Earlier this year I posted with the header Brian May (Not Dead! Hurrah!), the bit in brackets clarifying that he had not fallen victim to Covid but had instead ‘shredded his buttocks’ in a bizarre gardening accident.

Now it seems that he believes he may have had it, and that it could have triggered a heart attack for which he was prescribed medication which ‘made his stomach explode’. Poor chap’s having one hell of a year with his health, and while I’ll never be a Queen fan he’s always come across as one of the good guys and I wish him well.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/27/queens-brian-may-grateful-to-be-alive-after-heart-attack-and-stomach-explosion-13485652/

I’ve asked this in a couple of replies on Twitter today but not had any response. I’m hoping the hive mind of the Massive can help.

The news, and especially Twitter, is full of photos of people queuing, often for many hours, to vote in the US presidential election. The tone always invites the reader to be appalled that this is happening and suggests that making voting difficult is a deliberate tactic (typically to deter Democrat voters in the posts in my Twitter bubble).

Is there an unavoidable reason that these voters compelled to queue for that long, and so long before Election Day? November 3rd is still a couple of weeks away couldn’t they just come back another day some time between now and then?

Eddie Van Halen has succumbed to throat cancer, which had been suffering with for some time. It’s a while since I played any Van Halen, but tonight’s the time to change that.

https://www.tmz.com/2020/10/06/eddie-van-halen-dead-dies-cancer-65/

Another working week done, so I switched off the laptop, went for a walk, and returned to exactly the same room I’ve been working in every work day since late March.

For those of us working from home, how is it working out for you, especially if it was a significant change from your previous routine? From my point of view the huge, and frankly unexpected, success of the remote working experiment which was forced upon us has been one of the few good things to come from the Covid crisis. It seems odd then that in recent weeks the message from central government has been to get ‘back’ to work in the office, as if those of us in this position hadn’t been working just because we are not all in the same building.

It was pointed out that jobs which can be done remotely can be exported overseas. I dare say they can, but now it has been demonstrated that the jobs can be done remotely there is nothing magical about ‘the office’ which will put that genie back in the box. Jeremy Hunt said that people need the ‘fizz and excitement’ of the office, and that » Continue Reading.

Some terribly sad news. Long standing Afterworder and Word stalwart before that Phil Pirrip has passed away. His wife posted the following message on his Twitter feed ( @Phil_Pirrip ) :

This is Lucy (Pollewolledoodl) sad news I’m afraid my lovely husband passed away on 22 June (not) covid. He was 58, on the 19th he’d gone out for a walk and was found by a member of the public who started CPR helicoptered to hospital and unfortunately never regained consciousness.

‪Mark Lewisohn has posted on Twitter that Astrid Kirchherr has died, shortly before her 82nd birthday. Her involvement with The Beatles came years before I was born, but even as a kid I realised they would never look as cool again as in those early shots in Hamburg. Anyone who has read Lewisohn’s Tune In will realise what an important introduction she was to European culture. Great haircuts too.

… it’s quite, ah, ‘forceful’, isn’t it?

This might raise a smile if you have twelve minutes to spare.

I’m still on leave this week bu will be WFH from Monday for the foreseeable. My usual attempts at fitness are the two mile walk to and from work each day (which will now be unnecessary) and a weekly boxercise class (understandably cancelled for the time being). I’ll still make sure I get a walk in as long as possible, but does anyone have recommendations for fitness videos, ideally free to steam on Youtube or similar?

My profile is that I’m early 50s, err on the side of heft, and am reasonably healthy aside from a tendency to knee trouble. I’m just getting over a ligament strain at the moment. I have limited space but could clear a couple of metres spare in the living room and have a few small hand weights, up to 5kg.

Don’t be limited by the above of course. If you follow anything that works for you please share it here with a brief description.

Actually, I don’t have any hatches in my flat, which is probably just as well because I have no idea where I left my battens. It’s going to be a blowy one though, so might as well stay in and share YouTube links.

If my Facebook and Twitter timelines are anything to go by most people plan to go to bed early and ignore it, but not before making sure that everyone else knows. I don’t really understand this antipathy to NYE (or Hogmanay if I’m being true to my birthplace). I like the idea of rounding off the festive season with a booze spent with friends rather than family which, and this is the other crucial distinction from Christmas, is all over and done with in one night.

This year however I’ll be with the curmudgeons, not through lack of willing or lack of a party to go to but because I will be at home nursing a stinker of a cold. I should be at work right now, but instead I’m catching up on some excellent films on iPlayer (The Apartment earlier, and I’ll go back to bed with a paracetamol when The Ipcress File has finished). I’m ill as often as not at New Year, something I put down to years retail when I would almost always fall sick at Christmas because I had been too busy to get ill before.

Happily my other half isn’t too bothered about going » Continue Reading.

The incredibly sad news is spreading that Neil Innes has left us. I was a little too young for the heyday of the Bonzo Dog Band and Rutland Weekend Television, but made up for it since. The Rutles at Colchester Arts Centre was one of the best gigs I went saw all 2019, and he was in such good shape that I had high hopes of seeing him next time round.

https://www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/content/8160/neil-innes-dies