#SoCS - 30/5/26 - Impress

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “impress” Use it as a verb, use it as a noun, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

Well one thing that does impress me is the people who blog regularly, some even every day, and come up with prompts for challenges like Linda who blogs here and comes up with our #SoCS prompt every week.  She also does a One Liner Wednesday and is behind the Just Jot it January challenge which is a huge undertaking.

I also take part in the Wednesday Hodgepodge hosted by Joyce here and I try not to miss Friday's Fave Fives which Susanne hosts here.

Of course there are lots of blog hops that it's quite easy to find one for every day of the week but I do like to be a little bit original if I can.  One of the reasons I love the A-Z challenge that takes place in April is that it makes me blog every day but also allows me to come up with my own posts.  The team behind that challenge, which has been running since 2010 are very impressive.

Blogging every day is sometimes a challenge too far for me though.  I have done better this year, trying to have a blog hop or a theme running for every day of the week.  I had a think about what sort of posts I wanted to do and how the week would look and came up with the following:

Sunday would be looking back on the photos I'd taken in the previous week.

Monday would just be me waffling on like I usually do, probably with a weekend recap or something that I hoped readers might find worth reading.

Tuesday is the News day - trying to pick out interesting pieces of news locally, internationally, items relating to sports and entertainment and then either a feel good story or something quirky.

Wednesday is Hodgepodge Day

Thursday is something book related

Friday is the Fave Five of the week and then

Saturday is of course #SoCS.

Yep, something for every day.  Sounds impressive.  The reality is somewhat less.  For starters I am rubbish at taking photos.  Not when I actually take them - I usually try to get a decent photo.  No the problem is remembering to take them.  Things happen and I think I should have taken a photo of that but then the moment is gone.  Of course I could just take a picture of my dinner every day like a lot of Instagrammers seem to do but as my only input to that would be the eating of said meal (Hubby does the cooking here) that didn't seem right.  I do try and think of a good pic now and again but I definitely haven't made that habit stick, yet!

As for the news, well that has been quite depressing for such a long time really so some weeks it's been hard to find stories that are a bit more uplifting.

The other days have been a bit easier but I don't always do well on the #SoCS front.  The problem I find with #SoCS is that there are a lot of authors and poets who take part and they write impressive posts and I look at mine and think that's a bit trite so I don't always link them to Linda's page.  

And then of course throw in a visit from my son and his family, down from Nottingham for a few days, which then involves my daughter and her family coming here too and blogging gets put on the back burner.  I was AWOL for a whole week!

Still I'm here today and I will link to Linda's site as I think I've used the prompt word a few times at least.

Happy weekend all.

Friday's Fave Five - 29/5/26

Phew it's been a week!  Yep a week since I last posted but Friday means looking back on the good things in the week and then sharing with others here at our host Susanne's site.

1)  Firstly lots of family time this week - our son and his family arrived late last Friday and stayed until Wednesday - the kids were on half-term break.  That also meant we saw a lot of my daughter and her family - the cousins do love to get together.

2)  Afternoon tea at the Oblix restaurant which is on the 32nd floor of The Shard building in central London.  My DIL Amy couldn't make it to my daughter's 40th birthday party so the three of us had our own little celebration last Saturday.

The birthday girl.

This building is Chapter London Bridge which houses student accommodation, complete with a rooftop bar and a sky garden.  It's right next to London Bridge station with excellent transport options.

The Shard.  We were a long way up!  With great views.

We had sandwiches to start and then warm scones that were so light.  Of course we had the usual jam or cream first debate. (Cream for Rebecca and me, Jam for Amy.)  And then those lovely little cakes.  And of course lots of choices for tea.  It was all very filling!

3)  Sunday lunch with all of us together at The Royal Forest Hotel in Chingford.

4)  Today it has been cooler.  Still in the high 20s C but much more comfortable than the temperatures we had at the weekend.  We went from below average temps for the time of year to record breaking temps on Monday, which was a holiday here.  The previous record was 32.8C but the new high recorded on Monday was 35.1C.  It felt too hot to do anything other than sit by a fan and wish we had air conditioning.  Today though with it being a bit cooler I managed to catch up on some housework and washing.  Much needed after having family here.

5)  Thankful that we can afford to keep the bird feeders topped up.  Like everything else the food is more expensive but I do enjoy watching the birds on the feeders and the two cheeky squirrels that really like the sunflower hearts and pumpkin seeds.  Actually the pumpkin seeds were a bonus from the Foodbank.  We get all sorts of odd things in our deliveries sometimes, including recently boxes of small packets of pumpkin seeds.  Not a lot of demand for those from our beneficiaries so volunteers were invited to take some.  The squirrels emptied the feeder in no time!

Looking forward to a quieter weekend now.  It's lovely having the grandchildren and family here but with early starts and disturbed sleep with the heat  I'm ready for a rest!  Have a good weekend all.

Friday's Fave Five - 22/5/26

Friday means taking a pause and finding the good things in the previous week and then linking up here on our host Susanne's site.

1)  Firstly I'm extremely thankful that our car didn't get stolen last night as Hubby had left the keys in the car!  He was obviously in the process of locking the steering lock because that's where the keys were and he must have got distracted.  Anyway thankfully no harm done.

2) A couple of get togethers this week - Knit and Natter on Tuesday and the evening book group on Wednesday.  Always nice to get out and socialise with other people.

3)  Dry weather last Sunday for the Highams Park Spring Festival.  It clouded over at one point and was quite blustery but the rain held off until the early evening and it was a good day for the local community.  We also raised over £400 for the Foodbank.

4)  For the last few weeks we've had 3 or 4 students helping out at the Foodbank from a nearby Special Ed school.  They are all between 16-18 and each one has a member of staff with them and I think they've all enjoyed their time with us.  I'm grateful that we can give schools the opportunity to visit and help out at the Foodbank.  Also grateful for a local group that stepped in with a donation to replace one of our freezers that had stopped working last week.  The new one arrived on Tuesday and we were up and running with it by Thursday.

5) Dry, sunny and very hot weather forecast for this weekend which is a bank holiday weekend (no work on Monday for most people).  In fact they're forecasting that the temperature may be record breaking - it will be over 30 degrees.  (The record is 32.8° C.)  The washing is on the line and the garden furniture uncovered and ready to use.  My son and his family are arriving tonight for a few days.  All good here.

Have a good weekend all.

Read then Write - 21/5/26

Well I think I need to speed up my reading - I'm still ahead of schedule but I don't think I've been reading as much and the books are piling up!

I finished this last week and I was impressed with it as a debut novel. 

"When teenager Nora Sheehan fatally shoots her brother Nico in their family home one evening, her parents’ lives are left shattered. Nico had been diagnosed with a terminal illness – was what Nora did an act of mercy, or something far darker? And what will happen to her now, alone in a juvenile detention centre awaiting trial, unable or unwilling to speak?"

The book follows Nora and her family as they navigate the US legal system and deal with their grief.  Angie and David feel like they have lost both their children as Nora is facing the prospect of a long jail term.  Initially they rely on a local lawyer, Martine Dumont but she calls on her son Julian to take on the case as he is a high powered defence lawyer working in New York.  He is also the ex-partner of Angie and their parting was far from amicable.

Additionally, there are lots of secrets between the characters, some which are revealed early on, others later.

The story is well told and the focus is definitely more on the aftermath of the shooting, and the history between Angie and Julian rather than why Nora shot her brother.  Personally I would have liked to have had more insight into what was going on inside Nora's head leading up to the shooting.  But the lack of that didn't spoil it for me. 4 stars for me.

I'm currently reading:

This was the choice of the afternoon book club and it's a re-read for me, although it was a long time ago so I don't remember it that well, other than that I liked it first time around.

On my bedside table I also have this one:

which I picked because it was a magazine recommendation and it ticked the "published in 2026" prompt on the 52 Book Club challenge but Penitence ticks that box too so I might have to get a bit creative.

I also need to pick up this one from the library as it's the next pick for the evening book group:

I'm not sure I can fit this one to a prompt but maybe when I've read it I'll be able to work it in somewhere.

After this one we're going to read Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell which feels fairly recent to be on the library list but then I checked and found it was first published in 2020.  Time is going too fast!