Archive for July, 2024

Got my Q!

Queen’s parkrun takes place at Queen’s University’s sports fields and consists of a couple of laps around the campus. Nice, enough, not too hilly. Friendly place. I got chatting to one of the staff at Queen’s and it turns out he does computing. There were also tonnes of tourists, including a woman from Finland so I tried out some of my Finnish, which mostly went well.

Good zoo. My favourite animal was the eagle but there were plenty of favourites, too: elephants, giraffes, zebras, flamingos, penguins, sealions, alpacas, lions, chimps, bongos, giant anteaters, lemurs, a reptile house, and plenty of others.

It is built into the side of a hill and is somehow hillier than the Welsh Mountain Zoo. Worse, the cafe at the bottom of the hill was closed so we had to walk all the way up to the treetops cafe to get some lunch. You do get a wonderful view from the top, though.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth novel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It follows on from Life, the Universe, and Everything and forms the fourth part of the trilogy in five parts.

It is very different from the previous novels. Which are science fiction. This is a romance story. With a few aliens thrown in but only at the end. Still an enjoyable read and a good addition to the series. And the rain good is good, too.

After seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy and five years in prison, Julian Assange is free.

WikiLeaks has made one a huge contribution to the world exposing corruption, human rights violations, war crimes committed by governments across the world. Governments come after you when you do stuff like that. Ask Assange. Or Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden or David McBride. It takes much more backbone that I have to stand up against a government.

There were no unclear weapons in Iraq. There was no £350 million a week Brexit bonus for the NHS. There weren’t any doctors to staff the Nightingale hospitals and Seaborne Freight didn’t have any ferries. We’re so used to the lies and corruption at the highest levels we become completely blase about it, or protect ourselves by retrospectively saying that we never really believed any of it in the first place.

Thankfully, there are some people willing to stand up for the truth. Julian Assange is one of them.

I was without my bike for three months earlier this year so I wasn’t sure I would remember how to ride a bike. Even without the gap, I cycled inside exclusively over winter so my last proper ride was Helmsley Triathlon last summer.

Luckily, I did remember. I had forgotten what a joy it is to be out on a bike when the weather is beautiful. Will have to do this more often.

My next challenge is to workout how to stop my sun cream clouding up my prescription sunglasses.