Dear Diary...
This is my diary. How things are. Or something. Please note that the diary is archived month by month, so feel free to click the links for the archives (which now will go back five years maximum):
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Monday 12th May - The Wicker Bear
After a nice lie in with Brian the cat wanting to try his hardest to wake The Love In My Heart up, it was time to head off for the afternoon together and to visit somewhere we hadn't been to for some time. I wanted to go there as there was something I wanted to see, and it meant we could do a nice pub lunch along the way as well as being able to visit a nice farm shop too. So it was along the M56 for a while, off at junction 10 and following the A49 down to Acton Bridge, and a good stop at The Riverside pub where we could sit outside by the River Weaver and be able to have a nice lunch.
And so it proved, and with good music too in the background that was nice and calm in the background, including some Fleetwood Mac and the classic Dreams (so tune of the day for us there.) I got myself the Shipyard Low Tide non-alcoholic beer, and for the lunch I had a lovely sea bass dish, complete with some prawns, potatoes and vegetables in a nice creamy white wine sauce. It definitely was lovely to have, and The Love's fish and chips also looked good too. It was just nice seeing the ducks get some shade and sit by the river bank before flying off to find some more of the river to swim in before heading back to their little spot close to a tree where they'd get some duck food too.
We then went down the A49 (and then the A51) towards Nantwich and before there turning off in Hurleston for the farm that effectively is the home of Snugburys Ice Cream, which as ever is always nice. We walked to the field where they normally have the massive straw sculptures, and for this year there happened to be a 45 foot high sculpture of Paddington Bear, complete with picnic basket and hat too, and a blue coat on. It was all made of straw but also backed up with wicker for the likes of the hat and the picnic basket, which led to a thought of The Wicker Bear instead of The Wicker Man - interestingly enough.
It was an impressive sight and I am sure any child who loves the bear would adore that and marvel at its height and how tall it all is. We did notice an outside little kiosk close to the main field now, and there was no queue for the ice cream with it being a Monday afternoon and the weather being nice, so I went for the raspberry pavlova and marmalade flavours (the latter obviously being a Paddington nod), both of which were gorgeous. The marmalade won out because of the zestiness of the oranges inside and the nice overall flavour, but you could pick any of the flavours and come away happy, let me tell you.
After all that ice cream we headed back up to the A49 and to the Hollies Farm Shop. In fact we timed it well as we could hear a clap of thunder in the distance and it rained solidly for around fifteen minutes whilst we were making our way around the shop - and we did manage to get to the café and have a well earned coffee too. That was all nice and we didn't want to head back homewards later, but off we set and it was not as bad traffic wise as we thought it would be, so said my fondest farewell and got the train home later, but had had a wonderful extended weekend.
Sunday 11th May - Happy Birthday II
Not content with it being my birthday, one of our friends happened to also have their birthday yesterday too and had turned 50 themselves. As we knew that they would be doing something nice with their partner (who is also our friend too, nice how these things work out) we thought that it would be good for several of us to get together for a Sunday roast and some drinks to celebrate, meaning that both of us could spend our actual birthdays with the loved ones and then have a bigger get together of sorts the day after. That was a good idea and we both were looking forward to an afternoon of relaxing times and chatter all round.
The Love In My Heart and I got the tram and we soon realised that it was busy due to Manchester United playing at home against West Ham United with a 2.15pm kick off. We were heading off early so we could have a pre-lunch drink before meeting our friends - or so we thought. We got to a place close to where we were meeting and our two friends, including the birthday one, was there outside with a drink, so naturally it made sense to join them and have a catch up and chatter beforehand, and we could hand our birthday present over - a Lego voucher which can be used online or in the shop as we know that he is into Lego, so made perfect sense for us, and it was appreciated.
We then headed off to Albert's Schloss, where the remaining company (friends of our friend) had some transport issues and were delayed, but didn't take everyone else too long to arrive. They had plenty of nice beer on tap including Pilsner Urquell which is tank fresh, but the Schofferhoffer was the choice for me as it was the tropical one and not as heavy, and the Goldbrau Austrian lager went down well with The Love In My Heart. The difficulty was which main to have, as there were roasts but also other good options too. I went for the salmon with new potatoes and vegetables as that looked nice (and it was) whilst The Love and a few others had the pork knuckle, which looked fun to get the meat off the bone.
With that demolished nicely, two of us including me went for the dessert and admittedly the sticky toffee pudding was rather nice, so enjoyed that one quite a bit. Conversation and drinks flowed well and before we knew it, it had gone 6pm and time had flown by, always a sign of enjoyment that. We paid up and said our goodbyes to a few of the friends and five of us left headed over to Brewdog where two of us signed up to the app and got a free pint during the rounds we purchased, so may as well right?
It was nice as the music in there was a good vibe, and for me a great tune I'd not heard in ages, Woman by Wolfmother, so has to be tune of the day for me there really. We did have plenty of thoughtful discussion about all sorts over the next two hours or so in there, and I did notice sadly that the two pinball machines that they used to have were not there anymore, which was a shame as I did enjoy a good play on those at the time. Still, it was good to be able to have a good time and for us both it was more of a continuation of a whole weekend plus an extra day tomorrow to enjoy some quality time. Winner.
Saturday 10th May - Happy Birthday
So it was my birthday today, and thankfully I had managed to get the train up to Manchester last night without too many issues. It was therefore nice to wake up with The Love In My Heart and Brian the cat - Brian even let me give him some strokes and cuddles which was rather nice, and I'll take it. We got ourselves up and had a coffee, and I could open some lovely cards and presents too. I had had some presents delivered to my place and knew that I had got a gift card from my aunt and my uncle, and one of my friend had kindly got me the Blu-Rays of both Platoon and Challengers as well as the Pixies Doolittle 30 3-CD set, nice. That already was lovely to have.
I opened all the other presents first, two nice gift cards( from one of The Love's two sisters and one from my Mum), the new Seth Lakeman and Bryan Ferry albums from The Love's other sister and also some money from my youngest sister. I had also a nice surprise from Little Miss E - a birthday video from her after she had been to her dance class wishing me a happy birthday. In fact their parents had kindly got me a gift card for Urban Playground in Manchester, and a nice card in the post which had pictures of me and The Love with both Little Miss E and Little Miss O, which was lovely - and a tube of three Star Wars related beers. Way too generous!
The Love had very kindly paid for today's visit to Urban Playground (and the crazy golf Putters bit within it) but of course I can use that gift voucher for another booking which we can do as and when later on. The Love herself was super brilliant and got me the Frank Sidebottom 3-CD box set recently released (you know she did, she really did etc) as well as a Joules Summer shirt which looks fab on, and a Penfriend t-shirt too - so that was a welcome surprise indeed. She is just so thoughtful and considerate really and I know on days like today how lucky I really am to be with her. Today was one of those days.
As the weather was nice we decided to do our favourite walk - along the canal and to Manchester City centre, stopping off at Cask for a well earned drink in the sun - and a nice American Red Ale that they had went down nicely for me as well as the Manchester Union Lager for The Love. After that we walked through to the city, into the Arndale Centre and located Urban Playground. They have games based on The Cube TV series (which all looks fab) and in fact three crazy golf courses, two upstairs and one downstairs. We did one down and one up, as the booking was for two courses.
It's all very high tech too - your booking QR code gets scanned in, and then you can enter your names, and get a club with sensors as well as the ball. You can also do any of the first eight holes in any order (so for example if there's a queue you can skip and head back) but the ninth hole you must do last. The scoring is points based, so extra points for less shots taken, and bonuses for hitting targets or the ball over sensors for more points. Per round of nine holes you get three (x2) options to double your score, by hovering the club over that sensor. It all worked out well on the first course which ended in a Kentucky Derby crazy golf experience, up to six at once and all putting the ball into holes to move the horses. This was immense fun and meant on points I managed to overtake The Love, who did get the only hole in one of the day earlier on. The theme tune to the golf (Chase Side Shoot Up by Brian Bennet) was in my head, so tune of the day obviously.
The second course upstairs was more of the neon based 80s vibe about it, and there was also a circus themed course which we'll do next time (need to do that first course with the Kentucky Derby final hole for definite) and the 80s neon course was good, with different sorts of lights for all sorts of shots, ending in a massive skeeball against the clock where you putted the hole into the targets to score points. I'd prefer a ball roll for this myself, but still it was good fun and The Love did admittedly do better than me on this final hole, but all was good and we both enjioyed it to say the least - and I must go back and do the circus one!
We then headed out towards the cathedral and managed to get an outside seat at The Mitre for a well earned mid afternoon drink before we walked all the way through past a packed Northern Quarter and just as packed Stevenson Square, heading to the other side of Piccadilly Station and into Freight Island. We actually got a table with a good view and so we could pick what we'd like for tea - The Love had the gyros with chicken from one stall and I went for the classic Baconed burger and some fries from Burgerism, along with a pint too. That was nice to relax there as the early evening set in, and we headed off home having had a lovely time together and really good fun all round.
Tuesday 6th May – Mission Not Impossible
It was longer journey back home last night (due to the fact that Euston was closed) and so I had managed to book trains from Manchester to Sheffield, then Sheffield to London St Pancras, both in first class at a cheap price. That worked out well, I got coffee on both, and crisps and a snack on the Manchester-Sheffield train, followed by snacks and a pastrami deli sandwich on the Sheffield to St Pancras leg. That made it less painful all round and as the train was very busy in standard due to it being 5 coaches only – nowhere near enough to be honest, then first class with a comfier seat made a lot of sense. And I’m getting too old to be fighting for a seat which is why I always reserve when I can.
Anyway, it was off to our office in Hoxton today where I will be spending more time in the next month or so. I do like the overall vibe in there as it’s much more a creative environment to work in, and the railway arches do also give it a different feel. It is also where a lot of the magic happens prior to some of the events, so really does feel more of a community as well. It is always good to see some people there too and that adds massively, so despite the fact that the Overground (Windrush line at that) is always a busy time too. I got in and one of the team there had already opened up so saved me a job there – nice.
My mission for today (and I did choose to accept it – cue the Mission Impossible theme as tune of the day) was to get the Windows 11 boot USB media working on a Lenovo laptop so we could build and test a few things. Unfortunately, Lenovo have made it so that if you are booting from a USB stick, you have to have it FAT32 formatted, and even using a GUID partition table, it still doesn’t like it. The difficulty then is that FAT32 has a 4GB size limit, so the install.wim file for Windows 11 is greater than that. There has been some mention online of this being a showstopper for some that wanted to do a fresh install from media because of that, but thankfully there are two solutions at hand.
The first one is to effectively split partition the USB stick into two, with the UEFI bootable side on the FAT32 partition, and then the Sources folder containing the Windows 11 media on a NTFS partition afterwards. This actually does work sensibly and well and just needs some work to get the partitions right. However, there is an easier way provided that you don’t mind entering a single command line, which I can highly recommend that you do, as this then covers all hardware eventualities in future where you have the same scenario, and more so for more awkward setups. Granted, you do need TPM and Secure Boot if you want to do things properly for installs, but at least you can get all the installation ready and done.
So in effect, mount your ISO image of Windows 11, and copy the folder structure on to a hard drive. Once done, enter an admin command prompt, and wherever you have your Windows 11 media (in this case I have used C:\temp\Win11) you can enter the following and this will split the install.wim file into two parts, meaning they are under 4GB – and you can see where I am going with this one:
Dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:C:\temp\Win11\sources\install.wim /SWMFile:C:\temp\Win11\sources\install.swm /FileSize:3800
It is all on one line. In effect it splits the image file into two (install.swm and install2.swm). Once done, remove install.wim from the sources folder where you copied the Windows 11 media to, and copy the whole folder structure from the CD root (in my case C:\temp\Win11) to a FAT32 formatted USB stick. Boot up, the UEFI is detected and more to the point, so is the installation too, so it runs without an issue, applies the image in exactly the same way, and within a good few minutes you’re up and operational with a basic layout.
And if you want to customise this further, you can create your own autounattend.xml file so most of the work is done for you. Don’t want a Microsoft account requirement? No problem. Remove the un-needed bloatware during installation? Also no problem. Have the default languages pre-set to English (UK) with keyboard layouts? Not a problem either. Don’t need OneDrive and have a default user registry key change to stop it installing? Yes, you can add that one too. It comes highly recommended if you want something more vanilla but want to use the standard installation media so you have the source to start with. I did find that it was much quicker to get Windows 11 up and running and just how you want it to and in fact when I do have to do a clean install, I’ll be doing this myself to get things nice and tidy.
Sunday 4th May – Black Friar of Flowers
Little Miss O woke up a little in the night, and a little bit upset, but The Love In My Heart attended to her and she was all good – and I saw to her too and gave her a little smile and giggle, and she smiled as she had tummy rubs from The Love and headed back to sleep. Little Miss E had slept really well and woke up – and then came in to say hello and have a chatter and a cuddle from her Nana. Cereal for breakfast all round for them both (coco pops and rice Krispies!) and then we settled in with more creative play and more cartoons too – including My Little Pony which Little Miss E has appeared to get back into and likes the characters and their colour – understandable really.
Their parents came back to collect later on and were so pleased to see them both and they were all happy and playful. Little Miss E gave me a hug as she left and appreciated us both which is always lovely, and before we knew it, Brian the cat came out of hiding and was more than happy to reclaim his space on the pouffle knowing that peace and quiet was back in his world. Well, that was until he saw something running across the patio and grass at the front of the block of flats, and he had radar on at the window making sure he did not miss a thing whatsoever. And when he is on it, he definitely does not want to be disturbed!
The Love and I got ourselves changed and ready as we were heading out for a Sunday roast today. Her niece had got her a voucher for The Black Friar, which is on Blackfriars Road on the Salford side of the city centre. It was relatively easy to find as we had spotted it on the inner ring road – so from the city we just walked down Market Street, which continues straight on to St Mary’s Gate, where The Love had a look in And Other Stories for some nice new outfits, and Oliver Bonas, where it is always worth a mooch, and then down Blackfriars Street, over the River Irwell into Salford and then straight under the railway on Blackfriars Road and to the Black Friar, with its floral display outside dominating the entrance (not real flowers of course, but still looks the part it has to be said).
We had got there early so got inside and got a drink at the bar – they do their own Pilsner so The Love had that and for me it was the Buxton Brewery’s Deepdale, a good session ale and for those that need it, it is also gluten free. It was actually really nice and moreish and did what it said on the tin – very session-like and a nice head to boot. Well recommended all round. We were shown upstairs to our table which was in the old part of the building, and that had tons of nice period features and a lovely window facing out towards some flats and above the new build section, with light pouring in too which was definitely a positive for us both.
As it was two courses for £32 (so definitely not cheap) we pored over the menu and chose what we would like – with the member of staff serving us being really lovely and polite, and giving The Love some sensible wine suggestions too which was really appreciated. In the end, I went for the minestrone soup starter, which was absolutely spot on – a more tomato based soup with pasta, beans and other vegetables and really good. The Love’s chicken liver paté was spot on too, and the bread with it added a real sense of class to it all, and elevated that well. As for our mains – wow.
I had the roast beef, and plenty of it, and served pink (they do tell you this beforehand so if you want it well done, you can ask) and with roasties, mash, seasonal vegetables, gravy and a Yorkshire pudding, it really did hit the spot. The Love had the pork and the massive chunk of thick pork she had looked so lovely. She enjoyed that and the cauliflower cheese served with it (I let her have it all as she loves that.) Definitely for me the quality of the food was spot on and well worth it. The Love’s voucher for £25 for there was definitely well worth using, and I paid the rest of it. Not cheap, but for the experience and as a treat it was excellent, and I can highly recommend it if you want something a bit more elevated on occasion. Had I skipped the starter, the desserts all looked very tempting and that would definitely be excellent to try out!
We headed back to the city centre (Manchester) and off to the Northern Quarter where a pop into Terrace was long overdue, and I had the session ale that I love in Track – the Sonoma. I was sorely tempted to have the Vault City Iron Brew Sour as they have it in stock there, but stuck with session and that was a good move. The vibe is always nice in there and for us both it was a good end to a lovely afternoon all round which was made more so when we got back and Brian the cat just wanted fusses and cuddles, and snuggled up to his Mummy all evening as we watched the first episode of the new series of Malpractice too – which did seem intriguing. Tune of the day in the meantime is the excellent In The Light Sometimes by Penfriend, sums up the mood I’m in and how peaceful I am right now with being happy and with my love.
Saturday 3rd May – Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong
It was a really early rise for me this morning as I was heading on the train up to Manchester for the weekend. I had had a really nice online chat with a few of my friends last night, and it was good to do that in place of them not being at mine this weekend – due to some changes in personal circumstances. That did mean I got to sleep a little later but I had the alarm set and the case already packed too, so it was a case of getting up, have a shower and be ready and on the train to St Pancras, heading across to Euston and in good time for my 0753 train up to Manchester Piccadilly.
The Love In My Heart was having a more than well earned lie in after a hard week at work, so I took the tram from Piccadilly, and so well timed was my move down to the stop that I waited less than one minute for the tram, which was pretty nice. I was soon at The Love’s place, giving Brian the cat a fuss and some Dreamies, and was keeping eyes on the World Snooker Championship as it got to the semi final stage, with Mark Williams battling it out against Judd Trump for a place in the final against Zhao Xintong, a player with an interesting history but who has really been showing good form this time around.
We did have some visitors later on, namely The Love’s two sisters for a coffee and a chatter (and some cupcakes) and also Little Miss E and Little Miss O arrived with their Mum, and they were both full of joy and happy faces, knowing they were staying at Nana’s overnight. In fact when Little Miss E saw the pink bedding that The Love had got herself recently, she was beaming with joy and like “I love your bed Nana!” which met with her suitable approval. Everyone left later in the afternoon and it was just the four of us to have an enjoyable day.
We had the toys out and it was notable Little Miss O loved the little wind up musical thing that plays Teddy Bear’s Picnic, and all twee sounding at that too. Meanwhile, Little Miss E was asking to water the plants outside on the patio and make sure they were growing, so with the help of a water jug and The Love, she was attending to them and being a very good girl. We did also note that Brian the cat was attempting to try and sneak out too, but he was more interested in seeing the wildlife outside as two birds fluttered in the trees outside, so he was on watch for those!
Later on, we got ourselves ready and headed out for the tram, which made Little Miss E very happy as she does love the tram for some reason. We had to wait one minute for the tram, so all good, and off to Audenshaw stop which is near a retail part with a Pizza Hut – her favourite. The staff in there are always lovely and friendly and welcoming, and it is always a nice atmosphere in there because of that. I scanned the code and did the order, with Little Miss O having something of everyone else’s, a kids’ meal for Litle Miss E (ham pizza, fries, drink and ice cream factory) and The Love had the lasagne for her main with fries, a glass of wine and no dessert. For me it was the hand crafted base meat feast (part of me was tempted by the classic pan of course), chicken strips, soft drink and ice cream factory, so Little Miss E and I could get that together (cue her saying “pink sprinkles pleeeeeeeeeeeease!” when we were there.)
We headed back to the tram stop to head home, and literally the tram arrived as we got to the stop, so immaculate timing all day for trams for me – no complaints there. We headed back home to The Love’s place, and after some cartoons and more play, Little Miss O headed to sleep and later Little Miss E did too, and nodded off pretty quickly. It had been a long but lovely day and The Love and I settled in for some telly including the 1 Per Cent Club (where the final question was pretty hard but I did get several along the way) and then more snooker with the final session of the semi finals (and cue Drag Racer by the Doug Wood Band being tune of the day – it is the proper theme and all that.)