Possible friendly fire on a raid to kill/capture Rommel, iirc?

“Since Time Immemorial?”
“Legally speaking, even older than that.”

I read this right after seeing a couple on the bus get -incredibly- happy at seeing a cafe I must have gone past hundreds of times. Huge smiles, taking photos, laughing, cries of “I got it!”, etc.

No clue why they were happy - probably an in-joke or something. But it was delightful to see.

- Scotland (Fife, but the family are from around Glasgow and Inverclyde).
- English (Scottish Standard English).
- “Miaow”.

That friend isn’t Jess Wilson - this one’s a Scottish runner.

(Custard making an appearance thanks to a mate whose fuelling strategy in one race consisted of carrying Birdseye instant sachets, filling them up at the water stops, and drinking them cold. Interesting move.)

“And it’s back to the studio from Checkpoint 4, to hear our panel’s thoughts on the last hour’s worth of fuelling. Folks, some interesting choices around potatoes versus custard there?”

I’d say vice versa.

The world would be a better place with even more ultrarunning coverage.

Yeah, this is before we even get into nicknames. You’ll be deep into some correspondence with “Peter” before realising it’s actually with a guy who has a name that’s nothing like Peter.

“Alexander “Peter” Rocke-Androll, Lord Ampersand, later Earl Dustbin, also known as “Iain” to his uni mates.”

They didn’t just love them, they made a big thing of changing them!

Writing about Chamberlain’s PPS? That’ll be Lord Dunglass. The post-war FS? Earl Home, thank you very much. The PM? Douglas-Home. The -other- FS? Douglas-Home.

All the same guy!

Honourable mention goes to a guy in Oviedo who decided to wake the entire albuerge up by tunelessly yelling the lyrics to “Please, Please, Please” outside the window at 0300.

Just what you need before an 0430 alarm and 36km day.

“I think we’re on a sticky wicket here, so should run on a bit and see if we put in a good innings. Anyway, I’m out.”

First the bats blocking GW’s car park, now the giant rats… start the week with Vampire Counts, finish it with Skaven.

And it just becomes a cycle at that point. People drop out of the social realm, which leads to a shrinking social realm, which leads to people dropping out of the social realm, which leads to a shrinking social realm - etc.

I think the in-person social circle aspect’s key. I’ve seen people get radicalised in so many directions (from “person who constantly posts boomerslop” to “tried to storm Edinburgh Castle under Admiralty Law”) in environments where, historically, they’d have just done entirely benign things.