JonM

Bit of googling says that 3 (at least) local councils have Gritty McGritface. Looks like our local council is behind the times. Surrey did this a couple of years ago and have "Snow Surrender" "Roger Spreaderer" and "Gritty Gritty Bang Bang."

I looked the whole naming thing up on the council website and it seems like the names were suggested by local schools. So I think that's a no.

Our local council gritters all have names painted on them, like Eddie Stobart Lorries. So far, I have seen Gritney Spears, Brad Grit, Vanilla Ice, Snow Patrol & Usain Salt

Also, most of them don't go in phones - over 6 billion SIMs made this year. Will probably stop being a physical thing before too long, anyway (e.g. latest Apple watch doesn't have a separate SIM.)

Grrr. I had quotes this week for renewing my house and car insurance (£900ish and £300ish) from one of the UK's largest insurance companies. Ten minutes entering my details online has given me quotes elsewhere for basically identically cover for £200odd and £100 odd. Basically if you let it auto-renew you're paying a lot extra for the privilege.

I'll need to open it first! Mr Pullman taught my wife at school in Oxford and immediately remembered her when she said hello to him nearly 40 years later.

Do many Aussies speak Bahasa Indonesia? My limited exposure made me think it looked easier to learn than some other languages? The new Philip Pullman book "La Belle Sauvage" just arrived for me.

It's a work of art that bridge - pictures I've seen looks fantastic. My dad has been driving up from Shropshire to Runcorn & Widnes to go to the barbers & dentists for the last 30 years. The fact that you have to faff about with a website to cross the river means that he will probably never visit either place ever again.

Interesting to compare present day Vietnam (where the Americans lost) with North Korea (no-score draw.) The main streets of Ho Chi Minh City are lined with shops selling multi-national brands, american chain stores etc while the young, well educated urban population rushes off to work for businesses that mostly export to the western world.

A sheep heading a rugby ball? Quite good technique too. https://www.facebook.com/farminglife1/videos/457035454667757/

Good luck indeed - plenty of difficult stuff to be dealing with, bleep. The local council gritters are out round here, dealing with roads that are melting by spraying ground up rock on to the tarmac.

Great win in the world cup final for England u-20s.

The above map (which I love) has led me to read about the Synod of Hippo, which decided which books were in the Roman Catholic Bible and which were out. There's half an hour I'll never get back.

I've read the sequel, but not the third one in the sequence. Thought he had written a book about some of the wartime stuff (the abduction of the German General that was dramatised in the film Ill met by moonlight) just before he died. Thanks for the Norman Lewis recommendation, haven't come across any of his writing (he lived in a village not too far from me, where Dodie Smith also lived.) I think "As I walked out one summers morning" by Laurie Lee is the closest thing to 'A Time of Gifts' that I've read.

I only read "A time of gifts" for the first time a couple of years ago and it was instantly one of my all-time favourite books. I'm trying not to get through everything else he ever wrote too quickly.

A cockchafer flew into our kitchen last night.

Really like this guy's latest artwork - click on some of the pictures to get an idea of the scale. http://thomasdambo.com/works/forgotten-giants/

I know of someone who reported his plates stolen (in the UK.) He later found them down the street where he lived, presumably having been removed by waggish drunks. He fixed them back on his car and drove off to meet a friend. He was stopped by the police within a few minutes, who had recorded that the car itself was stolen. They searched the car, found a quantity of ketamine and surmising that he was not a vet, arrested him. He lost his job as an accountant and was sentenced to two years in prison. He served 12 months inside, emerged a fairly broken man and has been unemployed ever since.

Just revisiting this - does anyone know about the structure of the cup here? It seems like there are a very high number of local derbies, so clearly the draw was regionalised. How was this done? Did it persist in the later rounds? There are clearly Lancashire clubs playing Cheshire clubs, so it's not completely county based, but the Cumberland clubs seem to be mostly playing each other and Barrow play Seaton, Morecambe play Kendal, Millom play Lancaster. Was there a Cumberland/North Lancs/Westmorland pool?

Five laps of a school field doesn't sound like the most exciting course to me :-) Trail shoes make a surprising difference on mud, I find. Up that way in a couple of weeks, might do Fell Foot parkrun at Newby Bridge, which is described as "undulating."

Beat the previous total attendance record on Saturday by more than 10k. Our parkrun in Cambridge is in a park owned by a charity. The council decided it couldn't afford to run a large park, 10+ years ago and sold it to the charity (for £1 I think.) More than half of the park's income now comes via parkrun, which has funded new paths, currently building a new cafe extension. The next two closest parkruns to me are on National Trust properties, again I assume the NT is making money on car park fees & cafe profits. Local councils aren't obliged to allow events in a park and in any case most of them are trying to set up parkruns, not close them down. It's a nice gesture from the government, but it's more preventing a future possible problem than anything else.

Yorkshire Wanderers get a couple of mentions in Tony Collins' works, it was formed by ex-pupils of Leeds Grammar School in 1864, the school having had a football club since the 1850s. They refused to take part in cup competitions and restricted themselves to playing other "middle class" clubs, before disbanding in 1883.

BBC headline "Jesus returns ahead of schedule" http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/39032202 (at 10:53)

Now XPO logistics

I think the glaciers have receded quite a distance since we were there - and got a good bit more dangerous.