Not Much Happening

 I'm going to have a bit of a break from blogging until I can think of something more exciting than a picture of shopping!

Sport Report Catch Up

I forgot to mention yesterday about the final days of Wimbledon. The Wheelchair Men's Doubles final gave Brits Alfie and Gordon another title - well done them. I think that Alfie was then exhausted for the singles final as he was beaten by Tokito Oda the number one seed in two easy sets.

Brit Henry Pattern was one of the pair winning the Men's doubles with Finland's Harri Heliovarra. There was talk of doubles matches getting less coverage ...........

In July 2026, the ATP Tour proposed controversial sweeping cuts internally termed "Product 28" for implementation in 2028. The plan could slash doubles draw sizes in half and heavily reduce the revenue share for doubles players to reinvest in singles.

As someone said......  playing doubles is what most people do in clubs and schools and is still popular to watch at the Slams. It's all about the money. 

The men's final on Sunday was a tough match for both men I think, as it went to tie breaks in the first two sets, then Jannik Sinner seemed to dig in and won the next two sets to retain his title from last year. I don't know if Sacha Zverev was affected by a nasty fall, he said he wasn't but ..............

And I heard that Andrew Castle and John Lloyd who have been rolled in as BBC commentators every Wimbledon for donkeys years are being pensioned off - I didn't mind them but I know some people weren't keen.

So all over for another year 😢

Just that football match tomorrow night then - and that will (probably) be the end of my Sports reports 2026 except for  the cricket test matches against Pakistan next month.

BUT Only Connect and University Challenge were back last night for quizzy Mondays - so it's not all bad news!

Books for the Country Diarist

 Short of things to write about on the blog so here's another list of reading ideas from the Country Commonplace Book by 'cosy' youtuber and book reader Miranda Mills. (https://www.youtube.com/c/MirandaMills) She's much too cosy for me to watch more than a minute! I won't be buying her second book.

I've only actually read two of these although once owned two others and I have read Mark Cocker's second diary about Claxton ( Still own a copy of  A Claxton Diary). 'Country Diary of an  Edwardian Lady' is everywhere secondhand and I still have a copy here. The two old diaries by the clergy are classics but I'm afraid I've not read either. 'All Around The Year' by Michael Morpurgo was a good read from not so long ago when Little Toller Books reprinted it. 'Notes from Walnut Tree Farm' is one I ought to have read as he lived not far from here. We had a copy once  and I'm sure Colin read it years ago.

Like the other lists in Miranda Mills' books I don't know her criteria for her choices. I'm sure over the years I've read many other diaries about country life.

Random Round Up of a Hot Week.

First of all apologies for the comments I didn't get around to replying to....The day just went.......whoosh!

It's quite strange in this country to go to bed knowing the next day and the one after and another after that will be dry and sunny and even more unusual to know it will be really hot. 

This week has been like that and more the same for next week too - I am thankful to be able to do very little - even avoided going out really early for shopping. I was sad to have to cancel a lunch with cousins but the heat is getting to me more this year than ever before.............an age thing I guess.

The dustbin men have been starting work early due to the heat and my bit of the village is one of their first stops so they've been coming not long after 6am but it wasn't them that woke me on Wednesday morning, instead a man on a ride-on mower went into the churchyard to do the paths - I looked at the clock - just after 5am - he really did want to get it done early!

We got through the exercises at our Keep Moving Group. .......all windows open and much water drunk. Two other ladies led the exercises - it was too hot for me. I set up my phone for the 10 minute meditation and then went and sat out in the porchway to cool down. Several people have dropped out recently - perhaps it's only because of the heat and holiday season - I hope they return.

As I shut the living room windows very late Thursday evening I noticed a sort of dark patch on the grass(not good enough to call it  a lawn) so went out to look and YES - a hedgehog, first I've seen here in 5 years.  

I have 10 billion wasps eating the pears on the small pear tree - there were lots of pears - soon there will be none.

The climbing French beans are producing a few beans - very tasty.

I've not done a Being Grateful list for ages....... since March in fact, but this week I'm grateful for..... 

• Enjoying watching tennis on TV without having to be there in the heat.
• Being retired and not working in the heat.
• Stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer so I didn't need to go out shopping ....in the heat.
• The library books that I have here to read, indoors out of the heat.
• The bread machine that makes my bread so easily even when the weather is  hot.

Bit of a theme there!

Not sure if anything is happening this weekend but tennis is on TV for sure although Arthur Fery's  brilliant run at Wimbledon was ended by Sascha Zverev who's 6 foot 6inches tall with a massive serve  and - hooray- Jannik Sinner beat  Djokovic  setting up the Sunday final that I have no idea who will win.

 At 11am in the men's doubles wheelchair finals Alfie Hewitt and Gordon Reid are aiming for yet another title to add to the 24 they already have!

And there is a football match tonight - but it's after my bedtime again.

Have a good weekend, I'll be back Monday.

Imitation is the Greatest Form of Flattery

 Actually the saying should be 'the sincerest form of flattery' but either way this is what my Mum used to say when my little sister was doing that awful copy cat thing - repeating everything I did or said OR when I moaned about someone at school getting the same something or other.

Here it's me copying Sue in Lancs as I'm extremely short of bright ideas for blog posts.(Sorry Sue!)

Sue's post was through her day in photos...........and here's my day - Wednesday-  in photos.

Washing out early...........

Greenhouse stuff watered early too............

Breakfast of prunes and nectarine, marmalade on home made toast and a frothy coffee. 

( I got worried one day this week when my frothy milk poured onto my coffee just sank and vanished. I found myself googling "why is the frothy milk not staying frothy?"...............and thought........... good grief woman.... what a trivial First World Problem!)

Wordle in 3.

Ingredients in the bread machine 50/50 wholemeal and white flour.

Main meal...... half of my homemade pizza with salad of lettuce, cucumber and courgette (softened in the microwave) with balsamic vinegar. I drink just water with my main meal.

Bread out of the machine.

Watching the brilliant tennis

And then.........................

........................... I forgot to take any more photos....duh! but I had  a coffee - decaf un-frothy - and biscuit mid afternoon, the rest of the pizza with an apple later. 

Then couldn't resist taking a slice off the new made loaf, very soft and difficult to cut,  and having a holey peanut butter sandwich for my supper. With more coffee - again decaf un-frothy.

The washing dried easily, was got in and sorted and I watered the greenhouse stuff again late evening.

Then I went to bed with one icepack wrapped in a tea-towel and my two cooling gel pads which had been in the fridge all day.

Today it's THE semi final, there are two but only the first has a young British  guy playing! As for the second SF - it could be either of them but Djokovic is desperate for a record breaking slam win and I think he'll somehow beat Sinner.

The 'Fery' Tale Continues!

 That is the most dreadful pun which they used on the BBC and I'm sure will be sports page headlines today.

So well done once again to Arthur Fery who beat Flavio Cobolli in three straight sets to win and get himself into the Semi Finals. The third set was odd as Fery won 6-0 which seemed much too easy, almost as if the Italian slowed down and gave up.

He plays the  German, Sascha  Zverev on Friday. Zverev is second seed, much more experienced, so it will be a "whole different ball game!"

Sorry!

Nothing else to write about. Too hot to think yesterday, but thank you for all the comments that I didn't get around to replying to. Supposed to be even hotter today.

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!

Random 'Stuff' on the First Saturday in July.

 Bit cooler earlier in the week so we managed to get through the  exercises at Keep Moving Group. I led some and thankfully another lady stepped in to lead the second half. I just get so hot - my internal temperature gauge is hay-wire!

About 5 months ago the neighbours behind me had scaffolding put up and some guys came along and took down the chimney and then put it back up again. They also took off some of the tiles in various places and replaced felt and batons underneath. They came back weeks later and took off the ridge tiles and then cemented them back on again, took off tiles in another place and then put them back. Then they vanished for months. This week in the heat they (or someone else) came back and took down the chimney and rebuilt it Again. With my living room windows open to keep cool I had a continuous background chat from up on the roof....it wasn't very entertaining but I was glad they didn't have a LOUD builders radio like last time.

It might not seem like it but I have done some housework in between the tennis watching. With windows open so much the window sills get really dusty and lots of flies come in leaving their mark on the windows. The window cleaner only does the outside so it's up to me to do inside.

Another week of hot weather is forecast for next week - no rain. Water butts were all empty again and I've filled up the biggest from the mains. I'm glad I've not grown so much in the greenhouse this year, watering cans seem to be getting heavier as I get older.

Finally.................What's happening at Wimbledon? Last man standing - Arthur Fery  plays this afternoon and the Dimitrov/Berrettini match should be good. Djokovic and Sinner are in the same half of the draw so will meet up in the semis next week? maybe? if they both win Sunday and their quarter finals. I'm so missing Alcaraz and Jack Draper!

I've looked to see what events are on over the weekend but seems to be mainly music festivals, so probably just car boot sales for me then. Oh, my library books finally got to Stowmarket library so I need to go and pick them up today or tomorrow. 

Have a good weekend I'll be back Monday.

(Happy 4th July to readers in the USA - some sort of celebration for 250 years I hear - hijacked or not?!)  

 

Had to Choose From The Shelves.

 I took my last two library books back to the library in town and thought my reservations sent on from the mobile would be there, but they hadn't arrived, don't know why as it's a week ago. Instead I hunted the shelves and picked up five books in the hope that maybe a couple might be OK.

Dorothy Sayers - The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Ian Samson - Essex Poison, The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer; Black Sheep by Susan Hill and Death on the Norwich Express by Heather Peck. I've tried Ian Sansom's books before - he wrote a series of crime on mobile libraries which might have been good but the one I tried was dreadful!  and the one by Heather Peck is one of those printed on demand books from Amazon, it looks like a short quick read. The Crime Classic didn't ring any bells but yes, I'd read it already.

It was very hot and stuffy in the library and by the time I got out it felt just right to go in the Osier Cafe in the Church  which is just across the churchyard from the library and get a cool drink.......and a cheese scone of course. 

I read 13 books during June - due to the hot weather and the week feeling ugh. I don't think the July list will be so long. I read three from my shelves after running out of library books but then abandoned three others before I could find one to get into. I've started a collection to go off to World of Books or Ziffit or whatever they are called now - just need to find a suitable cardboard box. I've obviously not been ordering enough 'stuff' from Amazon!

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 Arthur Fery was the only Brit getting through to the third round in the Men's Singles, sadly Jacob Fearnley  and  Jan Choinski were knocked out as was Katie Swan.

 

Another Bundle of Someone's Leftovers!

 I fished these things out of the boxes of one of the house clearance people who were at the nearest car-boot sale on Sunday - they are always at Needham Market but not often at Stonham.

There are two packs of small freezer/sandwich bags - handy for keeping things like an opened pack of cheese in the fridge. Two part used packs of scourers and a new and sealed box of 100 Twinings Breakfast Teabags. I paid £2.50 for the lot.

All useful although I've gone right off tea while the weather is so hot......I'm OK with coffee (and lots of water). It's a good thing teabags keep for years because this is the second lot I've found this year and I already had a big box in the cupboard.

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The only Brits playing yesterday at Wimbledon were in the Men's Doubles. I watched Dan Evans and Henry Searle  lose and but missed the other pair winning then saw Sinner win although I wouldn't say he won comprehensively. Decided to be patriotic and watch football instead, except England were so bad I gave up at 70 minutes and went back to tennis. Then I heard huge shouts and cheers from somewhere in the houses behind me and knew England had scored and then again a few minutes later - a win then................ eventually. I see they play Mexico at 1am our time next Monday, actually in altitude in Mexico City - it will be deafening and England have no chance! 

Back to tennis and geared myself up to watch moany Djokovic play in the hope he would be beaten by the Greek Tsitsipas.............He wasn't.

My latest Pet Hate (and there are many!) is the interviewer after the matches saying "sum up your emotions!" .....Every.........Single........Time.......Grrrrr.

Sweet and Sour Cucumber Pickle

It was a case of use them or lose them because last week there wasn't just 1 cucumber from the greenhouse...................

or two........................

or three......................

but four!

So I bought Cider vinegar and  some celery..............

And turned the largest three cucumbers, one and half bottles of vinegar, some of the celery and a large onion into 5 jars of Sweet and Sour Pickles.

The recipe is on the separate Recipe page. I didn't put mustard seed into the mix this year. Trying to avoid things with seeds in.

Despite giving the 2 cucumber plants in the greenhouse plenty of water, they've started to shrivel. Perhaps the extreme heat has done them no good at all and there might be a shortage of cucs later.....typical.

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Another bad day at Wimbledon. I think just two men through to the second round, I lost track when I abandoned watching for a while  to watch the first two of the new series of Countdown. They used to take a break for summer but now roll right on. I worked out I've been watching this words and numbers game since about 1986. I had a small portable black and white TV in the kitchen and used to watch while getting a meal ready for the children..... it was on at 4.30pm back then. I didn't know what colour their set was until many years later!

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