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To Edinburgh. Two events from the journey there:
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Trying to extract a Beryl bicycle from a pile of Beryl bicycles that had fallen on each other to make a sort of bicycle gratin, I cut a finger – only a tiny cut, some blood. Such is the chaos of these dockless bicycle hire schemes.
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Peterborough. Wandered around the Queensgate shopping centre (which is looking fabulous) and eventually found the the toilets, where the liquid soap dispenser seemed to be broken. A while later, I looked down to see all soap down my front, which is an unfortunate look, even worse then the usual problem of tap water splashing there. But it smelt nice.
Nice time in Edinburgh, met the youngest new relative, enjoyed the salty air.
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Tabloid journalism used to be such a noble profession – hacking voicemails, rummaging through bins, etc – but these days the so-called journalists are reduced to transcribing TikTok videos, writing so many articles about “Mrs Hinch” and her cleaning tips. Hinch claims that a magic eraser is a good tool for removing yellow stains from white plastic toilet seat, but it isn’t, or at least you’ve got to rub it for a long time to abrade the yellow to the reveal white beneath. Still, I’m reassured that the stains are just the result of cheap plastic reacting with sunlight and maybe limescale and bleach, not other people’s pee or anything like that.
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“Discovered” the Frank Skinner [Absolute Radio] Show podcast. Like when that fellow discovered America, it’s not really a discovery, it’s been popular for a long time, but I’d never been curious enough to listen before, and turns out it’s a lovely way to pass the time. So I wondered about starting from the first episode, March 2009, but I’m not sure – in the last 14 years, Skinner and Emily Dean’s voices have developed richer timbres, and they’ve got better at presenting radio, which is a way of saying the earlier stuff is different and not quite as good.