So a horrific start to the season then, and the first time a new United manager has lost his first two competitive games in just over a century.

By now though it must be obvious that the manager is not to blame. Clearly, an exceptional manager who can assert authority quickly is needed, but that's not where the problem lies. Deposing Ole from that job has not done one iota of good, so far.

It's going to be damage limitation before long; granted it's still August but United should have chalked up 6 points now and giving them away could cost a few places in the league table.

Anyone read it? Or know why it's considered offensive by some Muslims?

I've just bought Kindle copy with an audiobook addon. It's been on my todo list for many years.

I will say that while I'm appalled by the idea of a 'fatwa' as a response for someone writing a novel, I also disapprove of religious groups being insulted in the name of freedom of expression. I was disgusted by that episode a few years ago of people passing round caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad online, because that offended a lot more people than the Islamist headbangers.

If the title of this thread has given rise to any concern, fear not. It's not about Scotland's First Minister or her bottom.

Rather, it's about the fourth and final Supermoon (but see below) of this year. It's already passed now but there are some nice pics on the BBC site here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-62518102

A Supermoon refers to the Moon being closer than 360,000km from Earth, but actually the closest the Moon came last night was 361,408 km so strictly speaking, it wasn't a Supermoon. The average distance is 384,400 km, the maximum is 405,000 km.

The Moon is receding from the Earth at a rate of 3.78cm every year. When Neil Armstrong went there, it was on average about 200cm closer.

Four billion years ago, about half a billion years after it was formed, the Moon orbited the Earth at a distance of roughly 125,000km and would have looked three times bigger than it does now in the sky. The tidal effects would have been colossal.

This would have been roughly the time the first microorganisms appeared on Earth.

The poet Philip Larkin was born 100 years ago today.

I don't think I'd ever heard of him before I studied English Literature on a Humanities course which I never finished, in 1979. I remember a tutorial with a genial lecturer in the first term who read us a couple of his poems as seven or eight of us sat around in comfortable chairs in his office.

At that time Larkin was working as a library administrator in Hull and would only have been in his late 50s, which I must say does make me reflect on my own mortality a bit now I think about it.

And on that note here's a snippet from his poem Aubade, which is about exactly that:

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

Disappointing start for Forest in their return to the PL yesterday. But a point would have been a decent result away at Newcastle so coming away empty-handed is not a setback. I think they'll finish 15th or thereabouts.

When musical archaeologists uncover the works of late 20th century Canadian rock band RUSH, a few millenia from now, they will doubtless listen carefully to each album in turn. And they will scratch their heads in confused bewilderment when they come to listen to Test For Echo. Perhaps they will brush the dust of years from the inner booklet and gaze more closely at the recording date, to confirm that it was indeed recorded in the mid-90s. For this album represents the greatest mystery in the recording history of this band: somehow they overcame a linear, consistent downward slide into banality and mediocrity which had started years earlier, to create a genuinely enjoyable album once again.

What happened?

First, let's have no misconceptions. Yes, Test For Echo is a dramatically more satisfying work than Roll The Bones and infinitely stronger than its dire predecessor, Counterparts. But it would be an exaggeration to consider Test For Echo a complete return to form. It is not one of the great Rush albums. It does not stand comparison to such recordings as Caress Of Steel, Moving Pictures, or Power Windows.

Yet it is in the main, a musical, involving album. It has life, it is listenable and enjoyable - and in its title track, it boasts at least one genuine Rush classic.

There are two standout tracks here - the greater of these, Test For Echo itself - is fantastic. Mean, moody and magnificent, it BURNS with a brooding, gripping intensity that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and doesn't let go until the final second. Imagine my surprise on applying Test For Echo to my CD player for the first time, when, expecting more of the usual humdrum yawn-ola, I was instead blown away by an opening track of ferocious intensity and power. Geddy's bass kicks like a tactical nuclear weapon in the signature riff and Alex' guitar part is dripping with sinister, menacing lethality. Peart's drumming is notably FANTASTIC on this track. Now I'm not someone who listens to drums - let's face it, apart from the occasional impressive fill they are really only there because rock music would sound odd without them - but the drumming on this song is COMPELLING, it DEMANDS attention. Peart's lyrics are for me his best ever here, bar none - soaked in righteous indignation and sneering contempt as he spits on the 'tough talking hoodboys .. in pro-team logo knockoffs' who 'conform to uniforms of some corporate entity'. A thrilling track, absolutely exceptional for its place in the Rush timeline.

Almost inevitably, the rest of the album fails to live up to the expectation induced by its extraordinary, fabulous opener. But there is still some really good music on offer here. The wonderful Totem, with some sharp, brilliantly observed lyrics on the nature of media-driven popular culture is Test For Echo's other standout track - with a beautifully melodic verse and a tremendous bouncy chorus powered along by (get this!) fabulous articulate guitar work - a real Rush Lite rarity. This is utterly convincing, wonderful open-hearted music - just superb.

Granted, it's not all good news. Driven is filler, a lacklustre, stop/start plodder, and Dog Years is worse. Color Of Right is better, but on the whole, not very interesting. Let's keep things in perspective however - they are all a cut above anything on offer on Counterparts. It has to be said though that Virtuality is absolutely terrible - mindless schoolboy metal in buttock-clenchingly bad taste married to a thoroughly nasty, cheesy chorus, it is an absolute minger and should probably have been held back for Vapor Trails, where it would have fitted in nicely.

But Half The World, Limbo and Time And Motion are involving, intelligent examples of what this album is (mostly) about - Rush confidently, competently firing on all cylinders, crafting music that truly comes alive in its performance, something they hadn't done for years. Half The World in particular is very strong - bass, guitar and drums meshing together beautifully in a catchy, rhythmic groove. And we round things off in even finer style with the excellent Carve Away The Stone, a spirited, toe-tapping little rocker with another infectious groove and some intricate yet purposeful guitar work that has you cranking up the HiFi and reaching for the air guitar.

Somehow, Rush recorded a mostly very enjoyable album in 1996 with two truly EXCEPTIONAL songs in the dying phase of their creative powers, following the worthless Roll The Bones and the pointless Counterparts. Why and how this happened, perhaps we will never know.

But we can be grateful at least that it did.

The US Navy dropped a toilet on North Vietnam in October 1965, to mark the occasion of the 6,000,000th pound of ordnance being dropped by US aircraft during the war.

My mum died last night, at the age of 94. By coincidence, this news came to me a day before the house I was brought up in is due to leave our family after more than 60 years.

Honestly, the news came as a relief to a degree. I said to my wife last weekend that I hoped the end would come soon for her, because she had been confined to a room in a nursing room for months, barely able to move around and mostly unconscious in her last weeks. And I've been expecting it for some time.

I feel sorry for my older brother who has done a wonderful job of looking after her, but wasn't able to see her in her final days because he has COVID. My other brother was with her when she died but she wasn't conscious when he arrived, and she wouldn't have known he was there.

I feel a bit of remorse that I didn't go and see her more often this last, well, nearly thirty years or so after my dad died. Unfortunately two of her three sons lived a long way from the North-East. I was going to drive up to see her tomorrow night and I'm sorry to say I hadn't seen her since Christmas.

Odd to be processing these two things simultaneously, but it seems poetically apt that the house and my mum are leaving us at the same time.

I've always loved this photo of my mum. She was 22 when this was taken, leaving hospital with her first child in 1950. Yet somehow she looks like the same mature, confident woman that I've known all my life.

.. for a server backup. Should be back up and running by 11:40pm BST.

Apologies for the short notice.

Temperatures projected to be in the high 30s here in the East Midlands today. Still comfortable indoors at 10:30. We have the windows closed and the blinds down on the south side of the house.

This is a pic taken yesterday looking west into Warwickshire from Little Orton, a village in Leicestershire. One some days there's a pointy little hill on the horizon, just visible with the naked eye. It's just under the red arrow in this pic, although you can't see it. I've just included it here for context.



It's just visible though in the following pic, taken from the same location using a zoom lens. Just to the left of the clump of trees in the middle of the shot. You can just see that there's some sort of tower pointing out of it; also just about visible with the naked eye on a good day.



For a while I've wondered exactly where, and how far away this hill is. Well - you might notice that there's a little communication tower in the left side of the pic. This overlooks the M42 near Polesworth, a few miles away. Further along the road, I was able to get this exactly in my line of sight with the hill. I took a GPS fix using my Garmin to determine my precise location, to within a few metres anyway.

Then using Google Earth's 'path' feature, I drew a line from said location, through the communication tower and over the terrain in the distance. There's a nifty feature that displays the elevation profile, and this allows you to see where the horizon is.

So by following the line or "path" to the horizon, I was able to locate the hill (screen capture from Google Earth, below). It's Turner's Hill, right next to Dudley Golf Club, 23.6 miles away.

Compelling match between Serena and the newcomer Harmony Tan, last night.

As soon as Serena started to claw her way back from a set down I thought she'd win. When she went 4-0 up in the decider tiebreak it looked done and dusted.

But Harmony managed to pull it out of the fire, bravo.

Did anyone else watch The Man from UNCLE as a kid? I don't think I'd watched one since the BBC showed them in the '60s.

I had the Napoleon Solo gun, the Dinky car and of course, the U.N.C.L.E triangular badge. I think it came with the gun, actually.

There was one episode in particular that left an impression on me. I can remember thinking about it the next morning at assembly, at the junior school I attended in Hartlepool.

This one had an especially high cool factor because most of it was set in the secret U.N.C.L.E base, which was not that common. There was a scene where the base was infiltrated, and the two agents go running to an elevator that's about to open, with their guns drawn. That stuck in my mind, for some reason.



So I had a look through an episode guide to see if I could find a likely episode to match, and The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair seemed to fit my vague recollection. It's available online here:

https://archive.org/details/the-man-from-uncle-s-1/The+Man+From+U.N.C.L.E.+S01E18+The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Tea+Party+Affair.mkv

[18 in the list].

I watched it. So very, very much of its time - slightly campy spy-fi with touches of that same wilfully bonkers trippy surrealism that you also saw in The Avengers, for example. There's a fantastic scene where a laser gun is deployed on the roof, to defend the base, controlled from the "radar room", full of machinery with flashing lights. The plot doesn't withstand scrutiny. But it's enormous fun.

I checked the BBC genome project. I must have watched this in May 1966.

https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?q=mad+tea+party+affair

Time to leave, he says.

He had a poor start but he'd started to make his name as an effective manager. Has he got something else lined up? He was linked to the Burnley job but that's gone now.

Footage here of the current version of Yes, in Glasgow on Wednesday night. But click through to the YouTube page and read the comments:

"This seems like an unintended pub tribute band playing at a uni refectory at times"

"I think that Yes should call it a day, this is very sad and empty. This is no longer Yes"

"Steve, please stop. Thank you"

"Sherwood does a decent job, but the rest of the tribute act - jeez"

"I just sold my ticket as I've seen the awful shows on you tube, bullet dodged "

" Doesn't sound very good does it"


To call this Yes is a travesty, I'm sorry to say. It's Steve Howe's tribute to Yes at most. It's no more Yes than Steve Hackett's band is Genesis. But more importantly than that, they're poor.

Paul is 80 today. Feels like a moment. And he'll be playing Glasto in a few days' time.

The future is stranger than I imagined it would be, in some ways.

There's an obvious and clearly correct answer to this, however I'm interested to know how many of my colleagues are aware of it.

I've only just noticed this in the settings, but in case you haven't noticed it either - there's a setting that will make any code tags you use in posts (for images, italics and so on) work in the editor as a preview of what you'll see in the post once you submit it. T-N-M-S had this and since I started this site, I'd wondered if it was an add-on. But it's built in.

To invoke it, go to the little menu at the top left indicated by your username, select 'Look and Feel' - and in the Posting section, tick 'Load editor in WYSIWYG mode by default'.

I'm not particularly a cricket fan but what a inspirational performance against New Zealand today!