Week 56

• I was making bread, sometimes sourdough, “before it was cool”. It’s not that difficult. I made some “this week”, which was fine, and I’ll make some more this week, cool story.

  Adrian “Toby jug of hot piss” Chiles, who is a broadcaster whose work I enjoy, has shared his soda bread recipe and his sourdough experiences, in response to a supposed shortage of dried yeast. I’m tempted to try Chiles’s soda bread recipe, simply because “Adrian Chiles’s soda bread recipe” is a fun idea, just like Julia Sawalha’s hummus, Rory Bremner’s orange soufflé, etc.

• I have a robot vacuum cleaner now.

  • For reasons, I got it delivered to the “Amazon PopUp” in the Morrisons cafe, which is apparently now a thing – indeed, there’s a sign up outside the repurposed cafe, but after waiting til the appointed opening hour I found no staff on either of my visits, which is explicable by their maybe having more important work to do. Eventually I spotted an Amazon cardboard box, and sure enough it had my name on it, so I just took it … which was thrilling. As there was no way for it to be marked as “collected”, I’ve since been emailed a reminder to collect the parcel – “If you can’t collect your parcel, it will be returned for a full refund” – and it would be unfortunate if this means I’ve accidentally done a crime.

  • The wandering overlord is providing hours of entertainment. It’s not an actual Roomba, which is the Hoover of robot vacuum cleaners and a character in Breaking Bad, Parks & Recreation and Jonathan Creek – it’s a cheaper sort, and doesn’t even have an app or Wi-Fi, which I suppose is for the best because I don’t want it to be recruited to fight in some cyber war.

  • I’ve met vacuum cleaners before, so I’m not surprised by the surprising amount of dust, but I am surprised by all the hair it’s picked up – presumably that of the people who used to live here – yuck – which inspired me to remove a mound of their hair from the washbasin plughole, a satisfying treat.

Stay safe.