Along the Great Northern Way, through the red wall, noticing a symbolic landmark of the north as we passed Ferrybridge cooling towers.
Even they look forlorn nowadays, originally eight of them and an instant landmark, we're down to three now because the others have been demolished.
I won't look for symbols though, instead I'll now be forced to turn to the city pages to watch the next stages of the campaign unfold, unhampered by any leader-driven opposition. A case of the uppers vs the downers.
The press snapshot tells part of a story ~ on the left hand side is Carrie and to the right is the Artful Dodger. Only the Sunday Times seemed to capture the full mise en scène, maybe with airbrushed strings?
I've got a new new alethiometer. We're all going to need one now.
Boris 'Le Menteur' Johnson and his gangsters have been elected. 'Brexit is easy,' we're told and the pound is already climbing to new heights.
The update for the new model quite simple. Stand the old compass near to the new one and, much like an iPhone, it'll do the updates automatically.
Now, I asked it "what's happening?" and got "wild man, serpent, globe" from the first reading. It's trying to tell me that a maniac who falsifies is grasping great political power.
There's a hole in the ladder, a fence we can climb
mad as a hatter, you’re thin as a dime.
Go out to the meadow, hills are a green
Sing me a rainbow, steal me a dream.
Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year.
Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothing.
I received one of those Spotify Wrapped summaries today.
It's a kind of sucker punch with the choices it's made (see what I did there?)
It is as if it took the last 2-3 albums that I played and then mixed up the tracks a bit. Here are the 30 second cuts of 'my' top tracks. There's 100 in the jukebox, feel free to scroll or play them...
Maybe I've worked it out. It'll be when I put on some chillout music whilst I'm cooking a Thai curry or something like that. Could it be when I accidentally left the Sonos running and went away for a few days?
The top selections compare very strangely with last.fm, where I used to use to track my music choices and which did a pretty good job of name-checking the right kind of bands. Regularly it would deliver a roll-call of the usual suspects. Well, my usual suspects, in any case. Not so with Spotify which must hunt around the streamed edges aligned to a marketing business model.
The wrapped cover art for my 2019 album seems to be Sigrid on a Tory pink album cover. My top track appears to be Beautiful Trash, by Lanu (ft Megan Washington) - though I'm sure I recognise that drum loop from something else?
It seems that others are just as mystified.
Maybe it is all of those long coffee mornings, when I'm listening to a playlist? Perhaps the miles of motorway driving to Absolution and Swordfishtrombone just don't get through to the hit-counter? Even my recent Billy Bragg revision appears to have gone unnoticed.
Or perhaps if it comes from my library instead of me streaming it? I don't know. I just don't know.
More cynical propaganda from the Tories today. They've arranged postal delivery of a 'You & your family brochure'. It is A3 folded on matt 100gsm and printed in a selection of scorching neon colours and styled to look like a free magazine illustrating what, I assume, PR millennials think boomers will like.
It is so trite and Daily Mail styled that I felt affronted to have a copy delivered to our letterbox. There's miniscule thin writing on the front that announces that it comes from Alan Mobbutt on behalf of the Conservative and Unionist Party, SW1H 9HQ.
There's a need to hunt around the document to find this information, helpfully printed out of registration in a lurid pink section of the leaflet. I doubt whether most people even spot it. It complies with the law but hovers right on the thin edge.
Then try to find this publicist of the Conservative Party; does anyone know him? I reckon he is in hiding. Not in LinkedIn, Twitter or on Google. An incredible act of self-erasure. Perhaps he is ashamed?
Well, the season of Christmas Parties has started and I found myself at my first Xmas lunch during the week.
A subtle change. We still had Xmas Crackers, but this year they were low-carbon-footprint eco-friendly ones. That meant, inside the exploded cracker was a joke and an interesting fact. Also a paper hat, but no small gift.
Instead, a picture of the small gift (which could be a thimble, a fake moustache or a conjuring trick). The picture included a description of the original item and an explanation as to why it was bad for the planet. Ah, the nostalgia of a Fortune Teller Fish...
Anyone who has ever attended an office party will recognise the paperclips, mini staplers and staple extractors, pencil sharpeners, mini-biros and packs of coloured pencils that formed the bulk of the cracker content. Like a short raid on the stationery cupboard. Here's a few of the jokes. Feel free to print out and cut up.
And of course there's always:
What do you call a fear of climbing down chimneys? SantaClaustrophobia.
or
How do you make Lady Gaga cry? Poker face
or even
Why did the protester let of steam? Because he was kettled
and perhaps
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was walking to work as it could no longer afford the train fare.
I'll leave the one about the difference between a foot spa and a bad drummer to your imagination.
I wonder if there's a way to summarise the Nam June Paik exhibition at the Tate? I looked at the beginning of it. A Buddha, looking at a TV showing a screening of the Buddha, filmed on a small camera. How very Zen. Or maybe how very X Factor?
The majority of this show builds from this simple idea, which I did find somewhat monotheistic. A kind of 'god is in the television' which I couldn't help supplanting with an 'Idiot's Lantern' viewpoint.
For me Nam June Paik's theme was worried around, in some cases, it was deconstructed. For a while, it was blended with the playful interpretations of Joseph Beuys, and then, at the end of the sequence, it showed a kind of modern information overload. Noisy and multi-dimensional.
I could understand what Nam June Paik was trying to address, but this might be a case of "the medium is the message" stretched to breaking point.
I wasn't sure what to expect with the Damon/Bale movie about the Ford Shelby car construction. I didn't know the background except that Le Mans is where people drive round and round for 24 hours. To be honest, I'd got it mixed up with Nurburgring in my mind.
But the movie was fine. Gritty car action with a playful relationship between Christian Bale attempting a Brummy accent and Matt Damon attempting a Texan one.
The directors added Typhoo tea swigged from an enamel mug for Bale to boost the authenticity and a JR hat for Damon, but really, it didn't matter. The storyline was simple and un-nuanced. America needed to invent a car to trounce those troublesome Italians. Hence the `US name for the movie: Ford vs Ferrari.
It all played out predictably, including some epic car races, which really benefitted from all the immersive sub-woofers and surround sound available in the tiny 40 seater cinema. The crowd in the cinema actually cheered when Ford won the Daytona 500.
Sure, there was referances to bits of cars in it but it was playfully hot brakes and jamming doors that created the drama rather than ECU remapping. And I now know what the 40 in Ford GT40 stood for. And what the wooden wedges were used for.
Indeed, the whole movie was delightfully analogue with dials, buttons and small clock sized stopwatches.
A Saturday morning picture for the boys. Vrrrroooomm.
I'm in a room tonight with blue lights flashing past outside the window. It's London, and I'm used to a certain amount of first responders going about their business.
Tonight it's different. It's once more because of another murderous terrorist incident in London.
As one of many, I've walked past the bustling area where it unfolded around five times in the last few days.
Like most Londoners, I'm used to the heightened state of awareness. The messages on public transport, "See it, Say it, Sorted," and the frequent and sudden disappearance of rubbish bins from train stations. That shared look on the Piccadilly line for the silly tourist that has left their airport luggage unattended. Bomb alert prompt scripts in the workplace.
When the last knife attacks occurred around Borough Market in 2016, I could scarcely believe it. Then we had the truck driven down the pavement on Westminster Bridge. I realise I'm getting used to it again, like when we used to get evacuated with IRA bomb scares.
Like many others, I've watched with casual interest as new safety bollards are added, and smiled that some streets get special flashy protective bollards styled like the ornate masonry such as along Parliament Street and Whitehall.
I'm used to seeing flatbed trucks carrying portable barricades around and dropping them onto a pinch point. There was plenty of that type of action for the Olympics in 2012.
And as I crossed over the road by St Paul's Cathedral the other day, I cast an eye along the road to one of the old blue Ring of Steel control points left in the road but unmanned since the end of IRA bombings.
It's almost impossible to predict this cowardly terrorism, but fortunately proud London's spirit is uncowed.
