Tomorrow is the Clacton by-election and our rubbish collection day, so Count Binface‘s supporters are lining the streets
Critters of the Day: Holly Blue and Hunting Spider
Here’s a delicate blue butterfly sipping from the tiny pink flowers of a mint plant. And here’s a Common Zebra spider with a fly as big as itself:
A2 is reading Kafka on the Shore* by Haruki Murakami
Dinner with the Family
Our family meal today was at Gez and Dave’s house and featured cod loins wrapped in parma ham with green beans and potato gratin with sausage rolls for the fish refusers. Present at the gathering were Dave with a broken foot in a velcro boot, Bob and Lena all the way from Sweden and Ivy visiting Faye.
A2 contributed a Dubai-style chocolate, pistachio and shredded wheat cheesecake but unfortunately dropped it and had to scrape it back together and apply another layer so it did not look as good as the before photo here but it tasted pretty acceptable. And we scored an astonishing 14 on the GSQ, bringing us back above 10 at long last.
A1 is reading The Killer’s Mark by MW Craven. A2 is reading Pinball 1973* by Haruki Murakami.
Ghost of a Pigeon
An unlucky bird must have flown full tilt into our window today. There was no corpse on the ground below so it must have flapped away with an aching head leaving a print of itself on the rain-soaked glass and a feather where its beak should be. Here’s a brief video:
Later: a pile of feathers at the bottom of the garden provides a clue. Most likely the pigeon rammed the window when fleeing in terror from a sparrowhawk but the bird of prey caught up with it and now it is probably a ghost indeed. How sad.
A1 is reading The Burning Tide by William Shaw. A2 is reading The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee.
Dish of the Day: Chicken Bacon and Broccoli
Another old favourite for our family meal, followed by ice cream in colourful cones and by the GSQ at which we scored a slightly improved 11. And thanks go out to Gez and Ceri for bringing us coffee from London and Rutland respectively.
A2 is reading The Killer’s Mark by MW Craven.
Passion Flowers
This plant continues to flourish in its tiny pot, bearing hundreds of fruits and overtopping the wall.
July 2026 was just above averagely warm but it was our sunniest July ever: 271.107kWh and our third sunniest month since our records began. It was also our driest month of all time at 0.6mm, though the accolade on our weather records will always go to the 0.3mm of May 2025 when it rained plenty but our weather station was out of action.
A2 is reading The Burning Tide by William Shaw.
Critter of the Day: Cinnabar moth
Welcome red and black flying insect, parent of black and yellow crawling caterpillars, though we haven’t seen any in these parts this year.
A1 is reading Solace House by Will Maclean. A2 is rereading, after like 50 years, The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark.
Dish of the Day: Curry
Welcome home Gez, to a warming curry cooked by A1 and followed by a damn fine cherry pie and damn fine coffee, after which we scored 10 on the GSQ with Faye as quizmistress.
A2 is reading The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves.
And later, an unexpected noctilucent display, later in the year than we have ever seen them
Flower of the Day: Surprise Amaryllis
This thing has been sitting on our windowsill unwatered since Christmas, when it didn’t bloom anyway, no leaves and a dried-up bulb that suddenly burst into bud.
A2 is reading The Haunting of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson.
Critter of the Day: Gatekeeper
Pyronia tithonus, sitting on grass that has lost the distant memory of rain.
A1 is reading Pandora’s Boy by Lindsey Davis.
Dish of the Day: Spag Bol Again
Gez and Bob are off on an adventure so our dinner companions were Dave, Faye and a bonus Ivy. We had fruit salad for afters and scored a satisfactory 10 on the GSQ with Ivy as quizmaster.
A2 is reading Solace House by Will Maclean, an absolutely phenomenal book featuring a bunch of alienated students, a house packed floor to ceiling with rubbish, a secret cave, a mysterious poem, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke and a shedload of magic mushrooms.
Critter of the Day: Mint Moth
The tiny Pyrausta aurata, a princess among moths with its gold-flecked velvet gown, flowing blonde mane and blue eyes.
A2 is reading London Burning* by Anthony Quinn.
ISS
While preparing for last night’s Dwarf Mini observing session (details here), A1 tried out his new phone, a Pixel 10a, on its astronomy setting. And accidentally caught the International Space Station as it flew overhead:
Salad Days
A fabulous family feast featuring green stuff, eggs, potatoes, salmon, tuna, cheeses, cold meats, chicken legs, sausage rolls and a peachy pie pudding, after which we scored a calamitous 8 on the GSQ. Outside, the street party was going on with more people than usual, most of whom seemed to be complete strangers.
A1 is reading The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsay Davis. A2 is reading Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard; a woman with a dodgy past moves into a house with a dodgy past. What could possibly go wrong?
I Love You
The air fryer leaves a message on A1’s pork chop.
A2’s bathroom book is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
An Active Sun
Between 23 June and 5 July some sunspots moved across the Sun as it rotated (it takes about 25 days to rotate fully). I managed — with some difficulty! — to photograph the Sun with the Dwarf Mini every day until 3 July, when the clouds moved in. I then made this video, showing the spots as they developed and moved across the face of our star.
This isn’t perfect. The images were all taken at different times so they needed rotating to orient them correctly … which is quite hard to do with something like the Sun. Still, a first effort.
Coincidentally, these spots erupted in flares during this time, and caused massive auroras over the US on their Independence Day.
A2 is reading Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre.
Coq au Vin
Another Sunday, another family meal, followed by pineapple upside down cake and a score of 10 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis. A2 is reading The South by Tash Aw; the opener of a four-volume family saga about a Chinese clan in Malaysia. Aw’s books normally arrive about five years apart so we will see how it goes.
Busy Mini
Here are a few recent pics from our Dwarf Mini telescope. This is the Dumbbell Nebula, in Vulpecula (The Fox):
The Pac-Man Nebula, in Cassiopeia:
And the Andromeda Galaxy in, er, Andromeda:
Much bigger versions and more details on our ROAST blog.
A1 is reading The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis. A2 is reading Seascraper* by Benjamin Wood, a poignant and atmospheric book about a shrimp catcher which had echoes of Beryl Bainbridge. BW is on record as admiring The Dressmaker.
A Great Tit
Another common bird which we have never photographed before. Sadly we didn’t see a pair of great tits.
June was averagely hot and sunny and somewhat drier for the time of year.
A2 is rereading Clown Town by Mick Herron, which completes the series so far.
Spot the Spots
The sun has been very spotty recently, and this was taken this morning during a break in the clouds.
But what’s that greeny-blue dot between the pair of large sunspots? That’s us, that is. The Earth, roughly to scale; you can fit 109 Earths in the diameter of the Sun. Here it is zoomed in:
A1 is reading Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre. Thanks A2! CB’s first published novel was Quite Ugly One Morning (1996), which introduced his journalist protagonist Jack Parlabane, and this novel continues — and possibly wraps up — Parlabane’s (rather doleful) character arc. While CB’s writing no longer provokes LOLs at his wonderful outrageousness (like the abseiling scene in Be My Enemy, or the unfortunate bodily invasion in Boiling a Frog), he continues to take aim at his bêtes noires — in this case MAGA loonies, influencers, fanboyz, right-wing fanatics with a complete disregard for morality, and rich bastards. All easy targets perhaps, and the tale is complicated by an excess of characters in the family under investigation, who created a 1960s puppet show not a million miles from Thunderbirds. Much is revealed about Parlabane’s background, and he perhaps achieves some kind of redemption. A satisfying read.
Silver Surfers
It has been 25 years since we tied the knot at Lusaka Civic Centre so we celebrated with a lunch of baked potatoes, cold meats and salad with the family, who brought wonderful presents and an unexpected bottle of champagne. We had cherry cake on galaxy-themed paper plates for afters and scored a disappointing 9 on the GSQ. Must try harder.
When darkness fell, the first noctilucent clouds of the year filled the sky; a special gift for us on our special day.
A2 is rereading Bad Actors by Mick Herron.
So Now We Know…
…who’s been stealing our cherries.
Today was the hottest day of the year so far, at 33.7°C. In fact, it was the hottest day since the notorious 19 July 2022, when we got to 39.2°C.
Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries
The cherries are a small selection from our garden tree. The books are presents for the birthday boy.
On the equal hottest day of the month A2 cooked a dinner of roast pork, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing, gravy, carrots, broccoli and garden peas, followed by a leftover carrot cake trifle with garden cherries on top. Enjoy!
A2 is rereading Slough House by Mick Herron.
Web Surfing
A very warm and humid day (31.9°C) to start the heatwave, so we opened the windows in the bedroom. It was gusty, and down came a very impressive cobweb.
Here’s the Met Office forecast for the next couple of days. It’s not often we get red temperatures (max over 25°C) at midnight, and it looks like tonight might be tropical — which is when the temperature stays above 20°C.
Happy Solstice
And happy Dad’s Day too! We had spag bol and carrot cake for tea and scored 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is rereading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. A2 is rereading Joe Country by Mick Herron.