Week 388: can amnesty

Wednesday 26 August 2026

• I used to wake up to the sound of the iPhone Crickets ringtone/alarm, you know the one that’s the sound of chirping crickets, so now the sound of cicadas engenders some stress.

• Home.

  There are some fine places to buy food on the way out of Luton Airport, but I skipped past all of them, onto the DART, and then there was just a Tesco Express. Nothing wrong with a Tesco Express, but it was a bit of a culture shock, and the Grain Bowl (really a box), well its contents were one of the blandest things I’ve ever put in my mouth.

• Read two and a bit thousand emails (accumulated over a few years, not just the holiday!). There were some good emails in there, thanks everyone. I’d quite liked revelling in seeing how high I could get the unread count, but now I seem to have changed; hope I don’t take up a more disgusting habit in its place.

• 🎦 Kiki’s Delivery Service.

  I like to smuggle a can of ginger beer or fizzy blood orange juice into the cinema, and to time the opening of the can so the noise doesn’t disturb my fellow cinemagoers. Ideally, there’d be a ring pull amnesty where someone opens a can on screen and everyone watching can open theirs at the same time. And good news: currently there’s a Coca-Cola advert which contains exactly what I’ve long wished for. But you’ve got to be prepared, and arrive in good time, not wander in near the end of the trailers.