JonM

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.

I first met my wife in NZ. She offered me a lift to the Fox & Franz Josef Glaciers, where we went up to the glacier face. So I took a ride in a stranger's car immediately followed by a dangerous walk under falling rocks and ice. Over 130 000 doing parkrun last Saturday. How long will those new year's resolutions last?

The Lancashire & Cheshire Unions both suspended all cups and other competitions in the 1880s, so the clubs which wanted competitions formed their West Lancashire & Border Towns Union, which also played inter-county fixtures. In the first year, Warrington beat Runcorn at Widnes in the semi-final in front of a crowd estimated as larger than the FA Cup final which was played on the same day. They then ran a league competiton until 1895. The Northern Union clubs (Saints, Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn etc.) continued to play a SW Lancs & Border Towns competition for some years after the split.

The ISS is only about 250 miles up, so there are plenty of places in the oceans where that would be true (if the ISS happened to be overhead.) Point Nemo is the location of R'lyeh, Cthulhu's home on earth, in H P Lovecraft's stories.

Cheshire played Lancashire & Yorkshire in the NU county championship from 1895-1904, Cumberland from 1898 & Durham & Northumberland from 1903 but I haven't seen any evidence of them playing a county game against Westmorland. Westmorland had a county Northern Union based in Windermere, with teams in Kendal etc. and did play at least one county fixture, against Lancashire at Salford in 1898, but I don't think entered the county championship.

Have you seen this film (Runcorn v St. Helens from 1901)? http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-runcorn-v-st-helens-1901-1901/ If he was a breakway original, is it possible that he is the J Jolley who played in the Lancs v Yorkshire match in 1893, which is the subject of a famous painting that is hanging in Twickenham? (the lancashire player who is between the posts) http://www.englandrugby.com/twickenham/world-rugby-museum/rugby-history/the-ghost-in-the-painting/

Do you know owt about designing silicon chips? We can work round the hours...

I'm sat in an office full of them. They're a lot easier on the eye than the engineers I normally work with. We've got to somehow hire 1000 people this year, with foreigners not wanting to come here any more, I don't think we'll get anywhere close. Funny listening to them going through their scripts on the phone again and again.

The owners of West Ham FC got a good bit more than £390m spent on their gaffe by the taxpayer and pay sod all rent. At least the royal family don't make their income off pornography. I thought the point about Buckingham Palace was that the queen goes there for meetings, she spends most of her nights elsewhere. It's a government building. The amount being spent will be dwarfed by the cost of doing up Westminster, presumably.

Definitely take the course. Apart from the fine, there's also the effect on your insurance to worry about. The 32 will be after they've deducted 10% and whatever error margin they allow (3mph?) They'll have evidence that you were doing 37 or so if they've put 32 on the ticket.

Obviously it was my fault, according to my wife. In fairness, as I've spent 20 years designing silicon chips that mostly go into phones, she may have a point for once.

Took me nearly 4 hours to get home instead of the expected 55 mins, but that was because my youngest son got separated from us at one of the stop/go boards, didn't have a working phone and couldn't remember what tube station to go to. He couldn't use a phonebox either because he doesn't know any phone numbers because they're stored in his phone. And guess what, he doesn't know how to walk anywhere, because he needs his phone to give him directions. Teenagers!