24 December 2025
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What to Plant for 2026?

We had an enjoyable time this morning, wandering around RHS Rosemoor. It will soon be time for me to start making plans for what I want to grow in 2026, including when to start it and when to plant it out. As my starting point, I’ve got various perennial things (like some wonderfully productive raspberries and a thornless blackberry) in place and beds with broad beans, garlic and leek growing through the winter for harvest next year. Two different varieties of kale also continue to do good service. However, that still leaves enough of a blank slate to make planning – soon – an essential.

23 December 2025
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Queen and the King

An unexpected Christmas treat the other day was discovering a recently released worship song featuring none other than Brian May of Queen on guitar:

It is the kind of song I could see adapting to use at church. I appreciate what May brings to it on guitar and also the fact that the whole song isn’t swamped with it. He’s the kind of musician who doesn’t need to try and prove himself and thus proves himself all the more.

22 December 2025
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Getting Close with Bath Olivers

On my third attempt at the recipe, I think I’m getting close. This time I used 200g flour, 75g warm milk, 50g butter and 1.25g each of salt, sugar and yeast. That gave a fairly stiff but workable dough. I rolled it out with my pasta machine (the widest setting, probably about 2mm, was sufficient) and didn’t skimp on pricking holes. I also set the fan oven to 150°C.

After about 15 minutes, including a tray rotation part way through, they had risen a bit but had only just begun to pick up some colour. I took them out at that point and cooled them. They still seemed a bit bready in the middle so, after baking something else, I put them back after turning off the oven and, with the door cracked open, let them dry out further.

I haven’t quite recreated the biscuits I remember but I’m much, much closer after a few iterations and, if nothing else, I’ve come up with a result that will prove to work well with port and stilton!

21 December 2025
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Last Gig of the Year

I’ve done my last public gig of the year at The Kilo Wine Bar in Quorn. Simon and I did a couple of 45 minute(ish) sets between 5 and 7pm. Parking is a bit limited so I’m feeling the ache partly from the playing and partly from carrying my double bass and other gear a couple of hundred metres along the road but, that aside, it was a good end to the gigging year.

It definitely won’t be my last music making of the year but probably the last time the double bass gets an outing in 2025.

20 December 2025
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Looking Down on the Back Garden – December 2025

Today is a bit damp and overcast, which has been the story of most of the month. Almost all the deciduous plants have lost their leaves (for example, the yellow leaves have dropped from the birch in the centre) but the predominant colour is a vivid green. The grass, which survived a long, dry spring and summer is taking full advantage of the fact it has been too soft underfoot for us to get out and trim it!

19 December 2025
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Bath Olivers – attempt #2

I had another go at Bath Olivers this evening, reducing each ingredient by half except for the milk, which I increased from 100ml to 125ml. The result was a softer dough, which was much easier to work but, after baking (at 160°C) came out more like bread. I think they will stale more quickly than the ones I made just over a week ago (and finished off this evening) although they taste great tonight. I also mixed the sugar and yeast into the milk and let it rest for a few minutes before adding to the flour and (salted) butter.

I’ll see if I can get another batch done, for which I’ll probably bring the milk down to 75ml and roll out thinner using the pasta machine, because it will be a less flexible dough).

18 December 2025
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Filament Pens

Despite doing what has seemed to me like a lot of 3D printing over the past year, I’ve only managed to use up one reel. Some of that is because that I have eschewed printing trinkets and I have also chosen to design many of the things I have run off from scratch. The design process probably accounts for the majority of the hours I have put into my new hobby.

I am getting to a point though where I’ve got another two or three rolls into the region where I can only print small items with them if I want to avoid mid-item colour changes. I’ve been thinking about what to do with the small lengths of filament that will be left and I spent some time this week looking into 3D filament pens. These are manually operated devices for extruding molten plastic and I thought they might be a way of making small repairs or one-off components with complex curves.

However, at the moment they are a bit pricier than I expected and reviews left me wondering if they would have the reliability and functionality I wanted. I’ll probably stick with adding the last bits of the filament rolls to my collection off waste plastic for eventual use as ballast in larger projects.

16 December 2025
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End of Terming

I’m starting to get to that time of the year when I am marking the last time I will do certain things in 2025. To be fair, plenty of those have already happened – for example, I don’t expect to be planting tomatoes or wearing shorts (both months in the past) – but the advent of Christmas means they are becoming more obvious. For example, last concert band rehearsal tonight (and one more gig with CSWO on Thursday) or my last day in the office (also Thursday).

I’ll be back to regular rehearsals with all three levels of Charnwood Concert Bands at the start of next term but I won’t be so frequently working with the IT team at Loughborough University. I hope to keep some association with them but I’m starting a new job with Resound Worship / the Song and Hymn Writers Foundation at the beginning of January. My role will be another part time one but as a home-based web application developer and I’m looking forward to getting my webdev skills sharpened up by regular use.

I suppose that makes this particular end of term feel a bit more poignant. Each day we step into what is unknown but, for me, this is one of those points when I know more significant changes are afoot.

15 December 2025
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A Worthwhile Turn of Speed

I think it was probably getting on for a decade ago that I invested in a couple of Google Mesh WiFi nodes. They have done me well but the computer in my upstairs office needs a wired connection so I’d resorted to some even older Ethernet over Power plugs that worked but didn’t have blazing speeds and tended to drop out once or twice a day. I had also tried a USB WiFi device but that was also on the intermittent side.

Since networking technology has moved on a lot in the past decade, I decided it was time to shell out for an upgrade. After some research, I picked the TP-Link BE3600 mesh system, which offers WiFi 7 compatibility. It isn’t one of the big sharks in the pool but, compared to the minnows I had been using, I was hopeful it would be a worthwhile upgrade.

My 3 node system arrived yesterday afternoon and I got it set up today. Set up wasn’t entirely straightforward but IT troubleshooting is mainly about patience – give things a little time to work and, if they don’t, backtrack and try another path. On my main computer, I’ve gone from download speeds round about 25Mbps to nearer 500Mbps which makes much better use of the fibre connection from my ISP. I do want to see if that holds up over the next couple of weeks but I’m very happy so far.

One fly in the ointment was Jane’s laptop, an Acer device we bought in 2018. I suppose seven years isn’t too bad for a laptop but it has issues. When we upgraded her to Windows 11, it lost use of the microphone (no updated driver available) and it has also been a bit flaky on power management. Today’s issue was that the built in network card couldn’t see the new network at all. She is temporarily sorted with the USB WiFi device (also TP-Link so perhaps it will work better on the new network) but I think we’ll be looking at a new laptop for her in the New Year.

14 December 2025
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Keswick Booked

The Keswick Convention is very unusual compared to other Bible weeks and similar events I am familiar with in that you don’t have to book a ticket. No reinforced paper wristbands or waving your hands in the air as you go through the gates for Keswick delegates. They do pay attention to security, with bag searches on entry, but you don’t have to pay for the event (donations, of course, gratefully received).

What you do need to do is sort out your own accommodation. There are some camping options but, anecdotally, the warm and dry weather we enjoyed in 2024 is not typical so we decided to go for a self-catering apartment again. I’m glad we looked this afternoon! Probably not helped by the fact we’re going in early August (week 3 has the ‘unconventional’ arts theme I enjoyed so much last time), there was nothing cheap left in the nearby area and most options were rather too expensive. We managed to find only 2-3 vaguely affordable options close enough to make for an easy walk in. In fact, the one we’ve booked is just over the other side of the River Greta from the main event. It should be a good base both to enjoy the events and to explore the town a bit more than we managed when we were based in Portinscale (a pleasant 20 minute walk away in good weather).

I think it should be an excellent home from home for the week but, if we decide to go again in 2027, we’ll probably try to get that sorted as soon as the dates are announced and not leave it to a mere eight months before the convention!

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