This is my eightieth blog post of the year, which means I'm now once again at the point where I have caught up with where I 'should' be. Huzzah!
And, yes, it's probably a bit of a cheat to post something saying just that I've posted the right number of times - that's definitely a case of cooking the books to make them look good. But given the effort that has been involved in updating this month, I've decided to allow it. One of the benefits of making up the rules, I guess.
LC mentioned the other day that she had been considering the possibility of us getting Funsize a tablet for Christmas. She had had access to one for quite some time, as we gave out ancient Hudl tablet a bit of a reprieve, but that has now reached the point of being actually done for, not merely obsolete, so it was time to consider something else.
Funnily enough, I had been considering much the same thing from a slightly different angle - my intention for my bonuses this year, had they been worth anything, had been to replace all out IT stuff - PCs for me and LC, a new phone for at least one of us, a NAS for use as a media server, and a tablet for family use. As it happened, it was all a moot point...
Anyway, having looked at the options, it appears that the dedicated 'kids' tablets are no longer the way to go - the likes of the Leappad have gone more or less the way of the Hudl in that they haven't had an update in some time. That left us with a choice of inexpensive normal tablets, which have the distinct advantage of being less limited - so we could potentially make use of them for reading, surfing, or whatever else. And some of these are aimed at that kids niche, simply by virtue of being fitted with a robust cover and a kids' profile.
So that seems to have worked out well. Though we'll need to see where we go from here.
The last time I rode a bike was about 25 years ago. Unfortunately, the area around where I lived was never really well suited to getting about by bike, the distances I routinely travelled were either too short or too long to justify it, and so as soon as I could drive it became largely obsolete. Technically, I still own a bike, but I suspect that it's now so far gone that it would be better to invest in an entirely new one if I were so inclined.
None of which really matters, since this post isn't actually about me knowing how to ride a bike.
Almost immediately after she was born, Funsize was gifted a bike by a neighbour whose daughter had outgrown it. Some time later, she started riding with stabilizers, and then with a balance handle. But the next, and final, step is to learn to ride without support. And that has proven tricky.
Unfortunately, it is also something that has been hampered by my return to the office, by my failure to schedule regular lessons... and also by a failure to see a way to teach it in a systematic manner. I had a feeling it should look like this, and when this failed, I found myself with no alternative approach to try.
None of which is ideal, since it leaves Funsize not yet able to ride without aid, leaves me frustrated at my failure to teach, and generally leaves us stuck.
Though I do now have an approach to try that looks like it might work. Watch this space...
I finally finished "The Angel's Game" yesterday, after having started it at the end of June. Indeed, it was the book that caused me to get so badly bogged down and therefore not complete any in July.
I should note that the reason I got bogged down was nothing to do with the quality of the novel - I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially as I got further into it. But the issue is that it's very much not a quick read, and with time being so limited my notion that I could knock it out in a week was clearly laughable.
Still, it's good to be done with it. Hopefully I'll now be able to pick up the pace a little now - I've narrowed my ambitions down to completing a further twelve books this year, and even that looks oddly tight. (Some of the ones I'm hoping to tackle are huge.)
#23: "The Angel's Game", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (probably the book of the year so far)
The band played Broxburn Gala Day on Saturday. With the cancellation of one other event next month, we've now completed our programme of events for the summer - five in all. And with that, we're now done until our two Christmas events.
As mentioned before, this has been a fairly light, but fairly enjoyable, gala day season. Next year I would expect to see a few more events occurring, although it does look like some are now cancelled forever.
One thing that was particularly pleasing to see on Saturday was that the band is clearly better than it was back when we started the season - as I mentioned, Mid Calder wasn't the disaster that I feared it might have been, but even so the improvement was quite significant. And given that I've been essentially running the band for much of the past couple of months (due to a variety of reasons), I'm claiming a lot of credit for that. The band may well hate me for all the hard work we've put in, but we've definitely seen the benefit.
The challenge now, of course, is to build from this foundation so that we start next season at the same place we finished up this year. A task which starts on Thursday at practice...
I had the very great privilege to be Robert's first piping instructor. He will always be the gold standard against whom all others are now measured.
Robert's enthusiasm and aptitude for the subject was obvious. Every practice we'd cover something, and he'd quickly pick it up. Then, at the next practice it was obvious that he had worked on it very hard; we very rarely had to repeat a lesson.
That by itself would have marked Robert out, but there was more. He was dedicated, always being where he said he'd be when he needed to be there. His uniform and instrument were always well maintained, shown the respect they needed. And that same respect characterised his dealings with people too - I don't recall any picked fights, or cross words, or any trouble at all. That just wasn't his way.
I only knew Robert for too few years as a boy. Even so, the calibre of the man was clear. And it was the very best.
Rest in peace, my friend.
This one came from the Hairy Bikers' "One Pot Wonders", which pretty much right away marks it as being a very low-prep meal - it consisted of placing some chicken on a bed of vegetables, baking, adding a sauce, baking again, adding some toppings, and one final bake.
The result was very nice, and we'd definitely have it again. Perhaps most amusing was Surprise!'s response to it all - he was supposed to be having risotto for dinner, but it appears he's a massive fan of chickpeas, demanding multiple helpings. That's no bad thing, as we're now gradually moving him away from 'baby' food and towards the same meals as the rest of us, with the dream being to be able to cook one meal for all four of us. Which happens sometimes, but not as often as I'd like to hope. We'll get there.
Anyway, that's that one.
Funsize started school on Tuesday, which was quite a thing - it seems no time since we were bringing her home as a tiny helpless bundle. But she'd reached a point she was clearly ready to go, as she'd gotten everything out of preschool that she was going to get. Plus, all her best friends were going, so it's good that she did too.
Anyway, on Tuesday she came home with a leaflet outlining the school dinners that are being served. In Scotland all children are entitled to a free lunch at school until P5, which is really good (she gets breakfast too, three days a week). I've written before advocating a provision like this, and indeed a universal provision of this sort, so I'm obviously well pleased with this.
But I was even more impressed on looking through the meals on offer for that school dinner - each day a choice of three options (one of them vegetarian), complete with a starter and drink. The range is impressive, as indeed some of the markers of quality (free range eggs, seasonal vegetables, etc).
This is all really very good. More of it please!
#22: "Level Up: Adventurer's Guide", by E.N. Publishing
This one comes from Mary Berry's "Simple Comforts". It's really easy (mix up a marinade, leave the chicken overnight, bake in oven), and the results were very pleasing.
And that's all there is to say about that, really. We'll have this again when we're having a barbecue, and indeed it may replace some of our 'bought' chicken at the birthday BBQ, which is nice.
#21: "Sharpe's Assassin", by Bernard Cornwell (finally finished another book!)
As part of that same box of stuff from the Wild Meat Company, we had a pack of four pheasant breasts marinaded in a piri piri sauce. These then formed the basis of a simple meal earlier in the week - we had them with some rice and some salad.
Cooking the pheasant was a bit tricky. Having looked online, I saw some wildly different cooking times and approaches. In the end, I pan fried them in a little butter for a few minutes on each side, and the finished them off in the oven. The upshot was that they were definitely cooked, but they were probably over-cooked - they were really quite dry.
Taste-wise, these were fine. It was a nice marinade, the meal was different but not unpleasant, and the rice and the salad went well. Unfortunately, Surprise! hasn't been at all well all week, and consequently our mealtime was extremely disturbed; I don't think either LC or I really would have enjoyed any meal that night, and I'm afraid the dryness here didn't help.
Ultimately, I think we won't have these again, mostly because I doubt we'll order that same box again, and without doing so it's unlikely we'll have pheasant. A shame, but there it is.
There is now only one item remaining from that box: we have a couple of venison steaks. These should be much more reliable, so I'm looking forward to getting them used up.
It was with some sadness that I saw the news that Serena Williams has decided to retire. I wish her well.
In my opinion, Serena is probably the greatest womens tennis player of all time. The trophy tables may not quite bear that out, but she has twice taken some lengthy time out to focus on other things, and then stepped back and been instantly amongst the very best players. Had she not taken those breaks, the tables would likely look different. The only downside being that she, and her sister, were so good and so dominant for so long that they rendered womens tennis extremely dull for a long time. But that's not their issue.
We've actually been extremely lucky to have been viewing in an era that has seen arguably the greatest mens player and the greatest womens player of all time playing, and indeed an era in which that greatest mens player has been challenged by multiple contenders for that same spot - for my money Federer is still the best ever, but Nadal and Djokovic are both exceptionally good, and Murray would have been up there but for injury concerns.
So tennis is poorer for the retirement of Serena Williams. And what a gap she leaves!
One of the ways being Prime Minister is not like most other jobs is that he or she is not allowed simply to resign and walk away. Legally, the Prime Minister is a part of the Privy Council and serves in that role at the pleasure of the monarch, and so while they can offer their resignation, they cannot simply walk away.
The reason for this is that there must always be a government. Which means that while the horror show of the Tory leadership contest is ongoing, Boris remains Prime Minister, and his various ministers and other sycophants retain their roles. (It's also why Gordon Brown remained Prime Minister in 2010 while the Tories and the Lib Dems finalised their coalition agreement, and indeed why our MPs stop being MPs while an election is ongoing but our PM does not stop being the PM.)
And the reason we must always have a government is that at any time a crisis may occur that requires immediate action. The country cannot be paralysed while a pandemic hits, or if we are plunged into war.
Or while there's a cost of living crisis rapidly blowing up in all our faces.
When government ministers claim that they cannot take action until a new PM is elected and in place, they are talking unmitigated rubbish. They is precisely what the government is there for.
Rishi Sunak won't be our next Prime Minister. Despite his very best efforts, he just isn't awful enough for the Tories. A shame - although he is truly, truly awful, at least I wouldn't be concerned about him accidentally kicking off World War 3.
Rishi's latest pitch is to crack down on 'bad' degrees - the ones that don't raise income potential. It's a classic Tory talking point, sadly just too little too late.
But...
Leaving aside the question of how you define a 'bad' degree, leaving aside the problem that qualifications in nursing and teaching would be included in those that reduce income potential, and indeed leaving behind the massive societal benefits of having an educated populace, there is another issue:
University education in England is not free. The students who are at university studying for these 'bad' degrees are paying tens of thousands of pounds for the privilige. (That's one of the very worst legacies of the Blair government, but that's another rant.)
That being the case, it's not the government's business whether those reduce income potential or not. The market has spoken, and the Tories, of all people, should be respecting that.
So, really, what does it have to do with them?
The third season of "The Orville" has been streaming on Disney+, and came to an end last night. For the most part it has been a fantastic third season - it's probably not the best place for new viewers to start, but otherwise it has been exceptional.
I was extremely surprised by the final episode, which was not at all what I was expecting. That said, I very much enjoyed the episode, and felt that it made for an extremely good finale for the series as a whole. At the moment it isn't clear whether there will be a fourth season or not, and I now find myself torn. On the one hand, it has been left with a really strong platform for continuing; on the other hand, that last episode makes for a near-perfect sendoff. So maybe it's better to let it go at this point.
Anyway, this is yet another success for Disney+, which is by far the strongest of our three subscriptions. And it is highly recommended.
I see "Lightyear" has made the jump from the cinema to Disney+, which is good news for us - we weren't going to make it to the cinema to see it, and now don't have to wait. But that means that the gap is all of six weeks. "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" was seven weeks between the two. "Thor: Love and Thunder" released in cinemas on the 23rd of June, which means that it has been out six weeks as of now - there's no indication of when it will come to Disney+, but given the above it would seem to be fairly soon.
And if that's the case, suddenly there is absolutely no point in going to the cinema to see anything from the Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Lucasfilm/20th Century stable - since we're going to get it for no extra cost just a few weeks later, it's not worth the expense.
Which, of course, bodes really badly for the cinema industry as a whole, because that stable represents a huge chunk of the 'big' films, and the other streaming services will be pushing for similarly quick transitions for other films. (I note that "Jurassic World: Dominion" is already available for home rental, and am presuming it will be on one of the services soon.)
There's no great point or conclusion here; I'm just noting how extreme things have become.
What it does mean, ultimately, is that the cinema is going to be much less about going to see the new big releases, and much more about the experience of going to the cinema - which to a very large extent means either taking the kids out for a treat, or taking ourselves out in the absence of the kids.
I must confess that I didn't watch any of the recent European Championships, largely due to have no time at all in which to do so (and a to do list that is absurdly long). So I'm not in a position to say much of any value about it at all.
Except one thing: congratulations to the England team on what is a great achievement.
