A Nice Find

 I love these Oxford Black n' Red note/account lined books - they have hard covers and are casebound like a book so last well and are very expensive if bought in a stationery shop.

I found this one for 50p...car boot sale of course. The person selling had lots of new stationery items but nothing else I needed  or even wanted.

It's A5 and will be my new accounts book when I have filled up the one I'm using.

Stowed away I have one of their books with the A-Z pages and when I get around to it I shall copy all the 1,000s of books in my old and tatty Book-of-Books-Read into the new shiny one but as that will be a job taking weeks (months?) I've not started yet.

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Yesterdays tennis saw Sinner win easily but Djocovic had to battle through 5 sets, including tie-breaks, and I thought he was going to start moaning again as he started to limp and had the trainer on.

Today it's Arthur Fery playing again - can he get through? We shall see. He is playing someone he has previously beaten so there is hope. I'd missed seeing Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool are into the quarter finals of the men's doubles, that's today too and Henry Pattern and his Finnish partner, who are ranked#1 are already through to the semis. I've been watching mostly on Red Button for choice of courts and that means I seem to have missed the newsy bits that are between matches on BBC1 and 2. 

June Library Book Photo - Several Days into July

Blimey yesterday was HOT AGAIN! Even the breeze was hot. Set to be the same all week - too much for me now - funny how not so many years ago I loved the heat, now I can only tolerate it by doing nothing. Although I did get started with another batch of compost (AKA mixed fruit) jelly, to be finished today once the sun had gone from the kitchen window.

As I mentioned before, the mobile library was cancelled two weeks ago due to the heat but Rachel rang and said she would send my reservations to Stowmarket Library for me to collect but when I went into town a week later they still hadn't arrived. Of course notification arrived the next day to say they'd finally got there (the afternoon after I was in town of course!)

I did a detour on my way back from visiting YD and picked them up. More non-fiction than usual and only two crime.

On the top is a book I reserved out of curiosity after reading Deborah's (Country Ways and Cottage Days) post about the Welsh herbal online course she is doing (and I hope she is OK as she's not posted for several weeks).

Then left to right ............. Tree Lore ( no idea why I reserved this as I've got several 'tree' books of my own). Dean Street Press have reprinted many of Sara Wood's crime fiction, dating back to the 1960's. I read some of her later books as she was still writing well into the 1980's . I suggested the library buy some and they bought the first one, saying that if I liked it I could suggest they buy more!

'Theo of Golden' is another book that I have no clue why I reserved it - did someone mention it? did I read about it somewhere and what the heck is it about anyway? I'll let you know.

'Secret Places' by Heather Peck, I plucked from the library shelves having found her novella in this series to try when I was there last week. It was a good short read so I looked to see availability of her other books and spotted Stow had this one on the shelves.

'The Enchanted April' by Elizabeth Von Arnim was suggested to read after I read 'Elizabeth and her German Garden ' in May.

'Evergreen' by Lydia Millen is "Inspired by the seasons, 'Evergreen' is the essential guide for anyone who is looking to bring more joy and more happiness into their everyday."

I'll let you know how that pans out too!

'Reconnected' by Carlos Whittaker. He is an American author, podcaster, instagrammer etc- well known apparently - I'd never heard of him. After working out how many hours, days and years of his life he spends connected to a screen he tries 7 weeks without a phone - two weeks in a monastery, two more weeks  on an Amish farm and four weeks at home.

I've started this already and he makes some good points.

There are already five books for me sitting in the mobile library depot ready for the July visit to the village....all crime....good.

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What an A -MAZ-ING game of tennis yesterday evening. Arthur Fery just kept battling and took it to the 10 point tie-break in the 5th Set and WON! So exciting to see, although I hardly dared watch at the end . He plays Flavio Cobolli in the Quarter Finals on Wednesday, someone he has already beaten this year in the first round of the Australian Open.

Looking forward to it.

Meanwhile it's back to the other half of the draw with Jannick Sinner and Djokovic playing. I expect both to win their games and meet in the semi finals.

First Food Shop of July

 This shopping-photos-to-fill-a-blog-post is getting to be a regular thing - I'm just not having enough adventures and with the weather forecast telling us we are in for another week of very high temperatures I doubt I'll be going far this week either.

At least last weeks trip to town was a few degrees cooler than the week before. I went to Aldi first on my way into town and then into town centre for a couple of things including the library, then frozen stuff from Asda that I didn't want to get at Aldi as it would have been in the cold box (even with ice-packs) for a bit too long..

Some things are rather hidden in the photo but this is the complete list...roughly left to right......... Aldi's calabrese still looked yellowing like the last couple of times I've been in, so I got a savoy cabbage instead for the weeks 'greens' 79p; 6 apples £1.39 ; 4 wholemeal baps 69p; pack 2 little gem lettuce 49p; cooking chocolate £1.59; chocolate chips £1.19; cheap choc chip cookies 65p; 3 peanuts @ 59p =£1.77; Soy sauce 55p; tin plum tomatoes 43p; 4 pints semi-skimmed milk  £1.65; Strong white bread flour £1.09; Packet jaffa cakes £1.00; Extra Mature Cheddar cheese 400g £2.49; Soft cheese 89p; 2 packets Colmans cheese sauce mix @£1.00 each = £2; Brown Sugar £1.64; 1Kg Nectarines £2.39; Frozen Fish in batter pack of 4 £2.49; Ice cream £1.62.

Total Spend £26.80

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Two really good games at Wimbledon on Saturday - there were probably more but these were the two I properly watched. First Arthur Fery battled his way to a win, coming back from being down so many times and finally winning in 5 sets. I think they said the first British Wild Card to get through to the 4th round  in many a long year (or maybe ever- they had too many stats to remember!) Then the Dimitrov/Berrittini match was equally good, I didn't really mind who won.

On Sunday Djokovic won again of course and then Jannick Sinner got through - again not easily. Today Arthur Fery plays Grigor Dimitrov who is getting back to playing after a year of injuries. It could be one-sided as Dimitrov is so experienced or Arthur - who is 12 years younger might be able to play really well again.  

I didn't stay up for the England/Mexico match - I'm not silly! But was amazed to wake up this morning with the radio telling me England had somehow managed to win. That was a nice surprise, I didn't think they stood a chance as Mexico had never lost a game playing in their National stadium.

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I saw my 9 year old EGD yesterday, a month ago we were practising her times tables ready for a test and she did well - getting all right. She wanted me to write some for her to do again but she got the answers quicker than I could write the numbers! I'm glad they learn times tables to be able to get the answer straight away, as we did back in the 60s."Off by heart" we called it. It went out of fashion when my lot were at school. It's quite a useful thing to be able to do at any age, unlike some of the things we did in Maths which were never used again!