In over six months EDF had failed to get my smart meters working properly so they could take remote readings and give me data to my In-Home Display. But now I've moved to bulb they've got it all working without me having to do anything. Hooray! For the first time in nearly 2 years I can see what electricity and gas we are using.
Today was Day 7 of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival and today we were walking from Hintlesham.
This was the invite from Joyce...
Please park/meet at Hintlesham Community Hall for our 10am start. Sadly there are no toilets on this walk and you’ll need lunch etc too. The post code is IP8 3PS. It’s probably a new area for a lot of you. Expect some great views and lots of variation.
Today was Day 6 of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival and today's walk was from Haughley. It was a double-header with 2 groups - one in the morning and a second in the afternoon. This was the invite...
Today was Day 5 of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival and today's walk was a little different - an evening walk at Wicken Fen. Maybe we would see the sunset and the full supermoon....
Today was Day 4 of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival and today we had a circular walk from Stutton via Alton Water, Holbrook, Woolverstone and Harkstead on the Shotley peninsula.
Dawn has had the clippers and scissors out again....
That feels better. I must remember, though, to wear a hat to keep my head warm on this week's walks.
Last week we won the quiz again so tonight it was our turn to provide the quiz. Here it is...
It resulted in a dead heat between Jane, David and Bethany and Jonny, Natalie, Eliza and Lola!. So we voted that Jilly and Ian should provide the quiz next time.
Today was Day 2 of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival, and the walk was from Hadstock in Essex, on the county boundary with Cambridgeshire. This is a walk that Joyce led with the group for the last walk before lockdown in March last year. I missed it as I was collecting Sarah from York, so I was pleased to be able to do it today. Dawn came too. This was the description...
A nice middle-of-the-road Jumbo, I thought, with plenty of straightforward clues to give you a foothold but a few chewier ones to make you think harder. FOI 15A and LOI 7A, where I was trying to get the first word to be GOLDEN, but in vain. A couple of unknowns for me, as usual, including "tow" as fibres and "arioso" as song. A good few ticks on my copy, though, such as 26A, 39A, 49A, 7D 27D and my favourite 42D. Good stuff! Thank-you setter. How did everyone else get on?
Today was the start of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival....
..,although she wasn't on today's walk. It was led by Glen, who took 5 of us in two circuits around Brandeston, stopping for our lunch break at the village hall where we started after the first loop. Then it was a welcome drink in The Queen afterwards.
A
fairly gentle quick crossword, I think, from Wurm today to ease us into
the weekend, although there are a couple of tricks that might catch
some. Lots of anagram practice here, with an anagram element to no less
than 6 clues. Not that I'm complaining. I was held up at the end by 12A
and my last one in 4D, but still finished within my target time. COD
for me was the witty cryptic definition at 11D. Thank-you Wurm! So how
did you lot get on with this? [Edit: I see I was an outlier in finding this not too hard. As the comments below show, it really is quite tricky in parts].
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.
Phil has included a bit of a topical theme. Can you spot it? Enjoy! And
if anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index
to them here.
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. This week's crossword has a bit of a topical theme. Can you spot it? 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.
It isn't quite Joyce's mini walking festival yet (it starts tomorrow), but it might as well have been part of it.
Since attending the recent local branch meeting (and beer tasting), I've decided to get a bit more involved in CAMRA. I had volunteered to help out at the East Anglian Beer Festival last tear, but of course it got cancelled. But I should get involved in this year's, which has been moved to the end of August. Meanwhile, I saw in the West Suffolk CAMRA spring newsletter, that volunteers were being sought to take up some vacant Brewery Liaison Office positions. It should require only a couple of hours a month and will give a chance to get to know a brewer and their brewery. Interesting - so I volunteered and was appointed BLO for Cabin Brewery in Bildeston.
It was a lovely day today so I thought I'd go and do a couple of the walks from the Brettenham Walks leaflet I had picked up on our Thorpe Morieux walk last week. It was warm enough that I was able to walk without a coat or even a jumper.
"The Chinook IPA takes its name from the popular American hop variety and
comes in at 5.5% and will be a hit with anyone who enjoys the current
trend for hoppy American IPA's. "
It certainly smells hoppy! Bottled last weekend, it has been sat in the kitchen for a week to keep warm and start the secondary fermentation in bottle and barrel. Yesterday it was time to label it and pack it away in the garage until ready.
Tasting in a couple of weeks time!
An early start today to beat the crowds.. and enjoy the sunshine. Our first trip to Bradfield Woods this year, put off from going earlier because of the likely mud. But it has all dried up now. We were hoping to see some ramsons and bluebells, but the former haven't come out at all yet and the latter are just starting to appear. But we did see masses of wood anemones and also some oxlips, dog violets and primroses. The birdsong was beautiful too. We did the Red waymarked trail...
We were walking by 8:20am and had the place to ourselves for most of the walk although the car park was a bit busier when we got back.
Here are a few photos.
A lovely morning walk. Home for coffee now. You can see a few more of my photos here on Flickr.
A 380 mile round trip today to take William back to York. Fortunately the traffic was light and I was home again by 1pm. He may not get any face-to-face teaching for a while, but his housemates will be there and he can meet course-mates in a pub garden.
Mine was the only car in the car park for the Atmospheric Chemistry Labs... not surprisingly.
It was only a short carry from there to the door to William's house. I didn't go in and let William take his stuff upstairs. All was well with his room, vacated at the beginning of December... apart from the dead plants. No surprise there! Have a good term and see you at the end of June, William. And now I know that if things go missing from the fridge at home it must be Dawn snacking, not William.
When I got my Solar Power System installed last month, I signed up with Bulb to export my excess electricity as they pay the current moist competitive rate of 5.5p/kWh, compared to the miserly 1.5p/kWh offered by EDF, my energy supplier. I have now transferred my gas and electricity supply to Bulb from EDF, having given up on their smart metering team ever managing to connect up to my smart Gas meter (read more of the saga here), over 6 months after I raised a complaint... (mutter mutter). Any I am now, I'm told, "A certified Bulberino" and my supply switch is complete.
If you haven't compared what you are currently paying with what they charge they are worth a look. And if you do decide to switch....
My reading yesterday was a bit different from the day before... I was reviewing the 46 pages of Chapter 4 "Antibody Sensitivity Testing" of Laura's PhD thesis for her. It took me 4 goes to finally get to nearly understand it all and I learnt a lot along the way. I sent her back an annotated copy last night before I went to bed. I liked a couple of her diagrams in particular...
I think I now understand what the different types of Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are and how they work... and how Laura has developed a method for detecting low concentrations of Mesothelin 😀. Thank-you Laura and good luck with the rest of it.
Last night I finished reading this new book, the first by one of my crossword pals David Jarvis. It was 25 years in the writing, but David retired last year and finally had the time to complete it and get it published.
It was the first day of the new freedoms and pubs would be allowed to serve drinks outdoors. But look what was outside when we got up this morning... Snow!
Nevertheless I booked a table at the Moreton Hall for a celebratory pint of beer for 4pm, hoping it would be a bit warmer by then. And here it is...
A pint of Black Sheep Twighlighter. Very tasty, but I didn't tarry long... it got a bit cold when the sun went in a few minutes after this photo!
Laura bought me some foodstuffs for my birthday including some Spanish Salchichón de Vic, Chorizo with truffle and membrillo quince paste. So I thought we could have a Spanish meal after our family quiz tonight. I got some Spanish cheeses (Iberico and Manchego) to go with the membrillo and tapenade on the food shop yesterday. I supplemented these with some ham & peach nibbles and I made a real spanish omelette. Together with some bread, salads, olives, home-made pickles and the pots of pork cracking I got from Sarah, and a bottle of Spanish red wine, we had quite a selection.
Delicious! Thank-you Laura and Sarah.
P.S. We won the quiz again, so will be having to host the next family quiz in 2 weeks time. Hint for any family members who read this... we've decided to do a quiz based on myths and legends. You've been warned.
Here are a few of my photos.
A wonderful range of different daffodils - some quite unusual, and, among the other plants, we particularly liked the white fritillaries. A lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon! Thanks for the tip, Joyce.
You can see plenty more of my photos here on Flickr.
