What do you do when you need a break? Spend five hours driving to Manchester, of course!

Yes, that is the kind of logic I employ. It’s a day away from work, to go to a work-related meeting, but a day away from the grind is more than welcomed.

Driving the Polestar 2 a couple of hundred miles is no great hardship, mind. If I had to take my Skoda Fabia that far I’d be suffering from a chronic lack of rear adiposity. The seats were not really up to the job for long distance, and my ankle only lasts so long operating a clutch. Give me electric with adaptive cruise control any day.

I have learned to take battery estimates with a pinch of salt, and view them as a bit of a challenge. 30% at Gloucester? I can stretch it to 48% easy. The integrated Google Maps is a bit pessimistic which is fine most of the time unless you’re trying to squeeze the most possible out of the battery, and avoid public chargers which are far more expensive than home charging (commonly in excess of ten times the rate available on home charging electricity tariffs).

The main challenge to efficiency is other drivers. Stick the cruise control at 70 mph and you’ll be amazed at how many people do 67 and 73, but never 70. That means a lot of lane changing to try and avoid hard deceleration and acceleration. The other challenge is avoiding using all 400 horsepower. Motorway driving isn’t great for range, but I can still manage 300 miles or so on a full charge.

Gloucester services is perfectly positioned at the half way point of the journey to Liverpool and Manchester, and is easily the best choice for atmosphere (not sticky) and food choice. It’s relatively expensive but it’s a pleasant affair, and the sausage rolls are on point. The coffee’s not bad either.

The rest of the journey to Manchester was smooth sailing. My hotel was at the airport, and despite the being utilised by many electric cars, there were only two charging points. A type 2 socket and a 3-pin plug. If you’ve had any experience with electric cars, you’ll be familiar that 3-pin charging is incredibly slow. It’s about a third of the speed of normal home charging, and in some cases a hundredth of the speed of DC fast chargers.

Miraculously one of the charging spots was free (when it wasn’t being occupied by a petrol Range Rover), and I just so happened to have my 3-pin charger to hand.

The advantage of electric charging not being properly organised? It was free! I wasn’t going anywhere during the meeting so a 16 hour charge time wasn’t an issue. I managed to fully charge the car for my return journey.

Bonfire Time

We had a little bonfire night adjacent celebration over the weekend, utilising the guerrilla fire pit built from an old washing machine drum. S’mores were aplenty.

The washing machine drum was the perfect size for the spare kamado grill. I was able to cook on the heat of the embers, using one of my cast iron pans. I fried some seasoned chicken thighs then added sliced pepper and onions. The end result was incredibly tender and flavoursome. There’s something wonderful about cooking outdoors over an open fire. It’s not quite as sophisticated as the kamado, but being able to warm yourself against the biting cold while watching the glow of the embers is soul-enriching. The weather held throughout the whole process (which can’t be said of the next few days).

The remaining chicken thighs were destined to become chicken burgers following a coating of Old Bay Seasoning, then a flour-cornflour batter. The resulting chicken was moist and full of flavour, with a crisp outer coating. The cook time was approximately 5 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. I had learned an important lesson from cooking fried chicken in the past – agitate the pieces when they first enter the hot oil, otherwise they weld themselves to the basket completely and you lose the coating. If you move them about a little then they don’t seem to stick.

The cooking didn’t stop there. I have recently revived my sourdough starter. This one has become quite vigorous and doesn’t seem to impart a particularly sour flavour to the bread. I discovered I had run out of yeast over the weekend, so I thought I might as well try and bake some sourdough. The starter wasn’t very active at this point as it had missed several days of feeding. The starting point for this recipe was the quantities used in the no knead bread rolls I often make. This time I added a generous dollop of starter and kept the remaining proportions of flour to water identical. There wasn’t much rise overnight, but there was some. Once I shaped the dough and put it in a tin, it proved over the next six hours or so. It was a decent sized loaf so needed a longer cooking time (30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, then 15 minutes at 180 degrees in a fan oven).

I held little hope that the bread would rise, but rise it did. I ended up with a country-style loaf that wasn’t at all sour, which on balance I prefer.

Death Stranding 2

I managed to complete the main story of Death Stranding 2 as well. It is a tremendous game and I thoroughly recommend it whether you’ve played the original or not. The conclusion was a love letter to boss battles. Running along the beach while kaiju fight in the background, and an epic hand-to-hand battle with your nemesis. There were so many moments that felt final in the lead up to it, so it was hard to be sure when the real conclusion would come. This is what happens when Hideo Kojima is unrestrained, and it is fantastic. More of this, please.