This morning, and quite possibly this afternoon, I will mostly be assembling a flat pack ‘shorty’ bunk bed ensemble for the kids.

Big kid is applying to be a Digital Leader at school. In his application he wrote, ‘I want to be a Digital Leader because computing has inspired me to do what I do best. Which is computing.’ And, ‘I would be a goodgreat Digital Leader because I have infinet gigabyts of space."

Scored this bag of Akash Gold at the local Tesco Express. Light and fluffy indeed. Chilli sans carne was amazing. Big kid gave the rice 11/10.

Strong Irish backbone to this England team. Pickford (born Logan), Maguire, Rice, Grealish and Kane. Carsley should have said he won’t sing the English national anthem because he’s Irish.

FUNNY OLD GAME

In the good old days, football was a simple game. You had eleven players and a substitute numbered 1 to 12, no shirt advertising, a referee and two linesmen, a manager, a trainer, a physio, a scout or two, tea ladies, drinking culture, long hair and perms, the club chairman, a board of directors, a club secretary, a groundsman, a stadium in the beating heart of the town or city, fans, standing room only, electric atmospheres, matches on Saturday at three o’clock, live coverage on the radio, match reports in the Pink Final after the game, and highlights on Match of the Day at 10:30 the same night.

Achievement unlocked.

Handed my four year old a slice of ham for his lunch. “Yay! Pink chicken!” Now we know what he meant yesterday when he turned his nose up at spicy chicken and said “I like pink chicken!”

I started reading the Kindle sample for this, but immediately felt anxious that I should spend the remaining weeks of my life doing something more fun, productive, insightful, useful, anything but this… I had been planning to write about my impressions and such from listening to Four Thousand Weeks but I’m going to buy the book so that I can go through and make notes. While there was nothing that stood out as deeply profound, it was full of thought provoking points that made me want to go away and think a.

Noel plays his guitar as if he’s scared it will break, and Oasis’s funkless, sexless plod is always carefully pitched below the velocity at which fluid dynamics dictate that you might spill your lager. I like some Oasis stuff, the early stuff. I like some woke stuff. This quote and picture are true enough and funny, though.

Dead duck. An unpleasant walk in the midday sun by the canal yesterday. A few abandoned Lime Bikes (one with its front wheel missing). Depressing.

Emptying my Feedbin and stumbled across this epic from Christmas Day 2022. The one where Matthew moves out of Sawtell because it’s too posh and goes to live sober in a homeless shelter in Melbourne with a Croatian who speaks no English (or does he?). Reading Sunday 9 April 2023 | The Zero Room

TV SHOW OF INTEREST

Finally got around to watching the pilot episode of Person of Interest last night. Took a little while to get going and I almost gave up. Not a comedy at all, but I couldn’t help feeling it was somehow a little like Minority Report meet Police Squad!, and not in a bad way. Only another 102 episodes to go… Academics in Europe are continuing to work with Chinese counterparts on “clearly problematic” artificial intelligence #AI research in areas like biometric surveillance, cybersecurity, and military fields, a new analysis has found.

SPUDS UP!

We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty. Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.​ Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.

Well, the super secure new lock on our super expensive new front door failed catastrophically today. I couldn’t get my key out of the lock. We couldn’t lock the door. The local locksmith arrived within fifteen minutes, diagnosed the problem (“you need a new lock, £180”) and proceeded to spend the best part of an hour removing the broken extra secure lock (finally, reminiscent of the birth of my second son, “it’s out, I’ll have to charge a bit extra…").

Big Kids' Sports Day.

England. Always different, always the same.

Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories' Austerity policies. Political choices. The same choices. So much for change. Original link to the article from 11 years ago:

My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm. My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot. “Don’t vote Labour, Dad”. He looked some more. “There’s Joe!” he said. “VOTE FOR JOE!”

ELECTION FEVER

My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for. (Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead. It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue.

New e-scooter and cycle hire infrastructure in Southall Green. [Edit] Not the ideal location.

I used to be funny.

Bushmen came to cut the communal grass and fill my compost bin with the cuttings. #Winning

THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!

“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.” You. Absolute. Bastards. If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539

• drandrewv2@freeradical.zone, https://freeradical.zone/@drandrewv2/112449885402615520

One of the reasons we never visit the place where I grew up. “I just have to share?”?