Sign outside The Rocket pub, near Coventry railway station.

Some photos from this years festival - mainly the parade through Coventry City Centre.

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On our way to the shops this afternoon, we saw someone standing on a patch of grass near the road, feeding the crows. Surely this cannot be a good idea. Feeding pigeons is a bad idea but feeding crows is worse. You really don't want crows to get used to swarming around people, expecting to be fed.

While I was driving home tonight, it was raining heavily. We live near the top of a hill so there was a lot of rainwater flowing down the road. The drainage grids seemed to be at full capacity and there were a lot of deep puddles on the road.

The water from up the hill was flowing down within the drains at such a rate that I saw a fountain of water coming up in the middle of the road, in a similar fashion to an artesian well. The fountain was only about 3-4 inches high but it was an unusual sight. It was far too wet to stop and take a photo.

We ate out at Frankie & Benny's in Coventry tonight. The restaurant was a bit noisy but the food was good. We shared two pizzas: Top - Chicken Caesar Salad. Bottom - Seafood Supreme.
The Seafood Supreme had anchovies, prawns and clams. The other pizza was a chicken pizza topped with tomato and lettuce in a caesar dressing. It was unusual to have a dressed salad on top of a pizza - we have often topped a pizza with a strong leafy salad such as rocket or watercress but we'd not thought of using a dressed salad. It was a surprisingly good combination.

Today has felt a bit like the real start of spring. It has been warm, sunny and dry. This afternoon we found the first quail eggs of the year, one from each hutch. The warmer weather and increasing day length should mean more eggs so hopefully we won't need to buy any more eggs from the supermarket.

The last eggs we bought were actually from a house in the countryside just outside Allesley. They were advertised as fresh eggs rather than the free range we normally buy but we needed eggs and were passing so we thought we'd give them a go instead of stopping at Morrisons on the way home.

Ostara was a one-off open air event which started in Charterhouse Fields before moving to Far Gosford Street. There is some information about it on the Coventry Telegraph website.

We missed the start because we had only just got back from the Thame Country Show. We managed to catch the parade as it crossed Gulson Road towards Far Gosford Street.

It was raining quite heavily while we watched the parade. It is a shame that open air events in Britain so often fall foul of the weather.

The Coventry Beer Festival started last night but we didn't go until the saturday afternoon session. We were a bit disappointed to find that some of the beers had sold out already, such as the elderflower beer, which we would have been interested in trying.

The range of beers was impressive, especially when we realised that we hadn't seem many of them before. A lot of previous beer festivals have had a lot of beers in common but this year the selection of new beers was impressive.

There was also a good selection of ciders and perries and also fruit wines. We finished off with a glass of the sloe wine and the rosehip wine.

I drove down Charter Avenue today, between the A45 and Cannon Park. The last time I drove along it the road surface was pretty bad, with quite a lot of potholes. Today the potholes had spread along most of the road. The freezing weather earlier in the month seems to have taken its toll on the road surface. A lot of roads have suffered but this one seems worse than most.

It started snowing yesterday and by the time we left work there about an inch or so had fallen. The main roads on the way home weren't too bad but our road was very slippery. We live on the side of a hill so I had to drive up very carefully. Even so, I could feel the car wanting to slide sideways.

The road was no better this morning. All the pavements were very icy. I walked into town to take some photos of the city centre in the snow.

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There were a lot of Chinese Lanterns released over Coventry to celebrate the new year. The photo here shows one flying near the full moon.

We were on our way Up North to visit visit family when we needed to nip into Boots to buy a few things. We stopped at Central 6 and struggled to find a parking space. I was lucky enough to find a space at the far end of the car park.

I noticed a huge queue of people on the pavement outside one of the shops. When I got closer it turned out to be people waiting to be allowed into Next. There were bouncers on the door only letting people in when somebody left. I found it rather pathetic that people were so desperate for a 'bargain'. We went to the shops because we needed to buy something, rather than because we felt the need to satisfy some shopaholic craving.

1. At last, over a month after it was delivered, it was time for our recycling bin to be emptied. We filled it a couple of weeks ago and we've got enough new recycling to fill it all over again.

2. There had been a heavy frost overnight. It took a while to defrost the car this morning.

3. On my way to the office this morning, I overheard some women talking. I missed the start of the conversation but I think they were talking about the cold weather. I heard one of them say "But it's not even December yet!".

4. I had lots of spare unripe tomatoes in the fridge so I decided to make some Green Tomato Chutney. I followed one of Keith Floyd's recipes from the BBC website. Chutneys are supposed to improve after a few weeks so I won't sample it yet and give it a chance to mature.

I probably can't blame Friday the 13th but tonights drive home was probably the slowest ever. There had been a crash which closed the M6, causing most of the traffic to divert along local roads. Roads which were normally free-flowing were backed up for miles. It took us a couple of hours to drive the 5 miles home.

Our blue-lidded recycling bin has finally been delivered, although the first collection isn't until the start of December. It will make recycling so much easier. We will be able to dump paper, card, tins, glass and plastic bottles in it. This will be so much easier than having to put everything in the car and drive to a recycling point somewhere.