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This is Willow Cottage in Bloom – Early Summer 2020
Maureen’s been out in the front, gardening. Nature does it’s best to turn the garden into a vast unkempt forest but there’s an art to keeping only the flora we find pleasing – and a lot of hard work. Personally I’m easy to please and love having lots of magenta coloured flowers.
The Simplest Pleasures of life – Chocolate and Soap
My wife just bought me some of this in Hexham – Beanies Mint Chocolate Instant Coffee. Not cheap, but very pleasant. I recently had a fad for cinnamon in my coffee and will likely go back to that after a while.
Meanwhile – this is a short video I put together about my experiences with a new hands-free infra-red foaming soap dispenser and my not-that-new infra-red water saver. It’s all in the video.
There is Life after a Stroke
A friend recently asked me an interesting question… someone who probably knows I write blogs, make extensive use of social media and create things like YouTube videos. I was asked if I had blogged about my experiences as a stroke “survivor”?
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Holiday Quantum Reading Matter – Sean Carroll’s Book
I’m less prone to reading books than I am watching videos but in this case, I think Sean Carroll’s book “Something Deeply Hidden” could be worth sacrificing some of my holiday time for – ok, so it is freezing cold anyway.
Sean makes relatively light work of getting your head into Quantum Mechanics, but more importantly Sean is very honest and open about the fact that although we use this very effectively to get real world results in a variety of disciplines, we don’t actually entirely understand the how and why. But then we made GREAT use of Aspirin long before we knew how it worked.
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Weekend Trip to Newcastle to see Holly at Work
As another decade draws to a close, I don’t do that many family updates in here so I figured as I was up early I’d put in a word for my granddaughter Holly and her new job at “Bar & Block” in Newcastle.
Having gotten used to inexpensive, cosy Spanish restaurants over the years I’m not that keen on UK city centre bars any more but this place in Newgate Street in Newcastle (Upon Tyne) wasn’t bad and service was good yesterday lunchtime. You might think they’d be chocker full around Christmas but early afternoon on Dec 29 things were nice and quiet.
Aside from the usual parking nightmare, a pleasant trip out and a nice break from the computer.
Autumn 2019 in Wark
The weather since we came back to the UK has been pretty crappy generally but just for the record in case I forget, yesterday was LOVELY. I took this little number down by the riverside as Maureen and I were taking the two youngest grandkids for a walk along the waterfront.
And today, on the cards is a trip to the new B&M store in nearby Kingston Park. Well, it beats visiting garden centres…
Making the Best of Summer
You may have noticed a lack of entries in here over the summer. That’s because I do most of my writing over at the Bedrock site and on Facebook in summer. The weather over in Spain has been very hot and though we’re getting the odd thunder-storm now, it is generally 32-36c during the day even now in early September. I’ve done a lot of technical blogging on the days it has been TOO hot and we’ve done a little travelling, with more in sight for September.
Here we have Maureen at her best, in the sea. she loves it – talking of which that’s where we are off to tomorrow for the day.. one of several nice beaches in the general area around Mojacar (Southeast coast) – I picked a beach at random for our day trip with our friends Karin and Dave. Of course, it all depends on the forecast being accurate.
The LED Lighting Sunday Lecture
Good morning all…
Benefit from my mistakes?.. in modernising our house lighting both here in the UK and over in Spain, we have totally gone over to LED lighting of one kind or another. Having been used to compact fluorescents, I kind of expect a couple of years at least, before lights give up.
LED lighting is currently a choice, it won’t be for long as supplies of older alternatives dry up.
The first thing I learned when fitting LED lighting is that manufacturer specs are rubbish, blindly copied from the actual LED design specs by the lamp manufacturers/sales people. The specs refer to LEDs running at reasonable (warm) temperatures. Typically, household lighting gets HOT due to poor ventilation. LEDs don’t like to run HOT so forget your 13 year life claims but 2-5 years should be do-able..
A Crappy Winter Morning
Lovely winter morning? Not lovely winter morning! The first of these pictures was sadly taken precisely 1,198.3 miles (1,928.5km) North of the second (hence the quality variation) mid-morning this morning. For anyone looking in while enjoying the sunshine in Southern Spain, please spare a thought for friends suffering the current god-forsaken weather in the Northeast of England.
Chicago then back to Blighty
After a very pleasant trip to the USA to visit friends and relatives in and around Chicago, we’re back in the UK. Time to get on with our various winter jobs and to catch up with our friends over here. Meanwhile here are some pics from our trip to Chicago.
