Dear "Remain"...

As we near the end of David Cameron's farcical 'renegotiation' process and it becomes apparent that he's not going to come away with any new powers, and may well come away with nothing at all, it's been interesting watching the Guardian and the BBC gradually filling with stories about how Britain will be bit with disaster if we decide to leave the EU. Which leaves me despairing at the idiocy on show.

Here's the thing: if and when the referendum comes, I fully intend to vote "Remain", because I think that's the best way forward for the UK. Actually, I'd go further than that, and advocate that even our current position of being in the club, but only just, is a mistake and that actually we should be getting right in there. But never mind.

But when I read stories about how the UK won't survive leaving the EU, we'll never be able to trade with anyone ever again, or we're going to lose all our maternity/paternity leave or right to paid holidays, I find myself reminded of the oh-so-successful "Project Fear" (their name, not mine) that the UK-OK campaign used in the Scottish Independence referendum. Where, again, we had such delights as being told that Scotland, uniquely of all nations in the world, could never survive independence, that we'd never be able to trade with anyone ever again, and even that we'd find ourselves vulnerable to attacks from space (no, really).

The problem is that the powers-that-be seem to have mistaken the victory for the "No" vote in that referendum for a sign that "Project Fear" was a successful campaign. But it wasn't - Project Fear managed to turn a 70/30 lead two years before the referendum into a nail-biting 55/45 result. What's more, by failing to win hearts and minds, it has left independence very much a live issue in Scotland. We voted "No"... but only with very strong reservations.

"Project Fear" was a terrible campaign. To see it being repeated already in the EU campaign leaves me extremely worried - it's a losing proposition even if you start with an overwhelming majority (which "Remain" don't) and if you have the media overwhelmingly on your side (which "Remain" don't).

And the more extreme the claims, the more outlandish the nonsense, the more counter-productive they are. See, when we were told that an independent Scotland would be vulnerable to attack from space (no, really), the reaction was not "oh well, better vote "no" then", it was to immediately discard that as abject nonsense and also to disregard anything else that person had to say in future. And so all the big names in the "no" camp were gradually discredited - Theresa May when she said England may have to bomb our airports, Ed Miliband when he talked about putting up a big wall along the border, Jim Murphy every time he said anything... and the BBC as they uncritically reported every bit of nonsense. The "no" camp were very, very lucky that Gordon Brown had kept his powder dry and had just enough of a reputation left that he was able to sell the Vow... and that now wouldn't work again.

So, to the "Remain" campaign, I say this: please, please don't take anything from the "Project Fear" playbook unless it is to use it as an example of how things should not be done. There's still time to end this madness... but not much time.

The Valentine/Lent Exception

For Lent I have given up Irn Bru (and all related fizzy drinks), chocolate, and alcohol. For the most part it's no big deal, except when eating out (because it's surprisingly difficult to get a drink that isn't either alcoholic or carbonated), and indeed barely worth mentioning. Though I'll be glad once Lent is over and normal service can resume.

It turned out that there was one more problem with this plan, though, in that because Easter is so early this year, Valentine's Day fell within the period of Lent. Which meant that the plan to produce a three-course meal and to consume it with a nice bottle of wine was endangered.

Fortunately, there's a loophole...

One of the key origins of Lent is tied up with the forty days Christ spent in the wilderness (see Luke 4), and so for a similar time before Easter Christians will symbolically fast, typically giving something up that they otherwise enjoy. (Ideally, it actually shouldn't be a bad habit or vice - if something is a bad habit or vice one should really just give that up permanently!)

But Lent runs from Ash Wednesday (Feb 10th this year) through to Easter Sunday (March 27th this year) - a period of 46 days. The reason for this discrepancy is that Lent is a period of 40 days that are symbolically set aside. But since Sundays are already symbolically set aside (being Sundays), they don't count towards the total. And so the six Sundays (Feb 14, 21, and 28; and March 6, 13, and 20 this year) aren't part of the 40 days of Lent.

Which was rather lucky - this year Valentine's Day just happened to fall on a Sunday, allowing the exception to trigger just as it was needed. Huzzah!

At least, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it! (I won't be making an exception for the other five Sundays, though, so it's fair to note that I'm not entirely convinced it's a good excuse.)

Anyway, Valentine's dinner this year was started with "Truly Tomato" soup (essentially, a homemade cream of tomato) with rolls (store bought), followed by Chicken Balmoral with mashed potato and whisky sauce (all homemade), and with strawberry ice cream (homemade) and shortbread (bought) for dessert. To drink we had champagne, and later we had a few Valentine's chocolates while watching "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

All in all, it was rather a success... though rather a lot to eat!

#8: "The SHepherd's Crown", by Terry Pratchett
#9: "Doctor Who: Shada", by Gareth Roberts

The Recurrence of PC Woes

As always seems to be the case, my PC has chosen to act up just as I'm facing up to an already-busy weekend. It's going to have to wait - there are things I simply must do this weekend, so annoying as the PC fault is I can't deal with it right now.

But the fact that this has happened is really annoying for two reasons:

1. This PC doesn't get particularly heavy use - web surfing and some light clerical work. It doesn't get used for gaming or coding or video editing, or anything remotely intensive, nor does the software load change except at the whim of Microsith.
2. This failure is really the latest in a cascade of failures that has now engulfed every single bit of software on the machine - first it was Office that needed removed and reinstalled, then that broke the anti-virus software, and now the OS has developed a fault. Which suggests there's something in there underlying it all. Time for a reinstall, I guess.

So much for Windows 10 being a good one. Sigh.

#7: "Pathfinder: The Kintargo Contract", by Jim Groves

BBC Radio Travel?

Some time ago, I half heard a snippet from some radio commentator of football, the gist of which was that when someone tuned in to the show, most likely part-way through the match, that person would actively resent every word that the commentator said until he got around to repeating the score. Which makes sense - it's the single most important factlet regarding the match, and so it's the one that you most want to know when you tune in.

Of course, the big problem with this is that a person who has been listening to the show throughout won't need a constant reminder of the score, and would be quickly annoyed if it were repeated every sentence or so. And so the solution must be to repeat the score reasonably often, but not necessarily all the time, and also to try to repeat it in a 'natural' way - "the attack dies out, and so the match remains poised at 1-1", or whatever.

When travelling to and from work in the last few days, I've been suffering a similar phenomenon with regard to the travel report. It's been fairly important for the last couple of weeks, and so I've felt compelled to listen out for it. And yet, the radio stations that have the traffic reports I need also don't have the music I want to listen to. (I could listen to a CD, but the stations in question are decidedly unreliable in their use of the "Travel Advisory" capability - usually, by the time they've activated it, they've already dealt with the bit of the travel I'm actually interested in. So that doesn't work.)

And so, I've been getting in the car, tuning to Forth One, and then resenting every single thing that is on the radio until a traffic report comes on. After which I change channel, since by then I know what I need to know.

Driving in to work this morning, then, I thought to myself, "I wonder why nobody has started a Traffic Channel, that plays nothing but repeated traffic reports?" At which point I quickly answered myself - there's no money in it since people would only ever tune in for five minutes, hear the report, and then tune out, so there's no value for advertisers, and so no funding.

So, really, whoever did such a thing would have to do so as a public service, with no intention of ever making any money from it. And where, in the whole of the UK, could we possibly find a public service broadcaster?

It really would be very helpful - a channel (actually, lots of regional channels) that broadcasts nothing but traffic reports, and maybe news and weather, on a permanent loop. They don't even need presenters as such; just use pre-recorded reports that change when the situation changes. Ideally, these channels would run in parallel to the existing programming on other stations, but if need be I'd be happy to sacrifice "Good Morning Scotland" on BBC Scotland for (a) something actually useful and (b) something that doesn't actively make me angry.

Just a thought...

(Oh, and another thought: Could someone at Classic FM please consider that having a single traffic report for the whole of the UK is completely useless? It's just not possible to cover the whole of the country in both a reasonable time and in enough detail to be useful - it really needs to be a local report to be useful. And, actually, that shouldn't be impossible, since I'm reasonably sure you already have regional advertising, so the technology needed already exists.)

#5: "Bloodbound", by F. Wesley Schneider
#6: "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", by Mitch Albom (a book from The List, and the first real candidate for Book of the Year for 2016 - it's going to take some beating!)

An Important Discovery... alas, too late

On Saturday LC and I got rid of my sofa. This was the one that I bought while living in Yeovil but didn't actually take possession of until I moved to Falkirk. For the first few years it was extremely comfortable, but as time went on it became more and more broken down.

Eventually, LC positively insisted that we had to get a new one (and rightly so). I in turn said we should wait until after we'd moved (again, I think that's right - we should select a sofa to match the new house, rather than pick the house to match the sofa). This delaying gambit led to us being offered, and gratefully accepting, a sofa from LC's parents (that I think they were in the process of getting rid of anyway). So far, so good.

Now, in hindsight we should really have gotten rid of my sofa at that time, when it would have been easy to do so. Instead, we made the mistake of keeping it in the living room to provide additional seating from guests. The folly of this approach became apparent when the Christmas Tree went up - it had to go where the sofa was, which meant that the sofa needed to be elsewhere, which meant "in the spare room". And the spare room didn't actually have space, and so has been insanely cramped for about six weeks (and since that's where the computer is, that wasn't good).

So the sofa had to go. At which point the plan was to donate it to a charity shop. After all, it's a bit beaten up but it's still a useable sofa that someone might benefit from. Arrangements were made, with only one condition: the sofa had to have the fire tags attached, without which they couldn't take it - not only could they not sell a sofa without, they couldn't even give it away. No problem... or so we thought.

It turned out that the fire label had long since been removed. I don't remember doing this, but obviously I must have done so. Anyway, the sofa couldn't be donated. And so, on Saturday, we borrowed my dad's car (which is just big enough) and took it to the dump. It's gone, done, and we have space again. Huzzah!

So, the important discovery is this: never take the fire tags off a sofa, even if you're sure you'll be keeping it until it dies on you. Because you never know.

#4: "A Confederacy of Dunces", by John Kennedy Toole (a book from The List)

New Template!

Yes, it's true. After 10 short years, I have decided that the time has come to switch to a new template. It's mostly the same as the old one, except for the bits that are different.

The main thing that has prompted this mad rush to modernity is that the archive of posts had become unmanageable - with 10 years of posts, the list of months was running to close to 120 entries, which was just crazy. Hopefully, this new format should be easier to navigate. Plus, I should be better able to track my productivity, since each month will now tell me how many times I've posted. Which is good.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago I was phoned to make a fairly important appointment for tomorrow, which necessitated moving some other stuff out of the way. Specifically, the thing I had been planning for tomorrow got moved to next week. I've just phoned back to confirm the details, only to learn that they screwed up and actually made the appointment for next week. Gah!

The Anniversary Card Joke

Today is my grand-parents 70th (!) wedding anniversary. So many congratulations to them.

In honour of this achievement, LC made a card for them, and I was tasked with providing the message. And so, I spent some not-inconsiderable time coming up with an inspired and literary message, one that encapsulates the true greatness of the achievement while at the same time not becoming overly pretentious in its scope. Or something.

However, LC said I shouldn't do this, and instead should write something that came from the heart.

So I just wrote "arteries".

(Yes, it's a pun. It's been a while.)

Not For the Faint-Hearted

I finished reading "The Man in the Iron Mask" yesterday, this being the third volume in the third part of the Musketeers trilogy. Which was great, being full of intrigue and incident, and which proved to be a very fitting end to that saga. Except...

It turned out not to be a venture for the faint of heart. After nearly 2,000 pages of comings and goings, intrigues and schemes, swashbuckling and derring-do, suddenly there was a chapter entitled "The Last Farewell", where Aramis, Porthos, and Athos finally come together for the first time in the novel... and suddenly it's clear that this novel isn't going to have a happy ending.

And it gets grimmer and grimmer from there, as it becomes apparent that Aramis has over-reached himself, d'Argtanian has been outflanked on all sides, and Porthos... ah, Porthos...

What's perhaps most interesting about the novel is that it is so unlike "The Three Musketeers", and that it's all the better for that - the four are now old men, they're all enmeshed in their own agendas, and they've grown apart in loyalty and temperament. And yet, when d'Argtanian is really pushed to choose between his king and his friends...

So, any time you've got a spare few months, I recommend the trilogy. (You can't really read this one without reading "The Three Musketeers" and "Twenty Years After" first, and you really can't read "The Man in the Iron Mask" without having read "The Vicomte de Bragelonne" and "Louise de la Valliere" first! But since the shortest of these volumes is some 600 pages of fairly dense text, that might take a while.)

So, good fun, but rather harrowing!

#3: "The Man in the Iron Mask", by Alexandre Dumas

A new Act of Union?

I saw in the Herald today an article about a proposed new Act of Union which a cross-party group is putting forward. The plan is to replace the existing devolution settlement with a new federal structure, with the hope that this will end talk of Scottish independence.

It's actually a somewhat interesting idea. I'd vote for it, and indeed I'd take that settlement over actual independence. (Though I do think we need some other reforms as well - including a total replacement of the House of Lords. Note that that's 'replacement', not 'reform' - it's now past the point of no return.)

However, it's rather a moot point - it won't ever happen.

The article suggests that any such revised structure would need to be agreed by all four component nations, and further suggests that Holyrood might reject it on behalf of Scotland. But that's actually not the issue. This proposal wouldn't even get that far - it's doomed to be rejected by Westminster on behalf of the UK long before then. This may be a nice idea, but sucessive governments in Westminster have shown they have no interest in making sweeping Constitutional changes to the UK - every step towards greater devolution, and indeed devolution itself, has been as a result of outside pressure, and has been an exercise in giving away the minimum power they think they can get away with.

Which leads me to wonder why this has popped up now, and why the Herald thinks the incomplete thoughts of someone who isn't a member of the government should be front-page news. I'm sure it's nothing whatsoever with us having some important elections coming up...

The Tragedy of the New Pen

I have a pen-tidy on my desk in the office, which for some years has contained seven items: my favourite work-pen, a backup favourite pen that I got from some random training course, two blue pens and one red pen that I acquired when I left my first job, and two pencils (broken). This was of course the ideal steady state for the universe, marred only slightly by the fact that I don't actually like my backup favourite pen, which has the single virtue of actually working, but isn't actually very comfortable to use.

Alas, about a week before Christmas I broke my favourite work-pen. Something to do with using it to pierce the tape on a package from Amazon, which isn't exactly the intended use for a pen. Silly me. It was as a consequence of this breakage that I discovered an horrific truth: somewhere in the thirteen years since I left my first job, the three pens I acquired there had dried up and were no longer usable!

Luckily, the torment that resulted from this was short-lived, as for Christmas I received three new pens: one red, one blue, and one black, thus covering all possibly pen-related needs. Huzzah! (I should perhaps note that these were not my main gift.)

And so I was able to restore my pen-tidy to a new and exciting steady state: it now contains six items, being my backup favourite pen the I got from some random training course, two pencils (broken), and a new and shiny pen of each of the three allowed colours. Huzzah!

(Some people may argue that green pens are also acceptable. The proof that this is a silly notion is left as an exercise for the reader, and will therefore not be addressed further here.)

The pen-tidy crisis averted, the world returned to spinning on its axis, most people blissfully unaware of the horror that had so nearly unfolded.

Until, that is, a card was passed around the office, inviting the addition of an inspirational message and a signature. Aha! A chance to use one of the new and exciting pens, and in an approved colour also! And so I picked up my new and shiny blue pen and proceeded to write, " ".

To my great horror, the new and exciting pen wrote nothing! Woe and calamity!

So I tried the usual remedy of warming the pen between my hands, but to no avail. I even tested it on the emergency Post-it note, and it in fact worked. But on the card... nothing. Bizarre. At this point, driven the greatest extremity, I switched to my shiny new black pen instead, and proceeded to write, " ".

So I tried the usual remedy of warming the pen between my hands, but to no avail. I even tested it on the emergency Post-it note, and it in fact worked. But on the card... nothing. Truly bizarre.

At this point, I found myself stuck. Obviously, the red pen could not be used, as this is intended for correction and denunciation only - it would render my message not so much inspirational as terrifying. (Of course, if I'd had a green pen... but that's just crazy talk.)

Fortunately, the story has a suitably anti-climactic ending, as the black pen elected to work after a while. Apparently, it was just teasing me. So I wrote a message of suitable profundity and wit on the card ("Good luck"), and returned the pens to the pen-tidy. Once again, all was well with the universe.

But, as I'm sure you understand, I remain traumatised by this most harrowing of experiences. For, truly, what can be worse than the discovery that not one but two new pens are selectively not working?

#1: "Pathfinder: A Song of Silver", by James Jacobs
#2: "Fifth Edition Foes", by Necromancer Games

Books of the Year 2015

And so we come to the end of 2015.

Here's the list:

1. "Pathfinder: Palace of Fallen Stars", by Tim Hitchcock
2. "D&D: Hoard of the Dragon Queen", by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter
3. "Wars of the Roses: Stormbird", by Conn Iggulden
4. "Pirate's Promise", by Chris A. Jackson
5. "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope", by Ian Doescher
6. "D&D: Rise of Tiamat", by Steve Winter and Alexander Winter
7. "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: The Empire Striketh Back", by Ian Doescher
8. "Pathfinder: The Divinity Drive", by Crystal Frasier
9. "The Long War", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
10. "Firefly: Things Don't Go Smooth", by Margaret Weis Productions
11. "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: The Jedi Doth Return", by Ian Doescher
12. "Pathfinder: Battle of Bloodmarch Hill", by Patrick Renie
13. "The Secret History", by Donna Tartt *
14. "Gone With the Wind", by Margaret Mitchell *
15. "The Pagan Lord", by Bernard Cornwell
16. "A Prayer for Owen Meany", by John Irving *
17. "D&D: Player's Handbook", by Wizards of the Coast
18. "Magician's End", by Raymond E. Feist
19. "Pathfinder: The Hill Giant's Pledge", by Larry Wilhelm
20. "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: The Phantom of Menace", by Ian Doescher
21. "Firesoul", by Gary Kloster
22. "D&D: Monster Manual", by Wizards of the Coast
23. "Vanity Fair", by William Makepeace Thackeray *
24. "The Bell Jar", by Sylvia Plath *
25. "Doctor Who: How to be a Time Lord", by BBC Books
26. "Pathfinder: Forge of the Giant God", by Tim Hitchcock
27. "Forge of Ashes", by Josh Vogt
28. "D&D: Dungeon Master's Guide", by Wizards of the Coast
29. "Middlemarch", by George Eliot
30. "The Silkworm", by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
31. "Pathfinder: Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen", by Jim Groves
32. "Through Every Human Heart", by Janice Brown
33. "Lord of Runes", by Dave Gross
34. "Love in the Time of Cholera", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
35. "Firefly: Smuggler's Guide to the Rim", by Margaret Weis Productions
36. "The Vicompte de Bragelone", by Alexandre Dumas
37. "Pathfinder: Anvil of Fire", by Sean K. Reynolds
38. "Pathfinder: Shadow of the Storm Tyrant" by Tito Leati
39. "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", by Louis de Bernières *
40. "The Empty Throne", by Bernard Cornwell
41. "A Slip of the Keyboard", by Terry Pratchett
42. "D&D: Princes of the Apocalypse", by Wizards of the Coast
43. "Firefly: Ghosts in the Black", by Robin D. Laws
44. "Pathfinder: In Hell's Bright Shadow", by Crystal Frasier
45. "Crime and Punishment", by Fyodor Dostoevsky *
46. "Liar's Island", by Tim Pratt
47. "Memoirs of the Geisha", by Arthur Golden *
48. "Pathfinder: Turn of the Torrent", by Mike Shel
49. "Beyond the Pool of Stars", by Howard Andrew Jones
50. "D&D: Out of the Abyss", by Wizards of the Coast
51. "Wars of the Roses: Trinity", by Conn Iggulden
52. "Louise de la Vallière", by Alexandre Dumas
53. "Pathfinder: Dance of the Damned", by Richard Pett
54. "One Hundred Years of Solitude", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
55. "The Long Mars", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
56. "Waterloo", by Bernard Cornwell
57. "Dragons at Crumbling Castle", by Terry Pratchett
58. "The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy", by Jem Roberts
59. "Red Dwarf: Last Human", by Doug Naylor
60. "Dune", by Frank Herbert *

So, that's 60 books, including the expected twelve from The List. Of these, there are twenty-one RPG books, and one re-read - the fourth and final (and weakest) book in the "Red Dwarf" series. All in all, I'm happy with that.

The book of the year thus far is "Captain Corelli's Mandolin". There's not much more to say - I enjoyed it, but it doesn't come close to either "Grapes of Wrath" or "Tale of Two Cities" in my estimation. This has been a year devoid of any truly great reads, though it's had plenty of good ones. (Both "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" were also very good, with the former being the better. But I enjoyed "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" a little more than either.)

The weakest book of the year, I'm afraid to say, was "The Frood". It's not a bad book, I suppose, but it just didn't grab me. I guess much of the issue is that while I enjoyed HHGttG, it's not one of my particular obsessions.

Next year I'm aiming to again reach 60 books. Three of the sub-series will continue unchanged: the Pathfinder (12), Pathfinder Tales (6), and Books from The List (12) series will remain intact. Beyond that it's considerably messier than this year, as there are no obvious sub-series to adopt. I suspect the rest will therefore be something of a grab-bag of titles with no particular theme. We'll see - perhaps I'll find a new series to dig in to.

My Year in 2015

2015 barely seemed to get here, and now it is at an end. Which seems really strange, but I guess that's just the way of it. Actually, it has been a bit of a strange year, in that I'm left wondering just where the time went.

Anyway, time for another end-of-year round-up. And, as usual, we have the headings...

My Year in... Work

Work has been hard-going this year, but mostly successful. Not the heady heights of late 2013, but little cause to complain, at least for most of the year. Alas, it didn't end well, for reasons I can't go into here. Hopefully, the issue will resolve itself early in the new year. Oh, and there was no call to travel, again.

Probably of more note have been the developments with LC's work. She has spent 2015 working at a high school near Stirling on a year-long contract, which was generally been good. However, at the end of November she managed to get a permanent position near Edinburgh, which is excellent news. So congratulations to her!

My Year in... Health

A middling year, in that the IBS continues to annoy, my neck is never quite as good as perhaps might be hoped, and now my teeth have decided to be a worry (though it's entirely possible that some or all of these are bound up together - the IBS in particular seems to delight in coming up with new effects that leave me wondering "what fresh hell is this?"). But there hasn't been anything serious, which is good news.

The aim of losing weight was slightly more successful than last year, but still not going well. Sigh.

My Year in... Gaming

2015 has been a mixed year for gaming as well. I've run a good few games that have been mostly successful, but I've also had a couple of disappointments. Sticking to the positive, though, I've been very much enjoying my "Firefly: the Lost Episodes" games, and look forward to continuing them into the next year.

On the playing front, this year has been particularly poor, though - I basically haven't managed to get to the other side of the screen, which is a shame.

I'm also a little disappointed that both of the games I play have almost entirely ceased publication. But then, I'm not actually sure that more books really improves things. And anyway, there's always Pathfinder.

For 2016, it's hard to see what will happen - this will depend on where we end up living. So it might prove to be more of the same, with both the "Firefly: the Lost Episodes" and "Eberron: Dust to Dust" campaigns carrying on (and in which case it would be nice to play a session or two on the other side of the screen). Or next year may well see me playing my last, which would be a shame.

My Year in... Band

Band has actually been quite enjoyable this year, mostly, despite a very disappointing competition season. And although we've been downgraded, and lost a number of people as a result, there's a sudden optimism that we'll be able to promote our learners and that things are looking up. Which is odd, but definitely good.

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

There have been several trips this year, taking in no fewer than four countries (or three if you only including independent countries).

In April, LC and I took our annual spring break, heading up to Banff for our anniversary. Which was a good trip, if a long way to travel.

In June, we spent a weekend in the Republic of Ireland, helping out at a church weekend for one of our partner churches (or 'helping' in my case). That was another good trip, but a strange one - it seemed no sooner had we arrived than it was time to pack up and come away. It was also odd driving home, when we crossed the border to Northern Ireland and I suddenly discovered that the hire car's speedometer was marked in metric only!

July saw us spending just over a week in France. Six days of this were spent in La Tranche Sur Mer with my family, and then three days were spent in Paris. Again, my biggest take-away from this one was to do with driving - I really didn't enjoy driving the hire car around the outskirts of Paris. But apart from that it was a really good holiday. The highlight was probably the day we spent at "Puy du Fou", which was great.

Almost immediately thereafter, we found ourselves heading to England for Grandad's birthday party - 90 years old!

And just a few more weeks after that, there was our trip down to Bridgnorth for Bex's birthday party. Another long drive for a fairly short visit, but good to see the extended family again.

Finally, in the recent October break, LC and I spent a few days in a parallel dimension, having driven up to Fort William. That was again a good trip, blessed with really great weather and a steam train.

So 2015 has been a rather busy year, really!

My Year in... Faith

There's not too much to tell, except that this year saw me asked to lead an occasional Bible study - the result of the normal leader being called away for much of the time due to work commitments. That went well, but felt a little odd.

2016 will see me tackling the second volume of Don Carson's "For the Love of God", and consequently going for another read-through of the whole Bible.

Otherwise, there's not much to tell. Things are proceeding much as they have done this last age.

My Year in... Love

2015 has been one of those quiet years where there's not a huge amount to say. LC has been rather stressed out by work, and I think we've both come to find the flat rather oppressive (though perhaps for different reasons). 2016 will see significant changes in both these areas, which means hopefully we'll be able to find a better equilibrium.

My Year in... Departures

This year has, however, been marked with some sadness. We lost Leonard, and we lost Terry, and we lost Christopher...

And then we lost Jack. The passing of LC's Grandfather was one of those devastatingly sad things that you can know is coming and yet you can't actually be prepared for. At the end, though, he passed as well as maybe can be hoped - he fell asleep and never woke up again, with LC's parents with him so he didn't pass alone. I did think the funeral hit exactly the right note, with the minister's observation that we had to say two things: thank you, and goodbye.

Adieu, Jack. You are missed.

My Year... Overall

2015 has been a good year, for the most part, but also tough at times. In particular, the last couple of months have been difficult, and I've felt an increasing discontent with things generally. There's been nothing I've been able to point to as being the issue, but everything has just been... not quite right. I think a lot of that has been down to a combination of generally crappy weather (which has had a greater impact than it really should) and an impatience to just get on with things, and the house move in general. In reality, it's a good thing that this has taken longer than was hoped, in that LC's new job may change our analysis of what's the right next move. But it has been frustrating nonetheless.

It's fair to say 2015 hasn't been as good a year as 2014, but it's also important to note that despite that this was still a good year. 2016 looks hopeful, despite the uncertainties. A lot will become clearer once we've decided where to move, and even moreso once we've actually moved.

As with last year, this will be my last post of this year, so I'll end off by wishing anyone who still reads my nonsense a very happy New Year, and all the best for 2016.

End of Year Update on Goals

With the year rapidly coming to an end, it's time for the end-of-year wrap-up. And so my first post on the topic is the update on my goals for the year:

• Weight: This one had some small progress, but fell well short of the target. Still, that's a little better than last year. Once again, this goal rolls over to next year, and does so unchanged.
• Books: Done. The final list of books will be posted tomorrow, but the headline figure is that I have completed 60 books this year.
• Games: Done. I actually completed this goal back in November, when I ran the ninth "Firefly: Lost Episodes" game of the year. Added to the three "Eberron: Dust to Dust" sessions that I had run by that point, I made the target of twelve game sessions. Unfortunately, the December session of "Eberron: Dust to Dust" was cancelled, but the "Christmas Game" did take the total to thirteen sessions for the year, just over the total. I never got a chance to actually play this year, which is unfortunate, but this still counts as a success.
• Work: Done. Work was quite difficult this year, but also quite successful. All in all, I'm happy with that.
• Band: The goal for this year was to see one of my learners break into the main band at some point during the season. In the event, he started competing quite early in the season, and played at pretty much every competition thereafter, including the World Championships. So this goal was completed quite quickly and surprisingly easily.
• Super Secret Goal #4: Ongoing. The house move had to be put on the back burner for various reasons, but almost all of the preparatory work is now done. We're therefore hoping to get moved early in the new year.
• Experimental Cookery: Done. It's been a bit tricky keeping this one going, as finding interesting and attractive recipes, and doing so on a weekly basis, has been difficult. However, the final tally is 52 experimental cookeries, which is good.
• The Imaginarium: Done. Again, this was completed, with the final tally being 62 entries in that blog this year.

So, that's six goals completed, one failed, and one ongoing. I'm happy with that, though a little concerned at the repeated failure.

I'm going to set a much more restricted set of goals for next year, and so am able to do that now. I'm dropping the Experimental Cookery goal - I'll continue with the series, but I'm not going to attempt one a week, nor even number the entries in 2016. Likewise, I'm not going to set a goal for the band, nor for work (that wasn't a good goal anyway). And the Imaginarium will, I think, take care of itself, so no need for a formal goal there.

So...

• Weight: This is the same goal yet again: I'd like to lose a stone and a half next year.
• Books: And, again, the same goal once more: 60 books. I only have three of my sub-series picked out, being 12 books from The List, 12 Pathfinder books, and 6 Pathfinder Tales.
• Games: The goal here is simply to continue both the "Firefly: Lost Episodes" and "Eberron: Dust to Dust" games. One or both of these may come to an end in 2016, but it's hard to know at this time. I'm not going to set a goal for either the total number of sessions, nor for spending any time on the other side of the screen, though of course the latter would be pleasant.
• Super Secret Goal #4: The goal here is simple: to move home in 2016. The target is actually to move as soon as is practical, but these things always take considerably longer than you think.

And that's it. The goals for next year are probably a bit trivial, but given the difficulties I've faced with the first for the last several years and given the upheaval represented by the last, I think that's enough to be going on with.

I also need to note that the Gaming goal is provisional, based on the results of the house move. If we remains within the Falkirk area, it can continue unchanged. If we end up moving further afield, however, this goal may cease to be relevant and so will be dropped.

Experimental Cookery 2015 #52: Spicy South Indian Chicken Curry

For Christmas I received a new cook book, "The Hairy Bikers' Complete Mum's Know Best". I also received a new pot suitable for cooking many things. And so, for the final EC2015, I made use of my new book to cook something in my new pot. The chosen meal was a very hot, very dry curry.

The recipe was quick and easy to make, though it did remind me again that we really should get a spice grinder - there was really too much to do with a mortar and pestle. But once the paste was made up, it then became just a case of adding things to the pot in order, which isn't exactly challenging!

The resulting meal was very nice, but near-nuclear in heat. Seriously, my mouth was burning for twenty minutes after eating! So, that's not entirely ideal. LC felt also that it needed more of a sauce, rather than being the very dry curry that resulted. I can't say I disagree.

And that's that - the last experimental cookery of 2015. I'll still do some in 2016, but I'll not be numbering them, nor will I aim for one a week. It's a fun series, but it's also a bit of a hassle coming up with something new every week.

#60: "Dune", by Frank Herbert (a book from The List, and also the book that sees me complete that goal as well! This may also be the last book of this year, though there's a possibility that this month's Pathfinder may yet arrive in time to be read before Friday. We'll see.)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

LC and I went to see the new Star Wars film last Thursday at midnight. I've held off on doing a review since then, as it's one that I do think should be watched un-spoiled if at all possible. That said, a week on we're now past the statute of limitations for spoilers, so here we go.

Seriously, if you want to see it unspoiled, you should probably stop reading now.

...

I thoroughly enjoyed the new Star Wars film, which felt much closer to the original trilogy than any of the prequels. Indeed, I watched all seven Star Wars films over the course of eight days (in a really odd order: I, VI, V, VI, VII, II, III), and AotC and RotS are actually quite painful in places - they're just so bad. TFA isn't - it's at least as good as RotJ. (Not as good as either SW or ESB, but then nothing could be.)

Having said that...

TFA very much feels like a "Star Wars Greatest Hits" compilation - we have another desert-dwelling kid who turns out to be powerful in the Force, we have another plucky droid with a secret message to deliver, we have a desperate escape from a planet in the Millennium Falcon, we have another attack on a Death Star-like superweapon, we have X-Wings and TIE Fighters, we have the shocking death of a mentor-figure, we have parental angst, we have a Jedi master - hidden on some remote world he is, hmm? - we have a new rebellion (sorry, Resistance) against a new empire (sorry, First Order)...

And so it goes. This actually works out quite well for anyone seeking to run an RPG in this new era - there's almost no need for any official support, since virtually everything already exists, even for the ancient d6 system. So that's cool.

The other thing that I didn't like about the film was that Captain Phasma has joined Boba Fett, Darth Maul, and General Grievous on the list of characters who look cool, are heavily-hyped, and then turn out to be a waste of screen-time. I felt this character was not only a wasted opportunity, but was actively mis-handled - apply just a hint of pressure and she folds like an umbrella? Lame.

But I liked the three new leads (Rey, Finn, and Poe - I'm assuming the last will be a bigger character in VIII). I liked the new droid BB8. And I thought the direction they took the new Darth (okay, "Knight of Ren") was particularly interesting. Plus, it was good to see Luke, Leia, and Chewie again - I thought they were in the film just enough to anchor it to the originals, without over-shadowing the new heroes. So that's cool.

I have much more mixed feelings about Han, though. On the one hand, I was very happy to see him "going back to what he does best" - the EU applied way too much hyperbole to Han Solo (and the Falcon), making him the best of the best of the best, and I much preferred him as the cynical smuggler made good, and by extension as the solely-wounded failed 'husband' and father ('husband' because it's not clear is he and Leia married or were simply lovers). And while I thought he was a little too prominent in the film, that made a lot of sense in light of his death. Which was cool.

And so, that's that. I'm hoping to see it again once more in the cinema, probably in glorious 2D this time, and then will certainly get it on blu-ray some time around May. And now I'm looking forward to "Rogue One" and also to Episode VIII, rather more than I have looked forward to a new Star Wars film for some time. Well done, Disney - as with Marvel, you've treated it right.

Though the 20th Century Fox fanfare was a miss.

Experimental Cookery 2015 #51: Tonkatsu Pork

The penultimate Experimental Cookery of the year was another entry from "The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure". Once again, it was very nice but very unhealthy - breaded pork steaks shallow-fried, and served with a sauce. The sauce, in particular, was very nice, and I may well make that again even without the steaks.

There's not much more to say, really. It did what it said, it was very nice, I'll probably make it again, but it doesn't make the top nine. The end.

I don't know what the final EC2015 entry will be, but I'm determined that there will be one more, and indeed that there will be one more. I'm hoping to tackle it this weekend, if only to get it done.

#59: "Red Dwarf: Last Human", by Doug Naylor

(I'm still working my way through "Dune", which I should get finished by the end of the year. But even that's now looking a bit doubtful! I still haven't received the Pathfinder for this month, so may or may not get to read that. We'll see.)

Congratulations to the BBC

I must congratulate the BBC on this year's wonderful Christmas advert, featuring a poor lonely sprout on his travels through winter, before being properly honoured at Christmas. They've successfully joined this blog in the modern era of 2006. Next thing we know, they'll be scheduling a Christmas special of "The Office"...

The Death of the Christmas Present

I had to abandon my initial version of this one - it turned into an entirely different rant than I'd expected and intended. Sometimes that happens, as my thoughts disappear down a rabbit hole.

Anyway...

'tis the season to go shopping, and as a consequence of this there has been a great deal of swapping of wish-lists. Because at this point most Christmas gift shopping now boils down to asking the person what they want, going on to Amazon, and buying that exact thing. Which isn't exactly the stuff great Christmas songs are made of, I'll grant you.

But there's a growing problem even with the Christmas list. We're increasingly moving towards a world where everything has become a digital download. Want a book? It's very likely you want it on Kindle. Want some music? That'll be MP3s, then; CDs are pretty much obsolete. Want a video-game? That'll be a "season pass" for a download. A movie? Well, we're not there yet, but we're not all that far away from DVDs and Blu-rays being a thing of the past. (Indeed, blu-rays were already yesterday's technology before they even came out. We just haven't caught up yet.)

All of which rather sucks for the whole "need something to unwrap" thing. Which isn't exactly ideal - and it's not going to change. In fact, I think we may be coming to a point where, beyond the age of ten or so, the giving of actual presents will just become a thing of the past. Which is a shame.

(As a consequence of this, one of my gifts this year is going to be a nice, shiny USB thumb drive - 32GB, if I recall correctly. Which isn't actually the gift at all, although it's a generally useful thing to have. But, instead, it's going to become a useful physical token which I can reuse as a gift at each Christmas and birthday - load it with the appropriate digital downloads, wrap it up, and there's at least something there to be handed over. Of course, it's still a bit of a cheat, but it's as close as I have to a solution.)

Experimental Cookery 2015 #50: Bulgogi Beef

Another quick and easy Asian Adventure from the Hairy Bikers, this one was pretty much a matter of marinating thinly-sliced steak in soy sauce overnight, and then frying it for a few minutes. The results were extremely tasty, especially given how easy the meal was to produce.

And so #50 in this series was a resounding success. Two more to go!

24: 100 Episodes In

Last night I reached episode 100 in my re-watch of 24. Obviously enough, this means I've now completed the first four series plus four episodes of the fifth.

Thus far, it remains much as I remembered - it's a really, really good show, if rather far-fetched at times. And thus far I remain of the opinion that the third season was the best, though that may change. Certainly, I had forgotten just how good series four was!

Of course, the worst thing about revisiting a show of the calibre of 24 is the cruel reminder that it has ended, and that we just don't have anything that quite hits the same spot. For a while there, it looked like "Homeland" might be it, but that turned out not to be the case. Still, better to have a show that shows us just what television can do, rather than not have one at all.

1999 All Over Again

"The Force Awakens" opens in the cinemas tonight, and LC and I have tickets to a midnight showing. Which is all rather exciting - as is so often the case, it seemed ages away when it was first announced, then it gradually crept closer, then the tickets went on sale, and then it was suddenly here.

This will be the fourth Star Wars film I've seen on opening day: I was too young for the first three, but in 1999 I left work early to see "The Phantom Menace" as soon as possible, I went to a midnight showing for "Attack of the Clones", and then just went to a regular evening showing for "Revenge of the Sith". (I've also only been to two midnight showings before: AotC as mentioned, plus the first "Spiderman", which I actually saw in an advance screening, which was nice.)

Part of the reason for going so soon is simple impatience - I want to see it as soon as possible, and anyway my next viable opportunity would be Saturday which is a veritable age away. But part of it is also a desire to avoid spoilers, which will become increasingly difficult as time goes on.

Indeed, I've even avoided reading any of the reviews of the film for this reason - one of the reviews of AotC dropped a massive spoiler in the text with no preamble, about which I was not best pleased. But the other part is that I don't trust the reviews to be accurate anyway - as with any J.K. Rowling novel, or a new season of Game of Thrones, or similar, I suspect many of the reviewers are reviewing the name "Star Wars" and not the merits of the movie itself. Indeed, they could probably have written their reviews without bothering to see the film.

Today is in many ways like that day back in 1999 - a new Star Wars trilogy is beginning, a new hope that this time they might have gotten it right. And, if only for a brief moment I'll be back to those Saturday mornings where, week after week, we'd get up early to watch the first film (on Betamax no less!). It's going to be weird having the Disney logo instead of the 20th Century Fox fanfare that nature intended, but then we'll be off on the adventure...

But, mostly, I still trying desperately not to get my hopes up. After the crushing disappointments of the Star Wars prequels, and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", and the Lord of the Rings prequels, and SPECTRE, I've found it's best just to assume everything will suck until I've seen it.

Which is probably wise, but I can't imagine it will survive once the text "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." appears on the screen. And we'll be back to 1999 all over again.

Please don't suck...

Experimental Cookery 2015 #49: Chicken Shichimi Katsu Curry

This was great, but oh-so unhealthy. It was the second recipe taken from "The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure", and was a nice, simple meal to prepare - bread some chicken and then shallow-fry for a few minutes on each side. And, of course, make up a curry sauce and some rice to have with it.

The result was extremely tasty, and the whole meal was pretty quick and easy. But we won't be having it too often - it's just far too unhealthy! And in future I think I'll use the deep fryer instead, as that's a bit more controlled and rather safer than a precarious frying pan.

But I'm well pleased with this week's meal. Next week should be another exploration of the same book; I'm sure there's something that we can find to tempt us.

Not Historic Enough

Last night featured a brief respite from the crushing normality of life. Due to a complete lack of other things to do, I found myself watching Reporting Scotland, and there was a feature on the search for someone for the new £10 note. Apparently, they wanted someone who was a Scottish historical figure and who had made a noteworthy contribution to science or innovation.

"Huzzah!" I thought. "It could be me!"

So I rushed through to the Spare Room to fill out my application form online, only to have LC crush my latest life's ambition. She feels I'm just not historic enough to qualify, by virtue of not being dead.

How disappointing.

#58: "The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy", by Jem Roberts

Experimental Cookery 2015 #48: Seared Asian Beef, Best Noodle Salad, and Ginger Dressing

This week's Experimental Cookery sees us returning to "Jamie's Fifteen Minute Meals". There aren't too many things in that book left that I'm inclined to try, but this was a good one. Quick and easy, and it tasted nice. The dressing was especially nice, with the combination of strips of ginger and the heat from the chilli. The salad was also okay, although there was a bit too much of it!

I do have two criticisms of the meal: there wasn't enough steak relative to the rest, and the noodles weren't terribly pleasant. In future, I think I'll forego draining them, and thus leave them warm.

Otherwise, this was a success. We'll no doubt try it again, although I think we'll mix up the selection of vegetables a bit in future!

I have no idea what's on the menu for next week. I do want to fit one more cake in before the end of the year, but other than that I'm flexible.

Experimental Cookery 2015 #47: Chow Mein

This is actually the third time I've done chow mein as an experimental cookery, but the first time involving pork rather than chicken. The recipe comes from "The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure", which was a fun series and is a lovely book - but is also a book I really don't envisage using terribly often. Unfortunately, it seems to rely quite a bit on fairly obscure ingredients, and I'm not hugely inspired to go hunt them out. A shame.

Still, last night's meal was a joy - quick and simple to put together, and both filling and flavourful in the eating. Which is pretty much ideal, really. I definitely enjoyed the switch of meat, as I've become a little bored of having chicken in everything! I'm quite certain we'll be having this again.

On Tuesday I'm planning a return to Jamie's "Fifteen Minute Meals" for one week only, and them I'm hoping to harvest at least a few entries from the "Asian Adventure". We'll see. Anyway, there are now five more entries to come in this series this year, at least one of which I hope will be another cake of some description.

Spoilers

This week's "Doctor Who" was well made, well scripted, and well acted. And I hated it.

The reason I hated it was very little to do with the show, and much more to do with spoilers. (Oh, yeah, there are going to be some spoilers in this post. If you don't want to know, skip to the end.)

For the past week, there have been interviews everywhere about Clara's exit from the show, about how she definitely won't be returning, and detailing the sequence of emotions we were supposed to feel during her departure. Many of which were right there in the headlines, so it wasn't as if I could choose not to read them - by the time I knew the article was about DW, I'd already read the spoiler. And, indeed, there was a whopping great spoiler right before the show started.

The net effect of all of this publicity was that the show itself left me completely cold. Oh, she's going to die. Oh, it's going to happen like that. Oh, they're emoting all over the place. Oh, I don't care.

Gee, thanks.

The thing is, some people like spoilers, and more power to them. And some people don't mind spoilers, and that's their prerogative, too. But some people like to avoid spoilers, because knowing this stuff reduces their enjoyment of the show - they like the surprise that's just been ruined.

Now, it is fair enough that complaining about spoilers needs to be time-limited. If I complain because someone says, "Darth Vader is Luke's father!", then I'm going to look rather foolish. Indeed, complaining about being spoiled on the most recent series of "Game of Thrones" would be a bit much - yes, I haven't seen it, but I've had adequate opportunity to do so; if it really matters to me to see it "clean", I really need to take responsibility for doing so promptly. Because people will discuss it, and it's not practical to expect them not to.

But at the same time, there's a limit to how soon it's reasonable to expect people to have seen it - there's a difference between discussing the plot details of a film the week after it is released versus doing so immediately after the first showing.

And, of course, in this case we're talking about spoilers for a show that hadn't aired yet. That is, spoilers for something I couldn't have seen "clean". Thanks, BBC.

(There's a bit more, but I'm not going to comment further right now, because Spoilers!)

#56: "Waterloo", by Bernard Cornwell
#57: "Dragons at Crumbling Castle", by Terry Pratchett

Confused

Help! There's a big scary yellow thing in the sky. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure I don't like it!

Experimental Cookery 2015 #46: Turkey Burgers and Chips

Alas, this one was a disaster. It just didn't work at all. Which was a real shame, since I'd had high hopes.

This recipe came from the "Hairy Dieters: Eat For Life" (the yellow cover), and seemed pretty easy - slice and then lightly fry some leeks, grate some courgette, then mix those with turkey mince, salt, and pepper, and you've got the basis for some tasty burgers.

It turned out that I had a mucky pink sludge. There was way too much moisture in the thing, and it just wasn't pleasant at all. I cooked up two of the burgers... and the binned the whole lot. Not only did it look nothing like the picture in the book, it was just nasty.

The chips were nice, though.

Genuinely Scary

I was genuinely scared by the cover of the Daily Mail this morning, with the picture of the 'robocop' police officer. And not just because of their idiotic labelling of a human woman as 'robocop', which is about what I'd come to expect from the Daily Mail, but rather what the picture represents.

I actually don't have any issue with the new "shoot to kill" policy with regard to ongoing terrorist activities. Nor, indeed, do I have any great issue with the increased prevalence of police armed with firearms while on routine patrols - I would very much prefer not to see this, but I broadly trust that these weapons will only be issued to people properly trained to use them, and I broadly trust them to only use those weapons where it is genuinely appropriate.

But what does worry me a great deal is the increased militarisation of our police forces, which is most easily seen by a quick glance at that newspaper this morning - that's not a picture of a policewoman; it's a picture of a soldier.

Though, actually, the problems started quite some time before that, the moment the first member of the police referred to 'civilians' meaning not the police.

The thing is, it's actually vitally important that the police are civilians. They're not, and must never become, a body apart. It's actually difficult, perhaps impossible, to over-state just how incredibly important that principle is - because the moment the police are a body apart is the moment we're under martial law. And that's a Very Bad Thing.

It is, of course, appropriate that the police maintain some special units for dealing with terrorism, and that those units be appropriately armed. It's also appropriate that in areas of heightened security (such as airports and, yes, Wembley stadium last night) such units be deployed visibly.

But that must be the exception, not the norm. The creeping militarisation of the police must be resisted. And this practice of using the word 'civilians' to set the rest of us apart from the police must stop.

#55: "The Long Mars", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Experimental Cookery 2015 #45: Lamb Lollipops, Curry Sauce, Rice & Peas

And so Wednesday rolled around, and it was once again time for an Experimental Cookery. This week's recipe was a return to "Jamie's Fifteen Minute Meals", and to one of the recipes he did on the TV show of the same name.

As I've come to expect from this book, the meal was quick and easy but took considerably longer than fifteen minutes to make. Just getting out the ingredients and washing those that needed it took several minutes, which is always a bit of a cheat. But no matter - it was still quick enough for a weeknight meal.

The end result was fine. I think it had a little too much balsamic vinegar, but that was my issue. But Jamie's trick with the poppadoms and the microwave just doesn't work for me at all. Oh, and there was an awful lot of it!

But the meal tasted nice, and it certainly hit the spot. I'm not sure I'll make this again, though - I'm not sure why not, but it didn't quite grab me as much as some others from this book. But you never know, I guess.

#54: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (A Book from the List)

Experimental Cookery 2015 #44: Caramel Sticky Toffee Cake

This week, in my ongoing quest to prove Sheldon wrong, I made half a cake - as you may recall, it was his contention that one couldn't make half a sandwich but rather that it should be a "small sandwich", but...

This recipe came from the BBC website, and was in fact Tamal's own recipe from his final Showstopper in the GBBO. I was certainly tempted by that particular cake, and especially when the judges said he'd basically created a new classic. Plus, I definitely thought "I could do that", so... (Though not the decorations. I'm not entirely crazy!)

So on Tuesday evening I gathered my ingredients and set to work. This involved chopping lots of fruit (seriously, lots of fruit), coating it in flour, then mixing up a cake batter, combining fruit with cake, and then baking in the oven for an hour or so. Easy enough, if rather time consuming.

So it came out of the oven, and it was a thing of beauty - my best cake to date. So I started in on the caramel sauce for the topping while the cake cooled a bit, and then it was time to transfer it to the cooling rack.

And then disaster struck. Because as I was transferring the cake, I managed to drop it a bit. Fortunately, it went on the work surface and not the floor, but less fortunately it hit the surface and exploded. And suddenly my cake resembled the second Death Star more than the first.

My exclamation of despair attracted the attention of Lady Chocolat, who abandoned her work to see what had proved this Vader-esque cry. So great was her sympathy that she proceeded to take a picture and post it on the internet. Which was much appreciated.

Anyway, I recovered from my despair. I reassembled the battered cake somewhat, and completed the task - cool it, cut it in half, spread the caramel sauce, then re-sandwich. Then, I left it all to cool overnight, before spreading the rest of the caramel in the morning.

And it worked. It still tasted great - he really has hit on something there - and although half of the cake was rather battered, it was still edible. And, really, who cares when you're about to chew it up anyway?

That said, the cake had been intended for consumption by other people. And so I proceeded to cut the good half from the battered remnants, and took only the assembled half-cake with me. And that's how I made half a cake.

But I think I might be giving up cakes. That's two in a row that have gone wrong, which is just sad. Either that, or I'll have to make lots of them, until I master the art...

Big Stupid Brother

So, two weeks after TalkTalk get hacked by a bunch of teenagers, our wonderful government decide it's a good idea to require ISPs to store our entire browsing history for a full year.

I feel safer already.

SPECTRE

I really must learn: never look forward to anything, assume everything will suck. Because the lower your expectations the better than chance you won't be disappointed.

Lady Chocolat and I went to see "SPECTRE" on Friday. I had, indeed, been looking forward to this film a great deal, after enjoying "Skyfall" immensely. I hadn't bothered to read the reviews going, and have now done so, and they raise a question: did the reviewers see the same film as I did?

There will be spoilers from here on out. So if you don't want to know, you should probably skip to the end, where I list two more books I've finished.

The film starts very well, with a lovely action sequence in Mexico City followed by a very impressive opening sequence - I particularly enjoyed the nods to the previous Daniel Craig films here. Good stuff.

And then the film continues very well, the Bond being grounded by 'M' for his antics in Mexico, then the revelation that he has a hidden agenda (which was great), and then he's off to Rome. And Monica Belluci is great, too, for all of the ten seconds she's on-screen (or so it seems).

And then Bond is off to the grant meeting of the ultra-secret Secret Evil Organisation. In a secret location. Secretly.

Indeed, it's so secret that they film the evil bad guy in the shadows, so we totally can't see that it's Doctor Evil. Though the effect is somewhat ruined by an appearance by Frau Farbissina.

Anyway, the Secret Evil Organisation's main order of business is the selection of a secret assassin to kill "The Pale King" (ooh, mysterious!), and then it turns out Doctor Evil knew Bond was spying on them all along. And so we have an Exciting Chase!

The next bit is actually quite good again - the film starts to bring together lots of threads from the previous Craig films, weaving them into a coherent whole. Good stuff. And, yeah, some of it doesn't quite work, but it's not particularly objectionable.

Except...

After following the plot for a good long time, and dealing with the Secret Evil Organisation's deadly WWE assassin, Bond and his latest love interest complete their train journey. They've tracked Doctor Evil to his hidden lair, and are all set to confront him.

The big problem with this is that it's an obvious trap and Bond equally obviously has no plan beyond "go in and get captured". Seriously, that is the full extent of his cunning approach. Basically, it's exactly the same problem as in Skyfall, except that this time it's Bond, rather than Silva, who gets himself captured for no reason.

But worse is to come. Because, in a rather spectacular show of self-parody, Doctor Evil proceeds to explain his Evil Scheme to Bond. He then places Bond in a deadly-and-yet-inexplicably-easy-to-escape situation. And then the BIG revelation. Actually, two of them: it turns out that Doctor Evil is secretly Bond's (adopted) brother all along! And, further, it turns out that although Doctor Evil has been going by one name all along, he's actually chosen to go by another. Yes, he's Khan!

Anyway, Bond escapes using the gadget that Q gave him way back at the start of the film. And, somehow, this causes the hidden lair the explode in a huge fireball. I can only assume it was secretly a Volcano Lair in disguise. And Bond and his love interest head back to good old Blighty for tea and biscuits. Good show!

(Oh, yes, one more thing: during the gratuitous torture scene, Doctor Evil declares that this will damage Bond's sight, hearing, and balance; while that will destroy his ability to recognise faces. In the event, both of those things do precisely nothing. Are we to assume, then, that Bond is actually made of rubber, like most modern action heroes? Or is it just that his mojo is so concentrated as to be beyond parody?)

So, we head to London for the final showdown, complete with obligatory bad-guy-falling-off-things, love-interest-in-peril, and buildings-exploding. It's all very exciting, I'm sure, though by this point I'd lost interest - the whole last hour seemed like something tacked on to the end of a better film.

And then it ends. Bond rides off into the night in his newly-restored Connery-era car with his love interest, with Doctor Evil safely stored for the next sequel. The end.

What's most annoying about "SPECTRE", in my opinion, is that most of it was a good film. Up until Bond gets off the train, I was actually enjoying it - lots of good spy stuff, lots of good action sequences, and fairly solid characterisations. Good, good stuff.

But that last hour was just half-baked. Indeed, it was pretty much "Quantum of Solace" all over again - they had part of a good script but it needed another few passes to make sense. Only where QoS has the excuse of the writer's strike meaning they couldn't get that extra work done (and is blessedly short), "SPECTRE" had every advantage lavished on it. It should have been better.

Oh yes, and one more thing: I'm now really sick of the movie approach of calling the villain one thing only to reveal them as another - as done with Khan in "Star Trek: Into Darkness", and again here with Doctor Evil. It's really not as clever as the writers seem to feel, especially when that big reveal was known over a year ago.

Anyway, that's that. And now I'm off to ruthlessly crush any optimism I have for the new "Star Wars" - it's critically important that I go into that one expecting "Attack of the Clones" all over again...

#52: "Louise de la Vallière", by Alexandre Dumas
#53: "Pathfinder: Dance of the Damned", by Richard Pett

Dear PC World

For the game yesterday I felt I needed a print-out of the adventure, rather than trying to run it from the tablet. (In retrospect... yep, this was the right call.) And so on Saturday afternoon I set it printing, which it duly did.

Very, very slowly.

Anyway, about half past midnight, the printer came to a halt having used up not only all four of the fitted ink cartridges but also the entire content of the replacement blue cartridge we had in stock. Which meant that we couldn't finish the print job that night. (We actually also needed more paper, but that was less of an issue.)

So on Sunday morning I went out to PC World bright and early. And, luckily, they still stock the required cartridges. (It's now a very old printer, so that's becoming less certain each time.) Huzzah!

This is necessary context for my two-part rant.

Firstly, I'm disgusted to find that PC World now have their ink cartridges fastened to the shelf with security tags - I wasn't able to select the item I wanted, take it to the till, and proceed to pay; instead I had to find an assistant, get them to get the item for me, and then take that to the till to pay.

The big problem with that is what it says about PC World's assessment of their customers. Apparently, their baseline assumption is that we'll steal those cartridges if they're not locked down. Well, frankly, I don't like being treated like a thief. Find another way.

But, if we get right down to it, I can understand that measure. I guess they probably have been seeing a lot of ink getting stolen, and so have take counter-measures. Disgusting as it is, there's probably reason behind it.

Secondly, though, what is totally unacceptable is that there weren't any assistants available on the shop floor. I had to go to the till to find someone, in order to take them across to the ink cartridge I wanted, for them to then go get the required tool, in order to free up the ink cartridge, so that I can take it to the till and thus pay. All of which took about ten minutes for a process that should have taken seconds.

That's a joke, and a bad one at that. If you absolutely must lock down your stock so customers can't get it, then you absolutely must have staff on hand to get it for them. And those staff absolutely must have the required tool on hand to unlock those security tags.

(Though, also, there's a related rant: dear PDF vendors... printer-friendly PDFs, damnit!)

Interesting Times

I'm not hugely interested in the upcoming Scottish elections. Partly due to politics fatigue, partly because I no longer see any hope of a better society through politics, and partly because I think they're mostly a foregone conclusion - it's hard to see any outcome other than another SNP government, with only some small doubt over whether it will be another majority or a return to minority governance.

However, the one thing that does interest me somewhat is the question of what will happen with the Tories, the Lib Dems, and, especially, Labour.

Here's the thing: for a long time, Labour was the big party in Scotland. And part of that success (though by no means all) was due to them being the only viable alternative - for a long time, they could capitalise on the "anyone but the Tories" vote; this later shifted to the "anyone but the SNP" (which brought in a different group of tactical voters, but the result was much the same).

But the problem is that a tactical vote only works if the recipient looks like they have a chance of winning. Thus, the "anyone but the Tories" vote has now shifted pretty definitively to the SNP. And the "anyone but the SNP" argument no longer works, as Labour have just shown that they have no more ability to win against them than do the Tories or the Lib Dems - anyone who voted for Labour tactically might as well have voted for their real preferred party.

So, I wonder just what impact that might have. How many people have tactically voted Labour in the past in order to cut out the SNP? And how many of those voters, seeing now that it won't make much difference, will instead swing back to their preferred Tories or Lib Dems?

(I suppose there's still a chunk of anti-Tory voters who are also anti-independence, who might therefore still tactically vote Labour to try to keep both Tories and SNP out. Though I wonder how many of those there truly are. I also wonder whether any such voters might be swayed by the knowledge that an SNP vote isn't a vote for independence - at the most, it's a vote for another referendum, where there's still a majority for staying.)

So that's a matter of some (fairly academic) interest to me: will Labour's vote hold, or will they now start to lose ground to the Tories? Have the Lib Dems hit bottom, or will the Alistair Carmichael fiasco hurt them still further?

Oh, and if Labour do continue to slide, will Kezia Dugdale be forced to resign, leading to another new leader, or will Labour stick with her as the best available option? But I guess that one depends on just what Labour do with their list nominees, and so depends on who is available as a potential successor.

Update on Goals

And so we near the end of October, and it's time for the penultimate update on goals. The next update will come with the end-of-year round-up.

• Weight: Some more, slight, progress. I won't reach my target with this goal, but at least I should end the year having lost some weight.
• Books: By day 300 I should by rights be at 49.3 books read. I'm currently reading book 52, so I'm still well ahead on that one. I'm also up-to-date on all the sub-lists, and indeed have finished two! The question now is less whether I'll reach the goal, but rather how many books I'll exceed it by, but we'll find that out at the end of December!
• Games: As I suggested in my previous update, I'm essentially caught up on this goal, largely by virtue of starting a second campaign. I now have seven Firefly "Lost Episodes" run and two sessions of "Eberron: Dust to Dust". I'm due to run the eighth Firefly "Lost Episode", "Bucking the Tiger", tonight, which will bring me back on target. Huzzah!
• Work: This is back to progressing at a reasonable pace, which is good.
• Band: Done.
• Super Secret Goal #4: This has had some movement, but has proven to be a bit tricky. In particular, it looks like we won't be starting the move process 'properly' until early next year, with a likely move some time around Easter. That's not terrible. What is less good is some of the news that came out of a recent meeting, but I can't really blog about that until all this is done.
• Experimental Cookery: By this point I 'should' be at 42.7 entries in this series for the year. As I've now done 43, I'm pretty much on target. So I'm hopeful that this one will hit the goal.
• The Imaginarium: As with the "books" target, I should be at 49.3 entries by this point of the year. I'm currently at 52, so, once again, I'm ahead of target, and fully expect to meet this target with some ease.

So that's that. Things are now looking considerably better than they have before - four goals are now at or ahead of target, with a fifth set to catch up tonight. One goal is actually complete. Two goals clearly won't be completed this year, although one of those isn't unexpected (and we will have made some very significant progress towards it). Only the weight goal remains an issue, and I do expect to end the year having at least made some progress. Assuming, that is, the last 65 days work out as hoped...

Experimental Cookery 2015 #43: Thai Green Chicken Curry

For this week's effort I'm revisiting a curry I actually did earlier in the year, but again using a different method: this one comes from the Hairy Bikers' "Great Curries". That's a book I like looking at, but there is actually very little that grabs me as a must-cook.

This was quick and easy to put together, especially once I'd got all the ingredients washed, trimmed and otherwise ready. Then it was just a matter of adding them to the wok in the right order.

The resulting meal was very nice, and was by far the best of the three versions so far - it wasn't so over-poweringly hot as Jamie's version, and also benefitted from a made sauce rather than a bought one, putting it ahead of Lorraine's version. So I expect this to be my go-to version from now on.

The End of the Union

I'm actually in favour of English Votes for English laws, at least in principle. It is, actually, dead right that politicians from England should be the ones to decide policy on matters that don't affect Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, just as the devolved assemblies deal with devolved matters here (and there).

But there's a big problem with EVEL as it is being implemented. Actually, there are two.

The first big problem is that there are very few truly English-only matters. Because of the way funding in the UK is determined, any change made to (say) the NHS in England has a direct effect on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland - if the budget is cut there, the badget is similarly reduced here. Likewise education, likewise policing, and so on and so forth.

That's not an insurmountable problem by any means. There are a couple of fairly simple solutions: they could reform the Barnett Formula so that those knock-on effects don't happen; or they could split decisions about allocating the money (UK matters) from those on spending the money (England-only).

Naturally, they're not doing that. Instead, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish MPs are going to be excluded from votes that have critically important consequences for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Our budgets are going to be determined in votes on which our voices are entirely excluded.

Which ties in to the second problem.

As a consequence of EVEL, it is now effectively impossible for an MP from a Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish constituency to ever again be Prime Minister, Chancellor, Home Secretary, or indeed most of the other "great offices of state". The Foreign Office remains open and the now-vestigal Offices for the three other nations, but that's about it. (And, for the same reason, they couldn't be leader of any party with serious ambitions of forming a future government.) Of course, there's no legal impediment, but as a practical matter it would be unthinkable to have a PM leading a government who was himself barred from voting on most of that government's policies.

Having formally lost any input into the budgets that so crucially affect their constituents, and having practically been barred from high office, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish MPs are now second-class citizens in Westminster. They're not equals; they're there to make up the numbers.

And with that, this is no longer a union of equals. As of now, Scotland is a colony.

(Incidentally, the was EVEL should have been implemented is as follows: set up one or more English assemblies, whether for England as whole or for different regions, that would then deal with local matters. Then replace the House of Lords with an upper house that deals with UK-wide matters - each regional assembly would send a number of representatives to the UK body, which would be responsible for oversight, setting the budget, and dealing with any international matters. That would have given us a nice, modern solution, would actually have been a nice, stable arrangement, and it might actually have led to the union enduring long-term. As it is, we've got a badly-considered fudge, and the clock is ticking.)

Downgraded

Unfortunately, as a consequence of another disappointing season the band have been downgraded back to Grade 4B - the lowest 'adult' grade. Even worse, due to a quirk in the system this is actually the hardest grade to get back out of - because it's the grade for "everyone else", it's difficult for any one band to stand out from the crowd.

Still, it's a fair reflection of the way the band has been playing. Indeed, one might argue that we should never have been moved up in the first place - in the year we went up, we actually missed out on doing so on merit by a single place. The deciding factor was that we'd recruited a bunch of new players from a higher grade, pushing us up. But when it came to it, almost all of those new players were no-shows, which meant we didn't actually get the benefit. So, really, we were always a little higher than we perhaps should have been.

Anyway, we did briefly consider appealing the decision, because again we're expecting several new players to join the band in the near future. But that has changed again - our lead drummer from last year has decided to leave (apparently, he'd been wanting out for some time, but didn't want to let us down), while some of those newer drummers have chosen to go elsewhere.

So Grade 4B it is. Which, in theory, should mean that next season is a bit more relaxed. But, on the other hand, I think there's likely to be a big push to get back up again, so maybe not...

Welcome Back Marty McFly!

Now, where's my hoverboard?

Yes, today is "Back to the Future Day" - the date in the far future to which Marty and Doc Brown travel in BttF2. (For real this time. There have been plenty of hoaxes along the way.)

Although, if we're being really technical about it, he arrives at 4:29pm on the 21st, in California. With an eight-hour time difference between the UK and that part of the US, then, that actually means the key moment is actually very early tomorrow. Which is, of course, heavy.

It's always weird when we reach the dates associated with "far future" films: there was Judgement Day (Aug 29, 1997), and then 2001 (of course), and then "Transformers: the Movie" ("The year is two thousand and five..."), and now this. It's almost as if time passes...

Batman's Secret Identity

Superman regularly gets a lot of shit for maintaining a 'secret' identity that amounts to wearing glasses, combing his hair differently, and stooping a bit, but I'm really not convinced Batman's cover is really any better.

Seriously, we're looking for someone who:

1. Lives within an easy drive of Gotham city centre.
2. Can treat millions of dollars not merely as disposable income, but so trivially that he doesn't even need to consider throwing it away.
3. Has a sizeable period in his bio where he was off the grid - the time he was away learning all those martial arts he knows.
4. Regularly appears to be suffering significant physical injuries, perhaps from some sort of extreme sports.

There aren't all that many people worldwide who fit any of those criteria. The list of people who fit them all has one entry on it.

The only reason Batman isn't unmasked immediately is that the police in Gotham fall into one of two camps: those corrupt to the point of uselessness, and those honest coppers who don't want Batman unmasked because he's an ally (that is, Jim Gordon).

Experimental Cookery 2015 #42: Meaty Bolognese Sauce

This week's experimental cookery was an alternate take on a Bolognese sauce - I have been using Jamie's version for some time, but I did find that the Hairy Dieter's chilli con carne was a better version than Jamie's, so it made sense to at least try their Bolognese. This one came from their first book (the white cover).

In truth, it was a mistake to cook this up on a weeknight - it took about forty minutes before everything was in the pot and simmering, and then a further hour simmering. Had I realised this, I would either not have bothered or would have made very sure to get started on it the moment I got home, rather than making today's lunch first.

The end result was nice... but not any better than Jamie's version. That being the case, we'll be sticking with that, unless and until I try another alternative.

Holiday in a Parallel Dimension

Last week was the October break for the schools up here (or, at least, the one where LC works), and as a consequence I took a much-needed break. It's been a long time since the last one! We spent a few days at home getting caught up on things, but then went up to Fort William from Wednesday until Saturday.

Our expectation had been that the weather would most likely be fairly grim, this being Scotland in October, but in fact it was absolutely ideal - wall-to-wall sunshine, barely a cloud in the sky, and although there was some fog most days it soon burnt off. In hindsight, that should have been a clue...

We were staying in the Premier Inn in Fort William, largely because we needed somewhere to stay and at least with them you know what you're getting. Plus, the breakfast is pretty legendary. And so, when I checked us in on Monday I also took the opportunity to order breakfasts for each morning. Which was fine, but gave rise to the second clue.

On arrival at breakfast on Thursday, I happened to glance at the sign-in sheet to discover something rather odd: I was listed as Rev S. Vader (or, you know, my actual surname). Which was odd and surprising, since I had checked in via the website, had made sure to get the details right, and the computer really shouldn't have gotten confused by this - human error would be understandable, but not from a computer. (And, yes, since getting home I have checked that my details are indeed correct on my account on their website.)

So, something was very odd.

And then there was the third clue. As you know, I don't talk about my work here (mostly), and there are quite a lot of things I simply can't talk about here. However, there is a bit of software that I wrote that is installed worldwide and is actually widely used. I can't say what it is, of course, but the nature of the thing is that you've probably used it, and you probably never gave it a moment's thought. (Which sounds a lot more mysterious than it really is. Just because I can't talk about it publicly doesn't mean it's necessarily interesting, you understand!)

Anyway, near the hotel was a site that I would normally expect to find my software in use. So, we went over and took a look... and they didn't have it. Nor, indeed, did they have the competitor's kit installed either. Instead, they were managing without a system at all, using seriously old-school manual techniques!

Honestly, it was like going back in time. Or...

And that was when I realised the truth: somehow, probably while passing through Glencoe, we had slipped into a parallel dimension, into a realm where I had entered the ministry rather than becoming a software engineer! Truly, it was the only possible explanation that made sense!

(Rather depressingly, it also seemed to be a rather better world, what with the better weather, the happier people, and the more relaxed way of life. Even the beer tasted better. Oh well.)

The rest of the holiday was good, too. We travelled on the steam train to Mallaig, which was fun, and we went up to Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness (alas, the monster doesn't exist in that dimension; at least here we still have some wonders!).

Then, on Saturday, and before returning to this dimension, we went for a walk in the countryside near Fort William. Now, LC had looked this one up, and said that it was a short drive - two miles out of FW to a single-track road, and then another mile along said single-track road to the car park.

So we set off, left Fort William, and then we drove. And we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove... And then we had to carefully navigate the car around some highland cattle who had blocked the main road (but had considerately left the passing place clear). And we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove... And finally we reached the single-track road. Then we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we dodged some sheep, and we drove, and we drove, and we drove... and then we reached the car park. Huzzah!

Anyway, we then changed into our walking boots (which proved to be a good idea) and then we went for our walk, which took us to the Steall waterfall. Which was lovely, but did involve crossing a bridge made out of a couple of bits of wire suspended above a long drop. (I may upload a picture later, if we have one that's suitably terrifying.) Still, we survived that, though on the return we did elect to ford the river instead rather than recross the bridge.

And that was the holiday. We then returned to the car, drove back to Fort William (which was, oddly, much shorter going back), and had a quick lunch, and then drove back through the dimensional rift and home. And all is well.

Oh. Then I baked some scones for the guys at work. Those were nice.

A Really Quick One About the Rugby

If it didn't hurt, it wouldn't be Scotland. And that's all I have to say about that.

Experimental Cookery 2015 #41: Spanish-style Chicken Bake

I meant to post this before disappearing off on holiday, but didn't quite find the time. And so it appears now, somewhat delayed by my venture into a parallel dimension (but more on that in another post). This experimental cookery came from the first Hairy Dieters book (the white cover).

This meal was almost ridiculously quick and easy to prepare, though it did involve three twenty-minute bake stages, each of which had just a minute or two of work beforehand as things were arranged, turned, or added to the pan.

The end result was a very nice, and surprisingly filling, meal, and one that I'm sure we'll have again.

And that's about all I have to say about that - there's as little to say about this meal as there was effort in its preparation.

#50: "D&D: Out of the Abyss", by Wizards of the Coast
#51: "Wars of the Roses: Trinity", by Conn Iggulden

The Haka

I just watched the start of Scotland's Rugby World Cup match against Western Samoa, and more specifically the two national anthems followed by the Samoan's Siva Tau (their equivalent of the better-known Haka). And it does occur to me that something is a little out of joint here.

See, the Haka and its equivalents are just being treated as a little local colour to the events. And I agree that they're no bad thing in themselves. However, they are also descended from the warrior traditions of those regions, where they would be performed before battle, for the dual purpose of firing up one side while trying to demoralise the other. Hence the chanting, the shouting, the gurning, and the staring.

So one side performing a Haka while the other does not is surely an unfair advantage? (And it's not as if New Zealand, in particular, need any more advantages!)

So perhaps Scotland, when we come up against a team performing a Haka, Siva Tau, or similar should respond by painting the faces blue, while the team captain strides back and forth giving Mad Mel's "Freedom!" speech from Braveheart?

(And England, not to be outdone, should use the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V". Which, frankly, is even better.)

Inglorious Failure

And so it's all over. Last night Scotland played Poland in their penultimate qualifying match, while the Republic of Ireland played Germany. The assumption was that Germany would beat RoI, meaning that if Scotland could just beat Poland then we'd only need to beat Gibraltar on Sunday and we'd be third in the group - and get at least a play-off place.

Naturally, therefore, we went and conceded a goal in the third minute of the match. And then, having somehow (and probably undeservedly) managed to turn the match around, we then managed to lose a second goal with the last kick of the game, and so snatched a crushing 2-2 draw from the jaws of victory.

Though it didn't really matter. The Republic of Ireland managed a surprise win over Germany, meaning that it was out of our hands anyway - even a victory would have left us relying on RoI also beating Poland in their last match (in Poland). Which isn't impossible, but seems unlikely - especially since this is Scotland we're talking about.

But let's face it: the RoI result is an irrelevance. The damage was done by our utter failure to defend a (pretty poor) free kick in the last few seconds of the game last night, and also, most especially, in our failure in Georgia. Those failures cost us five points, and the difference between second in the group and a poor fourth.

So where do we go from here?

Well, I suspect there's likely to be a clamour for a new manager, and indeed the pundits on the radio last night seemed to think that Gordon Strachan might well choose to walk away himself at this point. But I really hope that that doesn't happen, and that he chooses to stay on.

Because the truth is that Scotland were abject under our previous two managers, and GS had actually worked wonders in turning them around. And while this campaign ended in a poor failure, it has actually been a vast improvement over what went before - Scotland actually had the dubious distinction of being the first team who couldn't qualify for Brazil 2014, so to keep our challenge alive until the second-last game is a big step forward.

(And, anyway, it's not like there is a long list of potential successors. Again, the usual question: if you get rid of the manager, who do you get in his place who would be better? I can't see any answer to that.)

So I very much hope GS stays on to continue the job. I do wish, though, that I could say I was hopeful that next time would be different... but I'm just not. Simply put, we don't have, and aren't producing, players of the quality required in the numbers that are required. I'm not sure there is any manager who could take us to Russia 2018.

Maybe we really should start lobbying for the amalgamation of the various leagues in the UK, and the institution then of a true UK football team. After all, if Scotland isn't going to be independent, then we're one country. And if we're one country, why do we have four teams?

(Depressingly, in order to find the link for that post, I read back through my posts tagged 'football' only to find that I predicted we'd miss Euro 2016 way back in 2010. Sometimes, I hate being right.)

Experimental Cookery 2015 #40: Italian Meatballs with Chunky Tomato Sauce

This week's meal comes from the first "Hairy Dieters" book (the white cover). It was fairly simple: meatballs in tomato sauce isn't exactly a challenge! But it was a little odd grating up some carrot to bulk out the meatballs.

Still, it was simple and pretty quick, and the end result was nice. I don't think this book has let us down, certainly not very often. So, a success. (Still, I think I might stick to other meatball mixes in future - these were nice, but the carrot wasn't entirely convincing.)

(And, yes, this meal does put me a day behind schedule. Oddly, I'm not hugely worried about that!)

#48: "Pathfinder: Turn of the Torrent", by Mike Shel
#49: "Beyond the Pool of Stars", by Howard Andrew Jones

Memoirs of a Geisha

Last night, I finished reading "Memoirs of a Geisha". I had previously seen the film, just over a decade ago, which I found to be difficult viewing - it's a happy, romantic film about child abuse and prostitution, which really doesn't sit well. So I was curious to see how (or if) the book differed.

And the answer is it didn't, much. The plot-line of the book was essentially the same, and although the book was longer and therefore more detailed, a lot of that detail was actually conveyed quite effectively in the film - if you give a loving and detailed description of something in a book, this can be translated to film in seconds simply by showing the thing itself, which they did.

So, the book was well-written and presented, in the same way that the film was well made and acted. But it still remained a happy, romantic story about how a young girl was abused and then had her virginity sold to the highest bidder. Which remains more than a little problematic.

#47: "Memoirs of a Geisha", by Arthur Golden (a book from The List)

Woes

It has been a difficult few days. Not absurdly so, I should point out - I'm conscious that with all the terrible things going on in the world this barely rates, but still harder than usual. And, naturally, things have decided to go wrong in unison rather than sequentially.

Teeth

In the run-up to my six-monthly check-up I was very worried about my teeth, to the point where I actually feared some of them would be coming out in short order. These fears were essentially dispelled at the check-up, where in fact they were given a clean bill of health. Which was good news, if rather surprising.

Then, last Friday, I bit into a slice of birthday cake and suddenly found myself in significant pain, pain that was then renewed when I bit into my lunchtime apple on Monday. Not good. So yesterday I went back to the dentist and explained the issue...

and there's still very little to see. The dentist did apply something to try to deal with any jangling nerve-endings, but it does seem that things are, actually, basically okay. Still, a stress I could really have done without. Because...

Internet

Our internet stopped working on Monday for no apparent reason. After trying a few things, I concluded that it was probably the router, but by then it was too late to go out and get a new one. So on Tuesday I did just that. But, time being tight, I didn't get a chance to try it until last night.

Surprisingly, the new router made no difference whatsoever to the issue. This is perhaps not the worst thing, since it means we haven't lost another router in fairly quick succession (they seem to last two years, if we're lucky). But it still didn't answer the question.

So I called tech support, and spent in excess of an hour on the phone while the agent worked through his on-screen trouble-shooting process. Painfully. Slowly. (Seriously, he seemed like a nice guy and all, but I really wanted just to shout "Get On With It!" I don't need a lengthy explanation of the test you're about to run - just run the test already!)

Anyway, at the end of all that we didn't get our internet fixed. Grr. We have an engineer booked to come out on Saturday. Though I may just have hit on the solution this morning - unfortunately, I needed the internet to investigate whether my idea might be right.

Shower

We've also had a small problem with our shower, in that some of the plastic fittings in the "riser rail" were cracked. The rail therefore needed replaced. So we ordered the appropriate kit, which arrived on Tuesday. So far, so good.

Alas, while fitting the new kit LC discovered that one of the parts was not quite what we needed. Annoyingly, finding any indication of the exact part we actually need has proven insanely hard. Eventually, we'll have to photograph what we have, what we need, and email customer services. Once the internet is working again...

(In the interim, we do at least have a working shower - the old parts are still useable, if not great and not going to last. Still, annoying.)

The House Move

Perhaps the biggest stress, though, relates to the house move, which is proceeding apace. We had someone visit to discuss some of the factors involved on Saturday, and while I can't discuss the outcomes of that here (until the move is complete, at least), it does mean that our plans are having to change, possibly quite significantly.

Which is okay; it just means that the process isn't going to be as smooth as I'd (maybe foolishly) hoped, and that it's probably going to take a good bit longer than I think LC had hoped.

But one more annoyance I didn't want to deal with, on top of a bunch of other annoyances I don't want to deal with.