I did some phone box hunting while in Northampton on Hallowe’en 2015 for a wedding:
(Coordinates 52°23’69.1″N, 0°89’44.6″W.)
You can’t really see from this picture, but when I was on Google Street View to find out the name of the street, I realised that there’s actually another phone box behind this one. Next time I’m in Northampton I’ll make sure to take a picture of the both of them!
Update February 2022: added coordinates. This box and its shy twin were still standing as of November 2020.
No recipe this week, ’cause I’ve been packing boxes all day long and haven’t been very hungry.
There’s still a few areas of the house to pack, but today I really feel like I’ve broken the back of it. Just a couple of hours more packing after I’ve finished work tomorrow and I think I’ll be mainly done. There’s a few loose things that we’ll be carrying over to the new place ourselves after we get the keys on Friday, and then we’ll be all set for moving day on Saturday.
A few days ago, I was wondering how on earth we’d ever get it done on time, but between me and Geth we’ve done really well this week. I’m getting really excited about getting it all unpacked and finding places for it in the new house!
Friels was another of my birthday ciders that I had about a week and a half ago. I then had a couple of pints of the stuff at my local last Thursday and it knocked me out a bit; it’s pretty strong stuff and having lost a lot of weight my alcohol tolerance is a long way from what it used to be. It’s nice stuff though.
The taste is perfectly medium in my book, with the apple flavour very strong. I do enjoy it, but given the aforementioned reduced tolerance I’m going to have to be careful with stronger ciders from now on if I’m having more than just the one.
I’ve just finished work for the day, at nearly nine in the evening. Freelancing can be like that sometimes.
I’ll never complain about it though (well, hardly ever…). Being in charge of my own time, organising everything myself, liaising with clients on my own terms, being able to work from home – all of that is bliss for me, as I’m a control freak, a hermit, and someone who likes a lie-in. No, it’s not the best paid job in the world, and I can’t guarantee that heavy work periods will happen at times convenient to me (they almost never do!) but it suits me down to the ground.
Lots of the stuff I read as part of my editing job is absolutely fascinating. I mainly work for academics, and they all have really interesting niches, usually in history or social science. I love obscure information about subjects you would never normally think of, and boy oh boy have I learnt a lot of obscure information in the course of my job.
I’m pretty sleepy now after working all day. But the plus side is that I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Swings and roundabouts!
Six days till moving day! And we still have a lot to pack. And I have a lot of work getting in the way this week, grgh.
Geth did the bulk of the kitchen stuff today, and I was on track to get all of the living room ornaments done…until I ran out of bubble wrap. We have no time to go into town to get more, so we’ll be buying a lot of newspapers over the next few days.
It doesn’t feel real yet that in two weeks time we’ll have finished the move and will no longer be living here. We’ve been in this house for three years exactly – longer than any place since our flat in Edinburgh where we lived for nearly four years – and it’s been a lovely, spacious place to live, even if it’s never exactly felt finished. This is largely because I’ve been a terrible procrastinator in terms of a) putting stuff up on the walls and b) unpacking all the boxes of my stuff that I’ve had my parents bring down from Edinburgh in order to give them some more space. This is a habit I’m going to be very strict about changing when we’re in the new place, because we’re going to be there for the rest of however long we end up living in Newcastle (I hate moving. I may have mentioned this once or twice) and I want it to look nice. It’s probably going to be an ongoing project (an expensive ongoing project) but I’m fed up of living among boxes of stuff, so this year I at least want to find a place for everything I’m keeping and get rid of the stuff I’m not.
The last part will be easier said than done. Hoarding tendencies are a bitch.
After a stressful few weeks where Geth and I were anxiously waiting to find out when we could complete the purchase of our new house, we finally got a completion date on Thursday, and after a tough week at work, I thought it’d be nice to spend today relaxing before the chaos of the next week, which is going to involve packing up the rest of our stuff prior to moving day next weekend. As such, I skipped parkrun this morning and had a nice lie-in and a bath instead (I had asked Geth to get me some bubble bath specially – the best that Sainsbury’s had to offer was Radox, but that’s still so much better than the hotel freebies I’d been using before!), then spent the afternoon chilling out with my favourite blogs and my Duran Duran playlist. I feel so much better for it, too. Back to the grind tomorrow…
Every time (it feels like) I pass these phone boxes, it’s when Geth and I are rushing from the bus to the train. On this occasion, it was absolutely pouring, meaning that Geth was extra-especially grumpy about having to stop for me to take pictures of phone boxes.
(Coordinates 55°95’39.5″N, 3°19’44.8″W.)
I was pretty happy about it, though, because this particular date is an important date in the story of one of the novel series I’m writing, and I always envisaged it as being rainy in Edinburgh on that day. Given how often it rains in Edinburgh, though, I don’t think that notion was particularly prophetic. It feels like there’s a 70% chance of rain at any point, even when it’s been bright blue skies for days. You can never be too careful.
Update 22nd July 2021: still there and looking summery!
It’s still emphatically winter (I was too busy with work to leave the house today, but Geth informs me that it was snowing again) and so I thought I’d start my weekly food series with my most stodgy, wintry pasta dish.
I’m a lazy cook, so like everything I make, it’s ridiculously easy. Boil chopped peeled potatoes, chopped carrots and chickpeas for 25 mins (no measuring free foods on Slimming World – I just make sure that the carrots constitute a third of the total food I’m eating); with 15 mins to go, start boiling some pasta in another pan.
While everything is boiling, I make up my pasta sauce (passata, tomato puree to thicken it up, lemon juice, freshly ground black pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, hot chili powder and the lifesaver that is Very Lazy chopped garlic, all to taste) and grate some parmesan (30g for me as my Slimming World Healthy Extra A, lots for Geth).
Once the 25 mins are up, I drain everything, mix it all together, mix in the sauce, and serve with the grated parmesan. Highly comforting on winter evenings!
Well, I did say February was going to be big for vintage fairs. Averaging two a week at the moment!
Today I went to the Vintage Pop-Up at Newcastle Student Union, put on by University Vintage Fairs. Like the one at Northumbria I went to last week, it was quite a small affair, but I managed to pick up another addition to my ’80s jumper collection:
Seeing as winter’s not showing any signs of going away yet, I’m going to count this one as a ‘sensible’ purchase!
