should I get a 45 million to 1 lotto ticket ? - oh, go on then...

I must stop my weekly UK lotto gambling.

It's only been funded by sales of my novel, the funds from which seeded my tiny lottery fund out of which I bet on a ticket every week. Despite the old odds of 14 million to 1, I managed a few wins that kept the fund topped up (reinvestment - none of the wins were that spectacular).

At some stage along the way they doubled the entry cost, with the entry stake moving from £1 to £2. Maybe it was an attempt to hide the falling size of the main prizes as less people were entering the bet.

More recently, with the size of the jackpot still falling, Camelot/Lotto decided to change/rig the odds by adding another ten balls to the system, moving the odds to 45 million to 1. Maybe they took advice from their sole shareholder/owner, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan?

Unsurprisingly, the revised odds have created more weeks without a jackpot winner at all (like we all notice?), and so eventually, after some 13 weeks, they are invoking a payout based upon a different rule.

More surprisingly, in those blank payout weeks I have managed to win couple of small prizes! Guess what? Another con. In the old days a small win might be £10 or £25 which would keep a small-time gambler like me running for plenty of weeks. This time my small win was - a free entry to the next Lotto game. I remember the old negotiating tactic (from the eminently practical Karrass probably) - It runs along the lines of "If you have to give something away give something that is cheap to you but of perceived good value to the recipient".

So they give me a free entry - which would cost me £2 but they know is essentially useless because the odd of it winning are so low.

I get it that the new odds will create a headline grabbing piece of free publicity every 10 weeks or so, when the non-wins accumulate enough to give a big payout.

So yes, I will enter this weeks lottery, but unless I win something then this may also be the perfect time to cancel my recurring random bet.

Dickensian text messaging

I've been enjoying that BBC series 'Dickensian' which is now on around episode 6 of 20. Take a bundle of Dickens characters and put them together in a closed world and see how they interact. The stories are all from a time before the main Dicken's novels but have a similar episodic feel to them.

Set in east London, with a daily cliffhanger ending, murders, a pub frequented by many of the players and even a wedding that could go a bit wrong...Why it sounds like another show on the BBC, except the cor blimey Cockney is less pronounced in this than in modern day Eastenders.

If Eastenders is like an 'X-Factor' soap, mainly brash and sensationalism, then Dickensian reminds me more of a 'Strictly' version, still with scenes of anguish and mayhem, but somehow with more of a heart. It even tickles me to see Stephen Rea playing Bucket from the Yard with a smile in his eye.

The extensive and well detailed set reminds me of something from a Punchdrunk production and is being well used, although I suppose the roaming camera will eventually run out of novel angles.

I'm enjoying the simple pleasure of the series. Some of the plots are a little contrived, but the spirit of the production has a warmth that seems just right for this time of year. It may often be snowing in the streets of this particular part of East London, and there may be a permanent mist hanging in the alleyways and by the dockyard, but I'm still interested to see how Bucket is influenced by Venus the Taxidermist, or whether Arthur Havisham's disinheritance was for *ahem* another reason fleetingly alluded to in the shared digs with Compeyson.

Really there's so many rich resources to deploy across the realm of Market Street, with its Curiosity Shop, Mantalini's, Scrooge and Marley's offices, The Cratchits, Bumble's Workhouse and Fagin's Lair. Somehow the twenty 30 minute episodes are not enough to do full justice to these 'Greatest character hits' from Dickens.

And just when I think Eastenders relies upon telephone-based drama too much, with text messages, missed calls and all, I see that Dickensian has a similar device. Except they shout "Boy", and pass their handwritten note and a penny to the nearest Short Message Service. Properly voice activated and long before Siri.

new Apple - sorry Swiss Alp watch handles scarce commodity and allows reconnection

I was always wary of square faced watches unless they bore the inscription 'Casio' or similar. Although, come to think of it, I suppose I'd not really class that Apple device as a watch.

I see that H. Moser & Cie. have produced this interesting revision to the category, with a limited edition that has a 100 hour power source and no need for text, phone calls or even sketches or heart-beats.

It is slightly more expensive than the Apple watch though, at around $25,000, although I'm wondering if I'd change the strap to something with an orange rather than apple green backing?

To be honest though, I must admit to a sneaking preference to one of their round designs, rather than the square one, even if it is a little more expensive.

restarting the numbers

There's an annual reset in many businesses, when all the numbers go back to zero, new targets are set and everyone has to start all over again. There can even be a delay whilst the targets get cascaded.

Sometimes there's some sandbagging of figures which then drift into the new year to give a good start, and this depends upon the way incentives are set and whether there's any accelerators in play.

The targets I show here are somewhat simpler. Just some of my personal (non work-related) cycling targets at the start of the year. I've set a Bronze/Silver/Gold set which gives me something to aim for and, yes, I'm back at only about 2-3% achieved so far. Even with the slow cascade of business targets it is usually better to try to get ahead early.

capital thinking

Under the sign reading 'Duck or Grouse' and into the pub to meet a few friends.

We've all known one another for ages and will talk about most anything. This time, after the first pub, then the curry house and then the next pub, we were briefly talking about finances.

It was mostly about trying to make sense of the various ways we've all been turned over by the financial establishments. Not just on small things like inertia selling of utility services, but on big things like pension planning and investments.

The new Financial Conduct Authority has backed away from any systemic investigation, saying it prefers to precision target individual organisational investigations. Pah. Nothing whatsoever to do with ensuring that the City remains the intact.

Anyway, we'd all got tales of ways we'd been ripped off, from my case of collapsed Equitable Life pension scheme, to 'financial advisor schemes' running for multiple years with apparently 'no tax liability' (not me, I add, but still suspicious). All of us had stories and all of them implied largish losses.

We noticed a few common themes. Badly informed and often polarised financial advisors. Limited access to product sets, poor and mainly reactive regulatory controls throughout the industry, the way that the financial houses and planners win whatever happens (commission, run-rate, bail-out, bonuses) and the way that the average punter always pays (fee percentages, insidious effects from quantitive easing, the hidden effects of undisclosed inflation, and so on).

As a group of individuals we are all fairly switched on, yet each of us is somehow handling systemic challenges from these economic biases. We're all fundamentally survivors, yet each of us observed how it is getting tougher for those who follow us.

Maybe I'll need to add some other types of targets to my list for 2016.

Abominable Bride vs Doctor Who

I struggled with the last series of Doctor Who. I think I started to watch the last proper pre-Xmas special episode of the series three times before I eventually got through it. And that's sitting down comfortably on the sofa, not staring at it from a bike turbo session. It really was an out-of-time number, complete with a Dalek and a defective Cyberman in what appeared to be Doctor Who's mind-palace.

Similarly with the glossy Christmas Special, which I watched a couple of days ago. I'm not quite sure what has gone wrong, but it feels as if their infinite universe is somehow struggling for the right clever ideas. It started well enough and had some proper humour included, but then veered off into decapitations as they all ran around like headless turkeys. I liked the idea to use an old stripped back version of the Tardis and wonder if that's a hint that they'll need to reset their thinking before the next series gets written.

By comparison, the parallel universe and inception-like mind-palace of Sherlock Holmes was altogether more entertaining, to the extent that I might even watch the whole 90 minutes for a second time. When they Cumberbatched Sherlock, it was set in the modern day to provide an instant relevance (probably save some set money too). Now they've zoomed it back to the 1890s and it worked just as well, with the Holmes/Watson duo doing their now familiar double act with aplomb.

Given the Moffatt/Gatiss script-writers also write for Doctor Who, to me the Sherlock show was an altogether more finessed production, with most scenes having rapid-fire get-in and get-out moments to hustle the whole plot line along.

A straightforward main story with the bride Ricoletti's ghost prowling the murky Limehouse streets seeking revenge. Meanwhile Holmes/Watson and their extended company do their thing including some self-referential banter which could well be Sherlock talking to himself.

Then, if the beginning wasn't already snappy enough, it progressively accelerates through the last few scenes, keeping surprises tucked up its sleeve to the very end.

Throw in some multi-level twists and we see that inside the mind of Sherlock would give that DiCaprio movie a run for its money in terms of levels of nesting and recursion.

Final Score:

Doctor Who : 2
Abominable Bride: 5

Happy 2016!

We saw in the New Year, after what was personally a good 2015 considering the backdrop of horrible world events. Central London's fireworks is now a ticketed event and the barriers and cordons had started to go up at least a couple of days ago.

This morning, we had the first frost of the season, although it was only a light dusting only noticeable from certain angles.

Our central heating had packed up too. It turned out to be an unexpected consequence of the outdoor Xmas lights, which had tripped a circuit breaker for the whole of downstairs. I've spent a few minutes resetting various devices after restoring the power and re-booting the house.

We now have heat although I think the outdoor lights have now served their annual purpose and may soon be back in their box in the garage.

of cucumbers, scalpels and cans of ham

I remember starting 2015 above London in the Shard. Seems that we've finished in a similar fashion, with more views across the Thames.

My picture of Tower Bridge is actually from about half way up the Shard, in the cocktail bar. There's a scale to the view below from this level that really works well and gives different scenes from each side of the building.

Its getting that even St Pauls has to compete for a view now, with all the new skyscrapers going up around the City.

Another nine are planned for the next 2-3 years, including One Blackfriars (The Bobbin), Canaletto, The Scalpel, The Cucumber, The Stage, The Can of Ham and others.

It could all get rather more crowded if this artist's impression is to be believed.

London signs get the helpful new year makeover

One of those temporary illuminated signs showing various reminders as the new year approaches.

That one is from close to the well-known London tourist-only sightseeing spot known as M&M World. I must have strayed although I've not been inside since the Swiss Centre days.

I wonder whether this other sign will work?

in between

It feels as if it's time for a London picture, so here's part of the central tourist area, complete with a red bus and a few lights.

The barriers are already going up ready for New Years Eve, and Eros is completely boarded up. This year it is once more a tickets only event to get along the river for the fireworks.

mistletoe in Covent Garden

There's plenty of mistletoe hanging from the roof of Covent Garden. I recollect that Christian churches banned mistletoe because of its pagan connotations, but back in the days when I worked in a greengrocer's we used to freely give it away to customers at Christmas.

The Norse god Baldr is supposedly at the root of the mistletoe story, having been made invincible when his goddess mother made every living thing on earth swear not to harm him.

She somehow overlooked the mistletoe and in an Eastenders plot moment, trickster spirit Loki made a dagger from mistletoe wood, gave it to Baldr's blind brother and tricked him into stabbing Baldr, which killed him.

All the gods mourned Baldr the Beautiful's death and decided to make mistletoe a symbol of peace and friendship.

Festive Music Quiz

There's a chocolate yule log being mixed as I type this.

The festivities have arrived and we're fully moving into Yo-Ho-Ho.

Seasonal Greetings to all, and just for fun I have uploaded one of our Xmas music quizzes for anyone who wants to try to guess the tunes.

By way of a warning, there's probably about 50 tunes in the mix, sometimes as mash-ups. It starts slow and speeds up. The tunes and singers are mainly easy to guess and family audience friendly.

Spin that platter and pass the mince pies.