All Wired Up

.... to my MP3 player. Yes, I know I am supposed to be cool and have an iPod but I am not that cool. I have a bus pass. I have an MP3 player.

OK. OK. It be also a longstanding PC Girl versus ApplePerson. I don't do much in the way of Apple stuff. This is why I am not cool.

Anyhoo... I have this little player what does radio as well. But I do not have music on it. I have books on it. I used to like talking books so now I get them via Audible and attempt to keep up with Mrs D and her crime reading.Tell you what, though. It do not pay to listen in bed. I do fall asleep and have to back-peddle until I find a bit of book I do recognise and start over again.

But it be ideal for stuff like ironing, mending, making, sitting sunbathing.... or like yesterday... when The Old Man (who be an old crock as you may know) has to get his annual check up at the Hospital. And this hospital be in the next county so that's a hundred mile trip to see the doc for ten minutes then a hundred miles back home. I do go to keep him company on the drive... and I sit in the sun listening to "Salvation of a Saint" by Keigo Higashino ( very detailed and precise and slightly off the wall Japanese police procedural. Very Japanese....) .....while he sits indoors in the waiting room for an hour.

The Old Man do stagger out with a clean bill of health on the cancer front and  it is indeed a lovely day. So we do go home via Tavistock for lunch. Not been there before. Nice place. May go there again.... Next Checkup.

Mrs D Ponders Crime in Cairo: Parker Bilal & "Dogstar Rising"

As I can tell you for a fact... Mrs D does all of her travelling in her armchair... courtesy of books, film, music, ... and the internet.

She do sit down... reach for that glass of red and see where she do go next.

She is very pleased to have read the second crime book by British Sudanese writer, Jamal Mahjoub who writes under the nom-de-crime of Parker Bilal. He sets his books in Cairo with Sudanese refugee private-eye Makana investigating. She do like Makana, an outsider with a dry wit  and a painful past .... she do like his run-down houseboat and in general she do like Bilal's books. She looks forward to more.

Here's the Euro Crime Post that links to the latest batch of reviews including Bilal's "Dogstar Rising"... You might find some more crime fiction you would like to catch ... Mrs D would like to get her hands on "Pierced"  by Thomas Enger  for a start.....

Beautiful Day

A humdinger of a beautiful weekend in West Cornwall. I been watering my vegetable patch... which do mean a lot of trekking to and fro between rain barrel and patch. So all in all... what with weeding as well... I do sit down in the evening and find I have sun-burnt feet.

Today a walk in the woods where there is a bit of shade. Swifts are flying over the river.

Bluebells At Enys

I have wanted to catch the bluebells at Enys Gardens near Penryn for a year or so. Yesterday we manage it. They look magnificent spreading under the trees and through this open space called Parc Lye. Through some of the walks the bluebells are intermixed with ramsons or wild garlic which I haven't seen growing in such wide patches before either.

Enys is an old estate; the family supposedly establishing themselves here in the late thirteenth century. The Enys Gardens Trust is gradually conserving and restoring the gardens which are only open from April to September - and then only Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and the first Sunday of each month. Check the website itself for further details and directions. If you manage a visit very soon you may grab the last of the bluebell beauty. See them when you can. Such scenes could alter - not least due to the plant's threat from hybridisation with the cultivated Spanish Bluebell.

Sour Bakes As Sour Is: Bad Bagels And The Rebuild Of The Sourdough Starter

I now admit that I have been bereft of bagel-baking skills. Three ... yes three ... failed bagel batches what do sink to the bottom of the boiling pan like stones... and never do float. Yes, I do think you have to make sure you know your flour as I do say when the first batch fails but now I admit there is more to the problem.

With the change to warmer weather it appears that my "starter leaven" have just excelled itself in sourness and have become like over-excitable battery acid. The Old Man pronounces that this be the problem. My starter fails to "start" raising my dough... it do become so acid it be the death of it.

Solution? The Old Man starts by tiffing out good quantity of the leaven and feeding it with plenty more flour and water. I decide to keep it in the fridge rather than the kitchen porch. We do work like this for several days until the texture thicker and bubbly (it have gone thin and bubbly).

Yesterday I do make bagels again but do not worry about the overnight chilling of the shaped bagels in the fridge. I just do go for it and boil and bake when they do look ready. The Old Man thinks these are the best yet... though my confidence be shot and I don't know. But for sure the little darlings buzzed around the top of that boiling pan like water beetles... They ain't for sinking. Good news is we's back on track and a sharp eye will be kept on the starter during the summer.

I do wonder if I do curse my leaven with my constant current anger ... I have sometime said of people they be so sour they do curdle their milk. Well I think I may have become so sour that I have turned my leaven into acid and sunk me bagels!

It Must Be Spring....

....I do hear the first cuckoo... well,
MY first cuckoo anyway.

Dragonfly Time

Walking down the lane with The Old Man and see two dragonflies. Identical. Pristine. But not seen this type before. Do try looking 'em up and it seems they are Broad-Bodied Chasers ... maybe female... and are widespread in England and Europe.

The book I do check them in says the genders start out the same and the male develops a "pruinescence" that renders a blue appearance to its body. What a word.... "pruinescence".

Find a "new" dragonfly - find "new" word.

Mrs D Ponders Crime.... And Bunga-Bunga Parties

... by way of having recently read "Death of a Showgirl" by Tobias Jones. In which Mrs D be whisked away into a world of Italian celebrity sleaze as Jones' PI Castagnetti traces a missing girl through the streets of Rome in a story as old as.... Well.. isn't that part of our fascination with crime fiction? Largely the stories old as time... only the methods change.

Mrs D do say this be a calmly-paced book that provided a rest after some fired-up thrillers...She do enjoy it's precision as it unwrapped the tale.

You will find a review signposted in this post from the Euro Crime Blog... alongside reviews for more tales of crime you just may like to try.