Another full day of Day Job today, punctuated by a Grand Prix.

I had hope to spend much of the weekend doing Hugo reading. I have finally made a start.

We have fairly clear skies at the moment. Bet it clouds over before it gets dark.

Well, I seem to have spent most of today doing Day Job stuff. That wasn’t exactly the plan, but so it goes.

I gather it rained all day in Manchester anyway, though we did get a bit of F1.

We’ve had cloudy skies for days here, so no comet watching.

Today I finally managed to dig myself far enough out of urgent work to be able to start doing my accounts for last year. Huzzah! I think.

Never mind, there’s cricket and F1 on the TV, and I have the new Lianne La Havas album.

Having spent all day yesterday on the Day Job, I was able to spend a bit of time today on other things, including Wizard’s Tower, a history article, and a couple of book reviews for the next Salon Futura. Variety is good.

There has been a whole lot of nonsense going on in social media about Bristol. I do wish that concerned left wing people would try to find out a little bit about the city before launching into denounciations. It is hard enough for Black people to get into positions of political power in this country, without them being denounced as Evil White Folks by people who haven’t got a clue what they are talking about.

Also, of course, one thing guaranteed to get people’s backs up in Bristol is people from London telling them how to run their city.

Today has been all Day Job, because sometimes I get an urgent request for help and need to respond.

Meanwhile the farce that is British politics keeps on giving. Remember what I said yesterday about face masks becoming mandatory next week? Well apparently Wormtongue was spotted in a sandwich shop without one today, and the government hastily issued a clarification that take-away food establishments were exempt. Apparently all it takes for a change of policy these days is for someone in the Cabinet with more power than Bozo to disobey him.

Meanwhile Bozo had annointed the serial failure, Chris Grayling, to be head of the important Intelligence & Security Committee (with oversight of MI5, etc.) Grayling, of course, has no experience of this sort of thing, and a track record of incompetence longer than the River Nile. So one of the far-right Tories, Julian Lewis (who does at least have a lot of Defence experience) cooked up a plan with Labour to have himself put forward as an alternate candidate and he got the job. That’s yet another embarrassing failure to add to Grayling’s record.

A furious Bozo has expelled Mr. Lewis from the Tory party. It would be nice to say that this reduces the Tory majority to 78, but given that Lewis is very far right I don’t think that his explusion will make any difference in most cases.

What is does mean is that the Intelligence & Security Committee might actually be able to release the long-delayed report into Russian meddling in UK politics, which is expected to be deeply embarrassing for a certain person in the White House, and quite possibly for the chap in 10 Downing Street as well.

It is nice to have a weekend again. I know I shouldn’t. I have way too much to catch up on. But every so often it is good to just collapse in front of the TV and be entertained. The F1 was entertaining, and Lewis won. The cricket was also entertaining, and West Indies won. As far as I can tell, the Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol went well. And I got some laundry done.

Next week the shit hits the fan as the government is due to announce its plans for rolling back trans rights.

Today, in addition to watching rugby from New Zealand, motor racing from Austria, and cricket from Southampton, I have participated in events in Finland and California. Yeah, none of it was in person, but isn’t that amazing? When I was a kid the only one of those that would have been possible was watching the UK cricket match on TV. And that would have been in black and white. Sometimes I forget that I am living in the future.

Well, today was exciting. I actually went into town!

The main reason was that I had an appointment with my hairdresser, for the first time in 5 months. I feel so much better now. (And look much better too.)

But, as I had to go in, I did some shopping. I bought a new kettle as my existing one has sprung a leak. I picked up a few things in Sainsbury’s that I can’t get in Tesco. And I wandered around a bit. Quite a few places are still shut, but a lot of places are open. It almost felt normal.

Hardly anyone was wearing a mask.

When I got home I discovered that England had suffered a batting collapse in the cricket, which is the most normal thing that has happened in months

Today I have done some cleaning, written an article, and done some day job work. Productive, I think.

Also there has been cricket. Or, rather more typically for an English summer, there has been a lot of waiting around for the rain to stop and the occasional few minutes of actual cricket. Verily, we are back to normal.

Elsewhere the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced a raft of incentive schemes designed to get the economy back on its feet. None of them apply to me.

I did my weekly shop today. There was no queue to get into Tesco. I don’t know if this was because there were fewer people than usual, or because the store is letting more people in, but it is a change.

What hasn’t changed is mask wearing. There were only two people besides me wearing masks: an elderly couple who looked to be in their 80s.

My car insurance is due for renewal this month. Normally by this time I would have been flooded with quotes. This time I haven’t heard a peep, not even from the company I’m currently with. Score one for Lockdown.

In politics news, Bozo has apparently said that everything is the fault of other people. Nothing is his fault.

Work has happened. Today the main project was a book that I’m really looking foward to being able to talk about. Also invoices! I am exceedingly lucky to still have regular income.

I don’t think that the government has done anything spectacularly stupid today. I am assuming that they are all drunk and hungover after a weekend of grinning photo ops in pubs.

Yes, I forgot to post yesterday. I was watching Hamilton, which is a very powerful piece of musical theatre about a deeply problematic subject. Daveed Diggs is superb in it, but then you knew that.

Today there was an actual Grand Prix, with a great finish, and the local boy came in 3rd. Go Lando! Motor racing is a bizarre thing for Somerset to be good at, given that our roads are highly unsuited to racing, but we might just have another World Champion in the making.

Also today we had another fun WiFi SciFi event. Thanks as always to Anne for organising it.

If the media are to be believed, most of the UK population spent the weekend in the pub. Thankfully none of them will be coming home here, and if they truly want to gain their freedom (from this mortal coil) who am I to stop them?

The contrast between the strict security and hygiene in place at the Grand Prix, and the “let’s all grab a pint or ten together” attitude of the UK government could not be more stark. Our country would be better off being run by a bunch of petrolheads.

Formula 1 is back! Today has just been practice, and of course there are no fans at the Red Bull Ring circuit, but there are actual cars being driven by actual human beings on track. You may not have missed this, but I have.

Interestingly the sport is going out of its way to be socially responsible. Everyone actually attending races gets tested regularly. Most people are wearing masks. And the Mercedes team has adopted an all-black livery for the year in support of Black Lives Matter. This is not what one might expect from a macho, big-money sport.

There’s an England v West Indies test match due to start on Wednesday.

And Hamilton is now available on Disney+.

So basically I’m very happy staying at home and watching TV, which is just as well because pubs are opening in the UK tomorrow for the first time in months.

Wizard’s Tower accounts done, including another royalty payout for Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion.

Quite a bit of reading done, some of which is paid work.

And now I am going to make a loaf of bread.

Interestingly there is no update of COVID-19 data from the government today. Normally the daily figures are posted around 4:00pm. It is now almost 9:00pm and there’s nothing. That suggests that the news is bad.