danieldwilliam | Recent Entries

I was also out in the sunshine doing outdoor hobby things over the weekend.

Spent Friday at the Hive with My Lovely Wife watching Edinburgh Rugby's last (home) game of the season and saw them unexpectedly win and qualify for the European Champions Cup and United Rugby Championship play-offs. Edinburgh can be a bit wobbly in crunch games. They needed at least one other result to go their way. They've been (rightly) focused on their European Challenge Cup run to the semi-finals. I thought they'd be exhausted and fumble a that the last. Instead they played with the buccanneering freedom that I enjoy watching so much and won quite convincingly in the end.

Which means they finish in the top eight, and qualify for the play-offs and, more importantly, next year's senior European tournament, the Champions Cup. The play-offs will be a challenge. They have the second placed Bulls away in South Africa which will be a challenge.

Lovely sunny evening watching rugby with my wife, drinking beer in the sun.

Saturday evening I went to see An Audience with Aggers and Tuffers at the Assembly Rooms with a non-cricketing pal. My dad dropped out due to his back. Lovely gentle chat familiar to anyone who regularly listens to Test Match Special. Had a few beers.

Sunday, did a bit of light gardening e.g. stood looking at some things in the sun whilst holding a hose either at my garden or my dad's.

It's been very dry here for several months. I don't recall any rain in Edinburgh for a month. There is talk about hose-pipe bans.

As part of my stop being miserable and start being alive again programme I am taking up in earnest a number of hobbies.

I have joined a board games club that meets on a Friday, a table top role playing club that meets on Wednesday and next week I have an introductory session to a table top wargaming club. This all is in part spurred on by finding my old Warhammer kit spread across the bedroom floor after the burglary and being inspired to try and get it back on the table. (Improv and acting to follow.)

So over the week I spent some time assessing how much of my Games Workshop Bretonnian army was damaged (very little), how much stuff I thought I had was missing (a couple of pieces but they could easily be in a box I've not looked in yet), what sort of stuff I had that could go on the table (painted, based etc - enough for one functional but small army). That job done I needed to find a better way of storing them and put them on some movement trays.

The answer turns out to be magnets and the wonder of Amazon's business model.

Buy small magnets, glue these to the bottom of your models. Buy ferrous-rubber sheeting. Buy self-adhesive velcro tape. Buy Really Useful Storage Boxes. Spend Saturday morning listening to classic Just a Minute whilst Your Lovely Wife and Your Energetic Son are out shopping and playing golf respectively sticking them all together. Then spend some time on Sunday making magnetised movement trays out of the cardboard that your Amazon deliveries came in, self-adhesive A4 sticky labels and cut-to-fit rubberised magnetic sheeting.

So that's the core of a Bretonnian army ready to go.

Due to changes in the rule-set I need to add in some additional models and I miss my Green Knight. The Green Knight is such a wild, mad character, in both narrative and play terms that I insist on replacing him and I need some more flag-carriers and trumpeteers and junior officers. But that can wait until after I've tried out at the club. I will avoid buying anything from your actual Games Workshop because I try not to support the business model of "change rules to force lonely teenagers to buy new models."

In terms of changes to business models that make this easier, Amazon, Amazon-style delivery, 3d printing, YouTube and all mediate by the internet.

It's now easier and cheaper to find new ideas, new suppliers, new things and have them get to your house.

When I first took up this hobby it was very difficult to buy models that were not bought in a Games Workshop shop and made by Games Workshop. Games Workshop would not sell you alternative models (and in fact ban unofficial proxies from their shops and sanctioned tournaments). They also mediated / gatekept participation in the hobby. If you didn't already have a group of friends to play with you could only easily find them with the help of Games Workshop. Knowing how to store models using magnets was difficult to find out. Perhaps Games Workshop would rather sell you £200 worth of foam-filled boxes than £30 worth of magnets and velco and therefore didn't write articles about it in their official magazine. Perhaps not, coincedence or magic, you decide. If you knew the technique finding the kit was tricky. Who has 200 5mm by 2mm magnets? Where can I get ferrous-rubber sheets? Which part of my city is the place to look for people who know who to put those together.

Turns out the internet has you covered. Mostly Amazon. Amazon can afford to stock all of the things I need and ship them to me. 3d printing allows model designers using 3d print software to dis-aggregate themselves from physical 3d printing producers. 3d printing itself is perfect for high-value, low-volume small batch production. YouTube and Google will tell me how to make better storage and which producers of alternative models are good. I don't have to bodge together a foam-filled box in order to not have to buy one for £200. I know have instructions step-by-step on how to make a better alternative and can buy all the materials and have them arrive next day at my door.

So I've had all the storage I need delivered to my door. Assuming that I enjoy Thursday as much I hope to I'll then have models for the Green Knight, the Lady of the Lake, some heroic knights, some on flying horses, and some pikemen delivered to my door. That should complete my Bretonnian army for the time being. Then to make and paint High Elves and Skaven which are still mint in the box. The long winter nights will be filled with joy (and from MLW and MES, baffled incomprehension.)

I made some tray bakes at the weekend

Fifteens are a Northern Irish fridge-tray bake - apparantly unknown outside of Ulster. I came across them on a BBC evening tour of Irish food programme which is currently filling the space usually taken up by Michael Portillo and his trousers. I like the food tour programme but I miss Michael Portillo, who, if in office now would probably be the Labour Party's third greatest Prime Minister.

I'm practicing for the bake sale attached to the end of season rugby festival.

They are very very sweet.

Fifteens ingredients

Digestive biscuits

Marshmallows

Glace Cherries

Desicated Coconut

Almond

Condensed Milk

Milk Chocolate Chips

Very easy to make 15 each of digestives, marshmallows, cherries - whizz the biscuits in a food processsor. Chop up the marshmallows and cherries, mix in a bowl with the condensed milk, put most of the coconut on a sheet of cling film,dollop the biscuit mixture on to that, top with the rest of the coconut, roll up in to a sausage and put in the fridge overnight. Cut up in the 15 pieces (or smaller as they are very very sweet.)

I'm not actually eating them myself as I'm on a diet but the small taste test I did suggests they are dangerously moreish.

Six weeks in to my on-going change of diet to the 5:2 intermittent fasting pattern and the results are pretty good so far.

Weight is down about 3.3kgs, target was to be down 2.7kgs - so a little ahead of schedule. 14% of weight loss target in 10% of the time. My expectation is that I'll be ahead of plan early in the process when there is more weight using calories and sticking with the food plan is easier. So I'd say the outcome so far is on the good side of expected. Six weeks is probably long enough to see some consistency in the results but also still not long enough that some of the noise in the measuring (inconsistent clothing, drinking or not drinking a pint of water etc) are still showing up in the trend.

Waist measurement is down in line with plan but had a steep drop in the early weeks and is pretty static at the moment. I'm less fussed about this measure as I know the accuracy of the measurement if poor. I think this is one to take a longer term view on. At some point the measuring error will drop out.

Diet adherence has been mostly good. I've been pretty consistent but not perfect about making sure I have both breakfast and lunch on my fasting days so I'm not putting my evening meal under pressure. I'm not being very strict about the calorie content of the evening meal. It's more important that it is both significantly fewer calories than normal and that I'm content eating it for a year than I stick to the exact gram by gram, calorie by calorie regime. I have a big bowl of salad for dinner. So long as I am not making myself a big bowl of potato salad or whacking in great lumps of feta cheese I'll be consuming about the right number of calories to have the effect I'm after.

I'll check in again in another 6 or 8 weeks by which point I'll have added the Man vs Fat Rugby to the mix. Some extra exercise and some weight loss coaching. That ought to keep the momentum up.

I am not in a show during the Fringe but I might as well be.

I'm helping with front of house and set shifting for my drama group, specifically my friend R's production of Joe Orton's Ruffian on the Stair.

I'll be spending most of the evenings this week at the venue, selling tickets and moving furniture.

It's the physical part of physical theatre.

I'm going to actually see the show on Friday.

I am returned from a holiday in Malaga in southern Spain.

Took a flat just on the edge of the Centro Historico.

Malaga is a nice town, about the same size as Edinburgh. Hot in the summer but not too hot. Plenty to do but not an overwhelming amount of things to do. The historic centre of the town is about a square mile of little winding alleys, almost complete pedestrianised and almost completely made up of restaurants, cafes, bars and shops. Lively but not rowdy. Full of tourists. Nice beach and promenade. A Moorish castle and fortified palace. Big cathedral. The big world class draw is the Picasso museum.

There's even a bull ring but only in use one week a year.

It's been a major port for a long long time.

Founded as a Phoenician trading port in the 8th century BC then expanded in to a proper colony by the Carthaginians under the Barcids. Seems to be some Greek and local influence along the way. Taken over by Romans in the 2nd century BC. Vandal for a bit - hence the name Andalusia. Moorish from the 8th to the 15th Centuries AD then Castillian. Looks like the Catillians sold everyone in to slavery when they took over in the 1480s so there is less Moorish influence on show than you might think.

The Picasso museum is very interesting. It does a really good job of illustrating what he was doing as an artist. Right from the very start of the gallery where it opens with two pictures side by side, one of his sister holding a doll painted when he was a teenager I think, 1900-ish?, in a very late Victorian portrait style and one of Mother and Child painted in the 60's in a full Cubist style. These are both paintings of the same thing. Have a think about what it means for a painting to be a painting of a thing. The Captain seemed to engage with it. MLW liked the later ceramics. There was also a temporary exhibition of the little known contemporary of Picasso Maria Blanchard which was fabulous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Blanchard

MLW and I went from not knowing anything of her to being big fans.

We ate well, lots of lovely restaurants. I enjoyed the local beer Victoria Malaga very much. The best dinner was probably the one in the little tapas place on our first night there that I picked because it was the closest to us. I very much enjoyed the fact that if you bought a beer or a glass of wine you got a little tapas with it.

The coolest thing was in the Museum of Malaga - a 6th century BC grave of a Greek hoplite with Egyptian jewellery and Tyrian artifacts - moved wholesale from the place it was discovered literally underneath the block of flats we were staying in when they were built 15 years ago.

The other interesting thing about that museum was its deliberate dull display of deliberately dull Spanish art from the Franco period. Franco wanted dull art and the museum shows you the dullness of the art to its full effect by sprinkling just one or two interesting pieces trough the collection

We did not do much. Walked round the castle, looked at Picasso, spent a day at the beach, went of a Segway tour of the town, did a bit of shopping, looked at interesting archaeology and dull art, sat on the roof terrace and read, watched a bit of the Olympic Games.

I think we have seen the five worst Prime Ministers in the history of Britain and in descending order of worstness. Their greatest common sin was to consistently put duty to their Party or to their own venality ahead of their duty at Prime Minister but each one has a fault of their own.

David Cameron, Britain's 5th worst Prime Minister. A man whose arrogance was only exceeded by the gap between ability and his own perception of his ability.

By choosing the most simplistic form of plebiscite as a way to save the Tory Party from itself he put in to hazard 50 years of Britain's foreign and economic policy. Too arrogant and too stupid to stop for a day and think, "what if this goes wrong? what could I do today to make those risks less?"

What he learned from the AV referendum was that he would easily win referendums. What he should have learned from the AV referendum was that, if you don't carefully structure the referendum process the other side can and will just lie.

Also, he appointed George Osborne Chancellor, and he, more than anyone else caused this mess.

Teresa May, Britain's 4th worst Prime Minister. A genuine patriot and someone keenly sensible of the sacredness of the duties she was heir to somehow failed to realise that she was in charge of what happened next and could make some different decisions. Mistaking, as many Tories do, the unity of the Conservative Party for the unity of the country. After she realised that she was in charge, at each point chose to do the thing that would damage her party least. She could have asked, "well this is a mess, how can we as a country work out what to do next?" She chose not to but instead to push on as quickly as she could so that the Tories would not fall too much to fighting each other over the impossibility of dealing with the Brexit referendum result without having to say that some Tories were pig ignorant nut jobs too loudly.

Boris Johnson, Britain's 3rd worst Prime Minister. Having ridden Teresa May over the Brexit jumps with cries of "faster, faster" he demonstrated an utter inability to find any meaningful way to put in to practise the slogans and smoke rings he had blown in to the air to get himself elected. Having contributed to the destruction of Britain's foreign policy in order to advance his career by "saving" the Tory Party from itself he then purged the Tory Party of two thirds of the broad church that had made the Tory Party the natural party of government in England for 200 years leaving it a hollow shell bereft of ideas, talent, ideology or any sense of anything greater than itself. And then, like the scorpion on the frog he could not help himself but fail to follow the rules he had set for the rest of the country. He appears not to understand that people love their grandparents, as much if not more than he loves himself, and will not lightly abandon them to die a lonely, undignified death or lightly forgive someone who did abandon them.

For his own convenience he hollowed out three of the great institutions of our country and then lost his job supporting a sex pest in Parliament.

Johnson's great (espoused) hero, when sacked from Government in 1916 over the Gallipoli landings spent two years as a battalion commander on the Western Front. Johnson appears never to have asked himself "why would a man who didn't have to do that, go and do that?"

Johnson should be made to look at a picture of himself taken during his address to the nation on the eve of the Covid lockdowns when you can see flickering in his expression the realisation that people, large numbers of people, were going to die because of decisions he had already bungled and that he was just realising, to a rough order of magnitude, how out of his depth he was. It won't do him any good but then nothing could. His soul is a sodden mess of his own incontinence.

Liz Truss, Britain's second worst Prime Minister, as well as the shortest serving. Possibly actually insane. That alone is enough to put her on this list.

Took all the examples of the four Prime Minister's prior to her; that a Conservative Prime Minister simply stating something made it the truth, that there were no political consequences from poor government if you lied well enough, that the Tory Party and the country were linked in some sort of spiritual union expressed through the voice of the leader and that believing in your own ability was the same as actually being able and things would probably turn as you hoped because you were a good sort really. Then she applied them to the profoundly left-wing institution of the UK's's banking system with the sort of gusto that would make a sledge-hammer wielding David Hasselhoff attacking the Berlin Wall look on in admiration. By accident she then applied that sledge-hammer to about 10% of the households in the UK via the magic of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and seemed surprised, perhaps even disappointed, that people disliked this.

If Britain has stood for anything since 1745 it is stability, prudent financial management and a sort of Whiggish hope for the future. Radical nutjobs destroying banking is the sort of thing British Communists disapprove of let alone the Tory party members who voted for Liz Truss.

Then we come to Rishi Sunak, Britain's worst Prime Minister ever. Having watched the last 8 years unfold from inside government his response to the profound political, economic, social and financial mess that the country finds itself in was to do, nothing. To sit in his office, in Office in his ill-fitting suit jacket doing nothing. To take no action but to blame some poor unfortunates in ill-fitting life jackets. Not just to say this as a lie or a distraction but to appear to genuinely think this was sufficient to discharge the duties of his office.

That is why, despite the strong competition from his predecessors, I believe he is the worst Prime Minister Britain has ever had. To look at the country as it is and decide to do nothing about it.

We've had someone who didn't stop to think, followed by someone who didn't stop, followed by someone who didn't think of anyone but themselves, followed by someone who appeared not to be able to manage a single coherent thought and finally followed by someone who thinks this is okay. That it's all okay.

Come tomorrow, come the reckoning.

So India have won the Cricket T20 World Cup.

There followed some / many comments on the socials (from Indians judging by user names) that there were a lot of excitable but ignorant young Indian cricket fans who were too young to properly appreciate that the IPL was not the same as cricket and that the IPL had a very clear idea in mind of what appeals to young Indian cricket fans and prepared their wickets accordingly and that was different from the nuances of what other people appreciated in different formats or different parts of the world.

Which in some ways is just older people being older people and younger people being younger people with a kernel of truth about the IPL.

But it prompted me to look at the demographics of India. The population pyramid looks like a bishop's mitre.

Media age is 29. (China's 38, UK is 41.) 25% of the population are between 0-14 years old. Which is a young country.

I'm not surprised they don't yet appreciate the joy of Test Cricket.

I am collecting little writing tricks that I've enjoyed. This is part 1 in an on-going series.

Reading a science fiction novella set in a near-ish future colony on the Moon.

The view point character dislikes peppermint tea but is constantly being offered peppermint tea because peppermint grows really really well on the Moon. About half a dozen times during the story this character is offered some hospitality and there is some business about her not particularly liking peppermint tea.

The effect it has of gently reminding the reader that the late-22nd century Moon is not early 21st century Earth without breaking emersion or making a big deal of the difference.

Last week I ran an introduction to improv for a group of young scouts in Dunbar.

It's the first time I've run or taught improv for some years. Since I took up rugby I think. I've never run an improv session for young teenagers before.

I planned, and mostly delivered, a very very simple introduction to improv. The main focus was on "Offer" and "Acceptance" and the importance in improv of saying"Yes" and I pretty much kept it at the.

Games include 3 Line Scene, I Am a Tree, Park Bench and some warm ups.

Venue was the Dunbar Battery, which has been converted in to a small amphitheatre. The weather was lovely, sunny and bright.

https://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/dunbar-battery-p1790451

https://dunbarbattery.org.uk/

https://dunbarbattery.org.uk/the-location/amphitheatre/

I had a lovely time and I'm told that the kids really enjoyed the session and were really engaged with it.

Had a pint with some of the scout leaders in the most lovely pub before heading home

https://wintonbrewery.com/station-yard/

Very small pub with some nice outdoor space and some nice beer.

Home, via an adventure.

Makes me think I'd like to return to improv once I have finished with the rugby.

The Captain was busily engaged with his own social life this weekend (watching Scotland vs Germany with his mates on Friday and a birthday sleep over on Saturday) so MLW and I set out to enjoy some food and drink in each other's company.

Friday to the local wine bar for post work drink before some fish and chips on the way home. I watched the Scotland Germany game. MLW did something else. The wine bar is a sort of deli come cafe come wine merchant come wine bar in the evenings. It has some nice wine. It is the closest licenced premise to the flat. We basically popped to the local for drink and a chat.

The football was poor. Scotland were so far from the sort of performance that has become common that I think either there has been an outbreak of dysentery in the camp or else Germany are nailed on winners. Or both.

Saturday the Captain headed off to his pal's birthday and MLW and I headed to Leith to visit the Port of Leith Distillery. This is Edinburgh's third new distillery since 2019 for a tour and some food.

https://crabbiewhisky.com/bonnington-distillery/

https://holyrooddistillery.co.uk/

https://www.leithdistillery.com/

The tour was interesting. The building is 8 floor or 40m tall and sits right on the waterfront in Leith harbour, right next to the Royal Yacht Britannia. Britannia has about half a million visitors a year and the tram stops about 2 minutes away. I well understand why the owners built a tall narrow building there rather than a more standard building anywhere else in Edinburgh . Port of Leith, like Holyrood are experimenting with different barley and yeasts. Partly because the owners of both find it interesting and partly because, if you don't have 200 year's of quaint history to help sell your whisky you need to do something interesting. Not sure that the verticality of the distillery does anything interesting but the building is really striking both inside and out. Fantastic views from the bar on the 8th floor. Nice food in the restaurant. Nice drinks.

They don't actually have any whisky yet as they only started producing spirit in January. However, they are owned by one of Scotland's largest independent gin distillers and the bar and tours will probably keep them cashflow positive for a while.

Home after a dinner of bits and pieces.

We got home pretty early on Saturday evening as MLW was singing on Sunday.

Folks may have seen some coverage of the Church of Scotland's property sell off. MLW is right in the middle of that as one of the churches being merged is the one the she sings at.

Caught up on the cricket to discover that England had beaten Oman by scoring about 40 runs with a single hit of the ball and that despite rain they had also beaten Namibia. Scotland had lost to Australia by 2 runs and were out of the T20 World Cup. Which is a shame but not unexpected.

Sunday was Father's Day. The Captain and I laboured like Trojans to re-organise the kitchen, disposing of a variety of thing that we don't use e.g. two of the three sets of small bowls on a tray for serving nibbles. spoike to Bluebird about her new house and the sort of leaks you create when you drill through an unexpected water pipe. Then the Captain, MLW and I we went to Harajuku Kitchen for an early dinner of delicious Japanese food before two of us went round to my dad's to watch the England game which was tense and gave me the opportunity to explore once again with the Captain the intersection of football and politics.

Lovely food and drink. Less awesome sports.

1. What is the oldest object you own?

The oldest object I own is probably a fossil of bellamite or a fish. Although, as an object, both of them were excavated within the last few years. The fossil has existed for tens of millions of years but not in its current state.
The oldest object I own that has been in its current state the longest is my cottage, which was built in 1759.

2. What object have you owned the longest?

I have a couple of fountain pens which I’ve had since I was sixteen.

3. What is the newest object you own?

Is this an object? I just bought some replacement cutting heads for my electric razor. They arrived yesterday and are still in their box.

4. Who is your oldest living relative?

Probably my mum’s cousin who is a few years older than my mum. She’ll be 80 now I think.

5. Who is your youngest living relative?

My wife’s cousin who is 18 months old.

I have become bored of my hair. Over the Covid Years Part 1* I adopted the same haircut as many other men - a very short trim done by an enthusiastic but untrained family member.

The after those years had passed I had a protracted falling out with my barber. I liked my old barber but he had a Jeevesian habit of giving me the haircut he approved off and not the haircut I desired.

So I moved barbers. After a few unsuccessful attempts at a new barber I found one that I liked and who was prepared to indulge me in my no doubt heretical desires for slightly longer more interesting hair than I have had for the last five years. Two haircuts in to this relationship she had a heart attack and died.

This is clearly very sad and by far the most important part of this tale. People reading this should probably take a moment to dwell on the arbitrary and deeply contingent and precariousness of human life and the loss of this young woman in particular.

Yeah.

I then started having my hair cut by her colleague at the same barbers. After a few haircuts we've established a plan for me to grow my hair a little. All of the important decision makers** are on board.

Two haircuts in to Plan Moderately Windswept and Slightly More Interesting it became apparent that I would need some sort of "product." Whilst I am blessed with a fine full head of luxuriant thick hair it is not quite so perky as it used to be and perhaps requires a little support getting upright. The answer appears to be a salt spray - which is salty water with a little hair oil to counter the drying effect of the salt and perhaps a little essential oil for fragrance. Retails at £10-£20 a bottle. Reader, I may have a racy new hair cut I am not paying £20 for a bottle of salty water when I can make my own. Can I make my own? Not so far I can't.

I have now had four unsuccessful attempts to buy hair oil from Amazon. The first the transaction was cancelled. The second failed to arrive. The third arrived but was left outside me door and then stolen. The fourth has just been returned to the delivery centre by the courier.

I am beginning to think that my hair cuts are cursed.

*i.e. the years where people were worried about Covid killing lots of people and stayed at home (if they could), cf the Covid Years Part 2 where Covid just quietly kills and disables people are socially acceptable rates.

*** I say all, Wotjek and I have agreed it, I'm not not sure that MLW, the Captain or any of the other people who get a vote or a right to express an opinion are on board but you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

I am experimenting with making scrambled eggs in the microwave at work and porridge using hot water. So far it's going okay.

I need a source of food which
1) can live in the office
2) is cheap
3) is easy and quick to make

For breakfast that looks like porridge. Standard porridge, dried skimmed milk, hot water from the instant hot water tap, handful of mixed berries and seeds, small splash of maple syrup - stir, eat.

I find I'm not hungry for breakfast until after I've been awake for a while and / or moved around a bit. So being able to eat breakfast easily in the office is helpful.

Similar story for lunch. I don't want to go to the nearest supermarket to get sandwiches. It is Waitrose. The sandwiches are expensive and not very exciting. I also want some food with lots of protein.

So scrambled eggs in the microwave. Mug, splash of milk, two eggs, teaspone of harisa spices or mixed herbs, beat with a fork, microwave in 30 second increments stiring after each. Takes about 3 or 4 rounds.

Takes a little bit of judgement to get the egg cooked but not over cooked - but ever was it thus with scrambled eggs.

So far so good. Both are working well. And they mean that I'm properly fed during the working day and not arriving home feeling very very hungry and then eating too much at dinner.

I went to see a recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue last night with the Captain, MLW and her German cousins (more on them anon perhaps, they are very nice and one of them is the family geneologist)

For those not familiar with the show it a long running Radio 4 comedy panel show. It is very very silly and quite rude. I really like I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. It is perhaps one of my favourite things. I regret not quite getting to see the last recording in Edinburgh before Humphrey Lyttleton died very much. So delighted to be there. Jack Dee in the chair, Milton Jones and Fred MacAuley on one team, Pippa Evans and Rory Bremner on the other. Quite an Edinburgh - Scottish focused panel. Nice to play a neighbour concert. Pippa Evans is a hell of singer and I think a very good technical improvisor. Jack Dee knows the show very well. I enjoy Milton Jones' surrealism and I find Fred MacAuley just quite heart warming. So a good panel for me.

It's a recording of two radio shows. The whole thing took about 3 hours to produce two 30 minute shows. There's a bit of faffing around in that time. There's an interval. John Naismith does an introduction and a bit of a warm up, some bits of the intro and links are re-recorded for sound quality or delivery but it's clear that some material that is recorded is cut out. I think at least one whole game we saw performed will be cut from one of the shows. One of the pairs of panellists didn't seem to understand the rules and it was a bit of a farce The panel and chair seemed pretty clear that it hadn't worked and would be cut. Even in the games that go well I think whole responses will be cut out - some for quality and time and some for content. I also think bits of space will be cut out, little gaps and pauses and so on to make the final programme denser.

The recording is a) much more political / partisan than the final show, b) more obviously ruder, c) mannered and crafted

There were lots of jokes at the expense of the SNP and the broader independence movement. Not exactly political satire. For example, a bit in the intro about Edinburgh and the Scottish Parliament notes two real prizes it has won for architecture and one "prize" for the First Ministers' entrance in the Revolving Door Awards. Which is funny but not exactly political or exactly on point given that the SNP have been in government 3 years longer than the Tories and have one fewer premiers. I think most of that gets cut.

Part of the charm of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is that lots of the innuendo is doubly covert, with the Chair pretending that it's not innuendo but the result of the audience's dirty mind. The live recording has more direct blue humour and swearing - which I think also gets cut.

There's a bit of content that is tried out, works okay for a live show (i.e. it got a laugh) but not good enough for the radio.

So there will be lots of bits of content that will get cut out.

I enjoyed the show very much. It's a different experience being at the live recording from listening to the radio but also a different experience being at a live recording than being a live show. Most obvious example - at the end of a live show you applaud and then leave still awash with the enjoyment of the show. At a live recording, there's 10 minutes at the end when a couple of bits are re-recorded. You can't join in with the singing even if it would be the right thing to do.

MLW enjoyed it. I think her German cousins had a pleasant night out. The Captain is baffled by the whole concept of the show. He doesn't really do surreal word play. I think this is greatly to his credit as a human being but does mark a big difference between him and me.

An interesting and very enjoyable experience.

I think the election result will be at the bad end of predictions for the Conservative Party and towards the good end of predictions for the Labour Party. My view has shifted on this in the last month or so and especially since the English local elections.
My seat prediction for the Tories is closer to 150 seats than 200 seats.
Reasons I think this.
1) The polling has shown a very consistent and high Labour lead for a long time. This is backed up by government approval and personal approval ratings for Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.
2) There’s some evidence that tactical anti-Tory voting will be widespread and effective.
3) Reform supports appears to have held up and turned in to votes in an actual election. This was one of the bigger uncertainties for me. I’d expected many Reform supporters to end up voting Conservative but they appear not to have done at the local elections. I think, from that, fewer Reform supporters will vote Tory in the General Election than I was expecting. The Reform vote seems pretty widely and evenly distributed.
4) The large number of Tory MPs standing down. This is both a predictor and a cause of lost seats. As a predictor; Tory MPs are very likely to know what the situation is actually like. If they are leaving before they lose their seat that indicates that they know things are not going well. As a cause; there is an incumbency advantage but that is lost if the sitting MP, especially high profile ones, stand down.
5) The mood of the country (as far as I can tell from the limited view I have of it) seems to be resolutely that it is time for the Tories to be voted out and the harder and more thoroughly they are voted out the better. The people seem consistent about this.
6) The SNP seems to be struggling here in Scotland which means that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems will pick up a number of seats here that they perhaps might not have done with a more popular SNP.
7) The Labour vote seems to be pretty efficiently distributed at the moment. They look set to win many marginal seats with comfortable but not overwhelming majorities and where they are losing votes to the left that seems to be in seats in large urban centres where the Labour Party would otherwise have super-majorities.
So I think the Labour vote will broadly hold up, tactical voting will mean the Lib Dems will pick up more of the Tory-Lib-Dem marginals, Reform will split the Tory vote pretty consistently.
I think the Tories will be lucky to walk away from this election with 150 seats.

I got home from a long journey last night and started watching the first episode of the latest and I think last season of Sex Education and I found it hard going. I’m not sure why. It could just be that I was over tired after being on a train for 10 hours.

But it seemed like a very cruel satire of queer culture.

I am a big believer in the rule of law and due process. Those are really important foundational rights. Democracies don't really function without them and democracy is important and the best system of government currently available(1).

A vital part of due process is the presumption of innocence in criminal matters; that if the state accuses you of a crime then the state has the job of proving you did the crime, that they must prove that you did the crime before you are punished by the state and that the standard of proof the state needs to reach should be quite high. Beyond reasonable doubt is a popular standard of criminal proof and I'm all in favour of that. I do not want people to be locked up for something they have not done.

However, the presumption of innocence and that standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt is the rule for interactions between (weak) citizens and the (mighty) state. I'm not bound by it. I can form an opinion of an individual based on evidence that has not yet met the criminal standard of proof or perhaps might not reach the criminal standard of proof. Certainly I can do so on evidence that has not yet been put to trial. I can act on that opinion (2). I can withdraw my custom or my company from someone based on what I believe to be true. I, as a private citizen, do not have to wait for the criminal standard of proof to be reached, or even the civil standard (3). I probably ought to as a general rule. If a matter is going to go to trialit is probably fair for me to reserve judgement as much as I can until the evidence has been lead in court and examined and cross-examined. It would probably be prudent to refrain from saying "X did Y and is a Y-ist" until there had been a trial of some kind. It might be ruinously imprudent to state as a fact something that is still sub-judice.

So in most matters I do try to reserve judgement and keep quiet.

I might well think to myself, "there's something to that" or "I won't be surprised if they turn out to be convicted." I might, in private conversation with someone I trust, say as much. (4)

Where I usually don't reserve judgement is where several people have accused a wealthy and well-connected individual of sexual assaults. Reporting a sexual assault is difficult. The process is uncomfortable, painful, humiliating, emotionally scouring and deeply unpleasant - at best. Accusations are hard to prove. The risk of making what turns out to be an unproven (but not untrue) accusation is grave. More so where the person accused is well resourced and the complainer is not. So I recalibrate my own personal threshold for thinking "yeah I reckon they did that, bastard."

If three, or four, or five otherwise unconnected (4) people make accusations that appear on the face of them to be internally consistent and where they point to the existence of some form of corroboration of their account of the matter, then that passes my own personal threshold for thinking that the accused has almost certainly committed serious sexual offences and that I am justified in behaving as if they had; starting now.

I'm not, in good conscience, going to go jumping about loudly shouting the odds and pointing fingers in public. I can't afford to be sued for defamation right now. But I know what I know and if several people have made credible accusations then I know they are almost certainly telling the truth and that's enough for me to think, "yeah I reckon they did that, bastard."

The test is perhaps not whether person X did this thing Y in a criminal way and is therefore in law a proven Y-ist, but whether I would be comfortable leaving someone I cared about alone with them or being alone with them myself.

And that's an important part of the difference between the state's burden of criminal proof and a private citizen knowing something. The state has responsibilities not to use the legal system to oppress private citizens. As a private citizen I have responsibilities and rights not to expose myself or people in my care to danger and a right and a duty to act on the best evidence available to me. Being innocent until proven guilty is a necessary protection of the (weak) citizen from the (mighty) state. It's not there to privilege the (stronger) citizen over their (weaker) fellow citizen.

So, I've heard what I've heard and I know what I know.

And at the moment, yeah, I reckon they did that, bastard.

(1) At least so it appears to me in my liberal social democracy.

(2) within the rules of anti-discrimination laws and the civil laws on defamation

(3) For example David Goodwillie

(4) Although see the Salmond case for a cautionary tale all round.

(5) see the Moorov Doctrine on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorov_v_HM_Advocate

I am genuinely curious about what is actually driving the timing of the news reports about Russell Brand.

I very definitely do not mean, what Establishment Secrets or Deep Truth was Brand about to reveal that meant that he needed to be silenced.

I mean, what’s been the project plan for the investigative journalism, the investigation and research, interviews, verification, editorial and legal review. How does that all work. Why has the story broken this weekend and not a weekend last spring or next spring?

What I did on my holidays

I am recently returned from a family holiday to Germany.

We had one week in Berlin and one week on Usedom on the Baltic Coast.

I enjoyed the holiday very much.

For the week in Berlin we were staying at a friend's flat in the trendy district of Kruezberg. Lovely flat, lovely neighbourhood.

Lots of walking. The Captain was keeping track of his step count and we covered a fair distance on foot.

Berlin is a very vibrant city with all the things you'd expect from the capital city of a major European country and, of course, its own unique features.

It was very striking how much the cityscape is still affected by the Second World War and the subsequent division of the city in to East and West. It looked to me like there were still a few bombed out city blocks waiting to be built on. There were certainly many buildings in the city where repairs had been pretty minimal immediately after the war and then some combination of lack of funds and the broken logistics of a divided city meant they were never restored or rebuilt. The Memorial Church to Kaiser Willhelm the First for example which was made safe in the early 1950's and then, rather than being rebuilt had a new, different and very lovely church building built around it. It now has some relationship with Coventry Cathedral. Also noticeable that the tram system almost entirely runs in the old East Berlin, as the West, like lots of western cities, removed the trams. They are now slowly being replaced.

The other striking thing about Berlin was the attitude to the Second World War, the Nazis and the Holocaust. The Germans seemed pretty open about the mistakes they had made leading up to the Nazi government of 1932. That a combination of weakness, wishful thinking, desire for revenge, racism, a desire to solve problems with violence and nastiness from the whole country had allowed the Nazis all the opportunity they needed and Germans had nobody to blame but themselves for all the horrible hateful things they did and the consequences that flowed from it. It was pretty sobering, particularly as I can see my own state making some of the same mistakes that Germany made early in the Nazi's coming to power. (1)

The most striking example of this was the Reichstag which was only rebuilt in the 1990's and still has Russian and Ukrainian graffiti on the walls along with some bullet holes.

The rest of Berlin was pretty cool. Did the folllowing

Strolled the Unter der Linden to the Brandenburg GateWalked round the Tiergarten

The Holocaust Memorial and a section of the Berlin Wal;

Bumped in to the Pride Festival during the above.

Went to the Natural History museum and saw some T-Rex and Allosaurus fossils and a huge brachiosaurus. Very cool. Also an interesting exhibit on taxidermy for natural history museums.

Went to the Zoo, which was a lovely, but old fashioned zoo. Great for seeing the animals, perhaps not so great for the animals that needed more space. But saw some animals I'd not see before, orang utans, a Tibetan cow-moose thing, rhinos. Very lovely gardens.

The Museum of East Germany where the Germans make fun of the DDR. Sad to see the hopes of the socialist fraternity crushed and the Eastern Bloc exploited by *checks notes* their socialist brothers from Russia.

The Memorial Church of Kaiser Wilhelm, very beautiful but sad.

Saw the memorial to the War of German Independence aka the Napolianic War - which from the German point of view was an unprovoked invasion by France followed by 20 years of being oppressed, dragooned and politically re-organised. Interesting to see a different perspective on it from our own.

Food and beer lovely.

Public transport excellent.

Week on Usedom which is a seaside holiday resort for well to do Germans. As we'd saved some money on accommodation in Berlin we splashed out on a beach front hotel. Lovely seaside place. Lots of delicious fish. Made friends with the butcher in the local Aldi. I had a day's work to do so MLW and the Captain walked to Poland. We went up a treetop walk and observation tower. There was a little music festival going on so we went to listen to some music. Saw a full double rainbow over the Baltic. Weather was warm but with thundery downpours.

Did a lot of strolling up and down the promenade.

A very fine holiday.

(1) I would not personally wish to over egg this. There are elements of right-wing populism and racist nativism going on in the UK at the moment. As there is in the USA and a number of other European countries. that was also true in the 1920's and 1930's and also in other decades. The party currently getting its Poujade on in the UK is about 20 points behind in the opinion polls and looks likely to lose about 200 seats at the next election.

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danieldwilliam

May 2025

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On a Weekend of Outdoor Hobbies on Sunny Days
On a Weekend of Indoor Hobbies on Sunny Days.
On 15s
On Six Weeks of Diet Changes
On A Week at the Fringe
On On Holiday
On The Worst Five Prime Ministers in the History of Britain
On the Intersection of Indian Demographics and Test Cricket - Part 1
On Small Tricks in Writing That I Like - Part 1 or N.
On Improv on the East Lothian Coast
On A Weekend of Delights of Food and Drink and Sporting Disaster.
On Friday Fives About Old Things
On Being Cursed By the Gods of Hair Oil
On Work Based Scambled Eggs and Porridge
On A Radio Recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
On Predictions for the 2024 General Election
On Sex Education the Television Series
On the Presumption of Innocence As It Stands Between Private Citizens
On The Project Management of Investigative Journalism
On Being On Holiday In Germany

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Recent Entries

On a Weekend of Outdoor Hobbies on Sunny Days

On a Weekend of Indoor Hobbies on Sunny Days.

On 15s

On Six Weeks of Diet Changes

On A Week at the Fringe

On On Holiday

On The Worst Five Prime Ministers in the History of Britain

On the Intersection of Indian Demographics and Test Cricket - Part 1

On Small Tricks in Writing That I Like - Part 1 or N.

On Improv on the East Lothian Coast

On A Weekend of Delights of Food and Drink and Sporting Disaster.

On Friday Fives About Old Things

On Being Cursed By the Gods of Hair Oil

On Work Based Scambled Eggs and Porridge

On A Radio Recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

On Predictions for the 2024 General Election

On Sex Education the Television Series

On the Presumption of Innocence As It Stands Between Private Citizens

On The Project Management of Investigative Journalism

On Being On Holiday In Germany