Year: 2015

I have that feeling of wanting to write something tonight but … the heatwave we’re having in Blighty at the moment is driving away most rational thought.

There are plenty of irrational thoughts happening (as a few people found out over the messenger service today !) and I think I managed to reserve some sensibility for the work stuff. Some at least.

I think someone’s done that in the sky. It’s darn toasty out there. Even toastier on the bus which is a bit like an oven at the moment.

ABCs ? I saw this one late last week on the Facebook and I can never resist a good meme like this. The answers won’t all be the same as then but … here we go !

A- Age: 6. Oh wait, you wanted my physical age and not the mental age ?
B- Biggest Fear: Isolation and being ignored. That sense of reaching out to people and not getting any response.
C- Current Time: 20.11 UK British (it’s actually) Summer Time.
D- Drink you last had: Diet Pepsi with TONNES of ice. And no Mentos this time.

E- Easiest Person To Talk to: Everyone. For an introvert, I seem to be able to get people talking quite easily, although I do have a bad habit of turning the conversation round to focus on me. It should be about both.
F- Favourite Song: There’s lots but the one that’s stuck in my head for a few days is Dear Prudence from Across The Universe but that’s because I’d not heard I Wanna Hold Your Hand for a while. There’s also 03.45am No Sleep by The Cardigans, Cupid’s Gift got treated to Wonderful You by Alisha’s Attic and then there’s Moon and Moon by Bat For Lashes.
G- Grossest Memory: My outsides for perhaps the last 5 years. They’re trying to heal up now though.
H- Hometown: Bristol now but for a long time it was a not so little village in Lincolnshire.
I- In love with: Oh there’s a question 🙂 There’s a little lady out there who I hope knows that I really, really like her.
J- Jealous Of: Such a petty emotion. I try and avoid it. You can be jealous of those who have more, those who have what you want, those who have what you had. But … do you really deserve what they have ? Were you the one to earn it ? I think that’s the true root of jealousy. Ok, I’ll admit to being jealous to people who have air conditioning in their homes.
K- Killed Someone? Yep. You will never find the body. Or the pixels that made up the body.
L- Longest Relationship: It must have been 15 years with a lovely Muttley called Scruff. Here’s the old man again.

M- Middle Name: Bob, short for … erm, not Kate.
N- Number of Siblings: now 1, it was 2.
O- One Wish: to have 2 siblings again.
P- Person who you last called: I can’t remember, last one I messaged was SQ to check if she’s ok. Last conversation with a friend was LTK over the messenger. Last phone call was with the boss (cos he’s down south today) and last person I phoned was the mum and dad.
Q- Question you’re always asked: Hayfever ? After I’ve blown out the windows by sneezing.
R- Reason to smile: Other people smiling at me and the memory of hugs. Last hug ? Cupid’s Gift 🙂
S- Song you last sang: Singing along to I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
T- Time you woke up: Hmm. Maybe 7am which was a bit earlier than I wanted to.
U- Underwear Colour: Blue.
V- Vacation Destination: Sometime soon I want to have a narrowboat holiday to check out whether living on one would be a realistic proposition. Also want to go to Le Mans for the race weekend and maybe even Spa for the Grand Prix, although Grand Prix racing isn’t particularly great at the moment.
W- Worst Habit: Not doing me chores.
X- X-rays you’ve had: Several – left wrist was my first broken bone. Can’t remember if Nose Job 1 had an X-ray. Barium meal to check out the acid problem (they found nothing, suspected cause – fat + stress)
Y- Your favorite food: PIZZA !!!
Z- Zodiac Sign: Scorpio. They of the sting in the tail.

A few shoutouts to finish with ?

Get well soon little lady who’s off work at the moment !
Hello sister – welcome to the blog 🙂
A big hand for LTK who’s given me so much encouragement over the last few months.
And a big hug for someone who I hope is enjoying her time off in London this week.

Stay frosty ! If you can. And … if you see anyone suffering from the heat :

Help them out (that includes pets that idiots have left in car-ovens too)

Ok, I’m a little late with this one (oops).

Not done these for a little too long actually ! It’s a meme from Carmi Levy’s excellent blog (linky) and the post for (erm) last week’s Thematic Photographic is here at this link.

I rarely get good ideas for joining in with the Thematic Photographic but I was feeling wobbly in the sun at the bus stop this morning and a rare idea popped into a head that’s usually still waking up at this point.

Straight lines ?

All the straight lines !

It was hot enough this morning that it was genuinely uncomfortable standing on the sunny side of the stop, I was having to lean up against the wall in the shade. But it was fairly ok on the bus and when I was walking from stop to work, that was ok too. Bit nasty on the bus on the way home though. Hopefully they’ll allow me into the car park again soon because … air con.

Air con is cool. Erm. Lovely. Sorry about the really bad pun.

Anyway … Straight lines ! Lots in the wall, many in the bus shelter structure and the road is kinda straight too. Plus there’s those shadows. There are straight lines everywhere we look. And … a bonus ! Early Suzanne Vega song and didn’t she start well ?

Yeah. It’s gotten hot here and it’s going to get warmer too. Nowhere near as dangerously hot as in places like Pakistan are suffering at the moment but still warmer than we’re accustomed to here. I’m feeling it in slightly ill feelings when I eat and in gathering lightheadedness. I can deal with the light headed bit by drinking more cold things. And I’m highly likely at some point to raid the Costa that’s sprung up just outside our work for an iced mocha.

But tonight it was … let’s just grab a little quote from what was appearing on Facebook tonight.

The Harvester waitresses are starting to recognise me …
What could this mean ?

Uhoh. In my defence, one of them used to work where I do and was one of the canteen mob. They’re a good mob down there and they know me fairly well from me legging it down there just before they close.

The sundae is coming … THE SUNDAE IS COMING …
Yes. The heat may be affecting me.

Yep. It’s not about the shopping. It’s about that sundae. I just happened to have a load of empty cupboards that needed stuff putting in them.

And 8 Mini Cornettos came away from the supermarket with me too. Oops.

Oh well.

One last pic before I put my head into an ice helmet. This one’s from a conversation that was happening at work and I’ve been looking for an excuse to spring it on you :

I shall remember that the next time a Hot Lady comes up to me and asks for help. (And that “hot” is in no way a comment on her appearance, although she possessed that beauty that all women have. She was just looking for where the cold water is after being in a baking meeting room – honest).

Hope you’re not too hot where you are. Warmth is good but we do like it to be a comfortable level of warm.

PS Shoutout to a little lady who I’ve thought of as a little-big sis for 15 years … Feel better soon little lady !

Let’s see :

Wimbledon’s on the telly.
I’ve been leaving the rain hat at home in favour of :

The Mexican* sunhat
Dumping the ever present jumper all day after getting to my desk
Feeling it was too hot for a coffee on Friday, instead having an Iced Mocha (there will be more)
Dresses getting shorter
Temperatures getting hotter (and hotter to come too)

It must be … (don’t say it too loud) … summer ? Don’t worry, this is Britain. There will be a thundercloud around the corner to return us to reality.

* Mexican sunhat ? This is a present from the sister and her bloke after they had a holiday over in Mexico. It even has a “Made In Mexico” label on it. I like this hat, although it’s strangely about the same weight as my rainhat. It has the advantage of more ventilation and I will definitely enjoy wearing it over the summer.

Cheers sis ! It fulfils (someone else’s) dreams :

That’s a solid lifelong dream. Hats are awesome.

Yep. Half watching Wimbledon at the moment, as most Brits do with the sport of tennis for perhaps 2 weeks in every year. We tend to ignore it at all other times of the year. It’s a good sport, the winner is almost always the better, stronger, fitter player. As in, the one who has worked hardest to deserve the win. And that should be applauded always.

Me ? My various frailties meant I could rarely train, because physical training tended to take the edge off my advantages. I did a series of circuit training last century (yep – I can say stuff like that with real meaning !) and all it did was take the edge off my extreme speed. I gained no actual fitness from it. Where training did benefit me was where I got the repetitions right. So with the cricket :

Being the first one to bowl in the nets and the last one to finish
Getting out in that back garden and hitting the balls I bounced off the wall
And walking wherever possible to get the miles into my legs.

That’s something actually. Last week, I was struggling with a bad back that was increasing in pain levels and stiffness. My walking speed was down due to the back being too stiff to really stride out.

Then there was Thursday and huge amounts of positive energy coming from a darling little lady.

Friday morning ? Pain almost gone. Saturday ? Pain gone. Today ? Almost back to the full stride on the first testing of the skeleton since Friday.

Good times. I have to say too though, there’s another lady who’s been helping me out with making me feel a million dollars (pounds ?) by keeping up with the daft messages and pictures that I’ll send her way. My biggest fear is the fear of being isolated and all sorts of people sending me messages help dispel that fear of isolation that leads to my personality shrivelling up into its own dark place.

But I have a few very good friends who remind me that I can be a Good Human Being. At least some of the time.

Just ask the door to door salesmen who DARE to knock on the door trying to shame me into buying their shoddy wares.

Just kidding. But I did get chuckles from two people today for the Coffee and a Donut pic. You know the one I mean.

Right – back to the tennis and wishing on our Brit girl who is locked in a massive struggle in the second set of her match.

And I think when I resupply at the supermarket tomorrow, I shall have to indulge in a cooling sundae. Yep. Arm will be twisted.

Last thought on the summer heat :

Or tea. That goes for tea too. Cya !

Enjoying your blog. Particularly liked the Banksy coke bottle. The first natural disaster I can think of that directly affected me was the 1971 LA earthquake. Serious jolt at 6am and then off of work for several days while the schools were being checked for damage. We were caught in a forest fire the next summer driving in the Yukon. Had to drive in caravans when they let us. Thanks for commenting on my Sitemeter problems post. Thanks for the Statcounter recommendation. It looks good and Imay switch. I'll give Sitemeter a few more days to get back working.

Had a great night Thursday evening.

I don’t get many chances to see Cupid’s Gift but we managed to be in the same place at the same time on Thursday to watch Jurassic World. It was pretty close to her birthday too, so there were a couple of extra thingys in my bag. An Easter Egg too ! (Yes it was in date).

I must have chosen good things because I got hugs.

Hugs are awesome.

Movie ?

If you watched Jurassic Park, this is slightly different. It’s in an established park and there’s all the chance to do things Bigger ! Better ! With More Teeth ! We see a few old friends come back in with the dinosaurs. None of the original cast are involved, although there is a nice nod to the late great Richard Attenborough.

It follows the usual formula of having a few kids go off into danger they are completely unaware of (haha – where would plots come from if you couldn’t do this ?). It sets up the various protagonists (human and dino) without those introductions outstaying their welcome. The action builds steadily into a massively spectacular and boneshaking climax. You feel for the characters (especially the dinos)

Almost the film of the year. (There’s a few too many daft plot things in there for it to be a genuine film of the year). Definitely one of the best this year so far. My advice, watch Jurassic Park again first as a warmup. But don’t watch JP2 or JP3 as these were poor and may discourage you from seeing what is a quite excellent movie.

Yep. Go see it.

Of course me enjoying the movie could have partly been down to the company 😉

We get on really well me and CG. There are the text messages that bounce between us that always have me breaking out into that silly grin (no matter my mood before!) when I see/hear one come in. When we see each other, we’ll talk until we literally have to be required to be elsewhere. On Thursday, the place we ate our after dinner movie (Coal’s Bar – yum) was shutting. Yep. Last people there.

I was home before midnight, honest, after dropping off this lovely lady at her home. And not even knowing that I’d be at war with our work’s IT would dispel that happy mood. Although I did wear this as a statement of what I thought of the pooters we’re forced to slave over :

Mine is in purple. Purple rocks. And that definitely sums up my attitude when I have to walk away from the machine before it gets drop tested from our 2nd floor office window.

It would have been the dinosaur picture (modelled by avatar dwagon) but that was in the wash (oops, bad planning !).

Oh – I did a probably bad thing yesterday. I blame work’s canteen for not having any decent meat for the sandwiches which forced me to go to the Mall for lunch. Yep. Forced. Honest.

I did manage to resist the Thorntons temptation (this is really, really tough) but … somehow an iPad Mini 2 walked out of PC World with me. Oops. I’ve been investigating getting one of these for ages now, for the iOS games as well as using it for eBooks. I need to read more, it’s bad that I’ve gotten out of the habit.

And now I’m (slightly) hooked on the Fallout Shelter game. It’s a freebie to promote Fallout 4, which I am curious about but definitely won’t get on release. The developer/publisher, Bethesda, have a well established reputation for making games that get an immensely popular reputation but aren’t actually that great. Gameplay is everything in games and the Bethesda systems tend to be a little bit flawed. Plus we’ve seen a string of high profile games have disastrous releases lately, some of them (Assassins Creed Unity from Ubisoft) still don’t work right and Batman Arkham Knight has been pulled from sale because it was so badly broken.

Advice – save your money and let other people do the real world testing on stuff. It’s a timid attitude but we’re not all loaded, are we ? Save your money until you’re assured that it’s worth spending. Bravery is an applaudable characteristic but does have its cost. And it’s silly being brave over buying stuff, save the bravery for when it’ll help people. Or is that heroism.

I’m having this strange urge for pizza plus my tummy is telling me it needs something inside it so I’d better go but :

Evenings out with Pretty Ladies are awesome
(My back agrees, it started releasing yesterday and it’s pretty much pain free today – that’s what a happy attitude can do !)
Be wary when you get bombarded with shiny offers
Trust other consumers over the advertising and sales people
Dinosaur movies can still be incredible.
And I’ve cleared enough cable recording box space to let me watch Interstellar tonight.

Now looking forward to Minions, the next Terminator movie and seeing Pretty Lady again.

Yeah ! Although one thing about those dvd/blurays … There is always that "thank you for buying this disc. NOW DON'T BE A FILTHY PIRATE" warning that always makes you feel like a criminal.

HATE adverts – which is why I only watch TV shows on DVD these days.

Someone posted a picture the other day which … I had a look, I had a read and I thought … Yep. That’s absolutely spot on.

Here we go :

Hopefully that reads ok on a click !

Advertising is all pervasive these days. It seems like 90% of what comes through the door is junkmail. A lot of my email is … advert junkmail. When you look at a website, you’re assaulted by adverts that (unless you’ve got an adblocker) force you to wait until the advert loads before you can read the site.

There’s another excellent Heinlein quote :

Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is to deal with a leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please – this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing with to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time – and squawk for more!
So learn to say No – and to be rude about it when necessary.
Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.)

Be wary of those that demand ever increasing amounts of your time. Although if those people bring you joy ? I vote for joy.

With telly stuff, I rarely watch things live. I’m usually watching stuff recorded where I can fast forward past the incessant adverts. Unless the telly company are incompetent and don’t schedule their shows properly. For the last episode of Agents of Shield, Channel 4 started it maybe 50 minutes late (I didn’t keep watching after fast forwarding through 20 minutes of the end of In Bruges) and I had to watch it off their awful on demand service.

Some on demand services are ok. Some are terribly inefficient (Channel 5’s used to overheat my last laptop). Some are really good and don’t cause you any overhead past logging in (there are no extra ads on Sky Sports service, just those on the broadcast). Some are ridiculously obnoxious.

Channel 4’s demanded that I disabled my adblocker and wasted quite possibly 25 minutes of my time over the course of a 40 minute episode. That’s a few minutes before it started, 4 minutes for every break and more time wasted when their ad server couldn’t keep up.

COME ON ! Adverts are useless if they cause annoyance instead of interest. And I am one of those people who will actively avoid a product (even if it’s a good one) if I’ve been annoyed by the people selling it. Or I’ll buy the same thing from someone else.

(My hd came from Novatech who had a slightly higher unit price than the rest – however the rest charged extra for delivery and had poor interfaces on their websites).

I do get that there’s a certain necessity to advertising. Our content costs money to produce and advertising is one source of funding for that content. It’s why we get seasons of shows like X Factor, Strictly, BGT and all the other phone vote shows, the votes help to fund the content.

But if you do the phone vote thing, I applaud you. That’s your choice.

I’ll be watching Jurassic World tomorrow, which will have probably 30 minutes of adverts and trailers before the show. The adverts will be ignored by either nattering or catching up on phone stuff. The trailers I don’t mind, because they let you know about upcoming Good Things (or upcoming Bad Things like half the horror films out there). I would have avoided Tomorrowland as Disney-Meh and Mad Max as Too-Crazy-For-Me but …

Tomorrowland – interesting trailer, cute film, very enjoyable
Mad Max – EPIC trailer, totally nuts, mindblowing film

And then there’s the Interstellar trailer which had me : OMG I HAVE TO SEE THIS.

Some adverts are good. Some are really awful.

I’ve thought about activating the monetization here a few times because of the junk hits I get. These pages get typically 50 hits a day for maybe 1500 a month. It’s a little elevated again this month, I may get 2000 hits due to those junk hits … By that, I mean the patterns I see where there will be maybe 15 hits in a minute, perhaps a second. Sometimes the junk hits number 100 in a minute. That happens. I call those Junk Hits because that cannot be a real reader ! So I ponder the monetization as a response to the bots.

In amongst those junk hits are you lovely, lovely regular reader people. The Android-Chromes. The iDevice people. The ones who come here via Twitter or Facebook. The Win-IE8 people from a certain address I won’t mention. The ones who keep coming back for more.

I think of it as a special little virtual hug every time I see one of those familar patterns on the hit logs. I can’t decipher who it is. Google, Statcounter and the defunct sitemeter don’t give me enough information there. But my brain always goes “Hey ! That’s SQ !” or “That’s Pixie !” “That’s CG !” “That’s LTK !” I could go on but you get the idea. I think it’s awesome that so many wonderful people (you too CK !) care enough to keep an eye on me and how I’m doing.

What message would it send if adverts started appearing ? How would I feel if one of those special people got their device infected with something horrible due to something that a 3rd party advertising person put on here ?

Terrible. So the adverts stay away. Besides, the bots are probably all using adblockers so I wouldn’t get any monetization from them anyway.

That brings me to my last point. One mantra of the web is “be careful where you browse to” (for there be nasties infecting your system). Well, with all pervasive adverts, even if you browse to a well known site (and I always use the Daily Mail example, not that I read that site) you may get caught by the not so well known site that serves up tainted content.

The internet is dangerous. Harmful effects come from tainted pictures (not just the porn!), anything Adobe has anything to do with, hell even certain text messages can break phones.

Be careful out there.

It’s just really, really sad that advertisement people not only suck up our time, they make our lives tougher too.

Stay safe !

I went back to see my mum and dad this weekend just gone.

I don’t see them enough because it’s a bit of a trek to do the 180 miles and I’m not quite as spring chickeny as I used to be (case in point – my back hates me right now). But it is good to make the trip up there to see them. And Ben the Staffy.

Ben’s a real character. He’s a lovely little(ish) dog. He’ll give a good bark when he gets excited but he’s extremely quick to go to a state of “Hey, this person is ok. Let’s give ’em a slurp.”

Ben will very quickly take a cue from mum and dad. If they act ok to a person, Ben will check them out, give them a slurp (he doesn’t actually slurp too much now) and see if they’ll give him a bit of fuss. He does like people does Ben, although he does show a bit of a neurotic tendency. He’s getting old though, so not too much fussing and bouncing before he’ll flake out. We don’t bring my sister’s dogs to mum and dad’s place either now, they’re a bit too young and boisterous for the old fella waving his stick at them.

Except Ben wouldn’t be waving his stick, he’s way too nice an individual for that.

This is Ben at the door to the kitchen. Behind that door were bacon smells and Ben was attempting to use his telekinetic powers to get the door to magically open. (No whining, just an intent stare at the door). And …

Mind powers ! They work ! Bacon appeared ! (Which I ate – and felt guilty all the time due to pooch telepathic powers)

Here he is again with the “you don’t want that meat scrap”. He’s actually eyeing up my dad’s lap there for a cheeky scout of the table. He’ll jump up on a lap and then have a crafty 360 degree scan of the table. But he’ll only do that once. This is what he is worshipping :

Poor pooch to be tortured by such lovely smells. He will supervise the cooking too :

We don’t think Ben has that long left. Maybe another year or two. His paw is managed with pain pills but his heart is getting weak too.

We’ll miss him, he’s a lovely dog and adores his people. We’ve been very lucky to have three dogs like that, Scruff, Goldie and Ben are all amazing in their own individual ways. Ben has a few years left him in yet I hope.

They’re not pets, they’re part of the family.

PS The rest of the family is good too. I might be the worst off right now with a bad back and the outsides !
Back – I have a nasty feeling getting too fat and having trousers that are too small is putting pressure on my old lumbar area injury. So I’ve bought some bigger trousers today and will try and maintain a neutral posture to help it.
Outsides – are genuinely improving still. But it’ll take maybe a month overall for all the damage to clear and I can do damage in seconds that undoes that. Discipline required.
But on the whole – improving.

Good weekend was had. How about your weekend ? A good week too with potentially Mr Holmes on Wednesday (think I’ll give this a miss to be honest) and Jurassic World on Thursday. Looking forward to that hugely.

That’s a weird title I hear you say …

My brain is the type that tends to have random thoughts firing off completely at … random. Tonight’s random brain cell firing was from a chat on the bus on the way home, we were talking about cars …

How’s that connected to disaster ? Valid question. Very valid question. The random neurons went from the circumstances of the car to more general thoughts.

How often have you been affected by a genuine disaster ? I can think of 3 times for me offhand and there’s a few where disasters happened nearby but didn’t directly affect me. The UK is pretty lucky for that, our land is geologically stable so no earthquakes, we rarely get affected by megawinds and our coasts are fairly well protected from freak waves.

First up is the one that touched everybody – September 11th 2001. I was over here at a design review when that happened. Some of the chief execs for the company hosting the review were on one of the planes. 2001 affected everyone, it genuinely changed the world. I don’t think it changed the paranoia level of most of our intelligence agencies but it did give them justifications (excuses ?) for steadily increasing intrusiveness.

The second was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 which is more widely known for what happened with the Fukushima nuclear plant*. Amongst the problems caused by the earthquake was widespread damage to Japan’s industrial infrastructure. This included their automobile factories. This is about the time I was looking to change my Focus to something resembling a good car and the Toyota Prius, Honda CR-Z and Lexus CT were on my list, quickly being narrowed down to the Lexus for its quality.

*(This will be a tragedy for the planet because the good engineering was not recognised, the bad engineering caused knock on problems and set back the cause of nuclear power. What is the least polluting, outside of the low volumes of waste, source of power ? Nuclear).

Earthquake vs car ? They couldn’t build them fast enough to keep up with the demand. There had been too much damage to the infrastructure. New CTs were taking ? 3 months to deliver ? I think. Used CTs were rare and almost full price for 6 month old cars. Compare that to now and Lexus seem quite desperate for me to think about having another IS. The infrastructure has been rebuilt and supply has caught up to demand. And I’m seeing a fair few CTs and IS’s around, very few CR-Z (it’s a nasty, ugly attempt and fails at being a sports coupe) and not many Prius.

The last time is the floods that affected Thailand. Where are most of the hard disc factories ? They were underwater in Bangkok at about the time I was looking to build Pumpkin. The result was that instead of umming and ahhing over whether to get a SSD drive for Pumpkin, it forced my decision because I was unable to buy a conventional drive at an affordable price.

Translation – I had to use a little fast disc with an old big disc from the last machine instead of a new big slow one. And I was able to catch up later.

Yep. I haven’t been at all badly affected by disasters, although I’ve seen their effects from afar. I don’t like to talk about things like disasters too much, you see way too much of that from the news media and it’s far better informed (cough – Fox – cough) than what I’ll know about.

But I do work with people who occasionally get dispatched off to help with disaster relief and I think that’s awesome. It’s them using the tools we give them for an incredibly positive purpose.

You might be thinking – how about the floods ? how about the hurricane ? We heard about the infamous Michael Fish hurricane report and the aftermath but it missed us completely. The Somerset flooding of a couple of years ago was fairly close to where I live but I didn’t see any of it, outside of seeing waterlogged fields by the side of the motorways.

I’ve been lucky to avoid any real nasty effects from disasters. Being inconvenienced with buying stuff is of zero significance next to the real trauma and loss suffered by those caught up in natural disasters.

Looking back (in the pre-publish check that always misses typos and wrong words !), Chernobyl happened when I was 11. Can’t remember how we adjusted to that but we were very nervously watching the news for the spread of the fallout cloud, with the news telling us about how it would contaminate the milk supply for decades to come.

Over to you, have you been involved in a natural disaster ? (Outside of bedrooms and unkempt gardens) Can you talk about what happened ?

I hope you weren’t too seriously affected !

Cya and hope for good times.