An occasional journal
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.
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!
In the wee hours of this morning, as A1 was suffering from cold, flu or covid and A2 was wakeful with worry, the aurora alert shot up to a high level (thanks to those charged particles from the CME; see below)
To the naked eye there was only a hint of red high up but a photo revealed the green wavy curtains
It was a wonderful thing to see, at least on the screen, after so many nights of staring at black skies and taking black photographs. See the stars!
A plane shot up and fooled us for a short time. And the comet is coming!
A1 is rereading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley.A2 is rereading The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel.
Tonight we saw some weird lights in the sky illuminating the clouds, perhaps over Roundhay Park.
A2 is reading Kill the Father* by Sandrone Dazieri which was also weird and illuminating.
Another very warm and sunny so-called autumn day. A2 was out watching a very feeble sundog and willing it to brighten up when she looked up and saw not one, but two, very bright arcs nested together. Possibly a segment of a circumscribed halo.
Meanwhile A1 is reading Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan, which has a pleasingly complex plot and is much darker than previous volumes (and is all the better for it). But VK does enjoy his similes…
A2 is reading The Misper by Kate London (thank you A1), a boy goes missing under the influence of a County Lines panjandrum who is himself under the influence of Game of Thrones (an unnecessary distraction).
Not a very impressive one, but the first we’ve seen in ages!
In other news, our weather station is now integrated with Wunderground, with live updates. Sample below (click on the image to open in a new tab):
We had stroggers and homegrown apple and blackberry pie for our family dinner and scored 10.5 on the GSQ.
Admin2 was reading 1989 by Val McDermid but abandoned it because it was boring and is now rereading Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.
Loads of these came out to play today, including one which flew straight into Admin1’s mouth.
Admin2 is reading Fludd* by Hilary Mantel. Her slim volumes about weird northern ne’er-do-wells are much more entertaining than her Booker-winning turgid tomes about Tudor luminaries.
A fine 22° halo seen today, with added contrails and their shadows on the cirrus clouds. Admin1 timed the shot so the high contrail at 7 o’clock was heading directly for the sun. The blue dot at 1 o’clock is a lens artefact.
Pallet Man‘s burning hell, filling the sky with sparks and reflecting off surrounding windows.
We had roast beef and cherry pie for our Sunday dinner and scored 9 on the GSQ.
A peculiar glow in the night sky turns out to be common in all cities that have sports grounds and is the reflection of grass-growing illumination on the Headingley rugby pitch a couple of miles away.
Admin1 is reading The Water Clock by Jim Kelly, a book neither of us remember buying which has lain on the windowsill getting slightly foxed for a couple of years. A very chilly crime book with a reporter protagonist, set in the frozen fens of East Anglia; a pretty good read though.
Admin2 is reading Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths.
Happy birthday twins!
To celebrate, some low-down noctilucent clouds, the first of the year, and 13.397kWh on the solar panels, our third sunniest day ever, by 2 watts, what what!
Admin1 is reading Tragedy on the Branch Line by Edward Marston, which was a considerably cosier train ride than Bullet Train, soon to be a big film. Admin2 is reading Crow Court* by Andy Charman, another crowdfunded debut, not so interesting.
One of the questions in yesterday’s Guardian quiz prompted a family discussion about the Kasanka National Park in Zambia and its enormous colony of bats. Admins 1 and 2 paid a visit there in 2010, which involved getting up in the middle of the night, trekking through a swampy jungle with some armed guards and climbing rickety wooden towers to view the bats flying around. It was spectacular. Here’s another shot we took:
Anyway, in a weird coincidence the Park turned up in today’s Guardian. Apparently some company wants to open a huge commercial farm which would have a catastrophic effect on the wildlife. The paper also has a nice photo essay on the Park’s bats.
Admin1 is reading The Special Dead by Lin Anderson. Admin2 is rereading The Second Sleep by Robert Harris.
Happy Hanukkah and Lucia Day. Christmas Lights Man displaying as usual, with a giant snowman standing in the hall before he hastily shut the door. And Admin2 saw three Geminid meteors in the night [update: later we each saw dazzlingly brilliant ones].
Admin2 is reading Accidental Agent by Alan Judd; most boring spy novel ever.
We scored 8 on the GWQ; no, let’s make it nine because our answer to “What links Johann Strauss II; John Philip Sousa; Benny Goodman; Elvis Presley?” Blue (Danube, Ridge, Moon, Hawaii) was just as good as theirs (King of).
Happy Birthday Guida!
Admin1 is reading The Knife by Jo Nesbo.
You can see this stuff from miles away.
Admin1 is reading Drake by Peter McLean (violent urban fantasy … PM seems to relish rather too much writing about his hero getting beaten up and whipped by women). Admin2 is reading For the Missing by Lina Bengtsdotter.
and Christmas Lights Man is on the case. We scored 7 on a Guardian Weekend Quiz of a few weekends ago. Several more to catch up on.
Admin1 is all aglow because his cricket team stole the show. He’s also been playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since his birthday — thanks, Admin2!
Admin2 is reading Big Sky by Kate Atkinson.
We scored 10 on the GWQ.
Taken from the drone, just after midnight; ISO400, 1 second exposure.
And here they are from the ground:
Sadly it was too windy to let the drone out at midnight, but Admin2’s new camera has a firework setting so here are some fireworks.
Happy New Year everybody xxx
Pallet Man up to his tricks again. Admin1 is reading The Killing Bay by Chris Ould; a low-key crime story set in the Faeroes; it would have helped to have read the prequel. Admin2 is reading The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir which was disturbing but compelling. We scored 7.25 on the Guardian Weekend quiz.
Café si el dia: Bolivia Vincent Paye.
A halo with a sundog on the left.
Admin1 is reading Wasted Years by John Harvey. Admin2 is reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. We are watching series 2 of The Missing.
Admin1 is reading Satellite People by Hans Olav Lahlum.
Happy New Year everybody!
It was the best of times and in some ways, including the solar panels, it was the worst of times, but only because they were switched off on some of the sunniest days.
Admin1 watched Live Die Repeat. We scored 8 on the Guardian Weekend quiz, bringing our yearly average to 8.19, which is a slight improvement on last year.
This load of old optical fibres is apparently part of the Leeds Christmas Lights Trail.
Admin1 is redearing REAMDE by Neal Stephenson (another one >1000 pages). Admin2 is reading The Invisible Man by HG Wells.
We scored TEN on the Guardian Weekend quiz.
