AI pic of me and Caroline Munro out shopping
Dear friends, I find it hard to believe we have reached the end of January already. At this rate we shall soon be stocking up on calendars and diaries for 2026. At least we have a (temporary) break from the hot weather, which won't be back till next Monday if the forecast is accurate. It reminds me of the 1980s, when my first chore on returning from work in the summer months was to open the front and back doors, to allow the sea breeze to blow through the house - Mother Nature's air conditioning.
Since getting my cataracts done a couple of years ago I have been able to resume my old habit of reading for an hour or more each day, in consequence of which I received a message from Amazon saying I had achieved a new personal best, reading on my Kindle for 77 weeks in a row. I'm glad they are keeping track, since I certainly wasn't. This afternoon I finished reading the Strugatsky novel ROADSIDE PICNIC (a.k.a. STALKER). I am now contemplating my to-be-read list, wondering what to tackle next.
My poultry population has now sunk to ten, I think, with the body of the blind hen curled up in her usual sleeping spot. She has, unless I am very much mistaken, left us for the Great Barnyard in the sky. (I don't mind feeding Julie's chickens for the rest of their lives, but I do wonder how long this will go on for; I think most of them must be ten years older or more.) At least I have finally rid myself of the last of the roosters.
I am typing this on my secondary laptop, the one I bought in a sale last year because I sensed the old HP laptop was getting a bit old and cranky. Last year it started being a bit erratic and this month most of the keys in the middle of the keyboard stopped working. Until you can't use them, you don't know how often you use the letters M Y U and J !
My secondary machine is an Acer, which I bought mostly because it had a clear white-on-black keyboard which I could see a lot better
than the HP's black-on-silver layout. Of course I had never noticed that the Acer lacks two of the frequently used keys, Page Up and Page Down. Apparently there is a work-around that lets you use the keys 3 and 9 instead, but old dogs and new tricks....
I assume that the owners of the house next door are off on holidays, leaving the younger generation in charge of the premises. Two Saturdays in a row they have had noisy parties full of music, loud voices and other such noise. In fact after the first Saturday night I went to sleep and dreamed I was back in my 1970s job running an inner-city bar.
*
BOOKS OF THE NEW YEAR -- January's reading report 
ROADSIDE PICNIC by A&B Strugatski 1971 (filmed as STALKER)
RENTAL PERSON WHO DOES NOTHING by Shoji Morimoto 2019
WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES 3 by Will Murray 2023
WHISTLE STOP by Maritta M. Wolff 1941
TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS by Raymond Chandler 1950
