The slight cough has definitely evolved, so I'm at home, couch-ridden. It's just gone noon and I'm bored. This does not bode well.

The score so far:

Oinks, jokes about swine flu, Parmageddon, etc - 6 11
Expressions of sympathy - 1 2 3 ( Read more... )

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My Portuguese friend the Lamprey Queen called Friday evening to ask if I had time to go for coffee. She wanted to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that had brought democracy to her country. LQ had tried to explain about the revolution to her colleagues but they didn't really pay attention. Normally she doesn't talk about ( Read more... )

Right, finally got the photos up from Devon two weekends ago ( Read more... )

After putting on a halfway decent show against Japan, Argentina handed the game to England in ten minutes. First with an own goal and then with an easy goal from midfielder Jill Scott. England kept up the attack but worryingly didn't score again until early in the second half and that from a penalty, well taken though it was ( Read more... )

BBC2 is providing live coverage of all of England's games in the Women's Football World Cup. More importantly, the BBC also shows the games live online (UK residents only, unfortunately), so I can have the game sitting in the top left-hand corner of my screen. Getting to the "watch live" link is a bit of an Easter Egg hunt though ( Read more... )

My desire to watch sport fluctuates greatly for various reasons. But the World Cup is an event I've really been looking forward to and I was happy to have time today to watch my first game. And what a weird one it was too ( Read more... )

Wingnut pointed me to a nice article giving some experts' opinion on the UK handling of the floods in de Volkskrant (Laagland Nederland is en blijft een putje). The experts are from Delft Hydraulics who designed a warning system for rivers after heavy rainfall, including the Thames. Prime Minister Gordon Brown partly blames outdated infrastructure ( Read more... )

The floods in England and Wales inspired Wingnut to look up relief maps and other information about the affected towns. Every now and again, a despairing, "they're insane" would float up from behind his screen. Poor Dutchman ( Read more... )

A belated thank you, by the way, to those who answered my auntie J's question on English pubs and flowers. It'd struck her that many pubs -- rather than cafés or restaurants -- had carefully maintained flowers hanging in baskets, etc. Considering that there aren't nearly as many florists in London as there are in the Netherlands, she thought that ( Read more... )