Saturday Mid January.

There have been a couple of frosty morning sunrises this week . I know what the weather is like at night by how many lights are visible on the tall mast by the A140 - it was a  Anglia TV mast originally.

From Clay Cottage I could see it out of my bedroom window - here it's visible from the front door. When the weather is clear there are 7 lights spaced out all up the mast. It's quite a landmark.

 Nearly forgot I had this photo on the camera . It's a touch of colour in the garden on a tall shrub in the border - a winter flowering Viburnum? that's what I thought it was last May when I arrived here and it had leaves.

 The two different Magnolias are beginning to show buds, but no sign of snowdrops or aconites and the only crocuses are the ones I've planted in pots by the front door. Might need to rectify those absences sometime because I like early signs of spring.

Last weekend I decided to make some plain Suffolk Rusks for a change from rich and sweet Christmas cake. Rolling the mix out  I realised I'd used plain flour instead of Self Raising.(Idiot!) So rolled it a bit thinner and used it to line a quiche dish, which was baked blind and then filled with a bit of grated cheese, the last two slightly bendy carrots - grated, and the end of a packet of pine nuts (used in the ricotta and spinach lasagnas made for freezing before Christmas). Which might sound odd  but with plenty of pepper in the egg/milk mix it tasted really good and saved the pastry, the carrots and the pine nuts.

Are you fed up with covid stories from Downing Street and Australian tennis? I am, even though I try not to listen, so my better news story is hearing the the Robert Harris book "Munich" has been turned into a film, unfortunately only on Netflix and "selected cinemas" which doesn't include the Regal in Stowmarket! so I'll need to wait a while. The book, which I read in May last year, was so good and the film sounds equally brilliant. 

But going back to Downing Street - there was one thing I heard which I didn't know or hadn't even thought about. Numbers 9,10,11 and 12 Downing Street are all joined and are really a four storey block of several dozen offices. Numbers 10 and 11 also include a flat for the PM and the Chancellor and all the blocks have access to the communal gardens. We only see the front door on TV - I hadn't realised they were so big. No comment on the parties!

This week I've been grateful for

• Some sunshine among the rainy days
• Plenty of good reading
• 2 letters from penfriends - and both have crossed in the post with my letters to them which always complicates things! Whose turn is it to write now? 😃
  
• Blog friends who send books and give me ideas and information about things I wouldn't otherwise know about.
  

Have a good weekend - Nowt happening here.

Back Monday

Sue

The January Library Book Photo

Thank you to everyone for so many comments yesterday. There were some good memories.General consensus was that some of the energy/money saving ideas were a good idea and have been used for years by anyone with commonsense, some people are able to take offense at anything and home energy prices are going up everywhere which is going to cause real hardship for many people.

 Personally, after years of  frugal living in cold houses without central heating, where the only heat was after the fire was lit, years of reading the meter everyday so that we could work out where to cut down and scrimping and saving to achieve our goals, I'm very glad to be able to afford a warm house. Coming out of my cold bedroom(I never heat my bedroom) into the warm hallway and living room every morning is a pleasure that I'd rather not be without anymore.

Now to the real subject of today's post........................

 I collected the books that I'd reserved online from the library van yesterday.

Mostly crime, 3 by authors that were new to me last month (Marion Todd and Jim Eldridge......see last months photo below). The Devils Dice is a completely new-to-me author - noted from a pen-friends letter. The Pimlico Murder and Three Dog Problem are new books by crime authors I've read before. At the top is another collection of pieces by Alison Uttley which has come out of County Reserve and Ask a Policeman on the right was originally published in 1933 and is a collaboration between several famous crime authors of the time.

The Long Field by Pamela Petro is about her love and longing for Wales from where she lives in the U.S and right at the bottom Christmas at River Cottage is mainly recipes with other things thrown in by Lucy Brazier with notes and recipes by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. 

 Last months books, below, have been read or returned un-read, although I've  kept  'Veg In One Bed' and 'Forecast', the book about the weather changes, for another month.

The two new-to-me crime authors were both a success, which is why there are others by them in my new pile. I didn't read Sitopia - too dull and Little Stories of Your Life is about writing about your life, which I do on the blog anyway. I'm trying to read Forecast which is good but I keep getting sidetracked by things more interesting.

As usual the books I've finished are all listed on the separate Books Read pages - some in 2022 and some at the end of 2021.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

That Keeping Warm and Saving Energy List

In the news was Ovo Energy electricity company who had linked to a website with ideas for saving electric and keeping warm. People were HORRIFIED and DISGUSTED!  How dare Ovo mock people who were struggling to pay the ever rising fuel bills?

I only heard about this on Radio 4 Today programme and they LOVE a rant about anything and then Elaine on Random Jottings listed the ideas on her blog and had a rant about them too but to me most just seemed like the ideas that have always been around to save electric for people who prefer to spend their money on things more interesting than electric bills. It was just the two last ideas that I thought daft.............

Cuddle your pet - Obviously not if it's a goldfish but I know someone who often sat with a cat on her lap and said it kept her nice and warm  

Cuddle your children -won't work with teenagers but cuddle a baby if you have one handy and you soon warm up 

Leave your oven door open after cooking. Not if it's at ground level and a child might crawl in - obviously. But I do this with my small oven at eye level as it makes the fan stop running more quickly - saving electric  and adding a bit of warmth to my otherwise unheated kitchen.  

Wear an extra jumper - An obvious idea for anyone over 50 but 30 year olds have never lived with price rises like there were in the 70's, so maybe they need telling.

Do star jumps to warm yourself up NOT one of their best ideas if you are my age or have bad knees,hips, etc!

Go to the gym.Well that's more expensive than using electric at home! so a weird idea but when I worked in a library in the 70's there were lots of people who would come in for a few hours for a bit of free warmth  and a free read of the paper. 

 

So I'm not horrified or disgusted by this list, which Ovo were forced to delete apparently. 

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue