please empty your brain below

If relevant, please start your comment with a number from 1 to 31.

(questions will not be answered)
1, 21, 24 - How wonderful to see the kingfisher more than once! This looks like a classic example of how wildlife can become bolder when human activity is reduced.
1 - 'startled by a daffodil' is up there with 'the flow rates of the carrots' for most unexpected sentence that I've read/heard this month.

16 - poor thing.

18 - that's fairly pessimistic, perhaps your 80s.

25 - you need an audience for your refusal to play Monopoly, although you can now print near limitless amounts of money and distribution warehouses have replaced hotels.

26 - good
9. We're on the departure track for City, and over the summer any plane leaving there was something of a curiosity, and reason to look at flightradar24 to see where it might be off to.

15. I hope you alerted fixmystreet (or similar) to save others from the novel experience.

24. Thank you for the map. I'm near here quite frequently so really ought to take the opportunity to stop and sit and have a gander. (Might see some of them around too.)
21. How do you call a kingfisher? Do you know his/her name?
1, 21, 24. Kingfishers have been around on the lower Lee for a number of years, but they are not the easiest to spot. But once you’ve got you eye in things can become a lot easier. Keep looking and keep enjoying.
10. Oh, thank you! I did wonder ...
25. Why no roast potatoes?
25. Or parsnips?
9. I am struck by the unusualness of "unusualness". "Rarity" has much less rarity.
12 Had my influenza jab in September during a Saturday walk in vaccination day. No time for a chat or even sit down, fastest vaccination I have ever had.
27 I first saw The Sound of Music at the Dominion Tottenham Court Road, when the film was first released. It had a long run at that cinema. I remember I left the cinema at the interval as found it boring. Seen it many times on TV since and have grown to like the tunes, still find it too long.
14. That guy in the Romford tweet does sadden me. Always one dick that makes it look bad for the rest, Romford is fine. The unfortunate thing is that he wasn't born racist.

Thanks for the year of posts DG.
16: Sue!
12. Haven't bothered with a flu jab this year. I can't think of a situation where I might catch it, given the prevalence of masks/sanitising and not travelling on crowded trains.

16. It's unfortunate that our ability to balance seems to decrease as the fragility of our bones increases. So far so good though as 60 approaches, despite my tendency to be looking around rather than down at the ground.

19. I know what you mean, but I'm not sure the tiered calendar should really be described as "popular".
7. Our library has been a click and collect only since the start of the pandemic, but the additional length of borrowing time has meant my mum and could do door-step book exchanges so I've actually had a more varied read than usual!

12. I finally had a message a week ago that they'd book me an appointment for the flu jab on the 2nd Jan. Still waiting to hear!!

16. Been there, done that (3 years ago) with a resultant broken finger! You were lucky.

22. The Good Life is still one of my all-time favourite comedy sit-coms and has been a major influence in my life.

31. All the best for 2021
24. Thanks for the map, er, and everything else.
10. My last house in London was five minutes walk from Hackney Downs, and I have pictures taken on Christmas Day morning 25 years ago of us taking my then three week old daughter there for the first time. We used the playground often, but this was well before the arrival of the mosaic hounds.
You may well have walked past the house on the way to Stoke Newington High Street.
24 I used to walk along wilder stretches of the river, usually around Easter, After this, growing nettles provided a formidable obstacle especially to the east of Hackney Marshes. Eyes low ears primed and I was lucky to see this beautiful bird perhaps once a year.

By summer swans had congregated here. One year a lone black swan hung around for about six weeks and was completely ignored by his white cousins, One of the saddest sights Nature has ever provided for me!
25 Decent amount of veg, but that looks suspiciously like a dollop of apple sauce at 10 o'clock on your plate. Unless your turkey was actually pork, this is an aberration.
16 Had a similar fall on the A4 in Cranford while doing the London Loop. A long abandoned flower planter went unseen and muggins went flying, fortunately just a gashed hand.
25 Your Christmas dinner looks remarkably like mine...
16. Ouch! On my last perambulation along Upper Street, in November 2019, I took photos of some of the covers which chart changes in local administration, the oldest being an electric light cover for "VESTRY OF SAINT MARY ISLINGTON" which is presumably pre-1889.
Disappointed to see the offending cover has no such interest...
7. There are patently worse things to manage this year, but I've found mask-wearing steamed up glasses to be profoundly disorienting - whether in the supermarket or library. I become unsure of my footing, unable to make out products/books and as you describe it has caused several such visits to be aborted, or be left largely incomplete.

9. Living in a fairly elevated position, when out walking I have become accustomed to seeing planes on approach to LTN, and at dusk the lights of the distant stack over STN. In 2020, the sight and sound of planes has been so rare as to cause me to stop and gawp up at the sky.

25. Your dinner looks really tasty, but if it's turkey.. the apple sauce is (imo) an absolute abomination.
7. The libraries in my area have yet to reopen for browsing so I'm quite jealous you have that option (despite the steamed up glasses). For the last couple of months I've had an option where the librarians will select five books of their choice (although you can specify genres) but it just isn't the same as browsing. On the plus side I've got through books at home that I've failed to read for years.
21 - 'Coming this Spring to Channel 5 - The Kingfisher Whisperer'
4. Whenever I read or hear "oven glove" I find myself quietly singing the Half Man Half Biscuit song to myself.

12. Had my flu jab this morning. Like you the nurse had plenty of time for a chat; a 10 minute slot seems a long time for a simple injection.
16. I too had a trip over a very similar obstacle in the summer. Heartened that a passing car stopped to see if I was ok.
17. Our lottery is not yet over. 3 Christmas cards arrived this morning (posted 2 weeks ago) and there's at least one other still out there.
28. Did this prompt this afternoon's BBC story
1,21,24, A reader has emailed to say they spotted the kingfisher this afternoon "by the nesting boxes by the velodrome bridges". It's not proving a shy bird.
1,21,24. It seems to be a kingfisher with an exhibitionist tendency. It should have it's own Twitter or Instagram account, @OlympicPkKingfisher maybe.
25. No games of Monopoly were played.
7. As a fellow glasses sufferer, I mean wearer, I totally understand what you're going through. I found these wipes have helped a lot, not 100% but a significant improvement. Try them out and let us know what you think.
7. My glasses steamed up in Eden Project just before christmas, which was annoying. Worse my camera steamed up in sympathy, which made for several foggy photos of stunning flowers. Disappointing since I almost had the place to myself and the little birds were really friendly, but a good reason to return on their annual ticket shortly with an appropriate anti fog wipe.
24 I saw the kingfisher at about the 5/11 spot when out for a run before Christmas. A flash of electric blue and it was gone. I had a better sighting of one a few years back on the river Lea navigation. It kindly landed on the under side of the bridge so I could get a proper look. Amazing.
15. That's worth paying my council tax for.
Days which have not inspired comment:
2 3 5 6 8 11 13 20 23 29 30

(but the majority have, cheers!)

16 happened to me last year,very embarrassing,hubby tried to get me up but burying my face in the ground to avoid the onlookers was much better
2 Good call - me neither...

13 ...though I'd have accepted a testing kit
I did comment on 17 and 28 but, possibly because I spaced them poorly, they didn't register for your 11:59 PM tally-up.

dg writes: updated, thanks.
25. The benefit of cooking your own Xmas lunch is that you don't have to cook things that other people like. So if DG doesn't like roast potatoes or parsnips then he doesn't have to cook them. He can even cook sweetcorn and peas too, even if it's sacrilege.

I enjoyed not having to eat Xmas pudding.
30 - no longer buy it, in the 'old days' the Radio Times ended the week battered and crumpled, but in the late noughties I noticed that it was ending the week in near pristine condition - in other words nobody was using it, most of the other non-listing stuff was largely non-critical editorial about about actors and programmes, why pay money for that?
30 RT Inflation Rate 11.3% - worth remembering next time the media moan about increases in train fares, council tax, MPs' salaries, etc.










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