as we all know, he might have been abducted by aliens, crushed to death by rampaging cows, or fallen down some unmapped mine shaft.

You can't be too careful Out There. .

We won't mention Banjo Players. .

Morning.

Thursday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

Calm.

Where's this storm then? Just askin' like.

16.6 deg in here, 15.5 in the kitchen, 13.5 in the leanto.

987 mBar, 29.15 in Hg, 740.3 Torr, 14.32 psi, (up from 982 last night), 61% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 25th of February I watched "Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)" plus the little doumentary about Pitcairn Island made by ?MGM? in 1935 which showed the use of a spark transmitter for comms (now illegal), the house stank of the kippers I had for tea despite the extractor fan having been on full blast (never had this problem when my gran cooked them over the fire), and NF had either cod or haddock for tea, and LM thought the dampness on the ground probably wasn't due to snow.

It must be said that this sore throat thing is hanging on in there & getting a bit old now.

It's odd how each and every bat plague infection causes the injection site to be a bit sore/tingly a few days before the full blown symptoms appear. Odd.

The blue sky and sunshine went away to be replaced by grey skies and rain.

No walk today.

Lunch: brunch. "Entertainment": that thing about the remarkably rapid demise of an old chap who had oesophageal cancer which had spread. (Killed one of my grandfathers: saved the country thousands: he was 64). Stone me. That was grim.

Raining.

Sun came out.

Raining again.

Sun's out.

Tea: beans on toast etc. Entertainment: that science thing. PM.

A Look at Life: rope. Nylon, polypropylene, manila, cotton, sisal. No mention of hemp.

Classic Movies: "The life & death of Colonel Blimp".

Discovering Donald Siegel.

Discovering Jon Voight

Seems chillier out there this evening.

[WTFH]

Morning all
8C when we went out earlier and the forecast was for heavy rain, so I was dressed for that. In the end it was just a few light showers. Sky appears to be clearing a bit now, but I'm not expecting it to be weather for hanging out washing.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was Open Water (2003) in which a couple of SCUBA divers are left behind by their tour boat and discover that the ocean isn't much to their liking after all. A lot of blame is placed on the tour operators who got the head count wrong. I would simply point out that these people had a perfectly good house that they could have stayed in, but chose instead to go On Holiday and Do Stuff. Their home had neither sea water nor sharks in it, yet they willingly went somewhere that had both, and faced the consequences. This is why I don't go anywhere or do anything

And then a rewatch of Companion (2025). It's still very good and very funny, at least by the standards of most of the robot-gone-off-on-one films we see so much of nowadays

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Evening with sister at pub. She paid!

I've paid for two of the last three times we've had a family outing, which we only manage once or twice a year. I reckon I should be safe for at least a couple of years now

Then again, my sister and her husband do such a cracking job of Christmas that it must count for a couple of outings in its own right, so they're off the hook. We're going to have to start expecting the nieces to pay for stuff at this rate, but that doesn't seem right somehow

[xoggoth]

Evening with sister at pub. She paid!

[NickFitz]

For tea tonight, I popped round to the kebab shop

And to go with this, some new Police Interceptors