String fellow

Hmmm.... clearly you're not anywhere near the age of 70. If you were, would you want a re-test? There are vast numbers of perfectly good drivers in that age group, and I like to think that that includes me - with 50 years of driving experience and an unblemished record on the roads (not including parking tickets). And because I don't like to generalise, I'll avoid slagging off the age group whom I think are the biggest menace on the roads today!

Am I the only person mystified by seeing ads on eBay for circulated 20p coins dated 1982, being described as rare and fetching £500+? The photos appear to show ordinary 20p coins from 1982, the first year of circulation (hence the claim to be rare), but which are extremely common and worth precisely 20p. In fact, more were minted that year than in any subsequent year, and my jar of loose change contains at least four.

Gmail is cloud-based, so deleting one (and emptying the trash can) from any device you're logged onto essentially sends a message to the server to delete it. Other synced devices won't know about the deletion unless they're freshly logged onto at a later time. The OS and browser on any of the synced devices shouldn't make any difference to the process.

I've fitted a rear-view mirror to the handlebars. That seems be to a good way to see what's behind you at all times.

I can understand how you feel, but tbh, if it's important that the lad needs certain foods, isn't that a small price to pay? I'd pay my GP ten times that amount if he'd write to the DVLA to convince them that my vision is fine - which it is!

Evri, formerly Hermes. Two emails on Saturday, two more yesterday and two more today all promising to deliver a small parcel in a certain time interval, then saying it's been delayed. Maybe if they tried a bit harder to actually deliver stuff instead of making promises to do so, they'd not have such a bad reputation. Do on-line traders not understand that most of their customers would like to pay slightly more and be confident that their stuff won't have to pass through the hands of these jokers?

We probably all know that the penalty box dimensions are 44 yd x 18 yd. So the penalty box area is 44 x 18 = 792 sq yd. Writing the number 792 as 0792 then reversing the digits we get 2970. Now subtract the smaller from the larger number: 2970 - 0792 = 2178. Reversing the digits of 2178 we get 8712. Again subtract the smaller from the larger number: 8712 - 2178 = 6534. Reversing the digits of 6534 we get 4356. Again subtract the smaller from the larger number: 6534 - 4356 = 2178. So we end up back with the number obtained previously, and the reversing digits then subtracting process loops round infinitely!

Dare I say.... folk who moan about folk who moan. Does this make me a member of the set of folk who moan about folk who moan about folk who moan? This all feels like something akin to Russell's paradox.

That's all very well, but the item in question was definitely 48 hour tracked and it still took 7 days to come from Essex. So, not only was the tracking information useless, but also the delivery time was not what I'd paid for.

Royal Mail tracking information. What a joke. Whenever I enter a tracking number, the message they come up with is either: We don't have any information on the status of this item. Or: We'll update the information when we attempt to deliver this item. Thank you Royal Mail, for increasing the angst I already had from the non-arrival of the item I was expecting!

If I tried to drink 17 pints in one day, I'd either be very poorly or dead by the end of it!

Some folk rabbit on, making almost impossible to get a word in edgeways. They're worse than the interrupters and the sentence-finishers. They also use to body language as another way to force you to remain there as the person they're talking to (or rather, talking at). One of my neighbours is like that, meaning that careful timing is required, to make sure my trips to the shops aren't delayed by half an hour, as they bang on about whatever their current issue happens to be. And if the topic of the day is local gossip, my neighbour will speak very quietly, so that they won't be overheard - even if it's obvious that nobody else is within earshot!

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was played by three different 'roos, Jo-Jo, Stumpy and Wildy. Let's hope City's Skippy can also be three players in one.

Talking about speed limits, I was amused to learn recently that they don't apply to electric bikes. There are various downhill stretches of road with 30mph limits near here where I'm able to exceed that limit on mine. It's great to see the green smiley face turn red with anger as I approach the warning sign. The next challenge is to get flashed by a speed camera!

If the motorway is otherwise clear, you should always overtake a middle-lane hogger using the outside lane, if you're in a car. It seems that the undertaker is more in the wrong than the idiot causing the problem! The M69 seems to be especially popular with middle-lane hoggers.

That's extemely annoying. Tbh, if ever I'm waiting for an expensive delivery like that, I'll either stay indoors watching out for the van or be outside washing the car, in anticipation of the driver being either incapable of actually ringing the door bell or being too lazy to ring it. How often does stuff travel half-way round the globe in safety, then get damaged right at the point delivery? Very often, I suspect.

The passenger who yelled 'Get off the road' at me the other day in Houghton-on-the-Hill, as the car he was in sped past at at least 50mph in a 40mph limit. I was on my electric bike, close to the kerb, not holding up the traffic. I'd be interested to know the reason for his outburst. Maybe he was concerned for my safety, cycling on the A47, although somehow I doubt it!

Not sure if these stats are crazy, but since the PL began 30 years ago, City's record against Spurs is: Played 34, won 13, drawn 5, lost 16. Adding in four FAC ties and one LC tie, this becomes: Played 39, won 15, drawn 6, lost 18. So the head-to-head results aren't that bad overall. The worst stat is first one - played 34.

Using the golds as the criterion for the final medals' table is absurd. Surely 3pts for gold, 2pts for silver and 1pt for bronze would give a much fairer indication. The Netherlands being above the UK despite winning slightly over half our total shows how bonkers that table is.

All of the county's recycle centres closed today at 2.30 pm. How considerate it was of LCC to have them all closed at the same time!

Gated roads are fun when you've got a passenger in the car to open and close them. Today, I tried using a gated road as a short cut near Tilton-on-the-Hill. Having driven along it for over a mile in my otherwise empty car, suddenly there was a gate, with a flock of sheep loitering with intent to escape on the other side. If I'd opened the gate, returned to the car to drive through, then closed it again myself, the sheep would all have escaped. The only option was the sheepish one - to turn round and go back. Was I annoyed with the gate or the sheep? No, I was annoyed with myself for risking using a gated road without a passenger in the car to help out.

As someone who suffers with chromic insomnia, I recently learnt that sleep patterns can be improved by aligning the bed north-south and sleeping with one's head at the southern end. This is because the human head is its north pole and the feet are its south pole, and so with opposite poles attracting, the body is in its most natural alignment with the world in that position. And there's more! According to the 17th. century poet Robert Herrick, you're more likely to sire male offspring in a bed that's aligned north-south. In his great poet work 'Hesperides' of 1648, this was his Observation: Who to the North, or South, doth set His Bed, Male children shall beget.

Very appropriate! If you look at the famous 1927 Solvay Congress group photo, guess who's sitting right at the centre of the front row? Yep - the man with the biggest ego, Einstein. Imo, Paul Dirac (standing behind his right shoulder in that photo) should be as famous as Einstein, and this article seems to agree. But the Englishman was socially awkward and that probably didn't help with his public persona. https://www.fsu.edu/news/2009/09/16/strangest.man/

Einstein got loads of stuff wrong, including on the existence of gravitional waves and black holes, and even on the expansion of the universe. He also wasn't keen on having his papers peer reviewed, in case flaws were found in his work! Imo, he marketted himself as a genius, hoping that we'd forget about all the other great physicists around at the same time, including Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac.

I recently gained a load of points in Scrabble with the word 'scooper'. My opponent immediately pointed out that that was our new manager (S.Cooper)! If you look at the definitions of scooper, it's someone who scoops things up, often with a pooper-scooper. It can also be an animal or bird that scoops up food, such as an avocet. Apparently, there's also another definition in the urban dictionary, which we won't go into details about!