By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn’t seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

Not quite a scrotum pole, but there is certainly an interpretation of this statue of Cybele where what we are looking at are not multiple breasts, but actually the scrota of her eunuch priesthood.

It’s my turn to cook tonight. I’m doing a shakshuka.

I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.

Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.

I’d not encountered Bloody Knuckles before, but we did have the card variant when I was at school - the trick being to get a new pack, flex it a little and push the card so that all the edges are available to strike the knuckles in rapid succession. I was extremely good at it, as i recall, both in inflicting and (particularly) withstanding the pain.

We knew this game as Scabby Queen. Evidently there is an actual card game called that, it seems, with the knuckle skinning merely the end result. We did not bother with the game part (or even know about it) - just the knuckle skinning.

• Kaos - I’ve only seen the first ep so far, but it looks to have promise.
• Le Bureau de Legendes - this French spy series has a slow and meandering start but picks up over a couple of episodes and the initial time with the characters pays off.
• Pine Gap - After the first couple of episodes, I’m struggling to care about the characters - and am caring a LOT about the absurd lack of a Faraday cage around the main building which would have prevented the main plot point in the first place. It is only miniseries, but I doubt that we’ll finish it unless it picks up a lot and gives me a reason to get my disbelief suspended again.
• Slow Horses - the third of the spy tales that we are following at the moment and by far the most fun and engaging. Season 4 is as good as ever, and Oldman’s Lamb is wonderful.
• Carol and the End of the World - a low key, introspective little exploration of self-discovery and where you find value and it’s really quite charming.

I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.

I probably get one a month or so on my work number.

Basically all of them.

A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:

• Doctor
• Dentist
• Sister
• Wife
• Close friend

I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.

I have no reason not to speak to any of these.

Doctor who (2005) s01e07 - Kronkburgers on Satellite 5 in the opening scenes.

Excluding pretty much everything that I saw as a kid - when you go into basically everything blind - it would be After Hours (1985). I either hadn’t read anything about it or hadn’t been paying attention. Standing outside the cinema, I just saw that it was by Scorsese and went in.

I still think that it is one of his most under-appreciated films. And I loved the Ted Lasso homage, combining it with the Divine Comedy.

This evening: pizza and a film - Breaking Away (1979)
Tomorrow - gardening, then off to a medieval feast at a local museum
Sunday - probably out for a hike somewhere, then a waterway bat survey in the evening

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) - Aubrey Plaza in an engaging character piece that has hints of Eagle vs Shark among others. It’s not outstanding by any means and not among Plaza’s best, but still witty and touching.

Way back in the day it used to be Cinema City in Norwich: the only art-house one in the city and where I ‘learnt’ cinema. It was great.

These days, I live between three small town cinemas in Suffolk, and they are all good in their own ways.

The Riverside in Woodbridge often has a talk about the film or maybe even an interview with the director or one of the cast etc on stage afterwards. Aldeburgh Cinema is run by a charity, shows a good few NT live events and local films and also has a documentary fest each year, and Leiston Film Theatre is, as they say on their site, the oldest purpose built cinema in the county (110 years now), and had the advantage for a while of being about 150m from our back gate. It is the most commercial of three in terms of programme, but still has some interesting stuff.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

A few things off the top of my head:

• I made a particularly tasty shakshuka over the weekend.
• I saw a stoat leading her kits nose to tail, so that they looked like a single, bounding, furry snake as they crossed the track a few days back. I have only seen stoats doing that twice before in my life.
• in Forge of Empires, which I have recently started playing, my defending PvP army successfully defeated a challenger: the first time that has happened, and it left me feeling ridiculously happy.
• Albert Finney and Sean Connery’ interaction in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express
• My partner’s pleasure at completing a 1940s style knitted top. It has turned out extremely well.

Oh yes, very much - and not just with movies, but TV, novels, stage performance and the like.

As a kid, it was just the overall visuals and spectacle as much as anything - details of the plot were secondary. Into my teens and early twenties and think that plot details came to dominate and after that exploring interesting concepts began to take priority. Then I guess that I began to appreciate the production side of things more: writing quality and cinematography etc maybe into my 30s and 40s. And these days (in my 50s) I am much more focused on character-driven things.

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

That implies that the others have got complete maps - which I find much more surprising. Every time that I have had any dealings with any utility companies - which I do as part of my job - it becomes apparent very early on that they don’t have anything like accurate maps in whatever area I am looking at. And not just for old lines that they inherited - as seems to be the issue here - but for things like fibre optics that I saw them lay myself just 18 months earlier.

There are two of us. There will usually be either 1 or 2 bags from the 25ltr (I think) kitchen bin in the black bin when i put it out each fortnight. They aren’t really ‘full’ full, normally though - it is more a question of getting anything smelly out of the kitchen. If I have been around and emptied the other wastepaper baskets, which I proably do once a month or so, then there will be 2, certainly - most of the bulk will be snotty tissues though.

We usually cook from scratch and compost and recycle a lot though.

Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.