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We had a small crop of great figs in July. Now there are many small 3-4 cm unripe ones. Try culling most of the unripe fruit and trimming the growing shoots off every branch you can reach. Watch out for the nasty sap. You might get some fruit if the weather holds. Later pull off all but the pea sized figs, they will be your first crop next year. Assuming you have Brown Turkey variety, the most common fig in these parts.

This is an apalling tragedy for the victim, her friends and family.
Local witnesses said the driver lost control at speed on wet roads after overtaking a queue of stationary traffic.

It is understood that Whiston Road is an old “quietway” – residential
roads that were recommended for cycling – but no longer forms part of
TfL’s new Cycleway network as it fails to meet TfL’s safety standards.

https://translogistics.net/2023/09/woman-cyclist-dies-following-hit-and-run-crash-in-hackney/
It still appears on LB Hackney and TfL cycle maps. I find it the worst section of my regular routes in Hackney.

We don't know if the bike rider was on the road or on the pavement cycle track. Cars have in the past crashed onto the footway on this bit of road. I ride this route often but have never noticed the little crossing lane for riders who have been caught out on the Mountbatten Way/Millbrook 6 lane highway. The crossing is unmarked and goes over the slip road just after the 40mph sign where cars accelerate to the dual carriageway. After the crash police closed both the cycle track and the slip road for over 4 hours.
You need to be a magician to find the safe routes in Southampton. There is no wayfinding signs for westbound rider near here. People coming from Paynes road are directed onto the bus lane which feeds into the slip road.
I think the crash might have happened just west of (behind) the google map image. Driving here is often hairy with the slip road joining fast traffic. The cycle track here is about 2 metres wide, it is shared with pedestrians and is two way, immediately beside a 40mph dual carriageway. There is no coherent route on the other side of the highway. It is the scariest bit of the route between Totton and Southampton station.

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/23741978.cyclists-injured-crash-millbrook-road-west/
This looks serious the road and cycle track have been closed for almost four hours. I went past site on the train. It is just where Paynes road slip joins the main road. I hope the rider pulls through.

Stolen from Broadway Market over the weekend. My friend's Jo lost her brilliant copper coated frame with white wheels. Please let us know if you see it anywhere. - Charlie

So sad, so overwhelmingly depressing.
Thoughts with everyone who loved this poor woman.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/02/hospital-calls-for-action-to-stop-cyclist-deaths-at-notorious-london-junction

In a highly unusual intervention, the chair and chief executive of
Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust, and the heads of the children’s allergy
service where Dr Marta Krawiec worked, have written to the mayor of
London, Sadiq Khan, saying the moment had come “for action rather than
words”.

for a wider perspective of the labour situation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/empty-shelves-britain-workforce-workers

URTU represent less than 3% of drivers. Many more are in UNITE but sadly the majority belong to no union at all.
Denigrating drivers as fat necked racists etc, is part of the problem. I can't understand why lorry drivers in this country have such low status compared to almost anywhere else in the world.
I started HGV driving when there was a real shortage of drivers. Pay was good and going up. I earned enough in 16 weeks a year to live and pay my way though college. Since then relative pay and conditions have got progressively worse. It is really hard to recruit drivers who care about what they do if you treat them like shit.

https://twitter.com/9NewsAUS/status/1236088663093608448?s=09

Am I nuts to try and plant this mini hardy Eucalyptus in a bed on the north side?

We have one in a very large pot on the north side. It is doing well now in it's third year and about 2 metres high. Not as bushy as some of the pictures but still one of the best things in a very scrappy back yard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGCVh7WOA14

Do we have a Dominic Cummings thread yet?
Meanwhile journalist Stefan Collini has been reading all of DC's blog posts since 2013. A great public service.

Collini's conclusions compressed into about 5000 words appeared in the Guardian's Long read on Thursday.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives

Take a look at the mind that is directing PM Johnson and his cabinet of all the talents.

There are traces of that kind of absolute certainty that is more often shown by fellow-travellers of science rather than by first-rate scientists themselves.

When I was at school, a long time ago, a teacher was disappeared.
We came back from holiday and he wasn't there, his name removed from everything as if had never existed, his classes taken by supply teachers.
We later found out that his crime was that he had written a polite letter to the newspaper suggesting that homosexuality be de-criminalised on social justice grounds. He had been well liked and a popular teacher.
The lesson in homophobia worked. One of my classmates is now a very senior church man who is notorious for his opposition to gay marriage.
The only other famous person from that school was Errol Flynn. About 90 years ago he was expelled for theft, or for seducing one of the kitchen staff.

Stop the world, I want to get off.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-04/man-creates-fake-traffic-jam-on-google-maps-by-carting-99-phones/11929136
http://www.simonweckert.com/googlemapshacks.html

^ where the toilet is used to be a back door into the garden area so there was an existing stud wall between there and the kitchen. If I was doing it again I would make the shower a bit longer and the kitchen cupboard a bit smaller. Shower is 700x700 so quite cosy.

All Victorian/Edwardian terrace with pretty much the same footprint.

Most have a downstairs bog, generally under the stairs, occasionally in the kitchen. Anything with a toilet in the kitchen is discounted to take into account you really don't want a toilet in the kitchen.

Under the stairs is the place for bicycle parking nothing else, except a pram or pushchair.

I took 700mm from kitchen/diner to have space for toilet, small shower with door to corridor and a storage cupboard opening into kitchen/diner. Roughly like this

It's not all bad news for everyone. On ebay sellers of face masks are making a killing. Prices have risen from about 10p each to 70p to £1.40 each. One seller claims to have 300,000 in stock.

You think you have settled status! You better start bigging up your Wikipedia page for when the immigration police come knocking.
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/john-torode-wikipedia-page-british-passport-a4352166.html

Four children on pavement, one with bike, killed by drunk driver in Sydney.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/four-children-killed-one-injured-in-sydney-crash-police-say-20200201-p53wwf.html

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/everything-needs-to-change-say-road-safety-experts-after-oatlands-crash-20200203-p53xa1.html
[very strong video with parents of the driver, and the children]

Also in the news
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/khalid-shaikh-mohammed-threat-torture.html

Mr. Mohammed “didn’t scream, grunt or do anything,” Dr. Mitchell said, citing his recollection of the 183 times he waterboarded him in March 2003.

Really good video, but can't help thinking this would have been great to make 3 years ago rather than days before we are leaving.

I still don't understand how Labour failed over Brexit. They should have been doing this kind of video over the past few decades to counter the media liars, Johnson, Farage etc.

wuhan only recently opened up a grade 1 research facility

I think it was established in 1956
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

The best estimates of mortality and transmissibility will have a high error margin for some time. The article by Da Shiji illustrates the suppression of information followed by blockade and shutdown leading towards administrative collapse in Wuhan and neighbouring cities.
It is hard to compare mortality and transmissibiliy with SARS in 2003. This time the virus identification has been much quicker. The administrative cycle of deny deny deny / panic panic panic has been twice as quick. But the mobility of people is exponentially higher in 2020. Many times more Chinese and visitors move in and out of cities like Wuhan. They do it much faster and they go many times further. That situation is going to be a defining factor of this epidemic.

^ I am no expert but I have extracted files by booting the machine from a USB drive with Linux (Ubuntu or Mint etc). Once you have transferred all the data you want to an external drive you can try loading Win10. Other OS are available.