Well, that was pretty terrible.
Plenty of echoes of the bad Dr Who episode Love and Monsters – as soon as they started with the radical shift in narrative voice P and I were eyeing each other. Neither of us liked Elton’s story much.
Torchwood is not shaping up. It’s pretty consistently dreadful. But I suspect we’ll still be watching it every week.
Tonight, we actually watched a fair bit of TV. Making the most of Freeview. Two episodes of Planet Earth, an old ep of West Wing.
Well, that was pretty terrible.
Plenty of echoes of the bad Dr Who episode Love and Monsters – as soon as they started with the radical shift in narrative voice P and I were eyeing each other. Neither of us liked Elton’s story much.
Torchwood is not shaping up. It’s pretty consistently dreadful. But I suspect we’ll still be watching it every week.
Tonight, we actually watched a fair bit of TV. Making the most of Freeview. Two episodes of Planet Earth, an old ep of West Wing.
I’ve taken a few more Smudge pictures to even the balance a little. Timid little cat!
So timid, that much of the time he won’t talk to us. He runs out of any room we see him in. I find myself singing Black to him – “No need to run / And hide”
He’s not that bright either, so the standard place for him to run to is the fish tank where he spends hours trying to catch the little fish, and clawing the polystyrene tiles out from under the tank. He’s so dim, he reminds us of the puppet playing Matt Damon in Team America.
After dark, however, and upstairs, on the bed, he becomes a whole other cat. But only then and only there. Suddenly he demands affection, purrs his little head off, headbutts you to make sure you don’t forget him, tramps up and down your body under the duvet, before finally settling down and purring some more.
For hours before bedtime, he hovers in the doorway of the bedroom, waiting for someone to go to bed. Every time anyone goes near, he jumps on the bed and starts the motorbike purr in anticipation of the rest of us turning on.
Today’s APOD, a lunar panorama, is particularly striking.
I spent my formative years playing this game on my Acorn Electron.
One day we took the game in to school and tried to play it on the BBC Micro, but it ran about 200 times quicker, and was a bit scary.
There were rooms in this game I couldn’t complete. I had to get Mum to help!
Well, that’s gonna have grabbed the attention of all the RSSers, innit. I don’t have one, to be clear from the outset.
But I do have a headache I’ve had for nine days now.
I’ve had the headache on working days and weekends. Days I’ve had a drink and sober days. Days working with computers, days not working computers. I’ve even had it on the day when I didn’t have coffee for breakfast. I only found this out because I ran out of coffee, it’s not like I chose not to have coffee.
I don’t always have it first thing in the morning, but it comes back in the afternoons, and is always there by bedtime.
It’s unlikely to be a brain tumour, and is more likely attributable to stress, caffeine, lifestyle or diet.
It’s not the worst headache I’ve ever had, nor is it even slightly debilitating. It’s just annoying.
But I’ve still being roleplaying conversations with the doctor whilst driving home at the dead of night.
“You have a malignant, inoperable brain tumour, Mr Foster.”
(Play it cool, play it cool)
“Oh, really? Never mind.”
My concerns would be: will it hurt? How much care will I need? How long have I got
And crucially, will I be bed-bound or can I quickly cancel the kitchen plans and spend the money buggering off on the holiday of a lifetime?
Last night, both of us got in from various different things at gone 11pm, me from work, himself from a panto, having not yet eaten.
So, something fast and nutritious was required. I almost had an omelette, but couldn’t be arsed to clear enough space in the kitchen to chop an onion. We settled for beans and scrambled eggs on toast. Can’t go wrong with that?
Our cats have very strong associations between tins being opened and getting fed, even though we feed them almost exclusively on dry biscuit out of a two kilo sack. The tins we open most often are tomatoes, beans and olives, none of which the cats will eat (I’ve tried!). I suppose the occasional tin of tuna makes it worth their while winding themselves around our legs whenever they hear a ringpull or a can opener.
So, two slices in the toaster, tin of beans decanted to a mug and microwaved (we have hundreds of mugs but only fifteen bowls, so the chances of there being a clean mug are higher than the chances of there being a clean bowl – roll on the dishwasher) and two eggs scrambled in one of the remaining non-stick saucepans.
In under five minutes, dinner is ready.
P likes the smell, so I divvy up the eggs and leave some in the pan for him, get another tin of beans and let him reuse the beany mug, and go and sit down to watch the awful Katherine Tate show when P shouts “Alex, help!”
Now I am often rude about P’s cooking skills, but somehow this time, he’s managed to set fire to the toaster. Which takes the biscuit.
It’s quite a serious fire, too, flames leaping out of the toaster. By the time I’ve managed to set down my dinner and get out of the chair, he’s managed to open the two back doors (no mean feat, what with misfitting locks) and I clear recycling bottles away from the toaster. He grabs it, unplugs it and takes it out to the patio.
After he sets it down, flames continue to lick out of the toast slots for about 10 minutes. Peering in from above, it does look like the orange and blue flames are coming from actual pieces of burnt toast in the bottom of the machine. I had no idea that discarded toast fragments contained such a vital source of energy. There’s the answer to Britain’s generating requirements: door-to-door collections of toaster debris.
P still eats the piece of toast that was in the toaster.
And I now have an excuse to replace the toaster as well as the decades-old-kettle that no longer switches itself off. I can have new ones to go in my new kitchen.
Very funny reaction to local news on leftlion.co.uk
I particularly liked
October 25thWell, about fucking time; two new tram lines are announced, which will run through Clifton, Chilwell and Beeston. Fact: since the first one was opened two and a bit years ago, our twin city in Germany has knocked out 14 of the bastards.[…]November 21stMoaning about the new tram lines starts. Already. For fuck’s sake.
Very funny reaction to local news on leftlion.co.uk
I particularly liked
October 25thWell, about fucking time; two new tram lines are announced, which will run through Clifton, Chilwell and Beeston. Fact: since the first one was opened two and a bit years ago, our twin city in Germany has knocked out 14 of the bastards.[…]November 21stMoaning about the new tram lines starts. Already. For fuck’s sake.
Another quiz. Etrigan’s an animated director. Ramtops is a Reserved Leader
The quiz – “PersonalDNA” – uses all sorts of fancy sliders, “empty the bucket” and “place yourself on this graph” which is all very exciting. It says it takes half an hour, but I’m sure it didn’t take me that long. Maybe I’m not THAT respectful.
It also comes out with some very pretty graphs and sliders and things that you can see here, but that my best efforts can’t reproduce here in WordPress. So you’ll have to follow the linky.
Niles's Blog 