Tag Archives: Sun

Sunday BBQ

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My bucket BBQ needs more modifications, it’s still not good enough. Once up to temperature it cooks food OK, but the area of usable heat is quite small, you can only get two burgers on it. My next plan is to get some chicken wire and tinsnips. The inside of the bucket has a wire stand to keep the fire bucket off the inside of the outer bucket. This inner bucket has very few holes which soon block with ash making a very poor burning BBQ.

If I get rid of the inner bucket completely and – by using the chicken wire to stop the coal falling through – make the fire on top of the wire stand, there’ll be improved airflow and a bigger surface to cook on. The only disadvantage is the entire BBQ will become very hot and all the orange paint might burn off.

The tinsnips will be used to “improve” the airflow into the bottom of the main bucket. There’s nothing technically wrong with the BBQ’s design, but you do wonder if its designers ever tried to cook more than a single burger on one. It quickly becomes obvious that it is a pain in the arse to light.

In the future I will buy a larger BBQ that will work much better.

In Transit

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Today I have spent most of my time sat in a car. In the morning I went off into Marlborough again to do some more expensive food shopping to stock Amy’s grandma up for a while. Then we had to drive home. To make the trip a bit more interesting I plotted a less motorway-intensive drive towards the M1, going via Cirencester, Stow-in-the-Wold and Warwick, then up the M40, M42 and after a bit of zooming down the A42, the M1.

Much nicer driving through the countryside on a sunny day than rocketing up the motorway sealed away in the car. Even if I did spend quite a lot of time stuck behind a tractor, low-loader carrying a grass cutter, two vans and a truck. The truck was from a contract bed hire company for the hotel trade. It was brand new, with an 08 plate and a pleasing blue colour. That’s how long I got to stare at it. All the way from Cirencester to the turning to Stratford-upon-Avon. I used the grindingly steep hills to my advantage and had some food and stared out the windows a bit.

It was a much more civilised drive back. I’m normally racing against time to be back at a decent time because I have something Important to do the day after. Not this time though. My car’s due an MOT and service tomorrow and that’s about it.

We made it back to sunny Scunthorpe for 5pm, taking about 4 hours in total. Then, after a brief rest at Amy’s I shuttled back to Wakefield, stopping at her local Tescos to do some shopping of my own. A bit of a step down from the weekend’s parading around Waitrose, but I did get a bargain on some organic eggs (and in a fit of irony some cheap chicken). My cupboards are now full and look like I live there :)

So hot and sticky

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My form room is like an oven, it’s horrible. My classrooms are like furnaces, and the students are unable to sit calmly when too hot or too cold. I have no idea why they pace around, it makes no sense. Sit down you silly buggers and stop winding yourselves up.

I have to teach in my form room tomorrow. No idea how this is going to go down. Fortunately the idiots in my form are off on other things that lesson, and the rest are quite nice.

Think I’ll make food for tomorrow and go to bed. I’ve got an observation tomorrow in the first lesson.

Ice Cream Sunday

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This afternoon me and Amy went to the Blyton Dairy Ice cream parlour. It’s quite a random place, being in the small village of Blyton half way between Scunthorpe and Lincoln. Quite why people would bother driving all the way there just to have an ice cream is slightly baffling, but then again when you have the chance to eat pretty much any flavour of ice cream, it’s not an unpleasant experience :) The line of people waiting to be served an evident sign that the place is popular. If it were in the Lake District the line would loop twice around the building.

I had a double cone with ginger ice cream and Turkish Delight flavoured ice cream in it. The ginger had actual pieces of ginger in it and was really nice.

While it’s slightly odd driving so far just to buy an ice cream, it was a great afternoon out in the sun :)

An evening walk

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Me, Amy and her dog Twinkle went for an evening walk around the little pond/nature reserve across the road. It was quite nice, apart from the clouds of midges out for an evening snack. I took my camera along and took a few photos. We found a rope swing, and after testing it and giving it a once-over with my climbing head on (whoever tied it to the tree will die horribly if they ever take up rock climbing) decided it was about as safe as rope swings ever are, and we had a go.

Today was very hot, reaching a whole 25 degrees C, so Twinkle was given the hosepipe afterwards to cool down. She smells like wet carpet now.