Reply to: test please delete

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Grey.

Dark.

Dank.

Dreary.

Damp.

Sunless.

Cool in here at 18.9 deg, 20.5 in the kitchen, 17.5 in the leanto.

998 mBar, 29.47 in Hg, 748.56 Torr, 14.4747 psi, (down from 1000 last night), 71% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 5th of November 2019 BR14 was watching A British Guide to the End of the World, all good clean fun.

[WTFH]

Morning all

A bit wet out. Delaying the perambulation until it eases, or maybe I’ll just let Max have a swim in the garden.

[xoggoth]

Went with Loony Lady 3 to cinema last night to see Blink Twice. We left less than half way through, such an awful film and the sound was so loud.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was That Thing You Do! (1996) about a small-town band in the mid 1960s achieving a smash hit with their first single when it gets picked up by a major record company (represented by Tom Hanks, who also directed). A jolly nice film, and the eponymous song is great - I'm now wondering how long it will take to get it out of my head

And as the new Planet of the Apes film is now available without having to go to a cinema and catch Covid-19, I've started building up to it by rewatching the Caesar trilogy which began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

And then a further episode of S4 of The Wire

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Get yourself to Gordon’s Wine Bar.

Looks like a nice place but I don't see any real ales listed on their website, just a lot of wine

[ladymuck]

Get yourself to Gordon’s Wine Bar.

Anyway, TFBSZ

That place has been on my to-visit list for years

[WTFH]

Charing Cross.

Get yourself to Gordon’s Wine Bar.

Anyway, TFBSZ

[NickFitz]

Tea has been chicken in red wine sauce with chips and peas

Accompanied by a bit of Trucking Hell

And I see I neglected to record lunch, probably because of the excitement of the official email. It was a cold chicken leg with a bag of plain crisps. The soup has now been divvied up and has become six good-sized portions

[NickFitz]

It's turned very Simpsonesque here now, though it's still a bit breezy judging from the trees

[NickFitz]

If it's convenient, I could swing by the train station / pub / wherever and give you that Jeff Vandermeer trilogy I've been hanging onto for years

Excellent idea! Not sure what the exact plan is yet, but it'll almost certainly be somewhere around Whitehall/Trafalgar Square/Charing Cross. And if they turn out to be lightweights, I could head somewhere else later in the evening - my last train back that doesn't take forever because of electrification works is around 22:30, and I doubt we'll be knocking off and leaving the Admiralty any later than 17:00, so plenty of time for gallivanting around London

[ladymuck]

And I shall be going down to London on Wednesday where we are having a meeting to discuss "lessons learned" - though in reality, it's mainly an excuse for all of us to meet in person for the first time and let those who haven't visited the Admiralty before have a look at the place, before going down the pub

If it's convenient, I could swing by the train station / pub / wherever and give you that Jeff Vandermeer trilogy I've been hanging onto for years

[NickFitz]

Word has finally come down from on high, so we're officially ready to start shutting things down

I've decided that I'd very much enjoy taking a few weeks off to recover from this nonsense, so I'll have to work out what the correct channels are. I think I tell my contract manager, but she doesn't work on Fridays - though that didn't stop her approving my timesheet a few minutes ago

Anyway, we need at least until the end of next week to tidy things away, and I'm already off the week after. The official email includes a lot of stuff to do but very little of it is down to me, as there are managers who will write "lessons learned" documents and so on; I just need to contribute my 2p-worth when asked.

As my main insight is that it was always going to be a lot more complicated than everybody expected because management never looked at it properly before starting and wouldn't give us any people who could have told them this, it's probably best that I'm not going to be doing the final writeup

For the most part, I'll just be asking other people to dispose of stuff then waiting until they say they've done it. I daresay I can manage that by this time next week

And I shall be going down to London on Wednesday where we are having a meeting to discuss "lessons learned" - though in reality, it's mainly an excuse for all of us to meet in person for the first time and let those who haven't visited the Admiralty before have a look at the place, before going down the pub

[ladymuck]

Forgot to say: brunch was a cholesterol laden delight. Streaky bacon, scrambled eggs and bread fried in the bacon fat.

I need to make some more bread. Last week's experiment worked out well albeit with room for improvement.

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Dry and sunny. Wispy cloud scurrying past, occasionally being chased by a lumper cousin. Cloud cover set to increase as the day progresses. Currently 22 degrees and that's the high for the day. Barometer remains at 1004 mBar.

My weather app is showing a rainfall warning for pretty much the whole south-east corner of the UK. This appears to be for tomorrow where the forecast is 100% chance of rain, all day.

If I had enough laundry to do, today would be a good drying day.

[NickFitz]

Nothing to do before standup except glance through the Go Live checklist, seeing if there was anything we'd done that will have to be undone that I hadn't already thought of; didn't find anything

Then during standup we mainly talked about festivals, as the PM and DM are each going to one this weekend, one in London and one in Bristol

With that important matter dealt with, the most senior person present said that there'd still been zero communication from the more senior people so pending any further updates, we could just enjoy a nice relaxing Friday

I decided that I'd feel more relaxed if I knew there was a good reserve of chocolate peanut clusters around the place, so I drove over to M&S. They've been extensively remodelling the store recently, with a much bigger and shinier Food Hall now open and looking very impressive. This meant I had to spend ages wandering around working out where everything is now but despite my extreme dislike of such changes, I eventually granted it my seal of approval

I also popped into the menswear section where the same cognitive dissonance initially applied, but some wandering around in confusion paid off in the end. I got a pair of chinos, a belt, and a shirt - at which point, when queuing to pay, I discovered that they now have self-checkouts for clothes! A great improvement in my view, as it always used to take ages while the people ahead were asked if they wanted the hanger

And so home again, where the aroma of the soup has even permeated slightly out on to the landing. I've carried out an assessment and the lentils will need a bit longer, so I now need to decide which of the various delights I garnered at M&S will form lunch