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Aug 7th, 2016

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The Making of Imperial Governor

Many years ago my friend J and I used to play a very good board game called Imperial Governor. We played it so much in fact that when J came across our single copy of the game a few weeks ago, it was literally dropping to pieces and not playable in its current state. So […]

Aug 4th, 2016

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Not supposed to be like this…

We have a variety of foodstuffs out for the birds, one of which is a fat ball feeder which until recently was used only for its designated purpose of feeding the tits (we have blue tits, great tits and coal tits in great numbers). Not even the squirrels could manage to get to it – […]

Aug 3rd, 2016

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Lemon Curd

I made some lemon curd today which is something I haven’t tried since I was a girl. I used the BBC recipe, and it was super easy to make and (even though I say so myself) super delicious – about as far as you get from the synthetic looking florescent yellow stuff that my father […]

Aug 1st, 2016

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Cat out of the Bag

Actually Cats into the Bag… We have been having to fetch one of our two snow Bengals, Tora, back from the village at regular intervals (we think he has a lady friend down there). Most of the time we take the car because it is a pain trying to walk him back to the house […]

Jul 27th, 2016

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Suddenly Chaffinches

Since early summer, the normally prolific chaffinches had virtually disappeared on our bird feeders, and had been supplanted by huge numbers of siskins. For some reason, although they are a larger bird, the chaffinches seem rather scared of the little siskins. Then this week, within the span of 48 hours, all the siskins have departed, […]

Jul 26th, 2016

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Pies

I’ve been doing a lot of baking of late (getting ready for the new series of the Bake Off which starts shortly). I ventured into rough puff pastry for the first time recently, and as it proved so successful, I tried two new recipes with it. The first was from a book called “Cookery for […]

Jul 22nd, 2016

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Night of the Bat

I know the picture isn’t a bat, but bear with me. A few months ago I said to R that the cats were a bit past their best and rather too old and slow to catch things any more. How wrong can anyone be; quite aside from Tora and his little expeditions to the village […]

Jul 20th, 2016

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I would walk 1000 miles…

Indeed R and I just did… This was the View Ranger challenge to walk 1000 miles in 2016 completed – and considering we didn’t get started until end of Jan (because they didn’t announce it until then), placing at 41st was not too bad (although the guy that came first must be a real machine…). […]

Jul 19th, 2016

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Cherry Thief

I have been watching my cherry tree become slowly more and more heavily laden with fruit. Unfortunately, with the lack of sun it was a bit slow in ripening, but we were slowly getting there. But then I noticed that the branches somehow looked slightly lighter – as though some of the nicer red fruit […]

Jul 17th, 2016

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Flying Insects

I went for a walk up to the waterfall last night. Most of the midgies seem to have disappeared – not sure whether they have just gone early this year or if they will be back if the weather improves at all. Anyway, at the stile near the Cowal Way sign there must be an […]