My kids were more interested in my egg timer app, which cock-a-doodle-doos when the eggs are ready, and bashing the egg’s head in than eating them.

STUMPED!

“We say these rules are the rules when Russia invades Ukraine or when the Rohingya are being massacred by Myanmar, but if it’s now Israel butchering Palestinians, depriving them of food, displacing them en masse, then the rules don’t apply and whoever tries to apply the rules is antisemitic? It is really putting those rules in jeopardy.” Source: Measured Yet Damning: The ICJ’s Genocide Ruling on Israel - DAWN

Scratch that. Improvised rain shield.

Viking dress up day.

…people like you and I continue to have a vital role, as everybody does, in using the power of the people to wrest control from a vicious political class of killers. Craig Murray: Has International Law Survived, or Has the Western Political Class Killed It?

LAST WORDS

These are my last words writing from the café at the local leisure centre where I go every Wednesday during term time as a parent volunteer for my son’s swimming class. It’s their final session today. My lad has gone from being so anxious about swimming that he didn’t want to go at all, to wanting to go for swimming lessons now the class sessions are over. The café that was closed has reopened, although I still haven’t bought anything.

Germany has announced it will intervene in the substantial case to support Israel. They argue explicitly that, as the world’s greatest perpetrator of genocide, they are uniquely placed to judge. Craig Murray Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2

Perhaps nothing I did would help prevent genocide, but we all have to do that which is within our power to try. Craig Murray Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2

…genocide is never justified. It is absolute, a crime in itself. No matter how appalling the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel or Israeli citizens, a genocidal response was not appropriate and never could be. Vaughn Lowe, via Your Man in the Hague (in a Good Way)

SSSSSNNNNAAAAKKKKEEEEE! Very old photo (May? 1990). Mesa Verde National Park. Always thought it was a Rattlesnake. Google Lens suggests it might also be a Pine snake. 🐍

Irreplaceable! (I have a work commitment tomorrow morning.)

Heart skipped a beat (or several) when I saw this in the canal this morning…

Annual (eek!) morning walk.

CURRICULUM VITAE (MEMENTO VIVERE)

Having been so bitterly rejected both in love and at work, I started to look around for new opportunities. I don’t remember how I found it, but a nursing home nearer to where I lived at the time (Cleethorpes) was advertising for a Therapeutic Activities Co-ordinator to develop a range of meaningful activities with frail elderly people who also had -iirc - impaired memory, or dementia. Right up my street (well, just around the corner).

File under HamasIsrael don’t care about their own people?

When I first went to university, one of my first mates was a very quiet and shy bass player, a Geordie skinhead called Tim. Tim was into getting stoned and listening to Frank Zappa. I never got into Zappa. But I am now. Your browser does not support iframes.

Those were the days.

THRIVING?

My son’s school’s Thrive teacher is leaving. She helped transform my lad’s experience of school from being one where he had weekly if not daily challenges with regulating his emotions and his behaviour, to one where he enjoys school every day. She’s going to be very greatly missed. I managed to tell her this today and thank her for her work. It was so sad to hear her story. She has committed ten years of her life to helping our youngsters get the best start in life, and done lots of extra work getting accredited to do so.

Wife has returned home after being abducted by aliens (scroll down past the football).

CURRICULUM VITAE (HOCUS POCUS)

Inevitably, my time as a Manchester University player came to end, and I left the club by mutual consent when my contract ended. Somewhat bizarrely, looking back on it, I joined what appeared to be an obscure and tiny religious cult in the middle of nowhere (deepest, darkest Lincolnshire), dabbling in some rather questionable therapy / witchcraft. My role was primarily as Administrator with responsibility for making sense of the almost entirely lacking paperwork, contracts, and financial arrangements of the company (?

TEACHERS

Yesterday morning, I was sat in the foyer of my little kid’s children’s centre waiting for the staff to arrive so he could start his day. He was eager to get in, banging on the locked doors to the main part of the nursery. In my day, the kids would be trying to get out, not in. Some other parents, younger than me, commented the same. Everyone recounted some particularly, sadistic child-hating teacher who regularly brutalised them or some other poor unfortunate during their formative years.

CURRICULUM VITAE (AD ABSURDUM)

I spent most of my three years ‘working’ in Manchester down the pub. When I was in my shared smoke-filled office, I was more often than not playing a very early demo of football manager (four free seasons, on repeat), or compiling a regular comedy fanzine for the five-a-side footy team I helped to found and run. They were crazy and fun times. Every other weekend, I got a train back to Lincolnshire for band rehearsals, recordings and occasional gigs.

CURRICULUM VITAE (AD NAUSEAM)

After failing to become the next George Harrison, I spent three years idling around, getting into trouble, and generally not knowing what to do with myself. I had some summer jobs working on a local farm stacking straw bales on to lorries from Cockermouth, feeding turkeys, and working in the grain barn (doing what I can’t remember, although I do remember not being able to breathe because of all the dust).

365

It’s my 365 day ‘anniversary’ on micro.blog. When I moved here last year, it was in the wake of the X-ification of Twitter, the exodus to Mastodon, and generally wanting to start blogging/writing again. I’m still on Twitter/X, and left Mastodon to move. I did start blogging a bit more to begin with, but that soon tailed off to nothing, as it always does. I did try to interact with the micro.