What have you been doing today?

[Justin Passing]

Swotting up on the British honours system. The tiff between Sunak and Johnson, and Stanley's failure to bag a knighthood, made me realise that I didn't actually know what a knighthood is. As a boy, my dad taught me there was a hierarchy of peerages, from Baron all the way up to Duke. And it turns out that knighthoods also have their own hierarchy, in fact there are six different levels, I think, with each becoming more exotic. Starting with Knights Bachelor, then KBE and ending with Knights of the Garter.

I wonder if you saw what grade the 29 year old woman in Boris' Lords list got. Farce.

 

[Justin Passing]

Managed to scrounge 8 lengths of 4”x 2” and about 30 roofing battens from a loft conversion job being done locally. Ran that lot over the allotment - I’ll make some frames out of them.

While there, I noticed that everything seems to have grown considerably in the last couple of days.

Sweet peas up my shed.

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More plants coming on in the greenhouse.

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I've let my asparagus grow out to build up for next year.

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Runner beans are running away with themselves.

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The sweetcorn is looking….sweet.

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I have both golden and standard courgettes

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And finally the salad bed is filling out nicely.

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That's all very well, but can you grow a pizza?

 

[Brigadier]

2k openwater, then discussed the finer points of the freestyle stroke over a couple of pints of this.

 

[Justin Passing]

I got bored.
So I've been dicking about on a free share-buying platform.
I've only bought for longer periods before, with a trad platform which charges for everything. Or told a broker what to do.
I'm using Trading 212. Everything is nominally "free". They make ther money from squeezing the bid/offer spread, which so far has been trivial, and the forex if you're doing e.g. US stocks. IIRC it's 0.15%. which is cheap, but If you swap from say Microsoft to Meta you pay twice, so reckon 0.3% to buy + sell one stock.. They would obvs have accounts in £ and $ and get low cost fx. There are a few other bits to read about, like "W8-BEN".
Anyway once you know a bit, it's fun if you have some cash to play with. (can be ISA'd but trf will take a while) I'm just playing the pop stocks, which have been like a bunny hopping up a hill. It'll go up 3, drop back 1 or 2, then hop up again. Wait for a dropping back.

Whoever designed the website was very good. You go to ask a question and it pops up with the answer, etc.
Worth trying with say 5 shares at a tenner each so you can see what happens, if you're completely new. Read Motley and a few others, etc, don't just guess..
I'm beating inflation..

 

[Mottie]

A bit of work over the allotment - digging up my garlic. I’ve laid them out in the greenhouse to dry and then I’ll make a garlic plait to hang in our shed at home.

Found a leopard slug under a stone and I kept him on. - apparently they only eat dead vegetation….and other slugs!

Oh, and I planted out two big max pumpkin plants that I had brought on in the greenhouse. Plenty of my home made compost in the hole too. I doubt whether it will get as big as this one though!

 

[crystal ball]

I remember walking past a pumpkin field in Portugal, they were all enormous

 

[Mottie]

When I was out walking the dog this morning, I saw a pilot playing about with his plane.

Plane

Watch "Plane" on Streamable.

streamable.com

 

[JonathanM]

I wonder if you saw what grade the 29 year old woman in Boris' Lords list got. Farce.

I think all new life peers are Barons/Baronesses. Wouldn't be surprised if Boris did this just to p!ss people off.

 

[Mottie]

Mrs Mottie is out in Spain at the moment with her mates. Our dog was poorly when she left. Was off her food, lethargic and had been shîtting through the eye of a needle for nearly a week. I tried some ProMax that we keep at home in the doggie medicine box but still no joy. She’s been asking for updates just about every other hour. Took the dog to the vets on Friday, he found nothing obviously wrong - gums, belly and temperature all fine. He gave her some antibiotics. This morning she had perked right up. Sent this WhatsApp to her earlier. It made her happy. Must be the strangest message anyone has ever got that pleased them.

 

[Justin Passing]

When I was out walking the dog this morning, I saw a pilot playing about with his plane.

Plane

Watch "Plane" on Streamable.

streamable.com

That's an "Immelman". You stay firmly in your seat right through, so quite fun but not vomit-inducing.
You can do those in a not-very-aerobatic modern plane.

Different in an old Chipmunk. If you're too slow you drop out of the top of the loop, and can easily go into a spin; inverted, flat, or both..
Early Chipmunks don't recover from spins,
so neither do you.

 

[Justin Passing]

Found a leopard slug under a stone and I kept him on. - apparently they only eat dead vegetation….and other slugs!

Hmm, really....? Keep off mushrooms.
Take a strong magnifier and have a look at their* radula - remarkable structure.

*they're hermaphrodite.

 

[Mottie]

Meeting up with my kids and grandson for a Father’s Day dog walk in a moment. Not even 9.00 and I’ve already been over the allotment and harvested some of our home grown veg for them. Onions, Garlic, courgettes, radish's, new potatoes, mint and lettuce.

 

[transam]

Went to the new screw fix place around here

Walked in it’s all computerised touch screen order rubbish

Only one in there Can I help you the bloke behind the counter said

I said no I am
Going down to tool station bye

 

[Mottie]

Meeting up with my kids and grandson for a Father’s Day dog walk in a moment.

Met up with the kids this and my daughter have me my Father’s Day present from her - an air fryer! Not really been interested in them, thought them a bit 'faddy' in the same vein as sandwich toasters, smoothie makers and teasmades. I must say though, for stuff that you would have to warm an oven up, it worked fine although we don’t eat a lot of that type of food. I’ll have to read up on it and see what it’s like for other stuff. Chucked some chips, onion rings and chicken nuggets in it and they were all done in 15 minutes. Maybe next time I should lay it out on the plate first to get an idea of quantities lol. I sent the following photo to my daughter and said I was 'eating like a King'. She replied, "You’re eating like a 5 year old"!

The dog had a swim and my grandson kept chuckling when she did her flying leap into tgat water at the command of "swiiiiim!"

Popped back over the allotment to do a bit of weeding and it started to rain. That’s the first time we’ve had rain in about the last six weeks or so. It was great - I carried on working in it. You could almost hear the whole allotment slurping it up and a lovely smell of petrichor came up.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

We have an air fryer, there's really not that much you can't do in one, some stuff is better done in an air fryer than an oven and vice versa but then we have kids so all that frozen chips/fish fingers/pizza etc is really easy.