My Year in 2018

Finally, we come to the end of 2018! It has been quite the year, with the main theme being one of great change. So, time for the end-of-year round-up.

My Year in... Blogging

As in 2017, I set myself a sort-of goal of posting 120 times here and 60 times on the Imaginarium. And, as in 2017, I hit both those targets, despite a major drought on the Imaginarium in the first half of the year. I'm happy with that.

My Year in... Work

For much of last year and the first half of this year, I wasn't able to talk about a big change coming at work - we were recently acquired by another company. I'm still not going into the details here, as part of my "don't talk about work" policy, but I will say that it has been a very positive step, for a few reasons.

The other big news is that around Easter of this year I finally received the much-hoped-for promotion. Which was nice!

My Year in... Health

Things have been much better this year than last year (when they weren't too bad either). So that's all to the good!

My Year in... Gaming

On the other hand, 2018 has been somewhat of a disappointment on the gaming front. I have, rather unexpectedly, found myself running a game at work, which is nice. However, I have largely fallen out of the Falkirk RPG group (for reasons of distance and scheduling), but have not found a group in Livingston. I would be nice to think that might change, but I fear the reality is that if I wanted a group I would have to set one up... and I no longer really have the time or energy to be bothered.

In short, I expect 2019 to also be a very quiet year for gaming.

My Year in... Band

Things have been ticking along quietly in my new band - I'm involved enough to keep practicing without feeling any real pressure, which is nice. I do kind of miss the teaching aspect of it, and there's no prospect of that changing in the new band, but on the other hand I'm not feeling particularly inclined to push for a change.

My Year in... Resolutions

As always, the wrap-up of annual goals, and setting of goals for next year, are handled in another post.

My Year in... Travel

Ah, this year has been crazy!

Our first trip of the year was just a few weeks after the arrival of Funsize, when LC and I travelled to London for a friend's wedding. It was the start of summer, and a really hot weekend - especially as the AC on the train coming home failed.

Then there was the big trip out to the US for a family wedding. This was the best of the trips of the year, with a good time being had by all.

And then there was a third wedding, this involving a short journey and then an overnight stay. I wouldn't mention this except that it was followed immediately by an unexpected journey down South to say goodbye...

A few weeks later, that was then followed by another trip down South for another, more formal goodbye. This was also a good trip, albeit a painful one.

Then, more happily, LC and I (and FS!) spent a few days in Antwerp. This was a good trip, but by then I was really starting to get fed up with travel. I did also feel that just a few days was really enough for Antwerp - we could perhaps have found more to do, but we might have been making things up for the sake of making them up. I recommend the zoo. And the fries.

Not finally, I then had to make a trip back to the US, this time for work. It was fine - tiring and hard work, but very productive.

And then there is one more trip that I shall mention but not discuss further at this stage. Watch this space...

2019 looks like it will start much as this year has been, but will then calm down almost completely. (I may have as many as three trips with work in January and February, but have indicated that I am then not available to travel until the summer.)

I think that our own personal travels will be considerably shorter in range next year - we might make a trip to France in July, but otherwise are likely to remain in the UK, or perhaps even just in Scotland. Part of me thinks that we should seek to travel while it's still easy (grr, Brexit), but a bigger part of me has little desire to spend any more time in a plane!

My Year in... Faith

It has been a good year. LC and I have setting into our new church and been made very welcome. We're both becoming increasingly involved, which is a good thing... to a point. I expect 2019 to essentially be more of the same, which would be good.

My Year in... Sadness

As I alluded to previously, 2018 was another year that featured a great sadness, with the passing of Grandad. As with last year, I wrote about this at some length at the time so won't reiterate here. However, my thoughts at this time are very much with Grandma, who has just faced her first Christmas without him in more than sixty years.

My Year in... Great Joy

In sharp contrast, though, this year saw the completion of Project Tadpole and the arrival of Funsize. Again, I wrote about this at length at the time, so I'll not reiterate it here. Suffice it to say that she's been keeping us busy!

My Year... Overall

As I predicted at the end of last year, 2018 was a year of massive changes. Most of these have been positive, some hugely so, alloyed with one great sadness. I feel we've now really started to settle in Livingston, which means we now have a foundation for moving forward, and I have some significant optimism about 2019 as a result.

Anyway, that's the end-of-year review. As always, I wish you a Happy New Year, and will see you in 2019!

End of Year Update on Goals

It's a bit odd having an end of year update on goals, given that I deliberately only set one for the year (and haven't achieved that). However, since one of the other purposes of this post is to set goals for next year, I'm sticking with the format.

So, firstly an update on the goal:

Books: My stated goal for the year was to complete my reading though the British section of The List. Despite having made some significant progress, this goal fell short - there still remain five books on the list to be read. That's somewhat unfortunate, but not a disaster.

I have, however, managed to read 60 books this year, and have also completed all but one of the normal sub-lists I would set (I've read fewer books from The List than I would prefer). So that's a bit of a result.

Next, some thoughts on things that are not quite goals:

• Weight: I have ended the year basically where I started. That's slightly disappointing, but also not a disaster - especially given that I recent trip to the US played havoc with things.
  
• Gaming: This has been an odd one this year, in that I've been involved in a game at work, which was unexpected but quite nice. Otherwise, it has been a year entirely devoid of gaming, which is unfortunate. Indeed, this year is probably more notable for my starting to get rid of some of the cruft from my gaming collection, and also scanning and shredding my old paper notes, than it is for actual gaming.
  
• Blogging: As usual, my semi-formal goal has been to post an average of 10 times a month here and a further 5 times a month over on the Imaginarium. Despite a fairly lengthy drought on the latter, I've actually exceeded both those targets, which is nice.
  
• Work: I can't say too much here, but it has been a successful year at work - the much hoped for promotion finally happened, which is nice.
  
• The To-Do List: There have been a large number of tasks around the house that have needed done, and these have mostly been completed. I'm particularly pleased with the redecoration of the main bedroom, which has come together nicely. I think I'd still quite like to get the study redecorated, and there's still a few bits and pieces of decluttering to do, but that's not too bad.

So, that's how things have panned out over the past year. What about goals for 2019? I'm going to propose four:

• Books: The usual goal of 60 books for the year. As in 2018, I'm stating a goal of getting the British segment of The List done. Other than that, it's going to be an odd year for reading - I only have three sublists, two of which won't run for the full year. The rest will be made up of a mixture of books, unless and until I hit on a new theme.
  
• Weight: In 2019 I'll need to get back to work on this. The target is to end the year 20 pounds lighter than I start.
  
• Blogging: Time to formalise the informal goal of past years: 120 posts here, plus 60 on The Imaginarium.
  
• Redecorate the Study: When we moved in we identified two rooms in the house as needing redecoration - the main bedroom and the study. Having redone the main bedroom in 2018, it is now the turn of the study.

And that's it. Part of me would like to set a goal to get some gaming done in 2019 (outside of the context of the work game), but I'm really not sure how realistic that is. I think, therefore, it's best to leave that as a nice-to-have for this year.

#59: "A Song of Stone", by Iain Banks #60: "Pathfinder: The City Outside of Time", by Amanda Hamon Kunz

My Latest Silly Idea...

With Parliament in recess and Trump about to go off on holiday, it's time for us to spring into action. I suggest that, starting on the 1st of January, we collectively agree the following:

• Kiefer Sutherland has actually been president all along, having become so in a bizarre and convoluted sequence of events. (It has to be him, so that there's televisual evidence. After all, TV wouldn't lie to us...)
  
• Brexit was actually Ricky Gervais' most ambitious comedy project ever, and a true triumph of British humour. I mean, the very notion that we'd consider utterly trashing our economy simply to get blue passports. Naturally, Brexiteers should be lauded for playing their roles to perfection, and Theresa May deserves all the plaudits going for her absolute commitment to playing such a terrible character. Truly, she stands in the top echelon of such characters, along with Basil Fawlty, David Brent, and Gordon Brittas.

Of course, whenever anyone expresses any doubt about how this all came to be, we need to collectively shake out heads, mutter something about "fake news", and absolutely positively deny any and all knowledge.

I reckon, if we stick to it hard enough, we can convince the world that it really was all a dream.

Why Did Nobody Tell Me?

In amongst all the excitement of the last few weeks, I neglected to mention my exciting new find: when hunting for Christmas presents during the Black Friday sales, I happened upon the not-quite-latest range of Transformers toys. And it seems that the "Return of the Legends" line was followed by a "Power of the Primes" line... which featured new versions of the dinobots!

But there's more even than that. Because not only are the dinobots cool in and of themselves, and not only do these new toys closely resemble the originals (but better, it would appear), but...

• It looks like the new dinobots are actually a combiner set, able to merge to become Volcanicus!
  
• There's a new dinobot! She's called Slash, and transforms into a velociraptor. (Of course she transforms into a raptor. After Jurassic Park, how could she be anything else?)

Of course, this is all counterbalanced by the silliness of renaming Slag to Slug. This appears to be something to do with the slang associated with 'slag', but that then leaves me confused - what with 'slash' being slang for 'pee' (that said, pretty much everything is slang for 'pee' somewhere...)

Anyway, all of this raises the crucial question I raised above: why did nobody tell me?

Time for a Conclave

Our MPs, and especially the ones who make up our government, are now actively harming the country day by day. We not only need a good answer to the problems of Brexit (or at least a less-worse answer), but we also need it quickly. And amongst the problems are that we have too many outside considerations crowding in - whether it's appealing to the people, playing for a General Election or people who are leaders of parties but are not themselves MPs getting involved.

I have a solution.

The word "conclave" literally means "with key". When the time comes to elect a new Pope, the Cardinals are locked into a debating chamber, and have to stay there until they come to a decision.

So, what I recommend is that we do exactly that - our 650 MPs are locked into the chamber, with no access to telephones or the internet, no contact with the outside world, and with the microphones and cameras switched off. Three times a day, we'll deliver them bread and water, and those who have medical needs will have those tended to (I'm not a monster). But otherwise they stay there until they choose from the three available options: Theresa's Deal, No Deal, or Remain.

Once they come up with an answer, whichever one it is, we then take that to the people in a referendum: "Do you agree that we should {chosen option here}? Yes/No".

If the answer is "No", the MPs have to go back in and choose again from the remaining options. (It is possible, of course, that the people might choose to reject all three options in referendums, and our MPs have to go back in to choose from zero choices. That's a feature, not a bug.)

But if the answer is "Yes", the chosen option will then have an impeccable double mandate - it will have been agreed by the majority of the House and a majority of the people. So that's what we'll do.

(Of course, there's no chance of this happening - Westminster runs on conventions and rules, and none of them allow for something like this. Unfortunately, the conventions and rules don't seem to actually offer any way out of the mess. It should, hopefully, now be clear to all involved that politics as practiced in Westminster is just not fit for purpose. Once this mess is dealt with, we need reform - I would submit that that starts with a proper written constitution and goes from there.)

Good Doctor, Bad Series

This post contains spoilers for the most recent series of "Doctor Who", including the finale. As usual, if you don't want to know...

I have long considered that Colin Baker has had a bit of a raw deal. I wouldn't consider him a great Doctor, by any means, but a very large part of the problem with his tenure was due to the material he was given, the costume he was forced to wear, and the fact that the show was just getting rather tired by the time he took over. None of those were things he could really do anything about; he did the best he could with some rather poor material.

As predicted, Jodie Whittaker has been absolutely fine as the Doctor - she seems to be channeling a lot of David Tennant's portrayal (which is no bad thing, as he remains the best of the 'new' Doctors), while also bringing a lot that is unique to the role (also no bad thing).

Unfortunately, this most recent series has reminded me more of Colin Baker's tenure than anything else.

I do need to note some positives of the series. Firstly, and most significantly, the episode "Rosa" was excellent - perhaps the single best episode since the show resumed, eclipsing even "Blink" and "Day of the Doctor". (It benefitted from a very strong real-world premise, where the other two I mentioned leaned very hard on time-travel premises. For me, that gave that episode a gravitas the other two couldn't quite match.)

Bradley Walsh has also been very impressive as Graham - as with Catherine Tate I thought he would be awful, but he surpised me a great deal. I thought he was excellent, and would have been great as a lone Companion.

And the new take on the theme music has been great.

Unfortunately, that's about it. The rest of the show has wavered between the mediocre and the dire, with occasional ventures into the realms of being okay.

It all started with the first episode. On the one hand, regeneration episodes always suck (to the extent that next time they really should just skip it - jump ahead to "some time later..." and go from there), but this one was especially poor. I was utterly bemused to see the various reviews falling over themselves to heap praise upon what I thought was a godawful, muddled mess.

Then there are the monsters. I actually thought the decision to put all the recurring monsters on hiatus was a good one - Daleks and Cybermen in particular had become very tired, and the rest are best used very sparingly. Unfortunately, that decision only works if the new monsters are good, and I saw no evidence of that - I mostly saw a Niffler knock-off, a bad CGI tree, and a mock-Terminator.

As I said, BW would have been great as a lone Companion. Unfortunately, Ryan and Yaz weren't so much Missy's "exposition and comic relief" so much as terminally dull and completely pointless. They even failed in their duty to ask stupid questions so that the Doctor could explain the plot, forcing JW to spend loads of time talking to herself. Such a waste.

But the absolute worst aspect of the series was the curious lack of tension at key moments. The Doctor is being drowned in a witch trial! Quick, let's talk about it all at length - no need to hurry! The entire Earth is about to be consumed with crushing psychic energy! Quick, let's monologue at length about all the various resources we have at our disposal!

I guess talking is a Free Action in the Doctor Who RPG.

Anyway.

The upshot of that is that I was rather glad to see the end of the series, and curiously unmoved by the confirmation that the New Year's episode will be the only new Who in 2019. If what we've just seen is what we have to look forward to, then it's no great loss.

As a consequence of all of this, I'm not sure where to place Whittaker on my list of the Doctors*. Given that she's only had one year, and is going to have at least one more full season in the role, I think I'm inclined to put her just ahead of Paul McGann in the "Doctors with Potential" pile - based on her performance, she should probably be higher; based on the series as a whole the rating should be lower, so that's probably about right.

* Remember that I re-evaluated Capaldi's portrayal at the end of his tenure, leading to him being moved a good bit higher. I will do the same for Whittaker when the time comes, hopefully with the same outcome - I would much rather like something than not!

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that, for now at least. I daresay I'll have some things to say about "Resolution" in early January...

#58: "Pathfinder: Temple of the Peacock Spirit", by Jason Keeley

Christmas Preparations

I posted a couple of years ago about how to have a stress-free Christmas. Since this year marks something of a change from the way things have been (in that Funsize has changed everything), I thought I'd recap where we are at this time. Of course, much of this is subject to change, and some of it is likely to need revision for next year!

• Black Friday: Much as I am coming to dislike Black Friday, and even more "Black Friday Week", I admit it has its uses. There's no specific task for this week, but keep an eye out for useful bargains of all sorts!
  
• Christmas Presents: In theory, my preference for these would be to buy them all in the first weekend of December. The reality is that that's not practical - firstly because the rising tide of media pressure makes it difficult to delay, and secondly because the required lists aren't necessarily all available. So my actual position on this is that I want to finalise my list of who to buy for by December 1st, but will start buying at some likely time, and will aim to complete buying by the 10th.
  
• Advent Calendar: This should be bought as part of the last weekly shop in November. In addition, as of this year we have a reusable Advent Train which needs filled with goodies - these should also be bought in the last weekly shop in November.
  
• Christmas Decorations: Ideally, these should go up the first weekend in Advent. Even better would be the Sunday, but if scheduling makes this busy then either the Saturday or even the Friday night will work.
  
• Food Order: The big addition as of this year is that we'll be staying at home on Christmas Day, which means I'll be cooking the big meal. That means that a suitable bird needs to be ordered, and this should also be done on that first weekend in Advent.
  
• Christmas Cards: Another of my great nemeses, Christmas Cards continue to be a thing. And so, despite my vocal protestations about the environmental impact (and my real objection, which in truth is just about sheer laziness), I guess these should be done. My inclination is that the time for these is between the first and second Sundays of Advent. This gets them done in time for international postage (if applicable), and also in a slightly less busy part of the month. Anyway, get the list of recipients identified, get the cards written, addressed, and posted. (Also, as with wrapping the presents, my innate preference would be for a one-and-done approach, but I suspect it's actually a three-stage task - see the next item...)
  
• Wrapping Presents: My preference here would be a one-and-done task, to be completed in that second week after all the presents are in hand. This has failed the test of reality, which has led me to the conclusion that it's probably a three-part split - as soon as almost all the presents are in hand, set time aside to get those wrapped. Then there will need to be a second wrap party once the rest of them arrive, and then a final task of wrapping the inevitable last straggler. I've already completed the first, expect to finish the second this week, and very much hope to finish the third by that third Sunday in Advent.
  
• Stocking Fillers: These are not quite presents, but need a similar level of secrecy. Also, since they're not wrapped I don't really want them hanging around for too long. So the plan is to go get these some time in the last week before Christmas. I have a list...
  
• The Big Supermarket Shop: The weekly shop during Advent is the time for an almighty shopping expedition, stocking up on absolutely everything that is needed - ridiculous amounts of Coke and wine, stupid numbers of snacks, enough sprouts to cancel Brexit, and so on and so forth. The only exception to this is if the last weekend in Advent falls a long way before Christmas Day, in which case some fresh items may need purchased later.
  
• Pick Up the Bird: Having ordered a turkey, don't forget to go pick it up on the appointed day!
  
• Meal Pre-preparations: The cooking of the main meal is going to be hectic, so anything that can be prepared in advance should be. Therefore, it's wise to identify a starter and a dessert that can either be bought in or made in advance. In the latter case, Christmas Eve is the time to get these in hand.
  
• Cooking the Meal: Roast turkey takes a while, but fundamentally it's just any other roast dinner. So leave aside plenty of time, take your time, and get on with it. The major considerations here are really: (1) when do you want to cook, (2) does this give you opportunity to go to church, and (3) do you kick everyone else out of the house while you're cooking?

And that, I think, is where I'm at on the first part of Christmas - the run up to the day itself. As you'll probably note, I haven't included my various lists of things (the lists of who specifically to buy presents for, the list of Christmas card recipients, the list for the butcher and the big final shopping list). These will come later, and not on this blog. Also, I haven't included things like visiting Christmas markets, Santa's Grotto, and the lighting of the Christmas tree in the village. I've come to the conclusion that these are too variable to plan for in advance, so it's better to build your master list with significant gaps, identify the things you would like to do, and slot them into those gaps (if possible).

There will probably be a part two of this post later, dealing with the big tidy up afterwards. Or maybe not...

Ambushed by an Ending

I finished up "Father Christmas's Fake Beard" yesterday, that being absolutely the last book by Terry Pratchett. This time, there really will be no more.

This ending was particularly painful, because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Partly because the last several pages of the book were a taster for "Truckers" (a genuinely excellent novel), which proved deceptive, but also because the last story came to its end right at the bottom of a page, so I got there, turned the page... and there was nothing. Much like with this post.

#57: "Father Christmas's Fake Beard", by Terry Pratchett

New to (Part) Five: Sock Conspiracy: The New Evidence

I didn't dare post this at the weekend, but on Saturday LC was heard enticing FS to "go on, grab Daddy's socks". Funsize is currently at the stage where anything in the hand promptly finds itself in the mouth, so...

What this all means:

• As we know from "JFK" (the film, not the president), when two or more people are involved you have, by definition, a conspiracy.
  
• As I have long suspected, the secrets of the Sock Conspiracy are indeed passed from mother to daughter.
  
• You might not hear from me again after this...

Tee hee.

Phenomenal Symbolism!

Ten years ago, Irn Bru gave us the truly phenomenal "Snowman" ad. It really was, and is, great. Here it is:



So far, so good.

Of course, I have my issues with what's happened with Irn Bru this year, but there's no denying that the new "Snowman" ad is likewise extremely well done. And here that one is:



In particular, I really like the symbolism of it all.

Firstly, the original advert is ten years old, which means that the can of Irn Bru that gets stolen is from the old recipe. And, indeed "he nicked my Irn Bru and let go of my hand" is a pretty bang-on description of Barr's actions this year.

In which case, the can represents old Bru, the Snowman is A.G. Barr, and the boy is those of us who desperately want it back.

So far, so good. But wait, there's more!

Because the big winner in the advert is none other than Santa, who in the struggle manages to sneak off with the grand prize.

Note, though, that Santa is a big, jolly fellow wearing red.

But so what, I hear you cry. After all, Santa always wears red!

Aha! But here's the thing: waaay back, Santa used to be depicted in a whole host of different ways - tall or short, fat or thin, human or elfin, and in a variety of colours. The key thing that essentially settled us into the now-universal depiction of a fat, bearded, jovial man in bright red is another iconic advert.

For Coca Cola.

And so the ultimate symbolism of this fabulous new advert is that in the struggle for Irn Bru, the big winner are Coca Cola.

I tip my hat to the animators. Sterling work!

#56: "Whit", by Iain Banks

Wizard Wars, Episode 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I rather enjoyed "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". It had its problems, but it was a fun little story, didn't take itself too seriously and, crucially, wasn't just a prequel to the Harry Potter series - although there were some ties in there, it was separate enough for me not to tar it with the "prequels suck" brush.

Unfortunately, "The Crimes of Grindelwald" very definitely is a prequel to Harry Potter - much more even than it is a sequel to "Fantasic Beasts" - and prequels really do suck. This one, in particular, is very much the "Attack of the Clones" of the series (which, as I've noted before, is my least-favourite Star Wars film). But where to begin?

(From here on out there are fairly significant spoilers. You know the drill by now...)

First up, I think, the returning characters. Our hero, Eddie Redmayne, remains fine as Newt - no complaints there. But then it goes horribly wrong - one of the real highlights of the first film is the interaction between the four main characters, and in this one they're barely ever on screen together. Tina barely features, and is mostly off on her own. Queenie and Jacob are now no longer having a cute flirtation, they're having tiresomely predictable relationship woes... for about five minutes, and then they're separated for most of the film. And with that, the heart that carried the previous film is ripped out.

On the other side, Ezra Miller does a surprisingly good job as Anakin, as he goes in search of his mother, only for her to be killed off and thus cause him the lash out at some Tusken Raiders. Those poor guys never get any luck. Fortunately, Padme is on hand to soothe his woes, although this time out she's less Natalie Portman and more snake-ish. Or something.

Technically, Johnny Depp is returning as Grindelwald, but given the size of his role in the first film I think it's fair to count him as being new. And on the other side, we have Jude Law as Yodaldore, busy teaching some young padawans Defence Against the Dark Arts. You know the stuff - handing them a lightsaber and/or magic wand at an inappropriately young age, teaching them object lessons that are likely to scar them for life, and then forcing them to go into a cave to face their worst fear. At least in sentences he speaks.

Okay, I'm being a bit unfair here. A more accurate comparison would actually be to Charles Xavier and Magneto in the X-Men films - two old friends divided by an insurmountable philosophical difference. The problem is that the X-Men films work because (a) Xavier and Magneto actually have time on screen together to debate their positions, and (b) Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan are vastly superior actors to Depp and Law.

Beyond that there's not much to say. There's a cringe-inducing 'romance', there's a failed rescue (complete with joke about how badly it goes... but a less funny joke than in the noted comedy that is AotC), and then a final confrontation in an arena.

Here, to be fair, they surprised me. I had expected the film to follow the same beats as AotC, with our heroes having to face off against some Fantastic Beasts (possibly with Obi-wan Scamader using his abilities to tame one of those beasts?), followed by a 'rescue' by the other Jedi that leads to most of them dying, followed by the sudden arrival of Yodaldore to face off against Grindelwald in a CGI spectacular.

As it happened, though, it appears that they had used up their Fantastic Beasts by that point, so skipped straight to the Aurors arriving. And, meaning no disrespect, Callum Turner is no Samuel L. Jackson. (Also, Yodaldore was busy elsewhere, so instead the big CGI spectacular is provided by another character.)

Yeah, I think my version would have been better. Still not good, but better.

The other major problem that this film has, on top of all its other woes, is that it is very much the middle chapter in a not-trilogy. That is, it doesn't stand alone but mostly serves to move characters from the end of the first film to where they need to be at the start of the third film. The horrible thing there being that we're apparently getting five of these films, which leads me to fear that the next two will be yet more setting up for the big finale. In which case, a trilogy would definitely be better.

Anyway, that's that. I really can't recommend this film - watch the first one again instead, or even just something else entirely.

Cherry Coke

I'm not sure exactly where the notion came from, but I was sure I didn't like cherry coke. And that's a safe bet, after all - I mean, what kind of mad idea is it to add a sour fruit to a sweet drink?

Anyway, in desperation I've just had some cherry coke and discovered that my previous notion was incorrect. I wouldn't claim it as a favourite, but as an occasional alternative to Coke and Pepsi (which, frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of), it's not too bad.

I wonder what other options there might be out there?

King Lear

After a mere six months, we finally got around to watching the Hopkins version of "King Lear". It was an impressive piece in many ways - the modern day setting was well handled, Anthony Hopkins was great in the title role, and the rest of the cast was packed with Names.

But...

The big problem with it came at the end - it was evident that they'd cut an awful lot from the play in order to fit in the two-hour time slot, and this meant that they seemed to get to a point where they'd just run out of story, didn't quite have a resolution... so everyone just died off screen. And then it ended.

That's a real shame, since it really felt like it needed another half-hour or so to breathe just a bit longer, and maybe actually show how these things came about. As it was, it felt like a lesser version of "Hamlet" or "Romeo and Juliet" - everyone dies, there's some closing words from the last man standing, and we're done.

I guess I'll now have to go a read the actual text, to see just how far it differs...

Wrapping up the To-do List

As I mentioned in my most recent regular update on goals, it was my intention to try to blitz the remaining items in the to-do list in November and then put it on hold for the Christmas season. I'll then rebuild the list from the ground up in the new year.

In the event, that 'blitz' of the remaining items basically amounted to nothing much - I had intended to do a big clear out of the kitchen, that being the biggest remaining task, but when it came to it at the weekend I just couldn't find the motivation. Which is slightly unfortunate, but not a disaster.

Since we've now passed the last weekend in November, I'm calling a halt to most of the remaining tasks. I'll continue with my "scan and shred" efforts with the RPG papers until Friday, since that's something I do each day, a bite at a time, and I'll certainly try to get to the charity shop and the tip to get rid of the stuff that's busily cluttering up the study and garage. But the kitchen will have to wait.

I'm reasonably content with the results from this iteration of the list - I didn't get everything done but I did get most things done, and some of the things that are done have been bothering me for a long time. And I'm particularly pleased with the results of re-sealing the shower and re-arranging the spare room - in both cases, this has led to a vast improvement in things.

And now to turn my attention to Christmas...

Trust

Over the past couple of weeks, LC and I have been watching our way through "Trust". (Given that most TV is now highly serialised, it makes sense where possible to record a whole series and then watch it quickly. We could have used iPlayer to the same effect... but didn't.)

Anyway, it's... okay, I guess. It had very strong performances from Donald Sutherland, Brendan Fraser, and, especially, Hilary Swank, but it was really lacking in sympathetic characters (there were, by my count, two). Plus, it didn't help that I watched "All the Money in the World" earlier in the year, which was a somewhat different take on the same story. I expect it would be interesting to know the actual truth of what happened, but since nobody now knows for sure that's unlikely.

What I can't believe, though, is that they're planning a second series of the show - this one a prequel series to tell how Getty came to be the way he was depicted... or, at least, one possible point of view on that. I'll pass, thanks.

Anyway, that was ten hours more-or-less enjoyably spent. Next up will be "Little Drummer Girl", though again I intend to let all six episodes air before starting.

#55: "Pathfinder: Runeplague", by Richard Pett

It's a Miracle!

I see that they've started extracting oil from fields to the west of Shetland. The oil there is expected to last some forty years - which, in a sane country, should be more than long enough for us to vastly improve the technologies involved in collecting renewable energy and thus leave us sitting pretty on an absurd wealth of energy.

Unfortunately, the UK is quite manifestly not a sane country. So expect to see this bounty go the exact same way as in the 80's - squandered by a Tory government, mostly on tax cuts for their rich mates. Though I daresay this windfall will also be used to provide the "Brexit dividend" that the government so desperately needs to find.

(Of course, crazy conspiracy-theory independence supporters did suggest there might well be oil in the Clair Ridge fields. But I'm sure that's just a complete coincidence. One might even call it 'miraculous'. (In fairness, I was off by about four years.))

The Ultimate Indignity

I was digging through some old posts in advance of a proper rant (wanted to check I hadn't said exactly the same thing before - or, indeed, the opposite), when I stumbled upon a reference to a joke.

There was only one problem: I didn't get it, and consequently had to spend ten minutes desperately trying to figure out what the muppet who wrote it (past me) actually meant. Of course, once I did figure it out, it was obvious. And awful.

Bollocks

I've read two novels about India this year: "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry and "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. This post contains significant spoilers about both, so if you don't want to know, best skip this post.

It's fair to say that I didn't really enjoy "A Fine Balance". It was basically a thousand pages of awfulness happening to our heroes, but throughout it all Ishvar is sustained by one hope: that he will arrange the marriage of his nephew Om and see the family continue in the next generation.

As the book reaches its climax, and just as it looks like Ishvar might have succeeded, they find themselves rounded up by government forces, and suffer forced vasectomies. And even then, despite the absurdity of it, Ishvar retains hope - a vasectomy can be reversed, so as expensive as it is he'll find a way...

It is only then that he discovers that during the night a local authority, in an act of pure spite, has in fact had Om castrated.

The moral of the story is that the powerful will always abuse the weak, and that the only way to avoid being a victim is to be the biggest bastard around. And also, while hope is the last thing that they'll take, they will take it from you.

The book ends shortly thereafter in despair and hopelessness.

"Midnight's Children" isn't so hard going, partly because it's considerably shorter and partly because there is considerably more light to contrast with the dark. But as the novel goes on it likewise becomes increasingly dark. Still, I consoled myself that at least that final indignity wasn't on the cards.

Until the protagonist finds himself rounded up by government forces. Uh-oh, I thought...

Sur enough, Saleem promptly finds himself castrated. He even coins the term 'sperectomy' for a cutting out of hope (though apparently the etymology of the term is wrong...). And then, again, the novel ends in hopelessness and despair.

Sigh.

It's fair to say that I'm now not really looking forward to "A Suitable Boy"! Though surely it must be a coincidence... that can't be a pattern, can it?

I'm not really building to a great point here - mostly, it's just a good excuse for an amusing title.

I did think it was an interesting coincidence that both these books went with the same final indignity to heap upon their heroes' heads. It's also interesting in that that action is actually nothing less than an attack on the fundamental nature of the person themselves - what we are is not just the sum of our memories and experiences, but also very significantly impacted by the particular cocktail of hormones that our brains are pickling in. Removing the testicles, and therefore dramatically altering that cocktail, inevitably alters that.

(I should note at this point that there's a difference between someone deciding that for themselves versus them having it done to them. That's one of those things that should go without saying, but...)

Anyway, it's been bothering me for some time (actually, since I finished "A Fine Balance"), so there it is. But that's all I have to say about that.

Discombobulated

It has been a strange few weeks - I've been transferirng to a new project featuring a completely new technology and even language (that is, new to me), while at home we've been quietly working through some old TV that we've recorded, which FS continues to grow apace, and while the preparations for Christmas get underway. The whole thing has left me feeling somewhat adrift and also somewhat dissatisfied - I like having concrete things to do with clear goals and milestones, but those are sorely lacking at the moment.

It has also had the effect of leaving me with nothing much to blog about, hence the relative silence here. That, at least, should hopefully be coming towards an end - I'll hopefully have something to say soon about "Trust" and also about the latest "Harry Potter" prequel...

For now, though, there's just nothing.

The Emergency Mug Anecdote

As I've noted before, everyone loves a mug anecode. So, since it has been a while, here's today's exciting tale...

Halfway to work this morning I suddenly realised I'd left my new jar of coffee at home. This was followed almost immediately by the realisation that I'd left my coffee mug at home also. Disaster upon disaster!

Fortunately, I have an emergency mug hidden away in the office, in preparation for a situation exactly like this one. It is a simple black mug emblazoned with the name of my employer on the side, which I received as part of the company's welcome pack.

So all's well that ends well - I was able to bring the emergency mug into operation for this week, and am making use of the office supply of coffee for today, until I can make another attempt to bring some in tomorrow.

Brutus Was An Honourable Man

In all the flurry and turmoil of these resignations, my recommendation would be to watch Michael Gove. If he stays, then I'd expect May to somehow keep her job after this mess; if he goes then that's game over.

My reasoning for this is this: back when the Brexit referendum was announced, Gove promptly left Cameron's campaign to head the opposing campaign. Apparently, Gove and Cameron were good friends, but that was the issue that divided them... and cost Cameron his political career.

Then, after the referendum and when Cameron was gone, everyone expected Boris to stand for the leadership with Gove by his side. Only Gove jumped in first with his own bid, and thus forced Boris out of the running. And it's increasingly looking like that was Boris' only chance to be PM, so that action effectively cost him his political career.

And now Gove is highly-placed in May's cabinet. Hence my logic - if he goes, May will follow, and he will have cost her her political career also.

At which point I would label Gove a "serial Brutus". But there's one problem with that comparison. See above.

#50: "Complicity", by Iain Banks
#51: "Rivers of London", by Ben Aaronovitch
#52: "Dungeon Crawl Classics", by Goodman Games
#53: "Pathfinder: It Came From Hollow Mountain", by Mike Shel
#54: "Dunstan", by Conn Iggulden

Day 300: Update on... Stuff

And so it's already time for the penultimate update on goals for the year. The next, and final, one will be the end-of-year wash up. How are things?

Books: By day 300, I 'should' be at 49.31 books read. I'm pretty much on target, despite "Midnight's Children" taking an age to get through. So that's good.

As noted previously, though, I won't complete my stated goal for the year - the books that remained on that half of The List were just too long for the year.

Blogging: I'm actually ahead on this blog, and caught up on The Imaginarium! I certainly didn't expect the latter, but it's a good place to be.

The To-do List: This is proceeding apace, following the Modified House Move Strategy I mentioned previously. All the tasks in the upstairs of the house are now complete, and the downstairs is underway. There is a big task of actually moving out the various things that we've selected for donation/disposal, but that's not too horrible. Of some more concern is that the remaining tasks are increasingly nasty, and progress has therefore crawled to a halt.

My intent now is to try to make a big push in November and try to get as much done as possible. Once we get into December, and the preparations for Christmas take precedence, I'll ditch whatever remains of the list. Then, come January I'll repeat the exercise of rebuilding it from nothing.

And that's everything, I think.

#49: "Midnight's Children", by Salman Rushdie (a book from The List)

Resolving the Home Cinema Issue

When we moved into the new house, one of the things I stonrly considered doing was upgrading my home cinema system - the existing system is thirteen years old, and although it has done sterling service in that time it is also clearly quite long in the tooth. So I spent some time looking around for a suitable replacement, but never quite found the ideal solution.

Of course, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, there was also the need to get the cables cut to length and fastened down as part of our child-proofing approach - a task that has been getting ever more important as time goes by. (And which still isn't done.)

As of this weekend, I've found the solution to both problems, at least for the near to mid future.

What we've decided to do is to remove the existing home cinema system entirely, and replace it with a serviceable but not top-of-the-range soundbar - something that will give decent playback options without a massive outlay of funds (and, most importantly, something that doesn't have lots of cables snaking everywhere!). That will mean something of a downgrade, since we'll no longer have true surround sound, but should provide good performance for a number of years. (And if it's really not hitting the spot, the soundbar we've chosen allows for the possibility of adding a wireless subwoofer and rear speakers, so if we want we can get true surround sound back.)

The second part of the plan will then come into play in a number of years, once we're past the need for child-proofing. At that time, we'll consider paying out for an upgrade of the whole system - replace the TV with the latest model, get new input devices, and a new surround sound system with all the bells and whistles (and probably get it professionally installed, complete with wall-mounting for all components). But that's all for the future.

Anyway, the soundbar is now on order, and due to arrive at the end of this week. Which means that my big task for the weekend is now decided, but also means that it should be a more enjoyable installation rather than a tedious chore.

About the £50 Note

I see that the Bank of England are gearing up to replace their £50 with a new polymer version, to go with the exciting £5 and £10 notes they've already issued. This has, of course, triggered the inevitable controversy over who should be on it.

In theory, the criteria are fairly simple: it needs to be someone British, relatively famous, and dead. Of course, then there are the other qualifications - we need to ensure we find someone who isn't too divisive, and we ideally want to increase representation of women and people of colour. Which is fine, but I rather wish they'd simply state those other requirements, rather than having a set of invisible rules. It would just make the job easier.

Rather unfortunately, it looks like the front-runner for the job is Margaret Thatcher. And, in most regards she ticks all the boxes, including providing additional representation of women. Plus, she's backed by some very influential people, for obvious reasons. (There's even an argument that she's exactly the person we want on a bank note that will pretty much exist for the benefit of the already rich.)

All that said, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone I'd like to see less, at least without delving into actual criminal behaviour.

I do, however, have an alternative suggestion that I think is a good one. It is contingent on the Bank of England finding a way to fit the portraits of two people into the space, but that shouldn't be beyond the wit of men (especially on the £50 note, which is after all the largest of the English bank notes).

Morcambe and Wise.

Now, granted, that's two more white men, which doesn't exactly strike a blow for equality. On the other hand, they're British, famous, and dead, and shouldn't be a particularly divisive choice. Plus, they'd certainly bring me sunshine, at least.

(One last thing: If the BoE were to decide that they do want to choose a woman for their new note, my nomination would go to Ada Lovelace. Again, British, relatively famous, and dead, and not a particularly divisive choice. Plus, a reflection of the importance of science and engineering in building the modern world and a very visual advertisement of the importance of women in STEM. That's about as solid a set of credentials as you can get. So while I would prefer M&W, and would smile a little every time I saw the note in use, the selection of AL would also make me very happy indeed.)

The System Shatters!

As we know, you've got to have a system. And, per my system, there is a time assigned for switching from my summer jacket to my winter jacket (and vice versa), and it's when the clocks change. (By rights the clocks shouldn't change, and we should be on GMT all year around - British Summer Time is, frankly, an abomination. But since we're collectively determined to have all our clocks actively lie to us for two-thirds of the year, I've decided to get something useful out of it.)

Anyway, with the impending reversion of the clocks to Actual Time, I was rather looking forward to bringing my winter jacket back into use, and retiring my summer jacket.

Alas, with one week to go, one of the zippers on one of the pockets of the summer jacket has broken!

This is, of course, a total disaster. It means that I'll have to bring my winter jacket into operation a week early, which means inflicting on it the indignity of Liar Time until the clocks change next week.

(It also means that the summer jacket will need to be retired permanently. But given that I actually thought I'd done that last year, and so was surprised to find it ready and waiting for me this spring, I'm not too disappointed. But if I find it returned and ready to go again next year, I may not be quite so sanguine.)

Anyway, that's the level of disaster that has dogged this week from start to finish. Truly, it has been a dark time.

Where The To-Do List Failed

As I've mentioned before, after we moved in I constructed a fairly lengthy to-do list. This worked quite well for a while before getting bogged down. The two tasks that really defeated my efforts were clearing the garage and sorting out the home cinema cables - I even managed to get both of these partially done but then ran out of steam and found it really difficult to get motivated to finish them off.

My efforts to clear my revised to-do list have been going quite well, but they've hit a bit of a roadblock - the highest priority task that remains is now sorting out the home theatre cables, and that's just killing my motivation. (And, unfortunately, that's probably also the least horrible of the remaining tasks - the other three big tasks that remain are to clear out the spare room (which has become the dumping ground while dealing with everything else upstairs), sorting the kitchen, and clearing the garage.)

Which means that the revised to-do list has failed in exactly the same place, and for exactly the same reason as the previous list. And that failure is continuing to bug me in exactly the same way. Grr.

That said, there is something that is a bit different this time - a year ago, I wanted to get the home cinema cables sorted out. This year, they desperately need to get sorted out - Funsize has thus far only crawled once and hasn't yet realised the joy of unfastened cables, but both of those things are going to change very fast. So either those cables need tied down urgently, or the whole surround sound system is going to have to go into storage for a few years. (Although, actually, that might not be the worst idea...)

Officially Unpacked

In "The Incredibles", there's a scene where Helen Parr tells Bob that they're now officially moved in - although they've lived in their then-current house for some years, she's only just now unpacked the last box. At the weekend we hit that threshold for our house, after only one year of living there.

The thing is, that last box contained a number of largish miniatures, that had been carefully sealed in bubble wrap to protect them during the move. However, after the move was done and things re-arranged, I found I didn't have a good place to put them. More or less the only available open space was directly in front of some document stores that I would need to periodically (albeit infrequently) need to access. So not exactly the best place to put some fragile items!

And so, they stayed in that box and quietly annoyed me for the past year. But now, having decluttered some of my RPG books, I suddenly found myself with a free shelf - ideal storage for those miniatures. Huzzah!

(There's no greater moral to this story, nor any other significance. I just thought it was worthy of a blog post to note that we've reached another milestone!)

Breakthrough!

For the most part, work as a Data Transponster is a fairly cushy number. Sure, there's a fair amount of thinking involved in carving out designs, and then there's some work in turning those designs into actual code, but it's not hard, at least in comparison with many other jobs.

But every so often...

For the past week and a bit, I've been wrestling with a bear of a problem - one of those tiny glitches that are both monsters to find and nigh-impossible to fix. And, worst of all, every time I did an analysis of the system I concluded "it should work like this..." only to find that, of course, it didn't.

And so, every night for the past week and a bit I've gone home stressed and frustrated, and no closer to actually fixing the problem.

(And although physically it's still true to say that my job has been easy, that would be to massively downplay the mental effort involved in all of this. It has been really, really hard going.)

Anyway, I fixed the problem today. And there was much rejoicing!

Disaster!

I got home yesterday only to discover that I'd left my lunch box and my book in the office. Fortunately, we had a spare lunchbox in the house, so my sandwiches today remain appropriately boxed. However, the absence of the book did leave me rather discombobulated.

(Plus, it meant that when driving to work I was taking an awful risk - in the event of a breakdown I would find myself sans reading material while I whiled away the time. Fortunately, I got away with it. This time. But it was too close for comfort.)

Experimental Cookery 2018: Carrot, Apple & Chicken Grain Bowls

This is a rather belated Experimental Cookery - we actually had the meal in question last Monday. This one came from the Tesco magazine, though it's quite similar to something Hugh has had me cook before.

This is quick and easy to put together - soak some bulgur wheat and quinoa in boiling water, chop everything else, and make a simple dressing. Then combine.

For all its simplicity, it was a nice tasty meal to start the week - but a rather better lunch the next day. The only thing I'd be inclined to change next time would be to use some flavoured chicken rather than just blank roast chicken breast (or, indeed, cook a roast on the Sunday and then use leftovers for this).

In any case, I have no complaints, and fully expect to make this again.

#48: "Pathfinder: Secrets of Roderic's Cove", by Adam Daigle

Our Colonial Masters

If Scottish Labour and/or the Scottish Tories wish to prevent Scotland from having a second independence referendum, there is an obvious mechanism available to them: win enough seats in a Scottish election to prevent a pro-independence majority of MSPs forming.

Anything else is to deny Scottish democracy, and that means that Scotland ceases to be a free country (that has freely chosen to remain a part of the UK), and instead becomes a colony.

Because if we are a free country, we have the right to revisit that decision, and indeed to revisit it as often as we like and whenever we like.

#45: "The Quarry", by Iain Banks
#46: "The World of Peter Rabbit", by Beatrix Potter (a book for Funsize)
#47: "The Star Wars Sourcebook", by West End Games

The Modified House Move Strategy

I have previously outlined my strategy for unpacking after a house move:

1. Try to ensure the heavy furniture ends up in the right rooms. This makes the rest much easier.
   
2. Pick a room, and start going through things. If you find something for this room, put it away immediately. If you find something for a room that hasn't yet been unpacked, take it and put it anywhere in that room.
   
3. Once the previous room is done (and only once that room is done), move to the next room. This time, if you find something for the new room, put it away at once; if you find something for a room that hasn't been done yet, take it and put it anywhere in the room; if you find something for a room that has already been done, take it and put it away in that room.
   
4. Repeat until all the rooms are done.

That's a nice, systematic process that gets all the rooms done efficiently, without leaving you overwhelmed trying to do everything all at once - you're only ever working with one room at a time. (It can be difficult if you're trying to move furniture around in a room that's still full of boxes. For that reason, I would recommend - if possible - that you nominate one room as a dumping ground for lots of boxes, even if they don't go in that room. That then allows the other rooms to remain manageable, and allows you to move your furniture round. Unpack the "dumping ground" room last.)

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because my new strategy for dealing with the to-do list follows a modified house move strategy:

1. The list of tasks is organised by room.
   
2. Each week, I plan to identify the single highest-priority task and do that, whatever it is and wherever it is in the house or garden.
   
3. Each week, I also plan to identify a single room, and attempt to tackle all the tasks associated with that room.
   
4. In addition, if a new task crops up in a room that has already been dealt with, that new task will jump to the top of the queue - it's more important that rooms stay 'done' than that new rooms get 'done'. (There's an obvious danger there, so the intent is also to strongly resist adding new tasks to the to-do list until the existing ones are dealt with.

Last weekend turned out to be a highly productive weekend, taking the list of 'done' rooms to four. This week, the single highest-priority task is to pack up the BBQ for the weekend. The room that is nominated for being cleared is the nursery, which has three associated tasks (none of them huge).

The Banana Wrapping Rant

The problems with excess use of plastic have been well documented recently. Further, it has recently been highlighted that even plastics that can be recycled, and indeed in some cases even plastics that do get sent for recycling, still end up causing big problems.

That being the case, surely it makes sense for us to see if there are sensible steps we can take to stop using plastics where it is sensible and reasonable to do so? I mean, I'm not asking for us to go to crazy lengths here - but where there's something that doesn't need an additional layer, we could maybe not go to the time, effort, and cost of adding that layer and then adding the time and effort of me (or in this case LC) removing that same layer before sending it for recycling.

In short: bananas already come with a perfectly good skin to protect them against the elements. Maybe they don't need to come wrapped in a plastic bag?

When to Stop Giving Presents

I'm in another of my decluttering phases, and so I'm once again pondering the question of gifts (birthday and Christmas).

You might wonder how these two are associated. It's fairly simple: for each Christmas and birthday there tends to be a number of presents received. In most cases, these are things I've specifically asked for, or in some cases things I haven't asked for but that I will use. But the truth is that there are usually a few gifts that won't ever really be used, and which therefore just take up space. (I'm sorry if that seems ungrateful. It's certainly not intended to be! But it is the truth.)

In an attempt to combat, or at least reduce this, one of the tricks that we tend to use is to ask the person what they would like as a gift, and then get that. Or we just cut out the middle-man, and go directly to giving the money. Which has a certain efficiency to it, but which also lacks most of the warmth of gift-giving. Besides, if I receive £20 from each of my siblings in June, but then give £20 to each of them at their birthdays, is there really any point?

Basically, what I'm saying is that my siblings and I should stop giving each other gifts, with the probable exception of birthdays for ages ending in '0'.

But there's a second, perhaps trickier thing to consider: with one exception we now each have children, ranging in ages from 12 to less than one. And this also leads to a lot of present-buying.

So the next questions are these:

• At what age should we switch from giving a nephew/niece a present to instead giving them money to spend themselves? (Which may seem to lack warmth, but there comes a point where that's probably preferable to the recipient.)
  
• At what age does that gift-giving just stop entirely?
  
• Is Christmas different from birthdays for any of the above?

(Incidentally, I think the answers I'm inclined to advocate are: "thirteen", "eighteen", and "yes - between thirteen and eighteen you still get an actual present for Christmas".) Also, looking back, I think the convention I wish we had adopted had been that you keep receiving gifts until you start your first 'real' job. Which, conveniently, would have been at about the same age for pretty much all of us.

Their Own People

Back at the last Scottish Elections, some bright spark in the independence movement came up with a wizard wheeze: if everyone voted SNP in the constituency and then voted Green in the list, that would give the SNP a majority on the constituencies alone but also give the Greens a vast number of seats. In effect, this would allow independence supporters to choose both the government and their own opposition.

It was a fine idea, with only three small flaws:

Firstly, it was bollocks. Since neither the SNP nor the Greens could officially campaign along those lines (since the Electoral Commission would have some strong words - see point two), it just wasn't possible to get people to vote in the desired manner in anything like the required numbers. The outcome of this wizard wheeze was probably that the SNP dropped from a majority to a minority government, while the Greens advanced by two or three seats - certainly nothing like the outome that was envisaged.

Secondly, it was profoundly undemocratic. The wheeze was designed to take advantage of one of the weaknesses of the electoral system used for Scottish elections, and while a certain amount of gaming the system is unavoidable, antics of this sort really should be avoided. (As I said, the Electoral Commission would have had strong words had the Greens, or especially the SNP, given official support to this in their campaigns, for exactly this reason. And rightly so.)

Thirdly, though, what this wizard wheeze failed to consider is that the Green Party are not simply an adjunct of the SNP - they're their own party with their own manifesto, policies, and priorities. They happen to agree with the SNP on the topic of independence, for now, but that's all.

That third point is one that has been causing quite some grief ever since the vote - basically, every time the Greens fail to vote in lock-step with the SNP, they come under fire from SNP voters who gave their vote to the Green party. And so, when the Greens hold out for changes to the tax regime before agreeing the budget, when they vote to repeal the OBFA, and yesterday when they vote against testing for P1 children, they're seen as 'betraying' the SNP.

But, again, these are peripheral interests to the independence cause, and they're all matters where the Green party are simply following their openly-stated principles and manifesto policies. In short, they're actually doing exactly what I want to see from a political party.

(And, incidentally, I don't agree with the Green party on either repealing the OFBA (which was deeply flawed, yes, but desperately needed reformed and/or replaced; simply repealing it was a disastrous idea), or on the tests for P1 pupils. But that's my view; they're entitled to disagree, of course.)

Where I do take issue in recent events is with the antics of the Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems.

My view is that political parties should act pretty much as the Greens have done: determine your principles, work out your policies from those, and then vote accordingly. And do so regardless of who that means you end up voting alongside - taking the view that different people vote for things for different reasons, but that everyone is there for the good of the country.

However, that's frankly not how I see Labour, the Lib Dems, and especially the Tories acting. For them, just about everything seems to be seen purely through the lens of how to give the SNP a bloody nose. And so, the Tories call for nationalised testing of P1 pupils... and then once they are introduced they perform an immediate about face and call for them to be scrapped. Labour, meanwhile, have their crazy "Bain Principle", whereby they don't support anything the SNP propose.

But that's disastrous for our politics. Firstly, it's disastrous because most things in Scottish politics are in fact not about independence, or the prevention thereof. But if the unionist parties line up in a row to attack whatever the SNP do, that has the effect of turning our politics into exactly that - supporting independence becomes a matter of supporting everything the SNP do (even where they're wrong), while opposing independence means the opposite.

Secondly, it has particular problems in a minority government, where the governing party must cut deals in order to get things done. This worked really well in 2008 precisely because Annabel Goldie's Tories was reasonably pragmatic about making those deals, as were the Lib Dems. Thus, the SNP could cut this deal here, and that deal there, and it worked pretty well and led to pretty balanced governance.

But in 2018, things don't work like that. The Tories, Labour, and the Lib Dems are all manifestly not interested in making deals, while leaves the SNP with exactly one choice: the Greens. And that gives the Greens disproportionate influence, allowing them to pull the SNP government signficantly leftward. But... if people had wanted the Greens to have that level of influence, they would have voted Green in greater numbers. The effect of this is that the whole party is being skewed in a manner that the electorate do not want. And that's not a good thing.

Unfortunately, I don't see any of this changing any time soon. The reality is that the nationaist vote is fairly well united behind the SNP, but getting a majority in Holyrood without an actual majority in the country is extremely (and intentionally) difficult. But the unionist vote is significantly divided, such that neither Labour nor the Tories will be able to form a government without the other... and it's almost unthinkable that they would go into coalition together. Meanwhile, the independence issue is simply not going to go away (unless and until Scotland actually becomes independent, of course, but I'm not holding my breath). So the whole thing is going to remain a mess for a long time to come.

Baby Changing Facilities

One of the benefits of having travelled fairly extensively this year with Funsize in tow is that we've had several encounters with baby changing facilities. It's fair to say that some of these are better than others! However, I've generally been reasonably impressed with the provision of facilities - for the most part they've been there when we've needed them, and they've tended to be reasonably good.

That said, there is one thing that really annoys me when I encounter it...

In terms of provision of baby changing facilities, I take the view that there are three options, any of which are at least acceptable:

1. Have a dedicated baby change facility. This is probably the best - have a single room set aside for the changing of babies.
   
2. Place the baby change facility in the disabled toilet. This is probably the next best, in that it provides a single facility for everyone to use. However, it does have the downside that sometimes disabled people need to use the facilities, and sometimes when you've got to go...
   
3. Duplicate the baby change facilities in both sets of toilets. Sometimes, this is the only available option. And it's fine, since it does provide facilities for everyone to use. However, it suffers from being inefficient, since you have a relatively little used facility in two places, and it also runs the risk that the real baby change facility is the one in the ladies' while the one in the men's is allowed to degrade...

And that brings me to the thing that really annoys me, and the option that I don't think is acceptable:

4. Place the baby change facility in the ladies' toilets only.

Fortunately, we've encountered this only rarely, and only ever when we've been together, so we've never actually been caught out by it. And if it ever did happen, I'm confident (arrogant?) enough that I'd make no bones about going in and using said facility. But it's still something that continues to annoy me when I do see it. Partly because of the potential issues that might arise and/or the issue of children not being changed when they actually need it. But also because of what it says, and continues to say about gender roles - both that it is expected that mothers will be around to look after children and also that it is expected that fathers will not be looking after children, certainly on their own. But if we're serious about equality, both those assumptions must be challenged.

(That said, I'm not convinced we actually are all that serious about equality... but that's another rant.)

Winning Ways

The football season this year is shaping up to be rather more interesting than I had expected. I had expected it to basically be another procession - with Celtic having the best squad by far, the best manager by some distance, and the most money by miles, I'd expected them to more or less sweep everyone before them. And if there were signs of a meaningful challenge, I'd expected them to invest heavily to ensure it didn't happen.

But it hasn't been the case. Firstly, Celtic failed to qualify for the Champions' League group stages (which I'd expected - with the recent rules changes I don't expect a Scottish club to get there for a very long time). Then they lost their best player right at the end of the transfer window, with no real opportunity to get a replacement. (And, yes, they got a huge amount of money for that player, and yes, they had already brought in someone in the same position. So, business-wise it was rather spectacular; but in terms of the play on the field, it doesn't seem to be going so well.)
The upshot of that is that Celtic have had a poor start to the season. As, indeed, have Aberdeen and Rangers. This leaves Hearts as league leaders with some cushion, and indeed sees Livingston flying high despite having just been promoted.

Now, it's worth noting that we are only five games in, and I fully expect things to shake out quite quickly - I'm still expecting Celtic to get their collective act together, go on a long run, and win the league; and I'm still expecting the top six to be made up of some combination of Celtic, Hearts, Rangers, Hibs, Aberdeen, and one other (probably Kilmarnock). That order, incidentally, isn't entirely coincidental, but is also not quite a prediction!

But I can see three key points of interest in the next 33 games...

• Will Rangers and Celtic both end the season with the same managers as they began them? And, if so, will they start next season the same way? (Previously, I would have thought the only real prospect of Celtic making a change was if BR got an offer he couldn't refuse. I'm increasingly thinking that threshold might be dropping.)
  
• What will the gap between first and second be?
  
• Will Rangers manage a win over Celtic this season? (Or, in the case of a cup match, will they manage a win in the regulation 90 minutes?)

I still think we'll end the season with painfully little change - I think the pundits were basically unanimous in predicting Celtic for the title at the start of the year, and I think they were right to do so. But I do think that a change in manager for Celtic, or a final winning margin in the single figures, will make next season one to watch. And if Rangers do manage their first win in years, then that will be doubly the case.

Tasks For The Weekend

Over the weekend I finished off the decoration of the main bedroom, which involved drilling four holes and fastening the hooks for tidying the curtains. That was a good job well done. I also fixed the same issue in the nursery, and took the opportunity to patch a number of small holes in various walls - mostly places where things had been screwed into the wall but where the screws had been removed. (Those will need sanded and some paint applied...) I also started the task of scanning-and-shredding my old RPG papers.

The tasks for this weekend are intended to cross three of our rooms from my revised to-do list, all from the upstairs of the house. There is one big task, and then three minor tasks, one nice-to-do, and one continuation task. Specifically:

1. Fix the shower seals. This is now the highest-priority task remaining.
   
2. Have a clear-out in my wardrobe. This will involve a cull of clothing generally, but will also include going through the three boxes stored there (again) and discarding some stuff. In particular, those BB training materials I mentioned before will be for the chop.
   
3. Have a clear-out of the medicine cabinet in the en suite.
   
4. Have a clear-out of the medicine cabinet in the main bathroom. (You could argue that these are the same task. However, as the to-do list is now sorted by room, they're listed separately. It's also worth noting that there's not a lot needing done here, it's mostly just a matter of tidying up and taking stock.)
   
5. Continue scanning and shredding the old RPG papers. I made a good start at the weekend, but it's important to keep the momentum up.
   
6. If possible (which it probably won't be), get a cover for the barbecue and get that packed up for the winter. If this doesn't happen this weekend, it probably needs to next week.

Obviously, six tasks is a pretty heavy load, especially for a weekend where I'm determined to take things relatively easy (after several hectic weeks). However, the first of these is really quite important, while the next four are all pretty small in scope. Indeed, it's not impossible that I'll get some done before the weekend.

Cool, but disturbing

A few days before our trip, my phone popped up with a notification: had I considered downloading a map of Antwerp? Well, as it happened, I had already done so (and indeed language packs for French, German, and Dutch, and an Antwerp App), but it was quite cool to see that it was pro-actively suggesting ways to make life easier - indeed, the biggest pain of our trip to the US would have been averted by exactly such a mechanism.

On the other hand, it's rather disturbing that my phone popped up with a notification concerning a trip that I had booked entirely on my PC (and, indeed, using Firefox - I actually prefer Chrome, but it doesn't seem to work right on that PC). That means that my phone is reading and, perhaps more worrying, understanding my emails as they come in.

I'm not sure whether to be really impressed or horribly concerned by that development. Probably both - it's like having a super-fan who just wants to cater to your every whim... and who is quite willing to tie you to a bed and break your ankles to achieve it...

The Recent Tasks

At the time of writing, I have made progress on five of the six tasks I identified for my holiday. Three are done: the trip to Antwerp, the haircut, and the seasoning of the bagpipes. Another of these, the decoration of the main bedroom, is all but done - there is still one small job to be done, which I will complete this weekend (tomorrow?).

Of the remaining two tasks, one has proven to be more difficult than expected - the repair to the wardrobe door. Here, I had identified a possible fix that should work, and after considerable annoyance and effort I did indeed complete that fix. Unfortunately, I quickly found that that fix really didn't work right, which puts me more or less back where I started - it's okay for a temporary solution but would be a bad permanent one... and I don't see a good way to properly fix it.

(Annoyingly, the 'real' fix is both simple in concept and annoyingly hard in practice. Ideally, what I'd like to do is remove the damaged part (now parts) and instead fit an identical replacement part. Simple... if you can get your hands on an identical replacement part (or parts). The annoyance comes in trying to find those replacements - there's no sign of what the part numbers are or where they were bought from. Worse, I suspect they were originally bought as part of a kit, potentially from a company that has since gone out of business. So those "identical replacements" might not even exist, and certainly might not be for sale on their own, massively complicating a simple task.)

The last task is probably the most important, and is also on the schedule for this weekend (but may well slip to next weekend), which is to fix the seal on the shower in the en suite. Over the past year this has started to leak. Only very slightly and only on rare occasions, but enough to demand action. I have therefore got the required materials to effect a fix... I just need to find the time.

So, that's three done, one on the verge of completion, one that may be abandoned in an unsatisfactory manner, and one to do. Which is a... poor result.

Past Lives

I joined the Boys' Brigade in 1982 at the age of six. I then spent several years with the company, first as an Anchor Boy, then the Junior Section, the Company Section, and as a Senior. Finally, I took the KGVI training course and became an officer in the company. I served for a total of 23 years, leaving in 2005 due to my move to Yeovil.

(I briefly made contact with a company down in Yeovil, but in the end decided not to get involved - they were looking for Junior Section officers while I preferred working with the Company Section or Seniors. I also briefly considered resuming my service after my return from Yeovil, but again decided against due to the travel that would have been involved.)

I enjoyed my time in the BB, but the fact is that I haven't been back in thirteen years now, and indeed I won't ever be going back - that chapter is done.

However, over the course of five house moves between 2005 and 2017, I carted a box of BB training materials with me, ignored and indeed unknown. It was only fairly recently that I even discovered I had these books, while clearing out some other boxes. And these are materials that were old even when I got them; they must surely be completely obsolete by now (though, knowing the BB, maybe not...).

The upshot of that is fairly simple: it's time to let go of that past life. The materials that I have are of no value, to me or to anyone else; I can't claim to have any sentimental attachment to them, as I didn't even know I had them; and they will never see use again. Getting rid is really a no-brainer. (The only thing stopping me is time - it's one thing to identify these for disposal; it's another to actually clear them out...)

But that's an easy "past life" to get rid of. Doing the same for pipe band materials dating back a similarly long time (and with a similar usefulness or value) will be rather more harrowing. And clearing out RPG ephemera from my school and university days will be a whole new level of difficulty. But we're getting to the point where it needs to be done - all this clutter from past lives is starting to impact on the quality of the life we're living now.

Retiring the Tablet

A few years ago, I invested in a Hudl 2 tablet from Tesco, largely because it was quite cheap and relatively powerful for the price. And it was quite useful... for a while.

The truth is, though, it really didn't last long before outliving its usefulness. And as soon as I invested in a smartphone it immediately became obsolete - there's nothing I would use the tablet for that I wouldn't use the phone for instead. (And equally, while there are some things I wouldn't use the phone for, for those things a PC is still the tool of choice.)

The upshot is that the tablet has now been retired from use. It's not that we're getting rid of it (yet), and it's certainly not that we're going to upgrade to the latest model. It's just that that form factor turns out to be a solution that doesn't really have an associated problem. Which feels wrong, somehow, and yet... not.

#44: "Pathfinder: the Six-Legend Soul", by Amber E. Scott

Antwerp (or: What I Did on My Holidays)

One of the downsides of LC being a teacher is that our ability to take holidays is constrained by term-times. Most years, this therefore means taking our summer holidays at the same times as everyone else, and paying a premium for flights as a result. With LC being on leave this year, we took advantage of the freedom that that gave us to delay our holiday until September, and thus avoid the crowds.

Strange as it may seem, Belgium has been on my list of places to visit for some time - until last week it was the closest country I was yet to visit. And so the time had come to pack a bag and go!

We travelled out on the Monday and came back on the Thursday. However, due to the nature of the flights, this actually meant we only had two days in Antwerp itself - Ryanair fly to Charleroi airport, this is twenty minutes outside of Brussels, or ninety minutes from Antwerp. This meant taking a taxi and then a train to Antwerp, and taking a train and then a shuttle bus back on Thursday, and that meant that four days became two - that was probably a weakness in the planning. (I'll also note that I really don't recommend Ryanair. Yes, the headline figure for tickets is very low, but that comes at a significant cost - you have to work very hard to avoid additional charges, and where you can't avoid them they are very high (we needed a checked bag, which was extortionate), they've crammed extra seats into the planes so you barely have room to breathe, and when you do arrive it's generally to an inaccessible out-of-town location. All in all, that was not a cheap or pleasant experience. But it was the option for getting to our destination, so not exactly a choice.)

In sharp contrast to the flights, our hotel was excellent - the best we've ever used. It was very small, in that it had only four apartments, but each of these was fully-featured - there was a large living area, toilet, shower-room, and a large bedroom, plus a full kitchen if we had been inclined to cook. So, yeah, I was well pleased with that!

Antwerp itself was great - a very friendly city with a nicely relaxed atmosphere. Everyone we met was friendly and welcoming, and thoroughly charmed by Funsize. It also, conveniently, seems to be split quite neatly into sections, with most of the shopping gathered in one area, a historical town centre in another, and then the rest of the city. And although there were buses and trams, everything was within walking easy distance, even with a stroller and luggage.

Our first visit, on the Tuesday, was to the MAS. We spent the better part of the morning going through this floor by floor, each with a different theme. Personally, I found the "Celebration!" exhibit the most interesting, although the floors dealing with trade and also the feeding of the city (past, present, and future) were both interesting. And then we went to the roof, and the panoramic view. This was what we'd really come for, and was worth the climb.

After the MAS, we decided against the Ruien - a tour of the sewers under the city. I think that if FS had not been with us, we might well have gone ahead with this visit, which did look quite interesting, but it seemed not to be the sort of thing to expose a tiny child to. Instead, we went for lunch at Friteur No 1. Blegian fries are regarded as the best in the world, and Antwerp claims the best fries in Belgium. As the name implies, Friteur No 1 then claims the best fries in Antwerp, which (if true) would put them at the very pinnacle of all fries. They were certainly very good.

That afternoon we went to the Rubenshaus. As the name implies, this is a reconstruction of the house where Rubens did a lot of his work (and, in particular, taught a lot of his students). Again, this was very interesting. Between this and the MAS, that was the history/culture component of our trip fulfilled. Or so we thought...

While purchasing an item in the shop at the end of our visit, we were given the recommendation that we really should visit St Paul's church, which was the site of the founding of the Dominican order. So we duly retraced our steps back towards the MAS, to see this church. And it was certainly worth it, with a garden of statues in a courtyard and then a sequence of paintings by great masters inside. This is highly recommended.

Wednesday saw both the highlight and low point of the trip. In the morning we went to the zoo, where FS enjoyed seeing the animals. She particularly liked the sealions, but her absolute favourite were the seals (which were more playful). Plus, it was amusing seeing her reaction when she realised what LC and I were pointing at and saw the elephants.

The low point came when we went to "Comics Station", which we had mistakenly thought was a comics museum. But no, it was a comics-themed amusement park for 3 to 12 year olds, where every single thing was too old for FS and far too young for LC and I. There were some few games we could have played, but the instructions were all in Dutch and the controls opaque. So that was a very expensive waste of time (fortunately, not too much time - we quickly cut our losses and left).

And then we went for waffles. Yum!

By the end of the second full day, I did feel that we'd actually done enough. There was more to see, but I didn't feel that we were missing out for not doing so. It was just the right length of time to be there. (Also of note: most things seemed to close at 5:30 in the evening, which limited what you could do in a day. Antwerp is a place to get up early and get on with things, in order to get the full experience.)

And that's that.

It's been quite a year for travelling, what with the trips to London, America, and now Belgium. That being the case, I'm not planning to add any more trips away for a good long time. Perhaps towards the end of next year we'll consider something... but perhaps not. Maybe 2019 is a year to stick to countries we've already seen. We'll see...

#43: "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", by John le Carré

Day 250: Update on... Stuff

With Day 250, we reach the antepenultimate update for the year...

Books: By day 250, I 'should' be at 41.09 books read. As you can see below, I'm now actually ahead of schedule, despite my slow start to the year. But there are some mighty tomes coming up...

However, as noted previously I'm not going to complete my stated goal for the year - there are just too many books, and the individual books are just too long, to allow for completion. A shame, but not a disaster.

Band: As noted previously, the 'summer' season for the band is done. We have one more event in September, and then there's a quiet time leading up to the lighting of Christmas lights in December. (Sadly, this band doesn't do an Armistice parade. It was a little strange last year, attending as 'just' a bystander for the first time in I don't know how long.)

Blogging: At the time of writing, I'm still a little behind here and well behind at the Imaginarium. There's still no prospect of the Imaginarium catching up, despite a somewhat prolific August, but this blog should be back on track soon.

And that's everything. You'll note that I've dropped a couple of topics from the update this time, as there was nothing to report. Next time I expect to drop the update on Band for the same reason, but may or may not bring back other topics.

Oh, one last thing: with regard to the six things I listed in my previous post: I have now completed two (fixing the wardrobe, sort of, and the trip to Antwerp). Today we'll be starting on the master bedroom, and tomorrow is the haircut. So there's a good chance we'll get four done, and five is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility.

#41: "Stonemouth", by Iain Banks
#42: "Fools and Mortals", by Bernard Cornwell (two very good novels, though neither is a candidate for book of the year)

Speaking of the To-Do List

Tasks for the holiday:

• Fix the seal on the shower.
  
• Fix LC's wardrobe - one of the runners has been damaged.
  
• Re-paint the master bedroom (including stripping wallpaper from one wall).
  
• Trip to Antwerp.
  
• Season bagpipes.
  
• Haircut.

I think that's more than enough for one week. Realistically, I may get three of them done.

When Temporary Solutions Become Permanent

Our kitchen is increasingly a source of vexation to me. The issue fundamentally comes down to something I talked about before in "The Lasagne Principle" - we've filled every available space with stuff, much of which never gets used and therefore just takes up space; space that is much needed for other things.

The main reason we've gotten into this position is that when we moved in we needed to get the house into a livable state as soon as was possible. And so the kitchen layout is very much a temporary solution. Unfortunately, the reality of the last year has now largely set in - that temporary solution (like most of the rest) has become permanent.

(The sad reality is that in the past year I've barely touched the "to do" list I worked out after we moved in - once the low hanging fruit were picked it just came to a halt. My inclination in the near future is to simply delete that list entirely, leave it for a while, and then construct a new to do list on a per-room rather than per-task basis. That probably won't actually help, but may make me feel better!)

On the other hand, I do have a little free time tomorrow morning. That might be a good time to fix some of this... or it might not - the risk with something like this is that half the job gets done, creating a mess, and then it has to be abandoned due to pressure of time. And it's not really a job that lends itself to a piecemeal solution. Plus, there are other things that I'd much rather do, including "nothing at all".

Ant Man and the Wasp

LC and I never made it out to the cinema for the first "Ant Man" film - it was one of the MCU films that didn't quite grab us and so we let it go past (this was also true of "Captain America: the First Avenger", "Thor", and "Doctor Strange"). However, we did pick up the blu-ray and did enjoy the film a great deal, and also Ant Man's presence in "Civil War". So we were looking forward to this film quite a bit. Though not enough to insist on going to see it right away - indeed, Sunday was pretty much our last opportunity as it's now only on daytime showings at our local cinema.

So, we saw the film on Sunday, and... meh. I'm afraid I just wasn't overly impressed. Basically, it all felt like more of the same - we saw various ant-related tricks, we saw Giant Man, there were the same jokes, and the cutaway exposition section, and the cameo, and Paul Rudd rushing around making sure he's not caught where he shouldn't be...

All in all, I came away rather disappointed - I had expected more. Which was a shame. On the plus side, they did explain why Ant Man wasn't in "Infinity War"... but then, I didn't really need to know that. Presumably, though, it will be a plot point in "Avengers 4".

Anyway, I'm afraid this is one to skip.

Pipe Band Season 2018 Wash-up

Despite not competing this year, I did have a bit of a pipe band season, with gala days running from early June until late August. (We also have one event in September, but I'm considering that to be part of our Autumn/Winter, rather than of the season proper.) I think I probably attended a bit more than half of the events - several were cancelled for one reason or another and there were some I just couldn't make it to (and one I just opted out of).

All in all, it's been a good summer. There has been a lot less stress than in previous years, and obviously a much smaller set of events. And absolutely no weekends with two events, which is nice. On the other hand, the standard just hasn't been as good - that's an obvious and unavoidable consequence of not competing. And there's no prospect of that changing, as attendance at practices is just too erratic to allow for significant improvement.

The one thing that I do miss is that there's no opportunity for teaching at the new band, which is a shame. Again, there's no sign of that changing. (And, if I'm being honest, I'm not minded to fight very hard to change that.)

Otherwise, things have been pretty positive for my first year with the new band.

(Incidentally, my previous band have had a banner year, being placed in the prize list at four of the five majors. They also came higher in the Worlds than I ever saw in my tenure, and came second in one major, where the best I ever saw was third. So well done to them - surely now that means they'll be promoted back to Grade 4A?)

The Wrong Jam

This morning for breakfast there were pancakes! Not made pancakes, I should note - LC had purchased a packet, which is fine. Since I don't have butter, when I was ready to apply spread to my pancakes I naturally reached for the jam... only to discover that the only jam we had was chilli-themed! Oh, the horrors!

Personally, I blame the shopping committee. Or I did, until LC pointed out that I am the shopping committee. I'm now looking for a new official Scapegoat.

Anyway, the upshot was that I had my pancakes plain, much to LC's dismay and disgust. (No, I didn't consider having chilli jam on my pancakes. It's still too early in the morning for such wild culinary escapades.)

And that's the end of that story. I feel it doesn't quite have the excitement of some of my other adventures, but given that it's been a quiet week, I have to work with the material I'm given. Sorry!

#40: "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game", by West End Games

The Curtis Completion

This weekend saw LC and I (and Funsize) attending our fourth and final (probably) wedding of the year. This time, it was the wedding of two good friends of ours, and took place in the church where LC and I were married lo those many years ago (well, six and a bit). The reception was at Ross Priory, at the side of Loch Lomond.

It was a lovely day. We arrived bright and early, in order that I had time to tune my pipes and otherwise get ready. Then there were a few minutes of waiting, and then the time came to play. That went well, and then the bride arrived.

It now transpires that LC is going to mock and deride my description of the dress regardless of what I put here, so I'm going to content myself with: it was a white dress. So there!

Anyway, the wedding ceremony was lovely, and was fairly traditional in character. I thought it was quite short, although LC disagreed. There were two hymns, the exchange of vows and rings, the signing of the register, and a short message. Then outside for some photos, and then off to the reception.

The reception in Ross Priory was likewise lovely - the building had a lot of (fairly small) rooms, which meant that people could mingle in various groups. Before the meal, and while the official photos were being taken, there were drinks and nibbles laid on, including haggis bonbons (which means that this wedding wins - sorry to the others!). Then there was the cutting of the cake.

The meal took place in a very crowded dining room - much like the first wedding of the year, there was a top table with four rows leading down from it. This meant that the staff had a somewhat difficult time moving between the rows to serve the food.

But before the meal, came the speeches. As standard, there were three - ish. The father of the bride spoke first, then the groom, and then two the best men each gave a short speech. There were the usual happy words, the usual jokes, and the usual rounds of thanks. (As thanks for my part in the day, I was presented with an 8-pack of cans of Irn Bru "from before it became illegal". They know me so very well...)

The meal was excellent - a tomato and red pepper soup to start, followed by chicken and many vegetables, and then a sticky toffee pudding. Naturally, Funsize made her presence felt - LC had to take her out to feed at the start of the meal, and I had to eat my soup very quickly. Then I took FS for a walk in the grounds and persuaded her to sleep, before returning. I returned in time for the chicken, which LC cut up for me and I ate one-handed.

And then there was the dancing - a ceilidh in a fairly tight space, but with plenty of other areas for people to go and chat and generally catch up. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable evening and day. It was just a shame that we had to leave around 10, when the buffet was served, as Funsize was by this time worn out.

Which brings us to the end of wedding season for this year. Actually, 2018 has been very unusual - weddings have become somewhat few and far between, so to have more than one in a year is remarkable, and to have four...

It has been quite interesting to see how the four weddings have each been unique in their own ways, and each quite lovely. The first, in London, was probably most notable for being FS's first big trip. With the long train journey each way, with the heat, and with having so much to carry, that weekend was perhaps overly dominated by travel. But the wedding itself was a great centre-piece to that. (I feel almost compelled to highlight the champagne at that one, especially as that was brought to our attention several times. In fairness, it was particularly nice - if you're interested, or happen to be looking for a recommendation, it's the Veuve Clicquot which is apparently especially good this year.)

The second was of course the big trip to the US, and so notable for the huge distance travelled, the holiday that surrounded it, and indeed for piping in another continent (though I have played in the US before, but not at a wedding). More than that, though, it was notable for being a family wedding, which of course puts it in a different category for the others. This was probably the biggest of the four weddings, in terms both of number and of 'spectacle' (not sure that's the right word, really). It was also interesting seeing how things in the US were almost, but not quite, the same...

Then there was my colleague's wedding, which was right at the other end of the scale in terms of size - about twenty people, no speeches, no dancing, but a lovely time. And finally this wedding, which felt like the most traditional of the four. Or perhaps was just the one closest to what I was used to.