Food Hygiene Ratings as Biosafety Levels

For the past few years most restaurants, cafes and fast food outlets in Reading have displayed these FSA Food Hygiene Ratings at their entrances. 

Today it occurred to me that these can be seen as a continuation of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention Biosafety Levels for laboratories and other facilities that handle potentially dangerous microorganisms:

Maybe there is some overlap.

Foot stamping gulls

A pair of herring gulls (Larus argentatus) on the lawn in front of our flats.

The gull on the left was persistently stamping its feet on the ground, presumably to encourage worms to come to the surface.  The gull on the right only did it occasionally and most of the time just seemed to be waiting for the other one to finish.

Photo taken in Reading, UK on 2022-01-27

Doing business with Amazon

The last few times I have tried to buy something from Amazon each time I have had to go out of my way to cancel an unwanted sign-up for Amazon Prime. 

This has left me with an unpleasant feeling of being manipulated and I now try to avoid using Amazon whenever I can.

I buy my books online through bookshop.org, Blackwells.co.uk or wander downtown to the local Waterstones or WH Smith. They might sometimes cost a few pounds more but their user interfaces are simple, easy to use and honest.  And their delivery times are pretty good too.

Similarly for other goods, I would go direct to a reputable specialist supplier such as Dunelm, Spalding Fasteners or Tac Tree (to mention a few I have recently used) rather than go to Amazon.

Books I read in 2021

These are some of the fiction books I read and enjoyed in the past year:

• Settling the World by M. John Harrison
• Light by M. John Harrison
• Nova Swing by M. John Harrison
• Empty Space by M. John Harrison
• Climbers by M. John Harrison
• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
• V2 by Robert Harris
• Corporation Wars Trilogy by Ken Macleod
• Among Others by Jo Walton

As you can see I had a good session on the works of M. John Harrison. I 'discovered ' him back in 2020 when I read The Centauri Device, Viriconium and You Should Come with Me Now. I initially read his Light/Nova Swing/Empty Space trilogy out of sequence because the 2nd book wasn't delivered until several weeks after the other two, so I immediately read them all again in the right order and was pleasantly surprised by how much better I understood them after the second reading.

Hornet

A European hornet, Vespa crabro (Hymenoptera: Vespidae).

Taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading, UK on 2021-08-24.