Kind: Notes

When you love Jesus but you're sick of Him blocking your driveway.

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Orange garage on a tropical hillside, on the front of which are painted the words: 'Jesus is Lord. I love him.' And then below and between those lines: 'No parking'.

This is funny, but I'm confident Wrexham's potholes have nothing on the Trinbagonian ones I've been experiencing all week, which have sometimes spanned most of the width of a road or been deep enough that dipping a wheel into them would strike the road with your underchassis!

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Humorous handmade road sign welcoming visitors to Wrexham as 'Pothole Land', stating that there are 'two kilometres of award-winning potholes with very little actual road to spoil your fun' and guaranteeing 'the deepest, longest, vs widest potholes in Wales'.

After driving 300 (vertical) metres up a terrifyingly winding road, we find ourself at 'Top if the World', one of Tobago's highest points. Being able to look down the steep sides of this long-extinct volcano to the sea on both sides is quite spectacular, and the Caribbean and Atlantic horizons seem so far away that you can almost believe you're seeing the Earth curve.

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Tropical cliff view to a bright blue ocean far below.

My camera fails to do this view justice.

The Nylon Pool is a sandbar in the Buccoo Reef, off the coast of Tobago. Despite the distance from the shore, it's only about waist-deep. Truly mind-boggling.

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Dan stands waist-deep in seawater; land is visible in the far distance.

Came half way around the world to find a surprising boat with a non-English name I understand.

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Small six-seater day boat named 'Cariad', afloat. The letter I is dotted with a heart symbol.

("Cariad" is Welsh for "love")

A couple of hours into our ferry journey, we just got our first glimpse of the island of Tobago, where we'll be staying for the next few days.

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Across the sea, a rugged island begins to emerge over the horizon, through distant clouds.

Just visited the Logos Hope, an ocean-going, volunteer-staffed floating book fair (run by a Christian charity, but it's not-TOO-religiousy inside, if that's not your jam) that's coincidentally docked for a fortnight right next door to my hotel on Trinidad!

What a strange concept. Fun diversion though.

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White and blue passenger ship docked alongside a building whose roof reads 'Welcome to Port of Spain'.

My 12:55 flight is, according to this departure board, delayed to... 12:55!?

Either it's running a full 24 hours late, or this board is untrustworthy.

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Airport departures board, showing (among other flights) the 12:55 to Port of Spain is 'Delayed to 12:55'.

Except to children, I don't really give Christmas presents to (or expect to receive them from) others any more.

But that didn't stop my buying myself a gift of a particularly fun Lego set to build over the festive period (with a little help from the eldest child!).

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Lego model of a Tallneck from videogame Horizon: Zero Dawn/Forbidden West, with minifigure of protagonist Aloy standing atop its head.

I'm pretty impressed with running WordPress on Caddy so far.

It took a little jiggerypokery to configure it with an equivalent of the Nginx configuration I use for DanQ.me. But off the back of it I get the capability for HTTP/3, 103 Early Hints, and built-in "batteries included" infrastructure for things like certificate renewal and log rotation.

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Browser network debugger showing danq.me being served over protocol 'h3' (HTTP/3) and an 'Early Hints Headers' section loading a WOFF2 font and a JavaScript file.

(why yes, I am celebrating my birthday by doing selfhosting server configuration, why do you ask? 😅)

Compared to the children, the dog is Not So Impressed by the deep snowfall we've just received. To be fair, it's basically up to get armpits!

(leg-pits? I don't know what the right word is for a canine!)

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A French Bulldog up to the top of her legs in deep snow.

I'm staying in a lodge in the Yorkshire Dales National Park to celebrate the eldest kid's birthday and we've just received a huge dump of snow, overnight. What was grass is now a thick white carpet of fresh powder. Sounds like a great birthday present for an excited kid I can just hear beginning to wake up...

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Snow- covered meadow, uh a fence running through it, with snowy winter woods beyond.

Our family tradition on New Year's Day is to go to the Rollright Stones. Legend has it that you can't count the standing stones and get the same answer twice.

This year the younger child counted 37, the elder 67... so wide a difference that you can see how one might ascribe a mystical reason!

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A stone circle in the rain. Some people (and a dog) are walking around it.

This evening I used leftover cocktail sausages to make teeny-tiny toads-in-the-hole (my kids say they should be called frogs-in-the-dip).

It worked out pretty well.

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A pyramid of four bite-sized toads-in-the-hole alongside chive mash and carrots, smothered in gravy, on a plate.

Micro-recipe:

1. Bake cocktail sausages (or veggie sausages, pictured) until barely done.
2. Meanwhile, make a batter (per every 6 sausages: use 50ml milk, 50g plain flour, 1 egg, pinch of salt).
3. Remove sausages from oven, then turn up to 220C.
4. Put a teaspoon of a high-temperature oil (e.g. vegetable, sunflower) into each pit of a cake/muffin tin, return to oven until almost at smoke point.
5. Add a sausage or two to each pit and return to the oven for a couple of minutes to come back up to temperature.
6. Add batter to each pit. It ought to sizzle when it hits the oil, if it's hot enough. Return to the oven.
7. Remove when puffed-up and crisp. Serve with gravy and your favourite comfort food accompaniments.