C17: Day 149 – Home again, home again, jiggety jig

May 29, 2017

The great thing about flying home is that I end up with 30 hours to write my daily blog post. The problem is that I end up with no brain to write it with. So here’s a photo of a cat instead. Both Mewton and Grabbity are purring fit to burst, which only makes me […]

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C17: Day 148 – Seen in Sheboygan

May 28, 2017

One of the first things I did when I got to the US was start learning the local bird names. I’m not that big into birdwatching per se, but I do like knowing what they’re all called. We have some very cute species, so here are a selection of photos of birds I’ve seen in […]

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C17: Day 147 – How does this decorating thing work?

May 27, 2017

Being a house owner means that we’re now having to learn how to do DIY. Last year, we worked on the front bedroom, which was a nasty shade of monkey shit brown and was offending our eyes on a daily basis. It was, without a doubt, a learning experience, but we got there in the […]

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C17: Day 145-146 – The platonic ideal of public transport

May 26, 2017

Busy day yesterday, going to Southampton for a meeting, but it did give me the inspiration for today’s brief blog post. One of the things I miss about the UK when I’m in the US is the public transport. There is no easy way to get from our house to Chicago O’Hare Airport, for example. […]

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C17: Day 144 – Gardener’s delight (or tragedy?)

May 24, 2017

I haven’t seen the Chelsea Flower Show for years, but it just so happens that I’m back home, and it’s on TV, so I’m enjoying seeing lots of wonderful flowers and plants in amazing arrangements. I can only dream of such perfection. I do have, sad to say, a bit of a black thumb – […]

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C17: Day 143 – Act against media hate

May 23, 2017

After the terrible events in Manchester yesterday, we have sadly seen some horrific behaviour from parts of the media trying to dig up “stories” on those who were there: I have dealt with 50+ journos online today. Two found my mobile number. This cunt found my house. I still don’t know if my brother is alive. […]

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C17: Day 142 – Knitting ftw

May 22, 2017

First few rows of knitting! And I haven’t yet dropped or added any random stitches!

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C17: Day 141 – Going over to the dark side

May 21, 2017

You know what they say, resistance is futile. I have been resisting knitting ever since my mum attempted to teach me when I was a kid. It didn’t go well. I’m left-handed, she’s right-handed, and I really struggled. I did manage to make a jumper, a black and red striped jobbie in the style of Robert […]

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C17: Day 140 – Horn OK Please!

May 20, 2017

This started as a Facebook post, but I post it here because it’s 23:21 and I want to go to sleep.  An Atlas Obscura post claiming to explore the origins of the phrase “Horn OK Please”, seen frequently on the back and sides of lorries and trucks in India, popped up into my FB feed […]

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C17: Day 139 – Oh, what a palette

May 19, 2017

Gelish, the DIY gel nail polish system that I use, has a fabulous array of colours. Some 233 of them, to be precise. All listed with colour swatches on one page. You’d think that that would make it easy to pick colours, but whilst it’s easy to see colours that you like the look of, […]

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C17: Day 138 – Different but the same

May 18, 2017

The weird thing about returning to London after a few years away is how much the same it is, and yet, how very different. I’m sitting in the Camera Museum cafe on Museum Street, Holborn, and whilst the place is very much the same as it’s always been, it’s quite different. I used to come here […]

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C17: Day 133 to, erm, oops

May 17, 2017

Right, well this week got away from me. I was so sure that I’d be able to manage a blog post a day whilst travelling, but that does not seem to have been the case. I have been absolutely flat out, which is a very good thing, because it means good meetings and exciting connections […]

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C17: Day 132 – The anxiety of information

May 12, 2017

Yesterday, I wrote about how having more information can make things less stressful, specifically, how I find modern buses much easier to deal with, simply because you always know where you are and what the next stop is. But unfortunately, the opposite is also true. We have access to more information now than we ever have […]

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C17: Day 131 – The comfort of information

May 11, 2017

When I first moved to London, in the mid-90s, I hated taking buses. I didn’t know the city well, and it was far too easy to get on the wrong bus, or miss your stop. I would end up sitting by the window, looking out for street names so that I could check where I was […]

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C17: Day 130 – How do we combat mass manipulation?

May 10, 2017

I started trying to read The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked by Carole Cadwalladr on the plane yesterday, but had to give up because it was too depressing. Political campaigns, says Cadwalladr, are paying vast sums of money to a company called Cambridge Analytica to do psychological profiling of voters in the UK and […]

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