jonny777

24C outside? Bring it here, please. We are stuck on 28.5 and no wind. This is the thing which pees me off with dry, hot, sunny days. We get up after a sweaty night of intermittent dozing and then have to start the whole process of yesterday all over again. Then after 15 hours of shuffling around feeling like doing nothing, we go to be and have to repeat last night's process all over again, and again, and again...... Anyhow, more sinister happenings are afoot. Late this afternoon I received an email from the solicitor concerning the sale of my dad's house. Less than 90 minutes later I had a spam email from a property company titled 'looking to sell your house?'. Creepy, or what? Fortunately it was from some outfit in the USA and so was full of anonymous garbage, but how do they monitor these things?

Coverage is very similar here in the UK, at least it is with the BBC. If there are no GB teams in the heats then we rarely get to see them. We might see the occasional GB-less final, but I remember the BBC controllers cutting away from the World pole vault final one year, in order to show a GB athlete on the training track hours before his event. I am going to try and get my Virgin box to record the live overnight coverage, especially of the archery and rowing - which are my favourites - and then watch them 'as live' during the following day. I do not want a 'highlights' programme.

Hot and sunny in North Somerset too. Bedroom temperature last evening 29.8C; but felt cooler this morning when I woke up, 27.3C so I must be getting used to the heat now. I arranged a fan to blow horizontally across the bed, and laid in front of it. Slept quite well. SWMBO decided to fall asleep out in the garden, but I think the presence of a number of bats circling overhead made her return inside when she woke up. I would invest in a hammock, but I fear one has not been invented which will cope with my weight. However, I have lost a stone since my initial Covid vaccination, so I am not complaining.

Hot and sunny in North Somerset again. I did a lot of watering last evening, so this morning will only be a few pots which dry out quickly, and the rest will remain under my monitoring scheme. I opened a few lupin pods this time last week, and put about 20 seeds into a small tray of compost. By Friday the first ones had germinated, and now I have about 15 seedlings. Amazing, I wish all seeds were like this. I might try it with poppies and foxgloves, although their seeds are so tiny I can't see how many I have sown.

I suppose that he who hesitates is lost; and in cycling, a second's hesitation and the chance has gone. I'm sad for Cavendish because I know from his interviews that he would have loved to break the record; but in another way there is some karma in the two riders spanning several decades on equal stage wins.

Don't apologise. We are allowed to have different opinions - that is the way the world works; although these days one might believe that a difference of opinion is something to be ashamed of because it doesn't get one a billion 'likes' on Instagram or Twitter. There is nothing really to stop people from working to their preferred daily time span if they wish, irrespective of the official time. If anyone wants to get up at 5am and enjoy the early morning sunshine at this time of year, then - why not? Watch the glowball set soon after 9pm and then off to bed. Of course, mowing the lawn at 5:45 am may not be a clever idea, but activities can be organised to cause least disruption to those on BST/GMT.

I remember it too. It was horrible. On cloudy days in December it didn't get properly light until about 11am. I don't know how far north 'oop north' professes to be, but from memory it was northern England and Scottish farmers who objected to the idea most strongly.

So you would not mind it being dark by 9pm in July and 8pm in August?

. But BST in the winter was tried in the late 1960s and rejected because it was too dark in the mornings.

Well yes, but it would have to be done twice, otherwise if you put the clocks forward by two hours in March it would be dark until well after 8am at the beginning of April.

Just a reminder to those who whinge about not altering the clocks in March every year..... This is what it would be like at quarter past eight in mid-July if you had your way - sunset. Which is why we don't do it.

Dry, sunny and hot here in North Somerset. First outdoor tomatoes almost ripe, which is good considering the number of cool and wet days we have had. I have cut some leaves off the grape vine, in order to give the fruit more exposure to the sun. They tend to get mildew easily if shaded behind lots of leaves. It's now 25C and really too hot to do much more outside, so I will sit in the shade and monitor the buddleias for butterflies.

A job lot for which he paid about 50p each, I suspect. Not a bad mark-up. Harrods would be proud.

An excellent nostalgic video. Thanks for livening up my hot and humid afternoon.

The BTO just sent me an email to say the first cuckoo has arrived back in Africa. It obviously took one look at our spring weather and thought 'bu***r this, I'm off'. Apparently, the average time for cuckoos in the UK is 77 days. So most which arrive in mid-April will be gone by early July.

I have an old M&S store card account, which I tried to pay off about 30 years ago. I paid the entire balance as requested, but then had another statement telling me that between the statement date and them receiving my payment (a cheque in those far off days), my account had accrued further interest. So in desperation, I sent another cheque for double the interest amount and thus ended up with my account in a small credit of about £1. This is how it has remained since the 1990s, except that the account pays interest on credit balances. So, every few months they send me 3 pages of bumpf to tell me I have earned another 1p interest, plus a demand to pay the balance which is a negative number.

Dry, sunny and warm in North Somerset. Watering will have to take place, especially with the tomatoes now bearing lots of fruit. Am I surprised about the death and destruction from weather in Germany and Belgium? No I am not. Meteorologists warned everyone 30 years ago that this kind of extreme was going to be a regular occurrence, but everyone just laughed.... and carried on as normal. "Why should we listen to weather people?" they guffawed, "they can't even get tomorrow's forecast right".

Dry and sunny in North Somerset, and temperature already at 20C. I cut the back grass yesterday although it was still a bit damp under the trees. The grapes seem to have set ok, despite flowering during a spell of cool and cloudy weather. I think I will just vegetate in front of the Tour de France today, as it is going to be too warm for much outside activity.

It is a sad reflection of USA society, that the 'right to defend oneself' is used as a weak excuse to produce toy and replica guns. It is a sad reflection on UK society that many influential people see the USA as an example to follow or copy as closely as possible. This is a UK website - https://bbguns4less.co.uk/toy-guns/

No, 37s on parcels does not seem to be a regular occurrence - at least if my collection of images is anything to go by. However, I did find a couple. Here is 37298 with a GWML service near Waltham St Lawrence in May 1976. And here is an ER version, but I can't quite read the number. Looks like the ECML to me, but someone might be able to identify further details.

Dry and sunny here in North Somerset, and looks like staying that way for a week. I might have to trim the privet hedge today, before someone on the path outside complains they can't walk by with a pushchair.

That is indeed terrible news. I was going to give my good news, but maybe now is not the time.

I agree completely, and I reckon the wall to wall hype for days/weeks ahead of the games puts an insurmountable pressure on our players when having to take penalties. After all, the one against Denmark was saved initially and only scored due to intelligent follow-up and a rather fortunate rebound. I'm sure they practise a lot, but behind closed doors and with much reduced stress levels I bet the players have few problems beating the keeper. Therefore I reckon a significant percentage of the blame for missing must be put on the tv, newspaper, and online media commentators - who can't leave the subject alone if England progress in a competition. I don't want to be part of the 'plucky England went down fighting' nonsense. They were given the dream start to the game and blew it - for various reasons; many of which have been mentioned already in this thread so I won't repeat them.

Dull, damp and misty here in North Somerset. Probably quite fitting given the activities of Sunday evening. I watched 2 hours of rather tedious football where (as far as I can remember) not a single shot on target was produced by an England striker. At the thought of the game going to penalties I switched off the telly and went to bed. However, I guessed that things had not gone well by the general silence from outside while I lay there and drifted off. I'm afraid that most England footballers will never win a penalty shot out because of the extreme pressure put on them by the media in the weeks before the game. They can probably score in training every time, because the pressure is off; but wall to wall media nonsense is not conducive to keeping one's nerve. On the night, the best team won - so congratulations to Italy.

I don't think people who let off fireworks outside of the first week of Nov have anything to celebrate. They just don't have any pets.