Smylers
@smylers
Ilkley Christian geek board-gamer puzzle/quiz/crossword fan and parent
Pleasantly surprised to see ‘The Daily Telegraph’ today *not* pandering to their audience, with Charles Moore pointing out that inheritance is luck, not a right: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07... and Tim Stanley berating rightwing climate-change deniers: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07...
It was kind of Royal Mail to email about a new parcel locker near me, but given we already have a sorting office nearby, on balance I'll stick to the 10-minute walk there and back, rather than the 92-hour walk (plus sleep) to get to our “local” parcel locker and back in, erm, Market Harborough.
Relatedly, Screwfix in Guiseley has the worst pedestrian access I've seen for a long time. The pavement just runs out partway along their entrance (left), then you have to walk through the gates on the road as vans are squeezing past:
The platform screen at Derby somehow managed to be even worse, with the two individual trains joined together the wrong way round — L and A are the middle two carriages on this train, with G and F at opposite ends!
The 3rd-party @realtimetrains.co.uk website manages to gets the formation of this train correct, beating the supposedly-official departure screens at Birmingham (which mislabelled coach F as ‘r’):
Slightly concerned by the message on the bus window, though — no condition like “In case of emergency”, just an imperative instructing passengers to get smashing:
Ah, the flooding presumably explains why the cat on that home, and the one next door, have chosen to be so high up! www.catsinyork.com/cat-08 We were so busy looking for the cats, I completely failed to spot the gate-to-nowhere …
I've got stuck! I came up with this which the site hasn't indicated is correct but I can't work out where I've gone wrong. If you have a moment, can you compare this to yours and point out my stupidity? Thanks.
Hi. Just catching up on the Test stats — thank you for producing these. I think the bold 17 here should be 37:
Onjali Q Raúf writes engaging stories that featuring underrepresented groups — including refugees and minorities: www.onjaliqrauf.org/book-worlds ‘The Lion Above the Door’ is a Singapore child noticing everybody in school history lessons is white and investigating what his relatives did in the war:
We bought the first Ember Spark book for a 9yo girl 2 years ago. She's now 11 and has since bought the sequels with her own money: www.abielphinstone.com/book-categor...
Ooops — I think I must've left a holiday home TV connected to my Channel 4 account; there are some programmes I don't recognize in here:
Another month, another ‘Royal Mail Tracked 48™’ parcel which 48 hours later still hasn't made it anywhere from the sorting office I took it to:
The menu at this ‘corporate fun’ day doesn't seem very … balanced. Spouse has suggested I take my own snack box of vegetables. I think they were joking, but I'm now actually considering it.
Well done to the 2750 people ahead of me in the queue. Please don't buy up all the tickets for the day we want. Thank you.
I'm looking forward to discovering in what way Isle of Penguins is similar to a stack of stainless steel food containers!
Nothing says ‘penalty shoot out’ quite like … a long rectangular doughnut with sprinkles on it. Is the Morrisons product team having an internal competition for who can get away with the most tenuous link to football?
Other places say it's for “forecasted severe weather”. Which leads to more questions: 1. Why only that train? Is the weather forecast different for the trains 15 min before and after? 2. Is ‘forecasted’ a word? How does “forecasted severe weather” differ from merely “forecast severe weather”?
“This train was cancelled because its operator requested it.” As opposed to those trains that cancel themselves without their operators having any involvement?
Woo, the 13-year-old and I are record breakers! emergencycricketblog.wordpress.com by @hypocaust.bsky.social
“Including yourself, how many people did you attend with?” But did I attend it with myself? What does it even mean to be with yourself?
Most people are so bad at typography, I doubt it would matter. If asked to type out Morse Code, many would press hyphen/minus. Here's a professional theatre brochure in yesterday's post which uses an opening quote for an apostrophe in the title of a work — in both the text and illustration!
Supporting were The Coral, who competently performed some Coral songs. And before that Nathan Evans & The Saint Phnx Band, who really engaged the crowd. I didn't know their music except for ‘Wellerman’ but I'm now a fan and want to see them again. The BSL interpreter was also a joy to watch.
The 2007 Amy Macdonald gig was at a pub in London with an entire audience of about the number of people in front of me last night. The Piece Hall fits in quite a few more! And I think it's my new favourite venue. Far more pleasant than being inside, and with beautiful architecture.
It was emotional to finally hear ‘Run’ being performed live, which was the first-dance song at our wedding. Admittedly it would've been even better if Spouse had been there was well†, but #parenting leads to many compromises. † At the gig I mean; Spouse was definitely at the wedding.