Friday 30 May 2008

Got stuff!!

Today my order from half cost arrived, consisting of 3 800g tins of Roses, a Danny from Hearsay Doll, a roll of green wood pattern adhesive backed vinyl, 12 soul legends cds, 5 small packs of haribo starmix with a pink stocking and a triple cd rock boxset, total cost was about £15.

Also arrived, a stud for my Manfrotto Super clamp so I can mount anything with a 3/8" or 1/4" thread to it. And a new camera remote, unfortunately it wasn't the same as the one in the picture on the ebay auction that I bid on, it doesn't have the all important 2.5mm input on the side so it cn be triggered by a wireless trigger (the whole reason I bought it). So I sent the seller a message, it's not going to be worth me posting it back to them for a refund though since it only cost about £6 and it would have to be shipped back to China.

This morning I sorted and processed some macro pics I took of ants yesterday. I uploaded 3 to photoshelter, although they're not that great so they might get rejected, also I forgot to check 2 of them for dust spots. I also started a thread on dpreview to see if I could get any advice on how to take better macro pics.

This afternoon I checked my email, and I had an email from ebuyer with a cheap 22" TFT monitor, so I had a look on their website and 24" TFTs were under £400 as well, so I did some research and found that panels with S-IPS technology are the most colour-accurate (which is important for photo editing). All the cheap TFTs on ebuyer seemed to use TN panel technology, so that saved me some money since it meant I didn't buy any. I probably could do with a new monitor since this one is about 7 years old and I have had a couple of rejections on SXC for images being too dark, even though they looked fine to me, and my monitor is calibrated using Spyder2.

In the evening I checked what replies I had got to my thread on dpreview then tried some different methods of bouncing the flash towards the subject.

Food
Breakfast: Kellogs Special K Sustain; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; strawberries; grapes; banana; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Battered Fish; potatoes; peas; butter; salt; black pepper; vinegar. For pudding I had a slice of cherry madeira cake and a gold bar. Coffee.

Thursday 22 May 2008

Walk, panos, internetting and buying more stuff

This morning I bought a Nikon 10 pin trigger for my Zigview S2. Will be interesting to see if the Zigview's motion detection actually works properly when I get it. After that I went out on a walk with Rad. When we got back I started sorting the pics I took on the walk. My Christian CDs I bought off ebay arrived, and surprisingly there wasn't a big post office/tax bill to pay. I guess either the seller remembered about this (I forgot when ordering them) and kindly put a customs price low enough so I wouldn't have to pay tax, or the actual total cost of the CDs was very low and the majority of the cost was postage. I will check when I leave feedback for them which it was.

After lunch I sorted the pics a bit more, then went out and took some 360 panos. When I got back home I bought a new shutter release cable on ebay as my current one is broke (I thought I fixed it but I didn't). Then I did more photo editing/sorting, got Ben back from school and then finished sorting the photos. After that I did some research on how to trigger the camera shutter using an ebay radio flash trigger.

After dinner I did more research on the how to trigger the camera shutter using an radio flash trigger. I ordered another ebay remote shutter release cable (one that has a 2.5mm input jack in it) from ebay, and a 3.5mm female to 2.5mm male adapter and a ¼" female to 3.5mm male adapter from dealextreme. This should be able to connect the ebay radio flash receiver to the camera. I should already have a mono 3.5mm cable I can cut up to connect the photogate trigger to the ebay radio trigger. Then hopefully this will be able to trigger the camera. Or maybe it will just act as a half shutter press? There's lots of info on the pinternet but I don't really understand it due to my lack of electronics knowledge.

I also did some research on triggering the camera directly from the photogate circuit, without the radio flash trigger being invloved at all. As far as I could understand, the 9v power of the photogate circuit would damage the camera, but if you trigger the camera from an FET instead of an SCR then it will be okay? Didn't really understand that and don't know what an FET is so I'll just try the wireless ebay radio flash method first (well when I get the stuff) and then maybe look into that a bit more.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 2x cheese on toasts; apple; large slice of cherry madeira cake; gold bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken pie; butternut squash; green beans; new potatoes; gravy. Pudding was hot jamaica ginger cake with golden syrup and custard. Coffee.

Monday 19 May 2008

Prison Break

This morning I watched Prison Break. After lunch I was going to watch Prison Break again but the episode I was on that Maccy P had downloaded had annoying foreign subtitles, so I had to re-download it. While I was waiting for it download I took some photos in the garden using my homemade ringflash adapter, which seemed to work okay. Then I sorted them a bit.

After getting Ben back from school Prison break had finished downloading so I watched that again. After dinner I watched more prison break until now, when I finished watching the last episode. Hopefully season 4 will be about Michael hunting down the company people.

Food
Breakfast: Chocolate crunch cereal; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with beetroot salad sandwich; apple; iced madeira cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chilli con carne; Tortilla chips with seeds in them. Pudding was waffles with golden syrup and cream.

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Making ring flash adapter

Yesterday I got my passport, now just need to wait for Ben and Mac P to get theirs. Wierd how Ben hasn't had his yet. Also yesterday, Fixation UK phoned me to say the problem with my SB800 was dirty contacts and it would cost £20 or £25 for them to fix it. I said okay since I'd rather them clean it for that cost than say no, have to pay the quotation fee and then risk not being able to fix it myself.

This morning I sorted some photos I took recently. Some were of pound coins, and I found the lighting was a bit uneven, one edge of the coin was quite dark (due to the flash placement off to one side). So I thought a ringflash would be best for taking this sort of photo, so I did some pinternet research on ringflash. It seems the cheap macro ringflashes aren't very good quality and don't last very long. Some of them also don't have variable output, so you have to vary the camera aperture to adjust exposure. The Sigma or nikon ringflashes are expensive and also only work on one system (so if I moved to canon in the future I'd have to buy a new model).

So I did some more research on diy macro ring flashes and found this blog. The way they make a ringflash is quite simple and I could use materials already available to me. Their results also look quite good. Reading their follow up post, they said that they reckon they loose 4-5 stops of light, and they think it is from the bend where the light is directed downwards towards the ring. So I decided to make mine so the flash is just pushed in at the top and there's no bend (so the flash isn't placed in the camera hotshoe and is off camera).

It took me most of the afternoon and evening making it, and I made a few mistakes - I started glueing bits together before covering them in foil, which made adding the foil a bit difficult. Also I used UHU all purpose glue instead of a glue gun (couldn't find it), I guess a glue gun would have been better although the glue has stuck reasonably okay so far. I am going to leave it to dry overnight and then test it tomorrow.

Also today, an image I submitted to photoshelter a few days ago was accepted, but I couldn't figure out what category to put it in. I also noticed they seem to be accepting more traditional stock now - they had a picture of red wine pouring into a glass with a white bg and a boxer with a black bg and another person shot that looked like it was done in a studio.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with beetroot salad sandwich; grapes; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Mushrooms; chips; peas; bacon. Pudding was coconut tart. Coffee. Chocolate easter egg.

Monday 12 May 2008

Wasting time

This morning I decided to do a bit more work on my website, I need to add a form that allows people to upload a folder of images (or select a load of images at once) to upload. Googling didn't come up with anything suitable, just forms with multiple single file uploads or java solutions.

So I went on Flickr, and their uploadr allows you upload multiple files in one go. So I did a save as on the upload page and then spent a couple hours looking through their upload.js script to see how they did it. Unfortunately I still couldn't find out, but googling the term 'externalinterface' which was in the js, came up with the Flickr code blog and this page, which explains that it is actually flash used to do the upload.

After doing some more googling, I came across this page, which has the actionscript needed. Unfortunately I don't know actionscript, and getting it to work looks like it might be a bit too complicated for me. So I think for the moment I will work on just getting the site running without the user interactivity. Then after I have this running and the pano site done I can learn Flash and then add the interactivity. Although, actually I may need to learn flash for making the pano website.

In the afternoon my email from work finally arrived, so I spent the rest of the afternoon and first part of the evening doing work. Unfortunately by the time I had finished, the weather had changed from nice and sunny to slightly overcast and cloudy.

In the evening I checked my emails, transferred/ordered/cancelled some domains, checked HotUKdeals and bought loads of christian CDs from an ebay seller, so I can use my £5 ebay voucher up before it expires. The rest of the evening I watched ½ of letters from Iwo Jima with Mac P.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheese with salad sandwich; grapes; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Spaghetti; meatballs in sauce. Pudding was Mackies normal ice cream & an American style chocolate brownie. Coffee.
Supper: Breakaway; cup o' tea.

Saturday 10 May 2008

Walk and photo sorting

Went on a walk this morning with Rad and Mac P and Ben, went through some nice meadows with lots of different types of grass and Ben liked hitting them so loads of powder (pollen I guess) came off them.

After we came home me and Mac P watched a bit of Lost, then it was lunch time. After lunch we watched the rest of Lost, then I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting/editing photos from yesterday's walk.

After dinner me, Ben and Mac P watched a raddish Orson Wells film called F for Fake. Then I watched Mac P do a couple of guitar hero tracks, after which I carried on with photo editing/sorting.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard and salad sandwich; satsuma; slice of Farmhouse fruit cake; Rocky; cup o' tea.
Dinner: ¼ pounder burger in bun with cheese, pus, salad, Tom Ketch, and vinagrette; bun with marg. Pudding was Mackie's honeycomb and normal ice cream. Lemonade; Coffee; Cadbury's Caramel.

Friday 9 May 2008

Walking and dusting and waiting

This morning I went on a walk with Rad. Unfortunately the weather was overcast and cloudy today, unlike the nice blue skies we've had the rest of this week. This often seems to be the case when Rad wants to go on a walk with me. I'm not sure if he checks the weather forecast the day before to make sure its going to be cloudy or if its just bad luck.

We got back home about lunch time, and then in the afternoon I backed up all my stuff before adding my new hard drive to my PC.

After cleaning all the dust out my PC (which took ages because it was so dusty) and adding the new hard drive, I formatted the new drive which took the rest of the day. In the evening I watched a French film, District 13 which was dead gokos and had loads of parkour. Then I watched the latest episode of the Office US, and then went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; cherry tomatoes; grapes; slice of farmhouse fruitcake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Slice of chicken pizza; slice of ham pizza; chips; salad. Pudding was bread pudding with custard. Coffee.
Evening snack: Black currant jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.

Thursday 8 May 2008

Passport interview

This morning I was hoping to go out and do a test pano under some trees to see how bad the alignment problem is, but Clare and Brian both went out so I had to stay in to look after granny and answer the door if any parcels arrive.

When granny got up about 11am she asked me to pull off the dandelion flowers from the back garden. So I did that, although I don't know why she hates them so much. I think the garden looks very boring when its just plain green grass.

A parcel arrived me, I wasn't sure what it was since I couldn't remember ordering anything recently. I just hoped that my SB800 hadn't been sent back to me after finding what the problem was with a quote for fixing it and a bill for checking it and posting it back. Luckily it wasn't, it was my 1TB hard drive I ordered the other day. I sold my 160GB maxtor external drive to Rad for £20 so I needed some more space to store stuff on. For the moment I think I should be able to have my 2x500GB and 1x1TB internal drives for normal use, and my 2x500GB and 320GB external drives for backup.

After checking my email and some photography websites I did a bit of web development. Clare and Brian came back, then Brian went out again and me, Clare and granny had lunch about 1pm. After lunch I did more web development work.

At 2.45pm I decided to leave the house to get the 15.38 to Leicester. Before I went I had a quick look at the instructions on how to get to the passport interview office, and it said it was about 2 miles from the station. I had thought it was only 5 or 10 minutes away, on the map it looked like it was quite close to the station. So I walked quite quickly to the station, hoping that I might be able to get the 15.08 to Leicester. I thought it would be unlikely that I would be able to get there that quickly since the station is probably a couple of miles away and walking as fast as I can I can only do about 2 miles in 30 minutes.

I did get to the station in time for the 15.08, so I guess the station is nearer than I thought. According to the departure board, the train was a couple of minutes delayed and was due at 15.10, but when I went up to the platform, the train was already there. I went towards the train, but then the doors closed before I got there. Luckily one of the staff saw me running and their door was still open, so they let me get on in the staff section.

Sitting on the train was very nice, watching all the countryside go by. The rapeseed fields are nice and yellow at the moment, and I saw some cows with calves as well.

When I got to Leicester I walked around trying to follow the map I printed off multimap.com to find the passport interview centre. When I found it I still had about half an hour to go until my interview, so I just walked around for a bit until it was 10mins before the interview, as you're meant to arrive 10minutes early.

I went in and had to sign a signing in book and the bloke at the front desk gave me a security badge thing and told me where to go, which was the third floor and then to your right as you come out of the lift. The entrance to the passport interview place had a locked door, and a button that said 'press to ring bell'. I pressed it, and there was no indication that it worked but after a few seconds a lady walked down the corridor towards me and opened the door.

The corridor went to a large room with a reception desk one end, I was told to go and sit there and the guy at reception would ask me a couple of questions. The guy there told me he was going to ask me some questions to make sure the information to be printed on my passport is correct. He asked me to spell out my full name, my date of birth, and what my address was (didn't have to spell out the address). A couple of points about this:
  1. Why do they need to check my details are correct when they have already had my birth certificate and if my address wasn't correct how would I have got the letter to attend this interview.
  2. There were other people in the room attending interviews who could easily hear my answers. Clearly the government are not really concerned about identity theft.
After this the guy asked me where I wanted to go when I got my passport. I told him maybe Japan. He said "Well, if you go to Japan go to the Kawasaki factory for me, will you?". I know he was just trying to make conversation, but what a stupid way to do it.
  1. If I go to the Kawasaki factory what benefit does this have for him? Does he think I'm going to go to Japan and when I get back create a fake identity so I can apply for another passport and come to the interview office again so I can tell him what it was like?
  2. Why would I go to the Kawasaki Factory just because some random person in a passport interview office asks me to?
I just said that I doubted you would be able to look round the factory.

After this, he told me to sit in one of the chairs at the other end of the room, where there were a couple of other people waiting for their interviews. Here's a basic floorplan of the place:
At about 4.20pm I was called for my interview (the interview was meant to be 4.15pm). The interview took place in a kind of open cubicle, like they seem to have in American offices. Someone else was having their interview at the same time, so I could easily have listened to answers they were giving, or taken a tape recorder with me and recorded it if I wanted. Again, another point that the government are not doing this to stop identity theft.

First they asked me to spell out my full name, and give my date of birth and address again. Again, they said it was to double-check the details on my passport are correct. They said that after the interview, the information used in the interview about me and my family would be destroyed.

They asked me the town where I was born, whether I was registered to vote at my current address, what other adults live there, what my phone number is (I can't normally remember this but I think I remembered it correctly when they asked me), how long I had lived there, where I lived previously and how long I had lived there.

Then they asked financial questions, they asked if I had any loans, hire purchase agreements, mortgages, credit cards and checking accounts, and which bank/organisation they were with.

Then they asked questions about my referee, what his name was, what his job was and how old he was. Unfortunately, I got mental block and couldn't remember his name, though they said that was okay. I didn't know how old he was, so I told them what I thought his age probably was.

Lastly, they asked about my parents, their dates of birth (I knew Clare's since she was 50 this this year, but didn't know the year of Brian's birth), where they born (I didn't know) and when they were married (didn't know this).

Questions of this nature and about your referee (who is meant to be someone like your doctor or local Bobby) are pretty pointless really, its probably unlikely that most people would know the answer. I know that a lot of people don't know their parents birthday (or it might have been age) since that was a question on everybody votes on the wii recently.

Then after the interview a lady showed me out, I went back down in the lift, gave the badge back to the guy at reception and signed out.

So basically it was a waste of tax payers' (which includes me) money, a waste of my money (on the train fare and phonecalls to schedule the interview) and a waste of my time. The way the government tries to make out the purpose of this is stop identity theft/terrorism just makes it even worse.

After the interview I went straight back to the train station, I had to wait about 15mins for my train (the 17.05). When I got on the train there weren't any seats left so I just stood in the bit near the door. When we got back to Market Harborough I just walked staright home, and got about about 17.45, a few minutes before dinner.

After dinner I checked my work email, since yesterday work said they would certainly send something over to me by today, but they hadn't sent it. The rest of the evening I just went on the pinternet.

Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese sandwich; cherry tomatoes; grapes; slice of angel layer cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Sausages; mashed potato; baked beans. Pudding was Mackies normal and honeycomb ice cream. Coffee.

Sunday 4 May 2008

It's been a bad day. Please don't take a picture.

Well actually a bad spleen-kend. Yesterday morning I found Apache wouldn't start, and spent the morning trying to get it to work again. After finally fixing it (I think I had some bad info in my windows hosts file that was breaking it) I tried to get it set up the same as my webhost's server. The first thing (and only thing) I tried to change was my webhost runs php as cgi, whilst my setup (xampp) runs it as an apache module. I took ages trying to get php to run as cgi on my comp, eventually I did get it run, but only for the whole server, not just for one of the virtual servers. My webhost also has lots of configuration options, including one that means you don't need a shebang line at the top of each php script. I couldn't find how to add these configuration options so I just put the settings back how they were before, with php running as an apache module.

So I spent most of yesterday doing that. I also spent probably a couple of hours trying to find out how to put my HiViz high speed flash trigger together, only to find out (after the couple of hours) that HiViz have detailed step by step instructions on their website. Not sure how I missed that before.

Today went to Church in the morning, but Maccy P couldnae go because he has a bad cold and if he went to church someone might catch it and die (because most people at church are really old and frail). I meant to buy some Maccy's ice cream from co-op on the way home from church (is on special offer at the moment), but I forgot to bring any money.

After church I tried setting up my nodal ninja, it looked like I had found the No Parallax Point when taking pics out the window, but when taking an actual pano there were still quite a few stitching errors. I tried again without the zenith and nadir, the stitch was quite a bit better, but each pic was still a few px out. I tried with the camera position back a mm or so and forward a mm or so, but the parallax was still the same. My nodal ninja's bottom rail is slightly bent, so I think this may be causing the problem. I mounted the nodal ninja directly to the tripod and the camera directly to the nodal ninja (I removed the Kirk QR clamp I was using on the Nodal Ninja upper rail previously).

I also found that my remote shutter release cable wasn't working properly, I think it must have a break in the wire like my last one (also from ebay) developed.

I had a look at the 360 precision website as I'd really like a 360precision adjuste to replace my bent nodal ninja, but they are so expensive! £600 +VAT! They are doing a trade in until the end of May, £95 off if you send them your old nodal ninja. So this would make it about £600 inc. VAT, still massively expensive, although could also be massively time saving. Thing is, I'm still not sure how many panos I will be shooting when the weather gets better (which it is), how much PP will be required with them, or whether I will be mainly shooting tripod or monopod (no point paying for a panohead setup for batch stitching if you're not using a tripod).

After doing this, Maccy P had a bug in his room, so I went to take a photo of it, but my flash (SB800) would nae switch on. I tried for a few minutes using different batteries and trying different things to get it to work. It did switch on once, but then I switched it off and couldn't get
it to switch on again. So after tea, I looked into how to get it repaired. I got the box from the garage and went on the Nikon website and downloaded their repair request form and started filling it out. It said they need a receipt so I looked through all my printed receipts, it wasn't there. Then I went through all my paypal transactions from Jan 08 to Aug 07 to find the transaction. Eventually I found it and printed it out. Then I looked at the actual warranty card for the flash (which I bought off ebay) and it said the warranty was for USA only, no wonder it was so cheap.

Then I remembered that actually I didn't know which flash it was that was broken. If it was my other flash it would be out of warranty anyway (or have a Hong Kong warranty), so I decided I'd just have to pay to get it fixed. From the Nikon website, they list authorised repairers, Fixation UK had easy to follow info on their website, said they repair nikon flashes and looked like they offered good service so I printed off the repair form from their website and packed up the flash to send it off to them for a quote (and repair assuming the quote is less than the cost of a new flash which is highly likely).

So I wasted yesterday (and today really) doing nothing. I need to buy a new remote shutter release, postage and repair costs for the flash, and possibly a new (very expensive) panoramic head! And I just spent loads of money the other day on a macro flash bracket, and haven't had much paid work to do in the last month (from 15th April) either. Ah well...

Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chilli con carne; rice; slice of French bread with butter. Pudding was neapolitan ice cream with wafers. Cookie, coffee.
Tea: Slice of French bread with butter; slice of French bread with butter and cheddar cheese; Slice of farmhouse fruitcake; Caramel Rocky; Banana; cup o' tea.

Friday 2 May 2008

Spent sum(money)

This morning I was Barney McGroo (due) to go to my passport interview, but they said on HFM that there was a signal problem between Wellingborough and Bedford and the trains were either going to be very delayed or cancelled. Then an electric check bloke came about 9am to check the electrics so we had to switch everything off.

On HFM they said Midland Mainline had told them that people shouldn't try to travel by train today unless absolutely necessary, so since the electricity was off so I couldn't check whether the trains were being cancelled or not, I decided to phone the passport perks and re-schedule the interview. They said they would cancel the pinterview today, but said you can't book a new one until 24 hrs later so I should phone again tomorrow - annoy-chee.

While I was waiting for the electricity bloke to finish dishwasher cleaner I just sat in the front room and read my Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife trust magazine I got yesterday. When we got the electricity back on I put HFM on again and they said that all the trains were cancelled so I was glad I did cancel the pinterview.

Totally annoy-chee how on the day I actually need to use the trains they be cancelled. I listen to HFM everyday and they have the train reports throughout the day everyday, and there haven't been any problems for age-chee until today.

I received my Miranda 24mm f/2.8 lens in olympus OM mount, which I bought off ebay recently, so I tried that out reversed on the camera. You have to pull a little lever on the mount of the lens to make it stop down, so this means you can't really have one hand to hold a flash and one hand to stop the lens down and one hand to hold the camera and press the shutter. So I looked on the pinternet for reverse lens advice and read some general macro tips. After a while I eventually found the website/blog of the guy from the DPReview Nikon forums who inspired me to buy a 24mm lens for reverse mounting. He uses a bit of milkjug and the popup flash. So I got an old milk bottle, cut it up and made it like how he has his. I did a couple test shots indoors and it worked fine. However, when I went outside to take photos of spiders/flies it didn't work.

So I decided that I really need to get a macro bracket. I did some more research on these and came back to the same conclusion as I did when I was researching macro flash brackets before - the Wimberley F-2 Macro Flash Bracket seems to be the most flexible (since I am using variety of different sized lenses and also may switch to Canon in the future).

After getting Ben from school, I looked at the costs for the Wimblerley macro flash bracket for quite a while, looking at the costs from the US and also Europe (which hopefully would mean I wouldn't have to pay extra VAT when importing). The cheapest I could find was about £140-£150, either direct from Wimberley in the US or from a dealer listed on Wimberley's website who are based in the Netherlands. Quite a few retailers listed on Wimberley's website, including the UK dealer didn't seem to have the macro flash bracket for sale.

However I later came across the UK dealer's site again when doing a google search for Wimberley Macro, and it came up with a page that I didn't see when browsing their site before. They didn't have the macro flash bracket listed, but they did have Module #1 and Module #4 that the Macro flash bracket is made from (luckily Wimberley's site tells you this). So I ordered both those parts from the UK dealer, worked out about £130, so slightly cheaper and no need to worry about currency conversion rates or tax/customs fees.

I just ordered the one bracket for the moment, which I intend to use to get the flash with a mini softbox style attachment above the subject. If it works well and I think I could do with another flash, then I can buy another one. I think I'd also need an extra plate for both the arms to grab onto if I had 2, the extra plate is another £70 or so! Anyway, one arm will hopefully do for now and still works out quite a bit cheaper than Nikon or Canon's close-up flash systems, and will work on any camera model.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Elevenses: American style chocolate brownie; coffee.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; satsuma; grapes; slice of all butter madeira cake; caramel rocky; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Roast lamb; mint sauce; gravy; potatoes; peas. Pudding was swiss roll; custard; peach slices. Coffee. Clare kindly gave me some easter egg chocolate from an easter egg she hadnae eaten yet.