I remember - 20 or so years ago - driving around somewhere near Aberdeen or Inverness for work and playing around with the Long Wave on the car radio and picking up what I presume was the Danih- or perhaps the Norwegian shipping forecast. It certainly wasn't German or French, but I could identify the names of the shipping areas.

Serendipitous discoveries Today my friend and I took a slightly different route on our walk round Wimbledon Village, and found Cannizaro Park, which neither of us knew was there.

[Simons] Hidden gem, isn't it? Make sure you go next June when the rhododenrons come out, it's amazing.

Corporate kindness Rare as it is, it generates a lot of goodwill when I see it. Especially when humor is also shown. See this recent example from Northern Rail.

"We are aware we have bees nesting at the end of platform 3.
Please do not disturb them.
Consider them as key workers and apply social distancing."

Oh hey, I'm accidentally switching to American spelling. Serves me right for getting in to a big document in US-English.

Tim Vine jokes. Merriment.

Cake.
It's raining and windy and grey and I just got soaked on a dog walk so any cake will do. I should have made one yesterday but was busy ironing. Banana bread tonight then.

Red wine, after a week on the wagon taking a no-booze antibiotic

The wobble on a good hot dog. This one hadn't occurred to me, but it is true, and this video link of the WobbleDog 9003i in action makes an incontrovertible case.

I shall now pause to observe a moment of silence for the few dogs injured during these experiments.

Still sunny at 16:00 on a Friday afternoon in January. Longer days in lockdown.

My car passed its MOT. First time for ages. That means I can still legally drive to Waitrose (one mile). The open-ended freedom this endows me with is positively scary.