Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

More of Parable of the Talents read tonight, in which something good happened for a change - though it brought with it a foreshadowing of something bad…

I think today was the first day my system was completely clear of that cholesterol drug, as I felt much better and didn’t have any inexplicable bouts of tiredness!

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

My John Lewis credit card got hacked earlier. 17:35 an attempt to buy something from JL themselves. The card stopped it as suspicious. An hour later and 100+ transactions attempted to go through, one for a samsonite case, one for a graphics card, the rest were subscriptions to substacks along with multiple attempts to order from Aliexpress.
Card is now frozen and password reset for the email associated with it.

If anyone knows (or lives close to Rowland Hill Avenue, London, N17 7LU, and fancies picking up a suitcase, let me know!

[NickFitz]

Tea has been chicken madras with rice and naan

To go with this, another NYPD homicide case, this time about a cleaner in an office block in the Wall Street area who got into the lift with her trolley at the start of her shift, and disappeared

[ladymuck]

And I was most surprised to see a Crouch Recovery van (not a truck) whilst driving along the A280 that runs between Patching and Clapham. "That's a bit far from their usual patch", I thought.

[ladymuck]

After a lovely lunch with an old friend I haven't seen for nearly a year, I popped back to Mum's to bring the washing in and put it away, and then headed home. Currently in West London it's 32 degrees and the high was 34. I should have stayed on the coast where it's 10 degrees cooler!

Oddly, my basil plants survived the week quite well but my chilli plants are looking very sorry for themselves. I don't think they flowered enough for me to get a decent crop, sadly.

My own laundry has been done and is out on the airer in the garden.

[xoggoth]

Typical morning, spent with a couple of old lady neighbours, playing Scrabble.

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been a bit of leftover chicken chasseur, cold

[NickFitz]

This morning’s grand accomplishment has been securing the washing machine drain hose to the back of the cupboard under the sink

The hose connects to the sink drain, which isn’t ideal but that’s how it is. The problem was that the way the hose wanted to lie would gradually turn the thing it’s attached to until the hose itself was sagging, meaning waste water would collect in there, leading to an unpleasant smell of drains filling the kitchen when the washing machine expelled water, especially if it hadn’t been used for a few days in hot weather

The thing it’s connected to turns reasonably freely, without compromising its watertightness, and when the machine was installed last year it was left pointing up but had gradually moved round. This also meant the drooping hose was in the way. So I bought some hose brackets off Amazon (I only needed one for this but they came in a bag of loads of them) and have been meaning to get around to sorting it out.

However, the place where I needed to drill to attach the bracket is at the far back of the cupboard. It’s not too hard to reach if you’re reasonably limber, which is how I discovered that if I ever was limber, I’m not now

But with some awkward contortions I eventually managed to drill in the right place and get the back of the bracket screwed on. And once I’d carefully turned the hose upwards to get it into position across the bracket, I was able to get the front of the bracket in place and bolt it on, so now it’s sorted!

The dishwasher’s on at the moment and I don’t trust my third floor water supply to handle that and the washing machine if they both ask for water simultaneously. But once that’s done, I’ll run a fluff-clearing cycle just to make sure I haven’t inadvertently introduced any leaks

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s a sunny start with some bits of fluff hither and yon, and already building up to be a hot one. Currently 23°C, it’s expected to reach 29° for much of the afternoon, though after today it’ll slip back to the low-to-mid twenties for the foreseeable future (which is nine days, according to the weather app). The barometers are down a bit to 1002/1010mB

[ladymuck]

Morning all

No cloud but a gentle breeze. Currently 23 degrees ('feels like' 25) with a high of 24 expected. Barometer down to 1015 mBar.

Sunrise 05:24; Sunset 20:52 BST

On chatting with my brother yesterday afternoon in case our paths don't cross between me leaving and him getting back, I discovered that Mum's bedsheets needed changing so yet more laundry was done. This morning, I have stripped my brother's bed and put fresh linen on it and the stuff I've been sleeping in is in the WM. Glad it's good drying weather.

That bed is ancient, actually it's as old as my car. I bought it when I moved into a house I bought in Goring-by-Sea in 2004. Then I took it with me to London in 2014. In 2016 HWMBO and I started dating and I realised that a 6'4" bloke is never going to be comfy in a standard double so, when I moved to my second flat in Kensington, I bought a king size bed and my Dad claimed the bed as his one was knackered. And so it has remained in my parent's house ever since. I spent £1500 on it in 2004, I'd say we've had our money's worth.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday.

Damp.

Wanly sunny.

Was whitely cloudy now tending to blackly cloudy with small patches of bluely cloudy.

22.4 deg in here, 23.75 in the kitchen, 22 in the leanto, 20 deg out the back, 19.6 in the saltinghouse.

1008.5 mBar, 29.78 in Hg, 756.44 Torr, 14.63 psi, (down from 1010 last night), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of April 2020 AndyGarbs, Brillo, Churchill, and WTFH popped in.

That's the good news: unfortunately there are even more pages of April 2nd than there were of April 1st.

Washing frenzy in progress.

Walk (abbreviated: 3 miles) walked in the greyish gloom and intermittent sunshine. Pleasant enough.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: This Week in History: 1921 dear old Adolph joined the Nazi party. Well whatever could go wrong there then?

Sky Arts: Movies E3. Lots of those I've never watched, never even heard of. Others I have & have never watched.

That requiring the iRon has received it.

Entertainment: Shoes from 2007: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b008k0r4

I wonder how many of those companies are still going: the answer being: quite a lot. Though only expensive handmade shoes. If you have to ask the price you can't afford it.

All the run of the mill stuff went to China long ago. Including DMs.

Jack Hargreaves Old Country: dogs: setters, pointers. Some sort of French spaniel he imported. Showed said dog on its first autumn outing to flush pheasants, the one flushed was duly shot.

Tea: Tesco battered haddock. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM. UFO bollox on Blaze (the last of that particular brand of bollox). Dan Do: inneresting house that incorporated bits of old castle, two other less inneresting houses.

Bit of a thing about the Marie Celeste: this theory: the crew left after alcohol vapours exploded in the hold.

Jack Hargreaves Out of Town: he mentions how viewers had identified a curious iron construction as "A drain donkey" used to clear out drain pipes, though google reckons it's used to clear the bottom of a ditch to allow pipes to be laid. How a chalk stream rises and how it was restored by reducing the amount of pumping from the aquifer. Visits a market: livestock, assorted junk, etc. Felt rather sorry for the animals. Like my grandfather I wouldn't be the one chopping the heads off the chickens.

He mentions the River Misbourne as being defunct: in the subsequent 40 odd years it's been restored a bit (assuming I spelled it right).

Bab5 S2 E15 "And now for a word" (from our sponsor). ISN comes to Bab5 at an inneresting time.

PBS: bit of Lewis & Clarke E4/4. Bit of Horatio's Drive: America's first road trip (from coast to coast).

"The Gunpowder Plot" with Lucy Worsley. Trust in the lord & keep your powder dry. .

Britain's X Files: more Blazian bollox. Dowsing in WWII (stiffs & bomb detection). The Flying Dutchman. The Death Ray (Harry Grindell-Matthews). Some other bollox I probably dozed through.

[WTFH]

Morning all
Very misty when we went out, with a lot of damp on the grass and trees.
That burned off on our walk, and it's going to be another warm one.

[NickFitz]

Midweek (well, nearly) movie night’s premiere was Relay (2024) in which Riz Ahmed acts as an intermediary between corrupt big businesses and people who have information that could harm them. This is an excellent thriller, taut and suspenseful, eschewing fights and car chases in favour of an ever-building sense of paranoia and menace. Well worth putting on your watchlist

And then a further episode of Silo. I had thought I was only behind by one season but realised the other day that there are three seasons now and I’m still on S1, so I suppose I ought to get a move on

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been M&S pre-digested chicken chasseur, with chips and peas. Nice enough

And lunch was an M&S steak slice, which was OK but not as good as a Greggs steak bake - maybe not even quite as good as the Pukka variant, though close

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s sunny yet also cloudy out, and going to be a hot one: already at 24°C, it’ll reach 28° for much of the afternoon. There’s a bit of a breeze, but not as much as yesterday. The barometers are up a bit at 1007/1015mB

I slept soundly until just before 10am this morning, and awoke feeling refreshed - I think the new drug that was making me so tired must be largely out of my system now

But speaking of getting things out of my system, I still hadn’t got around to dropping off a new piss sample at the GP, though at least I got around to getting the jar for it last Friday; I don’t think they’re open for such things at the weekend, and I forgot about it yesterday morning. So I duly gathered that, and have dropped it off at the surgery - somewhere I feel I’ve visited a lot lately

There was an adult magpie hanging around next to the gate from the park to the surgery which had a vaguely hangdog air about it. Upon closer inspection, its feathers looked rather scruffy. This is the time of year when adults moult, so I think it was just a little embarrassed to be seen out and about in such a state