*stumbles upon an old bookmark*

Hello, world!

Hello, nights! Haven't seen you for days.

[Muse] I've seen Muse four times live. The first was just after the first album release and was without any mega-screens, UFOs, mass crowds etc. To be honest I got bored of them, but the first few albums remain great. [Modern Music] Although I buy modern albums I suspect that they won't be popular with the kids. The latest by Joanna Newsom, Swans, 7shades, PJ Harvey and Katzenjammer have all been making my Mini vibrate recently.

Muse? I've moved on. Star Trek and The Martian soundtracks at work, Van der Graaf Generator on the trains.

(Stevie) Actually it's a dynamo. It's for the lights, or used to be.

[Rosie] Spelled differently, though I didn't really know that until I looked it up. Perhaps there was one of those shifts in reality where I wake up and find the world is pronouncing a word completely differently than they were the night before.

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.

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