Doctor who (2005) s01e07 - Kronkburgers on Satellite 5 in the opening scenes.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) - Aubrey Plaza in an engaging character piece that has hints of Eagle vs Shark among others. It’s not outstanding by any means and not among Plaza’s best, but still witty and touching.

Way back in the day it used to be Cinema City in Norwich: the only art-house one in the city and where I ‘learnt’ cinema. It was great.

These days, I live between three small town cinemas in Suffolk, and they are all good in their own ways.

The Riverside in Woodbridge often has a talk about the film or maybe even an interview with the director or one of the cast etc on stage afterwards. Aldeburgh Cinema is run by a charity, shows a good few NT live events and local films and also has a documentary fest each year, and Leiston Film Theatre is, as they say on their site, the oldest purpose built cinema in the county (110 years now), and had the advantage for a while of being about 150m from our back gate. It is the most commercial of three in terms of programme, but still has some interesting stuff.

Fairly standard (for the UK, in the '70s): black trousers, blue or white shirt, dark blue blazer, school tie etc.

BUT, the blazer had the school emblem on, which was derived from the poultry trade that had been a major feature of the town’s prosperity at one time: we all had a large un-ironic turkey embroidered on our chests.

Without looking for sources - so I could be totally wrong - I believe that it did darken proportionately and that light meters would register that. However, human eyes are not light meters and adjust to the dimmer light without you knowing.

Does Ivor the Engine count as a cartoon? Animation, certainly, but I’m not sure about ‘cartoon’ as such.

Anyway, it is the 1975 version for me.

I don’t know whether it was you, but I have responded to this same question on Lemmy before.

Yes. We had a coal fire when I was growing up - in the 60s and 70s -, so it was an everyday thing during the winters.

Re-decorated their living rooms, fitted new kitchens, built patios and bbqs and so on.

We were the ones fitting the plexiglass etc.

I was considered an essential worker, along with a few colleagues.

There were three phases: going into it, being in it and coming out of it. During the first and and third of those there was new legislation and instructions coming in pretty much every day that needed to be interpreted and implemented and we had to do all of that. It was exhausting. And then everyone else came back from furlough and told us all about the DIY they had done and the books they had read and so on.

In the middle though: well, I work across a cluster of heritage and wildlife sites. There was a bare minimum of checks and maintenance that we were expected to do - pretty much alone - one at each site. Once that was done we went out and did patrols. They are some beautiful places and there were a few days when I completed the entire circuit of the site and saw absolutely no-one. Just me and the wildlife. That was excellent.

The single biggest thing for me is having a range of knowledgeable and intelligent friends and spending time with them. It very soon puts things in perspective.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty full-on at work, but this week is fairly straightforward so far - and looks ok over the next few days too.

Had a good weekend as well: some gardening, repaired the microwave instead of having to chuck it out and get another - which I was pleased with - and got out for an enjoyably bucolic walk. Also played chess with my SO - which is the first time for years - and have agreed to play backgammon in the near future. I have only ever played that a couple of times before and it did not grab me then. Maybe my SO will convert me though.

The original type of coat that would have been worn when riding was the Great Coat - which did cover the whole body, down to the ankles (and included the front of the body much better than a cloak). Those would have been worn by military officers, particularly.

Those were fine for riding, but then if you were off your horse and end up in the newly developed trench warfare - starting from around the US civil war onwards - you ended up wading through mud which got caked to the coat. So then they started cutting the coats shorter and they became Trench Coats.

The actual reason that we don’t is pretty much because of the invention of sewing machines. Once sewing machines were widespread, making coats became sooo much cheaper than they had been. Coats need a lot of tightly made seams which took time and so made coats very expensive. With sewing machines, making these seams was vastly quicker and more reliable.

Coats win over cloaks in so many ways because you can do things with your arms without exposing them or your torso to the rain and cold: impossible with a cloak.

Capes were the short versions - and intended to cover the shoulder and back without seams that might let the rain in, but with the new machine made seams, they were not needed either.

The really big change was when it became affordable to outfit armies with coats instead of cloaks or capes. At that point all the caché and prestige that was associated with military rank disappeared from cloaks and capes and they were suddenly neither useful not fashionable.

Nowadays, of course, they are no longer what your unfashionable dad would have worn: they are quite old enough to have regained a certain style.

I can listen to non-fiction when driving, although I tend to prefer podcasts. I get little or nothing from fiction when driving though. I can either focus on one or the other. Not both.

I will listen to fiction when washing up, cleaning or for an hour or so in bed before turning off to sleep. Those work OK for me.

Either way, though, long-term retention of detail is never as high from audio ad from the page for me.

And if it is, are they fans of the Wurzels?