
The new jump-start battery pack thing I’d bought looks a lot chunkier and generally competent than the cheaper old ones, and sure enough, it got it started without batting an eyelid and still showed a full charge afterwards when I plugged it into the fag lighter to top it up

With that done, I wanted to drive by a suitably long and circuitous route to ensure the car battery could get properly charged, so I decided to go anticlockwise round the outer ring road, such as it is. This was mainly because that gave me an excuse to take a detour up the residential road in the northwest of the city that’s lined with Giant Redwoods, which I’ve been meaning to go and have a look at for years. The road follows what was once the course of the main drive to the local big house when that area was still a village, and the trees date from then. They’re nowhere near fully mature yet, but they looked nice as it was very sunny, which really brought out their colouring

So onwards round the city, including finally seeing a bit of road lined with those flags of St. George that fascists seem to have been hanging everywhere except here. These were in the estate where you’ll find the types who rant about immigrants causing crime. For as long as I’ve been here, though, there’s been a roughly 60 to 80% probability that any story in the local paper about either petty crime or drunken murder will involve somebody who lives around there, or maybe just grew up there

I finally made it to M&S, where the phone app still resolutely refuses to self-scan things; I don’t know if it’s the rubbish in-store wi-fi, though that’s the most likely culprit. Anyway, I’m resigned now to just stuffing things in my bag like a blatant shoplifter, then having to tip it out and start again at the self-checkouts

And onwards to Sainsbury’s. I realised this morning, when somebody on Bluesky tweeted about Viz arriving in the post, that I’d got my dates mixed up and it won’t be in the shops until this Thursday. Anyway, I got various bits, though the refurbishment is still going on, which means I’m forgetting stuff because my entire shopping process has been refined over more than twenty-five years to depend on specific parts of my route around the store triggering the memory that I need something from that bit

It’s very sunny and Simpsonesque out now but there’s also a decent breeze, making it just about bearable






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