Not quite dead in the water

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The hole in the wall is still open.

I had thought that the hole in the wall (by which I don’t mean some species of ATM) had been closed and that my brief return had been cut short once again.

The news, unexciting, is that the weather has turned quite cool after last week’s summer-like temperatures, and the forecast isn’t looking promising. There would seem to be no gentle decent into autumn although I’m hoping that the present spell of chilly weather isn’t the harbinger of a long, cold winter to come. In my first year here, it snowed on the 1st of November and did not get warm again until late April

The bicycle inventory which I mentioned led to reg. plates for our bikes. My plate is in my rucksack. I completely forgot about it last night. Honestly, I don’t want to attach such a thing to my machine, and I don’t see the point because foreigners, at least, don’t have to register their bikes. In fact, I’m not sure anyone does these days.

The joy vampires have been at it again, killing off some popular talent show on Hunan Satellite Television. Putative reasons are that CCTV is using SARFT as its bovver boy to beat up a more popular rival; or that popular votes on acts appearing on the programme might foment democracy. Apparently the programme will be replaced with some puritanical drivel. The irony is that I then saw an article on the Cambridge Evening News website about some Shanghai-based talent-quest programme looking for hopefuls among Chinese communities in various towns in the UK.

Why are dictatorships so utterly humourless?

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