You don't get to be Chief Scientific Advisor to HMG (His Majesty's Government) if you are a complete dolt. You may be a bit obedient, and/or a bit blinkered (aren't we all?) but you aren't actually actively thick. Part of not being thick, you'd hope, is looking at your worldview, and the (in)actions of people... Continue Reading →
tl;dr - review of 8hrs of podcasts, interspersed with pics of Swans and so on. Continue at your own peril Hmm. This took summat out of me. I may not be as young or as fit as I was. (1) Left at 1120, returned 1640, basically non-stop yomping, with 11kgs of coins in the weighted... Continue Reading →
Whoop! Online and in the dead tree format version. Like Francis Beckett, I grew up listening to the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer compulsively. In 1992, while on an exchange scholarship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I nervously approached him in the dining hall at Cowell College. “Mr Lehrer,” I said, “I’ve listened... Continue Reading →
The latest astonishing(ish) brainfart to come from the Conservative Party is the re-introduction of National Service. My late father was born in July 1939, and so was in the last or second to last batch to have to do this. He always said it was a complete waste of everyone's time, and the regular army... Continue Reading →
After this, quatrains and stuff. A proper limerick is improper, imo. "There was a young man named Eenis..." and so on. Sure, there are some I cherish that are distressingly clean - but a decent lyric not only scans but is NSFW. However, we can't always get what we want, and you defo didn't want... Continue Reading →
One of the advantages middle-class people often have, and one that they are often blind to, is multiple opportunities to fail (because they goofed around/weren't quite good enough first time round etc). Obviously even in their lives there are chokepoints, but not as many, not as consequential as for people without the cushions of money/cultural... Continue Reading →
As I get older, I am learning to pace myself. Wasn't feeling 100% yesterday arvo (did Dr Termagant give me her bally cold?), so didn't go to gym. And this morning, didn't wear weighted jacket or backpack with bricks while went to feed the moorhens/ducks/swans before heading to the gym for a light-ish session. Probably... Continue Reading →
Four hours 34 minutes with weighted jacket (11ish kilos) and 2 bricks in a daypack. Also, sensibly for once, 2 litres of water consumed in hour 3. Goslings - 18-20 of the blighters, cared for in a "creche'. I will put video footage on Twitter and then link back if I remember/am asked. Podcasts (in... Continue Reading →
This morning was taking the tetrapaks to the recycling centre (presumably they are then incinerated or landfilled, but I've Done My BitTM), and listening to a podcast. Oh My. Oh My Oh My Oh MY. All the liberal handwringing. All the refusal to think about what would happen if you mashed up (as you should)... Continue Reading →
A short walk, and not in the Hindu Kush. Just to the marina and back (roughly 80 minutes). Weighted jacket and two bricks, as usual. Listened to the end of a podcast about James Baldwin (interesting comparisons with his essay "Notes of a Native Son" and Ginny Woolf's "A Room of One's Own.") Then a... Continue Reading →
