It was 80 years ago today, Sergeant somethingorother brought an end to play. Or something.

But what have we learnt? Judging from what’s going on in India, and Pakistan, and India-administered Kashmir, and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, not a huge amount.

If it wasn’t such a sombre occasion, it’d be laughable. Commemorating (a celebration of) a cessation of a bloody conflict while several others are in full swing.

What’s below loosely qualifies as London blogging, but don’t forget that no one does that better than Diamond Geezer.

The Pandemic. Remember that? Remember what you got up to?

Firstly, The Pandemic never ended. We’re still in it. It might officially no longer be a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" (PHEIC), but Covid still hospitalises and kills.

Now that’s out of the way, I remember what I got up to when movement was restricted. It’s easy to remember because I still do it to this day, if I have the time.

You’ve seen the Formula 1-based AI video with its graphical assault, right? Pope Francis has died, Donald Trump wore a blue suit at his funeral, now it’s time to find a successor.

As much as Trump might think he’s the best man for the job, Frankie Boyle, if you’ll remember, had him as not just the worst man for the job of President of the United States of America, but potentially the worst mammal, and that would likely apply here too. Instead, the runners and riders have been set out by more qualified people than me, and there are favourites.

It was an incredibly poorly kept secret, and an absolute no-brainer anyway, and now it’s confirmed. Max “Blessed” Holloway will fight Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier for the BMF - “baddest motherfucker” - belt at UFC 318 in New Orleans.

It will be Poirier’s final MMA fight, and he’ll be hoping to bow out with a three-peat win over Holloway - the second at Lightweight - but the meaning for the Pacific Islander is a little more complex.

The “auditing” phenomenon is one of the more polarising endeavours that modern social media - we’re looking at you, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok - has facilitated.

“Amateur” videographers/vloggers (video bloggers) visit a variety of locations with the intention of shining a light on sites, organisations and practices, with whatever they encounter documented for subsequent - or often live - publishing.

Close to a decade ago, a shift in my circumstances led me to, after a long hiatus, return to soap operas. Not how I refer to the dramas of my existence, you’ll understand, but the long-running episodic drama series which are the mainstay staples of television programming.

In the light of YouTube, Netflix and podcasts, to name but three challengers traditional entertainment media faces, the likes of Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Neighbours, Home and Away and EastEnders (I never really got on with Emmerdale) seem almost ridiculous in their dated approach to catering for our needs, but somehow they still demand my intention. Perhaps it is so I can keep an eye on what passes as normal human behaviour to the normal humans so alien to me that make up the viewership. No, not for the first time, I don’t have to be alerted to the irony.

I sometimes struggle with the storylines, and will abandon even my sporadic viewing until a specific plotline runs its course or, so I’m sure it can’t be resurrected, at least one of the characters involved is killed off. Largely, however, and to varying extents across examples, soaps are informative mirrors to society, and progressive. There’s the banal and the misrepresentative, sure, but soaps educate and enlighten as a matter of procedural policy.

Here we go again. Donald Trump, two years into his presidency, is due another (state) visit to the UK. Sickening, right? At one point, due to The Donald facing threat after threat to his position from inauguration to now, some said Angela Merkel had become, in effect, LotFW, but she ain’t the boss of me - God bless Brexit, eh? - and neither is Trump, thankfully. Oh, do monarchs have a claim to that? Anyway…

No one thought Trump would make it into the White House. Well, no one except me (listen in from 6m45s). But he made it in, and he’s lasting, to an extent. So what does this tell us about this planet? Well, assuming the majority of people reading this reside in the UK, imagine Alan “Lord” Sugar - to most media commentators a far more palatable human being than Trump - becoming UK Prime Minister. More palatable or not, Sugar is still an odious f*cking toad, so the idea remains entirely abhorrent, but the main parallelling point endures: Alan Sugar - like Trump, a businessman, a straight-talker, an a*sehole - sits in the faux-boardroom hotseat of The Apprentice, the BBC’s UK version of the show that propelled Trump to power.

This article’s in two parts. The first part involves this dual-national - UK and enduringly EU (French) whatever happens - bemoaning the leave vote. The second part, well, we’ll get there…

So what happened in 2016? A bus? Seriously? Who believes a politician at the best of times? And look at what politicians were for Brexit. Granted, David Cameron and George Osborne were on the remain side, and they’re utterly horrid, but the bus didn’t actually tell a lie, it just ignored the fact that the suggestion of funding the NHS with (some of) the £350million (gross) that goes to the EU each week could not be backed with any power to see it through. That’d have to be a policy decision and Cameron and Osborne were then in power, and singing from a different hymn sheet entirely.

Yesterday’s BBC News at Ten had a fun little segment on “fake news”. No, it wasn’t a crisis of contrite self-awareness, rather a comment on the dark potential of facial manipulation in post-production editing suites, so we can overdub people talking with a different audio, and enable them to say something different.

The example they used, which is particularly sh*tty for a news programme, was the possibility of the hit BBC drama, Luther, being overdubbed for foreign viewers, with Sexiest Man Alive™ Idris Elba’s mouth contorting to form words of a language he doesn’t speak.

It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate that the BBC’s possible gain in selling their enhanced programmes abroad could be the truth’s loss in other areas of life. The hipster video editor questioned on the subject paid the dangers very casual lip service, appropriately, by suggesting safeguards to ensure the technology is not used for nefarious ends. Because if you’re willing to edit a video to say someone said something they didn’t, you’d surely sign up to a code of conduct first, and be sure to stick to it.

Do you need this? Really? With unanimity amongst the public and critics that A Star is Born is wonderful, do you you really need me to tell you what I think?

How about if I tell you that it’s dogsh*t?

Okay, so, I found myself at a bit of a loose end on Saturday afternoon, so decided I’d go to the cinema. I couldn’t put myself through what I expect to be a deep clean of the Queen story, as told by Brian May - though I will - so I went for a different music-centric film.

We'll be slayin' people hatin'
But it don't bother us
Cus it's lit up in this thing called
Millennial Love

Millennial Love. The name of a song by a YouTuber I don’t dare type the name of, and also a podcast from the former newspaper, now blog online newspaper, the Independent.

This podcast - my main focus herein - centres on - uh-huh - the dating scene for millennials. If you don’t know, a millennial is somewhat accepted to be someone who was born in the last twenty or so years of the 20th century, which, incredibly, just about includes me, although there’s significant debate about the range. And, really, it’s a jungle out there.

Okay, so, two things:

1) I’m not Irish, and don’t live in Ireland, so maybe I should shut the f*ck up.

2) Chances are, by the time you - the average visitor to Marceltipool.com - read this, voting will have taken place, and my assumption, from over here in Britain two days before, is that Ireland will have voted Yes in a big way.

Well, to deal with both of those points, I’m nailing my colours to the mast on this referendum because I see it as a vote to legalise, and further the legitimisation of, abortion, both in Ireland and globally. Should Ireland vote Yes, then this piece can act as one of many examples of a counterargument whenever someone campaigning for easier access to abortion says “Even Ireland’s with us now!”