Mikes weather bits & Photo Blog: Windows 10 slow (?) here's a fix & A mushroom foray to Hardwick Hall

It turns out that Tom Watson the deputy labour leader of the Labour Party who is accused of leading a child abuse witch hunt has opened the cupboard door and an old "family skeleton" has fallen out. His uncle was jailed for child abuse years ago - - -

A pic of the Labour Leader cosying up to Jerry Adams is in the Sunday Telegraph with some astonishing revelations about Corbyn's and the shadow chancellor John McDonnell's links with the IRA - - -
======================================

Time to bang the Windows 10 drum again!! I have to admit to being a fan of the new OS after trying it on Sally's old Toshiba laptop but noticed the other day that something was "amiss" Hitting any of the app buttons or entering any search in the new Edge browser would take ages to produce any response. The old favourite of switch it off and switch it on worked a couple of times but then it would slow down again. Onto Google and search for Windows 10 really slow produces this result

– Open up Control panel

– Type in “Performance” into the search field

– Click “Adjust the appearence and performance of windows”

(or Right-Click on My PC and select Properties)

– Open Advanced tab and click “change” button

– First uncheck “automatically manage paging file size for all drives”
– Then highlight drive your system is installed on
– Select “Custom size” (as shown on picture)
– Set Initial Size and Max Size to the value recommended by windows
– Click “Set” and OK
– Finally Restart your PC and you`re done

Essentially its taking the management of the paging file away from W 10 and setting the suggested minimum and maximum values that the OS will use. I'm not sure why it should work because surely the min max "suggested" values should be what the OS is working with? Anyway it works so going on the old adage "if its not broken dont fix it" ta da - - - result - - - thanks to Robert Russell who's website the link above takes you to - - -

================================================

Having missed the opportunity the other day for a mushroom foray we determined yesterday to do it so drove across to Hardwick Hall yesterday

its a great place for a visit with the palatial hall and its, abandoned predecessor up on the hill but we were more interested in poking around the woods and pastures for mushrooms and fungi

We have a circular walk of about 2 miles and the first part is across rough pasture where we only see a few waxcaps who are passed their best. Turning down into a small forest we notice in the last couple of years the brambles have invaded and its too difficult to walk through looking for the elusive fungi.

Undaunted we approach a long straggly stand of birch/silver birch trees alongside one of the lakes and have had success here before! - - -

There are over 120 of this Russula species but i think this is called the Charcoal Burner

a nice example of the Amanita family a number of which are deadly this one is a Tawny Grissete

everyone's favourite the Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric

another fly agaric just emerging from the grass a number of them had been in the rain and were devoid of the remnants of the veil that produce the "spots"

not sure about this one we didnt want to pull it out of the ground to look at the underside, my guess is its a boletus but i could be wrong

one of the many birch boletus

and a cracking Brown boletus

this tiny oak tree has been visited earlier in the year by the gall wasp and the hole indicates it has been long gone

A bay boletus with possibly snail damage! shows of the classic tubes and pores rather than the gills associated with many mushrooms

not sure what these are

honey fungus on an old tree trunk looking like they have been around for a while

probably the best find of the day Amanita Rubescens commonly known as

The Blusher

its a great place to visit but the only drawback is the M1 is the other side of the trees on the far bank of the lake. Always reminds me of the American tourists comment on seeing the Heathrow bound noisy aircraft flying over Windsor Castle "you'd have thought she would have built it little further away from the airport" - - -

the foray over, we walk past this huge aok which used to have a plaque in front of it indicating it was the largest/oldest tree on the estate. Its upper branches have been cut off to preserve it.

while i eat "lunch" Sally studies the menu but we don't sample the fayre at The Hardwick Inn it was packed to the rafters inside with lunching customers

==============================

here's a grab form the Boris security cam footage after our return from the foray