Admin1 is rereading Slough House by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary.
Tag: admin2 reading
Long-tailed Tit
A fluffy little critter tweeting in the branches.
Admin1 is rereading Joe Country by Mick Herron. Admin2’s old book to reread was The Man Who Japed by Philip K Dick; the protagonist, driven by unconscious desires, subverts the country’s morals with propaganda. Couldn’t happen here.
Shopped
Another fine window from the local underwear emporium.
Admin1 is rereading London Rules (oh no it doesn’t) by Mick Herron. Admin2 has been reading What Makes This Book so Great by Jo Walton; about rereading old sf books, sadly not many of our favourites, and is now going to find an old book to read again.
Happy Birthday Dave!
Cloud of the Day: Undulatus
The sun is wrapped up in a thick puffy quilt to keep warm.
Admin2 is reading The Rising Tide by Patrick Easter; an eightteenth-century river policeman investigates a murder and meets Prime Minister Pitt.
We scored 9 on the GSQ. None of our guesses worked out so the only points we got were for things we actually knew.
What a Performance

Two and a half years after buying their tickets, arty intellectuals Admins 1 and 2 finally got to see Pet Shop Boys from seats perched high on a vertiginous man-made cliff which had acrophobic Admin2 pouring with cold sweat until the lights finally dimmed and the music began.Suburbia opened the set, after two and half hours spent getting through airport-strength security and waiting for the arena to fill. There was a spectacular light show, with lots of computer animations:
The PSB catalogue is so extensive (and such consistently high quality) that our guesses for the opening number were all wrong (we both favoured West End Girls, which was near the end). Happily for Admin1, Being Boring was also played. And there were great versions of It’s a Sin, Heart, Domino Dancing, and a sadly Dusty-less What Have I Done to Deserve This. They missed out Shopping, though 🙂
All in all, a splendid time was had by all…
It was our first trip out of Yorkshire for two and a half years and we found Manchester as rainy as always, and the prices at the AO Arena extraordinarily exorbitant (£5 for a litre of water FFS, and an incredible £35 for a poor quality ‘official merchandise’ T-shirt).
Admin1 is rereading Spook Street by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading Tragedy on the Branch Line by Edward Marston; a nineteenth-century railway policeman investigates a murder and meets Prime Minister Palmerston.
Rainy Days and Mondays
27.6 mm. We were going to get up for the lunar eclipse at 3am, but under the circumstances didn’t bother.
Admin1 is rereading Real Tigers by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel.
In the Empty City
City Square, the would-be bustling hub of Leeds, at prime shopping time and the place is deserted apart from some trees and the Black Prince.
Admin1 is rereading Dead Lions by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading The Dark by Emma Haughton, a juvenile mystery/romance, wasted on the locked room/powder keg setting of an Antarctic research station in winter.
Today was the warmest day this year: 23.2 °C.
The next day was cloudy and cool. We ate pork, veg and rice with the newlyweds and scored 11 on the GSQ after a lot of guesswork and bet-hedging.
Critter of the Day: Speckled Wood
A butterfly sitting on the grass of No Mow May.
Admin1 is rereading Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North.
Love Hearts
Thanks to the lovebirds and contributions from the juniors, we scored 11 on the GSQ.
Admin1 is reading Hot Water by Christopher Fowler, who’s clearly got bored writing about amiable old codgers and switched to nasty and vindictive youngsters; pity.
Admin2 is reading A Matter of Time by Claire Askew.
Ring a Ding Ding
Congratulations to Gez and Dave on their wedding day. Rings were given, words were said and they emerged into the daylight as a Mr and Mrs. Outside the Civic Hall, crowds demonstrated in their honour.
Admin1 is reading Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard. Admin2 is reading Inspector Chopra and the Million Dollar Motor Car, a special short easy book by Vassem Khan which took about 20 minutes to read but was enjoyable anyway.
May the Fourth Be With You
An escaped number balloon trapped on a telephone wire catches the sun as a bird flies by.
Admin1 is reading Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard. Admin2 is reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Wind and rewind.
Ten Years After
It has been ten years since we started uploading annual May Day pics of the garden after whatever weather was earlier. During that time the rain and sun have waxed and waned and the tulips and bluebells have slugged it out; tulips in the ascendant this year after an April that was our fourth sunniest April ever and not so showery.
Admin1 is reading A Killing in November by Simon Mason — another unpleasant protagonist whom the author works hard to make sympathetic. Not really successful at humour, and side issues (refugees, jihadists) not explored adequately. But readable.
Admin2 is reading Companion Piece by Ali Smith, which features an imaginary female character who is A Smith.
We had the pleasure of Gez in the flesh for the first time since Mother’s Day and scored, oh dear, worst this year, 7 on the GSQ.
Cumulus, Contrails and Communication Cables
On the sunniest day of the year so far (11.230kWh) Admin1 is reading The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves. Admin2 is reading The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis; a Devonshire crime tease.
Dandelions Old and New
Spring is well under way with little suns everywhere evolving into ghostly moons.
Admin1 is reading The House of the Hanged Woman by Kate Ellis. Admin2 was reading Among the Ruins by Ausma Zehanet Khan (a film-maker campaigning for a political prisoner is murdered in Iran) but found it, worthy as it probably was, too depressing, intellectually challenging and boring to read late at night so has switched to The Darkest Evening by Anne Cleeves.
Critters of the Day: Collared Doves
Are you looking at my bird?
Admin1 is reading A High Mortality of Doves (ooh, sorry, doves) by Kate Ellis. Admin2 is reading Dead Man’s Lane, also by Kate Ellis.
The solar panels reached double figures (10.163kWh) for the first time this year today.
Easter Eggs
Magpies have built a fine nest next to our house (apparently magpies nest next to humans to keep away their crow kin) and today Admin1 sent up the drone to look for blue eggs or fluffy chicks, but they had built a roof and the tree was in leaf so no luck.
Meanwhile Admin1 had his first stab at making a Battenburg cake which turned out extremely well. A lovely meal was had by all and we scored 11 on the GSQ.
Admin1 is reading The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis and Admin2 is reading Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard, which was extremely implausible.
Good Friday
A nice warm day and a red sky @ night.
Happy Easter, Passover, Ramadan and Vaisakhi!
Admin1 is reading Dead Man’s Lane by Kate Ellis. Admin2 is reading The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears which was ho hum.
Hooray Hooray It’s a Halo Halo Day!
A sundog in the morning…
…and a halo in the afternoon.
Followed by buckets of rain.
Admin1 is rereading Cut Short by Leigh Russell. Admin2 is reading The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard, a gripping novel in which the perpetrator of a string of unsolved murders is reading a true-crime book written by a survivor of his depredations.
First Poppy
Welcome to the first poppy of spring, along with many tulips.
Admin2 is reading Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard; a mysterious disappearance on a cruise ship.
We scored 11 on the GSQ.
Mushroom Cloud
Ooh er! Saw this shape in the sky and couldn’t resist.
Admin1 is reading Survivor’s Guilt by Michael Wood, in which enough tears are shed to float the Titanic. An awful book, a histrionic soap opera with a terrible plot.
Admin2 is reading You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood, a convincing piece of cultural appropriation from a fifty-something Pakistani barrister writing in the first-person voice of a London teenager of Nigerian descent.
Despite the clouds and rain and sudden burst of hail it was the sunniest day of the years so far: 8.449kWh
Grape Segmentations
An outstanding member of the bunch.
Admin2 is reading Paperboy by Christopher Fowler.
Trifling Matters
Another yummy post-cake trifle which we sadly had to share at a distance because unlucky Gez had sprained [update: broken] her ankle. We did the quiz on zoom and scored 9.5.
Admin1 is rereading Breathe by Dominic Donald. Admin2 is reading What You Pay For by Claire Askew.
April Foul
Snow again, cold again. It will probably improve.
March was averagely warm, averagely wet and slightly above averagely sunny.
Admin1 is reading 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard. Admin2 is reading The Doll by Yrsa Sigurdasdotter.
Happy Birthday Gez
It rained and snowed and hailed and sleeted today, with sunshine in between, and stayed freezing cold throughout. It might as well be spring.
Admin1 is reading A Matter of Time by Claire Askew. Admin2 is reading The Soul Breaker by Sebastian Fitzek, a weird book about an amnesiac encountering an outbreak of unconsciousness in a psychiatric clinic.
Goodbye Sun
End of a run of warm sunny days, to be followed, if the forecasts are to be believed, by clouds, frost, sleet, snow and stormy winds.
Admin1 is reading The Doll by Yrsa Sigurdasdotter. Admin2 is reading Unhinged by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger.