The cheese brain has arrived!

Christmas was a success! Started off with cranberry and gin cocktails. Then @xanderbur.bsky.social cooked monkfish bitterballen. Then onto the turkey roulade with all the trimmings, before finishing off with a mango entremet. Quick break for coffee. Then onto the cheese board. 😋

Standard day for the metro 🤣

Happy Christmas from Crumble, @xanderbur.bsky.social and I!

Houston we have a problem. The turkey is too big for the oven 😅 this is the oven tray which is the widest thing that’ll fit! 🥲

May have overcatered. 😬🫣 The deboned turkey has been covered in finely chopped rosemary. Covered in a kg of butter blended with sage, thyme, confit garlic and lemon peel. Then wrapped up and is now in the freezer chilling before tying. We’ll be eating turkey for a month. 🫠

Confit garlic is on, as is the first batch of stock reducing. The crowdie is also made and straining in the fridge.

This morning ritual brings such a smile to my face.

Grim. The entire royal family needs to go. s.

Turkey has been fully deboned, and is now in brine overnight. The bones have been roasted off and are now in the pressure cooker set to run at 5AM to make the first batch of stock. Tomorrow will be a whole day of prep. Christmas cooking has begun!

The sous chef is keeping an eye on my butchery skill.

😒 our original heat pump installer keeps emailing saying ‘your service is overdue’. We haven’t had that heat pump for over a year now! I look at their heat pump installs on Heat Pump Monitor and smile to myself. The other day we had a single start in 24 hours. Their two installs had near 100.

www.bbc.com/news/article... Newcastle should implement a range of things - proper congestion charge - LEZ should be for private cars too - properly enforce bus lanes - raise price for parking in city centre - use that to offset and lower prices of buses - build better and more connected bus routes

Tonight I’ve definitely shown my masc side. I’ve rewired the outside light switch to now have a Shelly mini behind it. Means the outside light is now fully automated to switch on at sunset, off at 2300. 😁😁😁

A lovely wander with Crumble and the husband around @nationaltrust.org.uk Gibside this afternoon. We met a badger, a bird and many other wonderfully sculpted creatures.

@jillchambers.bsky.social happy winter solstice!! We made it 😁🥳

It's your birthday, Duane.

That awkward moment you are at a dinner party, reach for the bottle of red wine, pour yourself a rather full glass and then realise it’s Bristol cream 😅 safe to say the night went downhill (or uphill. Depending on which way you look at it) from there 🤣

Morning walk along the beach with the Crumb

Wasted an afternoon at the magistrates court but we did get a result. Car driver using mobile phone whilst driving. Eventually pleaded guilty. A result for safer roads

🤣😅

Cycling and walking could help deliver almost everything Brits say they want to achieve in 2026 — if we design streets to support them. Getting fitter, losing weight, being healthier, saving money; enabling active travel quietly does all of it. With no gym contracts.

Good mental health

1C last night & still managed a COP 3.22 on the DHW run! 😏 3.76 on heating. Three defrosts since midnight. May be tempted to ask installers to add a volumiser on the heating return, that way we may be able to slow the temp drop during defrosts (we may be on the edge of not enough system vol)

Looks like it’ll be a cold one tonight. The skies are clear. Out walking Crumble I could see Orion and the Plough. We are blessed to have relatively clear skies up here Newcastle and even darker skies just north in Northumberland.

Just got told we have a 3/4 ton pallet of hedging plants being delivered tomorrow! 😵‍💫 Looks like I'll be busy planting this weekend it seems

😭 forgot dinner had chickpeas in it! So have had to put them in the pressure cooker….but that takes a minimum of an hour. Late dinner for us tonight. It’ll be gone 2000 by the time we eat.

Monzo throwing shade. 2997th in Newcastle for shopping at Greggs. That’s an accolade right? Not included in this is Greggs spending on the joint account or the work account. 😅

How beautiful is this day in the life of an Air Source Heat Pump. As they say low & slow, and keep it simple. It’s also amazing how quiet it is. Both inside the house and outside the house. Just casually purring away extracting heat from the air & pushing it into our house. #ASHP #RenewableHeat

Can you guess what it is yet?

“Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6km each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, annual carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes. This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.” @euronews.com

Been out for a lovely Christmas dinner with friends this evening, then have just got home and popped out into gale force winds to finish off the pointing on the garden wall by torchlight 😅 Our neighbours must think I’m a lunatic

Knackered. Have been bricklaying since 8 this morning. Definitely not going to be giving up the day job anytime soon. But we’re slowly getting there. I estimate at this rate it’ll be four more days work and then the garden side of the front wall will be built.

Does anyone in the north east have either plum, apple or pear trees?

The bed where front hedge was has been fully dug over. I’ve got as many of the roots out. I’ve now just placed an order for 50 green beach bare root hedging plants ready to replant with something more sensible. Hopefully these will take next summer and bed in well.

Evergreen Chargers at Woodall Services. Half didn’t work because they either Wooler connect to the car, or threw an error with credit card or Electroverse. the one that did work was only giving us 30kW speeds.😒 Charged enough to get to the Ionity chargers at Warmsworth. Plugged in and go. 150kW. 😁

Yeah no.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to have HS2 built all the way through to the north. 😭😭😭 Economically, the Elizabeth line paid for itself within six months of opening. Even with the overrun in costs. HS2 could have delivered huge economic gains for the North. But Sunak and the Tories wrecked that.

Let’s replace the Labour-run Newcastle City Council with a Lib Dem council and put Newcastle on the map as a city that champions active travel.

Sad to know I won’t be visiting the in laws any time soon. It’ll be interesting seeing the financial hit this has on US tourist revenues

Absolutely amazing chart from @peterkellner.bsky.social's piece in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social today: www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I’ve heard nothing but complaints from friends about how bad the service is. It’s shocking really that the council has entered into this in good faith, but in doing so have put people’s sexual health at risk.

This is delicious. Forstater basically comes across as insufferably opinionated with delusions of expertise. Her attempts to pass off Sex Matters research as credible evidence is recognised as unreliable and roundly dismissed.

This must be the most outrageous example of Farage's racist bullying. A 17-year-old Farage bullying a 9-year-old lad – NINE – for being black, and even waiting at the school gate to heap more abuse on the little lad. What an absolute f***ing scumbag. Deeply shocking, even by 1970s standards.

Invited by friends for dinner. We said ‘do you mind if we bring Crumble’ We received a 👍 Got here, had a lovely starter and main course. They go to us ‘it’s very generous of you to bring dessert’ We looked horrified. We hadn’t brought crumble. We had brought Crumble! 😅😅😅

This is niche 🤣

Wrapped 2025 has dropped 👀👀 How has Britain's democracy performed this year? Let's check...

This is exactly right. The problem in the UK tech sector with VC isn't just cash. VC do two things. They provide cash and more importantly they are a governance structure for providing managerial support. 1. AI start-ups in the UK need more than money share.google/W4CbRwpcYwPG...

If anyone cares at all, EV battery recycling is now hitting 99% recovery for important metals Please remind me again what the recycle rate for fossil fuels is interestingengineering.com/energy/recyc...

Why? It’s a failing asset