Monthly Archives: March 2014

Fog

This is day three of fog. How is it that virtually the whole of the UK had nice weather over the weekend while it was dank and miserable here?

To illustrate, a picture of my street this morning.

As a result of the weather, I hardly left the house. But a nice fire meant that the house was snug.

Actually, most of my weekend was spent messing about with computers. But the new computer is now up and running and the old one (which isn’t old at all) has been relocated to another room. It had been destined for the bin, but I managed to find the cause of its regular blue screens.

There’s not a lot inside a computer these days.

Heavy duty T-shirts …

… aren’t great to paint. Thin T-shirts are pretty rubbish; if the paint’s not stiff, the colour has an ink on blotting paper effect. The end result’s much better with heavy duty cotton, but it does take longer.

And I get bored too easily.

Redness

This man has really badly dyed hair. A most unnatural shade of red – its brightness isn’t quite captured here.

He pays attention to detail though; his moustache was the same colour.

Carlisle

Had almost an hour to kill between trains in Carlisle, so went for a bit of a wander (and a pint in the Howard Arms). I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the gorgeous old Victorian market hall is now a Wilkinson’s store, on the ground floor. A new upper floor accommodates TK Maxx. It’s good that a stunning old building is still in use. And I mean that. But, I have fond memories of that market (from the 80s); there was a great little wholefoods shop, at a time when such things were scarce in the North.

Anyway, the Howard Arms does a respectable pint of Stella (the real ale all contained fish).

My blue price promise

I’m mildly irritated with EDF. They’re upholding their blue price promise by mailing me whenever another energy supplier provides a cheaper tariff. But they don’t actually say anything about the competing plan. I do appreciate that they’re in competition, but greater transparency would be a good thing.

Another irritation is their billing. Again, I receive an email when I have a new bill or, which is now the case, when my monthly payments will change. But they don’t say anything about the amount on the bill or how much my new payments will be. I have to log-on to see that. Surely they must know that I’ve long forgotten my user name and password.

Festival lights

It was so nice to come home this evening to festival lights (from Reading a couple of years ago). They’d not lit-up in a while, so the sunshine is obviously a good thing.

Popolo

I’ve just learned, from Twitter, that Popolo in town has closed. Many people seem to be lamenting the loss of a venue for cocktails.

I’ve spent some very nice afternoons there over the years, in the pink light through the windows. With overpriced, but delicious Erdinger.

At the opposite end of the beer price scale, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours yesterday evening in the Olde Blue Bell, in Preston. With cheap, but delicious Sam Smith’s extra stout (and bitter).

A couple of pictures from last night too. The second was taken in the somewhat unusual hotel car park.

So

Started painting another T-shirt. There’s no urgency, and it’s for someone else, so it may take a while to complete. With limited time for such things, at say six letters a week, that’s maybe a month.