The first snowdrops are out in London.

Went for the first swim of the year this morning. And if the app for the pool is to be believed, I haven’t been since March last year (not counting holidays). That whole ‘work getting in the way of things’ I was talking about yesterday. Or being a good excuse, at least.

They had a sign up warning that the pool temperature was only 23.7°C. It was fine once I got going, though.

Happy New Year!!!

🅦🅞🅡🅓🄸🄿🄻🅈 #6
🌟 Length Score: 78%
🚀 Letter Score: 68
🔗 Play Wordiply: www.wordiply.com
🎬 Today’s starter: 🄲🄰🅃

The Guardian has a new word game, Wordiply:

🅦🅞🅡🅓🄸🄿🄻🅈 #4
🌟 Length Score: 73%
🚀 Letter Score: 46
🔗 Play Wordiply: www.wordiply.com
🎬 Today’s starter: 🄸🄲🄴

Happy Christmas, everyone!

I was listening to The Specials yesterday because of the sad death of Terry Hall, of course.

I was mildly distracted by this text early in that Guardian report:

The pioneering 2 Tone band rose thanks to the support of Joe Strummer,1 who invited them to support the Clash live,2 and of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

While not wrong, it ignores the fact that The Specials were bloody brilliant! The piece does make that clear later, to be fair, but it seems slightly the wrong way to weight it.

I also listened to some Fun Boy Three, and they were far better than I remembered, too, both with and without Bananarama.

  1. For whom there’s a big anniversary tomorrow. ↩︎

  2. I wish I’d seen The Clash on that tour, though. ↩︎

This is really weird. ‘Do the Dog’ by The Specials, but Apple Music brings up the lyrics of ‘The Last Day of Our Acquaintance’, by Sinead O’Connor.

At the start of this year, I promised myself I’d finish this novel by the end of the year.

I just passed the 70,000-word mark, and I’m on course to do it.

As long as Christmas doesn’t get in the way too much.

I opened a file where I had made some notes for a possible post. It had a link to something I might comment on. I clicked the link. Not only was the post gone, but the whole site; the whole Substack.

I created the file in March.

Own your stuff. Use your own site.