Dave Owen

I go to a nice chatty pilates class each week. Today conversation turned to podcasts, the ladies praising "Diary of a CEO", "Table Manners with Jessie Ware", and so on. "What's your favourite podcast, Dave?" asked our instructor. @impq.bsky.social took a bit of explaining, but they liked the idea!

I've just looked this up and I'm SHOCKED. Why haven't they played this since?

If you think Rick Wakeman's music's hard to listen to, try listening to his after-dinner speeches.

It was his name still all over the production credits that meant I wasn't as surprised as I might have been.

Some joyless high-performance fitness bastard's weekly schedule, or something.

Manchester Marathon training week 7 of 18 complete. This week I ran 29.1 miles in 4h36m. "That's less that last week! How? Why?" Yes! It's a nine day training cycle, and two cross-training days and one rest day fell in these seven. This was nevertheless a tough week - the slack has been taken up.

Green Party members on street with posters and clipboards

Another great canvassing session with @edinburghgreens.bsky.social in Gorgie-Dalry. Such enthusiasm for Green message and @scottishgreens.org candidate @lornaslater.bsky.social in Edinburgh Central. #VoteGreen

Just watched an edition of Portillo's Railway Journeys where he visits a heritage railway in Essex where they have High Speed Train power cars. Now I'm old. I remember these being introduced. Inter City 125 was the aspirational travel brand of my youth.

This week I listened to @herring1967.bsky.social interview David O'Doherty on a podcast recorded at the fringe in August. I thought some of it sounded familiar, and reasoned I must have seen preview clips on YouTube. Today, I remembered I WAS AT THE GIG. I saw it all live. This is quietly scary.

Lord Sugar and the "hopefuls".

There's a new series of "The C**t Factory" tonight.

Disengage from those who deplete you.

After the gig in a bar, with the news on the telly, the barman oddly said that he reckoned the footage of the explosion would "be used in every James Bond film for the next ten years". Everyone's reactions that night seemed a bit strange. A fan of space flight since early childhood, I was rattled.

40 years ago tonight I got home from lectures to be told by one housemate that there'd been "an explosion on the space shuttle". Another was annoyed that TV was dominated by coverage. Went out to see Marillion. Fish offhandedly dedicated "Fugazi" to the Challenger crew.

Just finished "to rise in the dark". I loved it. My own teenage band was 30 miles west and 12 years earlier, but we did have a reunion decades later, before one of us died, which led to secrets being uncovered. Some friendships survived! Thanks for a cracking read.

A TV quiz team sitting on the set of "Only Connect", smiling.

Well done to the 5Ks team on "Only Connect". They perfectly embodied Parkrun, coming back week after week, and just doing it for the love of it.

I had this. School friends asked if it had prizes. I may have been a bit scathing when suggesting they perhaps hadn’t thought it through.

Roger Waters demands conceptual attribution. “Power line, power station, what’s the difference?!” ranted the controversial ex-Pink Floyd curmudgeon.

"The gravelly-voiced Welsh icon" is a job for @secondmentions.bsky.social if ever I read one.

At the time this happened, I worked for a software company that was a subsidiary of Carlton, who had acquired us shortly beforehand. "You now work for the people who made Byker Grove!" we were told. Little did I know that Jilly Cooper had already written a bonkbuster based on our parent company.

"What's the matter, sweetie? You've hardly touched your pork lungs in sheep's stomach! Here - have some whisky sauce."

I'm quietly impressed with the unflinching brand identity of mass-produced haggis. A product that some people feel a bit queasy about, because they're vaguely aware it's made from internal organs, is shrink wrapped to vividly resemble a recently-harvested internal organ.

There was a new edition of @impq.bsky.social today and I listened to 60 minutes of it on the elliptical trainer at the gym. But you don't need any fitness equipment to enjoy what must almost certainly by now be the UK's leading pub-quiz format funny podcast about Iron Maiden. And that's a promise!

I'm glad we've finally welcomed Tracey Thorn from Everything but the Girl to the "Whoniverse".

And now, watching "Airlock" with its weird sound effects and music, the mixture of alien people and old fashioned dials and levers, I get that childhood feeling of something from a long lost time again. It's exciting. It feels like there's a whole world to explore. It's Maaga who sells it.

In 1972/73 I was discovering that B&W Doctor Who had existed, and finding the pictures of Sensorites, Monoids and Macra thrilling and out of reach. Less that a decade old to my seven-year old self they might as well have been from another century. Their names. Their appearance. Everything.

Stephanie Bidmead as Maaga in Doctor Who - "Galaxy 4" (1965). A commanding alien woman looks to the camera.

If you've got a spare 25 minutes, watch "Airlock" on iPlayer. Just dive in and let the scenes aboard the Drahvin ship bathe you in dramatically powerful world building. Maaga's character and Stephanie Bidmead's performance feel like my highlight of B&W Doctor Who. It's scary and weird.

The author, dressed like a male menopausal wanker, having just done some running or something.

Manchester Marathon training, week six of eighteen complete, which means I'm a third of the way to Old Trafford. This week I ran for 5h50m and covered 36.7 miles. Today I ran a 515ft ascent while listening to Tony Banks solo material, which I doubt any amateur athlete has previously attempted.

Alive.

Spouse is away for the weekend, so of course at nine on a Saturday night I'm analyzing my credit card spending for the last 12 months. I'm bonkers, me.

Quote skeet with a gif with a clue of where you're from...

I was volunteer coordinator at Parkrun today. Having got all the volunteers coordinated, I doffed my hi-vis, and ran the event. And then, I ran the course again, to reach today’s training target. I’ve clocked up 88 runs, and 77 volunteer credits. Feeling a bit sleepy now.