This family (I suspect, a boy and his grandparents) were not the only ones wondering what they were doing outside this afternoon — particularly watching Brighouse Town, who slumped to a 1-5 home defeat. For the last 60% of April 2024 I will be somewhere with better (and certainly drier) weather than here — but I’m not there yet.
I did want to get a photo of Joe posted from this weekend; after all we did go all the way to Scotland just to check up on him. Well, mostly. This is the first time he has appeared on here since July 23rd last year.
“Hello… hello? Can you hear me…..?” [pause] “I think you’re on mute….” Did the Starship Enterprise’s communications network have a ‘mute’ button do you think? Colleague Louis does his best.
And so breakfast, and then home again. Had the shot not captured the eye of the woman in the kitchen, there would have been nothing to show here: though I guess his ears are shapely enough.
A dull and chilly morning in Milton Keynes was passed in ‘Pixel Heaven’: not my term, but the name of this retro video arcade, or is it a working museum? £15 or so gets you three hours of indulgence. Which, I have to admit, was not as nostalgic an experience as anticipated — I seem to prefer pinball these days — though if the place had had a Bubble Bobble machine, it would have been different. The kid certainly looks as if he is enjoying watching Dad on this one, however.
If they don’t necessarily look happy I can assure you that they were, as these fans of Morecambe FC have just seen their team come back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at Crewe Alexandra: and at 2-0, no one in the whole ground saw that result coming, believe me. As the set of humanity that counts itself as Morecambe fans includes the wife (and I have to say, increasingly, myself), this was a good turnout of events.
I’m not saying this has never happened before — see the note — but today I can say that along with about twenty-five other people, I took a class with someone who is genuinely the world-leading authority in their specific field. Like, the ultimate teacher. I said to a colleague the other day that I was coming to this session on epistemic network analysis (it’s a way of depicting the patterns of conversation in groups, the way they talk about things) with some ’eminent American guy’ and she said, immediately, ‘Oh, you mean David Shaffer?’. Even Clare — who, while being a highly intelligent woman, does not move in the same strictly academic circles as I do — had heard of him. And Prof Shaffer turned out to be a friendly, agreeable chap, the two hours of my time very well spent.
Note: I think there are three other appearances of truly globally reputable teachers on here: Etienne Wenger, Michelle Brown and Jürgen Habermas.
Another day of data inspection and introspection brings to an end a whole week of much the same kind of stuff, so ending it with a rather ghostly self-portrait seems appropriate. Yes, I’m in a pub (The Albert), though not drinking rum.
The FA Sunday Cup might not seem like much to the rest of the world but about 600 people turned up today at Lower Breck FC’s stadium, in Liverpool, to see one of the quarter-finals. The tension seems to be getting to this guy: he’s about to see the home team (Pineapple) go out 0-2 to the visiting Trooper team from the West Midlands, anyway.
My last day of the promised 11-in-a-row in Toronto. It’s been a worthwhile trip for sure, although that doesn’t mean it’s been all that eventful (Saturday night’s accident aside). But the necessary work has been done, and possibly I will be back in June. For now, the pre-flight ritual beer in the departure lounge, then home.
Being 42 