Keith Williams

Cut these back hard in June after they started to suffer from the heat - they’ve recovered beautifully

“Why is $70m classified as ‘Parks’?”
“Oh well none of us speak Japanese and those are all the JP transactions.”

No and we’re not either - hard enough just to accurately catalog spend across 16 different SAP systems and figure out what it means!

Hah! I saw. We’re the analytics bit that pulls from source systems so yeah.

Didn’t realise you were in procurement - my firm makes software for that function

Agree on that. I’ve splashed out on a few USBs - not much more and you can always use a regular plug anyway. I refuse to have anything smart if I can help it!

Hard agree. Bonus points if you can listen to the rain!

I grew up in a house where it had to be sub-zero at noon before my mother would shut the windows!

Wife and I were remembering how, after the smoking ban in 2007, suddenly you could smell the underlying stench of every bar and club until they hastily re-carpeted

Having phone numbers memorised because it was easier than carrying an address book around all the time.

Start with Napoleon and work down the list from there…

True, but the Industrial Revolution was built by the Quakers who, not coincidentally, were extremely egalitarian (I went to a private Quaker school and the ethos was still there)

Really? FFS. Yes, Bristol Airport is in a terrible location and hills make a rail line tricky, but this is stuff the Georgians (let alone the Victorians) figured out.

Side note: the view off the hill as you drive past southbound is my personal “coming home” mental image

Sadly not! Old York I’m afraid, but my school was near Cheddar in Somerset back then. Nearest I’ve been to NY is a connection at JFK, alas.

Yes that was exactly the bit we were translating at the time!

No let’s not - in the words of my Latin teacher, “the man’s an absolute shit”

I have never felt safer at a gig than out in Bradford amongst the metal crowd. Miss those days!

Best obscure reference of the day!

Selling shovels in a gold rush all over again

Starting school at 7am is weird

A big demijohn with cherry brandy and a smaller jar with the cherry pits in vodka to make Kirsch

Cherry tree was bountiful this year!

So government’s going to be run by empowered professionals working together in closely-aligned teams making rapid incremental improvements?

I doubt it. Sigh.

“For this semester, we’re doing a case study on how the law deals with a maniac in charge - no assignments, just keep doomscrolling.”

Same here - sisters born in the late 60s, I was born in 81. Parents both born in the 40s so we had all the generations under one roof!

Our son did a project on the Victorians at primary school and was shocked when my mum told him she’d known Victorians (her great-grandad, born in the 1860s, was still knocking around in the 1950s)

I’m still cross about ID. I used to take pride in being a country that just trusted people to be who they said they were.

Linaria - it was popular in the 80s as a “posh weed” according to my mum. I grow it in with the roses, it’s lovely and whilst it self-seeds everywhere, it’s easy to dig up or move if you don’t want it somewhere.

Lockerbie was mine, but The Doctor’s speech in Battlefield about a child’s eyes turning to ash is burned into my memory.

I was 9 in 1990 but… yeah, it does feel that way.

Quite glad to be deep in the Lake District and near some caves.