almostwitty

3 Dec: Royal Mail leaves a parcel for someone else in the communal hallway. I email Royal Mail.

Today:

Royal Mail: "So what details do you have about the parcel?"
Me: "Well, it's been taken from our communal hallway!"
Royal Mail: "I'm very glad that all issues have now been resolved."

So I really have distinct memories of playing Sleeping Dogs - a superlative open-world gangster/police game set in Hong Kong - in January 2011.

I remember the sofa I was sat on, where I was playing it, the tension waiting for The Teenager to emerge, the fact that The Wife was mocking my sartorial choices for my in-game character (if you wear certain clothing, you get +5% in your stats etc.)

Every single online reference to the game's release date is August 2012. When by then we would have been in a different flat, on a different sofa, using a different TV etc.

Every piece of objective reality data tells me that my memory is wrong. But it can't be.

This is kinda fascinating.

Inevitably, as people grow older so do their voices. But our brains want our audiobook autobiographies read by the version of the voice we hear in our heads, not the real version.

Some voices are fine - Mel Brooks' voice still comes through when he read his autobiography. Patrick Stewart's just isn't quite what I expected.

Getting someone younger to read it though? Hrm...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/01/kenneth-branagh-anthony-hopkins-we-did-ok-kid-audiobook

So back in 1999, one part of the UK was gripped with total solar eclipse fever – that part being Cornwall.

Since I’ve been a boy, I’ve always wanted to “see” a total solar eclipse. So I had to pay £150 (a lot of money for a young adult on his second job) to go on the “Eclipse Express” – in reality, a slow train that took 6 hours to get to Cornwall from London, and had to leave at 0300.

So thus I arrived in Cornwall without much money and no sleep at 0830 – only to realise it was very very cloudy and we couldn’t really see anything at all.

Nevertheless we made our way to a local park that overlooked the sea and watched the sea and clouds as it got darker, and darker, and darker. Birds stopped twittering, it got colder and the bloody street lights came on. In the distance we could see the sun reflected in the sea as it got darker. Then it was all over, and I had to kill time in Cornwall before the train back. In hindsight, I should have just stayed in the pub.

Still, the next major US total eclipse is in 2024 …

Mirrored from almost witty.

Father’s Day is around the corner, which means the same lovely but predictable parade of gifts including photo frames, neck ties, and I’m sure, somewhere, a photo frame made of discarded neckties. It’s not that we don’t love our glitter glue and macaroni art gifts or wacky golf tees in a commemorative box; on the contrary, I’ll treasure each one lovingly handed to me by The Kid. It’s just that in an era where technology means we’re more likely to FaceTime our children then actually spend time with them face to face, moments of creating and teaching can get lost.

So fantastically, Pizza Express invited the Geek Family to their new swanky restaurant off Gloucester Road (converted from a ye olde bank) near the Natural History Museum, to learn about the mystical (well, mystical to me) art of making pizzas, getting just a little messy together and making some cool memories.

The jovial host showed us to our pizza making station – which was covered in flour and dough – and showed everyone how to knead the dough and flip it about, which is much easier and more fun to do when you have lots of wide space (instead of a tiny galley of a kitchen) and you don’t need to mop up yourself afterwards!

After the kids (including the father-aged ones) had rolled, kneaded and flipped the dough to a round shape (or a square shape if you’re a Dad who wants to show off and be all distinctive), it was time for the kids to choose their own ingredients. Our kid was a bit Gwyneth Paltrow minimalist in his choice of ingredients, and opted for tomato sauce – this is in itself a bit of an innovation, since he usually prefers his pizza plainer than Antarctica. Sadly for the kid, he was not given the option of adding gummi worms to his pizza. Myself, on the other hand, chose EVERY INGREDIENT AVAILABLE. So thus the kid’s minimalist pizza and Dad’s square pepperoni-ham-mushroom-olives-artichockes-cheesy feast pizza both went into the oven.

Fifteen minutes later, piping hot and lovely pizzas emerged from the oven and this is where I learnt why square pizzas are not the world’s best idea (they tend to burn at the edges). Nevertheless, we all tucked in with gusto and The Kid ate a whole pizza by himself, which hardly ever happens.

We all had a fun time, had some great memories and made some new friends – hello to fellow Dad, blogger, Twitterer and Whovian Lee Carey!

Thanks to Pizza Express for inviting us, and they have a special Father’s Day offer on – Give Dad The Gift Of Pizza’ – where any starter and a main can be purchased from £11.95 this Father’s Day weekend.

Mirrored from Family v2.1.

If, like us, your household has been sucked into endlessly shopping at Sainsbury’s in an attempt to get more golden Lego trading cards, then you’ll also have amassed a huge collection of duplicates.

In case you want to swap one of your duplicates, for one of our duplicates, then here’s our list of Lego trading card duplicates. Please comment below if you want to do a swap!

Mirrored from almost witty.

In our drive to reduce our possessions and be able to see things like walls and floors in our tiny 2-bed flat, it was gently pointed out to me that I might want to consider getting rid of my precious collection of Doctor Who Magazines. Which have been left to rest covered in dust in a distant corner of the living room.

However, unable to countenance such a vile piece of vandalism without at least the possibility of reading them again someday, I looked on the Internet to see if any kind souls had digitised them.

And lo and behold, a Russian site has PDF copies of what appears to be every single edition of Doctor Who Magazine to the end of 2016! Perfecto!

Except, foolishly, I wasn't browsing in incognito mode. Thus by the end of the day, every banner advert was kindly telling me that I could find Hot! Russian! Ladies! through their website. I wonder what their stance on the UNIT dating controversy would be...

Next step: to tackle the six boxes of Empire magazine which have been preserved in a distant cupboard...

In our drive to reduce our possessions and be able to see things like walls and floors in our tiny 2-bed flat, it was gently pointed out to me that I might want to consider getting rid of my precious collection of Doctor Who Magazines. Which have been left to rest covered in dust in a distant corner of the living room.

However, unable to countenance such a vile piece of vandalism without at least the possibility of reading them again someday, I looked on the Internet to see if any kind souls had digitised them.

And lo and behold, a Russian site has PDF copies of what appears to be every single edition of Doctor Who Magazine to the end of 2016! Perfecto!

Except, foolishly, I wasn’t browsing in incognito mode. Thus by the end of the day, every banner advert was kindly telling me that I could find Hot! Russian! Ladies! through their website. I wonder what their stance on the UNIT dating controversy would be…

Next step: to tackle the six boxes of Empire magazine which have been preserved in a distant cupboard…

(It should be noted that I haven’t seen a new episode of Doctor Who for two years… The delights of Hell Bent taunt me still…)

Mirrored from almost witty.

One trailer for the sequel to Blade Runner, and I remember just how obsessed I got with that film and everything about it. The beauty. The soundtrack. The music. Everything.



Following up on that, I thought, great, I'll dig out my 5-disc Blu Ray. Then I realised most people would just go look at it on Netflix and be bored after a bit. Which is ... Disappointing.

and has anyone figured out an easy way to post here *and* elsewhere simultaneously?