I get caught in them, mainly anticipating that the next car will exit the junction smartish, and then they don't. So far I haven't paid a fine.
Same here. It's very easy to do, especially if a fire engine or ambulance suddenly appears and everyone stops; or if someone sneaks in from the left (where that's possible). On the other hand I have on several occasions been tooted by an irate driver behind me, or even been "undertaken", because I have waited for the junction to clear before moving forward.
I've bought some non-alcoholic Peroni, which contains Sicilian Lemon Juice. The ingredients include Barley, Hops, and Sugar (all VEGETABLES), as well as the Lemons (FRUIT), so this is obviously a very healthy option.
I had some of the lemon non-alcoholic Peroni last week and rather enjoyed it @Bishops Finger They do an orange one too that I'll try sometime. I do like non-alcoholic beers, the taste is pretty much the same as the alcoholic version unlike non-alcohol wine which is usually pretty dire.
I’m pleased to report that my corner shop had exactly what I needed to charge my new ipad.
I have walked into town and back twice today, including for Scrabble group this afternoon but tonight I need to take the car for choir.
It is still too hot for my liking but bearable.
Spag bol has been consumed.
30c at about 4pm and starting to cool down. Possible thunderstorms today, so we’ll have to be quick off the mark. Had cheap lunch out courtesy to youngest son who manages an eatery in town.
Last evening I sat in my garden and watched the progression of a towering cumulonimbus which slowly drifted overhead, rumbling as it went. But not a drop fell.
This morning there was more rumbling and a drop or two, nothing more. Cooler today though, but my Pilates class this afternoon raised my temperature somewhat.
I've no idea what the temperature is outside but it's still Pretty Darn Hot, though with a bit of a breeze.
I had a happy first experience of the mobile library which, as it turns out, visits the village every two weeks (not once a month), parking at two different places (both easily walkable). The Helpful Library Lady enabled me to join Wiltshire Libraries and I could borrow a book there and then . There are also libraries in Nearby Town and Fairly Nearby Town so I am set up with reading pleasure for the foreseeable.
This morning I returned to the Powers That Be my bus pass for County Where I Used To Live and that gave me rather a pang so I was pleased to have my new Wiltshire Library Card to fill the gap, so to speak. I am already in possession of my new bus pass so am now officially an Old Wiltshire Person .
This afternoon we had a successful, though hot, trip to Fairly Nearby Town. While we were out we tried closing all doors in the house, to keep the heat from the atrium window from penetrating all the rooms and it was moderately effective.
The organic company which delivers my weekly shop sells a low alcohol beer with lemon which is a refreshing summer drink. I might go and have one now.
Tea was green curry spiced chicken thighs, with a salad.
There was a short bout of rain today, which I heard hit my office roof, but there was absolutely no evidence of it in the garden.
32.9 degrees here in Cardiff - hot but not unbearable.
On what planet is 32.9° "not unbearable"???
It got up to a very pleasant 18° here around the time I was coming back to the office from the hairdresser, and was still very nice as I ambled home.
Apparently it's going up to 21° (or 24°, depending on who you believe) tomorrow: I can cope with the former, but the latter would be Pushing It A Bit.
Back to salads for supper.
Apparently yesterday evening the surrounding villages had torrential rain and hail, resulting in flooding and trees down, whereas we had a bit of rain and rumbles of thunder.
@Baptist Trainfan I needed an adaptor into which the ipad cable would fit, to be plugged into the mains. This particular one takes both my ipad and my phone cables.
(USB-A and USB-C).
Glad you found the right adaptor @Puzzler. It's annoying that they changed the sizes of prongs (or whatever the correct term is), I've had the same problem.
I woke up to some unexpected but welcome rain. The sky looked far more dramatic than it did on Tuesday, when like @puzzler, we were on the edge of the mega-thunderstorm.
Shortly I'm off to my neighbours to start making a frock for a Regency ball I'm going to. The material is more day dress than full on ball gown, but I'm sure with a bit of trimming it'll do the job.
We had an excellent and most exciting thunderstorm at 1.30am with lots of lovely rain. The garden was singing this morning. We overlook allotments and someone came out in their car with a torch at that time to see whether their lightweight growers/greenhouses were intact.
I am off this morning to Nearby Pretty Village with a neighbour to the plant nursery there. I am dosed up on anti-hayfever meds and hoping there will be (probably Iced) Coffee and Cake.
Piglet asked: On what planet is 32.9° "not unbearable"???
To which Caissa replies, I often played football in grad school in London, On when the temperature spiked over 37 and then added humidity to take it to 40. Fortunately, they had water breaks, free substitutions and for myself, I played keeper. The climate in the summer was quite close to Fredericton's.
A bit cooler today but muggy. Some parts of rain had heavy rain last night, including the Youth Eisteddfod in Anglesey, but we so far have only had a hint of a few drops.
I had a very nice hour or so with my neighbour. Getting the bodice right is much more of a fiddle than I thought it would be, but we'll get there. I then went into town to buy some wine and a pair of shoes to wear with said gown. I hope I've chosen the right pair as I got plain ballet pumps and I never have much luck with keeping them on.
After lunch we headed to a wild flower farm which was rather nice, and I now have a couple more plants to fill gaps in the back border.
After a quick supper of the last of the cold meat and salads, I went and got my nails done, and it was so nice when I came out I went for an amble beside the loch before coming home. It was apparently 21° and felt very pleasant.
@Caissa - I found Fredericton way too hot (and humid) in the summer: I'm just not built for that sort of weather!
Past sunset, and still 75F in Arkland the Silly, where the promised breeze has not materialised.
Another tropical night beckons...
Shopp Ing will have to be done tomorrow, but at least Tess Coe is nicely air-conditioned! Our Town's store isn't large enough to warrant a coffee/snack bar, which is a pity...
Pretty warm here still. It was nice to be able to eat in the garden though, and afterward we did a bit of gardening, planting up what we bought today and discovering that the garlic we planted ages ago seems to have actually turned into usable bulbs. As a reward for our hard work we had cocktails from a tin. Espresso Martini for my husband and a Negroni for me. Negronis always remains me of my late friend T who made rather lethal ones, and the one in a tin was almost in the same league.
I hope you had an enjoyable day out @Nenya. Did you buy any extra plants too?
My youngest grandson came for lunch today then did some chores for which he earned some pocket money before going to a gig with his mates. He is on half term, revising for a few hours each day for his remaining A level exams, but also managing to get sunburnt and go for a dip in the river- to my consternation, given the recent 11 deaths of young people in the water.
Choir practice tonight was attended by a select few, one tenor, three altos and one soprano.
In French tomorrow we are talking about how we like / cope with the heat and what changes to our homes we might ( like to) make to accommodate the hot weather.
I hope you had an enjoyable day out @Nenya. Did you buy any extra plants too?
Thank you, yes, I had an enjoyable morning. My neighbour was driving so I didn't feel I could fill her car boot up with compost and plants . However, I got some very good ideas about what I could do here and I did treat myself to some new gardening gloves and some all-purpose plant food. The Iced Coffee and Cheese Scone were also very good.
Yesterday evening we went to an annual event at the village hall where all the clubs and organisations had a couple of minutes to talk about their groups and where and when they meet. Very useful and interesting for newbies like us - we ended up chatting to a number of people and being some of the last to leave.
Today Mr Nen and I went out exploring, had coffee and cake, and ended up in a nearby home department store which has become one of our favourite emporiums. There we had lunch and made a few random purchases. It was a bit rushed at the end owing to Mr Nen suddenly deciding it was Getting Late and he had Lots To Do.
Tea is going to be another version of @Heavenlyannie 's pastry swirls, this time with herb pesto and grated cheese, served with salad.
After a whole week of it, I am very bored of 33°. I did the Iron Ing first thing, although only the items that absolutely can't be worn presentably without it. The rest has been put away unironed and no one is going to die. After that I watered the garden, and also picked a load of gooseberries. The only trouble is that this involved wearing a cardigan and gloves on account of the vicious thorns. On the upside, it's one of the reasons the birds eat said fruit far less than some of the others that grow in our garden.
At lunchtime, husband en rouge had the luminous idea of going to an air-conditioned restaurant. We went to a fancy Italian place round the corner, and very delicious too. My last task of the afternoon was to procure new pyjamas for Captain Pyjamas. He had one summer pair that still fit, but the rest were conspicuously too small. He now has a natty new pair with trucks and tractors on.
Another nice day here, but getting a bit blustrous: the sort of thing that presages a change in the weather (it's allegedly going to be much cooler and wetter next week).
Supper was F&C, and to say they were on form would be an understatement. The young gentleman who was serving must have thought I looked hungry*, as I got a huge piece of absolutely delicious fish, and enough chips to feed an army.
* should have gone to Specsavers
Hope Captain PJs likes his PJs!
I used to enjoy those lunches when our son was at school too, @la vie en rouge, though there was the time we got drunk and went and put our flat on the market, a decision we were never sure was the right one.
A very lazy day today though I did go and cut a ribbon at a recently re-furbished play park in town and went for a mooch round the shops afterwards. A new wine shop selling wines from places like Moldova and Georgia is about to open in town. His door was open so I popped in for a chat. Apparently Elizabeth II used to order Moldovan wine by the crate. The weather has been warm, but not too hot so eating dinner outside was actually very pleasant, as was the Italian wine we had with it. When the new shop is actually open I'll try a bottle of the Moldovan wine to see why our late queen rated it.
Last year, when my sister and I visited my favourite local Italian restaurant, the waitress recommended Moldovan wine* - she was from Romania, but with Moldovan family connections. She reckoned that if Moldova concentrated on producing and selling wine as far afield as possible, the country's economy and finances would be much improved!
The restaurant itself had no Moldovan wine on offer, being Italian, and Our Town's Tess Coe didn't have any, either, though it's available online or from the larger stores. I'll be interested to hear what @Sarasa thinks of it...
*We went at a quiet time, and had an enjoyable conversation with the Young Person concerned.
A high of 26 here apparently, and slightly more bearable with a gentle breeze. I spent the morning doing admin and answering student queries and the afternoon doing mandatory online compliance training (Prevent/anti-terrorism, health and safety, safeguarding and GDPR).
Do you get the anti-hacker video by Kevin Mitnick too? I see that several times a year, one for each place I teach.
When Tesco's opened a Metro shop in Belfast (in the late 1990s), it had a small but well-stocked wine shop. They had some very decent wines from places whose wine we'd never tried (Mexico and Uruguay spring to mind) at ridiculously cheap prices.
It may have been what inspired the Drinkell Wine Buying Principle:
It may have been what inspired the Drinkell Wine Buying Principle:
Pretty label
Priced below £5 (this was nearly 30 years ago)
Politically incorrect country of origin
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I had a wine buff boss who would have loved that!
One of his best finds was cases of a 10-year old Reisling at £2.49 a bottle (circa early noughties) - it was delicious. Reisling is *still* stupidly underated in this country (along with most German wine, however good) hence why you can get a very drinkable one in Lidl for a mere £5.49. Must try the Aldi equivalent for size...
Incidentally, for petrolheads, or former moped owners, aged Reislings develop a petrol aroma when opened (no, they don't taste of it!) - the 10yo was definitely 2-stroke mix.
A high of 26 here apparently, and slightly more bearable with a gentle breeze. I spent the morning doing admin and answering student queries and the afternoon doing mandatory online compliance training (Prevent/anti-terrorism, health and safety, safeguarding and GDPR).
Do you get the anti-hacker video by Kevin Mitnick too? I see that several times a year, one for each place I teach.
I work for a long established distance learning university and they produce all their online training courses in-house. I just looked Mitnick up, I had vaguely heard of him, he was quite the conman and maverick. I might put his autobiography in my elder son’s Christmas stocking (he’s currently doing a PhD in high performance computing).
We have a viewing of our house today so I am currently trying to clear up around Husband Beaky so that it looks vaguely presentable 😆
Sympathies. Having recently moved house ourselves, fresh in my mind is that scurrying around before a viewing, trying to remove all evidence that people actually lived in the house :rolleyes:
What happened after you put your flat on the market when in a drunken state, @Sarasa ? Did you end up moving and the move not working out very well?
A sunny morning here in the Wilds of Wiltshire. I'm hoping we're going to get the lawn cut today.
The green pesto and cheese pastry swirls for tea last night were very tasty. Green pesto has become a stock cupboard staple at Casa Nen, as it also features in my Easy Pasta tea.
We bought some lovely Romanian wine at a wine fair a couple of years ago, from the owner who was married to a Countess who had re-claimed her ancestral lands and vineyards.
Next time we are in Waitrose I will seek out Moldovan wine.
Thirty years ago, we used to frequent the Adnams wine merchants in Norwich. They got some wine in that I think was Moldovan - it was certainly a recently liberated Soviet Republic. Under the Soviet Union, all the vineyards had to take their wine to a central point where it was all mixed together! This particular vineyard had stubbornly continued to make the best wine they possibly could despite this, and were reaping the rewards with foreign sales. The labels were individually numbered in biro, and the wine was superb!
I'll let you know the results of my testing of Moldovan wine when the shop opens next week. Unfortunately the prices are far from cheap, so I don't think I'll be buying the whole range all at once. Our way to choose wine is by picking the ones with an animal on the label. Our son reckons they are always. at the very least, OK. It seems to work, our Italian Montepulciano d'abruzzo yesterday with a bee on the front was very nice. @nenya, we sold our lovely three bedroom purpose built arts and crafts flat and bought a 1960s town house in a much more run down area after that lunch, The advantage was that it was house and much nearer our son's school. The house was a mess and took two years to nicely decorate and replace the kitchen and bathroom and the area never 'up and came' as the estate agent promised but at least our son could stroll through a park to school. If we'd stayed in the flat it would have been worth more than the house in the end.
We were up at 5.30 to go and take drone shots of our town from the local conservation area as part of putting together a neighbourhood area. I then went into town twice on various errands, but it was very nice bumping into friends, including E and C. who live in Florida but spend the summer here. They were in full Regency gear for an afternoon tea they were attending later.
I'm shortly going to go and make myself presentable. My best friend and her husband (my boss) are both turning 60 next week, and their twins recently turned 21, so they're having a ceilidh at the Burgh Halls this evening to mark the occasion.
Not sure how much dancing I'll do (with my knees, my willow-stripping days are definitely over!), but I think it'll be a good do all the same.
Unfortunately, I'm not only on coffee duty at church tomorrow, but also reading the lessons, so I'll have to be circumspect about my alcohol intake ...
Strange meal times today as they had to be fitted in around concert and rehearsal. I cooked portions of half a pizza in the air fryer for brunch and finished the other half on my return. Rehearsal finished at 3.35 so tea and carrot cake followed, with a ham sandwich brought from home eaten around 5.00 before going to Evening Prayer.
The concert was different, but outstanding for that. A special highlight for me was that four people from the Leeds choir I used to sing in came and I really enjoyed catching up with them.
If there was any rain, it obligingly didn't fall while I was either going or coming back, which was helpful.
I didn't do any dancing, but thoroughly enjoyed watching as other people did!
It was a right good do, and I caught up with a few people I hadn't seen for about 40 years, which was lovely (although when I see it put like that, it makes me feel absolutely ancient!).
Pre-emptive hangover prevention is being effected with orange juice, grapes and a couple of Solpadeine before I go to bed; I didn't have a huge lot to drink, but better safe than sorry!
Comments
Same here. It's very easy to do, especially if a fire engine or ambulance suddenly appears and everyone stops; or if someone sneaks in from the left (where that's possible). On the other hand I have on several occasions been tooted by an irate driver behind me, or even been "undertaken", because I have waited for the junction to clear before moving forward.
I had some of the lemon non-alcoholic Peroni last week and rather enjoyed it @Bishops Finger They do an orange one too that I'll try sometime. I do like non-alcoholic beers, the taste is pretty much the same as the alcoholic version unlike non-alcohol wine which is usually pretty dire.
I have walked into town and back twice today, including for Scrabble group this afternoon but tonight I need to take the car for choir.
It is still too hot for my liking but bearable.
Spag bol has been consumed.
This morning there was more rumbling and a drop or two, nothing more. Cooler today though, but my Pilates class this afternoon raised my temperature somewhat.
I had a happy first experience of the mobile library which, as it turns out, visits the village every two weeks (not once a month), parking at two different places (both easily walkable). The Helpful Library Lady enabled me to join Wiltshire Libraries and I could borrow a book there and then
This morning I returned to the Powers That Be my bus pass for County Where I Used To Live and that gave me rather a pang so I was pleased to have my new Wiltshire Library Card to fill the gap, so to speak. I am already in possession of my new bus pass so am now officially an Old Wiltshire Person
This afternoon we had a successful, though hot, trip to Fairly Nearby Town. While we were out we tried closing all doors in the house, to keep the heat from the atrium window from penetrating all the rooms and it was moderately effective.
Easy pasta for tea.
Tea was green curry spiced chicken thighs, with a salad.
There was a short bout of rain today, which I heard hit my office roof, but there was absolutely no evidence of it in the garden.
On what planet is 32.9° "not unbearable"???
It got up to a very pleasant 18° here around the time I was coming back to the office from the hairdresser, and was still very nice as I ambled home.
Apparently it's going up to 21° (or 24°, depending on who you believe) tomorrow: I can cope with the former, but the latter would be Pushing It A Bit.
Back to salads for supper.
If you move slowly, keep covered up (including a hat) and eschew talking, that all helps.
@Baptist Trainfan I needed an adaptor into which the ipad cable would fit, to be plugged into the mains. This particular one takes both my ipad and my phone cables.
(USB-A and USB-C).
I woke up to some unexpected but welcome rain. The sky looked far more dramatic than it did on Tuesday, when like @puzzler, we were on the edge of the mega-thunderstorm.
Shortly I'm off to my neighbours to start making a frock for a Regency ball I'm going to. The material is more day dress than full on ball gown, but I'm sure with a bit of trimming it'll do the job.
We had an excellent and most exciting thunderstorm at 1.30am with lots of lovely rain. The garden was singing this morning. We overlook allotments and someone came out in their car with a torch at that time to see whether their lightweight growers/greenhouses were intact.
I am off this morning to Nearby Pretty Village with a neighbour to the plant nursery there. I am dosed up on anti-hayfever meds and hoping there will be (probably Iced) Coffee and Cake.
To which Caissa replies, I often played football in grad school in London, On when the temperature spiked over 37 and then added humidity to take it to 40. Fortunately, they had water breaks, free substitutions and for myself, I played keeper. The climate in the summer was quite close to Fredericton's.
84F again in Arkland the Dusty, but They have promised us a south-westerly breeze this afternoon, which will help ventilate my sleeping-berth.
No need to go out today, thanks be to Māna-Yood-Sushāī.
After lunch we headed to a wild flower farm which was rather nice, and I now have a couple more plants to fill gaps in the back border.
@Caissa - I found Fredericton way too hot (and humid) in the summer: I'm just not built for that sort of weather!
The autumns were lovely though.
Another tropical night beckons...
Shopp Ing will have to be done tomorrow, but at least Tess Coe is nicely air-conditioned! Our Town's store isn't large enough to warrant a coffee/snack bar, which is a pity...
I hope you had an enjoyable day out @Nenya. Did you buy any extra plants too?
Choir practice tonight was attended by a select few, one tenor, three altos and one soprano.
In French tomorrow we are talking about how we like / cope with the heat and what changes to our homes we might ( like to) make to accommodate the hot weather.
Thank you, yes, I had an enjoyable morning. My neighbour was driving so I didn't feel I could fill her car boot up with compost and plants
Yesterday evening we went to an annual event at the village hall where all the clubs and organisations had a couple of minutes to talk about their groups and where and when they meet. Very useful and interesting for newbies like us - we ended up chatting to a number of people and being some of the last to leave.
Today Mr Nen and I went out exploring, had coffee and cake, and ended up in a nearby home department store which has become one of our favourite emporiums. There we had lunch and made a few random purchases. It was a bit rushed at the end owing to Mr Nen suddenly deciding it was Getting Late and he had Lots To Do.
Tea is going to be another version of @Heavenlyannie 's pastry swirls, this time with herb pesto and grated cheese, served with salad.
At lunchtime, husband en rouge had the luminous idea of going to an air-conditioned restaurant. We went to a fancy Italian place round the corner, and very delicious too. My last task of the afternoon was to procure new pyjamas for Captain Pyjamas. He had one summer pair that still fit, but the rest were conspicuously too small. He now has a natty new pair with trucks and tractors on.
Supper was F&C, and to say they were on form would be an understatement. The young gentleman who was serving must have thought I looked hungry*, as I got a huge piece of absolutely delicious fish, and enough chips to feed an army.
* should have gone to Specsavers
Hope Captain PJs likes his PJs!
Captain Pyjamas was not invited on this particular jolly. He was at school, and we were profiting from his absence to go on a Date.
He had to make do with the canteen
A very lazy day today though I did go and cut a ribbon at a recently re-furbished play park in town and went for a mooch round the shops afterwards. A new wine shop selling wines from places like Moldova and Georgia is about to open in town. His door was open so I popped in for a chat. Apparently Elizabeth II used to order Moldovan wine by the crate. The weather has been warm, but not too hot so eating dinner outside was actually very pleasant, as was the Italian wine we had with it. When the new shop is actually open I'll try a bottle of the Moldovan wine to see why our late queen rated it.
The restaurant itself had no Moldovan wine on offer, being Italian, and Our Town's Tess Coe didn't have any, either, though it's available online or from the larger stores. I'll be interested to hear what @Sarasa thinks of it...
*We went at a quiet time, and had an enjoyable conversation with the Young Person concerned.
Do you get the anti-hacker video by Kevin Mitnick too? I see that several times a year, one for each place I teach.
It may have been what inspired the Drinkell Wine Buying Principle:
Pretty label
Priced below £5 (this was nearly 30 years ago)
Politically incorrect country of origin
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I had a wine buff boss who would have loved that!
One of his best finds was cases of a 10-year old Reisling at £2.49 a bottle (circa early noughties) - it was delicious. Reisling is *still* stupidly underated in this country (along with most German wine, however good) hence why you can get a very drinkable one in Lidl for a mere £5.49. Must try the Aldi equivalent for size...
Incidentally, for petrolheads, or former moped owners, aged Reislings develop a petrol aroma when opened (no, they don't taste of it!) - the 10yo was definitely 2-stroke mix.
What happened after you put your flat on the market when in a drunken state, @Sarasa ? Did you end up moving and the move not working out very well?
A sunny morning here in the Wilds of Wiltshire. I'm hoping we're going to get the lawn cut today.
The green pesto and cheese pastry swirls for tea last night were very tasty. Green pesto has become a stock cupboard staple at Casa Nen, as it also features in my Easy Pasta tea.
This works quite well at Asda if you go for their "Wine Atlas" range (prices higher of course!).
Lidl's "Wine Tour" monthly offers can be good, too - we just had a lovely bottle of sparkling Hungarian Tokay from that.
We've had perfectly drinkable Moldovan wine but I can't remember where I bought it!
Next time we are in Waitrose I will seek out Moldovan wine.
@nenya, we sold our lovely three bedroom purpose built arts and crafts flat and bought a 1960s town house in a much more run down area after that lunch, The advantage was that it was house and much nearer our son's school. The house was a mess and took two years to nicely decorate and replace the kitchen and bathroom and the area never 'up and came' as the estate agent promised but at least our son could stroll through a park to school. If we'd stayed in the flat it would have been worth more than the house in the end.
We were up at 5.30 to go and take drone shots of our town from the local conservation area as part of putting together a neighbourhood area. I then went into town twice on various errands, but it was very nice bumping into friends, including E and C. who live in Florida but spend the summer here. They were in full Regency gear for an afternoon tea they were attending later.
Not sure how much dancing I'll do (with my knees, my willow-stripping days are definitely over!), but I think it'll be a good do all the same.
Unfortunately, I'm not only on coffee duty at church tomorrow, but also reading the lessons, so I'll have to be circumspect about my alcohol intake ...
The concert was different, but outstanding for that. A special highlight for me was that four people from the Leeds choir I used to sing in came and I really enjoyed catching up with them.
I didn't do any dancing, but thoroughly enjoyed watching as other people did!
It was a right good do, and I caught up with a few people I hadn't seen for about 40 years, which was lovely (although when I see it put like that, it makes me feel absolutely ancient!).
Pre-emptive hangover prevention is being effected with orange juice, grapes and a couple of Solpadeine before I go to bed; I didn't have a huge lot to drink, but better safe than sorry!
We had a very lazy day yesterday, and made doughnuts in the air fryer in the afternoon. Today I should really do some tidying and laundry though.