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?

Wednesday Hodgepodge - 22/7/26

Joyce provides the questions each week and then we link up our answers here.  Why not join in the fun?

1. Do your goals and dreams energize or exhaust you? Elaborate. 

I think they can do both.  Trying to meet goals or make a dream happen can be hard work and therefore exhausting sometimes.  But when a plan falls in place or a goal is met it the feeling of success can be energising.

2. July 23rd is national lemon day. Are you a fan of this flavour? What's a favourite dish or beverage you enjoy that calls for lemons? 

Not my favourite flavour but I don't dislike it.  I enjoy a lemon meringue pie or a lemon tart.  I'll drink lemonade (unless it's homemade and really tart!) but don't bother serving me lemon tea thank you.

3. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"...is this something you're pretty good at managing? Have you had to do this recently? If so tell us about it. 

I haven't had to do this recently and probably not quite the same thing but when I left my job (not of my own choosing) and was feeling a bit lost I ended up in the right place to help a relative going through cancer treatment.

4. Something you love that is lemon yellow in colour? 

Daffodils.

5. How would you describe your attention to detail? 

Absorbing!  I can end up going down rabbit holes with planning things sometimes lol.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Our temps have dropped this week to mid 20s (C) so it's much more comfortable and sleeping has been better too.  I'm sure the extreme heat will return at some point but for now I'm enjoyed summertime.

Highlights of Summertime in Vermont, June 2026

Well firstly it was lovely to be able to visit our son and his family in Vermont in the summertime.  Our last 3 visits have all been at Thanksgiving so it has been very cold and there has been snow!  A lot of snow.

But travelling to them is not for the faint-hearted.  Heathrow offers the best flight options but getting to Heathrow takes time.  Firstly we have to get to our local station.  It's about a 10 minute walk but we usually jump on the bus - our cases were heavy!  The train takes us down to Liverpool Street in central London where we can get the Elizabeth line straight through to Heathrow.  Well apart from the comfort stop for me at Paddington.

Yes we could get a cab but traffic conditions are unpredictable or yes we could drive and park but that's expensive and the flights were already way more expensive this summer.  Who knew about some football tournament taking place?

Anyway that's what we usually do but, because we had a morning flight which would have meant being up really early and catching the first train out from our station, and we had family staying in the house, we opted to travel close to the airport the day before and stay overnight in a hotel which was on a shuttle bus route to the terminal.  This made things so much easier and we'll probably do it again.

Once at Heathrow we sorted out the glitch in the airline system which wouldn't let us check in online.  Despite having entered my new passport details on the booking etc it was still showing my old details so computer kept saying NO!

Our flight to Boston was fine and we arrived about 5 minutes early and we were able to catch an earlier bus than we'd planned which was good.  We use a company called Dartmouth Coach which gets us as far as Lebanon in New Hampshire and takes about 2 1/2 hours, depending on traffic etc.

In Lebanon we were met by our wonderful hosts Paul and Crystal, (our son's in-laws) who drove us on to Barre which takes another hour.

It's a long trek but so worth it to be able to give these two real hugs!

                            

and of course to catch up with our son Michael and DIL Elizabeth.

On our first full day we took a hike up to a place called Owl's Head lookout which is in the Groton State Forest area.

Rather than just park at the look out and walk up to the view we opted to do what was supposed to be a 1 mile hike first.  Well that turned out to be nearer to 2 miles!  But the views were worth it.

Thankfully the boys are good walkers and despite just a few moans from Vinny we made it up to the lookout and then back down and back along the path to the car.  

Of course walking in woodlands does carry it's own risks.  We saw a garter snake and I managed to not have a panic attack.  My DIL reassured me that there are no venomous snakes in Vermont.  

I also acquired this delightful creature:

Hard to tell from the photo but it's actually a tick which Crystal carefully removed for me.  I then spent some time doing a thorough search of the bed and my clothes from the previous day as I didn't notice it until the following morning!  I've also kept a close eye out for any sign of infection but I seem to have escaped with no ongoing effects.

Another walk we did was to the biggest waterfall in Vermont:

This was a much easier walk and on the way back we had time to visit the Ben & Jerry's factory.  It wasn't as exciting as it might have been because the factory was actually closed as it was Juneteenth but we still got the tour and the ice cream tasters.

My DIL is a teacher so she was able to be our driver and tour guide while we were there.  Unfortunately, like most people working in America my son does not get a lot of annual leave which he is saving for when he visits us at Christmas and for when his brother and family visit.  (That's happening now.)  He's also coming over for a wedding in September and will stay for a week to catch up with family and friends here.  But of course we saw him most evenings and at the weekend.  

It was Father's Day while we were there so Paul and Crystal hosted a BBQ at their house so we got to catch up with their other kids and partners.  I also got to see a performance by the choir that Elizabeth has joined.  (She has a lovely singing voice.)

Her grandparents also came to watch so it was nice to have a brief catch up with them.

On the Monday Elizabeth, the boys, her parents took us to the Millstone Trails Hike which is on the site of a former quarry.  There is a lot of granite in Vermont!

The boys enjoyed following a story trail.

We also did a trip to the Shelborne Museum but I'll do a separate post on that as I have lots of photos from that day.

We went out for meals with both my son and DIL and on another evening our hosts.  We had some lazy days too and of course there were some football matches that had to be watched but at least they were at more civilized times than if we'd been at home.

And then all too soon it was time to leave.  We went out for brunch in the morning:

Rory finds it hard to pose for photos while Vinny has no such problem:

And then Elizabeth drove us to Lebanon on the first leg of the long journey home which began on the Friday and ended at lunchtime on Saturday!  We love being able to visit them, I just wish someone could invent a transporter to just get us there a lot more easily!