• With a face like Homer Simpson, when he eats the codenamed 77X42 candy, I bit into the lemony lemon cake I baked. When I served it, swimming in custard to take the edge off, it was less lemony. We ate it while hungrily watching Bake Off, along with Lizzy’s parents who had brought the kids back to London after a few days.
• The kids left me with carved pumpkins and strict instructions to scare the visitors to our house as they headed to Sheffield for Halloween with cousins. We had about 3 groups for trick-or-treat, way less than expected. I offered the leftover chocolates to any front-line worker who visited over the next few days. Postie had one. Tesco delivery driver flatly refused.
• Post halloween, the carved pumpkins transformed into the best pumpkin soup I’ve ever made, heavy cinnamon, roasted pumpkins, carrot/celery/onion base. Eaten with the seasonal pumpkin bread from Dusty knuckle. A welcome pumpkin overload.
• Got introduced (via invite code) to the insane ten-ten app this week after researching social startups. More social startups should have boundary breaching headline features like this live walkie-talkie app.
• Electrics are the lowest on my list of preferred DIY jobs. There’s no creativity and maximum risk involved in minor electrics. But thinking about lighting types and how they’ll work in our dining area was a curious challenge. Even if re-wiring the current pendant lights was disgustingly awkward. The lights are still not quite right, but better than before.
• Ludwig’s good isn’t it. Oh it’s slow enough in pace in each episodic mini-puzzle, but has an intriguing overall storyline. Very much not my usual thing. Even so. I like the humour. Though I feel like David Mitchell isn’t quite “Socially awkward” enough.
  • Lads, the last paragraph was an intentional acrostic. Classic.
• Our littlest ran her first Park Run on Sunday. It took a lot of coaxing to get her around but she seemed to be in good spirits and ran most of the way (2km). Whenever she got tired of running and I said we should walk, she did anything but walk. Spinning around, side-stepping, walking backwards, doing exercise on the municipal exercise machines. This kid is a ball of energy.