An after-rain cloud, not that we’ve had much rain.
Coffee of the day: Brazil Ecoagricola Serra Do Cabral Red Catuai.
We scored 10.5 on the GWQ.
Tag: coffee
Sunny Afternoon
This brilliant segment of halo briefly appeared in the sky and nobody on the crowded street looked up; they were all engrossed in their phones.
Coffee of the day: Java Jampit.
Out of the Door
The cats went outside for the first time today.
Admin1 is reading The Vanishing Box by Elly Griffiths. Admin2 is reading A House of Knives by Willam Shaw.
Coffee of the day: Colombia Finca las Mercedes la Isla; rich and dark like the Sultan of Brunei.
We scored 11 on the GWQ, mostly through wild guesses.
Allotments
We went to the allotments open day hoping to get some beans or tomatoes but they were all gone. We did get some random plants and Admin1 got an oak tree.
Admin1 is reading The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths.
Café del día: Rancheros Mahogany Roast: chocolatey. We scored 8 on the GWQ.
Happy Birthday Dave
Admin1 is reading A Song from Dead Lips by William Shaw. Admin2 is reading The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths.
Coffee of the day: Kenya AA Blue Mountain: bitter and citric but tasty.
We scored 10.5 on the GWQ, which we had saved for Dave’s birthday, thanks to Dave.
First Poppy
Coffee of the day: Guatemala Finca Bourbon; smooth and sweet.
Snowman’s Land
After the Beast from the East comes the Pest from the West. This is what we woke up to this morning:
By the afternoon it was all gone, apart from the melting snowpeople. Admin2 is reading Eighteen Below by Stefan Ahnhem (a somewhat preposterous but pacy story) on a day when it eventually reached 10.5 above.
Coffee of the day: Red Roast Blend: mellow.
Not a Good Advertisement
To be fair, I remember this car looking good in the olden days.
Admin1 is reading Touch by Claire North.
Kaffee des Tages: Lidl Deluxe Uganda Erussi which is OK.
Weather of the Day: Rain
Storm Eleanor blowing by. Nothing dramatic in these parts.
Admin1 is reading The Tottenham Outrage by MH Baylis, an intriguing contemporary mystery centred on (and sympathetic to) the Hasidic community of north-east London, coupled with a fictionalised account of the real Tottenham Outrage of 1909 — an event of which we had never heard, despite both living in the area for some years.
Admin2 is reading The Vinyl Detective: The Run-out Groove by Andrew Cartmel, a lively adventure which crackled along at either 45 or 78 rpm according to the cover quotes.
Coffee of the day: Percol Black & Beyond.
Snow Is Falling All the Time
Actually it has all melted now, but not before the solar panels had recorded our first 0kWh day of the year.
Admin2 is reading A Death at the Palace by MH Baylis (thx Admin1); a young woman goes missing… We are watching Sé quién eres (aka I Know Who You Are); another young woman goes missing…
Coffee of the day: Ethiopian Espresso: sweet and fruity (thx Fiona)
Happy Birthday Jesus
A 3D printed sheep and Buddha come to the party.
Deck the coffee with leaves of holly.
Admin2 is reading White Tears by Hari Kunzru; a splendid time-slipping story of white men and the blues (thx Admin1).
We watched The Cuckoo’s Calling (thx again).
Christmas Day was our warmest (14.5 °C by day and 10.2 °C by night) and sunniest (0.683kWh) of this December.
November Rain
There is a very faint rainbow in the top left corner.
Admin1 is reading The Cutting Crew by Steve Mosby, a very strange book. Set in a weird, dreamlike but quite recognisable version of Leeds (with bits of Prague and York thrown in), it starts out as Chandleresque noir — down these mean streets and all that — and progressively gets stranger. It’s definitely an example of New Weird, and confirms SM as a very interesting writer.
Coffee of the day: Mystery Coffee Mark 8: kicking!
Coffee of the Day: Kopi Luwak
Cat poo coffee: yums! Thx Gez xxx.
Admin1 is rewatching Game of Thrones.
Weather of the Day: Rain
Happy United Nations/Independence Day. Admin1 is reading I Know Who Did It (terrific, with a wonderful `Chris Priest’ moment), and Admin2 is reading Dark Room, both by Steve Mosby.
Coffee of the day: Cherry Cherry
Fun Guys
Admin1 is reading The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts.
We are drinking Duromina Espresso and scored 7 on the GWQ.
Critter of the Day: Red Admiral
Coffee of the day: Colombian Excelso: bubblelicious.
The Unlucky Lottery
Some people just can’t win.
Admin1 is reading Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Admin2 is once again trying to read Shark by Will Self: Gravity’s Rainbow meets Finnegans Wake and goes on an epic drug-fuelled ramble for a 466-page … paragraph. We are watching Dicte and drinking Sumatran Organic & Fairtrade.
Rainbow’s End
Pot of gold in next door’s garden.
Admin1 is reading When It Grows Dark by Jorn Lier Horst. Admin2 is reading The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason
Coffee of the day: Colombian San Agustin.
Cakes
Admin1 baked all these cakes to use up some leftover icing. Thx to Auds for the multiple sprinkles.
Admin1 is reading The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason — a multigenerational crime story, with added Icelandic folklore. Admin2 is reading Three Days and a Life by Pierre Lemaitre: guilt and shame upstaged and covered up by storms Lothar and Martin — for a good many years.
Khofi ya tsiku: Zambian: khofi pakhomo.
Here Comes the Rain Again
Another wet day.
Admin1 is reading The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham (dull and characterless). Admin2 is reading When It Grows Dark by Jorn Lier Horst, a pleasant early cold case for Horst’s signature investigator.
Kafo de la tago: Pedregal Espresso; sweet and chocolatey with maybe a soupçon of Chelsea buns.
Critter of the Day: Faux Phobos
A cat that looks like our cat and is sometimes accompanied by another cat that looks like our other cat. Admin1 is watching Messiah and reading Unforgivable by Mike Thomas: home-grown terrorism in downtown Cardiff. Authors do tend to give their detectives convoluted backstories, but MT really piles on the baggage.
Admin2 is reading The Arc of the Swallow by Sissel-Jo Gazan, an evil crime/science/family drama that panders to antivaccinationists.
Coffee of the day: Burundi Gahahe: tooty fruity.
Light of Heart
Admin1 is reading The Blood Strand by Chris Ould. Admin2 is reading Blood Wedding by Pierre Lemaitre: a bloody terrifying ‘girl’ book.
Кофе в день: Black Hole.
Take Five
Admin2 found a fiver on a wall and took note.
Admin1 is reading Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, writer of the Fargo TV series; well-written and engrossing. Admin2 is reading Buried Lies by Kristina Ohlsson which was endless.
Cafe de jour: White Dwarf: honeyed and citrussy.
I Am the God of Hell Fire
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.
Rainy Day Women
A changeable day with sunshine, heavy rain, thunder and lightning.
Admin1 is reading Disclaimer by Renee Knight. Admin2 is reading Phone by Will Self: a 617-page paragraph with lots of… and italics and repetitions and repetitions that randomly switched protagonists in mid-sentence but was surprisingly compulsive, maybe because there was no place to stop.
Coffee of the day: Rwanda Gihombo: fruity.