No - you could get the 81 both prebuilt or as a kit. The kit was cheaper, clearly, and was the only one we could afford.

ZX-81 which my brother and I built from a kit. I was astonished when it actually worked.

As far as TV is concerned, Murderbot, The Eternaut, Babylon Berlin & Your Friends and Neighbors continue to be the best that we are watching at the moment - pretty much in that order.

Film:

• The Penguin Lessons (2025) - Steve Coogan puts in a fine, morose performance here. It takes a while to engage, but pays off well in the end. Nothing groundbreaking, but well worth a view.

• The Salt Path (2025) - a solid adaptation of the book which, perhaps inevitably, focuses more on the emotional journey of the couple than the incidents of the walk as the book tends to. It did not entirely grab me and felt rather overlong as a result, but still an interesting and well acted tale.

Most recently, spot the car that isn’t black, white, grey, blue or red.

Commercial vehicles don’t count. Gold/bronze gets 1 pt; yellow gets 2 or 4 if it isn’t a sports car; pink gets 4; dark/british racing green gets 4 or 8 if it isn’t vintage; any other type of green gets 6.

We were making this up at the time. That’s as far as we got.

We have played the legs game occasionally, but not much fun on motorways.

And “Horse” from Eagle vs Shark. You win the round when you see a horse and say “horse”.

I really can’t recall but not a lot at all. To avoid the whole blood-diamond thing we bought a vintage one from a charity, where it had been donated.

Yes, much the same here. Forgettable is, disappointingly, the key word.

I’ll carry on watching, but largely in hope that it improves rather than for actual enjoyment as it is.

Catching up after a couple of weeks away, so:

The Righteous Gemstones - after an unfocussed start to the 4th and final season, it has picked up again in the second half. One more episode to go.

Sirens - the new, much vaunted miniseries, and another in the ‘aren’t rich people terrible’ genre. I have only seen the first ep so far. I will continue, but that episode didn’t really live up to the hype, IMHO.

The Eternaut - Intriguing Argentine apocalypse tale. Also only the first ep so far, but I am definitely hooked.

Murderbot - I’ve been looking forward to this one, having read the first few books. It has been cricitised for being slow, but I am enjoying it so far.

Poker Face - the return of this neo-Columbo show. It is as undemandingly entertaining as before.

Babylon Berlin - halfway through season 1 and it continues to be stylish, grim and gripping.

Your Friends and Neighbors - and another ‘aren’t rich people terrible’ tale, which is developing engagingly.

I grew up near Slut’s Hole Lane. It didn’t have a sign at the time and I only found the name on an old map, but the sign has been put back since.

More recently a regular walk would take me past a woodland called Fiscal Policy. I did find an explanation for this one. I can’t recall the details, but it was rather dull overall.

Right handed. My wallet is in my left pocket, since anything that I need to do with it will involve holding it with my left and doing the thing with my right.

Both my phones (home and work) are in my right, since I can carry out basic functions on them one handed.

It sounds like this is the page that you want.

Not since the early '80s.

It’s the end of a fortnight’s holiday for me, so I’m driving home tomorrow, followed by pizza and undemanding tv comedy when I get home to my wife. I have missed her a lot.

On Sunday there are some post-holiday logistics and chores to sort out, but we’ll have lunch out and probably play Gloom in the evening: a card game that one of the friends with whom I am on holiday introduced me to. I ordered a set myself after the first game.

Yes. Why do you ask?

Ha, yes. They have now updated the photos. I imagine that there were quite a few people pointing this out to them.

The photos that the Independent are using at North American elk - Cervus canadensis. However, the species that they are actually looking to introduce are Aces alces - Eurasian elk, which are what North Americans know as moose.

The Guardian did get this right a few days back.

ETA: they have now corrected the photos.

I think that it does improve after ep1, but we still abandoned it after around 4 eps. There was still nothing compelling or that added to the overall Duniverse.

Not specifically for the eyes or posture, but for overall approach and attitude to situations like this:

• Marcus Aurelius’ quote: Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. - and stoicism in general.
• Imagine them sitting on the toilet. You can’t take them too seriously like that.
• Take a longer perspective: consider whether this interaction will be of any significance at all in 10 years time?

Just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud, after a bit of delay in the middle. Some good world-building and interesting concepts, and an engaging tale - but not quite up with Children of Time, I’d say.

About a third of the way through Iain M Banks’ Use of Weapons. It seems too focused on the flashbacks - which have not coalesced into a cohesive whole so far. There is still plenty of time, of course.

Comments like that say far more about the person saying it than about the person being described most of the time, I’d say.

I’d need to know how good the describer is like in that area before I could make any assessment about the describee.

Yes. This is one of his Culture novels. I’ve been enjoying them so far.