The weather late yesterday afternoon was absolutely atrocious. There was a major storm, pretty much directly overhead, with non-stop lightning flashing between the clouds and thunder rolling around the hills. The wind was so strong that the trees in the wood opposite were thrashing around alarmingly, and indeed one came down and completely blocked my […]
Christopher’s iPad has finally reached the end of its usable life, after just over five years. It’s a first generation device, and I’ve not been able to upgrade the operating system or apps for a long while now. Apps and websites have gradually stopped working, so even though there’s nothing wrong with the hardware, it’s […]
Christopher’s stepfather, Peter, goes to stay with some friends of his in mid-Wales for a week’s holiday most summers. To get there, he pretty much has to drive past the end of my road, so we try to meet up for a pub lunch either on his way there or as a stop on the […]
My Gran died at Christmas, having surprised everyone (including herself) by living well into her nineties. She had very little to leave, and made a very simple Will, but there was one clause in it that has been causing me no end of trouble. She wanted to leave a sum of money to her great-great-nephew, […]
The glass fusing course was thoroughly enjoyable, but the downside is that it’s very hard on the hands. Last time, I came away with my hands covered with small but surprisingly deep cuts. This time, I was much more diligent about “grozing”, or filing away the very sharp fragments from the cut edges of the […]
It sounds faintly Victorian and somewhat amusing, but I’ve recently been through an attack of gout and I can assure you it’s no laughing matter! I thought that a full-on migraine was painful, but an episode of gout is right up there in the pain stakes. It was horrible. It started completely out of the […]
It’s not got above freezing for several days. My garden and drive face almost due North, and the thin covering of snow that fell overnight on Friday hasn’t melted – in fact, it’s frozen solid. At least I can tell that the insulation in my loft is doing its job, as my roof is still […]
It’s snowing for the first time this winter. Not particularly hard, yet, but the forecast is for an accumulation of 5cm or more overnight. Considering it logically, that’s not a particularly big deal. The main road will be gritted overnight and ploughed if necessary, and I’ve put salt down on the steep slope onto the […]
It was particularly timely that I went to see Adrian’s Wall, the new play by the local Writer-in-Residence about four misfits walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall. I’ve recently started a new “MOOC” online course studying the Wall itself. The course is on the FutureLearn platform, and is being run by Newcastle University. The Wall […]
Today is the fourth anniversary of Christopher’s death, and I wanted to commemorate it in an appropriate way. For several years before he died, he had become very interested in “Damascene blades”, a form of steel used by the Saracens to make their scimitars. He went into far more technical detail than I was interested […]
