Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

Current Bun

Gareth Southgate keen to blood Ryan Sessegnon, Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho and Callum Hudson-Odoi soon to prepare for Euro 2020.

The rise and rise of Callum is beyond amazing.

Kitchen Notes

Dinner last night due to the coincidence of what was left in my fruit and veg box and the inspiration of BBC Good Food.

Also knocked up a Coq au Win to take back to Cardiff.

All or Nothing: Manchester City

I enjoyed the All Blacks version of this back in the summer (Icons passim) and even showed it to Kiwi Andy in France last week.

I will be all over the Man City version like a cheap suit. It's available tomorrow, though I will have to take a rain check until next week as I am off-grid in Bronwydd Avenue for a couple Friday evening thru Sunday morning. It's a pity I can't download it onto my PC and take it with me.

fodderstompf

I left home before 6 this morning to get drive up the M40 for a business meeting with the Warwickshire Police.

When I got back to the office all our AWS infrastructure was lying on its face and beating the floor with its fists in a Richter scale tantrum.

I have now restored order the universe, but I ain't gonna get out of the premises for a lunchtime gym session. That ship has sailed.

As ever John Lydon put it best:

No one understands us
Nobody cares
No one loves us?
Love makes the world go round
Oh, it does that as well without any mistake whatsoever
Love does make the world go round
I don't know what these punk rockers get up to
Y'know these punk rockers with their spitting and their antics
Don't they realise that love makes the world go roooond?

A comedy about dying

I fully intend to see Rhys Ifans in Exit the King next time John is up. It's a new version Patrick Marber of Eugène Ionesco's play.

That said we fully intended to go and see Dealer's Choice, Marber's first play, in the National in 1995 and that never happened.

A couple of years later I did manage to catch Closer, which he also wrote. I didn't like that.

Don't know why I bother half the time.

Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel

I'm back in the office. It's a long old drive back from the Sud-Ouest.

It was fun listening to Ben and Rory talking about their upcoming Reading Festival visit.

"I just want to go home, have a proper shower, and poo," from 47 seconds into the trailer below just about seems to cover last year. The movie opens tomorrow,



The joys of youth eh?

Nick and Ben de Bergerac

We will be driving off to www.boisdebelivier.com for a week tomorrow morning, crossing the Channel courtesy of Eurotunnel.

Part of the plan is to hire bikes from www.ouibike.net/en/location-velo/dordogne/eymet/

For all that the farmhouse has wi-fi, I don't imagine any updates will appear here until we are back.

Plonker at Paapa at the Pinter

I have got us a bunch of tickets for the last night of One for the Road / The New World Order / Mountain Language / Ashes To Ashes in the Pinter at the Pinter series which is good news as Sir Antony Sher has joined Paapa Essiedu (sparker of the original interest) in the cast.

Unfortunately though, when clicking on the interactive map to select tickets, I assumed that the stage was at the bottom of the image not the top. Instead of five tickets in the front row I have got five right at the back of the stalls.

Imagine how well that has gone down.

Arsenal beat Chelsea on penalties

Torygraph

Chelsea began this match by partnering their £57 million club record-signing with a 17 year-old who had never previously started a senior competitive game, but there was no doubting which of the two left Dublin with their reputation most enhanced.

Callum Hudson-Odoi capped what has already been an outstanding pre-season under new manager Maurizio Sarri with a wonderful individual display here, despite Arsenal ultimately prevailing following a penalty shoot-out after the match had ended in a 1-1 draw. Petr Cech saved the decisive penalty from Ruben Loftus-Cheek to allow Alex Iwobi to take the winning kick.

Playing off the left in Eden Hazard’s usual role, Hudson-Odoi’s pace and willingness to run directly would have surprised nobody who has worked with him through Chelsea’s academy but it certainly left Arsenal right-back Hector Bellerin reeling.

Read the whole thing. It's a long way from him and Ben in 2007, that's for sure. He seems so inevitable these days I sometimes forget how amazing it all is.

Smart meters

Smart meters will let companies change cost of electricity every 30 minutes under 'surge pricing' says the Torygraph today.

Kevin was talking to me about the smart meter roll out on Friday. It sounds like a fiasco but I am late to the party.

This Commons briefing paper may let me start to get my head around it.

Diamond Dogs Rule

I'm having the car serviced before Saturday's jaunt to France for a week.

Coolant Leaking Through Thermostat Housing , Needs New Thermostat Housing, thermostat, Gaskets & Antifreeze

That explains why I have had to keep topping up the coolant lately. Better to catch it here at home that try and figure it out on an Autoroute lay-by.

Where it all began

Before the Tour de France.

Songs of the Border

Tonight at 9pm on BBC4, "against the backdrop of President Trump's much-trumpeted wall, Reginald D Hunter takes a 2,000-mile road trip along the US-Mexico border to explore how romance and reality play out musically where third-world Mexico meets first-world USA on this broken road to the American dream."

That looks like a must-watch, his Songs of the South series (see Icons passim) was terrific.

Channel Tunnel rail delays continue due to 'extreme heat'

BBC

"Extreme and prolonged" high temperatures are being blamed for cross-Channel rail passengers facing more disruption.
Eurotunnel is warning of delays of about two hours at its terminal near Folkestone in Kent.
On Thursday there were reported delays of more than five hours in 30C heat, caused by air conditioning problems on Eurotunnel's trains.

Fingers crossed that this will be sorted out before we have to get it Saurday week.