Fireworks in the far distance, played backwards as 2025 disappears into history.
Our weather station malfunctioned at various points in the year, with the base unit failing in June and the business end packing in in December; consequently none of the statistics are reliable. However the solar panels soldiered bravely on and served up 1,530.932kWh, making 2025 our second best year ever.
A1 is rereading Bad Actors by Mick Herron.
Author: admin1
All the Colours of Bram
And the following morning, a brief but lurid sunrise:
Roasted
Roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, sprouts, broccoli, stuffing balls, gravy … but A1 forgot to serve the carrots. But never mind, Gez scoffed the lot anyway. Plus A2’s delicious afters of Squidgy Chocolate Pear Pudding and cream, after which we scored 13 on the GSQ with Bob as quizmaster.
A1 is rereading The Stand by Stephen King. A2 is reading Desolation Road by Ian McDonald.
It’s Coming…
Yes, the season of … well, trying to avoid it. The shops are full of it, and still a month to go. And last week the Chapel Allerton willow tree got its lights.
A2, who walked to the shops today, but not those shops, is rereading The Priest by Thomas M Disch.
Halloween Spider…
…looking for a nice snack of a flamingo. And later, a double rainbow:
October 2025 was our coldest and least sunny October ever recorded. It was averagely wet though. A2 is rereading Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson.
Watts Going On
On the 300th day of the year, we’ve managed to reach 1,500.000kWh precisely in our solar panel output for this year. So giving an average of exactly 5.000kWh per day.
This year was looking like it would be our best ever for the panels, but that was probably scuppered by the very gloomy October. It’ll probably be only second best.
A2 is reading The Rose Field by Philip Pullman, which finished off the trilogy beautifully. Like with the knee replacement, she has been waiting for this for 6 years, with covid to blame in both cases.
Kneedful Things
A2 is indisposed, getting a new knee, so no family meal or quiz today. But here are some photos taken in the hospital grounds during various visits. Primrose and autumn leaves above, and some splendid fungi on the right.
Get well soon, A2!
[later] A2 is back. And A1 is rereading — of course — Needful Things by Stephen King.
Diwali
Some Diwali fireworks. The first few were local, followed at 9pm by the main event at the Sikh Temple. Obscured by trees from here, but still a splendid display.
Coq au Vin
The family meal on this very rainy day (19.8mm) was A2’s amazingly delicious Coq au Vin, served with mash, green beans and garlic puff pastry pinwheels. Yum!
And for pudding, here’s Dave cutting A1’s Orange Sponge, served with custard, cream and chocolate sauce.
After all that, we scored a reasonable 9 on the quiz.
A1 is reading Ice Queen by Nele Neuhaus, a fearsomely complicated story of a squabbling German family with secret Nazi pasts. An exhausting read.
Cloud of the Day: Arcus
An interesting rotating barrel cloud:
New Toy!
This is the new Raspberry Pi 500+. With keyboard lighting!
Thankfully, it’s completely configurable: you can have any colour and brightness, light up just the key pressed, have a “heat map” effect … you can even turn it off 🙂 And for fun, you can play a (very difficult) “Flappy Birds”-type game just using the keyboard and its lights.
The keyboard itself is really good, with mechanical keys. Just like the old BBC Micro.
When he can tear himself away from his new toy, A1 is reading Stone & Sky by Ben Aaronovitch. A2 is reading The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown, a readable fantasy about magic books that, for the purpose of the plot, can be used for good or evil.
Earth Shadow
The Earth’s shadow rising at sunset, just after the equinox, below the Belt of Venus.
A2 is rereading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick, which mentions in passing a machine that will render eg The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as a funny cartoon in the style of De Chirico. Truly PKD was a prophet for his time.
Buckets of Rain
Lots of rain today, and the entrance foyer of the local Co-Op has a serious leak problem.
A1 is reading Clown Town by Mick Herron.
Another Milestone
Today is the 5,000th day of generating solar power from our panels; they’ve been working flawlessly since December 2011, nearly 14 years. And quite coincidentally, today our total power generation reached 20MWh — that’s twenty megawatt hours, or twenty million watt hours. That will keep a 10-watt lightbulb lit up for 228 years.
Shiver Me Timbers!
Trembling trees in Storm Floris. Leeds is just within the yellow warning area.
A1 is rereading Bryant & May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler. A2 is reading The Shadow Collector by Kate Ellis.
A Record, of Sorts
| Rank | Date | Total | Year total/rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 11 Jul 2025 | 1001.506 | ? |
| 2 | 16 Jul 2020 | 1009.582 | 1513.188/3 |
| 3 | 16 Jul 2015 | 1005.793 | 1528.472/2 |
| 4 | 17 Jul 2022 | 1000.305 | 1537.314/1 |
| 5 | 18 Jul 2021 | 1001.289 | 1484.297/4 |
| 6 | 19 Jul 2018 | 1007.096 | 1483.659/5 |
| 7 | 24 Jul 2023 | 1007.385 | 1465.268/7 |
| 8 | 25 Jul 2019 | 1004.350 | 1467.265/6 |
| 9 | 27 Jul 2014 | 1002.906 | 1440.038/8 |
| 10 | 29 Jul 2013 | 1000.932 | 1419.952/9 |
| 11 | 3 Aug 2017 | 1003.167 | 1403.480/10 |
| 12 | 8 Aug 2012 | 1004.008 | 1369.068/11 |
| 13 | 10 Aug 2016 | 1000.968 | 1366.583/12 |
| 14 | 10 Aug 2024 | 1000.675 | 1321.768/13 |
A fine and sunny day, and the warmest of the year (32.6°C).
The solar panels made 12.33kWh, which takes us past 1000kWh for the year. This is the earliest date we’ve reached this milestone, as seen in the table, and puts us on target for a very good year.
Solstice Bubbles
Happy solstice! Here’s a glass of cream soda to celebrate. If you look closely, each bubble contains images of many other bubbles. Meanwhile, today storms are threatening to, er, bubble up, but just a brief shower so far. Feels very sticky though.
A1 is rereading A Song from Dead Lips by William Shaw.
Cherries
Some of this year’s excellent crop of cherries. Although the tree is over 10 years old it’s never fruited very well until now, not helped by the depredations of squirrels and pigeons.
A1 is rereading Body Breaker by MW Craven, which brings to an end his MWC reread. Just waiting now for the next Washington Poe book, due soon. In other news MWC has been commissioned to write some juvenile James Bond tie-ins, which doesn’t bode well for his proper books 😐
A2 is rereading Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre.
Art Attack
Well well…
A1 is rereading Black Summer by MW Craven. We are watching Dept Q.
Round and Round
A colourful halo seen from the library roof. Still very dry this month (0.3mm so far), but rain is expected over the weekend.
A1 is reading All of Us Are Broken* by Fiona Cummins, the third book in a row not cast aside lightly. Thrown with great force, to be precise. It was horrible.
A2 is reading The Shadow by Ajay Chowdhury
Florence and the (Xbox) Machine
A1 has been reading the recently published Perspectives by Laurent Binet, an epistolary murder mystery set in 16th-century Florence. And was rather struck by this passage:
As I descended from the ramparts, I heard some guards climbing the stairs. Since I had no business being up there, I would have had no excuse to justify my presence if they had seen me. So I hurried back to the roof. But you know the palace better than I, so you know that there are no hiding places up there. I ran to the wall; a leap from that height could be fatal, even to me. But God rewards the brave: at the foot of the wall was a cart loaded with hay, left there by some groom. It all happened in a flash: the decision, then the execution. I climbed onto the parapet, arms outspread like Christ on the cross, I closed my eyes and I dived. During my fall I heard the cry of an eagle. My landing was as soft as on a feather bed, and in a second I was up on my feet again, completely unscathed.
That’s from page 140. So here’s a sequence from 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, which is set in … 16th-century Florence. Which is where we are here:
This really does stretch coincidence too far. All that’s missing is the eagle — but as any fule kno, nearly all Assassin’s Creed games have an eagle perched on the viewpoints you can jump from (he must have flown off before I got there this time). And there is always a convenient hay cart below (well, unless there’s a lake).
I think it’s pretty certain that M. Binet is a fan 🙂
More Japanese Animals
More wildlife from Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Here are some boxing hares, being drawn by our heroine Naoe. Who turns out to be a dab hand at sumi-e (ink wash) painting.
And here’s a kitten!
Partial Eclipse Day
The day started auspiciously with a fine 22° halo, seen on the webcam.
Clouds rolled in, but there were enough gaps to see the eclipse between 10am and noon.
And here’s the traditional colander picture, with hundreds of crescent suns:
A2 is reading The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.
Contrails
Warmest day of the year so far: 19.0°C, and the sunniest by a couple of watts, and dry.
Met Office forecast for today: “Cloudy with strong winds and rain”
We have been watching Adolescence. Phew!
Cats of Japan
A1’s new game is Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set in 16th century Japan. There are samurai, ronin, cherry blossom, lords and peasants…
…and cats!
Dogs too, but you can’t have everything.
Addendum: A2 noticed the unusual tail — this is a Japanese bobtail. According to a source of the time, “It has no mind to hunt for rats and mice but just wants to be carried and stroked by women.” 🙂