The weather stayed clear for the eclipse yesterday. Here’s the traditional colander shot, awkwardly taken because it was difficult to hold a camera and a colander at the same time and there was only a tiny bit of unshadowed wall to project on:
And here’s a montage of images from the Dwarf Mini and a first stab at a video, 2 hours in 20 seconds:
Later we watched a small selection of Perseid meteors. A great day!
And today is our warmest day of the year: 34.1°C
A1 is reading The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee. A2’s toilet tome is Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
Our family meal today was at Gez and Dave’s house and featured cod loins wrapped in parma ham with green beans and potato gratin with sausage rolls for the fish refusers. Present at the gathering were Dave with a broken foot in a velcro boot, Bob and Lena all the way from Sweden and Ivy visiting Faye.
A2 contributed a Dubai-style chocolate, pistachio and shredded wheat cheesecake but unfortunately dropped it and had to scrape it back together and apply another layer so it did not look as good as the before photo here but it tasted pretty acceptable. And we scored an astonishing 14 on the GSQ, bringing us back above 10 at long last.
An unlucky bird must have flown full tilt into our window today. There was no corpse on the ground below so it must have flapped away with an aching head leaving a print of itself on the rain-soaked glass and a feather where its beak should be. Here’s a brief video:
A1 is reading The Burning Tide by William Shaw. A2 is reading The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee.
Welcome red and black flying insect, parent of black and yellow crawling caterpillars, though we haven’t seen any in these parts this year.
Pyronia tithonus, sitting on grass that has lost the distant memory of rain.
A fabulous family feast featuring green stuff, eggs, potatoes, salmon, tuna, cheeses, cold meats, chicken legs, sausage rolls and a peachy pie pudding, after which we scored a calamitous 8 on the GSQ. Outside, the 
A1 is reading The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsay Davis. A2 is reading Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard; a woman with a dodgy past moves into a house with a dodgy past. What could possibly go wrong?
Another Sunday, another family meal, followed by pineapple upside down cake and a score of 10 on the GSQ.
And the Andromeda Galaxy in, er, Andromeda:
Much bigger versions and more details on our 
A1 is reading Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre. Thanks A2! CB’s first published novel was Quite Ugly One Morning (1996), which introduced his journalist protagonist Jack Parlabane, and this novel continues — and possibly wraps up — Parlabane’s (rather doleful) character arc. While CB’s writing no longer provokes LOLs at his wonderful outrageousness (like the abseiling scene in Be My Enemy, or the unfortunate bodily invasion in Boiling a Frog), he continues to take aim at his 
And happy Dad’s Day too! We had spag bol and carrot cake for tea and scored 11 on the GSQ.
For our family dinner today we had A1’s lovely roast chicken with halcyon potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, mixed vegetables, stuffing and gravy, followed by 
Woke up this morning, sun shining through the rain. Looked for the rainbow and instead saw, through the rain-blurred glass, what seemed to be a giant black and yellow bee sitting on a cornflower. Got a better look; it was a goldfinch eating the cornflower seeds. The rainbow arrived later. Here it is:
Meanwhile A1 is reading The Third Nero* by Lindsey Davis.
A pastalicous respast, followed by a fruity trifle hand-sprinkled by the ever-helpful Gez, after which we scored a poor quality 8 on the GSQ.
It’s Commonwealth Day and also Dave’s birthday so we ate Swedish meatballs to celebrate his origins and A1 served up a lovely cake with candles, peach slices and sprinkles on top. Afterwards we did the quiz with Ivy as quizmaster and scored a steadying 10.
Welcome to the 
The first Jersey Royals of the season have arrived in the shops and immediately there is an argument about whether they should be cooked starting with cold water or boiling water. The packets were no help; they gave opposite instructions. But anyway they were delicious, served with salmon and creamy cheesy leeks and followed by A1’s scrumptious pineapple upside-down cake.
Thanks to Beth for this cloud which looks like a flying crocodile, or so she claims.
We had brassicas for Africa this week, and Gez is dieting for health, so our food for today was cauliflower cheese with coleslaw and a garden lettuce salad followed by fruit salad, after which we scored 11 on the GSQ.
The cats are basking in the sunshine (11.67kWh) or maybe just getting in the way. [update: they look so innocent, but they raided the oven in the night and got away with our meatloaf.]
Another marvel from the Dwarf Mini; captured by A1 in the wee small hours in a gap between trees.
Our bathroom book is The Single Helix 100 short science essays by Steve Jones, which has well-timed chapters: one for a no.1, two for a no.2.
A1 is reading Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky and A2 is reading The Player of Games by Iain M Banks so here is a lovely half moon (thx Dwarf Mini) to go with our science fiction enjoyment.
So here are the Seven Sisters, low in the sky, photographed in the front garden under a street light, and the Dwarf Mini still made a decent shot of it.
Spring is here, the sun is up and the weeds are out in force.