Sunday, 31 January 2021

Nowton Walk

Dawn and the Panda in Nowton Park. I think it needs a bit of TLC

It was  a lovely bright and frosty morning, so I thought we would do the walk I was going to do in the snow two weeks ago but the roads were a bit slippery so we just walked from home instead. It is the longer of the two walks from the Nowton Circular Walks leaflet. I had done and variants of it this plenty of times before, notably at the leaflet launch walk with the Bury St Edmunds Ramblers, but it was new to Dawn. This is the route...

Here are some of my photos. The theory was that the frost would freeze the mud so we shouldn't get our feet too muddy. Hmm.

We didn't remember this stream flowing so much ever before - in summer it is normally bone dry.

The trees in the Lime avenue are bare, but the daffodils are showing.

The lake was partly frozen. The pale stems of the bulrushes look almost bleached.

This is a path. Oo er. Even trying to avoid the mud was squelchy as the ground was water-logged.

Heading out from muddy Nowton Park we passed the Artisan Bakery and followed the path up the hill ti the paddocks. This old man's beard caught the eye.

Dawn enjoyed the views across the countryside and, a little later, down to Sicklesmere.

We found a few other walkers, but didn't expect to meet Venkat and Rachel, friends with children at Music School and King Edwards School alongside ours. It was good to catch up with them for a few minutes.

I love the silhouette of these bare trees against the sky.

We approached Nowton Church. The road here was somewhat icy!

Dawn admired the stained glass windows from the outside.

Venkat had suggested this bit was a bit muddy and that we take the private road, but it was fine.

We passed Nowton Hall. As this article on Nowton says, "the Grade 2 listed former farmhouse is dated 1595 on the chimney-stack, with the initials A.P. for Anthony Payne (d.1606). The house stands on the remains of a roughly E-shaped moated site. Prior to the Dissolution, the manor belonged to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Edmundsbury"

Yes the chimney stack says 1595.

We continued to follow the St Edmund Way passing this trig point.

But what was this we could see hovering just a little further along the path?


A female Sparrowhawk, perhaps?

And now we came to the muddy bit. Unfortunately the frost had been melting....

Maybe we should have avoided this bit like Joyce did the last time we walked this way. By the time we were half way across the next field I was about an inch taller.

On our way back now we passed what used to be Hardwick Middle School, which all three of our children had been to and where Dawn started her teaching career.

Along Breckey Ley we found this house had had all the trees chopped down.


And then, at last, we came across some snowdrops. Hooray!

And then we saw a few more as we entered Nowton Park once more.

Well that was a nice walk, but I should have followed Dawn's lead and worn my wellies. Good conditions for hippos, though!

You can see more of my photos here on Fickr.

Sara Dowling Live Streamed Concert

 

Last night we had a second consecutive night of live streamed music in our living room. This time it was my favourite jazz singer, Sara Dowling as a recital as part of the Global Music Foundation series. Streamed from her living room with her husband Dario on bass, she accompanied herself on the piano in several of the numbers. 




My favourite was the fabulous rendition of a version of "Bess, you is my woman now" from Gerschwin's opera Porgy and Bess, but sung as Bess "Porgy, I is your woman now". Can't wait to hear live back in Suffolk, but I guess it wont be for a while.

Saturday, 30 January 2021

Hoagy's Children

Last night we enjoyed another gentle fireside recital from Chris Ingham from the comfort of our living room. A great range of jazz pianist-singer-songwriters in the manner of Hoagy Carmichael, starting from Hoagy himself and up to the almost present day.

Starting with "Georgia on my mind" he ended with one his own with his own "Don't Look at me Like That" from his 1995 album with the Flanaghan Ingham Quartet and plenty of other songs in between. We were also treated to a little commentary about each musician. Thanks Chris. Looking forward to another one next month.


Friday, 29 January 2021

First Snowdrops Walk

I managed to get out today for a walk... through the underpass and along the road to Ravenwood Hall and back via the Rougham Industrial Estate. This was my route...

Look what I found in the grounds of the Hall!



That brightened up my day! You can see more details of my route here on MapMyWalk.

Another Friday Quick Cryptic Blog

Joker is our Friday setter this week and he has given us a typically neat quick cryptic with plenty of concise clues, which I enjoy. I liked the beer that gives you wind and the reminder of Christmas in particular. 6A was my first one in and 19D my last. There are quite a few trickier clues, I think, that will make people work out the wordplay without being able to guess from the definition, so I suspect some will find some of this on the hard side. Those that had me headscratching included 1A, 10A and 4D, but I don't mind that and it is rewarding to get the Penny Drop Moment when the answer finally appears. It took me 6:13. Thank-you Joker. Nice one! How did everyone else get on?

By the way, if you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in fellow blogger Jackkt's post yesterday, Difficult QCs, about his discussion with Richard Rogan, the editor, about level of difficulty. Yesterday's setter, Izetti, has also commented there with his view.

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Phil's  turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the latest crossword here and the answers here. Enjoy! And if anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index to them here.

Read all about it.... )

Thursday, 28 January 2021

This Week's Tasting

 

Look what I got paid to taste at home this afternoon!

Weekend Quick Cryptic 17 - by Phil Jordan

Click here to read about the origin of this series of crosswords.

A brief history of the origins of these crosswords for those who are new to them. As a blogger of the Times Quick Cryptic Crossword on Times For The Times every other Friday, I have often had comments on the blog bemoaning that The Times only provides a Quick Cryptic on Mondays to Fridays. When I finally gave up work at the end of February 2020, I decided that I would try my hand at compiling crosswords. It was with some trepidation that I published, in May, the first of these Weekend Quick Cryptics to fill the gap. Well it seemed to go down well so I did another. And then my fellow crossword solver and commenter on Time for the Times, Phil Jordan, volunteered to produce some too! So now we alternate, publishing each new crossword via my Friday Quick Crossword blog. You can find an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

This time it is Phil's turn to provide the fortnightly weekend quick cryptic crossword. You can try and solve it interactively here or download a PDF to print here. Alternatively you can copy and print the image below. Comments and queries welcome here or with the solution post here. I will respond to them as soon as I can.

You can find the solution here and an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

Wednesday, 27 January 2021

The Unanswered Question

Yesterday's Times Quick Cryptic Crossword had a clue that referred to the American composer Charles Ives. I remember him most from his piece The Unanswered Question, which was used by Leonard Bernstein as the title of a fantastic series of lectures about (linguistics, poetry and) music, which taught me a lot I never learned in Music or English classes at school.  They also introduced me to some great music and poetry. They are all available on YouTube via this playlist or these individual links.

I watched the first again last night and will work my way through them. Was it really 48 years ago they were filmed? It's noticeable, though, how the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the time consisted of almost exclusively middle-aged white men, reminding me of how unusual it was for my Aunt Rosemary to be a professional trumpeter with an orchestra at the time.

Edit: I will add a few comments on the lectures as I go through them...
Lecture 1 - A great and easy to follow explanation and demonstration of the harmonic series and the different scales you find. An introduction to me at the time of linguistics. I liked the demonstration of "Ma" and the children's taunt.
Lecture 2 - I enjoyed the discussion around parsing and the concept of "deep structure". The mapping from linguitic to musical concepts sort of works and the demonstrations are again great.
Lecture 3 - There was a lot of linguistics at the start. The fun bit was the deconstruction of the first movement of Beethoven's 6th Symphony. Fascinating.
Lecture 4 - This is where the rubber really hits the road on exploring the evolution of musical metaphor. Some great examples and performances including a Chopin Mazurka, Berlioz Romeo and Juliet, Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and, to finish with, Debussy's Prelude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Great stuff. 
Lecture 5 - A wonderful selection of musical examples discussing the "Whither Music" question, including the Ives piece, Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Mahler's 9th Symphony and non-tonal music including the serial music system as laid out by Arnold Schoenberg. It also introduced me to the sublime Berg Violin Concerto. Another great lecture.
Lecture 6 - Extraordinary! Did anyone before this know that Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is based musically on Verdi's Aida? This is the lecture that got me hooked on the music of Igor Stravinsky. And the conclusion of the series that tonality isn't dead is borne out by the new classical music of the last 40 years. Great stuff!

Tuesday, 26 January 2021

Burns Night and Haggis in Space

 

Last night was Burns Night. We always celebrate it by having haggis, but I had forgotten when I did the food shopping last week that it would be before my next weekly food shop. So on Saturday I went haggis hunting in town. Waitrose, where I got the one we had on St. Andrew's Day only had vegetarian or gluten free. But I found a MacSween one in St. Edmunds Butchers... and then thought it a bit small, so bought another one from Marks&Spencer.

This year I decided to make some cock-a-leekie soup too for lunchtime. This was the recipe from BBC Good Food, although I didn't follow it fully, adding barley and peas and not adding prunes.

I also made some fresh bread to go with it.

Nice. And there is some left for lunch tomorrow

Then for tea I did this haggis recipe from the Hairy Bikers....

I'd not tried a whisky sauce before. But it didn't stop us adding baked beans and brown sauce as we usually do.

We were full after that!

While we ate we did sister Sue's Scottish Quiz...

Thank-you Sue. I think we got most of it right. You can find it to have a go yourself here.

Oh and the picture at the top? Sister Kirsty sent a link to this story... 

Nice one. Thank-you Kirsty.

Monday, 25 January 2021

No Pens Yet

You may recall I won a prize for the Sunday Times Crossword of 27th December, and the pen was out of stock so I chose a number of others as an alternative (see here). But still no prize pens! I sent this message today...


 My pal Jerry hasn't got his from his August win yet either. My fellow weekend QC compiler Phil suggested... 

"Perhaps you should all write a letter to "The Times",  apologising for it being written in pencil......"

Sunday, 24 January 2021

Tepper Isn't Going Out

 

I've been doing a lot more reading during this lockdown. A week or so ago, a crossword friend, the brilliant setter Robert Price, mentioned on our CrosswordCentral forum how he had enjoyed this book, so, after reading this review, I decided to get it. It arrived on Wednesday and I finished it this morning. What a great read and entertaining main character. A book about someone who has a hobby of parking and reading his paper in the car... you wouldn't think you could create a book about that. Recommended by me too!

Saturday, 23 January 2021

Job done

As mentioned before, I'm making some whisky. This is the result of three days of distilling. A total of 12 runs leaving me with about 3.6L of raw spirit at 50% ABV. I could have maybe squeezed one more run from my barrel of wash, but I'd had enough of watching and adjusting jars and heating every 15 minutes or so.

Those bottles are now combined in my little barrel which will sit in the garage for a month for the flavour to mellow. Then I will add some oak chips for a few days before diluting to 40% and bottling. Not convinced yet it will taste any good, but we will see by the end of February.

And now a chance to go out in daylight!

Thursday, 21 January 2021

Whisky Distilling


I mentioned here that I had got a whisky making kit for Christmas. Well my 'wash 'is fermented and in that barrel. I am now in the process of distilling. Now onto my 6th run I remain to be convinced. My first run with just the alembic hood boiled over leaving mucky distillate which had to add to the next batch to redistill. Yes it tastes a bit malty, but also maybe a bit yeasty. Will it turn out all right? The taste seems to be settling down now, though, although it still is a bit raw. For each run I discard the first 20ml or so of foreshots/heads and blend the next 4 cuts before diluting to 50% ABV, I get about 300ml of that per run. Once I've had enough distilling, I'll put all my distillate in my little barrel and let it settle for a week with a bit of oak before diluting and bottling. We'll see how it turns out.

Wednesday, 20 January 2021

Home Tasting - Ready-meals

Some more market research this week. Yesterday I had to go to the offices to pick up 5 ready meals, and today tasted them along with 5 others on a Zoom call.

Very interesting. And William got to taste the leftovers for a second lunch.


Monday, 18 January 2021

Home Tasting Test

I can't really tell you much about it as I'm not allowed to discuss it on social media (or, I guess, blogs) but I had an at-home taste test on Thursday last week of these red things.

The wine glass is for the water with a spot of lemon juice to cleanse the palate between tastings. Recording the results is done on a mobile phone just as is done at a tasting in their office. And I got a 2 mile walk the day before to go and collect them. Good fun and a small payment too!


Sunday, 17 January 2021

Another Snowy Walk

A bit of Déjà vu yesterday as Dawn and I went for a walk in the snow before it disappeared. This was our route...

..exactly the same as I did the last time it snowed (see here)! But it snowed a bit more and didn't melt as fast as then.

Here are some photos from yesterday.

Our original plan was to drive to Nowton Park and do a walk from there. Here is Dawn clearing the car.

Our road is a bus route, but hadn't been treated.

After finding Mount Road wasn't much better, we decided to turn back and do a walk from home instead.

The bushes laden with snow were pretty.

We came across a young couple with a sledge. They had their youngster in a push chair and dog tied to it as spectators too.

The Flying Fortress is still in the middle of a building site, but once the houses are built it will reopen as a pub. At the rate the houses are going up that could be just a year or so from now.

As you can see the roads were still a bit snowy by the peace statue.

As befere, we crossed the railway and headed towards Great Barton Church.

The road that is liable to flooding was, fortunately, not quite flooded this time.

Then it was back along the path beside Rougham Airfield.

When we got back we found William had built a snowman while we were away.

Snowman? No. A snowwoman. She had shells for her eyes so was called Shelly.

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.