Welcome Lena to another cold-ridden two-house quiz meal. We had baked chicken and apple strudel and scored just 9.
Admin1 is reading The Girls Beneath by Ross Armstrong and Admin2 is reading Borderliners by Peter Hoeg.
Rainbow
A beautiful bright and evanescent rainbow briefly lighting up the autumn leaves to celebrate Admin2’s booster jab.
Admin1 is reading The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths. Admin2 started reading Too Much of Water by LC Tyler but is probably going to look for something else [update: rereading The Pesthouse by Jim Crace].
Fall Rain
Warm rain from a Spanish plume, soon to be followed by an Arctic blast.
Admin1 is reading All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew. Admin2 is reading The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths.
Prickly Pear
Last of the garden cucumbers; tiny and a funny shape but fabulously tasty.
Admin1 is reading The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is reading The Girls Beneath by Ross Armstrong
We scored 10 on the GSQ; reverted to Zoom thanks to the Worst Ever Cold.
Crowd of the Day: Spanish March for Climate
AGS, PCS, TUC etc supporting the Spaniards who are walking from Portsmouth to the COP26 in Glasgow.
Admin1 is reading River of Darkness by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is reading Cover Your Tracks by Claire Askew.
Moonlight Night
The waxing moon sits next to Jupiter in the clear evening sky.
Admin2 is reading Hidden Depths by Anne Cleeves.
It’s Light Night All Right
Hordes of people cram into a churchyard to stick their heads in luminous flowers and hear the hum of nature. Light night is a brilliant institution; it’s understandable that it’s always too crowded to be bearable.
Admin1 is reading The Death of Kings by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is reading The Blood-Dimmed Tide, also by Rennie Airth.
Red, White and Blue Sky at Night
A sunset panorama.
Admin1 is rereading Finders Keepers by Stephen King. Admin2 is reading River of Darkness by Rennie Airth.
We scored 12 on the GSQ.
Cloud of the Day: Flying Horse
A nice day, considering it’s October: 22.0 °C.
Admin1 is rereading The Outsider by Stephen King. Admin2 is reading The Guest List by Lucy Foley: a “Sunday Times bestseller”; a sure sign that a book is speedy, superficial and uses the word “adrenaline” as a substitute for conveying excitement through the text.
Flower of the Day: Calendula
Thank you Fiona for helping us plant these cheery yellow flowers.
Admin1 is reading If It Bleeds by Stephen King. Admin2 is reading The Death of Kings by Rennie Airth.
Jupiter Rising
Admin1 is reading Cold Kill by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is reading Death in Florence by Marco Vichi, another book set in the 1960s, this time featuring the catastrophic Florence flood.
We scored 12.5 on the Guardian Saturday Quiz which we had to do online because there were no newspapers in any of the shops yesterday. When the lights go out we’ll have beautiful views of the stars.
Leaves Alone
Winter is coming. September was warm for September; better than August and had more rain per rainy day than any other month but less sunshine than average.
Admin2 is reading The Long Firm by Jake Arnott; fiction with real characters from the 1960s London crime scene with the final chapter from the POV of a social studies lecturer living in Chapeltown.
Out of Gas
Yesterday the sun shone and the petrol station was crammed with cars. Today it is raining and the pumps are coned off.
Admin1 is reading The Reckoning by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is reading Cold Kill, also by Rennie Airth; a complete departure from the cosy peri-WW2 fictions, this is a horrible and unlikely story about gangs of ruthless assassins versus a lone plucky young actress.
Conkerama
Autumn’s bounty of inedible chestnuts.
Admin1 is reading Telling Tales by Anne Cleeves. Admin2 is reading The Reckoning by Rennie Airth: events in WW1 resonate in a nostalgic post-WW2 world where the characters wait uneasily to see what the Labour government will do.
We scored 10 on the unchanged GWQ in the new-look magazine. So it’s the Guardian Saturday Quiz now.
Equinoctial Halo
We’ve had more sunshine so far this year (1,366.747kWh) than the whole of our two worst years, 2012 and 2016, and there are stll three gloomy months to go.
Admin2 is reading Telling Tales by Anne Cleeves which began very promisingly but turned into a standard whodunnit.
The Sun Shines Down on Scott Hall Road
Admins 1 and 2’s traditional post-vaccine roadscape; this time for flu vaccines. How our arms hurt!
Admin1 is reading Redemption by Jussi Adler-Olsen and Admin2 is reading Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan: a cursed block of flats inhabited by successive generations of weirdos, including William Burroughs.
We scored 12 on the GWQ.
Return of the Naked Boys and Girls
Soldiers diddies etc, back with reinforcements.
Admin1 is reading Shadow Sands by Robert Bryndza. Admin2 is reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.
Clouds that Look (a Bit) like Fish
A red snapper escaping from an electric eel.
Admin2 is reading Redemption by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
We scored 10 on the GWQ.
Weather of the Day: Rain
We had 16.2mm of rain today; 14.1 in one hour. Too bad we had already watered the plants.
Admin1 is reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. Admin2 is reading Earthly Remains by Donna Leon which is mostly about rowing so far. To be fair, the crimes in the two Donna Leon books are mainly environmental, and the detective who tries to solve them is a happily married family man who devotes his spare time to reading ancient Greek and Roman literature, which makes a change.
Critter of the Day: Dilophosaurus
Happy Birthday Lee.
Admin2 spotted this animatronic monstrosity outside a closed-down shop while searching for another shop that turned out to be inside yet another shop.
Admin2 is also reading Trace Elements by Donna Leon which is pretty boring so far, being mostly about the weather in Venice. You wouldn’t catch us banging on about the weather all the time…
Critter of the Day: Red Admiral
A warm and sunny day, and this fresh-out-of-the-chrysalis butterfly graced our garden with its presence.
Admin1 is reading Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds and Admin2 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth.
We scored 11 on the GWQ.
A Tomato that Looks a Bit like Ernie from Sesame Street
But not a lot.
Admin2 is reading Mr Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd.
Exploring the Cosmos
A bee gets a taste of a daisy.
August was colder than June and July, saw 75mm of rain and managed to be the third least sunny August ever by just 3kWh.
Admin1 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is rereading La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman.
Finding Jesus
Baby Jesus has been missing from our Nativity scene for years now but Admin2 found him in the cupboard while reading the gas meter. Admin2’s mother made the set from a kit of plaster of Paris moulds back in the olden days. Jesus looks like a self portrait.
Admin2 is reading Under the Wave at Waimea by Paul Theroux but abandoned it because surfing is boring. Admin1 is reading The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry.
We scored 10 on the GWQ.
Some Cats and Many Colours
Owing to roadworks, Admin2 took a different route today and spotted this charming arrangement on some steps.
Admin1 is reading The Other Mother by Michel Bussi. Admin2 is rereading Big Sky by Kate Atkinson.