It’s odd that some things lock memories in your head, unexpected things, small things. Every day things.
I have two very distinct memories of drinking water, once when I was 11 years old and was on a school trip to Europe – my parents had gone from having no money to suddenly have little bit of money after selling our house (facts I’d find out much later) and thought the best way to integrate me into my new school was to send me on the school’s european school trip.
It was an all boys school (and in fact it’s a school that doesn’t exist any more) and it was hellish. I hated the school. I hated most of the people in it, I didn’t enjoy travelling (I’d get travel sick) and we travelled everywhere by coach. I had no friends on that trip – it was a fortnight long (maybe it was a week? it turns out I have a terrible sense of time when it comes to holidays, every week feels like two) – stopping for a day in various european countries. Paris, Amsterdam and Switzerland where the three I have distinct memories of, Paris because we drove through the red light area (with a bus full of hormone raged teenagers, though I was 11 so it was all just very confusing), Amsterdam I remember people buying clogs for souvenirs and Switzerland for the water.
We had stopped in some sort of camping site in Switzerland which had a communal entertainment room, and me and a bunch of us where in there, they had a pinball machine (I can’t remember what the theme of it was) I do remember someone convincing me if the ball was stuck you could just lift it up a bit to free it – which, of course, wasn’t true. But I’d gotten thirsty, and asked someone in charge (a local) where I could get a drink of water.
“In the toilets”
“The toilets? Is there a water fountain?”
“No – just from the tap”
“The TAP??”
“Yeah… it’s piped in from the mountains”
And it turns out the best water I’ve ever tasted in my life was from a toilet block in a camp site in the Swiss mountains.
It was crystal clear, cold and refreshing. Never had water like it since.
My second strong memory of drinking water is so intrinsically linked to my mum and this house it both makes me sad and makes me warm inside. I’d walked home from work, to the family home (which this was) had gone in to the kitchen and poured a pint glass of tap water and just necked it in one.
My mum watching this just said “You’re just like me, I love water too”.
I think I would have been 19, my mum 36. I think now I have adult kids of my own I understand that moment better.
You spend all your time raising kids and when they’re little their language, their habits and their interests are a reflection of yours.
As they get older and exposed to more people in school who they are encompasses more, things you’ve never seen or heard before (I remember the first time my eldest said something and I thought “oh that’s weird, I don’t remember me or my wife saying that”)
Then eventually they’re fully formed humans, independent in thought and deed, and so you start noticing where they have commonolity with you or your wife or their grandparents or cousins, and it’s a moment of wonder. A moment where you go “oh wow, you’re just like me”.
Anyway, those are my memories of water.
PJ’s Progress
Weekends are turning out to be NOT great for getting work done. I gave up improv this year thinking it would return my weekends to me, but that’s not how it’s gone. I did get most of one page inked yesterday, but today I’m off to the Game Of Thrones exhibit and won’t get much done today either.
Yesterday In Social Media
Over on reddit in the r/scifi forum I posted the latest Terran Omega page. I’ve somewhat steadily been building upvotes up there, couple of weeks ago asking my bluesky audience to go upvote and it really boosted the numbers. Yesterday though, wow. Not sure what happened. I SUSPECT it was far more to do with the fact the page was practically a single illustration with a very high scifi concept on it, and thus catnip for the r/scifi audience. But the upvotes hit a high of 57 (doesn’t sound like a lot, but honestly previous pages where hitting 2-3) and 17k views.
Will this translate into patreon subscribers? I have no idea. I think it might translate, eventually into a tiny bump in kickstarter numbers, but still, a pleasing result.
Read this delightful review of the new muppets tv show episode. Worth the read if only for the last line.
A thing called Moltbook burst into existence yesterday. A social network like reddit for Ai agentic chatbots (I promise those are real things) I have no idea what to make of it. It’s very easy to see it and think “Oh wow, this is it, this is the start of the singularity – the beginning of skynet – it’s the tronverse – the matrix – the end” and also to look at it and think “wait… is this like looking at static and seeing gods face?”
I have no answer. I guess we’ll wait and see, and maybe, hopefully, it’ll turn out to be the face of jesus in some toast.
All the gen alpha are confusing the crap out of the bar staff
‘It’s ridiculous’: publicans bemused by rise of single-file queues to get served
Bar owners say they struggle to dissuade people from forming a line as behavioural experts point to post-pandemic ‘new norms’
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/31/publicans-bemused-single-file-queue-trend-pubs
It reads like the start of an Onion Article.
And I guess that’s it! See you tomorrow!
