mintybloggydiarythingy 2.0

Week from Monday 29th June 2026 - Whoops! here we go again! It's already Thursday and I haven't thought about anything to DIARISE about yet! It's hasn't been QUITE so haht 'round these parts (or 'round MY parts!) this week, but I've still endured a few hot'n'sticky sleepless nights, and I prefer to stay in the shade with the fan blowing during the day... However, I am obliged to step outside on FRIDAY, because I have another BLOOD TEST to undergo, plus I will be visiting the moneygrabbing DENTAL PRACTICE, in order to pay them a DEPOSIT, ahead of my six-monthly check-up in September ('cos I don't like to do that sort of thing over the phone!). My smile is stuck, so I have to go back to yr POUNDLAND as well... My VISA CARD expires this month, and I was starting to worry because they hadn't yet sent me a new one. While I was in town, I checked in with my bank to find out the score. The chap told me that the new one SHOULD be in the post....

Week from Monday 15th June 2026 - I finally got around to the happy task of turning CBQ's naughty recording of the SOFT MACHINE gig at The Green Hotel in Kinross into a SINGLE DISC LISTENING EXPERIENCE, and pretty atmospheric it is too. As is usual with latter day Softies, once you cut out the banter and dead air between numbers (and abbreviate the drum solo!), it NEARLY all fits on one seventy-nine minute disc anyway! In this case, I also needed to omit "Joy Of A Toy", which will go on a future "HOT TICKLES" compilation instead. Week from Monday 22nd June 2026 - I dipped in and out of the Sky Arts coverage of the ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL, but for the most part, none of it was for the likes of me! I did however stay up to watch Shelfy's favourite band THE CURE in all their glory. I don't think that the HIGH DEFINITION close-up cameras did them any favours though. Nobody needs to see geriatric goths squinting in the unaccustomed light through badly app...

Week from Monday 1st June 2026 - I did one of those L-O-N-G phone calls to the ELF CENTRE to organise my next rounds of pre-HORSEPICKLE blood tests. You have to wait until after eleven-thirty on a Wednesday before you can book an appointment these days, and then you have to listen to twenty minutes of terrible electronic Mozart before you can get through to a person to make your arrangements. But at least I shan't have to TAKE A GAMBLE the next time, going all the way to the general obstacle, only to find that I can't be seen to on a 'WALK-IN' basis... The LiDL-TREK ladies have been having a better time of it in their version of the GIRO D'ITALIA... ELISA BALSAMO sprinted three-for-three in the opening stages, thus wearing the PINK JERSEY. But she lost it by quite a few minutes in the Stage Four TIME TRIAL. However, she's still leading the RED JERSEY points competition by a comfortable margin and keeps winning everything that isn't too hilly, thanks to the...

Week from Monday 11th May 2026 - Meanwhile In Blooskyland, a couple of SOFT MACHINE recordings have exchanged hands... I posted a picture of the CD cover that I did for the recent SWISS WEBCAST, so naturally I had a few replies from the curious. It appears that the original broadcast is no longer there, so opportunities for 'acquisition' have now been lost (It hasn't yet appeared on the SUGARMEGS archives either, surprisingly - although there is ANOTHER recent show in Portugal that will no doubt need hearing at some point!). Luckily, I captured the "CONCERTO-JAZZ" broadcast on the night and I do have THE FILES! I sent a link to my Scottish chum "CBQ" and he in turn has sent me his own 'naughty' recording of the Softy gig in KINROSS, which I look forward to getting into. But I have a couple of other "PROJECTS" to do before I give it my FULL attention. I recently got sent some rather good soundboards from BRAND X's 1978 "M...

Week from Monday 4th May 2026 - I had my COVID JABBING over the weekend, which naturally led to a couple of daze ZONKED OUT with the "Spikevax Fever" - including all the fun stuff like nauseous retching, reduced appetite and crashing headaches, as well as spending most of the ensuing day-and-a-bit in fevered semi-consciousness. It's a CATCH-22 sitch... I get FREE priority vaccinations because I'm "IMMUNO-COMPROMISED", but that is also the probable reason for my reacting so badly to the drug itself! Meanwhile, I have a chat with the HAEMO-ONCOs on Tuesday, so I made sure to get my relevant BLOOD TESTS in earlier, before all that was in my system! TUESDAY PHONECHAT... Indications are that certain critical blood 'NUMBERS' are creeping upwards again ('Free Light Chains', 'Serum Free Lambda' and all that sort of hoohah). But they are nowhere near the 'UP IN THE THOUSANDS' count that they were when I was first diagnosed with MYELO...

Week from Monday 27th April 2026 - ...in the end, the only way I was able to save a copy of THIS MONTH's bank statement was to do a screenshot of the account page. To recap, since the new "improvements" to the bank's website, previous months statements are there as PDFs, but not the latest one, even several days after I got the notification that it was! Sorry to bang on about this, but ill-advised "improvements" to bigbiz websites are a particular bugbear of mine, along with most forms of advertising... FIREFOX has now released as version 150. A lot of the 'fixes' apply just to WINDOZE and MAC, and I'm not that fussy about any improvements they might incorporate for the management of multiple TABS - 'cos I don't roll that way! - but I did notice a couple of the new features in my own LINUX and ANDROID versions. The built-in PDF EDITOR has all that you could possibly want from a PDF editor now, and they've upgraded the built-in LANG...