It’s been a ‘train’ kind of week for various reasons and so this 1984 cracker from OMD has been a frequent earworm.
Love a silly train video! Especially a silly train video from the ’80s.
Booze Alternative: Fentimans Dandelion & Burdock
This is a booze alternative I tried when Geth and I accidentally found ourselves in a pub last summer (it was genuinely an accident as we only stopped off to buy some drinks from their brewery, but they showed us down to a secret beer garden instead). I took the opportunity to sample some flavours of Fentimans that I hadn’t tried before!
Unfortunately I really didn’t like this one as I wasn’t keen on the flavours. Nothing to do with Fentimans as I’ve loved lots of their other drinks – I think I just don’t like dandelion and burdock!
Phone Box Thursday: Dream Destinations #1: ‘Out Of Order’
Still no phone boxes in my life so I’ve been planning phone box tourism instead (to be fair this is not just about phone boxes; it’s going to be nice to stick my nose out of Newcastle every now and again when the pandemic eventually goes away).
Next time I’m in London (which, everything crossed, will be for the marathon in October) I would love to go and see the ‘Out Of Order’ sculpture. I’ve seen a lot of London phone boxes but not these ones!
It is probably not at all surprising that this is just one of many phone box destinations on my list…
2020 Pestos #7: Sacla No. 1 Classic Basil Pesto
This one is classic by name and classic by nature. I’ve been eating it for a long time. When I was really little and first discovered pesto (in the golden age of pesto that was the ’80s), the jar for this pesto looked like this:
Nowadays there are a lot more flavours of Sacla pesto and so they have a numbered system to keep track of them all. Modern jars for the original basil pesto look like this:
The taste of this pesto has changed over time as well as they’ve gradually altered the recipe. It originally tasted more like the pestos that call themselves ‘pesto alla genovese’ nowadays. These days, it’s got quite a strong, rich taste that I find more suited to the ‘chicken pesto’ meal I make with pasta, Quorn chicken style pieces and green vegetables.
That meal is Geth’s favourite, so we eat this pesto at least once a week!
Adventures in Coding: November in June
In the world of my current game project, it is November. The town centres have put up their Christmas trees and the shops are full of tinsel and cut-price fireworks. Every day is cold and wet. It is the UK in the run-up to Christmas. It is a few unspecified years in the future, and life has returned to pre-pandemic levels of normality.
In the real world, it is June. The shops are full of summer holiday clothes that nobody is buying, because it’s still too much of a risk to book a summer holiday. The heat arrived a week and a half ago and despite the clouds today it is endlessly muggy. It is the UK in the throes of uncomfortable summer. It is still the very early 2020s, and we are not out of the woods yet.
As such, is it any wonder that I’m preferring to spend most of this month in my game world rather than the real one? 😀
I kid, mostly. I’m spending most of my time coding because I’m working to a tight deadline for ParserComp. I need to be really disciplined with it in order to give myself some breathing room in the last couple of weeks before the deadline, so this week is going to be a really big push. Lots going on in my other life areas as well, but that’s okay. Madness is sometimes enjoyable!
I think I’m going to feel a bit bereft in July! I am going to enjoy playing other people’s games again though…