Sunday 14th September 2025, 2.15pm (day 5,134)

Post-Sunday lunch card gaming. Clare demanded to play cribbage for the first time in a long while. Only the Brighton & Hove Albion cards could be found. Didn’t faze her – she won 2-1.

Post-Sunday lunch card gaming. Clare demanded to play cribbage for the first time in a long while. Only the Brighton & Hove Albion cards could be found. Didn’t faze her – she won 2-1.

It’s only the second day of September but the kids have started back at school, it is much cooler and damper than it was, and there’s this general feeling of decline (and I don’t even mean in political terms, though we’ve certainly got that too). Autumn is upon us, I fear. Well, let’s make the most of it.

Chose exactly the wrong time this afternoon to pop down to town for a bit of food shopping, particularly as I did so without umbrella or jacket. I may, or may not, have taken this one from inside the White Swan pub…. OK, I did. But it was certainly a preferable option at this point in time.

I don’t care that I haven’t captured him actually picking up the piece. Somehow it works just fine like this, and chess is an intrinsically black-and-white subject matter.

The sunshine continues: if you hear any Britons complaining about the weather this spring, you have my permission to scoff. This jackdaw seems to be enjoying it just like the rest of us.

This ‘reading in the pub’ theme has been done before but after nearly 5,000 days some things just come round again. Anyway, taking in James V. Wertsch’s concept of ‘mediated action’ is better done with the accompaniment of alcohol, I feel.

Back home, where it is, of course, raining. (It did seem to be threatening rain on one evening in Dubai but it never fell.) Then again, the sun is shining too, at this point in time. It’s this essential ambivalence that keeps us Britons who we are, I suppose.

A visit from Vicki and Pete, and as I get inexorably older, days like this are increasingly welcome. I think the relatives are happy about it too, despite how Pete may look on this shot.

I have put in plenty of hours already this week and there are still two long and busy days to come. So no, I don’t really care that I was in the White Swan before 4pm today. And, I’m sure, nor does the other guy.

The sun comes out, and with it, various bits of English skin that have not had much opportunity for solar exposure in recent months. And it shows. Clare, who has never been one for tanning much, decides to display possibly the whitest legs in Europe as we enjoy an end-of-week beer or three. They’ve some catching up to do on the arms, for sure.