Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

A pretty quiet week as far as I can remember.

I completely forgot about the clock change last night, but thanks to the fact that all the important clocks now set themselves by magic it didn’t cause any issues beyond wondering why I woke up early on Sunday feeling more rested than I expected, and I didn’t turn up anywhere an hour late.

I gave my 62nd unit of blood on Wednesday. For a change I ran there rather than cycling, and may have slightly glossed over my intention to run the two miles home during the health check. As usual though, I didn’t really feel any different afterwards than before.

When I had my flu jab the other week, they also checked my blood pressure, which was apparently borderline high (something like 140/90 I think). They must have passed that information on to my GP, because I got a letter asking me to make an appointment to have it checked again. I haven’t got round to it yet, partly due to laziness and phone-aversion, partly to avoid wasting the NHS’s time, and partly to avoid having to tick the “I’m waiting to see a medical professional” box on the blood donor form. I’ve measured it at home since, and it seems like it’s usually in the 80s, so I’m sure I’m fine (although my dad does have high blood pressure, so who knows?). I should probably just book my over-40 health check and kill two birds with one stone (I’ve only put that off for 13 years so far).

I happened to see one of the abnormal loads that are travelling from Ipswich docks to Eye. It apparently weighs around 500 tons, and took most of the day to get from one side of town to the other. Here’s a terrible photo.

Slugs keep coming into my kitchen at night (presumably through a tiny crack under the door). I think mainly in an attempt to steal cat food, although I’ve been known to find them on the ceiling so I’m not sure about their sense of direction.

I managed to scrounge a lift from a friend with a bigger car to pick up my eBay replacement sunroof on Tuesday, in exchange for helping him get rid of a big old TV at the tip (sorry, recycling centre). I also took advantage of the opportunity to get rid of the incredibly heavy 32″ CRT TV that I’ve had sitting around for well over a decade, so I definitely got the better part of the deal! I haven’t got round to fitting it yet, as I need to time it to reduce the probability of it taking longer than expected and finding myself suddenly needing to use the car when it has a huge hole in the roof.

Meta is a $750bn company, and yet apparently it’s beyond them to correctly pluralise UI text on Facebook:

I’ve watched the first two episodes of that BBC Savile programme. Not exactly a barrel of laughs, but very well made. Steve Coogan does a good job, but it inevitably feels like Partridge is peeeping through now and then. And disconcertingly the first of the survivor talking heads sounded spookily like Philomena Cunk.

I escaped any ill effects from Storm Whatsitsname, largely by not leaving the house on Friday, but other parts of Suffolk experienced some pretty major flooding (including Framlingham, which has caused what would have been the first event in this year’s cross country season next week to be postponed). Ipswich parkrun was cancelled too, but fortunately Kesgrave wasn’t, and it’s equally close (but without a big hill to cycle up to get there!)

Fortunately the weather improved massively between Friday and Sunday, in time for the annual(ish) club “one lap to ultra” event (six hours to complete as many laps of a 4½ mile loop through the countryside as you can, or want to). I managed seven laps again, which I guess makes it technically my third ultra. My claim that I’m never going to run a marathon is looking ever more paper-thin. Holly ran six laps with me, making it her first marathon distance, having previously never gone beyond 30k (or 19 miles or so in my old man units), but was strangely unenthusiastic about the idea of doing one more!

I upgraded my phone to Android 14, and now everything seems ever so slightly worse.

Have we finally hit autumn proper? After another mild (even warm) week, there was a bit of a chill on Saturday morning, then Sunday was properly cold (good for racing, but less so for standing around afterwards). Still sunny though, and even on Friday when it poured for much of the day I still managed to cycle to work, to the pub, back to work then home again entirely in the dry, so definitely chalking that up as a win.

The prospect of colder and wetter weather also bumped up the priority of fixing my sunroof. I managed to source a complete second hand unit for £140 from a relatively local seller on eBay, and have scrounged a lift from someone with a larger car to pick it up next week. Then I just have to figure out how to swap them over, but how hard can it be. Speaking of which, helpful as YouTube is, I still miss Haynes manuals. Turns out they do publish one for the R56 so-called Mini, but it looks like replacing the sunroof is beyond its scope (which I’m sure isn’t in any way a bad omen). Not like in the old days when they’d describe a full nut-and-bolt engine rebuild (“refitting is the reverse sequence to removal”).

I found a mysterious lone trainer on my driveway. Not sure whether it was the result of a schoolboy prank or a mischievous fox.

A second consecutive five mile race this weekend, this time at Saxmundham. I improved my training regime compared to last week by neither (a) running eight miles on Friday – although obviously I still did parkrun – nor (b) eating a massive pizza on Saturday afternoon (I made one on Sunday instead). This clearly helped, as I was 13 seconds faster. Surprisingly, given that I don’t feel particularly quick at the moment, both were course PBs.

I had a phone call from Specsavers on Monday reminding me that they still had the reading/vdu glasses that came for free with my eye test for work. Rather than procrastinate further, I made an appointment and picked them up in the afternoon. I checked when the eye test had been, and it was in August.

2022.

They’re 1.75×, compared to the 1.5× of my old pair (and the collection of cheap Amazon ones that I keep scattered about the place). No hugely discernible difference, but having had pretty much perfect vision up to the age of around 45 I still find it frustrating that I can’t just read small close-up stuff unaided any more.

In exchange for me making her a Christmas cake, Nicola brought round some spare brandy to feed them with. There was an almost full half-bottle, and an inch or two in the bottom of another, and the majority of that is now in the two cakes.

Capel 5 this Sunday, which was ludicrously warm for the time of year. I guess we need to get used to it being warm enough to comfortably linger around in shorts and vest in October, and I’m sure it’s a small price to pay for the ever more rapidly approaching end of a human-habitable planet.

The sunroofs on the Mini are still stuck partially open. I tried taking the motor out, removing the glass and applying grease and various types of violence, but to no avail. At least I eventually managed to get them back to where they had been when I started rather than making things worse.

Well, it’s October. That was quick.

A fairly sociable running week, with the usual club session on Tuesday, then runs for both coffee and beer on Wednesday, and another run with the same crowd on Friday, finishing at The Railway for a meal to celebrate Kevin’s 60th birthday. Then parkrun (obviously) on Saturday and an easy loop out over the Orwell Bridge with Holly this morning.

Strava decided to show me a nice encouraging notification this afternoon …

… then when I clicked it, it hit me with its actual opinion of how that hard work was really “adding up”. ?

On Friday we had our first attempt at an unconference for developers at work. It seemed to go OK, with plenty of interesting discussions. Also, I ate far too many biscuits.

After buying a Rubik’s cube (well technically not an actual Rubik’s cube, but a cheap MoYu speedcube) on a whim a few months ago, I seem to have become quite addicted to it, and decided on another whim to upgrade to a Tornado v3 Pioneer. I saved about a third of the price by ordering it from a seller on AliExpress, and it arrived from China impressively quickly (under a week). I had thought the other one was pretty good compared to my memories of the original, but this one is a huge improvement – it spins really easily, and has magnets that help it gently snap into position as it rotates, rather than ending up misaligned and jamming. I’m still hardly an expert, but can now reliably solve it in around a minute most times, with a best effort of 33s thanks to a scramble that happened to work out nicely.

In a brief concession to the still far away festive season, I baked my cakes today (a massive one for me, and the smaller one I somehow got talked into making annually for Nicola). And now I shall brook no more talk of Christmas for at least another two months.