The last three have been s/h when I have bought them and then I have hung on to them for around 5 years each myself.

Remember them: yes.

Feel anything: it is usually a particular event or something that causes me to bring them to mind, so any feelings will be more tied to the event that caused the memory than the place itself - and that could be good, bad or just unusual. I don’t think that I have ever had reason to look at street views of any of them.

Sentimental: not in general. They all had good points and not so good. I enjoyed living in them most of the time, but I enjoy where I am now too.

The closest to sentimental would be when I spent a night at one of the old places some years later. I used to live on site for work, but my role changed. No-one lives there now. It is used for meetings and storage etc, but someone will occasionally sleep-over for one reason or another, as I did on this occasion. That evening I felt like a ghost haunting my own past.

My wife has knitted me several pairs of socks over the years. I am pretty certain that she has given me at least a couple at Xmas. I still have them all and wear them at weekends.

However, other than that, I don’t think that I have given or received anything that is not consumable - food, drink, toiletries, candles, outings etc - for a very long time.

Dark Mustard

Films that I saw, on TV or at the cinema, prior to the age of 16 or so that had a major impact on me - in the approximate order in which I saw them:

• The Amazing Mr Blunden
• Jason and the Argonauts
• Mon Oncle
• Star Wars (before it became A New Hope)
• The Third Man
• The Omen
• Stalker - which pretty much marked my transition to adult SF

Bite my shiny metal ass!

It’s a variation on a local folkloric figure, and the image is modified from the album of a poem about the figure by Martin Newell and the Hosepipe Band.

An excellent sausage and cheese toasted sandwich.

2 x 240L wheelie bins - one for dry mixed recycling, the other for residual waste. They are collected on alternating weeks.

We could pay for a third for green waste, but we compost instead (and have a bokashi bin to assist with that).

There are a few communal glass bins around which we will drop stuff off to as we pass from time to time, since that is not included in the DMR selection.

Soft plastics - bags, film etc - are also not included, but can be recycled at supermarkets - or collected by them when they make a home delivery (which is what we do).

Tetrapaks, WEEE, batteries etc need to be taken to the local recycling centre. We’ll book a slot about once a quarter for that.

Early in secondary school, back in the '70s, the music teacher had some issue or another - if I ever knew, I have long since forgotten - and had simply given up. She did not even attempt to teach anything. As a result, we were allowed to do anything at all as long as long as it was quiet.

I did an assignment on early Russian space flight. I don’t know why that particularly, but it was my obsession at the time, so I did. It was never marked and no-one else had any interest. It contained a lot of detail from numerous sources, but I doubt that it was that great really. However, that I was allowed to do it at all surprised me at the time and had been a source of fond amusement for me even since.

I have read comparisons in the past. I don’t have them to hand, but the conclusion was that dishwashers were more efficient in terms of water use and energy. However, the type of hand-washing that it was being compared to was itself a very inefficient style of washing (tap running continuously? two full sinks for rinsing? I can’t recall, but not the way that we do).

So handwashing the way we do is probably more efficient but it seems that there isn’t THAT much in it either way, and given the time taken and that we cook from scratch almost all the time, we use a dishwasher for the vast bulk of stuff.

As a kid, in the UK, back in the '70s, I was watching Roots and was wondering why they were so keen to get to Scotland. I eventually realised that this was set in the US, of course, and the north there was different.

So I suppose that was my default then but, these days, I typically find myself trying to work out exactly when and where a thing is set, if it isn’t obvious, automatically - before I actually settle into the plot or anything.

That’s nothing. I have no granadillas, rambutans or mangosteens either.

I guess that you might attract some - but it is going to depend where you are as much as the light source. I’m in the UK, for example, and wouldn’t get a lot of moths right now as we are well into autumn.

However, even with glowsticks, I’d expect that you will find something - just not a lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortina_d'Ampezzo

Because I became curious about why the car was named that.

I have no idea where you are or how possible it might be, but I’d suggest volunteering for some local thing: soup kitchen, wildlife conservation, charity shop, whatever.

That will get you out of the house, meeting people - basically without any commitment on your part, so you can walk away, potentially learning new skills and making connections that could lead to a job.

I have a selection of natural scenes - some that I have taken myself, other found on the web - that rotate each two hours around the day. Night shots at night etc.

Nope. I still have From LA to New York etched into my brain in bile and loathing from it playing on a cheap crappy clock-radio alarm I had when it was first released in '76 or whenever. Actually waking up to that song probably only happened a couple of times, but it was enough. I found that I preferred the brain-piercing built in alarm to having any other songs or drivelling DJs hypnogogically imprinting themselves.

These days I have either birdsong or Tibetan chimes instead.

I probably wouldn’t.

From the first RSS feeds onwards I have found that anytime I curate a list like this, 6 weeks later I am ignoring the entire thing. Either the individual feeds contained a few items of interest that one time, but basically nothing since, or else there are a lot of interesting items - but they are buried in a tidal wave of uninteresting ones.

I would primarily describe my view as Virtue ethics, but…

• I believe that cultivating virtues is necessary to be able to take responsibility for your choices etc: existentialism - and this is what I aim to do
• I definitely consider that prioritising the natural environment is essential - at the large and small scale
• In areas where I am aware that I am not sufficiently developed, I will adopt a deontological approach as a fallback
• I would certainly consider the promotion of equality and the development of local community as virtuous, although not to the exclusion of individual autonomy or rights - within that community or without.

On the larger scale, I seek to promote the development of individual virtues and equality within society but, acknowledging that this is always likely to be an aspiration rather than a achieved state then, again, I would look to a deontological approach as a fallback.

I am deeply suspicious of utilitarian arguments in most circumstances, simply through experience of those who tend to promote them. Both egoism and libertarianism seem short-sighted to me.