After years of a using a temporary cardboard desk (something like this but bigger), I got a proper one made of wood and metal. It’s Ikea wood, which is to normal wood what Pringles are to crisps, but who doesn’t like Pringles? It’s a large improvement, probably unsurprisingly. A larger desk than I’d have chosen if I’d double-checked the measurements, but that means the chair fits underneath more easily, so in practice it takes up less space, and that could be a metaphor for something, I don’t know what.

First time using the Muji screwdriver set with the handle at 90° for extra torque.

The ongoing bicycle project has reached an impasse: the expander cone bolt is stuck, and it’s a part they don’t make any more which makes destructive options extra unappealing. People recommend diesel for unseizing bolts, it would be against all sorts of fire safety regulations, and where do you get a cupful of diesel? But I’ve got it marinating in WD40, after realising that the thread goes into the cone a long way down at the bottom of the bolt so you need to turn the bike upside down, and perhaps I’ll invite people to have a go at unscrewing it, like Excalibur or the Seinfeld pickle jar.

That and a jar of mayonnaise has me slightly concerned that my grip strength, which I’ve never found lacking before, is actually lacking. It would be a great tonic if someone else said they too find Stokes mayonnaise jars, with their cruelly sharp-edged lids, unusually hard to open – I hoped the few negative customer reviews would reassure me, but they’re all on about seed oils instead.

Paul Foot’s The Future.

🎦 Digger. Verity. The Social Reckoning (“they used mousse?”).

A week bookended by fish surnamed men:

• Richard Herring’s (London’s glittering) Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, for my last time, unless the next two sold out live shows being the last is like those perpetually closing down discount shoe shops.

  • At university some oaves got in trouble for dressing up as the Jamaican bobsleigh team. I don’t think it’s irrelevant that one of them had come from Eton College – I’d gone to the school of hard knocks a local comprehensive school and knew that was unacceptable in 2013, but they’re not teaching that at Eton? But I think somehow I’d learnt that from the formative podcast Herring did with Andrew Collings, of all things, as much as anywhere else.

• Dom Whiting’s Drum & Bass on the Bike – sort of like Critical Mass with big speakers. I’m not a known enthusiast of drum and bass music, and in a parallel universe I could absolutely have been seething at the crowd of bicycles briefly preventing me from Mr Toading along the road in a Nissan Murano. But in fact I had a lovely time.

After a period of fast living and sometimes being so tired that Face ID® wouldn’t recognise me, I caught a lurgy – maybe freshers’ flu, if you can catch that from being in a Tesco Express near some students briefly. Tested negative for Covid-19 twice. I’m mostly back to normal now.

You know “marginal gains”, the idea espoused by the cycling coach Dave Brailsford that the accumulation of small improvements, like athletes washing their hands properly and travelling with their favourite pillows, could add up to large improvements in results. Some years ago, my then-boss became interested in applying this to the business (of renting out holiday cottages). But actually, allegedly, the real key to those cycling teams’ impressive medal hauls was performance-enhancing drugs – and I’m sure feeding the accounts department steroids would also have been effective.

So I’ve been obsessing again over the length of time between a bus transmitting its location and the rectangle moving on the bustimes.org map. Last time I wrote

it’s a bit like trying to go to the pie shop as soon as possible after some pies have come out the oven

but there are also analogies to things like when a bus arrives at the railway station just after the hourly train has left. The periods of time are much smaller than that – tens of seconds – but also much longer than they could be, compared to you know high-frequency trading.

After mentioning hacksaws and hairdryers last week, I finally noticed a tiny concealed screw on the thing I was trying to remove, and all I had to do was unscrew it. It certainly wasn’t glued, so I’m glad I didn’t waste time blow-drying some handlebars in vain.

A fellow used social engineering to register as a bus operating company on the government website, track his motor car under the guise of an “employee shuttle”, and draw shapes in the sea using pretend buses. Cool. I first became suspicious upon noticing that the data was of a higher quality than most real transport companies’.

The world-class stock checker on the website told me Lowestoft was the only Marks & Spencer in East Anglia with 35+ Gut Booster Mega Mix in stock.

• I wonder if the world-classness is a sliver lining of the cyber-attack last year being an opportunity their computer systems substantially better?

So I went to Lowestoft, and so it was.

• Alas, the kittiwakes had left.
• I think I saw, I shit you not, a small shrine to Charlie Kirk in a corner of a shopping area?

Too early to tell if the gut booster mega mix has made my poos world-class.

Henry Paker’s Pencil Case (h). I was exhausted and tempted to stay at home, but it seems that “Dr Theatre” applies to going to the theatre as well as performing.

Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf (my second trip to Lowestoft of the week)/

Sam Campbell’s Kid Giblet (Birmingham).

🎦 Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger. Many tears flowed out – maybe that was partly exhaustion again.

I’ve memories of finding Birmingham New Street quite horrible, but these days it’s pretty good – the mechanical bull has a lot to do with that. It’s certainly nicer than the unsheltered patch of uneven pavement one catches the FlixBus from.

In the technology news, companies keep donating to a bad man’s Linux distribution. It will be recalled that I spend lots of money on DigitalOcean services – pale and insignificant to them, I’m sure, but it’s more than I spend on rent or yoghurt or anything. Given their tacit endorsement of hatefulness, it’s incumbent on me to migrate to somewhere else, which is a vexing pain in the arse. But let’s see this as an opportunity to build in more resilience and sovereignty and stuff.

Taken custody of a Brompton, you know the folding bicycle, an old one that had been fitted with an electric motor that eventually went berserk and tried to maim a loved one – if it was a horse, it would have been shot. I thought I’d simply remove the electric bits, and well we do these things not because they’re easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy.

I’ve been hacking away at the twist throttle, but to remove it properly I think needs a hairdryer to soften the glue, or a hacksaw – if I needed to buy either of those, not sure which one would be most enduringly useful. Removing the front wheel, with its heavy hub motor, was a big win, but now embarrassingly late I realise the front fork had been widened to accommodate the motor. I worry that bending the prongs back will weaken them dangerously, so I’ll get another fork.

So rather regretting getting involved – I could’ve bought a new Brompton, or accepted that maybe bikes, like phones, aren’t meant to fold – but I’m learning new things e.g. what lawyer lips are.

Had the back wheel stolen off my normal bicycle, which caused me to miss a train, but on the bright side the spare back wheel that I’ve been tripping over regularly now has a bright future. I’d actually hoped someone would steal the headlight – I’d like to replace it with a USB type-C one – but they didn’t take the bait.

The annual big local running race. In previous years I think I’ve fatly slept thorough it and/or just glimpsed the runners from afar through the window, but this time I had to go somewhere and I’d stupidly underestimated how many roads would be closed and the consequences thereof.

Please don’t think I’m complaining about a marvellous event that raises lots of money for charity etc. I didn’t even mind being woken by the noise of misparked cars being towed off of the race route. The point is I’m a silly billy. And in the end I caught the next bus, only two hours later, and my day wasn’t ruined at all.

A roadside poster in a field shouting “abolish inheritance tax”, “stop labours land grab”. The graphic design made me violently sick in a Cayce Pollard sort of way. It made me reflect on how it’s hard for the tax system to distinguish between a honest farmer and a Jeremy/James who bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax, but then I realised it’s quite simple: if they have a Japanese pick-up truck, they can be exempt, but if they’ve a Range Rover they shouldn’t be.

I’ve sometimes spouted the interesting fact that the boot (trunk) of a Range Rover was designed specifically to accommodate a pregnant sheep. It turns out that’s not a thing and I must have made it up.

🎦 Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma had some moments of brilliance. Also was the first time that I successfully opened my tin of weak orange drink in sync with the Coca-Cola advert.

Had a spam:

Hi Bus Shelter,

This came up when our team was looking over your Google listing:

“Blaby council need fix it up as it’s a disgrace.”

Jason Smith wrote it, and from what we can see it may go against Google’s review policies, so our team can likely have it taken off.

Our team is happy to take a run at it for you. There’s only a fee if it actually comes down,

This is the Google listing. I’m quite taken with the idea of a bus shelter hiring Bell Pottinger to do an astroturfing campaign, and why don’t they all have their own email addresses as part of the internet of things?

The spammy reputation management company has some terrible reviews on Trustpilot, by the way.

Trying to buy some new handlebar grips, for a bike with grip shifters – which were popular on cheap bikes 20 years ago – so they need to be unusually short, 90mm. There aren’t many choices that don’t look unfortunately like alien foreskins or something. Maybe not as bad as the state-of-the-art saddles they have these days, which are sort of crab claws with all trypophobia-triggering holes in them like a crumpet.

🎦 Tony – not Blair, Parsons or Chocolonely, but Anthony Bordain, who’s sort of like the American Rick Stein?

Spa Weekend I didn’t so noisily enjoy as some of the folks in the screening but that’s OK. Some months ago I pounced on a discounted year of my limitless, and taking a punt on things that might be shite makes that more worthwhile.

I used to wake up to the sound of the iPhone Crickets ringtone/alarm, you know the one that’s the sound of chirping crickets, so now the sound of cicadas engenders some stress.

Home.

There are some fine places to buy food on the way out of Luton Airport, but I skipped past all of them, onto the DART, and then there was just a Tesco Express. Nothing wrong with a Tesco Express, but it was a bit of a culture shock, and the Grain Bowl (really a box), well its contents were one of the blandest things I’ve ever put in my mouth.

Read two and a bit thousand emails (accumulated over a few years, not just the holiday!). There were some good emails in there, thanks everyone. I’d quite liked revelling in seeing how high I could get the unread count, but now I seem to have changed; hope I don’t take up a more disgusting habit in its place.

🎦 Kiki’s Delivery Service.

I like to smuggle a can of ginger beer or fizzy blood orange juice into the cinema, and to time the opening of the can so the noise doesn’t disturb my fellow cinemagoers. Ideally, there’d be a ring pull amnesty where someone opens a can on screen and everyone watching can open theirs at the same time. And good news: currently there’s a Coca-Cola advert which contains exactly what I’ve long wished for. But you’ve got to be prepared, and arrive in good time, not wander in near the end of the trailers.

Further to the Jake’s Cakes thing, I saw an ice cream van named Jake’s Flakes – a fine name, even though the van surely sold cones and ice cream as well as flakes. Having a name that rhymes with one of the things you sell is a privilege.

(Bakes also rhymes with Jake’s, but using bake as a noun gives me the ick.)

To Catalonia. The first time I’ve done various things since these weeknotes began, e.g. touched an aeroplane, camped. Saw the total eclipse, enjoyed some of the finest food and drink available to humanity, was at times sweaty and mosquito-bitten and uncomfortable.

Months ago, I decided I’d worn my last short. Not because I care at all what Gyles Brandreth, Billy Connolly, Maciej Cegłowski, or Bertie Wooster think, but rather because of an odd mole that I want to shield from the harmful rays of the sun. I’ve got some loose linen trousers – not quite the Zara death pants – instead, which are no substitute, and possibly make me look like I’m wearing a nappy. I should’ve worn shorts and smeared sunscreen over my shins. I saw hardly anyone else in long trousers.

• (Brandreth and Cegłowski have tweeted extensively disparaging shorts. Connolly didn’t really confirm nor deny rumours that he thinks men in shorts look babyish on Adam Buxton’s podcast. Wooster mocked the fascist Roderick Spode for “swanking about in footer bags”.)

Also, sandals.

• I paid £17.99 for some Crocs in 2013, equivalent to £26.06 in today’s money, but these days some new ones cost nearly double that? (Are they made out of RAM?) And it’s somehow relevant that last month, a fellow wearing Crocs was being astonishingly racist on the bus.

Bravely, brazenly, I didn’t pack a computer, a good decision I don’t regret. With impeccable timing, early on the first morning the Bus Open Data Service went loopy and remained so all weekend, but everything I could do to work around the loopiness I could do on my phone (so I did).

• I use Prompt for SSHing on my phone. Writing this is how I learn that there’s been a Prompt 3 for more than two years, while I’ve been using the old version.

Was late for a thing on Saturday because I thought it wasn’t until Sunday. In my defence, it’s ripe for confusion that Sat and Sun begin with the same letter. If you think about it, there are so many more letters of the alphabet than days of the week that there’s no excuse for some of the days being spelt so similarly.

(I know that in some languages all of the days all start with the same letter.)

It finally rained, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Later, I felt like that even more when some men delivered a food waste bin and a stack of caddies to the building – what a jolly surprise, a dividend of the Simpler Recycling legislation (which we haven’t time to discuss the flaws of) I think, but I wonder if people will think it’s to do with the Green-controlled city council. And fair enough if it is.

🎦 The Odyssey. I was a bit sleepy, but then I wasn’t. The bit where Agamemnon drank some Pepsi Max was rather crass.

Obsession. The best film I saw that week.