Project Digitisation: phase 1 nears completion

Even though I'm so untidy, I do like information to be organised.

In line with this, I've long wanted to make digital copies of things like my old photos and diaries.The ultimate aim - still a long way off - is to have a grab-in-case-of-fire hard disc (actually of course backed up elsewhere) containing all kinds of things I'd hate to lose access to.

Photographing every page of the diaries I've been keeping since childhood is proving a chore, even though each volume only takes a couple of hours to photograph. Once one is complete, I tie it with a piece of ribbon and stick a note on it to say it's all done - the idea is that it can then be stored away while I retain access to what I did that year. It's easy enough to stay on top of current volumes, but going backwards is a task that I keep putting off.
 
Similarly, photographing my favourite (print) photos is something I've failed to get into the routine of, but it wouldn't be too hard to tackle. All I'm planning on doing is taking a snap of every print in the photo albums I used from the late 70s until I went digital in the late 90s (I filled about one scrapbook a year). It's really just a matter of picking an album every (dry - some hope) day for a couple of weeks and heading out into the garden with my camera. Of course, this doesn't make the most perfect of copies - but they do serve the purpose of protecting against total loss of the memories. By way of example, I was thrilled recently to take this shot of a copy a friend still had of a picture from 1986 that means a lot to me (the first time I met Tim, although he was going out with a friend of mine at the time!). I can't find my copy - but now I don't mind!

I scanned all of my parents' slides a few years ago to mark their 50th anniversary. I'm also taking ad-hoc snaps of prints of old family photos - as with my own prints, there are far too many to contemplate capturing them all so I'm just concentrating on special ones, ones we get talking about, or ones where a copy is wanted to give to someone.

So with all these aspects dragging on, it's been nice to get to the end of one of the tasks - copying my collection of a few hundred slides.

(and Tim's, except that he's just found another box - ggggrrrrrrrr!)

Scanning is horribly time-consuming, so instead I've turned to my trusty first-ever digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 950. It still takes good pics (albeit only at 2 megapixels, so fine if you don't need enlargements) and has particularly good macro capabilities. I've even tried infrared photography with it - not many modern cameras can do that. It was a very high end model at the time (I paid £450 for it new in about 2000 or 2001, about 18 months after it was launched, when I think it was more like £600). Boosting its versatility still further, there were various lenses and accessories made for it - including the ES-E28 slide/negative copier.

It's so easy - all you do is drop the slide or negative into the appropriate carrier, slide it in front of the lens, photograph it and continue until you're bored. The original slides - mostly from the 70s - aren't top quality and not all the shots have come out very well - but it certainly beats them sitting forgotten in a box.

Above: the view - with and without fog - from my bedroom when a third-year student in Bristol
Below: Solomon, circa 1974

I've a bit of tidying up still to do - eg changing the file names to include any information I have about dates, people or location - but the hard bit is done.

Now time to get stuck into the photo albums - or maybe the diaries....

Belatedly living below the line

Live below the line is a very interesting charitable challenge in which you have only £5 to buy all your food for 5 days in acknowledgement of the sobering reality that this is normal budgeting for much of the world.

We'd done very well with the challenge two years ago, overspent a little last year & were a bit late getting started this month.
And we did make life harder for ourselves this year, with Tim & I each having £5 to spend instead of pooling our resources (except for sharing a bag of rice & tub of drinking chocolate) (and I actually overspent by 5p as we decided I could spend £1 instead of 95p in order to get free range eggs).

He focused on chili (every day's evening meal!) while eggs, sausages, sweet and sour sauce and a 7p bag of batter mix were my main items.

One of my main conclusions was that it's much cheaper to buy things like biscuits and noodles than fruit or veg - all I managed to afford was a can of corn.

I normally buy many items in bulk but taking advantage of these savings is impossible without the cash in your purse. Immediately after finishing the exercise I bought 4kg of onions for just £1.20. This more than anything brought home to me that the best value purchases may often be beyond the reach of those who need them most.

(This is the first thing I've written and published from my new smartphone - the Blogger app has proved very easy to use.)

Time for a smaller handbag...I finally got a smartphone

The Technomage and I had resisted buying smartphones, even though we do like gadgets. But we have finally succumbed and have each bought an Acer Liquid Gallant Duo.

As I result, I've been looking at various things I normally carry round with me and wondering what can be left out of my handbag.

The camera (which has mixed reviews online) has already produced a nice snap of one of my little 2" bears even without messing around with the settings, so my Canon A495 isn't likely to be coming with me every trip out of the house (and for special events, I'm more likely to take my bigger, zoomier, camera).

Also out of my handbag, obviously, is my old phone as I can pick up its calls via the Acer's second sim slot. And my poor old Palm TX will semi-retire, replacing its predecessor (a Palm Zire 71) on my desk. It will now have a rather dull existence, primarily used for converting between imperial and metric units (something I seem to have to do a lot of) using its excellent calculator, imported from an even older PDA, a Handspring Visor Deluxe.

We've found decent mp3 apps for Android, but my wonderful Sansa Clip+ (actually a Sansa doesn'tClip+ as I broke the clip) will remain in use, as its battery lasts far longer and it is so tiny and a joy to use.

I installed an app called Swiss Army Knife - but it doesn't feature a knife or scissors, so my Victorinox Minichamp is safe.

But the app does include tools for magnifying using the Acer's camera and can also measure and turn on a 'flashlight' so maybe I don't need to carry round the spare pair of reading specs, tape measure, loupe or torch....

There'll be no need for the spare batteries for the phone and camera (though perhaps a need for a spare for the Acer instead). And maybe I won't need a notebook and pen, given all the different ways of recording notes in the smartphone (my primary method will, I expect, involve using the trusty old Palm handwriting recognition system, Graffiti, thanks to an Android app that I was very pleased to find. It's a joy to be able to write without having to watch my fingers trying to hit little keys).

Having a dual sim phone like the Acer seems the ideal solution for a first smartphone.

We don't have reliable mobile reception at home (ie no reception away from the upstairs windows) and spend more time near computers and landlines than out and about, so I don't often use a mobile to call people. My typical bill on Virgin pay-as-you-go, paid monthly by direct debit, is somewhere between £1 and £4.50 - so having a contract would be a waste of money.

Thanks to the dual sims, I can keep my existing sim to receive calls from people I know without having to transfer my number or commit to a particular data provider/package. I can then try various pay-as-you-go deals depending on who has a good deal for what I'll be doing that month. Giffgaff is this month's choice - a £12 goody bag (actually costing a few pounds less thanks to introductory discounts) gets a month's unlimited internet plus loads of calls and texts.

Although we didn't really need the smartphones we were both keen to get new PDAs, even though we did already have an Android tablet. I've had various Palm OS devices over the last 13 or 14 years - the Technomage started with a Sharp digital diary many years before that, before getting a Psion about 20 years ago.

My current Palm TX was bought secondhand two years ago after I stupidly lost an identical one. It has most of the functions of a smartphone apart from the actual phone, but development of and for the Palm OS has long been abandoned and it's feeling rather long in the tooth. Nevertheless, up until getting the Acer this week I've used it every day - I'm still addicted to various games on it (sadly mostly ones that don't seem to be available for any other platform) and have a lot of information stashed away in Palm memos and in the fantastic List program. List is a very simple Palm tool that's perfect for - as the name implies - listing things. I use mine for everything from my bear collection to keeping track of which books I've read in a series. A version is available for Android, though I haven't got it to display properly yet.

We've both wasted a ridiculous amount of time over the last few days playing with the phones on wi-fi and downloading apps. As the Technomage has a particular interest in databases (!), he's been very clever at importing data from List and various other Palm database programs. He's even tranferred his CD database, which started on a mainframe in the 1980s and has been on all his handhelds since the Psion. I've been much less focused this week, though I did waste an hour today trying to connect to the internet vai giffgaff before realising that our signal by the window here at home is only 2G and that was why the internet isn't available.... I've still got a lot to learn!

Starting the new year only a little better organised than last year...

One of my high hopes for last year was to sort through lots of things. I haven't done as much as I'd hoped but some things are falling into place a little.

In most respects I am a very organised person - eg I file things away efficiently, meet deadlines, index my photos, keep a diary and can generally remember where things can be found lurking round the house. However, I'm also very untidy and have a tendency to hang onto all manner of things, on the basis they may be useful or interesting one day.

I made some progress in 2012 in things like going through boxes of old letters dating back to my childhood. I don't really know why I'd hung on to so many, but having kept them for in some cases 30 or 40 years it would seem wrong to chuck them out without thought. Some have ended up straight in the recycling (eg where I can't remember the person they were from) but there are others that I can't bring myself to throw away at the moment. At least the volume is being whittled down.

Another area where I made progress was in sorting a lot of old school memorabilia I'd hung onto - mostly old exercise books. At least I was able to get these out of the house without having to destroy them - the school archivist was pleased to receive them. I guess there will be interest in seeing how much some subjects have changed in the 40 years since I started high school - and not many people hoard such things like I do! (My Mum also had a comprehensive folder of letters to parents that I've added to the pile - appeals for funding, uniform rules, even a letter about head lice!)  If you find yourself with similar things I'd really recommend seeing if your school would be interested as it's so much more worthwhile than recycling them!

Clearing out junk has been harder as there are lots of decisions to take even when we're agreed on getting rid of something, to determine what just has to be thrown away and what can go to the recycling centre, the textile recycling bag collected with the bins, a charity shop, freecycle or similar, ebay or a car boot. We ended the year by knuckling under and finalising decisions on masses of stuff - I suspect we won' t be alone in arriving with a car load at the charity shop in a few days' time!

But my biggest organisational success of the year has been to start using Evernote, an excellent note-keeping system that you can keep synchronised between your computers and can also access via a web interface from someone else's computer. I'd long been a fan of Microsoft's OneNote, using it both as a kind of scrapbook and for organising complicated work projects. I've scarcely opened OneNote since reading about Evernote in an excellent feature by the Guardian's Oliver Burkeman in summer.

Evernote has completely transformed how I keep track of all kinds of things. I've got lots of lists in it and also use it for some work. I'll write another time about some of the ways I use it and how I work around some of its shortcomings such as its lack of a calendar.

The Technomage and I are sharing the account and gradually building up notes and lists covering everything from when our teeth are due for a check-up to purchase dates of important items. I feel it's really taken over from my old Palm handheld, which I'd got out of the habit of using very much. And it's brilliant being able to access the information from any web-connected device. When I finally buy a smartphone I'll be able to use it on that too - it works fine on my Android tablet.

If only I'd started using Evernote earlier - I'd wouldn't have got stung with a £60 'quarantine' fee when I let a .eu domain lapse as a credit card had expired and I missed the email about it...- the first time this has happened in a dozen years of owning various domains. (By coincidence, the same thing happened to the Technomage the same month but his was a .org and the quarantine fee was only £2.99) Needless to say such renewals have now joined countless other things in the Evernote system.

Starting to get all this sort of information organised is making me more confident that there's hope for clearing the ebay/charity shop/car boot backlog in the new year....

Didn't realise that muntjacs like tomato plants...

Lunchtime today: very pleased with progress of tomato plants. Three different varieties, all doing really well and thriving since I put them outside a week or so ago

6pm: three short green stems with a smattering of new leaves tentatively peering through:

I hadn't seen the muntjac sneak into the garden (though it's not difficult for her to get in - we don't have a hedge or fence). She hadn't touched last year's tomato plants so it never occured to me to hide them from her - but clearly this is one more plant to add to the list of ones she regards as yummy snacks.

Flowerwise, my beloved diascias still don't seem to tempt her, nor do various alpines including four new Helianthemum The Brides, bought to replace ones that didn't survive the winter.

Meanwhile, I've moved my few pots of annuals and anything else that looks juicy down to by the back door where she might think twice about coming.

But every year, the list of things I can grow with confidence gets a little shorter....

A perfect store for crafty bits

I'm thrilled with our two new sets of storage drawers, which were bought with some money kindly given to me for my birthday.



Not only are they wonderfully cheerful, but they are also extremely practical and useful.

They are made by Really Useful Company, who also make the well-named Really Useful Boxes. They are from Hobbycraft and, with discount vouchers, ended up costing about £33 and £20. I haven't often used Hobbycraft before but they do seem to be quite kind about offering discount vouchers.

I find the drawers absolutely ideal for storing crafty things. The individual drawers in the taller unit are a very useful size (7 litres, measuring about 370mm x 230mm x 80mm) and having so many of them means that there is plenty of space. They are easy to lift out if you wanted to carry a project elsewhere to work on, though I tend just to decant things into Whitefurze's brilliant AllStore boxes (of which I have zillions).

I was all set just to buy the tall drawer unit as I was less keen on the smaller one in the shop as it had far fewer drawers and hence colours (though I later realised that I liked it much better with the drawers arranged in rainbow order, instead of the way they had it on display with purple next to yellow!). We then realised that we could swap the drawer arrangement round as the two towers have the same footprint. The shorter one is now a bit shorter still so that it can fit under the slopey bit on the landing...



...and the other one a bit bigger, with a very useful deeper drawer. (They aren't actually designed to allow this kind of swap - the Technomage had to break a little bit of plastic in one of the corners to do it.)



I've thoroughly enjoyed arranging things in the drawers - now I just need to knuckle under and do some sewing!

Hoglet update

Good news from the PACT animal sanctuary - they've told us that all is OK so far with the hedgehoglet we rescued on Monday. He's eating OK and is comfortable, which we were delighted to hear.

We'll keep putting plenty of cat food out for his mother and hope that she decides to hibernate in our garden in the so-far-unused lovely wooden hedgehog house that the Technomage built last year.

The day our combined ages reached three figures

We’d had a very successful and busy day in London to celebrate the Technomage’s 50th in July so decided to do the same-but-different for mine on Tuesday. We’ve been in London off and on for more than 25 years but there are still countless interesting places we’ve never been to and things we’ve never done, so these two days have been a good opportunity to tick a few off the list.

After pressie-opening, both days started with breakfast at a venue of local (Stratford) interest. For his, we’d been to the View Tube overlooking the Olympics. In my case, we took the opportunity to have a first look at the new Westfield Centre – we arrived there via the original run-down Stratford centre, so it was quite a contrast.


As big shopping centres go, I did like the feel Westfield, although there aren’t really all that many of the 300 or so shops that I can imagine using – I’m sure I’ll still continue shopping more in Poundland, Tiger Stores etc in the old centre! We didn’t have time to go into any of the new shops yesterday, but I am looking forward to checking out Lakeland, Paperchase, Lego, M&S, Waitrose and John Lewis at least.

Our next destination was the London Canal Museum near King’s Cross/St Pancras. We’d realised that this also gave us the opportunity to catch a high-speed train from Stratford not-International station. We’d hoped our first trip from there would have been a direct train to Paris but there doesn’t seem any chance of international trains at present, despite the best efforts of our mayor, Sir Robin Wales. The train to St Pancras was expensive at £5.40 each, but the return fare (£7.30 I think) isn’t so bad - it’s £5 off-peak on the tube, which takes 25 mins instead of six!

The canal museum was great – and a doubly appropriate place for the day.


Like our house, it has an icehouse, and my 21st party was on a canal boat. Lots of interesting information and exhibits covering both canals and the commercial ice trade made for a very enjoyable morning.(In July, the museum we visited was the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green – we thought this too was highly appropriate for a 50th).

A walk along the canal tow path to Camden Lock highlighted the contrasts in even a small area of London. These two photos were taken from exactly the same spot...




There’s a huge amount of development going on around King’s Cross, yet a few yards away there’s quiet water and masses of greenery. I don’t recall ever walking along the canal tow path before – it’s a wonderful escape from the busy London that’s only yards away.

The boat trip on the Jenny Wren proved to be the ideal way of spending a relaxing afternoon (very important to relax at my age...).


The trip lasted about 1.5 hours and took us down the Regent’s Canal, through the Zoo and to Little Venice, and back. Other points of interest included the Blow Up Bridge, which we'd read about that morning at the museum.


It was rebuilt after being destroyed when a boat-load of gunpowder blew up in 1874, killing three people. The museum had an excellent illustration of the tragedy on the cover of the Illustrated London News. More about it here, as part of a lesson plan on the London Canal Museum site, and here in an article by Richard Hill in Canals & Rivers magazine.

There were only two other people on the Jenny Wren, which seemed a shame – though I suppose it is late in the season. (We do have a bit of form in being virtually alone on boat trips – we were once among only half a dozen on an evening cruise on a Hong Kong ferry that would hold hundreds – it did mean that we got plenty of the free beer though!)

Afternoon tea was next. On his birthday, we’d gone to that slice of heaven called the Whole Foods Market near High Street Ken station for a drink and a quick shop for luxury things to bring home. This time, we opted for a more traditional afternoon tea and went to Napket on Piccadilly. Excellent value - £21 for two gave us lots of cakes/scones and a choice of tea or any of their regular-sized coffees.


There hadn’t been much on at the pictures in July so we’d opted for spectacle rather than quality, going for Transformers in IMAX 3D. This time, we went for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was great fun, with a good storyline and lots of entertaining action. On arrival at the Empire, Leicester Square, we showed our age/lack of interest in sport by failing to recognise – or even know the name of – the celebrity surrounded by fans and being photographed by everyone in the foyer. Turned out to be a bike rider called Bradley Smith, there for the advance screening of a film called Fastest.

Dinner was at Los Locos in Covent Garden. We’d planned to go there for Tim's birthday in July, but it’s shut on Mondays so we’d gone to another Mexican, Cafe Pacifico, instead. The margaritas were particularly welcome as we’d not had time for any booze all day. We ended up being about the last diners – not because we were very late, but apparently it turns into a club later. Food was good, staff very friendly (like everyone all day) and we had a good time.


Back home, we were too full to start straightaway on the cake and fizz provided by my parents, but we tucked in after a break ...




(joined by the bear Tim's had all his life, the Panda I got for my fifth birthday and another bear I was given for my birthday at least 35 years ago).

And then the day was over and I can start to reflect on being the target audience for all those services and events aimed at the over-50s...

Hedgehog rescue...fingers crossed

Today hasn't quite panned out as expected, as we ended up making a 50 mile round trip to take an ailing baby hedgehog to the excellent PACT Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk.

We'd seen a hedgehog wandering round the garden yesterday, but then later found various bits of hedgehog, clearly savaged by something. Perhaps a bird of prey? By this morning, we hadn't quite screwed up the courage to clear them up but spotted the hedgehog wandering round again, inspecting what we took to be some of the remains.

The Technomage decided to be brave and go and start collecting the pieces. I lurked some way off until he called out that one of the parts was in fact a whole, live baby hedgehog.



It seemed OK but was very young - its eyes didn't even seem to be open. And it was being bothered a lot by flies, which we've since learned is a very bad thing, as the eggs and resulting maggots can apparently kill the hoglet if left untreated.



We dithered for a short while about whether to leave it for its mother to find but then got on the phone to seek advice from a local expert found via the British Hedgehog Preservation Society list. We were advised that it was urgent to get him out of the daylight and into a shoe box with a hotwater bottle wrapped in a towel, and give him some digestive biscuit in water. This we did.



We then rang round to find somewhere that would look after him properly and PACT said that they were happy to take him. On arrival, they whisked him off to see the vet - he was already fly blown, they said. We're going to contact them in a few days to see if he's made it.

Meanwhile his siblings have been buried in Dead Bat Cairn - the pile of flint stones that is the resting place for any dead animals we find in the garden. As well as at least one bat, there's a mole, blue tits and assorted rodents such as shrews and voles.

We like to think of some future archaeologist uncovering it and deciding that they've found evidence of some hitherto undiscovered cult!

Fabulous fireworks

Saturday evening was spent at Catton Hall's wonderful Festival of Fireworks - it's now going to be a regular fixture in our diaries.

There were four breathtaking displays - each lasting about 10 minutes - by top-class businesses of the kind that win international competitions. Sometimes the whole sky was filled with fireworks and I can't begin to imagine how they created some of the patterns. Dazzling. There was even a short daylight display at about 7.30pm to keep everyone entertained while waiting for dusk - a nice surprise (and surprisingly effective even though it wasn't yet dark).

All in all, the event was highly enjoyable, extremely well organised and well worth the £22 each. The organiser was Jubilee Fireworks, which also put on our joint favourite display of the evening (the other being by Pyrotex Fireworx).

I haven't found much online about the festival yet, though some people at the UK Firework Review - who clearly know what they are talking about - were also very impressed.

Much as we like taking snaps, we didn't want to miss the live spectacle and in any case aren't expert at firework photography (and didn't have a decent tripod) so just tended to keep the cameras aimed vaguely in the right direction and keep pressing the button without checking what was in the frame. I'm hoping that some other people out there will put more professional efforts online in the coming days. Pyrotex has loads of videos on its YouTube channel, as does Alchemy (and no doubt Feerie and Jubilee too) so no doubt videos of last night will appear in due course.

Here are some of the Technomage's favourite shots from his Canon SX20-IS...









My favourite pic from my Sony h5 is this one...



I also like this one even though it doesn't look like in the least like fireworks - more like rolls of some golden gauzey material plus a flower of the same material I reckon...



This is the best from my little Canon A495 snapshot camera in firework mode...



Next year, I'm also going to take my ancient but still very useable Nikon Coolpix 950 as I've got a fisheye lens for it - none of the cameras we had with us had a wide enough lens to get the whole view in.

I also tried a few movie clips - not very successful but they may give a bit of an idea.

My current favourite garden tool - Aldi ratchet pruners

Aldi is out of my good books at present thanks to its new parking policy at my local branch. You are now only allowed to park there for 1.5 hours and 'only whilst shopping in store'. Taken literally, it seems you can't even park there while using the bottle bank, let alone popping up the high street to the post office, charity shops, bank, excellent Portuguese deli etc. The Technomage has written a rant on our village website and I've a letter ready to post to the manager.

The new arrangements mean that I won't be popping in there for impulse buys when in town for other things, but next time I'm there for a proper shop I do intend buying another spare pair of their brilliant ratchet pruners - a snip at £4.99. It's not because mine haven't lasted, but simply because I'm highly likely to lose them.


I've got plenty of overgrown shrubs, brambles and self-seeded saplings to tackle and these do an excellent job - they are great both for the initial removal of biggish branches and for cutting even fine twigs up to fit as much as possible in the wheelie bin. I was given a pair as a present two years ago, then bought a spare pair last year.

Good thing too, as I lost the originals last autumn - only to find them this spring hidden under the ivy that covers the icehouse. They were still in perfect condition - unlike all the other pairs of secateurs I've ever left lying round the garden. They're aluminium so are lightweight and of course rustproof. They even come with a little oil-coated pad for lubrication, built into the handle. Needless to say I lost both of these almost as soon as I opened the packets...

Highly recommended - but only on sale for a short period from 25 August 2011 (and perhaps at the same time next year).

So why are birds better at growing sunflowers than I am?

I sowed dozens of sunflower seeds this year and not a single one came up.

Granted, I didn't really expect great success as:
a) our soil is pure sand;
b) muntjac deer find sunflower leaves really juicy and tasty;
c) the seeds were mostly from ancient half-used packets (I have a vast stash of all kinds of old seeds and keep intending to strew them randomly round the garden to see what happens).

However, the garden birds have done their best to help. I've counted at least a dozen modest sunflowers dotted round the garden. They're mostly teensy and spindly...





...though some stronger ones have made a home amongst other flowers in pots.




I'm now wondering whether next year I should simply replace the seed on the bird tables at sowing time with some of Mr Fothergill's finest giant varieties, on the basis that the bird gardeners couldn't do worse than I did!

1 August - the start of the year

I've used a mid-year diary for my journal since 1973, when my cousins started sending me a school year diary that they published. Theirs is no longer available, but I've kept up the mid-year tradition, even in years when I use a Paperchase notebook that somehow always lasts me exactly a year too.

My current preferred books are both A5 page-a-day diaries - a WH Smith one in silver for my journal and a Collins one for my desk diary.


Both actually last more than a year, but I use them from 1 August to 31 July. The Smiths one will be the fifth of the same design and the Collins one will be the seventh, so I am quite set in my ways. I like them both for their own purposes - the Collins one has times down the side of the page so wouldn't work for a journal but is great for work timings, while the Smiths one has narrow lines so you can write a lot on a page (it also has a little quotation in tiny writing at the bottom of every other page, eg yesterday's was Jayne Mansfield's 'Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.')

Every year I wonder whether the time has come to keep my diary on the computer, but every year I put off the decision on the basis that I already spend enough time in front of the screen. Yes, it would be quicker to look things up - though yesterday it only took me about 20 minutes using a combination of photo albums and my diary to track down something from 1998 (without being sure beforehand what year it happened). Of course a spreadsheet of key events would have been much quicker still.

The written journal in particular contains a lot of information. I rule columns to make a page for each month to record where we each were on each day and keep lists of books read, movies seen, presents given and much more. These are arguably all things that would be better in a spreadsheet or at least in my Palm handheld, so perhaps I should start compromising and listing these electronically while continuing to use the diary itself for the not-very-exciting records of my days.

There will be two small changes this year. Every year, I try to keep a list for a single month of something that wouldn't necessarily be mentioned in my diary but that might be interesting to look back on one day. One time I listed a month's worth of non-food/supermarket shopping with prices. Circumstances last year led to a horribly long list of things that broke (several bits of both cars, the washing machine, laptop power supply, two separate leaks, a mp3 player etc etc etc). Another time, we totted up how many gigabytes of videos, mp3s etc we had as of that date. I think this year's list will be a month's worth of evening meals.

The other 'innovation' is to add photos. I'm terrible at getting round to printing out pictures, but bought a new toy last week - a secondhand Polaroid Pogo printer. Its not much bigger than my compact camera and prints out 2" by 3" stickers - you just bluetooth them to it, or connect a usb cable from the camera.



Brilliant - and it will be a great help in skimming through old diaries looking for particular events, as well as reminding me of good pictures worthy of proper prints.

My plant of the week: Ceanothus (Californian Lilac)

My absolute favourite shrub is Californian Lilac, with its mass of beautiful blue thimbles (much loved by bees) at this time of year. I particularly love the variety Concha, which becomes absolutely smothered in blue - some years you can scarcely see the leaves. However, I never seem to get it right with them - mine tend to grow too little or - as below - too much.


Here in Suffolk, they've failed to thrive here in our feeble, sandy soil. The ones I've planted into the ground have soon died; ones in big pots have lasted a few years max but then been hit by particularly hard winters.

My latest purchase is currently looking pretty and I'll plant it out soon. I had an unopened bag of top soil lined up to help create a nurturing new location, but found that the bag is currently home to a zillion ants so I'll need to get some more.


In contrast, the last pair I planted in London (Concha plus another whose name escapes me) grew far too fast, shooting up to more than 10 feet high in just a few years years. For a Ceonothus lover like me, it's hard to to make yourself prune them - every branch lopped off means hundreds of flowers that won't blossom! The two flowering periods were a few weeks apart, extending the 'blue season' for weeks.


I'm hoping that the new plant will manage something in between my two past extremes - healthy but not too rampant. I'm promising it that I'll do my best to tend it well and to give it the best start I can in the hope that it too will be smothered next year.