The Energy Savings Trust website has a questionnaire thingy that lets you work out how energy efficient your home is.  At the end of the questionnaire it comes out with one of those tables that are starting to crop up on everything.

I went through the questionnaire twice, once for the house when we moved in, and once taking into account the changes we have made.

Quite bizarrely, the best I could hope for changed from B to C in the second run through.  I shall have to have another play with it later and work out what I changed.

Now, the one remaining thing to do, as far as the EST is concerned, is to insulate my solid walls.

One of these labels has just appeared on a noticeboard in the Council House.  That building was built about 10 years before my house, and somehow manages to have greater energy efficiency.

News reached us from the Maxfields that Noah had joined their household.  Then Leigh and Kathryn became Pregatron and Sperminator, much to everyone’s consternation.

Now news reaches from Sweden that Nigel and Stephen have had kids.

There must be something in the water.

Someone on Cix was surprised by a water bill which he calculated meant he was using 200 pints of water a day.

Picturing a pint is not difficult – we can see it in terms of beer or milk.  But tell someone they have a 210 litre hot water tank or that a washing machine uses 60 litres of water per wash, and they flounder a bit.

Here are some handy comparisons:

1 litre = 2 pints

10 litres = a toilet flush = bucket of water

A power shower is using the equivalent of having a bucket of water thrown over you every thirty seconds.  So if you wallow under the hot water every morning, and you have a powerful shower, you may actually be using far more water than if you had a bath.
60 litres = a washing machine cycle = a water butt

240 litres = a wheelie bin = (roughly) a modern hot water tank

Any more?  UMRA will be particularly interested in sightings of unorthodox units like “swimming-pools per minute” and so on.

We went out and had a picnic in Wollaton Park yesterday amidst hundreds of other people taking advantage of the weather and the space.

I cooked. Homemade feta, tomato and spinach quiche. Home baked bread rolls with salmon and cucumber, and with ham and pickle. Potato salad (but need a better recipe). Melon slices and fresh strawberries. Scone round with clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam. Homemade elderflower cordial to drink. All packed into a wicker hamper P was given by someone planning to move abroad.

A lovely time was had by all!

My cousin got married yesterday, so we spent the day at his wedding with lots of my family. A lovely day, with the reception at Fairlawns – who did a really, really good four course meal: melon, soup, a pot roast blade of beef, and creme brulee. Yum.

Halfway through the proceedings, after the speeches (brief and very touching) but before the evening do, we all trooped outside onto the lawn and released the helium balloons that had decorated the room, with tags tied onto them with well wishes. A nice touch, and a clever seamless way of getting us out of the room while they got it ready for the evening do.

I drank far, far more than I should have done, carrying on well into the night largely with the brides family, long after most people went to bed. I finished at about 3am, with several members of the party keeping going much later.

The following morning, I felt much better than I had any right to – with practically no hangover at all. We had a lovely a breakfast then set off home.

I eventually remembered my camera. I’d left it out of sight in the hotel room which unfortunately meant it went out of mind also, and I had to drive all the way back to the hotel later in the day to retrieve it.

There were one or two nice photos on the camera.

I have uploaded some more photos to Flickr. Firstly, the pics from our Norwich holiday in May, which have been languishing on my computer untouched for months. A boat trip on the Broads, an afternoon in Walsingham, and an eery fog that engulfed the chicken farm we camped on all feature.

Following on from that, photos of our choir week in Hereford – mainly long-lens candids in the pub, but also the official photos of all of us in our cassocks, taken using a tripod and a time delay, so I’m in some of them too. And because I was at home, there are also too many parents of Ellie, my aged parents’ aged cat.

And then later some photos from our weekend in Ipswich last weekend – more particularly our afternoon on the beach in Aldeburgh.

I have a new camera – my first digital SLR. I do like have the extra control, and seeing the machine focus for you. Some of what I learned using an old manual SLR has been useful with the new camera, but the amount of control you now get is great. Changing the sensitivity of the “film” at a key press is great. And instant feedback on whether the settings you used worked or not is fantastic. No more having to wait days to see whether you wasted another whole roll of film.

Nominet UK sent me an email today asking me to complete a survey as a person who has just renewed a *.uk domain (I can’t remember which one it would be!)

In the email, they say they look after 6 million UK domain names.

That suggests there’s a .uk domain for every 10 people who live in the UK, assuming the population is still roughly 60 million.

Fascinating.

I have way more than my fair share of domains, but then practically no-one else I know has one at all, so it all evens out.

Well, choir week is over for another year. This year was as good as any I’ve been on, and certainly felt very different, being on home turf in Hereford.

I’m pleased to say the clergy and staff at Hereford have been the most welcoming of any cathedral we’ve been to. It may be because whilst some cathedrals and chapels have more visiting choirs than they really know what to do with, Hereford seems to find itself bereft of singers for long stretches at a time. Next week, they have no choir at all, and they will be having their main service said next Sunday. So when choirs do arrive, they are welcomed with open arms, invitations to sherry in the Precentor’s lovely garden and fed tea and biscuits after their rehearsals.

And whilst many cathedrals have invited us back to spend more time with them, Hereford is the first to do so during choral evensong itself!

Being in Hereford meant staying with my parents was most economical. The constraint of catching the last train home meant I drank less and slept more than in some previous years, but it is still somehow very tiring to spend seven days concentrating on singing and standing up for long stretches of time. I must definitely get fitter!

And once again I am better acquainted with my singing voice. I no longer sing at all between annual choir weeks, which mean my voice needs exercise, and going from nothing to singing for 6 hours a day every day is a strain. It’s strange how day to day, my range changes. At the fullest I can get from F above middle C to C two below in my main voice, and get much higher in falsetto. But by the time evensong comes around, many of the extreme notes will be missing, and I have to be careful not to crack in exposed places. So much singing with so little preparation is actually painful, and at the end of it, my speaking voice sounds raw. And I have a nasty feeling of dangling things hanging around my tonsils that I can hear vibrate when I sing. Urgh.
It’s also amazing what being surrounded by really good singers can do. This year, I was propped up by a bass with perfect pitch who could come in reliably and find weird notes with no problem. I’m not an excellent singer, in that I can’t hold a part entirely on my own, but near people who are, I can be a very useful additive volume.

We’ve had our share of odd bible readings this week at evensong. We’ve had a full set of readings about King David, from being chosen, to beating Goliath, to leading the Jews. Who knew that David had a ruddy face and beautiful eyes? (1 Samuel 16 v 12). By the end of the week, we had David meeting Jonathan, and having their souls bound together (1 Samuel 18). We also got a particularly steamy passage from the Song of Soloman.

And of course we found ourselves chanting very odd phrases from the psalms:

• He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse : neither delighteth he in any man’s legs.
• Deliver me from the hand of strange children
• I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.

Etc, etc.  There’s never any shortage of strange passages to sing.