Move along - nothing to see here

Our local Sainsbury's has started pushing Advent calenders, Christmas puddings and mince pies. In mid-September!

Mind you, Paperchase were selling Christmas cards last months.

I have just found a stick of ZZ9 rock I acquired at the Brighton Worldcon in 1987. It really hasn't lasted that well, let's just say I won't be bringing it to the AGM. I only hope that was the last of them now.

After nearly two weeks we finally have heating and hot water again. Which is very nice indeed.

Thanks to kayxh for lending us her electric heaters and the fishlifters for letting us use their bathroom at regular intervals. And if anyone wants a recommendation for a heating engineer in Croydon, please ask.

The bad news is that we are close to melting in our tiny, non-airconditioned office. The good news is my boss just bought us all ice cream. This should stop my brain from melting for at least the next ten minutes or so.

I have been proofreading subtitles for DVD commentaries recently. My favourite so far:

(Set Designer, talking about his set for a fancy hotel:) "A lot of upmarket hotels nowadays are created by top designers, that raises the bar pretty high."

was translated as "A lot of upmarket hotels nowadays are created by top designers and the bar is always near the top."

At least the translator tried to make sense of it, I suppose. Anyway, I don't think we're about to replaced by machine translation just yet.