Mags L Halliday

Genuinely stunned at the UK result. Like, if my local FB is to believed, 80% of people in the UK are Up To Something.

Genuinely stunned at the UK result. Like, if my local FB is to believed, 80% of people in the UK are Up To Something.

For the dark, the dark is rising! Puffin edition of Susan Coopers book. The illustration has a circle of light within which a horse rider is galloping towards us through a snowy landscape. It’s all monochrome. Another circle over his head - which is a head that is part stag, part owl - is in strange sickly colours.

The one on the right looks like my favourite cover of The Dark is Rising.

I went through Dawlish the other day and noticed the lampposts were now brown and cream and the BR era signs had been replaced with 1950s signs. Very odd given the station is a mix of Victorian and 2010s.

It was a 2 bed cob cottage: the attic was a room and the ‘loft’ barely had room for the insulation. Otherwise I would have.

GOOL PERAN LOWEN! Happy St Piran’s Day!

“Britain is divided in four parts; whereof the one is inhabited of Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third of Welshmen and the fourth of Cornish people”.

Polydore Vergil - historian to Henry VIII

Birmingham Moor Street station gives the impression of a toy station that has somehow escaped from a quaint train set and is now hiding, nestled between the inner ring roads and shopping centre of Brum.

Glorious, but it really belongs on a biscuit tin cover.

Damn, yes, good point.

Without his intervention in the bar, they get all of the headpiece of the staff of Ra, so they would have been digging in the right place.

Of course, if Indy hadn’t taken advantage of Marion when she was a teen, she’d not be running a bar in Tibet.

The Indy character is so good bc he's not some all-powerful macho hero, he's always in over his head, and just barely getting out of situations via help from others or just plain luck. He gets the shit kicked out of him a lot. I don't think he ever even wins a fight totally on his own merits.

A friend’s mum offered us a load of unneeded new carpet, enough to redo the whole ground floor in my old house, which had a rather knackered carpet. Child was about to be potty trained. Carpet was cream.

Reader, I did not take the carpet.

I think the theory was the U shaped rugs got washed every week on a boil wash.

Woman can also make a mistake by standing up too soon. Usually hits the seat not the floor but still. And potty training. Oh, gods, the potty training.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

The influencers leaping to Dubai’s defence [FREE TO READ] As missiles streak across the region, unfazed residents insist they ‘know who protects us’

‘British expats, he claimed, were refusing to fill out evacuation forms provided by the British government “just in case it somehow turns into a tax form instead”.’

No notes.

as.ft.com/r/65cf2b43-6...

I dislike carpet in the bathroom but can understand it. But never, NEVER, if there is a toilet in there too. And no, the weird U shaped little rug does not make it better.

Also, @selinalock.bsky.social, if you want to play Shonan Knife at the wedding, do it!

I wanted Beyond the Sea as first dance but @markclapham.bsky.social pointed out it was about death. So we had 'Dream a Little Dream' by Terry Hall and Salad.

That was the year all the weddings I went to played 'Walk Like an Egyptian' by the Bangles at some point.

Ta!

I think I've found a friend with both the tracks I want and a working CD burner!

Radio DJ people I know, I have a question. I know CD or vinyl is easier but can you play from streamers or a USB stick?

Great news, all! The rain has ended.

You'll never guess what we get next!

Howling!

The idea of Call of Duty never sat well with me. Wars our parents and grandparents fought in being packaged as "let's blow shit up for fun" felt off in a way "let's punch Nazis in the face like Indiana Jones" still doesn't (;))
This is maybe why. Like a logical endpoint 2 "real war is just a game".

I think you're right.

Also, I think what we did during the Vietnam War was diplomatically support the US but refuse to get dragged in militarily. I'm not sure to what extent our 1960s position was taken after the US declined to get involved in Suez.

The best response I heard this morning was a minister saying "We didn't join America in Vietnam" which seems to imply a view of how this will turn out.

(radio6 so I've no idea which minister as I only half listened)

Switching the e-vehicles is better for the planet *and* means we are less dependent on oil. Renewable energy regularly meets over 50% of UK demand on the network and that can power e-vehicles.

But no petrol head ever has that explained to them.

And also, sadly, by many people. When bills spike, or the bread is absent, people will blame local leaders not that the USA gov has lost the plot.

There's a fair bit of work underway for energy and food resilience in the UK, but the simple logistical reason we need it is rarely explained.

During the Beast from the East (2018), all transport in the UK ground to a halt. There was no bread to be had in my parent's town. I've a friend who runs a bakery so I got a white loaf from her and got the first train running down to my parents so they would have bread.

Logistics matter.

Look, people laugh when I said that growing up during the 1970s oil crisis made me prone to worst case scenario thinking.

But just-in-time delivery chains means something like this could ripple quickly and suddenly the Co-Op shelves have no fresh bread.

What do you mean there aren't just ammo dumps and health packs lying around with helpful auras around them?