One more bus, to return me to the point I’d started at last week. This one had a squirty hanitiser dispenser near the entrance (although I only noticed it once I’d sat down), and a badly designed A4 poster about masks at knee height (like it was aimed solely at toddlers or something).

Saw some more of some relations. They’d come all the way from a different country, which feels bizarre, but apparently you can go on a thing called a boat, these days, and float across the English channel.

Like some kind of Paul Rudd (the irritating famous dude with a famous fear of condiments), I declined the offer of some condiments on a vegan sausage sandwich – a poor decision.

I think mustard is the sausage sandwich condiment, but Danny Baker’s sausage sandwich game (“red sauce, brown sauce, or no sauce at all?”) suggests it isn’t one of the two main ones.

Hooray (hurray?) for the return of the Late Night Alternative.

Renamed some main Git branches from “master” to “main” because it’s just a better name – it’s less letters and less syllables and greater descriptive.

After some weeks of parsimony, an unusually cheap rabbit bhuna to end the week, thanks to an Uber Eats discount code. Collected it myself from the sash window of the restaurant, and it kept its temperature, double- or triple-bagged in a paper bag in a plastic bag in the bicycle pannier. I hope that somehow Travis Kalanick pays for the discount, and not the salt-of-the-earth local restaurant staff.

The service design of Uber Eats is bad.

I have resisted going on too much about breadmaking. Last time, I was all haughty and “it’s not that difficult”, but recently I think I’ve been mistreating my levain and it’s been showing, and I don’t actually like overly sour or crusty bread. Where has it all gone wrong? There’s going to be some soul-searching.

I bought a big boy bicycle pump, because it’s hard to inflate tyres fully with a minimalist little portable pump, although it’s also an invigorating cardio workout. Quite big, but it came in an even bigger enormous great big box, almost London rental opportunity sized. Cool story. One night I’m going to spend the night in the box, for banter.

Tyres pumped effortlessly firm, I went and cycled and stood on some ants and some ants stood on me and now we’re even.

To the Apple shop. This time my temperature was perfect. I used to think, especially after last week, that maybe my usual body temperature was unusually high, because sometimes my forehead and other body parts feel warm, but what if being warm to the touch is just a normal sign of being alive?

My AirPods (ooh, get me) have mysteriously renamed themselves, or been renamed, to “Chris’s AirPods”. Who is Chris, and what claim have they over my AirPods? Very strange.

Suddenly I had a reason to use some public transport. It was a Sunday, and it turns out that some Sunday timetables aren’t quite back to normal, so I had to go a long way all around the coast, taking all afternoon to end up barely an hour away from home. But that was OK, I was secretly delighted, I got to see the sea, and at the end of it all I got to see some relations.

Some of the eggs in Tesco, and other shops of that nature, are temporarily being packed in plastic instead of the usual cardboard egg boxes. I think this is because of a shortage of pulp in the supply chain, and the novelty hats (“bedpans”) you get in hospitals, which are made of the same sort of stuff, take precedence.

I bet some people are disgusted by this pragmatic response to the pulp shortage, I thought, so I searched Twitter and was proved right. Maybe there’s a galaxy brained argument to be made that the plastic versions are lighter, easier to produce, or more reusable, and therefore actually better for the environment, but I won’t be the one to make it.

Not necessarily in protest against the plastic boxes, I’ve been cycling around and making mental notes of the all smallholders who sell eggs (and preserves and plants and fruit and vegetables) from their driveways. When I buy something, I find myself dropping the coins in the honesty box as theatrically loudly as possible, lest I’m mistaken for a thief.

To the Apple shop. I was a bit worried about failing the mandatory temperature check before entering, but then I forgot about that in favour of wondering if I’d be blamed for somehow damaging the computer screen myself. Well, it turns out that hairline cracks are covered under the warranty, which is good. But, having cycled uphill to the shop and then been inflamed by the hordes of shoppers ignoring the one way system in the shopping centre, I was too hot, or too warm, or not cool enough, so I had to go and stand outside Monsoon with my raincoat off for a while until I was allowed in.

It occurs to me that wearing a mask (the other main prong of Apple’s retail store precautions) is actually pleasant, because it’s like breathing into a paper bag, which is the thing people do in films and on TV to calm down and stop hyperventilating. Actually, apparently, breathing into a paper bag is ineffective and possibly dangerous, but never mind.

The replacement screen part is taking a jolly long time to arrive, but that’s OK. The old computer has been behaving impeccably, and I’ve been productive on it.

Some work. Reworking some of the live maps to use WebSockets, using Django Channels, which is an enriching experience and the results are going to be great. Starting to deploy the new stuff has been trickier, until I realised:

1. I was accidentally reading the documentation for the old, much harder to use version of Channels.

2. O2 do some terrible nonsense which breaks ws:// WebSockets.

I tried to remove a 5G conspiracy theory sticker from a Sheffield hoop, but those science hating conspiracy theorists have some really strong adhesive.

The screen of my still new computer broke. There are all lines along the bottom and left sides, and possibly a tiny crack in the corner, and the rest of the screen goes all blank every so often. I don’t have a handy external display to plug into, because minimalism, but I just about managed to do a backup and delete anything embarrassing during a not-completely-blank phase.

Because of the rona, Genius Bar appointments are in short supply. At first, it looked like I was going to have to go all the way to Ipswich or somewhere, and the thought of having a reason to travel was a bit exciting, but I only needed to reload the web page twice to find a slot somewhere nearer (albeit in a whole week’s time).

Meanwhile, there’s the old computer, which has never had such a problem. I finally sent off for some pentalobe screwdrivers, to replace the OWC Aura Pro X with the original SSD, and now it runs much better and cooler. Unscrewing the case, I found exactly as much hair, dust and DNA as I’d expected.

I haven’t been to the barber’s shop. In fact, a few weeks ago, I bought a surprisingly cheap and in-stock hair cutting device. (I’ve always mentioned my previous self-hair-cutting efforts here, so how odd that this latest development wasn’t deemed interesting enough in the week that it happened.) The best thing is the cable doubles as a charging cable for a Philips electric face shaving machine, and I needed one of those because my old cable had broken, and while “acoustic” face shaving is satisfying it almost always results in bloodshed.

I haven’t been to the pub. I walked past plenty of people responsibly enjoying picnic benches (only one rowdy bunch of lads), so I don’t think they’re desperate for my custom.

Some work. Speaking of which, what interesting bedtime reading it was to read a House of Lords debate about something I know about.

Bought some chilli flakes, and they’re ruddy bloody good. They’ve leapt straight into my top three condiments.

It’s been windy, and my arms are all crispy like the skin of chicken who’s been in a fan oven, and my outdoor plants have grown stronger as a result of the turbulence.

It has been warm. I’m a sweaty little man, but that’s just a failing of my glands, and it’s bad form to complain about it being warm.

Lots of traffic about. I can believe that it’s still less than usual, but I’ve looking back and forth along the queues of motor cars at the traffic lights in campy disbelief, like, where are you all going. I also glared at a driver I saw fiddling with his mobile phone.

Some cycling. Went quite a long way to see my da, and explored some of the off-road cycle paths – they’re quite good, aren’t they.

Time for some observations about the novelty of living near a football stadium where, finally, some matches have been played.

• I walked past Martin Keown. He hadn’t donned his mandatory mask yet – not sure I’d’ve recognised him if he had – but, even so, I wasn’t completely sure it was Martin Keown until, later, I searched Twitter to see people complaining about Martin Keown’s punditry.

• Yesterday, there was a drone buzzing about overhead. This meant I could tune into the BBC and see that the Morrisons car park was empty so I wouldn’t need to queue to buy tomato juice.

• Some fans gathered to watch the team coaches (more coaches than usual, for distancing, I think) arrive and depart. Clearly they, like me, were excited by the Van Hool Astromegas, Mercedes-Benz Tourismos and Plaxton Elite is, not the famous masked athlete passengers.

😍 Liverpool.

I was unlocking my bicycle from the rack downstairs – it’s not quite the same as these, but has the same problems, designed to leave as much space as possible for cramming in motor cars, at the expense of being far less useful than a Sheffield hoop – when a motor car appeared, seemingly reversing straight into me. I backed against the wall and maybe shook my fist at the impertinence. Eventually I realised the motorist was trying to park in his parking space, which he managed after like ten attempts. He looked about 100 years old, and had presumably died in a war, so, adrenaline pumping, I pedalled away before I could be tempted to make a scene.

The Unbelievable Truth, the most bearable Radio 4 parlour game, has returned. Of all the intra-rona¹ things I’ve seen and heard, it’s the first that’s felt so flat. Perhaps it’s harder for radio, without the crutch of the novelty of seeing people’s curtains and bookshelves. I expect it’ll improve as it “beds in” and everyone gets used to the lack of a studio audience and everything.

My cultural highlight of the week, the thing I’ve watched most this week, is shopping TV presenter Rob Locke, a character played by actor Rob Locke. This is the tweet that started it for me. It’s great to see someone at the top of their game, doing something difficult (presenting unscripted television, three hours at a time) so well. I have found myself watching live, between midnight and 03:00, although more sensible people would just catch bits on YouTube or “on demand”. There are obvious comparisons to Brent and Partridge; my observation is that he has the voice of Greg Davies.

Saw my da with my bare eyes. I believe the verb is “to bubble”. Later that day, I felt all tickly in the throat – crivens – but of course that’s likely a symptom of hayfever.

Sad news that the world’s largest Budgens, which is around here, has been destroyed by fire, which is a bit like the curse of the world’s oldest person. (I wonder which remaining Budgens is now the largest.) It would be churlish to focus on the loss of some expensive quiche, as the main thing is it’s a huge blow to the local workers, suppliers, and customers.

Crivens.

I had a life affirming rabbit curry. You might think “Deliveroo” is a service purely for the delivery of food make from Winnie-the-Pooh’s friends, were they going to call it Kangaliver, but it came via a different unicorn.

I have some complaints about their weirdly bad handling of addresses and postcodes and things. Hmm.

Less jetlagged. Going to sleep when it’s dark, like a person.

For weeks, I’d been looking forward to seeing some rail replacement buses and coaches, and sure enough I did, and took some photographs. How wholesome.

Finished watching Law & Order UK, by which I don’t mean I’ve watched all of it at all – I skipped past some series, and it was a relief when the smug guy got replaced by a different smug guy – and it’s a bit bootlicky.

Crumbs.

A gruelling week at work down the data mine. Some intense data wrangling, and then, as a sort of treat, I did some other things like finally changing a certain primary key to a surrogate key, and moving from Travis CI to GitHub Actions.

A noticeable spike in website traffic on Monday, coincident with the increase in numbers of (empty) buses driving about.

I’ve been jetlagged, which is something as I haven’t been on any jets.

Such a shame that Iain Lee and Katherine Boyle’s radio programme, on the upsetting talkRADIO, is no more. I’d only been listening for a month or so, like I’m cursed or something (although there’s no other evidence to support that). On the other hand, a relief that I’ll never have to listen to talkRADIO again.

A(nother) birthday Zoom, which was a verb even before the zeitgeisty videoconferencing app had been thought of. We had a good old ding dong around the old Joanna, and the thrill of seeing people’s bookshelves and things extends to one’s extended family.

Well, shit.

Rode the bicycle to some kinds of countryside. Found a smashing meadow, and a quiet route past the local sewage works.

It’s been hot, hasn’t it? (so hott!!!💯) Some truffles I had for my birthday, not the dog or hog kind, all melted, forming two enormous megatruffles, showing that natural light, big windows aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and maybe there needs to be a hog around to snaffle food before it melts. I’d been being curiously abstemious, despite looking forward to having a useful pot to put things in – a pot marked truffles, which will be a funny joke when it’ll contain teabags or something.

Some work. Following Michael Green/Sebastian Fox’s announcement of some extra coin, they are increasing the frequency of some bus timetables back to more normal levels, which timing I don’t fully understand. This motivated me to do more work to ingest more timetable data from more different places (qv).

• There are some problems with the Bus Open Data Service (beta), which I should probably email someone about. Where possible, I’ve been avoiding it – Stagecoach have an informative web page; for First, I had to guess some filenames (http://travelinedatahosting.basemap.co.uk/data/first/FirstHampshireAndDorset.zip, etc).

• The TransXChange standard is the gift that keeps on giving – new hidden depths of complexity I’m only discovering after nearly five years of what turns out to have been a sheltered life dealing with comparatively nice data. But I can feel smug that my code and I are good enough to evolve to cope.

The website traffic is just about perceptibly increasing each week from its nadir. Of course this is to do with people planning necessary journeys, not joyriding psychogeographers.

Been watching Law & Order: UK, which I mention in part because the Palatino italic ampersand looks pretty. There are better things you could watch. The highlight is when the name “Dick Wolf” flashes on the screen.

The evening is a good time to go to the supermarket – no queue, fewer people dithering about yoghurt.

Walking to Lidl, I encountered several steaming folks who must be having a tough time. That was a bit sad.

I have a bicycle again. As previously mentioned, hooray, and think I’ve been lucky to find an adequate one. I have some complaints about the bicycle storage here – the motor cars get much more, better sheltered space, which their drivers don’t have to lift their cars onto – even the bins are better located – but is this the place for those complaints?

I have partaken of some Chinese meal deliveries. I heard that unconcious racism means Chinese businesses are particularly struggling, and I live downhill, and give a bigger than average tip (based on what I’ve learned from r/Deliveroos), so it feels like a good thing to do. But the food hasn’t been that amazing, and it’s expensive. Hmm.

Unforgivably, Dominic Cummings uses the word “blog” when he means “blog post”.

I was also going to mention that he appeared to have a Tesco bag for life in the recycling bin outside his house, but it turns out that Islington Council says you can recycle plastic bags, so that’s OK.