Week 176: handle like eggs

Sunday 31 July 2022

• Found my jumper. Some people say “it’s always the last place you look” is the sort of pointless truism only a boring moron would trot out, but it’s true!

• You know the “net promoter score”, where folks ask questions to which the answer is either “I need you to understand that people don’t have conversations where they randomly recommend [East Midlands Trains] to each other”, or “very likely [not really, but I don’t want the poor employees to get in trouble].”

  But I search Twitter and actually people are randomly recommending bustimes.org to people. I could say something mean-spirited about it but I won’t – people find something useful, and want to share the useful thing, which is lovely.

• As I was walking past Tesco Express, a lady laden with bags toppled over, oh no. I hesitated until someone else approached to help her up, and I’m afraid I just scurried away like I had somewhere important to be. (Thinking back to the fainting TalkTV political editor, of course I’d’ve run over to help if I was a mum like Liz Truss.)

  Just hours later, I was bicycling along when suddenly the right handlebar snapped clean off and I landed cross-legged on the ground, bruised and grazed, sand in my mouth and my jumper torn. Oh what instant karma. Motor cars motored past, as it probably looked like I was meditating on the grass verge, but one did stop and kindly check I was OK, which I was after a fashion, and I gingerly pedalled home sort of one-handedly.

  It was the old old bicycle, by the way. Who knows how old the handlebars were, and maybe whoever fitted them didn’t use a torque wrench, putting untold strain on the metal by over-tightening.

  I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my swollen purple bum – I should have been quicker to sit on a bag of frozen brussels sprouts – woe unto me. What must the neighbours think of the moaning each time I get up or sit down or lean over in bed to reach a cup of tea.

• 🎦 In The Living Daylights, Timmy Dalton says “it must have scared The Living Daylights (1987) out of her”. There’s a box of fragile cargo marked “handle like eggs”, which apparently is a thing and is also written on something in Thunderball, which I’ll have to keep an eye on ITV4 for.

  I had a tin of zesty pop to drink during Licence to Kill, so I waited for someone to open a can on-screen so I could open mine at the same time without the noise disturbing anyone. But there are no ring-pulls in the film. Bond orders a bottle of Budweiser with a lime, but he doesn’t get to drink it.

• Sure you’ve already heard Nathan Fielder’s (from off of Nathan For You) The Rehearsal is something. The second episode was underwhelming, but after the third I feel silly for having had any doubts. There’s a New Zealandish torrent search engine that seems better than the famous Swedish one, I don’t know what everyone else uses these days.

• I call women’s football “football” and men’s football “men’s football”. 👅