Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.

Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.

Facilities manager for a wildlife and heritage charity. I lead a small team looking after health & safety, compliance and building maintenance and repairs.

Ninety percent of my time is spent at the keyboard, but since I am peripatetic and move around the properties that I cover, I have a different, and usually beautiful, view out of the window each day of the week. When I am not sat behind a desk, I will be crawling through an attic or have my head down a sewer or something.

My time is spent arranging contractors for routine servicing or repair projects, reviewing fire risk assessments and dealing with outstanding actions, writing client briefs for renewable energy projects, chasing people to do workplace inspections, advising on risk assessments, updating our compliance tracker, arranging asbestos surveys, ensuring that everyone who needs training has it up to date, proving to utility companies that their meters are wildly inaccurate and need to be replaced, working out why the biomass boiler/sewage treatment plant/water heater/automatic gate/car park machine/phone system/greywater pump/security alarm/whatever isn’t working and getting it fixed and so on.

By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn’t seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

It’s my turn to cook tonight. I’m doing a shakshuka.

I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.

Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.

I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.

I probably get one a month or so on my work number.

Basically all of them.

A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:

• Doctor
• Dentist
• Sister
• Wife
• Close friend

I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.

I have no reason not to speak to any of these.

Doctor who (2005) s01e07 - Kronkburgers on Satellite 5 in the opening scenes.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) - Aubrey Plaza in an engaging character piece that has hints of Eagle vs Shark among others. It’s not outstanding by any means and not among Plaza’s best, but still witty and touching.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

Fairly standard (for the UK, in the '70s): black trousers, blue or white shirt, dark blue blazer, school tie etc.

BUT, the blazer had the school emblem on, which was derived from the poultry trade that had been a major feature of the town’s prosperity at one time: we all had a large un-ironic turkey embroidered on our chests.

Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.

Yes, definitely. Why you are doing it makes all the difference.

There is - in my experience - a good deal of how you - and the organisation in general - do it too, and that accounts for much of the cultural difference. Charities tend to treat staff (and volunteers - since so many depend on vols) as people rather that resources much more, although there is also a tendency for the cause to outweigh everything, which can lead to staff, particularly, being expected to commit totally around the clock, and sidelined if they don’t. I have only encountered a few organisations that do this to a problematic extent really though.

I did in my late 20s after working in IT. I didn’t know what I wanted and wasn’t planning on non-profit or anything as such, but jumped ship, did a range of random things before spending some time volunteering (at something that was not in any way IT related)- which was the critical thing. That put me in a spot to A) show some commitment and B) get some training as it was offered. A paid post followed in due course after that.

That is a very simplified version, but volunteering was definitely the critical element for me.

Since then, I met plenty of other people who made the jump. Some simply moved with their existing skills to an equivalent role in a charity - and there are plenty that need project management skills - whilst others have taken the same route as me and spent some time volunteering.

Volunteering means you don’t get paid for some time, of course, so you have to either live off savings and/or find a live-in role and/or work part-time or something and you probably need to downsize one way or another, but people find a way and make it work.

Of course once you are in a role with your chosen cause, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be away from being overworked, stressed and given more and more responsibility. It is a trope that working for a charity means that you don’t do it for the money and you work waaay longer than the official hours say.

Certainly my role at the moment, with a large charity, is the most demanding I have ever had and there is basically nothing left at the end of the month for savings: I am just keeping afloat. For all that though, there is no way at all that I would go back to a for-profit role, and I have never looked back for a moment. The culture is totally different and leagues better.

My main requirement is that it has to be available on my heavily locked down work phone and work laptop as well as my home ones. If it isnt in my face whenever I look at a screen, it isnt going to work. So it ends up being Google tasks.

Without looking for sources - so I could be totally wrong - I believe that it did darken proportionately and that light meters would register that. However, human eyes are not light meters and adjust to the dimmer light without you knowing.

Does Ivor the Engine count as a cartoon? Animation, certainly, but I’m not sure about ‘cartoon’ as such.

Anyway, it is the 1975 version for me.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.