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.
Category: events
The Girl (and Boy) with All the Gifts
We each gave each other copies of The Burning Grounds and The Halcyon Years but A2 got 2 unduplicated books. Other goodies: hairy shoes, fluffy socks, a cushion cover, salt and pepper grinders, a yoyo, Shiwa coffee, a turntable and a Raspberry Pi. Lucky us.
We had succulent tender roast pork, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, pigs in blankets, stuffing balls, carrots, sprouts, spring greens and gravy for dinner. Tomorrow we will eat it all again.
We are watching Slow Horses. A1 is reading The Regulators by Stephen King. A2 is reading ICE by Jacek Dukaj. Thank you A1.
Oh Christmas Tree
The Yorkshire puddings, pigs in blankets and stuffing balls are ready and the Christmas presents are all wrapped up and awaiting the grand opening. Tomorrow we feast and the next day we feast again.
A1 is reading Rosy and John* by Pierre Lemaitre. A2 is rereading On the Yankee Station by William Boyd; short stories mostly about young men lusting after random women and generally failing to score.
In the Darkness Shineth
Our Christmas tree is up at last and festooned with coloured lights instead of the normal plain ones.
A1 is reading What the Dark Whispers* by MJ Lee. If I was a publisher’s reader and this was a first novel, I might say “Shows some promise, but needs work. Reject with encouragement.” But MJL has published 30 crime novels in the last ten years and really should have sorted out his plotting. (Example: An apparent suicide pays for self-immolation petrol with his own credit card, and the baffled cops are unable to identify him.) And the book badly needs a proofreader.
A2, inspired by an article by Aditya Chakrabortty, is rereading Kingdom Come by JG Ballard. In an imaginary future, suburban blokes string St George’s flags from lamp-posts, trash Asian shops and try to burn down asylum hostels. Couldn’t happen here.
Baubles
Tis the season to be jolly tasteless.
A2 is reading IT by Stephen King.
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.
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.
Jab Day
Alas, the jabberwock has gone (perhaps defeated by the frumious Bandersnatch, or the Jubjub bird) and so have the COVID shots for under-75s. Still, we had what jabs we could get and are back home with uncomfortable arms.
A1 is reading The Society of Unknowable Objects* by Gareth Brown, a bad children’s fantasy with added swearing and violence. It’s not precisely a sequel to The Book of Doors (which worked much better) but is set in the same universe and has references to it. Disappointing.
In anticipation of the forthcoming final volume of Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy, A2 is rereading volume 1, La Belle Sauvage.
After the Birthday
Transit of Bob. It was A2’s birthday yesterday so she got a lot of lovely presents of things to drink, read and wear to the gym. Our family dinner was chicken, bacon and broccoli with A1’s cherry cake and perfect garden apple charlotte for afters. We scored 9 on the GSQ. Could have been worse. And we could have seen the lunar eclipse if it hadn’t been cloudy, and then raining. But it was clear in Lusaka (see right) — thanks, Guida!
A1 is reading The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith, the latest biceps-straining volume in the Strike/Ellacott saga. Expensive, too — probably the first £30 mass-market novel (although it’s been heavily discounted).
It’s nominally a fiendishly complicated crime novel (and it is complicated — you may want to take notes), but RG is having great fun with the on-off relationship between the protagonists, which fortunately errs on the right side of soapiness; you can imagine her smirking at the readers’ reactions. The targets this time include Freemasonry and another stab at an evil Boris Johnson analogue, who really seems to appeal to writers (cf Mick Herron, MW Craven etc). Can’t imagine why… Criticism? There’s a bit too much phonetic transcription of accents, and the subplot about human trafficking gets somewhat lost in all the fol-de-rol. But a thoroughly enjoyable read nonetheless.
A2 is reading The Predicament by William Boyd, which was absolutely delightful. Thank you A1.
Crowd of the Day: Chapel Allerton Arts Festival
A2 was put off by the seething crowd under a lowering sky so did not go in and got home before the heavy rain started.
A2 is reading Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway.
Ride a White Horse
The music has been playing for days and today was a perfect day for a carnival, warm (28.9°C) and sunny (9.46kWh) but A2 could not face the walk and the crowds so here is a picture from the old days (like about 20 years ago).
A1 is reading A Schooling in Murder* by Andrew Taylor. A2 is reading Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
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.
24 (Wonderful) Years Later
It’s A1&2’s wedding anniversary and a delicious cherry cake was baked to celebrate.
A1 gave A2 a bunch of flowers and our number 6 coffee maker; a handy little gadget for making one cup of espresso, and A2 gave A1 The Red Shore by William Shaw in advance of publication.
It was our opal wedding so A2 got a packet of [redacted], previously known as Opal Fruits, and A1 got an opal (see below).
A2 is rereading Disgrace by Jussi Adler Olsen.
Happy Birthday Chris
The good times keep on rolling! Here’s the birthday boy’s boozy coffee walnut cake looking like Pacman going after our cherries.
A1 is rereading A House Full of Knives by William Shaw. A2, inspired by watching Dept Q, is rereading Mercy, aka The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Happy Birthdays Twins
We celebrated with a random Chinese banquet with allegedly perfect chocolate chip cookies for afters, serenaded the twins over the phone and scored a respectable 11 on the GSQ.
A2 is rereading The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre.
Later: And just after midnight, the first noctilucent clouds of the season:
National Beer Day
It is also Father’s Day, so we had a delicious chicken, leek and mushroom pie for the dads to enjoy with their beer, followed by Fried Alaska (with raspberry Swiss roll and minty chocolate ice cream), and scored a creditable 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is rereading Born in a Burial Gown by MW Craven. A2 is reading The Man Made of Smoke* by Alex North. Many years ago, various people ignored an unhappy child in a service station, and now they are being bumped off one by one.
Happy Birthday Dave
Dave cuts himself a slice of delicious parkin cake after his post-birthday dinner of stroggers and pizza. And we scored a respectable 12 on the GSQ at last.
Jabadabadoo!
A2 went for another covid jab today. Here’s the Jabberwocky in its current incarnation.
A2 is reading Annihilation* by Michel Houellebecq, a novel with a wandering plot skipping through politics, paganism, christianity, terrorism, but mostly about reconciliation to marriage, to family, to death.
Mother’s Eid
It’s Eid-al-Fitr, Mother’s Day and Gez birthday eve and A1 has made a delicious strawberry sponge to round off our meal of stroggers and pasta, after which we scored 11.5 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading The Trap* by Ava Glass (don’t mind if I do), which was a tediously cliched spy thriller — ChatGPT could do better. A2 is rereading Be My Enemy by Christopher Brookmyre.
Critters of the Day: Women
Yes, it’s International Women’s Day. We had a family lunch of kedgeree (with boiled eggs for the fish refusers), ate a blueberry cake and scored a substandard 9 on the GSQ.
A1 is rereading When the Devil Drives by Chris Brookmyre. A2 is reading The Fourteenth Letter* by Claire Evans, which was weird and unbelievable.
Tit for Tat
A random bird for lack of better photos. Apparently there are all seven planets on view tonight but it’s cloudy and we can only see Jupiter. It was a grey day too, but it’s also Gray Day so A2 is reading Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray.
Happy Belated Birthday, Bob!
A delicious chocolate cake baked by A1 formed the finale to our family dinner of stroggers for the adults, salmon and leek pasta for the piscatarian and a pineapple pizza for the Bobster himself. But no Saturday quiz because it’s Friday.
恭喜发财
Happy New Year Everybody! May the snake of fortune wriggle through your world bringing you happiness and better quiz scores than the 7.7 we achieved tonight.
The food: egg fried rice, veggie noodles, jellified belly pork, rainbow chicken, sweet and sour pork, har gow, siew mai, jiaozi, fish egg balls, stewed eggs in various substances and of course the snake cake. Would have had spring rolls but A2 absent-mindedly steamed them.
A2 is rereading The Secret Life of Mr Roos by Hakan Nesser.
Tree Fellas, Again
Another one bites the dust; though Storm Eowyn tomorrow might have demolished it for free.
A1 is rereading Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The G File by Hakan Nesser.