The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:29am on Thursday, 25th December, 2025:
Weird
8:37am on Wednesday, 24th December, 2025:
Anecdote
When my wife and I were looking through photos to put on next year's calendar, we came across a good one of our younger daughter and grandson. Unfortunately, it was spoiled by the presence of a woman in the background.
"We could use it if it weren't for that useless woman", I said.
I meant "useless" in the sense of "not helping". Earlier, I'd described a van as being useless. It's my default way of referring to something in a photograph that would improve the photograph by not being there.
"That's me", said my wife, inspecting the useless woman.
We had a good laugh about it, but this was two weeks ago. I fear that the longer she takes to plot her revenge, the worse it will be.
10:02am on Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025:
Weird
This is a cruel way of tricking hungry birds into thinking they've found berries large enough to feed a family of eighteen.
9:22am on Monday, 22nd December, 2025:
Weird
I saw this list propped up in the bread section of Sainsbury's.
It looks as if it's someone's shopping list, but it's all Sainsbury's products and it includes the prices. Could it, therefore, be some kind of stealth marketing campaign?
Nah, Sainsbury's isn't imaginative enough to try that. It's a shopping list.
9:13am on Sunday, 21st December, 2025:
Anecdote
Oh, I meant to post this earlier.
When I was in ASDA a few days ago, buying ricotta cheese for my wife's ricotta cheese confection, I picked up some other items as well. I think I ran eight objects in all through the till.
When it came to paying, I reached confidently into my jacket pocket and ... no wallet. It didn't occur to me that it had been stolen, because it hadn't been: I knew exactly what had happened. When I'd gone to the Co-Op to buy the ricotta cheese, it had been cold so I'd put on my coat. I'd put my wallet in that coar. After I got home, I transferred the wallet back to my jacket, so so I thought, but actually I'd transferred it to the other pocket of my coat (they hang next to each other in the hallway).
So, there I was in ASDA with eight items of shopping and a till that kept asking if I wanted to continue.
Now, a good many people these days pay using their phone's near-field communication system. I heard about this when it came out, but avoided it because the security wasn't good. It's since improved, but I never got around to installing it on my phone.
There, in the automatic till section of ASDA, I downloaded Google Pay, installed it, ran it, entered my card details (conveniently remembered by my phone), entered my card verification value (conveniently remembered by my memory), rushed through the tutorial and paid what the till was asking.
I was astonished that this actually worked.
I'll still use my card to pay, because I have to get my wallet out for loyalty cards anyway (no, supermarkets, I don't want your stupid app on my device, thank you). Besides, my phone is more likely to be stolen than my wallet, so I wouldn't want to rely on it.
My wife doesn't like relying on hers, either, but she keeps her payment cards in the cover of her phone so is still stuffed if she loses either.
9:52am on Saturday, 20th December, 2025:
Anecdote
Overheard in Sainsbury's, from a hassled shelf-stacker who shouted it at her colleague:
"Don't you criticise MY stacking, Mr Leaning Tower of Pancetta!"
He was wearing a Christmas jumper, so probably got off lightly.
12:17pm on Friday, 19th December, 2025:
Weird
Ancestry is clearly running out of ideas for its "dominant traits" DNA updates.
If they can only guarantee that your footedness is 1% determined genetically, there seems little point in mentioning it (other than as clickbait).
9:48am on Thursday, 18th December, 2025:
Anecdote
My wife wanted some ricotta cheese, so I had to walk to the local Co-Op to buy some. They didn't have any, so I walked to the Nisa store further away. I was a little apprehensive, because I knew they were rebranding and the changeover date was the 18th. Were they closing on the 18th or opening on the 18th, though?
They were opening! Yay!
They were opening three hours after I got there.
I asked at the door, but they didn't sell ricotta cheese either.
8:43am on Wednesday, 17th December, 2025:
Weird
I found this business card at the dentist's last week.
You can see why people would say to him, "with a name like that, you should have been a barber!".
You can also see why people might ask him, "Are you related to Sean Lock, the comedian?".
You can also see how, being faced with one of these two responses every time you introduced yourself to someone new might prompt a career in psychotherapy.
9:06am on Tuesday, 16th December, 2025:
Anecdote
We went on the Colchester light walk yesterday, which was a fifty-minute trail through Castle Park. It was quite good!
Never mind that, though. There was a section where you could write a wish on a luggage tag and tie it to a wire-mesh wall. Most people expressed wishes for health, happiness and peace, but not this person:
It would have been well worth the entrance fee for this alone, except my younger daughter bought me my ticket so in my case it was free anyway.
9:29am on Monday, 15th December, 2025:
Miscellaneous
On the left, a scan of a photograph of my paternal grandmother, which I helpfully uploaded to Ancestry.com a few years ago,
On the right, what someone is claiming is a photograph of my paternal grandmother on Ancestry.com .
Thanks to AI "enhancements", a hundred years from now no-one will know what any of us actually looked like.
My grandmother's eyes were very, very dark brown.
8:45am on Sunday, 14th December, 2025:
Weird
I'm not up to speed on fairy yuletide fashion, but it seems to me that wearing skirts made of holly leaves will inevitably lead to serious leg injuries.
8:37am on Saturday, 13th December, 2025:
Weird
8:38am on Friday, 12th December, 2025:
Weird
8:46am on Thursday, 11th December, 2025:
Weird
It's nice to see games competing with Disney movies for Lego sets.
Fortnite has a PEGI 12 rating, but the Lego sets are for children aged 7+, 9+ and 10+.
I'm sure there's a Games Studies paper in the making called "Lego: Gateway to Violent Video Games", although you could replace the word "Lego" in that with pretty well any toy and still have a publishable Games Studies paper.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).