charlie clown

Nice that, Murph.

Mark Fisher - Capital Realism. A mind-blowing experience of a book. Anything by him will be great though. A couple of others - the classic (and therefore maybe a little outdated but nonetheless still super-important) Eric Wiliams - Capitalism & Slavery, and the more or less contemporary Mark Bray - Antifa. The latest one I have which is in my 'to read' pile is Jason Hickel's Less Is More - an argument against growth in capitial systems.

The most freaky thing that I noticed in that whole series was the weirdness of Michelle Keegan's ears. They're like some trapezoid architectural structure. I was mesmerised. Never seen owt like em.

They are a great band. And unusually their third album is better than the first two. I'm still wearing socks I've had for twenty years.

I had a few fale starts with The Bear before it really took off for me. Mostly because RIchie is such a horrible, narky t*** in the first series. I just found it really difficult to buy into it whenever he was on screen. But his character development into the second half of S2 is just beautiful. I'm currently feeling like I need to watch the whole thing again rather than start on anything else new.

Both would probably be a sensible move but I think you'd need to limit the legal thing to actual criminal investigations because any lunatic could bring a civil case, no matter how baseless, and therefore scupper the chances of any candidate. It'd start getting weaponised.

I'll tell you what... to plug the remaining gap in the perimeter, I've built a dead hedge. It's one of the most satisfying things I've ever done. I've got two of them on the go now and I'm intending building more. Super environmentally friendly and a great way to use up all the garden waste.

The mystery of the tree felling has been solved. There was one tree that was on the exact border between the back corner of our garden and the church yard. That tree blew over in the storms and partly landed on the back fence of the vicarage next door. The vicar called the diocese property maintenace company who sent in the tree surgeons. They came in and removed the fallen tree but without realising that they had wandered into our back garden (there is a hedge along the borderline but as it is a young deciduous hedge in winter, it is pretty, um, porous). They saw that there were three other trees that looked like they might also come down at any time. So they messaged the vicar asking if it was OK to remove the other three. He was away at the time so just assued they were on the church land and so gave them the go ahead. And this happened on the weekend we were away so that's why we didn't see or hear it all.

He's talking perfect sense there. Can't fault his logic at all.

Yeah, amazingly well-written and acted.

Watched the last three episodes of The Bear last night. Damn, it was great. And I take back everything I said earlier in the thread about Richie. He brought me to tears in the Bolognese ep and was absolutely glorious in the finale.

Alexey Navalny, Putin's only real opposition. Deaded in a Russian jail.

I've just looked in that mirror and saw no reflection. Am I a vampire?

Aye, I mean, I have no experience of OF at all but from all that I hear, it does seem to attract some absolutely barking 'contributors' .. But I wonder what kind of checks the schools did on the U.S. woman before she got the job because with that stuff in her background you'd have thought they'd have binned her application off straightaway.

Maybe not so niche. A friend of mine is a teacher at a secondary school. In one of her recent classes the kids were sniggering and the focus seemed to be the phone of one of the kids, so she asked them what they were all looking and laughing at. It was the OnlyFans account of one of the other teachers. And the lad who had spotted it had signed up as if he were an adult and had asked for more photos. The OnlyFans teacher had sent naked pics but the bigger shock still was that he had taken them in the schoool gym.

They're already my two favourite lines.

My GP has pretty much reverted to all stuff being done online, but if you book an online appointment or phone consultation you at least you get a foot in the door. Book an online or phone appomtment, then use that conversation to ask for a follow-up face-to-face session. That's the route I've taken when I've needed f2f stuff with a doctor and seems to work, Its a slow, painful route but it gets you there.

Maybe but they're playing a wider range of grounds these days, different adminstrational units, different officials, different gang of peoeple to rubber stamp all the paperwork. I'm not in the least bit surprised by it all.

We always watch it (Silent Witness) but it's really badly made. Almost laughably bad at times. Spotting the continuity errors is our favourite part of the show. It's fine braindead telly though.

We often bring colleagues from India over to Europe for workshop meetings etc. and we always start the visa processing months in advance and yet still, very often, they are not completed on time and the people cannot then travel. It is largely the labyrinthine Indian bureaucracy that is the cause of the prlobems Maybe the same here.

Wow. I never really liked Steve Wright at all as a DJ - he had really crap taste in music, and I kind of blame him for starting that posse in the studio nonsense that lead us to the abomination that was Chris Moyles and his like - but bit of a shocker nonetheless because he seemed like a decent fella if nothing else. It's not that long since he was sacked by the BBC as well IIRC.

"Why can't we all be happy with patriarchy and colonial masters?"

You're just going to stirrup everybody's emotions with posts like that.

They have to do that becaue if they showed his real eyes, we'd see the cataracts.

Yeah, personally I really enjyed it but I thought the 'one take' thing was way overplayed because it clearly wasn't that.