If we know each other and you want to keep up with things from this point forward, let me know; there is a slight transition occurring — so slight that you may not even notice the difference — to de-universalize this effort to make it more effortless on my part. If we know each other and I make other efforts to keep in touch, you’ll receive directions whether you want them or not. The rest of you will have to search for it (it isn’t hidden, but I’m trusting, nay, hoping that any effort will be too much).
Fifteen years ago today we landed at Heathrow with two cats and started this Great British adventure. Since then both cats have died, we’ve lived in 7 houses then bought the 8th one, I’ve had jobs at 3 universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham), Jackie has become a medical librarian, we’ve got another cat, and I’ve run a little over 25,000 miles in this country stopping at 2676 pubs along the way. It can’t go on forever, but 15 more would be nice.
The totals for the year [month]: 1134 [74] miles running, 157 [10] pubs, 48 [4] kebabs, 44 [1] fish and chips, 34 [2] short reviews including one in this post. We are now up to date on the write-ahead-to-ensure-daily-posts project and will now return to merely occasional posts. Hopefully, the quality improves but don’t count on it. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
On a trip to Walsall, I was crossing one of the bleak rail bridges the town seems to specialise in (this streetview captures the essence of this bridge) and caught a glimpse of a New Year’s Resolution suggestion:
The resolutions for 2023 were to log 26 new venues, each, for Fish & Chips and Kebabs (completed on 11 and 09 May, respectively); to publish one post per day (prewrites done in June with certain on-the-day posts like Thanksgiving and Christmas pending until on-the-day happened); and, to finish Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (18 January), The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (10 May to beat Debra’s arrival since she gave me the original copy for a birthday back in the 80’s), and Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce (failed). Shameful, but I did read other stuff (you should really read the NONFICTION “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot for instance). No resolutions for 2024, but the Joyce is still on the shelf.
The month started cold. I found a loving home for the lab’s forlorn FTICR. I noticed I was on several publications’ author lists for which I would have been more comfortably buried in the acknowledgements. We attempted a Christmas tree with Jimi (he did well…next year we’ll try baubles). I put in a little more flooring and roof insulation in the attic. We ate and drank too much but substantially less than in Decembers past (for no explicable reason other than I think we might be slowing down, generally). And, my work Secret Santa gave me some laboratory based shot glasses:
This photo could be just some poisoned rats but I never saw any on the street before. Then one turned up early December in front of a house a few doors down, was cleared away, then a few days later another with two young ones turned up in front of the same house. Coincidence notwithstanding, it smells like a gang warning to a big rat and two little ones.
Spotted this shipwreck on the run home from Mad O’Rourke’s the last workday of the year:
No Phones, No lights, No Motorcars, Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe It’s primitive as can be.
But, now the month and this bastard of a year are over. Happy New year to you all and do feel free at midnite to wish us a happy 38th anniversary.
Sidenote 1 Jan 2024: an old friend did just that, thanks, and it reminds me — as I treat my hangover — of this little meme from two versions of this blog past:
The totals for the month: only 75 miles running, 6 pubs, no kebabs, fish and chips, or short reviews. I’ve given up on serious running until at least the Christmas break but have made occasional surprise appearances at the gym (at least, I was surprised by them). With one month to bring by stock of pre-written posts up to date, the most recently published pub and fish were actually visited September 21, and kebab was September 20. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
Spotted a cut mark on a gate to this primary school on the walk home from picking up a newspaper early in the month and didn’t have any reason to post at the time so here it is dumped into the Monthly:
Brits have funny prejudices about Americans. Apparently, my former land is full of fat people who don’t get irony and that all of us over here are a burden on the NHS. Still, here is yet another fit and fabulous Brit who took up two seats on the tram. Irony, indeed. Perhaps these people need to get their house in order first (to use a phrase from my adopted dialect, “chill out, it’s just bants“).
It isn’t fat shaming if shame isn’t involved.
There was a training day for macromolecular mass spectrometry this month and I had nothing to do except be on call for instrument breakdown emergencies. None happened, so I spent screwing around first with live equipment not involved in the event then with old parts to use as demo tools for our incoming postgrad researchers. Here’s an old-style HCD cell:
We managed to get over to the Christmas Fete at St Andy’s this year, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. No, we don’t burst into flame inside a church but this was the first time we’d been in this spare yet magnificent hall. The fare was sandwiches, pork pies (mine was delicious) and tea and we got into a raffle for a bunch of booze but seems that we lost. The vicar seemed nice.
A grad student gave me a very kind thank you gift on his penultimate day in the labs. I said kind, not thoughtful (but I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I think about Jack Daniels with a further explanation at the end of this post linked here).
The far end of my street sits a house with a marvelous, albeit cracked, lintel.
The totals for the month: a most paltry 67 miles running, 8 pubs, 2 kebabs, 1 fish and chips, (sushi, in fact, and I’ve eaten there 3 times since it opened), 1 short review. In order to mock myself into getting back to proper running I started a Couch to 5K schedule. Yeah, I’m exceeding the minimums but it isn’t really having the motivational effects I hoped for.
Tony Husband died (cartoon of the month, above and not necessarily a monthly feature, is one of his as is the lawyer one somewhere else in this post). Big fan of Yobs and his other material which is generally demented. Other obits: My computer’s wake-from-hibernating background has been the Mechanical Shaft photo for the last 11 years. Richard Roundtree died on the 24th (shut you mouf!). Also this month: Piper Laurie Dick Butkus and, a bunch of people who I wasn’t compelled to say to Jackie, “hey, did you see that {insert name here} died?”
Jimi finally got his ‘all clear’ from his surgeon after the whole penis removal debacle. I wish he could learn to relax a bit:
Looking at the October photo folder, I have some leftovers from unsuccessful TrigPointing trips but which I rather like nonetheless. This bit of the ruins of the former Grove Primary School, now some flats just behind the Girls and Infants entrance:
Jimi on Wednesday 27th, no longer bleeding but still healing
The totals for the month: 67 miles running (abismal), 12 pubs, 2 kebabs, 1 fish and chips, 3 short reviews. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
Jimi continues to recover, at this writing, from his dick-ectomy (perineal urethrostomy, look it up) earlier in the month. He’s a trooper and seems to have a lot of Bobo in him. He tore out some of his stitches Tuesday while I was at work and bled like a motherfucker; ‘fortunately’ I was sent home for being too sick to be of any use there and was able to apply pressure and this stopped without a return trip to the vet. He’s since recovered remarkably and, besides sleeping like the stereotypical kitty, has been nearly back to normal. Yesterday (Friday the 29th), he got the last of the sutures properly removed and was freed from his Elizabethan collar. Hooray, Jimbo!
Me and the missus were also at Death’s door most of the third and fourth weeks of the month with fever, headache, sore throat, hacking cough, and shortness of breath. Sound familiar? It helps explain this months poor running performance just as I was starting to ramp up again. It also goes some way to excusing the sudden cessation of the wall bricking started the end of last month.
Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Wilfred Owen would hang their heads in shame if they were confronted with the War Poetry presented in this tome to 2nd tier British footie. At least, so I imagine since the local paper has pay-walled the article about it (yes, Express & Star, this mockery is aimed at you):
For reference regarding catching up on the backlog from the Post Per Day Project, the current last post of the year in several categories are (although these are all likely to move forward, now):
Category: Date Visited, Pending Till Pub: 22 September, 30 December (99 days delay) Fish: 21 September, 27 December (97 days) Kebab: 20 September, 22 December (93 days) TrigPointing: 22 September, 29 December (98 days)
The totals for the month: another light one with 103 miles running, 20 new pubs, 4 kebabs, 5 “fish and chips,” 3 short reviews. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
It was colder than it should be most of the month, rarely breaking 70F (21C). Throughout the same time, Tucson (our last US residence) temps exceeded 104F daily (40C). To paraphrase the trope from there, ours is a damp cold.
I got out quite a bit at lunch or just after work and explored some new areas for me. On one journey around Rubery, I spotted the culvert just beyond the shopping trolley, above, and immediately thought what a good hash trail I could put together if hashing was something I did, anymore.
Probably thirty years ago, now, we gave Debra the iguana pipe in this photo, which she sent captioned, “Iguanaman Lives!” She doesn’t use it for dope, anymore, but this story does seem to suggest she has another pipe to hand not far out of the frame.
Attending some training at the Med School, I encountered an old school toilet. Love the overhead tank which, should you need to flush a small dog down the pipes, provides an excess of removal pressure. In a cramped little box, this photo of it is comprised of a three shot panorama. (I am officially Britain’s most boring man but definitely not Ireland’s most romantic one.)
Early in the year I had some ‘filler’ posts but realised that if I just soldiered on until I caught up with my regular postings I would easily meet my New Year Resolution to put up One Post Per Day, every day of 2023.
By February, I had Rail Run posts that were delayed by a few days as a backlog of other posts trundled through. I also had a lot of record, book, and movie short reviews in my pocket from Dry January. A sub-rule to the post-per-day rule was to have one kebab post every odd-numbered week and one fish and chips post every even numbered week until I had at least 26 of each.
Now that the remaining days on the 2023 calendar is filled with pending publications, I’ll squidge posts together so that, by 31 December, the events described will be back to within a day or two of when they happened. Every new one written will push one forward so I expect a lot of two-and-more posting days as the year concludes with a single Monthly Recap on 31 December.
For reference, the current last post of the year in several categories are (although these are all likely to move forward, now):
Category: Date Visited, Pending Till Pub: 24 August, 23 December (120 days delay) Fish: 24 August, 28 December (125 days) Kebab: 23 August, 24 December (122 days) TrigPointing: 24 August, 27 December (124 days)
By the way, I wrote this text, the 366th post of the year, the first week of February when it became obvious this would be easier than I initially thought. It is really effortless to dunk a 6 foot high rim.
The totals for the month: barely triple digits at 100 miles running, 17 pubs, 4 kebabs, 4 fish and chips, 2 short reviews. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
We got a new sideboard on which we put our turntable and speakers and inside of which we stored CDs and various electronics. The old tv stand must go, now, but we’ll make sure we’ve cleared it of cats before sending it on.
Ozzie the bull — from the Commonwealth Games last year — has taken up residence in New Street Station. Magnificent.
On a bus ride, I sat behind Bob Dylan from about 1965 for a few stops until he got up to depart and it turned out to just be some school boy:
The spaceman encountering the flower was a nice find. It brings to mind the future and the way I have, in this blog this year, been juggling time and discovering that it is screwing with my head. I’m never on the blog for something publishing today (except some rare stop-the-presses ones and these monthlies); things always happened ages ago or won’t be ‘live’ for ages.
Y’see, I’ve dedicated myself to doing one blog post per day all year. It doesn’t have to be just one but that doesn’t kick in until I have one scheduled for every day of the year.
As a result of this and my other 1-fish-or-kebab-post-per-week commitment (which ended when I reached 26 each), I stand today with only 55 posts left to schedule 153 days from the end of the year. Pubs are currently ‘done’ out to 18 October. The most recently published pub write-up, a couple of days ago, detailed a visit on 14 June. Similarly, fish looks backward to 04 April and kebabs to the day before that.
Once a full set of 365 are sorted, I’ll start pushing multiple postings until I catch back up to the current date on 30 December (the monthly/annual summary already earmarked for the 31st).
The totals for the month: 90 miles running, 10 pubs, 3 kebabs, 3 fish and chips, 2 short reviews. The mileage is low but I’ve started using TrigPointing as a way to add new interest to the runs (for me, at least … posts will start appearing in due course and a new map to cover this is here).
Started using a topical medicine that induces an immune response so my body attacks some BCC lesions on my arm; this results in aches and fever, a bit more sensitivity to the sun, and foggy headedness so that I’m not sure if I’m actually sick or just experiencing the chemo side effects. Pharmacokinetics and past experience suggest it will become worse until about 2 weeks after the last doses (progress report to follow) then taper back to normal over the subsequent 4 weeks. The last time (8 years ago) I was in the midst of training for the Ridgeway Challenge and doing a little more than 50 miles per week in the hills, so I just need to ignore it (and test regularly for COVID).
Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
Names important to me in my youth and adolescence are now cut into tombstones. Farewell Astrud Gilberto, Daniel Elsburg, Robert Gottlieb, and Ted Kaczinski (who I know is a controversial choice especially in my line of work, but he was right even if his methods were ill advised). Additionally, Yossarian (the movie one) died the last day of the month. Rot in hell Pat Robertson.
Spotted in the Aldi…disgusting:
Some of the grafitti in this Monthly Update is from Chapel Ash Island near the WNW corner of central Wolverhampton.
A pretty good gallery relatively unmarred by the brainless tagging that will inevitably overlayer the bits that require some minimal amount of talent.
This one came from beneath a canal bridge, but at least it is clever and simple:
Had another litre of Keptinis, a Lithuanian beer I pick up at the Polish supermarket down the street. First time I noticed the royal eels sharing flagons of ale using a barrel as a table. Marvelous.
Fairly allergic to bee venom, this little fucker nailed me twice after flying up my shirt then one more time on my hand as I tried to rip the shirt off. Not sure if the neighbours spotted me naked from the waist up jumping up and down on a t-shirt but the spectacle was there for them:
Finally, a tip of the cap to Led By Donkeys for dumping this billboard over in a financially distressed, working class neighbourhood in Tipton that typically votes against its own best interest and which went strong ‘for ‘YES’ in the Brexit Referendum (spotted 14 June across from the Tilted Barrel pub, link live 29 July):
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 
