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[NickFitz]

They deigned to give us some wildlife programming today, having apparently used up all their Christmas stuff too early

And later, I watched the final “making of” episode of Kingdom on iPlayer

Tonight’s reading has been Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade, about the loss of a container ship in the Caribbean in 2015: “Thirty-three mariners, one megastorm, and the sinking of El Faro”

Goodnight all

[xoggoth]

Woody volunteery thing this morning, was nice and sunny. Got a nice hug from a youngish lady cos she broke my spade. Well worth it.

PS Santa Claus, Elves and Reindeer are all going on strike this year.

[NickFitz]

Tea was brought to me from KFC

Quite a lot of leftovers too, due to it being a festive special offer

[NickFitz]

Ah, the forum’s recovered then? I wasn’t sure if the above had posted or not

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Sunny day out, though with a fair number of clouds hanging around. It’s still a little breezy, which allegedly makes the current 7°C “feel like” 2°. But that’s as high as it's going to get today, so we just have to make the most of it. The barometers are trivially down at 999/1007mB

I’m having croissants with strawberry jam for breakfast

[WTFH]

Afternoon all
Sunshine and a few clouds blowing through.
Washing on the line, base for gravy in the oven.

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Blue sky with occasional fluffs and wisps. Currently 9 degrees and that's the high for the day. Cloud cover set to increase this afternoon. Barometer down to 1011 mBar.

Sunrise 08:04; Sunset 15:54 GMT

Lazy start to the day. Had a strange dream this morning, which I can still remember - that's very unusual for me.

Steeling myself for a visit to Westfield shopping centre at Shepherd's Bush. I don't want to go but it offers the greatest chance I'll get of picking up cards and a couple of small gifts.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Donald E. Weslake: now there's a rave from the grave. "The Hot Rock" and "Point Blank".

Morning.

Saturday apparently.

Sunny. .

Damp.

Blue sky. .

Chilly in here at 13.6 deg, 12.5 in the kiitchen, 10 in the leanto.

1005.5 mBar, 29.69 in Hg, 754.2 Torr, 14.584 psi, (untapped), 68% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 6th of March 2020 BR14, LM and Anonimouse popped in, NF had some rather unsatisfactory Pukka steak & kidney pie (glutinous) & chips (left too long after being cooked) in celebration of pie week whatever that is, and I watched an Eastwood epic "Bloodwork", whilst NF was back into Scandinoir.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: FOOC. Followed by book, which, thank feck, is now in the Oxfam pile.

Just think: if they hadn't locked Adams in a room for several weeks we could have got away with not having that pile o'tulipe inflicted on us.

Thank feck I never bothered with books 5 & 6 (this last being written when Adams was in his coffin: it's never too late to flog a dead donkey author).

There's a 1* review on goodreads where someone went to a bookshop to order book 5 & the bookseller told them to get it from the library so they wouldn't waste their money, thus proving there are decent people left in the world.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in greyish gloom. Chilly out there.

Entertainment: "Cursed Treasures": Hope Diamond, Koh-i-noor diamond.

Tea: soup etc. Entertainment: PM.

Maigret "Voices from the past (1962)". The one about the dead count with a long long affair with a lady. Don't recall seeing this version before.

Book. Other book.

The big xmas freeze of 1962/3. Oh joyous time. 6 weeks off skool coz the bogs were frozen.

[NickFitz]

Weird scenes inside the goldmine tonight, as the living room “smart bulb” glows an ominous red whenever I turn it “off” and I have to turn it off properly at the wall to stop the place looking like a brothel

Anyway, tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Play Dirty (2025) on Amazon Prime. I was a bit hesitant about this as Prime heist movies can be a bit crap, but then I saw in the opening credits that it was based on stories by Richard Stark. So that’s alright then! Richard Stark was one of the several pen names used by the American writer Donald E. Westlake for stuff that didn’t fit into his usual brand, and the stuff he wrote under that name was mainly about a character called Parker who was a somewhat psychopathic criminal, and that’s the main character in the film. And it’s better than the average heist movie, I reckon

Westlake’s usual style under his own name was humorous stuff about New York petty criminals trying to enact heists which proved to be beyond their capabilities and landed them in ridiculous situations. I first came across his work when my Dad came back from one of his visits to his publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, in 1977 with a copy of Nobody's Perfect which was to be published a couple of months later and is a kind of pastiche of Joyce’s Ulysses in the context I just described. Very clever, and very funny. I enjoyed it so much (which I can’t say for Ulysses because I’ve never got more than about forty pages into that before giving up) that I then read every Westlake novel Bedford Library had, which was a lot, but we didn’t have Wikipedia back then so I didn’t know he also wrote stories under other names. The Richard Stark thing is quite weird, as Stark’s style was very different to his own, and in the 1970s he suddenly found himself unable to “channel” that author any more. So no new novels “by” Stark appeared for about twenty years, until the 1990s when he found himself able to write that way again after working on a film script in a similar vein

After that, I rewatched A Complete Unknown (2024) because I was in the mood for some Dylan and it’s a good film if you’re into Dylan

And then the penultimate episode of Alien: Earth, which continues to be not as good as it could have been, which is a shame

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been steak with fried onions and chips

This was accompanied by more of Apollo 13: Survival on Netflix, which I started watching a few days ago - maybe even last week. It’s a documentary that proclaims that it’s made using only original recordings, photos, and footage, which is true enough. But they still do things like stretching out the time between Odyssey saying “We’ve had a problem” and Houston replying “Say again” by an extra couple of seconds to increase dramatic tension, so not wholly factual

[NickFitz]

Late lunch, now the bread has cooled down: a roast beef sandwich. The bread has turned out very nicely, light but not too bubbly, with a lovely crisp crust

[NickFitz]

The bread has been baked. For some reason, it’s risen significantly more in the middle than at the ends, resulting in a profile somewhat reminiscent of the Paramount logo. I’m sure it’ll be fine though; it’s now cooling down

[ladymuck]

I am trying to decide whether to return some espresso cups I bought for HWMBO. They were advertised as being 90ml in capacity - perfect for him as his coffee machine is configured to pour 40ml espresso shots, and he likes a double espresso. However, the label on the cups said 'capacity 8cl'. I tested this and confirmed that the cup volume is indeed 10ml less than advertised.

They are very lovely but I don't know if his morning coffee will overflow and be a nuisance. I suppose I could let him decide.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Clear blue sky today, barring the merest wisps low on the horizon to the east. The wind has settled down a bit too, though it’ll get up again later. It’s 6°C which “feels like” 0° and expected to soar to a balmy 9° by lunchtime; the barometers seem optimistic, being up to 1000/1008mB

First order of business when I awoke this morning (after setting the coffee to brew, of course) was to get a white loaf started in the breadmaker. I’ve been meaning to make one all week but kept on forgetting

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Blue sky with some fluff here and there. Damp from overnight rain. Currently 8 degrees ('feels like' 5) with a high of 11 expected. Barometer up to 1015 mBar.

Sunrise 08:04; Sunset 15:53 GMT

Knackered today. Woke around 4.30 am and, whilst I dozed, I never properly got back to sleep.