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New year was a bit of a washout then. I was going to go to the pub but it was raining exceedingly heavily, so I resorted to my own supplies.

The Grannywagon was serviced and tested for another year. The rear shock absorbers needed replacing, but overall the cost was not too excessive. I was expecting the shock absorbers to be a big spring, but in reality they look more like the stays on the boot lid. The coil springs are a separate component, apparently.

A couple of trips out. First was a day trip around the Dearne triangle of random small towns. The highlight was the Wath Tap micropub, where I ended up surrounded by a birthday party for one of the regulars there. I was also able to collect a few more Spoons for the tick list.

Next was a couple of days in Blackpool. It snowed and froze over whilst I was there, unusually for the coast, so I slid over a few times and obtained some cuts and bruising. The copious amounts of booze consumed on the Thursday pub crawl probably didn’t help.

My new years splurge was on a Choyong LC90 radio which, probably uniquely, combines both a shortwave tuner and an internet stream and Bluetooth receiver in one unit. It has some quirks and oddities but seems to work fairly competently. I’ll probably write up some more substantial opinions on the thing once I’ve used it for a few weeks.

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The unusually cold weather seen previously became unusually mild instead. The communal area of the flats has no heating so didn’t heat up as quickly as outside. This resulted in a three storey slip-n-slide being created as condensation settled on every flat surface. Equilibrium was reached after three days.

A return visit to London, this time for the annual Christmas-time tour from The Kunts starting at the New Cross Inn. A suitably cheapo hotel room (a Travelodge, of course!) was obtained at nearby Deptford Bridge so a walkable evening was in order. The Shirker’s provided pre-gig drinks, plus I was pleased to see that the venue bar at the New Cross now has a bank of cask pumps in place. The gig was therefore enhanced by several pints of Brockley Pale.

I was also talked into a run down to Milton Keynes, for the final stop of the tour at the Craufurd Arms. Gem and Lee are to blame for that. It was a no-go originally, as I was supposed to be working an early shift on the Sunday, but the new rotas starting that week changed it to a late instead so I could wangle an overnighter in. It also gave the Grannywagon a good run. Both the Craufurd and the hotel bar stocked Brixton Reliance Pale, which is apparently owned by Heineken now and brewed at Beavertown in Enfield so has lost some of its provenance.

Speaking of rota changes, I now have the Nottingham line signed off on the route card. Not a bad run, but they can get rather busy on the weekends.

Additional Grannywagon mileage was also clocked up over Christmas week, primarily caused by bad planning on my part. I had a pub shift in Derby on Boxing Day between socials in Merseyside on Christmas Day and the 27th, so two round trips were put in. I got four different routes each time though:

  • Snake Pass, M67, Manchester city centre, M602/M62, M6, M58
  • M58, M6, M56, A555, A6
  • A50, A500, M6, M62, M57
  • M57, M62, A57, A50, A537/Cat & Fiddle Pass, A6, 13 Bends

The roadworks on the M6 through Haydock have finally finished, so it was a pleasure to drive along the newly resurfaced carriageway without worrying about average speed cameras.

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This would have been two weekly posts, but as I had difficulty changing the original post setting from ‘draft’ to ‘published’, you can cope with a combined fortnightly post instead.

The presence of a long weekend along with a desire to do something that wasn’t sleeping lead to a hastily arranged trip to that there London. Hastily arranged as in all planned at 2300 the day before whilst at work. A cheapo hotel room was obtained in Kingston-upon-Thames so that became the focus of drinking activities. I managed to collect a few more Spoons for the collection, and also some other pubs for the purists. Highlight location was probably Surbiton, which I had unfortunately left until late on, so didn’t make it around everywhere I had my eye on. A return visit will be in order, along with Tolworth which also had some interesting looking establishments that I saw going past on the bus.

A more local drinking session took place in Wakefield with Rich. As a result, I am now in possession of a deerstalker.

I came across a heavily discounted parka-type coat that I purchased, which came in handy for a period of unusually cold weather. The heating in the flat has now been switched on too. There was also a heavy dumping of snow that made getting home from a late pub shift, that would normally take around 35 minutes, take around three hours instead.

Also picked up on the cheap was a pod coffee machine. Teach me not to proof read, I got this last week. Anyway, the following still stands: Now, I fully appreciate that coffee pods work out more expensive per cup and have a potentially dubious environmental record, however the convenience of not having to grind beans, warm up the espresso machine and then clean it up afterwards when I just want a quick shot to go wins out overall. Fellow pod machine owners have also pointed me towards some alternative avenues to pick up pods at a lower price point that I shall investigate.

The coffee machine at the church kitchen had been playing up for the past couple of weeks. It was ascertained that perhaps reassembling the filter bowl completely – i.e. putting the spring mount back in – after cleaning it would stop it flooding the counter with coffee.

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Fast food opinions, because I rarely have it but have needed to on two occasions this week:

  • McDonald’s McRib: the finest arseflaps and eyelids in a wet bun with barbecue sauce. Fucking shit, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.
  • Wendy’s Krusty Krab Kollab: it’s basically a standard Dave’s burger with nice sauce on. To be fair, Wendy’s burgers are quite good insofar as fast food goes, and this special was no more expensive than the standard pricing, so I can go with that.
    • I remember Spongebob Squarepants being launched. Apparently, that was 25 years ago according to this promotion. I feel old now.

Untappd has been binned off. I had set the status as “Occasionally, I even check in what I drink” because that’s how little effort I put into it. I finally reached the conclusion that I no longer cared, so see ya Jimmy Greg/Tim!

I picked up a Nespresso capsule coffee machine on clearance. I managed to fit it on the kitchen worktop after some re-arrangement of small appliances and disposal of rubbish. Now I need to work out how to dispose of used capsules.

Some places that I had intended to go this week, but never did because I preferred sleeping:

  • London
  • Tipton
  • The doctor’s surgery; although they never got back to me about an appointment, so that’s on them.
  • The supermarket
  • The pub

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Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public:

  • Missing your stop does not constitute an emergency, Get off at the next station and take a train back.
  • In case of disruption, we are not capable of rustling up a substitute bus within ten minutes. Wait on the platform until we can do so, or until the next train comes/the line reopens.
  • The driver, conductor, and dispatcher are pretty confident as to where the train is going. Listening to them is better than believing whatever nonsense Trainline is shitting out. Certainly, do not convince a train-load’s worth of passengers to alight, and then re-board within 60 seconds.

I had an IBS flare-up towards the start of the week. The supermarket have decided that diarrhoea medicine requires you to be 18 or older to be able to purchase it. Underage? Nah, go shit yerself kidda! As an aside, the same supermarket only needs you to be 16 to buy paracetamol, a product that is more likely to kill you should you decide to overdose on it.

The insurance on the Grannywagon has been renewed for another year. The good news was that the quote given was £100 less than last year. The less good news is that that is still £80 more than it was in 2022. We may return to normality, as it was, one day.

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Wow, a weekly round-up post. Let’s see if I can keep this up to beat the current record run of three weeks1.

🎦 The Apprentice: I was expecting this to be a Donald Trump hit-piece, which it was to some extent, but it was more of a Roy Cohn hit-piece.

🎸 Kevin Bloody Wilson/Jenny Talia: Good, clean family fun. I’ve been humming FOCUS for the rest of the week towards dickheads.

I was out in Leeds on Friday for Light Night, although I was more interested in the Indian restaurant that had been booked for tea beforehand. I suppose having lived in Blackpool for a decade makes me less impressed by light shows.

The site is now fully Automattic free, as I’ve replaced Akismet with an alternative anti-spam solution. The themes of the recent messages it has caught have been porn and bitcoins.

Continue reading →

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As previously threatened, I have finally got around to making the desired changes to this humble hovel on the internet. Firstly, in keeping with the theme of unnecessary delusions of grandeur/large buildings, House of Deyes has become Anto Towers. This will also potentially allow me to make theme park related jokes. I’ve also fired up the new domain name anto.im, and I’ve even got the old domain redirecting through for the time being for the one person who needs to update their bookmarks.

I’ve also made a slight adjustment to the backend, which now uses the ClassicPress version of WordPress. Classic Editor or die! Thanks to Mark for alerting me to the existence of this version. Just in time for WordPress proper to implode under the idiots in charge.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual. All the old stuff has been imported over so my previous offerings to the void are now available here. I’ve got the colours looking the same. I haven’t bothered installing the IndieWeb and Fediverse related plugins, as I didn’t really make great use of them previously. I’ll see how I get on without them for now.

I’ll now spend an afternoon looking for broken links, of which there will likely be several, and updating references to HoD, deyes.im etc to the new format.

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The slackness continues through the year. Mind you, I found some old webpages that I had made from 2004 on a USB drive that I was trying to find something else on. Those pages followed a similar pattern to this, so it’s good to see that I have retained some level of consistency over the past 20 years.

In other news, I’ll be making some changes to this webshite over the next few weeks. Included in this will be transfer over to a new domain name as I don’t really use the deyes moniker any more. It was more a thinly veiled disguise from the “professional” real life, but as I no longer require that cover I might as well go back to something more recognisable.

I had planned to accompany the last paragraph with an image of an exceedingly useless sign that was displayed on multiple shelves in the local Tesco Extra that read “We’ll be making some changes soon” and no further detail. Unfortunately, they had all disappeared before I got a chance to take a photo of one. I can’t tell what changes have been made either, as everything is still in the same place as it was before.

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Exactly 30% of the way into the year and I haven’t taken the time to dump some words on this site. I didn’t even manage to take the opportunity to use my page numbering system to do a ‘post not found’ joke on week four.

Oh well, business as usual I suppose!

I’m on weekly leave next week so I might be able to muster up something interesting.

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As usual, I’ve been rather slack in keeping up to date with events and happenings. I’ll try and remember what I’ve done since May.

The main change has been a change of employment, having gone from bus to train. Where I used to log various delays and cancellations, I can now be a cause of them. Also: better pay, benefits, conditions and such.

An earlier post was seeking suggestions for areas of outer London for pub based investigations. I managed two of those with calls at Penge and Eltham, plus Bromley and Stoke Newington as well.

This year’s Loony Party conference took place in Wales (specifically, let me check the spelling here, Llanwrtyd Wells). Beer options were a bit suspect and for the first time it rained during the cabinet reshuffle. Hopefully, that isn’t a bad omen. I was also roped in as an election agent in the Tamworth by-election. First count I’ve been to for a few years and completed relatively quickly too, as I was in bed by 3am.

Space idiot decided that not posting on Twitter was spamming, so that account got suspended. I got a Bluesky invite code around the same time though, so I have a new social network account to neglect instead. Mastodon continues to be my preferred waste of time, however a full range of options can be found in link-me-do corner.

That’s about everything of note, unless I remember something else later and add it into the small space above this paragraph. I’m off to the pub to celebrate one crap year ending and another beginning. Cheers/Sláinte/Iechyd da/Prost/As you are!