A really, really good day in the football. A potential banana skin successfully circumnavigated, and some wonderfully helpful results elsewhere.
And that’s good, because it has been less good at home. A niggling back injury and an unwell daughter has made for a painful and frustrating day.
So I’ll be concentrating on the former, and hoping that a good night’s rest will sort the latter.
It’s been a while since i did one of these and my Pocket is filling up again. So…
It’s Springtime! (in the UK) and time to switch to BST. But this isn’t the correct way to put your clocks forward:
And this might work, but is also very confusing:
Pro-tip: Use a whiteboard marker and you can simply use a damp cloth to change the clocks back again in October.
Good news for me on this change is that evening football matches now kick off at a more reasonable time and so I can watch them and still get enough sleep (see below).
However, that good news is tempered somewhat by the fact that their Spring means our Autumn. And the weather has been doing its bit to remind us of the changing seasons. We’re losing 2 minutes of daylight a day in Cape Town each day at the moment, and we crossed the 12 hours daylight/12 hours nighttime line yesterday.
I was reminded of this Soy, Ginger and Chili salmon recipe today. I must cook it again. Today is all about the big boneless gammon joint on the hob, though. The whole house smell of cloves and all-spice (coincidentally also the name of the giant robot formed when all the Spice Girls zigazig-arred together like the Power Rangers). Delicious.
The future is bright: Sheffield United win the Professional Development League (North) for the third season running.
A fact made even better when you look at the whole league table:
LOL – mind the gap!
A Long Read about Long Covid here.
tl;dect (didn’t even click through) – risk of developing LC drops after a secondary infection (UK 4.0% to 2.4%), but that’s still not zero!
and just for reference, 2.4% of the UK population is one and a half million people. That’s a lot of potential cases, and a huge burden on individuals, families and the health service.
Covid really is just like the common cold.
I was out on a run earlier this week and was thinking about how I couldn’t even manage a staircase in the aftermath of my acute Covid experience. Things are clearly much, much better now, although it took over a year to get back to normality. That said: three things I have noticed post-Covid: I need more sleep, my lung capacity still isn’t what it was before, and my memory (which use to be very good) really isn’t as good any more. Especially on people’s names. Other random nonsense (phone codes, capital cities, song titles/bands) – generally fine. Names (famous ones or personal acquaintances) – nope.
Weird.
Stop stacking rocks on beaches (and elsewhere), say SANParks.
…The problem is that people are increasingly building rock cairns to leave their mark or symbol of their presence in a natural setting or for posting on social media. Therefore, when engaging in this activity, it is important to be mindful of the potential negative impacts on the environment, wildlife and other people’s experiences.
Moving rocks and stacking them can disturb the natural habitat of tiny creatures. On the rocky shore, these organisms, such as crabs, molluscs, and algae, depend on their environment’s rocks and other structures for shelter and protection. By moving or stacking rocks, we may inadvertently destroy or disrupt their homes, harming their populations. Similarly, rock stacking can also have adverse terrestrial impacts on insects and moss in wilderness areas.
The article has a (terrible) picture of Agulhas National Park in it. So this is a local thing, close to my heart. And when the kids were younger, we did used to do this from time to time, albeit that our towers were built near the low tide mark, ready to be knocked down as the waves came in, and never for social media purposes.
Anyway. No more. Stoppit.
Lastly for today: a new way to filter flights on flightradar24. This is the update that everyone as crying out for. And it works. From being a very cool tool, its now also massively powerful. You can now get it to do whatever you want (and even more if you pay for a subscription). A lot of the features are in the free Beta version at the moment, but it seems to be stable and full rollout isn’t likely to be far away.
We’re the famous Sheff United and we’re shifting attention from our currently somewhat iffy league form by going to Wembley.
We’ll probably get thumped, but it’s important to remember that to be thumped in an FA Cup semi final at Wembley, you need to be in an FA Cup semi final at Wembley.
I’m back in my car park, but surely only briefly. There are, I would estimate, around 400 people at this particular sports complex this evening. Dodgeball, squash, rugby – at least two different team groups, baseball and dog agility training. (There are several dogs, as well.)
And we’re all going to have to go home when the power goes off at 8 o’clock. Training truncated. Sports shortened. Activities abbreviated. That’s a lot of people who are having their evening ruined.
It’s also going to make the traffic out of here quite horrible.
Back home 6000 miles… away, things are looking equally disrupted. But this time, it’s the weather.
The local road through to Manchester – always an early casualty in the snow – has been closed, but you’ve got to be a bit of a mindreader to know. (Or, you know, just notice that there’s white stuff on the floor and put two and two together.)
Derbyshire County Council has announced the A57 Snake Pass, a link between Sheffield and Manchester, is closed. They said in a statement the road was closed because of snow, adding: “Unfortunately the electronic signs we have on the pass are not working today.”
“Please do not attempt this road or any of the others we have closed.“
Ooh. Very cryptic. I got my crystal ball out and tried to work out which other roads those were, but all I came up with was the Three of Clubs. So, I’ll dutifully be avoiding that this evening.
A lovely evening yesterday. Not the most exciting of cup ties. Not the giant-killing that the press were hoping for us to be involved in this season, but just a quietly assured performance, despite injuries and illness.
And this guy, working his magic and dancing through a helpless Tottenham defence.
A lovely confidence boost and a reminder of what we can do to a big club by applying ourselves: te passion, a lot of hard work and some properly vocal support.