Week 86: tar patch for Alan Shearer

Monday 9 November 2020

• Gambling is, and I cannot stress this enough, a mug’s game. But I placed a bet (£6) on the orange tyrant, and cashed out the following morning when the market was having a panic that he might win. So I won £3.85, and he didn’t win, so that’s nice – the two best outcomes.

  What can one buy for £3.85? Apparently a bottle of Sainsbury’s Penguin Sands wine (either Shiraz or Cab Sav). 🤯 I have not bought one.

• Bicycled to see my da. It’s sugar beet season so I mudded my clean trousers and shoes, mainly by squelching past some magnificent Scania lorries that were parked inconsiderately so beets could be elevated into their trailers. Apart from that it was lovely.

• During a different bit of biycling, I saw the sobering sight of fieldfuls of furloguhed aeroplanes, and then came across a bit of cycle path where the message tar patch for Alan Shearer had been spray-painted on the ground. So there must be a person named Alan Shearer who’s in charge of tarmacadaming at the council or one of its contractors, and I bet sharing a name with a beshirted retired footballer turned pundit is… not much of a hassle actually. The most interesting thing about this graffiti was how large and clear the lettering was – usually you just get some small illegible abbreviations.

• As soon as I read about the AirPods Pro Service Program for Sound Issues, I booked an appointment with a Genius, in the nick of time before the non-essential shop would have to close. I wasn’t sure if my sound issues were really issues – a crackling sound when out in windy conditions, or when lying down with an AirPod touching a pillow, both easily solved by changing the “Noise Control” setting from “Noise Cancellation” or “Transparency” to “Off” – but surely it was worth checking, and if you have to switch off one of the main features then what’s the point?

  Before I was allowed in the shop, I was delighted to have my temperature taken and again confirmed to be perfect – even though having a normal temperature is no more special than passing a cognitive screening test (person, woman, man, camera, TV).

  Well, after a bit of palaver with serial numbers and diagnostics, the Genius replaced both AirPods for free, even going to the trouble of extricating the replacements from their elaborate individual cardboard boxes. And the replacements don’t make any crackling sounds, which is reassuring.

  Shortly later, I woke from a nap and was convinced for a while that I’d swallowed an AirPod, which was alarming. (If you do swallow one, you want to expedite its passage, because remember the pig pedometer fire? – you don’t want the battery catching fire in your tummy.) I eventually found the stray AirPod, on the floor not in my poo, so panic over, but perhaps it’s best to use wired headphones when sleepy.

• The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020 came into force here in England. It’s nice that there are fewer motor cars about, at least compared to the few days before when folks were flocking to non-essential shops. Website traffic and money are less low than they were in April – possibly because some places aren’t England, and schools are still open, and the government isn’t actually advising “avoid public transport”.

Stay well.