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Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Locked (2025) in which down-at-heel Bill Skarsgård takes advantage of the unlocked door of a luxury SUV to see if there’s anything worth nicking, only to find it’s no longer unlocked when he tries to leave… for it is a trap car! And not a police trap car, but one controlled by the elderly and vengeful Anthony Hopkins. So as if his life wasn’t bad enough already, now he’s stuck and trying to placate a Welshman. This was pretty good, I thought; there were two or three moments when I thought it got a bit silly or out of kilter, but overall I thought it was worth watching. Free With Prime at the moment
After that, a rewatch of The Accountant 2 (2025). As I probably said when I first watched this, it lacks something the original had; though having never got around to getting a degree in Film Studies, I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it is that it lacks. It’s still good to very good, just not perfect
Finally, S1E2 of Silo. This still shows promise, so I shall continue to assume that the somewhat slow building of the story will pay off in the end
Today has largely been devoted to dealing with some stuff for the new forum software
Lunch was the rest of the cold cocktail sausages left over from yesterday
It’s sunny here but not as hot, so I thought it would be safe to go round to Little Sainsbury’s as I forgot to buy any ice creams when I did the shopping, and I had a feeling I’d fancy one over the weekend. Turns out it’s still very warm if you go walking in the sun. Who knew?
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and as I was already most of the way there, I carried on to the kebab shop; so tea has been kebab and chips
And I’m just watching the end of the final episode of the Estonia thing, in which additional investigations of the wreck by the authorities seem to be doing little to quell the conspiracy theories
Cloudy but sunny. A gentle breeze wafts. Currently 19 degrees ('feels like' 23) with a high of 24 expected. Barometer steady at 1022 mBar.
Sunrise 04:52; Sunset 21:06 BST
Terrible night's sleep. Woke around 3.30 am, way too hot and never really cooled down. There was zero breeze wafting about at that time and definitely none of this rain that some are getting.
Today is invoicing day for gigs1 and 2. Gig3 is weekly auto billing but I still raise an invoice in my system.
Thanks for that - I forgot to raise the invoice in my system for this gig this month..
But the council still haven’t managed to introduce a legally-mandated food waste collection scheme, and don’t expect to for another couple of years. I’m not even sure how it will work for somewhere like this, with fifty-odd flats across three blocks, none of which faces directly onto a public road. Will they expect us all to dump our potato peelings and pizza crusts in a huge mound at the end of the drive?
RBKC, back when I lived there, had a half-hearted food waste collection scheme that was only available to houses. Blocks of flats were excluded because the collection of said waste wasn't feasible.
Here in Ealing, I've not seen anything to say that blocks of flats are excluded. I make good use of the the food waste recycling but then I'm just in a house that's been converted into two flats with sufficient space out front for the bins.
Cloudy but sunny. A gentle breeze wafts. Currently 19 degrees ('feels like' 23) with a high of 24 expected. Barometer steady at 1022 mBar.
Sunrise 04:52; Sunset 21:06 BST
Terrible night's sleep. Woke around 3.30 am, way too hot and never really cooled down. There was zero breeze wafting about at that time and definitely none of this rain that some are getting.
Today is invoicing day for gigs1 and 2. Gig3 is weekly auto billing but I still raise an invoice in my system.
It’s a cloudy day out, and isn’t expected to be as hot: currently 17°C (“feels like” 13°) with an expected high of 22°, which is a bit more tolerable. It seems rather close though and there’s been some light showers, though no more expected and the sun is due to put in an appearance in the late afternoon and evening. The barometers are down to 1010/1017mB
I just saw today's lady of the bins a-trundling from block to block; she only had a black bin with her, confirming my expectation that the recycling bins will all be too full again after the Bank Holiday weekend. I reckon the council need to make the same adjustment I did a few years ago when I got a smaller pedal bin for general waste and repurposed the tall bin as the recycling one. I did this when I realised that with the greater variety of stuff that was collected for recycling plus the shift in packaging, I was now putting out a lot more recyclable stuff than black bag stuff. The allocation of bins to places with lots of flats needs to make a similar shift, as our recycling bins usually seem to be all full by Sunday even on normal weeks. I reckon they could take away a third of our quota of black bins and replace them with orange ones, and the balance would be about right
But the council still haven’t managed to introduce a legally-mandated food waste collection scheme, and don’t expect to for another couple of years. I’m not even sure how it will work for somewhere like this, with fifty-odd flats across three blocks, none of which faces directly onto a public road. Will they expect us all to dump our potato peelings and pizza crusts in a huge mound at the end of the drive?
22.9 deg in here, 24 in the kitchen, 21.5 in the leanto.
1015 mBar, 29.97 in Hg, 761.3 Torr, 14.72 psi, (up from 1013 last night), 67% RH (Lidl electric).
Meanwhile on the 28th of March 2020 Brillo popped in a lot, along with BR14, eek, and LM.
Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the pleasantly grey gloom until the last half mile when the fecking sun came out.
Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: the food programme.
Bit of cleaning of grandparents' graves: the brambles have grown like topsy in the last 6 weeks or so. Duly received the attentions of Agent Orange. We shall await results with innerest.
The Japanese honeysuckle in my garden had another quick spray to gee it up a little.
Book. Other book.
Tea: chilli con carne etc. Entertainment: UFO bollox on Blaze: this one included Skinwalker Ranch and the Anasazi buildings. 18 o'clock news.
News Quiz.
Taggart S12 E1,2,3 "Leg Ends". The 60s rock band murders. Seemed a bit meh without the star.
Morning all
TFIF, etc.
Some very thin cloud this morning, and about 4 hours ago we had a series of sharp but heavy showers. Not enough to do much watering of the garden, but enough to leave damp patches on the road.
In The Middle Kingdoms, things haven’t gone well for Poland-Lithuania, which has been divvied up by Prussia, Russia, and Austria (those Habsburgs again). But they didn’t have much time to enjoy their spoils because look out, here comes Napoleon!
It’s cooling down here now, assisted by quite a vigorous breeze
In other news, I think I saw the new magpie family today! One of the adults was down on the lawn and there were what appeared to be two fledgling magpies further away on the other side. But this was just after I’d got back from shopping and I had to get back to work so I didn’t have time to check out the situation properly
The roses are also doing very well, prompting one to reach for clichés like “a riot of colour”
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