Robin Hiding

Here’s a glimpse of the elusive bird that has been tormenting us with its vanishing tricks. One day we’ll catch it in the open.
We had macaroni cheese, vegetable and fruit salads and a sad-looking but tasty brick-like air-fried courgette cake for our family dinner and scored 12.5 on the GSQ; thx everybody and happy birthday eve Bob.
A1 is rereading Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading Machines like Me by Ian McEwan.

Crowing

A crow in a tree.
A1 is reading Trapped* by Camilla Lackberg and Hendrik Fexeus. A1 was less impressed with this, getting very bored with one protagonist’s obsession with cleanliness and sanitising everything, and the other’s with counting everything. Take all that out and it’d be half the length. The plot was daft, too.
A2 is rereading The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe.

Head Scratching Time

Thanks to channelling our brainpower, we scored 12 on the GSQ tonight after our delicious dinner of roast chicken and apple crumble; our best score this year so far.
Ai is rereading The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is reading Trapped* by Camilla Lackberg and Hendrix Fexeus; a special unit in the Department Q/Peculier Crimes mould recruits a mind-reader to solve a series of murders committed with stage magic equipment.

Another Beak in the Wall

Troglodytes troglodytes (so good…) aka a wren. We have never photographed one before, or even knowingly seen one. It was bouncing around like a little brown ball, occasionally stopping to search for critters in cracks. And here’s a nice song:

…well, not so nice for the poor old wren.
A1 is rereading A Snowball in Hell by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The Unlucky Lottery by Hakkan Nesser.

The Goldfinch

Carduelis carduelis; so good they named it twice. Haven’t photographed one for years but A2 spotted this one in a distant tree far, far away.
A1 is rereading A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre, in which we learn its psychopathic terrorist loathes The Smiths. As does A1 đŸ™‚
A2 is rereading Borkmann’s Point by Hakan Nesser.

The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone

Ou sont les neiges d’antan? Well they have gone for at least a while and for the first time in ten days we have action on the solar panels and people are moving about outside.
A1 is rereading Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The Mind’s Eye by Hakan Nesser.

Still Snowy

It is still freezing cold, ice everywhere, lethally slippery pavements. A1 had to go to work in the horrible conditions and said it was like walking over crisps. A2 only went as far as the dustbin, wearing crampons and holding onto the wall, and noticed that the snowperson population had increased.
A1 is reading I will Find the Key* by Alex Ahndoril. A2 is reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (thx A1).

Happy New Year Everybody

Normally we like to see the new year in standing on the traffic island swigging port and watching other peoples’ fireworks but the rain was hammering down so we stood in the doorway while some fool somewhere let off rockets in the distance.
2024 was cooler and wetter than average and our least sunny year since the solar panels arrived.
A1 is reading City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan.

Critter of the Day: Turdus merula

Not a very pretty name for this handsome blackbird.
We had pasta, parkin and delicious Ethiopian coffee for our family lunch and scored 11.5 for the last quiz of the year, bringing our average to 10.2268518518519, a step down from last year’s 10.2756346153846.
A1 is reading Nobody’s Hero by MW Craven, another violent and thrilling outing for Ben Koenig; thanks, A2! — who is reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey (thx A1); 24 hours on the International Space Station watching the drama of the cosmorama, incorporating 16 days of the sun burnishing the oceans and 16 nights of lights fringing the coastlines while the astro/cosmonauts on board divulge a bit of backstory and have high-flown thoughts about the geography and meteorology of their home planet and a typhoon winds up over the Philippines. A short but engaging read.

Bob Unboxing on Boxing Day

The Bobster enjoys a present.

We had the family round for Boxing Day, with a repeat of our Christmas Day meal (but pico-pizzas for the veggies). There were even more prezzies, including the traditional coffee, some rather lovely pictures and about 500 tomato seeds of many varieties — thanks, G,D,F & B!

And unlike last year, we managed a flaming pudding by using calvados rather than brandy.

We scored a traditional 10 on the GSQ.

A1 is reading The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter (thanks, A2!).

Return of the Sun

After the solstice, a brighter dawn, with Mercury somewhere behind the clouds.
A1 is rereading Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen, his first Department Q novel from 2007. This was prompted by reading his recent novel Locked In, which finally resolves the mysteries posed in Mercy and ends with the start of that book.
A2 is rereading The Strangler’s Honeymoon by Hakan Nesser.