Nice thunderstorm tonight as I was driving to the pub. Plenty of cloud-cloud lightning and some forky stuff as well. From an elevated point looking NW I could just see clear sky near the horizon at about 1035 pm. Most unusual and only possible with a high cloud-base, which these storms had. And they were shifting, about 50 mph. All over rather quickly.

I stood on our back deck late last night watching the lightning flashes illuminate the clouds towering over Antwerp, about 40km to the south of us. We didn't get a lot of weather action last night, but my colleagues are all suffering from lack of sleep caused by constant thunder and lightning last night. And it's awfully black out today, but still about 22-23C.

So, the Queen introduced a new variety of tea, in honour of today's historic vote. It is, of course, called, "English Brexit". Oh... you ask what ingredients? Leaves. Just Leaves.

(Giertrud) Shaddap. We have just made complete arses of ourselves.
(pen) More thunder yesterday. 9 days this month, a record for Hughes Hall (34 years).

[Rosie] Probably similar here. I'm getting fitter dashing in and out to rescue the washing on the line.

Just about

Better than being incomplete ones, I supposie, Rosie!

(Giertrud) One buttock is OK, two is really good, but three!

[Rab] Hello! Do we all need to renew our Mornington Passports? Will there be restricted access to Crescent markets? Will podumes lose value?

[Pen] Will you decide to be English/Welsh or Dutch?

The behaviour of the Head Brexiteers in the aftermath has suggested an ... interesting (in the Chinese sense) scenario: Trump wins the Presidency (of the USA), decides to resign and walk away leaving us in the hands of whoever his running mate is.

I get the strong impression that all the top politicians who were belly-to-belly shouting "Oh yeah?" at each other a few weeks ago were caught like a young boy telling a teacher his term-long project is well under way when in fact he hasn't actually done any work. By the sixth week the lies can't stop because there is now a malfunctioning mental imperative preventing truth yet the do-no-work stance can't be rejected in favour of a work-like-mad-to-make-up-for-lost-time because the same malfunctioning brain is in charge. Lies and laziness are being rewarded in the short term and lightning might burn down the school before the end of term.

Continuing to lie until it becomes impossible to back out led to this rather odd, and rather gruesome, news story I spotted a few weeks ago.

Well, now we have a real need for the HHGttG term "beljam".

Yeah, I'm feeling a bit lazy. I'm in the middle of a fortnight off, the windy miller and I noodled around the Ardennes and Luxumbourg for a couple of days (ate and drank too much), and we're expecting The American Niece and her boyf in a couple of days, but I'm still doing the same amount of cooking and cleaning as normal. Have I forgotten how to holiday?

[pen] Know what you mean, there's always the idea of doing it better yourself, just not at home, which equates to a holiday. This year went B&B&restauranting with Frau Bismarck, the brother in law and the kids in Brittany, just to make sure that no-one had housework. Normally it's a rental as we have several sprogs and that gets expensive. It cost an arm and a leg but achieved the aim. There had been a plan for an invasion of Prague in rental accommodation for the same price, but wife plus sprogs 1 and 2 refused.
Would you be one of the few Dutch families without a camping car?

[Bism] The windy miller refuses to camp. I think he did it wrong (ordinary field, earth closet, insects) when he was about 18 and it put him off for life. I love it, have slept in the car and camped and caravanned everywhere (including the arctic circle) but even though I tell him the secret is air mattresses, a campsite with loos and showers, and a good pub for food nearby, he won't listen. And we don't have kids, so we do hotels.
So today, mid-way through our holiday, I am taking pleasure in jam-making (double batch - he keeps buying plums and strawberries from stalls at the side of the road and not eating them, so they get stashed in the freezer), ironing, and hoovering. I would get bored on a beach or watching the world go by at a pavement cafe, wouldn't I?

[pen] You wouldn't be around Larochette, would you? I remember 2 days there in the main hotel with a bunch of grill/barbecue kiosks along the road which did great meals.

Or you're all asleep. So what's everyone up to?

Helping to make a drum head about 40 inches across. Another will be made in a few weeks to go on the other side of the drum, which itself is about 40 inches deep.

Never seen a pizza used for this purpose before. Woodna fought ittaby terribly resonant.

Can't think of a drumming/pizza pun at all. There must be one!

(pen) Music for strings is occasionally marked pizzacato = cheesily.

His syncopation's a pizza work.

[Raak] Why do you need a 40x40 drum? Are you taking up Taiko or planning to serenade the neighbours with the Dies Irae of the Verdi Requiem? (I ask out of professional curiosity as a percussionist)

[Raak] Will the drum be lit from inside?

[Pablo] I've been playing taiko for about 8 years, and right now I'm in the Swiss mountains at a taiko festival. [Stevie] I will see if I can persuade our Benevolent Leader.

[Raak] That explains that then. Taiko in the Swiss mountains? Bit like gamelan in Siberia innit?

This just in: Swiss budget for avalanche precipitation mortars exausted before winter season starts! Government said to be considering alternative approaches to clearing the ski slopes. Film at eleven.

Hello. Just performing a server upgrade.

Rab! Good to see you.

Taps on the glass? How big is it FFS?

[Rosie] Screen. I mean screen.

Do we need a Prime Minister? I don't see why. A Composite one would be far more multi-faceted.
(pen) You take me far too seriously.

[Rosie] Oh no I don't. ;o)

Only a feeble one-rumble-and-a-bit-of-rain here last night. Other places not far away have had exuberant electrical displays, crashing thunder and joyously roaring downpours leading to surface water flooding and hazardous driving conditions south of the M4 corridor. So why not the B269? Come on.
(pen) Thank God for that.

It's cooled down a bit - now 21C or so and 16 at night (which is nice) but we haven't had any decent rain for about 3-4 weeks. even the promised donder en blixem didn't amount to very much, it seemed to swirl around us but dumped very little rain on us.
And I've got new shoes and a new coat and everything, ready for rain and inclement weather.

Thar be not much rain in Beds either me hearties!

Arrr, Cap'n, if it be rainin' in yer bed, yer mun ha' left the porthole open again!

[Rosie] Yes, it was rather damp in Newbury last Thursday evening. I avoided it by 12 miles or so, but watched the lightning from a distance while nervously walking the dog.
The very slow-moving storm finally reached us about 4am, and continued till nearly 6am. The closest lightning strikes were just under a mile away, but were some of the most powerful I've heard. Fortunately, we live on top of a chalk and flint hill, so it drains very rapidly down to the Thames, so the roads were largely OK by 7.30am.

[Rosie] A couple of weeks ago there was a "gully washer" in Florida the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Mrs Noah smashed a bottle of Manischewitz across the bow of the ark. It only lasted for about 15 minutes but dumped inches of wet. This isn't super-rare in that neck of the woods, but it has been years since I was caught in such sheer amounts of ruined holiday.

The last time was on the causeway connecting Kennedy Spaceport with the mainland. Sea on both sides and lightning poking it periodically. I turned to Mrs Stevie and said "I know you won't like this, what with the Stevieling being in the car, but we have to let those two people on the motorcycle in or they could be killed". I looked over at the bike to see it laid-down and no sign of the riders. They had taken refuge in the ditch. The alligator-infested ditch, which we had been warned many times to keep clear of on account of hungry alligators of a particularly grumpy disposition. Now that is rain.

I have a soft spot for the rain in Singapore, which turns up for thirty minutes at carefully defined times of the day. Allows one to plan, don'tcherknow.

[Bism] my recollection was of a rainy season that deserved its name. When were you there?

[Sup] You've unmasked me there, only been there once in February, weather was as I described though.

The windy miller and I are off to the 24-hour Citroen 2CV race at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday. What fun. Ages since I've been to any motorsport-related (I use the term advisedly) events. It's been nothing but windmills for the past eight years.

(pen) For a short period I drove one of those. They can do 60 on the flat. Handling characteristics of a London bus; power of a Sinclair C5.

I think the ones on the track last week had been pimped. Quite a lot. Great fun, free entry, free grandstand seats, disgusting toilets.

The 2CV has an integral toilet?

[Stevie] IN the Netherlands they are affectionately known as the Citroen Eend or 'duck'. There's also a brand of toilet cleaner in NL and in the UK called 'Toilet Duck' or 'Toilet Eend'. We are truly going round in circles.

(pen) I get the impression the Dutch are cheerfully lavatorial. Is that a fair assessment?

[Stevie] Not really, not as much as the British. It's a coincidence about the Duck thing - it's a Europe-wide name for the toilet cleaner because of the shape of the neck of the bottle. Now I'm trying to identify the Dutch sense of humour...

[pen] The boy with his finger in the dike points* the way to the Dutch sense of humour, I think.

* Ahahahahaha

Not seeing the connection between the bottle-bank on wheels and a duck, myself.

Depends on your stance. The Ka was nicknamed "Flea" in Germany (they seem to have an insect fixation), the Multipla was the "coffee pot" in France (probably could be exchanged for one after ten thou miles), not too sure about the resemblance either.

[pen] My recollection of Dutch humour was that they gave you very fair warning of an imminent joke, often some days in advance, allowing one to take cover. Is it still like that?

Our Finnish friends, who owned an underpowered 2CV, used to refer to it as the 'un cheval'.

[Superman] I get the 'flea' moniker and the coffee-pot (I'm thinking of a Bialetti stove-top espresso maker - does that make me one of the 'liberal elite'?) but it does take time for objects to earn an affectionate nickname, doesn't it?
And as for slow-simmering Dutch jokes, I haven't actually noticed any, probably because I don't work with enough Dutch people for the technique to gain critical mass. They're not without a sense of humour, but because mine relies on wordplay (most often) then there's a gap that isn't often bridged.

I had asked if anyone had seen Venus low in the SW around sunset but for some reason the question didn't appear. Well? The moon's there now as well.

[Rosie] I have seen it peeping through the trees the last few chilly nights.

(Boolbar) Bright, innit. You can see it in broad daylight with binocs and even with the naked eye under the most favourable conditions.

Is it the thing shining diretly under the new moon right now? I can see it from the sofa. It's going to be a chilly one tonight.

(pen) It is, or was. The moon moves on, unlike Ars?ne Wenger. Venus gets higher and higher until mid February. Cue UFO reports.

Why has my carefully crafted grave accent come out as a question mark?

Jupiter beaming at me this morning. Still visible as the sun was lurking just over the horizon. [Rosie] Try using the html string è

[Rosie] I dunno, but I wish you'd stop ending every question with an 'e' sporting a jaunty grave accent.

(Boolbar) Normally alt0232 works but not this time. Something is slightly amiss because on doing "Preview" the text disappeared from the box and after several severe blows with a club hammer this is what came up. ??? lad.

It's done it again. I dunno.

[Rosie] I never use that because absent a numeric key pad I have to use the numbers up top and it dun't wurk. Boolbar's suggestion should work as it is broswer rendering character set immune (a quick test: è).

It could be the preview is furging it all up. (quick test with preview: è).

So preview can't bugger up the HTML entity. Let's try with the number (quick test:

Egad!

? j?? ??p? th? ?h?r?ct?r? İ ⱳā?ẗ.

è é ë
These characters created via è é ë, as recommended by Boolbar.

Testing, testing.

Well, that works, as does the Preview. Let's try this: Tèsting, tèsting. That previews OK but only by using Boolbar's method. On MCIOS both systems work. Why dat den?

[Rosie] Differences in how the moves are stored I guess. Unicode and code pages are a bugger.

Yesterday's free lunch came with a Christmas box (containing wine and cashew nuts) plus a step-counter that counts randomly but no food because the queues were too long, full of people queuing for their free lunch, and I decided it was a better idea to eat lunch at my desk.
Today's free lunch is hosted by the research institute and is on the 17th floor so at least there'll be a fabulous view while queueing. University life, eh?