23/07/20 e-bike sale, backgammon, etc.

A bit of a sad day yesterday as we said goodbye to the e-bikes. Had to give £50 off the price of the carrier to seal the deal but not too unhappy about that. All done with face-masks and gloves and lots of hand sanitiser. I'm pleased that all three items have gone together, and to a couple who will make good use of them (load them on the back of the car, go somewhere new, ride to a pub for lunch, back again). Much as we used to do. We did payment by online credit transfer, which worked fine in just a few minutes.

It's a dex night tonight, so this is probably going to be a more rambling post than usual... It's also the start of a new cycle, so back on the Lenalidomide as well.

Just as the e-bike people were leaving, a fish delivery arrived. The small fishpond now has a new and rather bigger grass carp to tackle the blanket weed, plus a yellow goldfish to keep him company. The carp is a "green" one (natural colouration) not an albino, so he won't be so easy to see. No sighting of him so far, but he's probably down at the bottom getting over the trauma of being delivered. I'm fairly sure I've seen the goldfish. I only got the goldfish because the complications of minimum order price and scaled delivery charges meant it was cheaper than just the grass carp. Such are the complications of "normal life".

I've mentioned the regular weekday online backgammon hour with an old college friend. Today we had a remarkable run of 5-2 dice, leading me to invent a new backgammon variant called "Groundhogammon".

The idea is that whatever dice you get in your first roll, that's what you have to play for the rest of the game. If it's a 6-1 (one of the strongest opening throws), you have to play 6-1 all the rest of the way. And 6-1 is often difficult to play well after the first move. I don't have anything on tomorrow apart from the usual exercise, so intend to play a couple of games against myself on a real physical backgammon board, just to see how impossible this will be. The big advantage is that you know within a few possibilities what your opponent's next move will be, and also what moves you will have available to make his life difficult. It will make the game much more predictable than the normal and very probabilistic version.

I'm reminded of the time back in university days (and against the same opponent) when I invented a vastly improved version of cribbage. In the standard version the idea is to get to the target score (usually 101) as quickly as possible, so you aim to maximise the points from each turn. Little room for strategic and tactical complications there. In my version there's a target zone of 99, 100, and 101 and at the start of each turn you also declare whether your score is going to be positive or negative. If, for instance, your points count of your hand suggests that you will reach the 90s but not 99 (a win), you might choose to go backwards if you have a low-scoring hand, in the hope of being better placed next time. On the other hand, if you have a high-scoring hand, you might aim to overshoot the target zone for a more realistic backwards move next time. Your opponent, of course, will note which way you're going and whether you're playing for maximum points or trying to go for a smaller score, and will play his hand so as to frustrate you as well as to advance his own tactics. I honestly think this is a  vast improvement over the basic game but have never been able to persuade anyone else (apart from Mr.Anonymous) of its many virtues.

After the e-bikes and the fish we went to Hylands Park for a walk/roll but instead of using the car park closest to us we headed for a different entrance that leads to a car park near to Hylands House. It's a ridiculous route that involves going a long way down a duel carriageway to a roundabout and back up the other side to get to the entrance but it does avoid a longish walk from the usual car park which has become just a little tedious after doing it so many times.

Hylands House has been used as a set in several films and TV series as a stand-in for the early White House. Here's an unusual view of the back. Just search Hylands House Chelmsford  (images) for the front.

We found this rather unusual piece of topiary while wandering around a bit of the garden we have missed before. It is irresistibly reminiscent of skittles or ten-pin bowling things just beginning to topple over. No idea whether that is intentional or not.