An occasional journal
Admin2 came home from Light Night to find that Admin1 had done his own illuminations. What a lightful surprise!
We had an exquisite chicken and leek pie for our family meal and scored an amazing eleven on the GSQ.
Admin1 is rereading Thud! by Sir Terry Pratchett. Admin2 is rereading Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd.
The Disocactus x hybridus in our bathroom puts out another overarching display.
Admin1 is reading No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary. Admin2 is rereading Real Tigers by Mick Herron, which features a devastating portrait of a popular but pernicious politician, totally fictional of course.
Outside is shrouded in clouds and sodden with rain, so here is a view from inside.
Admin1 is reading The Last Astronaut by David Wellington, a highly derivative cross between Rendezvous with Rama and Alien, complete with chestburster scene. How this awful, badly characterised and idiot-plotted novel got on the Clarke Award shortlist is one of the great cosmic mysteries.
Admin2 is rereading Time out of Joint by Philip K Dick. Nothing is real.
We have read 2309 books since we started counting; 274 in the last year. Here are just some of them.
Our cats in an uncharacteristic affectionate pose. They spend most of the day annoying each other and half the night charging up and down stairs playing a crazy game of hide-and-seek.
Admin1 is reading Cover Your Tracks by Clare Askew. Admin2 is reading Nightshade by ES Thomson.
We scored 10 on the GSQ.
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.
This Disocactus x hybridus has been chilling out on the bathroom windowsill for years, producing one or two flowers a year, if any. This year it has gone crazy.
Admin1 is reading Let the Dead Speak by Jane Casey. Admin2 is reading Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee.
It’s Booktally Day! In the past 8 years we have read 2035 books, 260 up on last year.
Admin2 is reading Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas; the plot hinges on a dog turd deposited on a Paris street at midnight.
Our Christmas cactus suddenly in bloom on an unexpectedly sunny day.
Admin1 is reading Woman with a Birthmark by Hakan Nesser.
We have been keeping an eye on our tiny courgettes, hoping that they would eventually grow big enough to be worth eating. Yesterday we found this long-as-your-arm monster hiding under a leaf.
And here it is baked and stuffed. Yums!
Admin1 is reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell. Admin2 is reading The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths which was implausible and stupid.
The inside and the outside (and Admin2’s new(ish) phone) reflected in a shiny bauble.
Admins 1 and 2 have been watching True Detective Season 3 (thanks Admin2!). Admin1 is rereading Real Tigers by Mick Herron and Admin2 is reading The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor.
Admin1 is reading Insidious Intent by Val McDermid and Admin2 is reading Speak by Louisa Hall; a clever novel about artificial intelligence, love and loss.
We scored 9.5 on the GWQ, close to our average score in 2018, which was 9.347692308…, continuing our year-on-year improvement.
Admins 1&2’s new dining table which converts to a snooker table. Thank you St Gemmas. Game on!
Admin1 is rereading Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson. Admin2 is reading The Hit by Nadia Dalbueno.
Khofi ya tsiku: Malawi Pamwamba which was pamwamba (top).
With this lot on our team we managed to score 11 on the GWQ. Thx Gui, Lee, Bi & Fi, C, G & D.
Admin1 is reading Transcription by Kate Atkinson; finely written, but I wasn’t convinced by the denouement. Admin 2 is reading America City by Chris Beckett, a fabulous book about the power of publicity to change for the worse an America changed for the worse by climate change, and topical in the week of Hurricane Michael.
Our new toy tool: a drone with a movie camera, bought to look at the solar panels to see if they need a clean (and definitely not to have fun with). It’s pretty difficult to control in small spaces, but Admin1 is slowly improving with practice. This is the highest we’ve taken it so far.
Admin1 is rereading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.
Coffee of the day: Costa Rica Montanas del Diamante Tarrazu; smooth and citric.
Admin2 is rereading Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan: the spy who loved reading novels. Admin1 was reading The Lies We Tell by Kristina Ohlsson, but gave up because it was rubbish.
Our Christmas tree and all our presents (before G, D, A and B came to take theirs away). But with their help we scored 9 on the GWQ.
Admin1 is reading No Echo by Anne Holt, which was totally implausible, not helped by the characters all acting like spoiled kids. Admin2 tried reading The Marco Effect by Jussi Adler-Olsen but discovered that we had already read it under the title of Buried and is now reading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, which was visionary.
Our new cleaner. Goodbye Carrie, hello Carrie2.0. And happy birthday Lee.
Admin2 is reading Open Grave by Kjell Eriksson. Someone has to do it.
Our shiny new roof is finished and it’s the sunniest day of the year so far but the solar panels are still parked next door so we aren’t getting any electrical benefits.
It was cloudy and rainy today so we did our jigsaw from 1978 that included Upper Volta, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the USSR and watched Whitechapel. We scored 5.5 on the Guardian Weekend quiz. Bah.
Google looking at Admin1…
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…looking at Google:
We watched Oculus, which explains, on reflection, why we have an aversion to looking in mirrors.
In the misty morning a cobweb sparkles with tiny dewdrops and frosted flies
And in the afternoon a parhelion lights up the sunny skies
A mediocre bathroom “improvement” from Norwood Interiors. Caveat emptor.
This blog is 500 posts old today. Happy blogiversary!
Admin1 watched Gravity and is reading The Jewel That Was Ours by Colin Dexter. Admin2 is reading A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver, about squabbling siblings.
Today the solar panels reached the amount of money we made in 2013.
Huge pink hairy stripy flowers that smell revolting. What’s not to like?
Admin2 is reading Nineteen Eighty by David Peace.
