Month: September 2021

UniBrum Fish-Chicken-Chips

Amazing. Not in a good way, so ‘perplexing’ may be a better term. Aww inspiring, not awe inspiring.

I watched the chips as they were dropped in the oil at the chip wagon on the UniBrum campus and waited patiently for my treat. Still steaming when I dosed them with vinegar, they should have been crisp and fluffy. More vinegar might have helped with the grease, but cooking at the proper temperature might not have gone amiss, either.

It has been 406 days since my last stop at a chippy, so maybe this is what it is supposed to taste like and I’m just no longer acclimated to it. Aww.

Week 38: Seemed Like A Long Week

Seemed very busy at work this week. Too many irons in disparate fires. More of that next week, I reckon.

We did a lot of furniture maintenance Saturday. Then, after the gym Sunday I ran to the town centre for a newspaper and trotted up a street I normally don’t use and spotted the coffee table in the photo. It was bleached out on top from outside usage and missing the glass central surface, but it was solid and well built (like me!) and I returned the same path to pick it up on the way home. Two hours of sanding and oiling yielded the product you see in the photo. Ordering a tempered glass top later in the week.

Fines & fees: £83. Scant 10 miles this week as we get re-acclimated to the gym.

Week 37: Four on, four off

Four day work week was hectic and the four day weekend, with one day remaining at this juncture, has been busy as well. Save, that is, for Sunday when I ran to what was going to be my first organised race since Bournville a couple of years ago. The race, one lap around Prince’s Park in Burntwood, Staffordshire, doesn’t have a distance listed but, rather, is said to be “approximately 55 adult strides.” Prince’s Park is reputed to be the smallest park in the UK — you could fit it, twice, inside the church next to it (above).

In sad news, Norm MacDonald died this week. In a rare book endorsement, I HIGHLY recommend “Based On A True Story,” his exceedingly dark and surprisingly only mildly funny memoir/novel/dunno-what-to-call-it. Read it and learn how to never take my book recommendations again.

In a much happier section of the obits:

Bob Enyart used to thank his god for every AIDS death and used his broadcasting platform to spread ridiculous conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccines and the existence — or, nonexistence — of COVID at all. His Twitter feed should update that whole, “LIVE,” claim, since he died of COVID last week:

The Acorn, Litchfield

Pub #2451 (It’s Good To Be Back):

346 days. That’s how long it has been since I last darkened the door of an open pub (there was a LONG stretch where none of them have been open, to be clear). But, I had booked into an event that I planned to participate in a few miles west of Lichfield and ridden in an almost empty train car maskless and fearless and thirsty and decided that the drought ends today.case in p

I followed others from the train station to the main shopping drag and spotted a Wetherspoons that I could be sure was open and I hadn’t been to. Result.

Got to the bar behind a guy I recognise as the local equivalent of me in most southern US bars…disappointingly banal conversation but lucid enough to realise that the banality is more a comment on the observer than the observed.

Case in point the weird convo I was sucked into regarding a 60-year-old wide-boy who pushed ahead to insist to the guy ahead of me in the queue that Tony was just over there. “A ‘townie’ you say. No, no, no, this won’t do.Thank you for your advice, though.” Then he turned toward me,

“What do you say, sir?”

“Bastard townies give me a right pain in the dick.”

This was met by what I’ll eventually call raucous laughter but honestly would label, “nervous.”

Fucking townies, though…they give me a right itchy place in my trousers.

If anyone can source me a potential bird bath stand as sturdy as the standers in this pub, please contact me (needs to be on a public transport line to West Brom or thereabouts:

Prince’s Park MilliMarathon

That’s right, 42.185 metres around the smallest park in the UK. One lap to glory. [Editorial note: I’d be willing to do the 1000 laps required to make it a full marathon, but the OFFICIAL name of this event was the World’s Shortest Fun Run.]

I had run from Litchfield, roughly 4 miles away, to participate in this endurance event but, while my bib number was 27 and numbers 1-500 had a 12:30 start time, the organisers were sending people off in pairs calling folks up by name. When I realised they were getting all the donors and volunteers and locals through first, I ran back to Litchfield.

The first two off the blocks, though, were running with someone dressed as a giant acorn with cartoon feet and hands. The mascot took a tumble the first turn and had to be extracted from the costume. The unathletic, middle aged woman therein was wearing nowt but a poorly fitting sports bra and I heard someone near be gasp and say, “the children! Shield their eyes!”

I believe I got my entry fee’s value back in entertainment.

Week 36 Recap: Limbo? Chaos? Order? It’s ‘Bun in the Bardo’

The research groups that use The Facility were gone from Tuesday for the British Mass Spec Society conference. I had an engineer booked for two days and a master’s student who wanted to use an instrument on Thursday so I camped in the abandoned office all week. Quiet. I could get used to this.

We continued shifting things into the new shed on the Home Front and got some containers to help organise things. Likewise, with all the stuff from the erstwhile pantry under the stairs now safely stored in the shed we were able to start moving the durable-but-infrequently-used kitchen items into it. With this done, I’ll be attacking the kitchen in due course on the final big project before next year’s garden transformation.

Winter is coming and we are 6 weeks from the annoying clock change which will plunge us into post-work darkness for the next 6 months. With less carpentry, masonry, and plumbing to do than at any time in the last two years, we decided to join a gym with the first visit on Sunday.

Fines and fees: £52. Mileage: 12 (feel guilty about not taking advantage of the good weather and absence of colleagues to try and get back my stride, but…hey, ho).

Garden is still a wreck but we have a clear path from everything to everything, at last.

Week 35 Recap: Hols Hangover

Oddly, a recipe (of sorts) for buttered sea trout is making waves. Strange what people choose to read on the internet. It is good despite the way it is described in this journal. Enjoy.

Off Monday for the late summer Bank Holiday, we also took Tuesday and Wednesday to do a little bit more on Shedinburgh Castle and to get some long overdue clothing shopping done. This made Thursday hectic at both our jobs as we got our foundering boats righted but both of us had reasonable relaxing Fridays.

I put up some temporary shelves in Shedinburgh, but only so we could store the items we’ve been using to build it while the industrial floor paint cured for 7 full days.

Overall, a relaxing week without, again, any runs worth mentioning (average mileage hovering around 10/week for the past 7 days), Very high Sunday night as I edit this. Fines and fees: £62.50