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Quintus

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  1. Quintus

    Room 101

    It's planned disorientation. Supermarkets rearrange regularly because the last thing they want is people going straight to the items they need. They rely on a percentage of casual / impulse purchases, which means drifting you past as many shelves as possible hoping that unplanned items will catch your eye before you find what you came in for. That's also why staples like the bakery and booze are at the back of the store. You appear to have foiled their strategy though!
  2. Anyone going, plan to arrive early! The Wimbledon day 1 entry process was so chaotic that despite being in good time, we lost a good hour and a half of spectating, and the queue built up to way over half a mile. There were problems with the scanning system itself, then the ongoing issue that scanners don't read screens in bright sunlight (which is why other tournaments had awnings up!!!), and ultimately the fact that they concentrate the whole scanning and security process inside a very narrow gateway instead of distributing it in an external buffer zone as they do to an extent at Roland Garros.. Once inside the perimeter of course everything works so well that it's a painful contrast!
  3. thanks, I put some on Instagram and a couple of the players asked for copies to use on their social media, which is always gratifying
  4. We had a great five days at the Rothesay Classic in Edgbaston last week. Such a good tournament as you get top talent in a small venue, and a tradition of players pausing for a few words and a quick pic - we have quite the selfie collection now . We always 'discover' someone interesting to follow and this year we found we were about ten years late to the game in noticing Sorana Cirstea; a super nice personality and with a fast, hard game. Below clockwise: Giorgi, Martincova, Garcia, Cirstea.
  5. A few pics from Roland Garros; Watson, Bogdan, Kostyuk, Ostapenko, Azarenka, Giorgi.. Looking forward to Birmingham in a week or so; some good players there this year. Shame Iga is now too big for that venue, though frankly at the moment she also seems too big for all the other players - today's final was so one-sided.
  6. reminds me of some of the scenes in Woody Allen's film 'Midnight in Paris' !
  7. We went to Roland Garros for two days last week, the usual mixture of delight and chaos. The scheduling has been interesting to say the least - timing the Nadal-Djokovic epic to start near 9pm, hardly any women's matches in the evening sessions, putting the world no 1 on a secondary court for early rounds as she was deemed too good to give an interesting match... It was noticeable that the crowd was most interested in the domestic players, no matter how minor, so they got put on the big show courts and with our cheapo 'courts annexes' tickets we got to see the big international stars from really close up instead!
  8. ooh, didn't know they'd started arriving, will have to go out and have a look. Love watching them head out to sea and return with a fish in their bill.
  9. I managed to escape a road trip from hell for a couple of hours yesterday to pop into the wonderful Bempton Cliffs reserve. I was fortunate to see Albie the much sought Black Browed Albatross do a couple of circuits (someone nearby was saying their friend had made five trips from Chichester to Bempton and not seen it!), and there were lots of puffins about. Clockwise below: 1. Albie 2. 'go on, tickle me again' razorbills 3. gannet 4. puffin
  10. You never know, but I got the impression that this is not just about wanting a new phase in life. She'd already withdrawn from tournaments this year, and said that she has given all she can and is both physically and mentally spent; I think the tour is just too much for her (as it may prove for some of the young stars coming through). It's one thing achieving slam victories and another coping with the strain and stress of defending them, and matching expectations, year after year after year - that's a real endurance challenge. I don't much like Serena Williams but I have to admire the sheer resilience she showed in maintaining her level over such a long period. Ash has already done tennis and cricket - perhaps she'll pop up as a top swimmer or golfer next!
  11. So farewell Ash Barty, retiring from tennis and life on tour. We went to Roland Garros in 2019 and walked miles to find a restaurant open; we ended up in a bog standard Chinese in a backstreet, and who should be on the adjacent table but Ash and her team... a choice quite illustrative of her unassuming nature. With her money I'd have been in Maxim's. Rumour has it that marriage and kids are on the cards, so here's wishing her all the best. The usual routine for a retirer is to ask for their ranking points to be withdrawn, which would put my much-mentioned-here protegée Iga Swiatek up to world number one, and needing to win just one match at Miami to defend that position. Jazda Iga!
  12. We saw Phantoms at Dance East on Friday. Green Apples is a great attention-grabbing opener, full of energy and shifting dynamics between the couple. Folk Tales was my favourite, moving from bravura display to nursery rhyme horror to folksy humour. Phantoms itself was pretty bonkers, to use a technical term, and I gave up trying to follow the plot somewhere around the point where a goblin gets distracted from gutting a villain by his mobile phone ringing. I thought it needed tightening a bit, but the dancing was excellent. For me too, Jonathan Goddard was the outstanding dancer of the evening, fluid, assured and able to convey characters. The whole company was impressive though, and I note that several have a Rambert background. Great stuff.
  13. Our local venue, Dance East, hosts some excellent small touring contemporary dance and dance theatre companies. Whenever I look at these companies' websites, there's a handful of their artists who list the well known ballet schools in their profiles. At what stage they went from ballet to these other forms, and whether it was through choice or from diminishing options is not clear, but this seems to be a well trodden path.
  14. with Jasmin Vardamon, the production to look out for is Medusa, which is excellent. We recently saw Pinocchio, also good fun.
  15. We're looking forward to seeing this at Dance East in Ipswich in March - sounds like a cracker and we love that venue as it is so intimate. A couple of weeks earlier we've got James Wilton Dance Company doing Four Seasons there, which also looks interesting. Peanut68 - as another company recommendation, keep an eye out for Jasmin Vardamon Company; more dance theatre than pure dance but often very innovative, and hugely entertaining.
  16. I saw my first jack snipe yesterday at Minsmere. Phenomenally well camouflaged - took me (and others) several minutes to see it even when it was pointed out. It did bob very briefly, but clearly you need to be a Springwatch presenter to get the full display!
  17. Quintus

    Wordle

    Absurdle is a good variant in the same format - it lasts longer as instead of having one answer from the beginning, it keeps a number of options open as you make guesses, so you have to pin it down.
  18. Last night we watched Winterwatch, and it prompted me to check the trailcam I'd put in a stable to try and locate a rogue mouse. We were thrilled to find it had captured this clip of a stoat, just after watching the same beastie on TV! I had it kindly confirmed as a stoat rather than a weasel on Twitter by queen of the beanie, Megan McCubbin. stoat clip on youtube
  19. I find Barty much more relatable so I hope she does win. She’s a very intelligent player so hopefully she’ll already have a strategy for all that speed and power….
  20. I haven’t managed to see a Cornet match, given the impenetrability of the Eurosport add-on I got via Amazon, but I read that she’s benefited from a high rate of unforced errors in her opponents, so with Collins the going in favourite it may be down to how consistent / good at controlling the nerves they both are..
  21. Of my original watchlist, I'm left with Iga Swiatek in the QFs and hope she gets through at least one more round. I'd like to see Maddie Keys do well too - she seems like a genuinely nice person and I remember being shocked and saddened to read an interview about all the unwarranted abuse she gets online. It's bizarre how frenzied both supporters and haters get about players. For me, tennis is just entertainment and while I find some players far more engaging and interesting to watch than others, I'd never lose sleep about a result.
  22. That was a heartening performance from Emma; Sloane was rather off in the first set but Emma also played very well, and did a great job to come back so strong after the difficult second set. Some cracking rallies and now she has an easier draw for the next round. Fingers crossed..
  23. Watching our 'strawberry blonde' Harriet Dart put up a brave fight against Iga this morning, we were wondering how such fair skinned players cope with the endless hours of UV exposure on the tour, which basically follows the blazing sun. I guess they have to slather factor 50 all over, but that then would make them sweat more, run painfully into their eyes etc. They don't end up looking like beetroots so they must have some technique that works!
  24. ...... oh, and this young lady, who impressed us at Wimbledon last year, when I took these shots, and has done very well since - Lena Rybakina.
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