Wednesday Hodgepodge - 29/7/26

Joyce provides the questions, we think of some answers and then we join up here.  Thank you Joyce.

1. What was the last thing you celebrated? 

My birthday back in June.  We had brunch with our US grandkids and family before heading home after a lovely visit.

2 July 29th is International Day of the Tiger. Besides the wild animal itself, when you hear the word tiger what's the first  person-place-thing-whatever that comes to mind? 

Probably the "Eye of the Tiger" song or "The Tiger who came to Tea".  (Yes I'm a grandparent lol,)

3. The expression 'eye of the tiger' describes someone with intense focus, determination, and the drive to succeed. What area of your life are you currently bringing that kind of energy to?  

Well being retired and happy in our home, I don't have the same drive I had when I was younger.  I do put a lot of time and focus into the two book clubs I'm a member of - I'm usually the one to send out reminders/polls etc on our WhatsApp groups.

4. What was the last meal you cooked? 

I cooked today - pasta with a ham and leek sauce.  I don't do much of the cooking but Hubby was eating out with friends tonight and our son and his family were here for the night so I cooked for me and them.

5. Describe your July using exactly five words. 

Busy, chaotic and uncomfortably hot!

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I've never been a great one for drinking water but during the hot spells we've had over the last month or so I have been drinking lots of it - and making sure there's always ice in the freezer!

Dehydrated is not a good thing to be.

An overdue Waffle - 27/7/26

Saturday was quite a busy day - I was at the Foodbank accepting a delivery Saturday morning.  Thankfully one of the other volunteers, Sally, was there too and the people bringing the goods were fairly early so we were finished by 10.30 am.  The previous week when I had been on my own was much later.

Anyway it gave me time to relax a little bit before collecting grandchildren Nathan and Ella.  Their Mummies were going to an adults only party in the afternoon so we had them from early afternoon into the evening.  Thankfully we had some of "Grandpa's Bolognese" sauce in the freezer which they love so that made an easy dinner.

They were actually quite good while they were here and it wasn't too late when I took them home.

I declared Sunday to be a day of rest.  I was quite lazy all day although I did manage a walk around the lake in the early evening once it started to cool down.   It's been weeks since I've managed that for various reasons and my goodness the cygnets have grown!

Not easy to see as they were bunched up and the parents were still being quite protective but there are still 6 cygnets.  Hopefully they should all make it to adulthood and then the fun will begin when the parents start chasing them away from home.  That won't be until the end of the year though.

We had a nice downpour on Saturday morning.  The first rain we've had for a while and it didn't last for long.  We're now under a hosepipe ban.  And while on the subject of water, they changed our water meter on Saturday morning which meant turning the supply off for about 15 minutes.  Thankfully I'd just showered!

This week we're supposed to get temperatures in the 30s (C) again so I will probably have time for blogging because I won't be doing anything energetic!

Have a good week all.

Friday's Fave Five - 24/7/26

Friday again so time to look back on the week and list the blessings.  Susanne keeps us on our toes and we join up here.

1)  Fresh water.  I'm not a fan of bottled water and I certainly don't like fizzy water so I'm thankful that we have drinkable water from the tap here, particularly while it's been so hot.  I've been drinking lots more than usual.  Some areas in London this week were without water due to burst water mains so I'm especially grateful that we weren't affected by that.

2)  Apparently today is National Cousins Day in the US.  Who knew?  Anyway I am blessed with several cousins that I'm close to and one of them became a grandmother again yesterday.  This comes at the end of a very long journey for her daughter, and is actually a rainbow baby so very precious.  

3)  Getting back to normality and routines.  I was definitely out of sorts after our holiday and while our daughter and her family were here.  The excessive heat didn't help either.  But this week it's been a bit cooler and I've managed to get back on track with my usual routines, reading and blogging.

4)  Dinner sorted tonight courtesy of the Foodbank.  Occasionally we get things donated that we can't give out to beneficiaries - anything containing alcohol for example.  Volunteers are offered the chance to take advantage of this and Hubby and I will be having a lasagne each tonight that has red wine in it.

5)  A knit and natter session on Wednesday - well a natter session for me.  I'd been doing some knitting before I went and somehow managed to leave one of my needles at home!  It was still nice to get out of the house though and catch up with friends.

Have a good weekend all.

Read then Write - 23/7/26

Well this might be a short post as, although the last one of these posts was done on 11th June, (yes 6 weeks ago!) I have only managed to read 2 books during that time.   Yes I know, that is most unlike me.  Of course we were on holiday and then we came home to a houseful of family so I really didn't have it in me to do much reading.

But, I finally finished this one earlier this week:

It was a book club read and several people rated it highly.

I'm on the fence.  

I can understand why people rave about it. It follows the lives of two young Nigerians, Ifemelu and Obinze as they navigate life in America (for Ifemelu) and the UK (for Obinze) there is a lot about race and immigration, written from a black perspective. Both subsequently return to Nigeria where much has changed.

It is a really good book but for me it was just too long and it took a long time for me to get hooked enough to read it consistently. I hadn't even finished it when the book club met to discuss it. It's also quoted as being funny but I failed to find much humour in it.

Another complaint we had was that the edition we had from the library was very small print. The page number was 477. I noted another edition as having 588 pages. That probably had an average sized print and confirmed my suspicions that this is a very long book!

This one was a much easier read and I finished it in two days:

Our evening book group will be discussing it next week.  I really enjoyed it but I do think it's been overhyped.  

These are the next two book club reads:

I've actually read Lessons in Chemistry and loved it so that will be an easy re-read for me.  The Atwood one is a collection of short stories and is less than 300 pages so hopefully that one won't be too difficult to get through.  It will also tick one of the 52 Book club prompts - "starts with an O" so that will help get me back on track with that challenge.  I have some catching up to do!

Have you read much over the summer so far?