So ... How's Your Girl?

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Not having much time away – unable to for reasons above – I had the late October half term off and pottered in the garden. I replaced a rotten fence post and gave myself a hernia in the process. Busy hospitals mean a long wait – I get scanned in mid-January, gawd knows when the corrective surgery will be. I’m in discomfort rather than pain, so can’t really complain, although I’m effectively housebound (again). Family reunion. UK-based parents and 2 other expat siblings all found their way to Madrid in the summer so 18 months of separation was finally over. That was a good week. Dislikes humankind? Generally, yep. I don’t see much to like in most of humankind (too much evil crap and shit stuff and we allow it to happen. And social media and YouTube are real windows into how utterly crap so many people are. And so are the governments we vote for).

The first half of the year seems with it’s (seemingly) neverending restrictions seems such a long way away now. In other areas, Grant says the UK has been weakened, particularly in its influence and power on the European and world stages. Greetings at the end of a second COVID year, to those who have kindly taken the time to post above, and you others reading, but not posting. It’s coming up to 10 years (next summer) when I dipped my toe into an already-thriving community, such that I still feel like quite the newcomer/arriviste. There’s such a wealth of life shared, (not just in this thread) lightly tied to the tagline of ‘byways of popular culture’, that it’s a privilege to host (this time) this annual community of expression. The bus service was very unreliable when I was young and it remains so even today. (It remains very unreliable …)This week we are looking at two words which may be confused by learners of English: produce and product. Improve your English with Collins. A sense of perspective and what is important gained (maybe, until life in all its complexities clouds that clear vision). So, Merry Christmas, deep breath, count your blessings every day, tell the people you love how you feel, and I'm looking forward to a slightly "quieter" 2022.

Now I’ve decided to make the focus pretty much purely about the running, to try and see how good I can get. If I can run 5k in under 20 mins while eating for a serious calorie deficit, what happens when I forget about the calories, eat for running, and just try to be fast? That’ll be fun. The easing of restrictions meant I managed to get out to loads of restaurants and pubs, a few gigs, and catch up (in the flesh) with friends and family. Something we perhaps took for granted before, but it was a massive boost.We often use so when we mean ‘to such a great extent’. With this meaning, so is a degree adverb that modifies adjectives and other adverbs: Health & Fitness (as opposed to quasi-jazz mag Health & Efficiency) has been a big thing for me ever since I sent for a Charles Atlas course when I was 9 years old. Parents these days would intervene and ask why the hell a Year 4 child would feel the need to beef up for self-protection, but they were different times, and thus began the journey, with weight training, martial arts, marathon running and indoor rowing being pursued to sometimes ridiculous levels of intensity.

The student ignores him and clutches his phone tightly with both hands as the teacher tries to pull it from him. Eventually he takes the phone and walks to the front of the class to continue the lesson. And Mrs M just got approved for a year’s extension to her PhD which we hope will include her scholarship Disentangling precisely what has been caused by the pandemic and what is the result of Brexit is difficult. For Johnson the coincidence of Covid and Brexit has proved convenient in one sense, shielding him from blame and obscuring the picture. But economists broadly agree that the long term economic hit from Brexit will be far greater than from the pandemic. And in the last week or so I got offered a new job, which I will start in February – same company, same work, higher grade and more money.I haven’t seen my son for 16 months in-person, and that’s starting to grate a bit. Still, hopefully see him next May when he graduates High School and goes to University, a steop I’m really not ready for. I started the year as a postman, which I did until about May, when I quit because a) the office I finally ended up at, after being shunted around, wasn’t that well run. b) I didn’t want it to become what I did. So, we’ve covered the nineteenth century and we’re now going to look at all the experiments in the novel in the early twentieth century. First world problems though, I know that. We are all healthy, I am still in a good job, we managed a summer holiday to the South West. But dear God, I just wish this pandemic and all that it brings with it, as well as our awful, venal, utterly incompetent government, would just go away.