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The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.

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8:53am on Wednesday, 8th April, 2026:

Red Lines

Weird

In those places in the village where the potholes are alarming but there's no available place to put a "hole" sign, some friendly local has taken to outlining the worst ones in red spray-paint.

In another part of the village, they used yellow paint. One of the ones marked thus was subsequently filled in with tarmac, which suggests that the council may have been responsible. They only did the one, though, so perhaps not. The red ones aren't marked by the council, because they're efficiently refreshed every so often with new paint.

In a party political broadcast for the Labour party yesterday, which was intended to address the local elections coming up next month, the Prime Minister spent his time telling us that he didn't go to war against Iran but that the Conservatives and Reform would have done. The Greens and Liberal Democrats wouldn't have joined in either, but he didn't mention that.

Our local TV news went out and about asking people in the region whether they would be voting, and if so, for which party. In the interest of balance, a vox pop was found to support each viewpoint (along with one intending not to vote) , but when asked what the most pressing matter was for them, the answers were universal accross the spectrum: potholes.

Sir Keir Starmer may have correctly figured that local elections are often regarded as a referendum on how well the national government is doing, but that's worth nothing if what really, really gets voters annoyed is a surfeit of holes in the road.

If only there were a tax explicitly created to finance keeping roads in good repair. It could be paid yearly, and be due for every roadworthy vehicle. "Road Tax" would be a good name.

8:26am on Tuesday, 7th April, 2026:

Essex Weekly

Miscellaneous

The Essex University weekly email shot, imaginatively named Essex Weekly, got around to mentioning that I'd been inducted into the UKIE Hall of Fame. The mention itself wasn't much, but it did link to a web page. I thought this was going to be the UKIE one, but I was wrong: the university made one itself.

https://www.essex.ac.uk/news/2026/03/23/essex-gaming-pioneer-inducted-into-hall-of-fame

As you can see, that award really is more orange than anything other than an orange.

8:22am on Monday, 6th April, 2026:

Egged Off

Outburst

I remember when Easter eggs were shaped like eggs.

Now, they're shaped like Thunderbird 2.

8:27am on Sunday, 5th April, 2026:

Dress-Down Doll

Anecdote

We were in a charity shop recently and bought a toy for our grandson. He's a bit young for it at the moment, but I'm sure it will bring him hours of education, or at least entertainment, when he gets older.

So, it's like one of those paper dress-up dolls you can get, but it's made of plywood. Also, you don't so much dress him up as dress him down. You start with a boy, then you take off his clothes, then you take off his skin, then you take off his muscles, then you take off his everything else until he's just a skeleton.

It's ... er ... well-intentioned.

You can remove different individual parts, you don't have to take the whole body to the same level. Want to see what a naked boy with a skeleton head and visible intestines looks like? You can do it.

Here are two simple examples, where I kept him clothed but burrowed into his head.

One looks like Homer Simpson, the other looks as if he didn't put on enough suntan lotion.

You can make great zombies with it, as I'm sure you can imagine. As for the groin area, well my wife and daughter we howling with laughter at what they could do with that, but I didn't look at their creations for fear of psychological trauma.

Quite why the hair stays on until you reach the skull, I don't know. So much for anatomical correctness.

8:26am on Saturday, 4th April, 2026:

Not Roadworks

Anecdote

Here is a picture of some work being done to a footpath in our village. The surface layer has been removed, leaving an undressed section perhaps two inches deep and maybe four feet long.

Here is a picture of the effect of this on the road.

The footpath was diverted onto the road, with barriers surrounding it. This narrowed the road, so the workers installed the traffic lights. Traffic is so light, though, that most of the time we were left waiting for the light to change but nothing was coming in the opposite direction.

Here is a picture of one of the traffic lights, unplugged by a frustrated resident. No, it wasn't me; I'm law-abiding.

The other one was unplugged, too.

This reinforces my belief that if the space take up by roadworks or whatever is less than that taken up by a parked car, and a car could park where the roadworks are, then you don't need traffic lights any more than you do when someone parks a car there.

8:19am on Friday, 3rd April, 2026:

X

Weird

Our grandson has a set of wooden bricks with letters and pictures on them. This is one of the pictures:

It looks as if it's some kind of sword-fighting Dalek, but it's not. Apprently, it's a xylophone, a musical instrument the chief purpose of which is to illustrate the letter X.

Personally, I prefer to think of it as a sword-fighting Dalek.

9:06am on Thursday, 2nd April, 2026:

Brown Rice

Anecdote

Hey, Sainsbury's: if you put paella rice in a brown packet, people who know nothing about cooking will think it's brown rice. No, writing "paella rice" on the packet isn't enough.

I speak from personal experience here.

8:20am on Wednesday, 1st April, 2026:

Headlines

Weird

This week's Essex County Standard has some odd headlines.

(They had that one twice)

I'll show the last one with some of the accompanying article.

"Other" wild birds?

8:17am on Tuesday, 31st March, 2026:

Early Computer Games

Anecdote

In the modern art museum at the Laboral complex in Gijón, Spain, there's a wall showing the development of different arts, sciences and technologies (or at least there was when I visited it last year). Pleasingly, it includes a strip for computer games.

I'm not complaining that they omitted MUD, because they only have so much space. I do wonder why they chose to use Neverwinter Nights as their exemplar for MMORPGs, though.

I'd never heard of Bertie the Brain before, but it does look to have a decent claim to be the first video game (in that it was a game, Noughts and Crosses, and had a screen).

Who says modern art centres aren't educational?

9:04am on Monday, 30th March, 2026:

Artificial Flowers

Weird

I think these flowers outside our local pub might be artificial.

The fact that passing schoolkids keep pulling off the heads and stacking them up adds weight to this belief.

12:39pm on Sunday, 29th March, 2026:

Twice

Weird

With local elections coming up in May, the Conservatives were first out of the blocks with their campaign literature.

Weirdly, they have the same person standing both for the city council and the county council. Apparently, this kind of thing is allowed.

Needless to say, because she's standing for both councils, we were in receipt of two identical election leaflets urging us to vote for her twice.

Perhaps it's the Conservatives' way of demonstrating that they're so rich they can afford to leaflet us with the same material twice.

9:46am on Saturday, 28th March, 2026:

Jesus!

Weird

My Steam discovery queue has started scraping the bottom of the barrel again.

This is different to the Jesus Christ Simulator game I also didn't buy two years ago. It must be becoming a genre.

10:43am on Friday, 27th March, 2026:

Dondorf 243

Anecdote

I bought some more old playing cards.

These were something of a bargain, as there are two packs in an original wooden box. They're by Dondorf, my favourite manufacturer. However, they're a little different to the usual Dondorf cards you see around.

As you can see, they use the English (Rouennais) pattern rather than the more esoteric patterns Dondorf usually invents for itself. They definitely are Dondorf, though: the Jack of Clubs has "Dondorf Frankfurt" written on his black chest band. There are some nice Dondorf touches to the faces, but few people would look at this deck and think they weren't just regular playing cards like the ones you buy in shops.

I doubled the size of the cards in the scan (they're patience cards) so you could read the Jack's chest band, but doing so also made the tax stamp on the Ace of Hearts easier to read. It's from district 15, which is the one for Frankfurt am Main. This particular stamp was used in Germany from 1889 to 1918. The #243 packs were manufactured from 1909 to 1933, so that dates mine to somewhere between 1909 and 1918 inclusive.

The packs don't come with jokers. These could have been taken out (most Dondorf English-pattern decks do have jokers), but it's more likely that they were deliberately omitted; these are patience decks, after all.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with them. I prefer some of the prettier ones, but Dondorf did a good job of making an attractive version of the English pattern.

8:19am on Thursday, 26th March, 2026:

Comments

Outburst

Facebook has put in some new kind of feature to limit spam. You can't post anything too soon after you last posted something.

I don't know how long "too soon" is, but I couldn't post a reply to a comment on my own post after three hours, nor could I post a reply to a different comment on a different one of my posts nine hours after that.

Why is replying to comments on my own post considered spam? Why is commenting directly on my own post considered spam?

It's as if these people don't want their social network to be buzzing (except with ads).

8:44am on Wednesday, 25th March, 2026:

Fruity

Weird

Some people who are against making coats out of animal furs are also against making coats out of artificial furs, on the grounds that wearing these encourages people to wear the coats made of animal furs.

I don't know what they'd make of these.

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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).