GreyShuck

I always heard it as trombeleese, which I imagined to be some exotic musical instrument like this:

My comment was a (half) joking one on the increase in capacity over time due to technology advance - and the bloat in software. As I recall, the early USB sticks that I had were something like 32mb - useless by todays standards. Meanwhile the increasing size of even blank .docx pages has been remarked on over the years.

In my experience, they last until you look at the capacity a few years and several changes of use down the line and end up giving to someone for some weird reason with a single MS document filling it up.

I was around 20 years too late.

They didn’t attend mine either, as it happens, on the grounds that they too were “late” by then.

It is 2.4km to my nearest shop (and most of that to reach a bus stop, as it happens). I have walked there from time to time, but I wouldn’t do an actual grocery shop there anyway: we have the weekly groceries delivered.

I have brought a full grocery shop home in a large rucksack that kind of distance, and more, in the past when on holiday, but I wouldn’t want to do it regularly.

I have also known a couple of other people who do that kind of distance with a huge rucksack for a monthly top up of specific things that their local shops don’t carry, but they are both weird in several ways other ways. Good weird, but still weird. This is not something that the majority of people that I have known would even consider.

I don’t know whether it is ‘the best’ but one that I find springs to mind quite often is a moment with a new Christmas present once. It was one of those walk-along-then-spin-and-shoot robots - a very simple thing, since this was in the early '70s. However, my memory is of utter joy and entrancement as I set it going then leapt out of the way, on to the furniture, before it opened its chest and fired.

It must have been a present from my parents, so they were probably happy that I liked it. Whether they were quite so happy after the first hour or two of the same thing, I don’t know.

No - you could get the 81 both prebuilt or as a kit. The kit was cheaper, clearly, and was the only one we could afford.

ZX-81 which my brother and I built from a kit. I was astonished when it actually worked.

Right handed. My wallet is in my left pocket, since anything that I need to do with it will involve holding it with my left and doing the thing with my right.

Both my phones (home and work) are in my right, since I can carry out basic functions on them one handed.

Comments like that say far more about the person saying it than about the person being described most of the time, I’d say.

I’d need to know how good the describer is like in that area before I could make any assessment about the describee.

• Worked for their local team, and was quite happy to challenge/push back on unreasonable top-down asks.
• Quite happy to admit they didn’t know stuff and asked for advice and ideas - and, of course, credited the appropriate team members for things that worked, but took responsibility themselves if things didn’t go well.
• Displayed authentic emotions and enthusiasm for the work, rather that present a bland corporate mask.

The 1983 UK general election.

However, since I lived in a Tory safe seat (taking boundary changes into account, the last time that location had been anything except tory was a Whig in the C19th) I spoiled my ballot - writing some pithy comment across it about how meaningless the process was. That showed them!

Checking now, I see that it has continued as a Tory safe seat up to the present day.