There are no good clouds or wildlife at the moment so A2 is reduced to wandering the byways admiring the fine selection of weeds. When we deliberately attempt to plant wildflowers nothing comes up.
A1 is reading The Prey* by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir, a horror short story expanded tediously to novel length. A2 is reading Gallows Rock*, also by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir, which was not as ghastly as The Prey.
Garden Raspberry Cake
Gez was cavorting at a festival in France this weekend so we were not sure if the family dinner was on the cards, but she arrived home in time and we slapped together a dinner of pasta followed by this slapdash cake and managed to score 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Gallows Rock* by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir. A2 is reading The Silver Collar* by Antonia Hodgson.
Cloud of the Day: Nimbostratus
Turbulent black clouds boiling in the sky on another dismal dark day.
A1 is reading The Shame Archive* by Oliver Harris, a so-so spy thriller about the leaking of MI6’s stash of kompromat on UK politicians and the great and good. The writing and characterisation is curiously flat and uninvolving, so the novel lacks power.
Fixing a Hole
The gas men cometh with a digger on a wagon full of dirt to fill the holes where the rain gets in (and there has been plenty of rain today — 41.4 mm, all-time number four on the high score table). All done now; we are cooking with gas.
A1 is reading Scatter Her Ashes* by Heine Bakkeid, a grim and gloomy tale with another useless protagonist. A2 is reading A Death at Fountains Abbey by Antonia Hodgson.
Olive Blossom
A rain drop dangles from the tiny flowers, containing an image of a trellis and a piece of a tomato plant. We had roast pork and a reprise of the lovely strawberry cream rice pudding for our family dinner and scored a disappointing 8.5 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading City of Sinners by AA Dhand, who still has it in for Bradford. A2 is reading Hunted by Abir Mukherjee.
It’s a New Day
And a new government, heralded by a halo. Lets hope they do better than the last lot.
A2 is reading The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins by Antonia Hodgson.
Red Rose
Celebrating election day in which Labour is bound to win bigly.
And commiserations to Rose who broke her arm in two places. Poor Rose.
A1 is reading A Death at Fountains Abbey by Antonia Hodgson.
How Did We Cope…
…before nail bars? Chapel Allerton now has an extra two, one still being fitted out so just pipped to the post by this one. Which had its Grand Opening today, with a fire-dancer and a stilt-walker. They kept smiling, despite being ignored by most passers-by.
A1 is reading The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins by Antonia Hodgson. A2 is reading The Wild Swimmers by William Shaw.
Dish of the Day: Strawberries and Cream Rice Pudding
A1 cooked this ambrosial pudding tonight. It was sweet, juicy, succulent and delicious.
June 2024 was averagely rainy and sunny but our second coldest June of all time. Brrrrrrr!
Flowers in the Rain
The first passion flowers of summer.
We had fishcakes and peach cakes for our family dinner and did this week’s and last week’s quizzes, scoring 10.5 on one and 8.5 on the other.
A1 is reading The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson. A2 is reading The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks; back in Victorian times, the Trans-Siberian Railway travels through a burgeoning, evolving, threatening landscape in the style of Jeff Vandermeer.
Street Party
Another in the series of declining summer street parties; half a dozen people crammed into the gazebo under overcast skies and drizzle, and surrounded by the gas people’s excavations.
A1 is reading Ashram Assassin by Andrew Cartmel. A2 is reading City of Sinners (that’s Bradford for you) by AA Dhand (thx A1).
Critter of the Day: Meadow Brown
A monochrome butterfly on a monochrome fence taken from a long way away, but hey we’ve seen so few butterflies so far this year.
A1 is reading Hunted by Abir Mukhergee, an attempt at a contemporary US-based thriller from AM, who usually does historical crime set in India. Readable but implausible, and yet another entry in the sinister-cult subgenre. Thanks, A2!
23 Not Out
It’s our 23rd wedding anniversary! Two minds with but a single thought, we gave each other T-shirts with a 23rd theme (cos neither of us wanted silver plates).
A1 is reading Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel (thanks A2!), first in a companion series to AC’s Vinyl Detective books, this time about paperbacks, with some intersecting characters. This didn’t work quite as well, chiefly because the book is focused on a single character and so not much dialogue, one of AC’s strong points. Readable, but we won’t be trying the recipe in this book, which is for hash-infused butter using a sous-vide cooker 🙂 .
A2 is reading The Mercy Chair by MW Craven.
Gas Works
The gas men are coming for us
Some of their stuff
A massive soil shifter — it sucks!
The new pipe — on a roll!
And a shedload of barriers in front of our hedge.
It will be our turn soon and our gas meter is buried in the bowels of the extension so we won’t be cooking with gas.
A1 is reading The Wild Swimmers by William Shaw, a double-spaced Cupidi novel(la). Weaker than WS’ usual offerings, unfortunately — has some signs of being rushed, with a number of typos, a slightly confusing plot and an implausible recovery from grave injury. Still, entertaining enough — thanks, A2!
Birthday Boy
A fine haul of presents, including a shedload of books, comfy slippers and, from the Gez family. comedy coffee: Kenya believe it’s your birthday? Uganda love this! Not to mention pineapple beer and Hells Lager.
A1 is now reading The Mercy Chair by MW Craven (thanks, A2!), another entry in the sinister-religious-cult subgenre. Somewhat grimmer than MWC’s other Washington Poe books, but leavened by the usual humour and sharp dialogue. Interestingly, the author notes that one of his favourite books is Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch — also one of A1’s favourites — and that Poe is modelled on that novel’s Sam Vimes character.
A2 is reading The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson.
Warmest day this year so far: 28.5 °C.
Damn Fine Cherry Pie and Damn Fine Coffee
A pre-birthday cake for the incomparable Chris.
Recipe: line a pie tin with shop-bought shortcrust pastry. Beat 100g of butter with 100g sugar, beat in 2 eggs, stir in 100g ground almonds and a dollop of Amaretto. Fill pastry case with this mixture, poke in 200g of stoned cherries, bake at 160 degrees for half an hour or until done.
We served this after our family dinner of spaghetti and sauces but sadly did not do the quiz because Dave was indisposed. Next time then.
Later, 23:00:
We were a bit dubious about these possible noctilucent clouds, but Space Weather seemed to think they were:
Windrush Day
If it wasn’t for the Empire Windrush we probably wouldn’t have the Caribbean Cricket Club.
It is also the twins’ birthdays. Happy Birthdays Twins!
A2 is rereading The End of Mr Y by Scarlet Thomas.
Solstice
Good day sunshine! 25° and 12kWh at last!
A1 is rereading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.
Dads’ Day
Happy Fathers’ Day, daddies! And a nice day at last with 11kWh of sunshine.
We had cottage pie and Aunt Celia’s lemon pudding for our family dinner, did this week’s and last week’s quizzes and scored 12 on each. Yay!
A1 is rereading Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. A2 is rereading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. “It’s not like anyone asks you for your passport at the polling booth,” it says. Yeah right!
Setting Sun
It’s been a miserable cold rainy month so far but our income from the solar panels over their lifetime has now reached £10,000 and look at this apocalyptic cloudscape. A1 is reading The Silver Collar* by Antonia Hodgson, an excellent historical novel mainly set in 18th century London, concerning the ramifications of the slave trade, the treatment of mental illness and the power of class. The antagonist is a bit over-the-top evil, but the two protagonists are well-drawn and sympathetic, and the writing is sharp and witty. This is the fourth of four in the series (so far), and it would have helped to read the earlier volumes.
A2 is rereading Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.
Manchester Pudding
To celebrate our return from Manchester, A2 looked for a regional dish and found this pudding. Recipe adapted to our gadgets: warm milk, sugar butter and breadcrumbs in microwave, beat in egg yolks, air fry on bake setting for 15 mins, stir, give it a couple more minutes, slather on the jam, dollop on the egg whites beaten with sugar, nuke it at 200° for 4 minutes. Done and yum!
A2 is reading Undoctored by Adam Kay.
Pet Shopping in Manchester
Off to Manchester again, for the Pet Shop Boys at the new mishap-prone Co-Op Live arena, which was clearly designed in Minecraft. We travelled by coach this time, after worries about Sunday railway timetabling, and arrived about midday.
After paying our respects to Alan Turing — holding an apple, perhaps a bit tasteless (Here are A1 giving Alan a respectful pat on the shoulder and A2 giving him a friendly cuddle)
— we visited the very Manchester-centric Science and Industry Museum. Much of this was closed for refurbishment, but enough remained to be of interest — including a BBC Micro, A1’s old 1980s machine, prominently displayed.
Much wandering (and aching legs) followed, both on foot and on Manchester’s free buses. It was rainy, cold and windy, more like March or April than June, which didn’t make that part of the day very enjoyable. We did find the old Roman ruins by the canal though, which made an interesting contrast with Manchester’s splendid crop of new skyscrapers.
Eventually we started to make our way to the venue, some way out of town next to a football stadium. This proved to be very difficult, due to A1’s lousy mapreading and the complete lack of signage. After a lot of faffing about we were directed to a tram station underneath the railway station, where it appeared that a van had blocked the tram system and there weren’t any running in our direction. So the station gradually filled up with PSB fans, complete with silly hats, while the display’s “next tram” time stayed still.
And then … the trams finally came. One after the other, all packed to the rafters. We managed to squeeze on one eventually, and it seemed we could have walked there and back a few times in the same time — it was only a couple of stops. We were a bit worried about paying, but it seemed it was all free courtesy of the Co-Op. No-one was checking tickets anyway.
And it was still raining. Of course it was. Bizarrely, they’ve built a new arena in Manchester, and among the weird list of banned items is … umbrellas. Fortunately everyone completely ignored this, including the security people. Also banned are plastic bottle tops for some reason. And nobody was allowed a bag bigger than A4 so there was no chance to go S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G.
A2’s stick proved very useful again, as we got to queue-jump a bit thanks to the generally very helpful (actually almost excessively helpful) and pleasant venue staff. The venue’s capacity is about 23,000, and we estimate it was about 90% full — which makes about 20,000 people in the queue.
Having had the experience of vertiginous seats at the top of the arena last time around, we had booked the more expensive seats much lower down, which involved a walk of shame for A2, holding onto A1 as we staggered down numerous steps. As soon as the show started the people in front of us stood up and could not be persuaded to sit down. So we ended up in the cheaper seats higher up, where we were much more comfortable, and once we were settled we thoroughly enjoyed the show. Two things we were promised which didn’t materialise: step-free access and freely available drinking water. Oh well. Never mind.
Finally, here’s It’s a Sin, one of the band’s signature tunes.
Fungus
There’s not mushroom between them.
A1 is rereading The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. A2 is rereading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer.
Abandonment
A horrible old mattress riding a shopping trolley down the path to perdition. Amazingly streetmattress.com is still a thing.
A2 is rereading Runtime by Catherine Ryan Howard.
Starling…
Cute baby starlings at feeding time. They fared better than the dead bird we found under the table wearing a ring that had been put on one day ago and 4km away. And the one that got away from the cat and spent hours flapping behind the sofa before A1 finally ushered it out. Same two things happened almost exactly two years ago.
We had three sorts of delicious burgers (meat, fish and pizza) with many accompaniments followed by fruit salad for our family dinner (thank you A1) and scored a below-par 8 on the GSQ.
A2 is reading Scatter Her Ashes* by Heine Bakkeid; another grindingly miserable book: divorced deposed detective on trail of missing children and serial killers.