Fly-By-TheWire

For those who get the horn for noise and raw power, the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford is on the weekend of 19-20 July. There are still some tickets for the Sunday display. It’s the world’s biggest military airshow, with a 7-hour flying display and a 2 mile static line up of aircraft from the world’s armed forces. Many of these aircraft you can actually board and meet the crews. It’s a unique event.

The jury’s out, but to be fair to Burgess he took over a -show (albeit one with a couple of star players) and took them to a final (narrow defeat) and a league semi (narrow defeat) and finished the season with the best attack and defence. Not bad for his very first season as a coach. How he responds to the current ‘crisis’ might give a better indication of capability. I do feel he’ll go on to do some good things in the NRL though.

That's my big worry. We have some top-class home-grown backs coming through who will hold their own, but we need a few more established big forwards to set the platform for them.

Small steps, but barring a minor miracle (which I think would have to include at least Walker back in the team) I can't see higher than 7th personally. We look an entirely different team to last year, even with a first-choice 13 on the field.

Hadn’t seen the squad news so that’s a bit of good news if it’s definite

I think Warrington will go for defensive basics here. Low scoring game decided by a late try. Most likely for Hull, as Wire seemed to have lost the will to fight for each other.

Girl-boss wanted me to treat her to date night last night, so I took her to see 28 Years Later. Not bad, but a different feel to the original. Still a good zombie / survival movie in its own right though. Leave the kids at home as it’s a bit gruesome. ======== Incidentally the writer of 28 years (and 28 days) also directed an excellent movie that I took my teenager to see (confession: he’s not far off 15 but I sneaked him in before his birthday) called Warfare, which has now made to Prime TV. It’s an amazing piece of work IMO, and is about a real event that happened to a bunch of Frogmen on a surveillance mission in Iraq. Everything is based 100% on memories of the real SEALs involved: The fear, noise, mistakes, confusion and horror. Zero Hollywood influence as well - no hammed up script or over-acting, and no political messages. Watching this leaves you with way more admiration for those on the frontline than any of the traditional vanity projects.

I don’t remember that. He’s not without fault, but I’m pretty sure he’s the only British half-back to have nailed a starting spot in the history of the NRL (happy to be corrected). And Canberra weren’t exactly a poor side at that time.

Not sure how high you managed to get in the Balloon, but in the past I’ve scooted across the region at a very high altitude both day and night, and it always fascinated me how the Nile region appears as one massive strip of bright green (or bright lights at night) in a seemingly infinite landscape of desert. There’s bound to be some good video on YouTube taken by astronauts on the ISS.

After an intervention by the referee. Thanks.

Can you challenge something that wasn't actually noticed by the referee? Or only executed decisions?

The real Connor appears to be back.

Presumably Mother's Day is later in the year over in Adelaide? Otherwise, if you missed Mother's Day by two months (it's March in the UK) then I'm kind of thinking any poisoning of your Wellington may have mitigating circumstances .

I also thought it raised an interesting point at the end, concerning whether the fame and publicity generated by the internet sleuths on the hunt may have unwittingly contributed to a narcissistic psychopath's decision to escalate from killing animals to humans.

Quite often in these cases, the murder thing is a fantasy that suddenly manifests. Have you ever watched the documentary "Don't F*** With Cats!" ? Eye opener. Especially in this day and age, where many people appear to find it hard to distinguish the virtual online world from actual reality.