Saturday, July 21, 2007
Festival fun, carnival week and another year older
Kat: I meant to blog about my birthday on Thursday, but it's been a busy few days. Let's travel back in time to last weekend, and the break in the clouds on Saturday which was timed very well with the Lanhydrock Festival, a one-day music event at our local National Trust property. Headline acts were The Wailers and The Levellers who both performed stonking sets. Sunday was the start of Carnival Week in Lostwithiel but the gloomy weather meant that the events were cancelled, so instead we had a lazy lunch at the Globe with visiting festival-goers.During the week there were various carnival events including rounders and cricket tournaments, the pram race, and a street party on my birthday (what a happy coincidence). The entertainment included a hog roast (plus veggie burgers), outside bar, live music from Just Plain Myrtle and a duck race of about 1000 ducks; sadly we didn't win this one and apparently lots escaped through the finish net and tried to make a break for the sea. We bumped into nearly everyone we know in town and a good time was had by all.
Yesterday our home-brew came of age, so we celebrated by having a naming competition and consuming most of it (not just us - several people helped!) The winning name was "Wobbly Tooth" inspired by Eve who has one, although "Lostwithi-ale" and "Fizzy Tickle" were popular entries. We rounded off the night with bat walk along the river led by a couple of local experts. We used bat detectors which convert echo location sounds to audible frequencies, and found pipistrelles in the trees and daubentons skimming over the water.
This morning was my birthday treat: kayaking down river from Lerryn to Fowey with Encounter Cornwall. It was a lovely trip: the organiser Damen pointed out wildlife and places of interest, such as spots featured in the Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Graham honeymooned in Fowey and based the story near Lerryn) and smuggling nooks. After lunch with Bryan, Debs and Rosie we're having a rest before the final carnival festivities: the parade and fireworks.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Duck race
Kat: Like the rest of the country, we spent yesterday enjoying the long-awaited sunshine. We had a BBQ lunch with Bryan, Debs and Rosie then sauntered down to Lerryn for their Summer Fayre. It consisted of a sausage sizzle, WI cake and flower stall, tombola, coconut shy and duck race - 200 rubber duckies racing from the bridge to a finish line where they were caught in a net strung across the river. We chose numbers 159 and 162, got chatting and completely missed the race but our ducks didn't let us down. 159 came first (by a beak, apparently it was very close) so we won £20 - a shame we missed the race but a very satisfactory outcome! Lostwithiel has its own carnival and duck race in a couple of weeks.All-in-all, it was a very good night as we bumped into several Lostwithiel-ites and even did a bit of networking. A really good local folk group called Just Plain Myrtle performed. As well as an excellent female singer, their band includes a banjo, mandolin and double-bass. You can see them playing Oh Susanna and Drowsy Maggie at the Globe, the only one of the five pubs in town that we've visited so far.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Our baby
Okay, I think I've taken this metaphor as far as possible.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
The most fiendish so far
Kat: I subscribed to the Grauniad Unlimited when we left the UK in 2004 so I could continue to do my precious crosswords from abroad. As well as the daily Quick and weekly Prize crosswords, there's a monthly Genius crossword, which I won while I was in NZ (UK crossword solvers must have been busy that month).June's Genius was absolutely diabolical, even by cryptic crossword standards. It was set by Monk, a maths professor at Leeds university. With Michael and Lesley's help, it took me the whole month (on and off) to unravel. In addition to regular cryptic clues there were special instructions:
"In filling the grid, solvers must note down one-dimensional changes to Guardian Genius. Only the original version does not change."
We managed to find several answers but they didn't seem to fit together. Finally Lesley noticed there were 14 down clues and the same number of letters in the words one-dimensional and Guardian Genius. Each down answer contained one of the letters from one-dimensional which had to be substituted with its equivalent in Guardian Genius in order to fit with the across clues. Reading across the grid was fine but downwards it became gobbledegook.
This two level encryption seems to be a new format for Genius crosswords. Previously clues were harder or themed to raise them a notch above the weekly Prize crossword, but once you've solved a few it's fairly easy to find words that fit into the remaining gaps using software or a crossword completing book. The new format means that answers must be manipulated before they're entered on the grid, and they don't help you to solve other clues.
Sadly, I don't expect to win June's because I got one of the answers wrong. Bring on July's Genius!