Eureka!

I didn't get much sleep last night. About 3am I suddenly realised the key to a problem I'd been grappling with for a couple of weeks, which in hindsight is now obvious. Now I just need to find a way to explain that to the relevant people, in the hope that they might actually do something about it.

Which on the one hand is really good, since it means I've actually got a solution to something that had been eluding me; on the other hand, it meant I didn't get enough sleep. And it's going to be a long day.

Oh Dear

Much to my disgust, I find myself concluding that I preferred Rishi Sunak's disastrous government to the current lot. Yes, they were absolutely awful, but at least they offered the possibility of hope - that the government would one day change and could potentially be better.

Unfortunately, the current government is pretty much the best that could be put together by the shambles that is our current political class. They're to the right of Thatcher, hampered only by there not being any mines to close down (though Grangemouth might compensate somewhat for that), and seem intent on moving further in that direction.

And there's no hope of improvement - the Tories are as bad as ever and are in utter disarray, and they're looking increasingly likely to be overtaken and replaced by Reform who are (or should be) a joke of a party.

Basically, this is the worst government of my lifetime. And I suspect it may be the best government of the rest of my life.

Wilted

After a hard-fought win against Greece on Thursday, Scotland had left themselves in a really strong position to stay in group A of the Nations League - just avoid a defeat in the return leg and they'd do it.

Naturally, I therefore expected them to collapse in a heap, and naturally, they did.

And so, once again, we have the aftermath of another failure by Scotland, another manager having to reflect on what went wrong, and another batch of players failing to live up to their potential.

And none of it is a surprise. Oh well, on to the next false dawn!

Star Wars Day Party!

Due to a confluence of events I now find myself hosting a gathering on the 4th of May, better known as Star Wars Day. I have, of course, been waiting for this all my life!

Needless to say, I can't let this opportunity go without taking full advantage, and so there is now a need to make suitable arrangements. But what form will these arrangements take? And will the Jedi or the Sith come into the ascendance?

Time will tell, as it always does.

Snowpiercer

Another show we've been watching for a while, and that we've just reached the end of, is "Snowpiercer" - a post-apocalyptic show about a massive train that contains the last remnants of humanity in a frozen world. There are four seasons, the first three of which are on Netflix, and the last is on ITV-X (actually, they're all there now).

Truth is, I almost gave up on "Snowpiercer" in the second episode, when there was almost a scene so horrible I just couldn't continue. Fortunately, they backed off from that one.

But "Snowpiercer" ends up having three great seasons, and then one more season. Season 4 is, unfortunately, rather disjointed and not close to the same standard as the others. But it is an ending, and sometimes that's what matters.

(Incidentally, there's also a movie called "Snowpiercer", which has the same premise but is otherwise significantly different. Both are okay, but I prefer the series.)

Ultimately, I think I recommend watching the first three seasons of this, and then recommend calling it a day - the fourth season just wasn't worth the wait. But then, even knowing what I know now I would have watched that final season, so make of that what you will.

#6: "Nero", by Conn Iggulden

Cobra Kai

When we got Netflix, I was pleasantly surprised to find "Cobra Kai" available on the service. This was a show I'd seen some trailers for and being intrigued by, but never expected to get to watch. I therefore raced through the first two seasons, and was not disappointed.

Unfortunately, as time went on the show became more and more convoluted, always trying to top the last twist, and if I'm honest it was all the weaker for that. By the end of the fifth season, my distinct feeling was that it had gone on too long. (That said, the structure they had meant that it couldn't have stopped - every season except the first and maybe the fifth ended in such a manner that you had to know what happened next.)

I've recently finished the sixth and final season. And I'm afraid in many ways it's like the lackluster final season of "Babylon 5" - they've ended up with not quite enough story stretched across too many episodes.

And yet, and yet...

The final season of "Bablyon 5" has five final episodes that are nothing short of outstanding, providing a great and massively cathartic ending for the season - they wrapped everything up in the neatest of possible bows. It is truly one of the great endings in TV history.

And "Cobra Kai" is another, because it also has a final five episodes that twist and turn, and yet somehow manage to bring everything together into an ending that on one hand seems to come out of nowhere... and on the other is obviously how it had to end. The finale, in particular, manages to sum up everything that the show was about.

So... "Cobra Kai": starts great, loses steam a bit, but the ending is great.

One Week Only

Since the start of the year, my commute to and from work has just been awful - it has seemed that every single road has had roadworks on it, with the inevitably lengthy delays. Though I did find one that didn't just after Storm Eowyn - largely by virtue of the roadwork-infested route I would have usually taken being completely closed.

Anyway, last Friday was a banner day, because finally, finally all the key roads on my main route to work were blessedly free of roadworks. Oh the joy of being able to travel to and from work in a less than hellish manner!

Spin forward to today, a scant four commutes later, and the roadworks are back. Because of course they are.

Free Time

I've recently been finding that free time has been at a serious shortage, and free time with access to a computer even more so. I'm hoping to get caught back up on the blog in the next couple of days, but I guess we'll see - this was probably about the point I started to lose track last year, so it's not impossible that the same is about to happen again.