Happy Birthday Dave

It’s Commonwealth Day and also Dave’s birthday so we ate Swedish meatballs to celebrate his origins and A1 served up a lovely cake with candles, peach slices and sprinkles on top. Afterwards we did the quiz with Ivy as quizmaster and scored a steadying 10.
A1 is reading Death at the Sanatorium* by Ragnar Jonasson. A2 is reading The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler.

First Poppy

Welcome to the first big poppy of spring, fresh out of the bud and attended by bees (NB technically it is the second poppy, but the first was way down beneath the leaves and inaccessible to wildlife or cameras).
A1 is reading The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, an alternate-history sf novel set in 1952, when a meteorite hits the east coast of the US and wipes out most of the government. The ensuing threat of catastrophic climate change kick-starts the space program, and we follow a female “computer” — as in real life, the maths was done by women, many black — as she attempts to join the program and become an “astronette”. This book won just about every sf award going in 2018, including the usually reliable Sidewise award. But despite the laudable examination of gender and racial issues, the book comes across as … well, rather soppy and girly. It must have been a fallow year for good sf.

Dinner with the Royals

The first Jersey Royals of the season have arrived in the shops and immediately there is an argument about whether they should be cooked starting with cold water or boiling water. The packets were no help; they gave opposite instructions. But anyway they were delicious, served with salmon and creamy cheesy leeks and followed by A1’s scrumptious pineapple upside-down cake.

Sadly Gez and Bob were absent from our gathering so we only scored 7.5 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler. A2 is rereading (though I don’t remember reading it the first time, twenty years ago) The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw.

May Flowers

The garden after an April which was middle-of-the-table warm and wet but the third sunniest, including five of our all-time sunniest April days and the earliest ever >12kWh event.
A2 is reading Desperate Undertaking* by Lindsey Davis, which was er um OK as thrillers about serial killers in ancient Rome go, but part of a series that would take too much effort to read all the way through.

Healthy Veggie Food

We had brassicas for Africa this week, and Gez is dieting for health, so our food for today was cauliflower cheese with coleslaw and a garden lettuce salad followed by fruit salad, after which we scored 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading The Edge of Darkness* by Vaseem Khan. A2 is rereading Death at the Sign of the Rook by the ever-enjoyable Kate Atkinson.

Jabs for the Girls

A2 went for the Covid jab and Salvation Army shopping experience today. Changes: very few punters, you no longer get a certificate and the nurse calls it a sharp prick instead of a sharp scratch or a little prick. And the wall of the long departed Jabberwock has been painted over again. [Aside: A1’s id number at boarding school was 37. But he had nothing to do with this. Honest.]
A2 is reading Tom Lake* by Ann Patchett, featuring three sisters in a cherry orchard.

Star Trails, and Meteors

The Lyrids meteor shower — a remnant of Comet Thatcher, no relation — has started, and though it doesn’t peak until the 22nd April, the sky was clear last night so we thought it was worth seeing if the Dwarf Mini could image them. It has a “star trails” setting, which takes a load of pictures with the wide-angle camera, combines them and produces  a video of the result. We left it running for 3 hours (producing over 1000 photos) and got this:

At about 5 seconds, a pair of short trails appears at the upper right, which we’re fairly sure are meteors as they’re pointing directly towards the shower’s radiant in Lyra/Hercules. We’ll try again later, weather permitting; the night of 21st is forecast clear.
(Ignore the ghostly artefacts — it was shot from indoors through an open window and caught some reflections from the glass.)

Welcome Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS)

Another marvel from the Dwarf Mini; captured by A1 in the wee small hours in a gap between trees.
More info on Roast with a bonus North America Nebula. Update: Here’s a better photo, taken the next morning:
Our bathroom book is The Single Helix 100 short science essays by Steve Jones, which has well-timed chapters: one for a no.1, two for a no.2.

Critter of the Day: House Sparrow

Passer domesticus, a very common but also extremely endangered bird. We’ve never photographed one before.
March was more or less average on the sun, rain and temperature fronts, but it was frequently unpleasantly windy. In like a lion and out like a lion.
A2 is reading The State of the Art by Iain M Banks.