Mixed feelings on this one with Waitrose in particular as a target. Whilst not exactly a workers cooperative, it is employee owned: staff have non-transferable shares. Thefts will hit employees directly as a result.

Clearly this is not going to be any kind of significant dent in the overall profits of the company - it is very much about the publicity - but, even so, couldn’t they have chosen one with a more standard corporate model?

Some decades back I described myself in a social organisation’s yearbook as “Degenerate freeloader and card-carrying pope” - which should indicate my influences at the time.

I no longer carry a pope card.

The last three have been s/h when I have bought them and then I have hung on to them for around 5 years each myself.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is often considered to be a prime example, I think.

What are known as moose in the Americas are known as elk in the UK. What are known as elk in the Americas are known as deer in the UK.

All the usual domestic stuff that everyone has mentioned, but also the books that we are each reading, the films and TV that we watch together, and ideas from the assorted podcasts and videos that we each watch/listen to separately.

Unless there is something that dominates anyway, we usually make a point to share something that we have each learned and something that made each of laugh that day over dinner.

Remember them: yes.

Feel anything: it is usually a particular event or something that causes me to bring them to mind, so any feelings will be more tied to the event that caused the memory than the place itself - and that could be good, bad or just unusual. I don’t think that I have ever had reason to look at street views of any of them.

Sentimental: not in general. They all had good points and not so good. I enjoyed living in them most of the time, but I enjoy where I am now too.

The closest to sentimental would be when I spent a night at one of the old places some years later. I used to live on site for work, but my role changed. No-one lives there now. It is used for meetings and storage etc, but someone will occasionally sleep-over for one reason or another, as I did on this occasion. That evening I felt like a ghost haunting my own past.

My wife has knitted me several pairs of socks over the years. I am pretty certain that she has given me at least a couple at Xmas. I still have them all and wear them at weekends.

However, other than that, I don’t think that I have given or received anything that is not consumable - food, drink, toiletries, candles, outings etc - for a very long time.

Dark Mustard

Films that I saw, on TV or at the cinema, prior to the age of 16 or so that had a major impact on me - in the approximate order in which I saw them:

• The Amazing Mr Blunden
• Jason and the Argonauts
• Mon Oncle
• Star Wars (before it became A New Hope)
• The Third Man
• The Omen
• Stalker - which pretty much marked my transition to adult SF

Long thought to have been damaged in the Great Fire of 1834 - which is believed to have originated in the furnace room of the hall’s basement - new archaeological evidence, supported by historical records, reveals that sections of the hall’s medieval stone walls not only survived the blaze and a nearby WWII bomb strike, but were restored, re-roofed and continued to be used until the building’s final demolition in 1851.

Hmm. Sounds like WWII started much earlier than I had heard.

Bite my shiny metal ass!

It’s a variation on a local folkloric figure, and the image is modified from the album of a poem about the figure by Martin Newell and the Hosepipe Band.

An excellent sausage and cheese toasted sandwich.

2 x 240L wheelie bins - one for dry mixed recycling, the other for residual waste. They are collected on alternating weeks.

We could pay for a third for green waste, but we compost instead (and have a bokashi bin to assist with that).

There are a few communal glass bins around which we will drop stuff off to as we pass from time to time, since that is not included in the DMR selection.

Soft plastics - bags, film etc - are also not included, but can be recycled at supermarkets - or collected by them when they make a home delivery (which is what we do).

Tetrapaks, WEEE, batteries etc need to be taken to the local recycling centre. We’ll book a slot about once a quarter for that.

Early in secondary school, back in the '70s, the music teacher had some issue or another - if I ever knew, I have long since forgotten - and had simply given up. She did not even attempt to teach anything. As a result, we were allowed to do anything at all as long as long as it was quiet.

I did an assignment on early Russian space flight. I don’t know why that particularly, but it was my obsession at the time, so I did. It was never marked and no-one else had any interest. It contained a lot of detail from numerous sources, but I doubt that it was that great really. However, that I was allowed to do it at all surprised me at the time and had been a source of fond amusement for me even since.

It’s 2°C outside, but fairly toasty inside because both Mrs GreyShuck and I have the lurgy and so the heating is turned up. Personally, my temp is all over the place. My feet were simultaneously too hot and too cold most of last night.

It has become big business for the mafia in southern Italy for example.

Usually it is just individuals or people from small businesses that tip rubbish somewhere they are not allowed to and then ‘fly’ from the scene: just leave it and run. This is usually so that they don’t have to pay to dispose of it - but sometimes just because they can’t be arsed to go to the actual waste disposal site.

Increasingly, criminal organisations are finding that they can make money from this: charging businesses for the disposal but then just dumping it - as this case seems to be, from the scale of it.

I have read comparisons in the past. I don’t have them to hand, but the conclusion was that dishwashers were more efficient in terms of water use and energy. However, the type of hand-washing that it was being compared to was itself a very inefficient style of washing (tap running continuously? two full sinks for rinsing? I can’t recall, but not the way that we do).

So handwashing the way we do is probably more efficient but it seems that there isn’t THAT much in it either way, and given the time taken and that we cook from scratch almost all the time, we use a dishwasher for the vast bulk of stuff.