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.

The first three of Dennis E Taylor’s Bobiverse tales, definitely: easy reads and the most compelling that I have read for a long while. The next ones may be too - I just decided to take a break before continuing.

Also Dan Simmon’s Hyperion for it’s breadth of styles if nothing else.

The early Murderbot diaries by Martha Wells. After the first five there were some elements that started to get a little repetitive, so I took a break there. I expect to enjoy them again when I restart though.

And then The Road, of course, which is by far the most literary, and probably The Player of Games so far from the Culture tales.

The least favourite would be This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which I found naïve and unconvincing.

This year I have been catching up with some SF: broadly alternating Banks’ Culture series with others. A few weeks back, after finishing Use of Weapons, I read McCarthy’s The Road - which kinda counts as SF - and that spoiled other books for me for a while. His excellent, sparse use of language topped off a brilliantly understated and impactful tale.

Life got in the way for a bit following that, and rather than going into the next Culture novel, I happened to have Niven and Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye to hand and so started that, but not only was the writing extremely mundane compared to McCarthey, but the setting of “Nelson’s navy in space” left me comparing it to O’Brien’s Aubrey and Maturin tales - and it didn’t do well on that front either.

So I will not continue with that one and will be starting Excession - which I believe many find to be the best of the Culture books - shortly.

The last coding that I did was back in the '90s, so I’m going to pass on that then.

Happy to if that will help, but this isn’t anything that I have done before, so I don’t really know what would be involved. Could you give me a little more detail on what I need to do?

Loving that AI summary here:

Blaise Metreweli will take over from Richard Moore to become MI6’s 18th leader. The agency’s chief, referred to as “C”, is the only publicly named member of the organisation. MI6 is the final British intelligence agency to appoint a woman as its leader. Stella Rimington led MI5 from 1992 to 1996 and Eliza Manningham-Buller later ran it. In 2023, Anne Keast-Butler became the first female head of the electronic and cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ. Boelter was arrested after an extensive manhunt on Sunday in a rural area of Sibley County, southwest of Minneapolis. He is also suspected of shooting and injuring Democratic Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette at their residence. Authorities received a report of a person in the woods and launched a search using a helicopter. US Senator Amy Klobuchar shared a statement from Yvette Hoffman on social media. “John is enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods,” Hoffman said.

161 words - 88 of them from a completely different story!

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.

As far as TV is concerned, Murderbot, The Eternaut, Babylon Berlin & Your Friends and Neighbors continue to be the best that we are watching at the moment - pretty much in that order.

Film:

• The Penguin Lessons (2025) - Steve Coogan puts in a fine, morose performance here. It takes a while to engage, but pays off well in the end. Nothing groundbreaking, but well worth a view.

• The Salt Path (2025) - a solid adaptation of the book which, perhaps inevitably, focuses more on the emotional journey of the couple than the incidents of the walk as the book tends to. It did not entirely grab me and felt rather overlong as a result, but still an interesting and well acted tale.

Most recently, spot the car that isn’t black, white, grey, blue or red.

Commercial vehicles don’t count. Gold/bronze gets 1 pt; yellow gets 2 or 4 if it isn’t a sports car; pink gets 4; dark/british racing green gets 4 or 8 if it isn’t vintage; any other type of green gets 6.

We were making this up at the time. That’s as far as we got.

We have played the legs game occasionally, but not much fun on motorways.

And “Horse” from Eagle vs Shark. You win the round when you see a horse and say “horse”.

I really can’t recall but not a lot at all. To avoid the whole blood-diamond thing we bought a vintage one from a charity, where it had been donated.

Yes, much the same here. Forgettable is, disappointingly, the key word.

I’ll carry on watching, but largely in hope that it improves rather than for actual enjoyment as it is.

Catching up after a couple of weeks away, so:

The Righteous Gemstones - after an unfocussed start to the 4th and final season, it has picked up again in the second half. One more episode to go.

Sirens - the new, much vaunted miniseries, and another in the ‘aren’t rich people terrible’ genre. I have only seen the first ep so far. I will continue, but that episode didn’t really live up to the hype, IMHO.

The Eternaut - Intriguing Argentine apocalypse tale. Also only the first ep so far, but I am definitely hooked.

Murderbot - I’ve been looking forward to this one, having read the first few books. It has been cricitised for being slow, but I am enjoying it so far.

Poker Face - the return of this neo-Columbo show. It is as undemandingly entertaining as before.

Babylon Berlin - halfway through season 1 and it continues to be stylish, grim and gripping.

Your Friends and Neighbors - and another ‘aren’t rich people terrible’ tale, which is developing engagingly.

I grew up near Slut’s Hole Lane. It didn’t have a sign at the time and I only found the name on an old map, but the sign has been put back since.

More recently a regular walk would take me past a woodland called Fiscal Policy. I did find an explanation for this one. I can’t recall the details, but it was rather dull overall.

I would imagine that it is linked to the rainward side of the Urals, which I would imagine have more cloud and so would promote a selection for improved Vitamin D production, as with Ireland.