A Friday Ten for the 5th of October

A missed Friday Five From Last Week Makes a Friday Ten

1) Sports - are going well. The Captain continues to enjoy rugby and football. Competative football is going well. The kids seem to be enjoying it, although 4 ten minute games in a hour is very tiring for them. I am attempting to power them through with digestive biscuits and oranges. We have a mini-tournament at BRFC this weekend, with teams from Heriots, Stewarts Melvilles and Musselburgh. I am going to start a campaign to rename our two squads from Blue and Green to Packers and either 39er or the BlueSox.

2) The Captain has been on fire these last few weeks. He was star of the week in his class, was voted player of the tournament at rugby, has been selected to be the Mascot at the next BRFC home game, got an excellent report from his teacher at parents' evening and he's started walking to school on his own. He looks so little when he walks away from the house on his own and yet he fills the space around him so fully.

3) It has been year end at work (hence no Friday Five last week). The firm is in excellent good shape.

4) On television I have been enjoying The Good Place, Ozarks, Strictly and Killing Eve. I have not been enjoying some of the Captain's choices. In particular the programme about a 14 year old science genius who graduates from college at 13 and takes a job at his old school so he can try and persuade his high school crush (and student) to go out with him is problematic in many ways. The Captain asked me if I was excited about Doctor Who and I find that I'm not especially but he seems to be so I guess I'll need to front up and abandon my plan of letting the froth and rage subside and seeing if it was any good when it appears on Netflix in 2020.

5) I have been following the Brett Kavanagh story. I believe he has probably done more or less what he is accussed of. Reporting sexual assault is difficult. His blustering denials were unconvincing. There seems to be a disagreement between him and many of his friends about whether he was a heavy drinker at college. I believe his friends. Which implies that he has lied under oath to the Senate. This alone ought to disqualify him. It seems likely that the Supreme Court is going to suffer great damage to its legitimacy and become even more politicised and more explicitly so than it has in recent decades. This seems to me to be part of  a worrying trend in the West where we do not nurture or respect our institutions.

6) We are just finalising our requests for the ticket ballot for the Six Nations, many people are coming to the rugby with us this year. We have our tickets for the autumn tests Some old school friends, some old uni friends, Bluebird, my mum. I am unequivocally excited about rugby this season.

7) I received an email from a shipping company yesterday that at first I thought was a phising scam or an advanced fee scam until I remembered that I'd pre-ordered a game from the USA that was out of stock about three months ago. The shipping company appear to have had some difficulty deliving the package, which as it is essentially a card game, I have a letter box and MLW works from home I find either incredible or disappointing.

8) I am looking forward to the US Mid-Terms. They look like they are going to be an interesting set of elections with interesting repurcussions from any of the results. Some of the interesting results I think I'd prefer to watch from my bunker on Mars but I'm not Elon Musk so I'll have to watch the results on the same planet as the rest of you.

9) Talking of results, Strictly results format has changed a bit. There was some faux jeopardy business this week. I mean additonal faux jeopardy to normal. I dislike the trend in adding in long pauses to results announcements and other business designed to highten the emotional impact of these things. For me that marks a failure to illicit genuine emotional interaction. You don't have to wait five minutes to find out the result of rugby match.

10) I fancy doing some cooking over the weekend. Perhaps some baking and a nice slow cooked meat dish.

On Strictly 2018 Week Two

Week two of Strictly has passed.

As predicted by just about everyone Susanah Constantine (and Anton) are first out. Their Week Two score of 12 giving them an overall score of 24 and bottom place on the leaderboard. They were joined in the dance off by  Lee and Nadiya whose combined score of 48 put them in the dangerous middle ground of 7th place. I think I'd be a little bit worried if I were Lee and Nadiya but it's early days, the field is broad and there are worse dancers still in the competition.

Quite challenging dances for early on in the competition. On reflection I think this is unwise. It makes the early rounds a bit of a dice roll. Get a difficult dance and a bit of bad luck and you run the risk of being out much earler than you ought. I favour the more structured learning route but I guess Moffat needs a job now that he's no longer ruining Doctor Who or Sherlock.

I think I'm managing to get behind Katya and Seann and DJJ and Amy. I'm pretty much convinced that Katya is the cleverest choreographer in the competition.

Joe Suggs has moved in to favourite with the bookies at 4/1. He's moved a lot from the 10/1 you could get before the pairings were announced.

Kate Silverton has moved out quite a bit, which is sad but probably fair. Seann Walsh and Katie Piper are favourites for Next Elimination.

Worth noting that the following EU dancers would not be allowed in the UK after the 29th March without a visa.

Giovanni, Gorka, Alijaz and Graziano. Who knows how much a professional dancer is paid in Brexit Britain?