Joffe’s book of the week is a cracker, a  brand-new crime thriller from bestselling author David Hodges — WATCHER ON THE LEVELS, the latest thriller featuring detective Kate Hamblin, which is out now for the special launch price of just £0.99 | $0.99*.

Sunbathing on the beach in Mexico, detective Kate Hamblin receives a disturbing text message. Is someone watching her? Kate is relieved to escape the unwelcome attention and return home. But back in Somerset, she reaches into her coat pocket and finds a scrawled message: See You Soon, Kate.  Has her stalker followed her home . . . ? Now we chew our nails, get ready to turn the pages, quickly.

OUT NOW — JUST £0.99 | $0.99

Detective Matt Ballard FENLAND MYSTERIES books 1-3 by Joy Ellis

A GREAT-VALUE BOX SET OF BESTSELLING CRIME FICTION. Discover the author who’s sold over three million books globally. Nominated for Crime and Thriller Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.

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Detective Jack Dawes by Frances Lloyd

A FANTASTIC-VALUE BOX SET OF FIVE GIRPPING MYSTERIES.   Detective Inspector Jack Dawes, tall and handsome, looks like the fuzz even when he’s off-duty.

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The Rose Bowl by Judy Gardiner JUST £0.99 | $0.99 

A SPELLBINDING HISTORICAL SAGA FROM A BELOVED AUTHOR. 

Set among the willows and water meadows of Suffolk, this historical tale tells the story of perseverance and finding the courage to love unreservedly.

Fans of Lucinda Riley, Rhys Bowen, Tania Crosse and Chrissie Walsh will be captivated.

NEWS

Don’t know about you, but I’d like to learn more about David Hodges …

So, let’s see if he can describe his novel in just three words. 

Game of death.

Which author would you most like to have dinner with?

Lee Child (for his Jack Reacher novels) or my old friend, the late Colin Dexter.

Who would you pick to play the main characters from your novels?

Rose Leslie (from Game of Thrones) as Kate Hamblin/Lewis and Brendan Gleeson (from Banshees of Inisherin) as Hayden Lewis.

I first watched Rose Leslie in Game of Thrones and immediately saw her as my key character, Kate, in the way she played the dynamic, sexy and forceful wilding, Ygritte. As such, she is the perfect fit for Kate.

Brendan Gleeson for the way he looked in Banshees of Inisherin — his untidy appearance and his moody, brooding nature — was Hayden to a T. The only slight issue would be his Irish accent, as Hayden is a posh, articulate character like Boris Johnson (on whom I originally based him).

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve had to research for a book?

Research into poisonous spiders (which I hate) for the novel Venom On The Levels. In particular, the Brazilian Wandering Spider was certainly interesting!

What are you currently reading and watching?

Reading = Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly.

Watching = Poirot on ITV3.

Of course there are many more wonderful novels available from Joffe Books. Find out more HERE

A short week at the CCA but a busy one, so let’s get started. Grinders removed the concrete from the external wall ready for the repointing.   At eight on the dot the lads arrived to re-point the wall. It’s a big one, so it wasn’t to be a quick job, but David and Chris set too as though “The Great Wall of Brady Square” was nothing. Then came the rain, so out came the plastic sheeting which needed to be held down with sandbags.

Dyno-Rod arrived to put the cameras down the drains, for a full survey, and all was well. They just need a good clean out. So the CCA are waiting for … another quote. So what’s new. 

JLA came to assess the electrical work which is yet to be completed, Richard, the CCA’s lovely surveyor met Gary from ACT, who popped in to tell CCA that the scaffolding is due to come down Monday next week. Marion is delighted, because now the windows can be cleaned, inside and out.

Blinds are being fitted Thursday of the coming week; and it really does seem as though everything is all starting to come together.Tthough, as with all such projects, there is still a little more to do. Wonderfully,  another delivery of hats for the Sea-farers arrived and the team is still in awe of the kindness of the  community.

Brian Mason, has been steadily working on the CCA’s new signage though it’s not quite ready, but the team is enormously grateful for the push, pull signs Brian has made and which are placed on the swing doors. In fact, Marion insisted to Margaret that Brian is a star. Heavens, high praise indeed. 

Cultural Creatives are starting their courses this week: ten weeks every Wednesday and an eight-week course every Thursday. The girls were amazed when they came in and saw how much progress had been made since their last visit.

Aimee and her dancers are taking the opportunity to get some extra practice in while on school holidays, and before Aimee jets off to Benidorm for a Hen Party. Benidorm, yes Benidorm. Margaret wonders if we should warn Benidorm. Marion told her not to be a party pooper. 

Phil and Dean are here to plaster the internal side of the door that was blocked up. It will be painted  when dry and then the CCA will have a  computer room up and running.

Marion and the team have quite a photographic gallery along the walls: framed photos of the many who have been involved in the project, with people strolling down the corridor to see who is up, and looking for themselves. As Marion said, ”Let’s hope we don’t offend anyone, it is not intentional, we are working through a multitude of pictures that bring happy memories of our journey together.’ 

Friday is the CCA’s free coffee morning with prize bingo, pies, cakes, cream scones and much more. ‘The chit chat is amazing,’ says Marion. ‘It is always a reminiscence session which we love, takes us back to childhood days in good old Brady Square, a bit of nostalgia, hide and seek until dark, conkers, penny sweets and picnics with jam butties and a bottle of water to share among us all. Happy days.’

Margaret and Dick turned up to join in the chat on Friday. Margaret had some photos of her mum, Annie Newsome, and her Uncle Stan and Auntie Isobel. One of which was of Uncle Stan in his arab headress. It was taken, Margaret thought, in the war when Stan was stationed in North Africa. ‘Mum always said she thought Stan imagined he looked like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia! It always made her giggle. 

Margaret chatted to Geoff Millington, who initiated the original mural painted by the children of the then Biddick Primary School in 1983. Geoff (shown with the CCA print, hanging in the Brady Square Room) has promised to write the story of the mural in more detail and the CCA cannot wait. While chatting to Margaret, Geoff realised that sitting nearby was the mother of one of the children, so off the pair of them went, recapturing memories. Frost Magazine was thrilled to see the magic of the the Columbia Community Association in action. How hard the team have worked to reawaken the centre to provide a central meeting place. Applause please. 

Everyone clearly had a great time at the coffee morning, including Margaret and Dick who were thrilled to be back, and to be guzzling lemon drizzle cake. Such a shame they had to nip off before the bingo, with its fabulous boxes of Thorntons for the winners. Why? They had to snatch some fish n chips then dash home or two small dogs would sulk for eternity, as they would accuse ‘the grown ups’  of being away ‘forever’. Margaret and Dick will be back in a few weeks, to listen to memories of Brady Square, and try to gather them together to be kept at the CCA for all to read, and maybe others will add their own. How great that would be. 

Information: Columbia Community Association  Columbia uk Community Forum

Memories of Brady Square

‘Ere we go, off the starting block with MBC children’s ceramics. The children were soon busy creating  ceramic egg cups, which are very suitable for painted hard boiled eggs. ‘Do you remember how kids like us, says Margaret, ‘painted hard boiled eggs, then popped them into egg cups?’  All the egg cups were wonderful, so the children deserved the boxes of lunch sandwiches dropped off by Andrew Leach.

ACT came and decorated, and also fitted the sky light. Apparently it’s a lot lighter in the corridor with the new sky light in place, while the ever cheerful  Davey assessed preparations for the Loft ladder due to be fitted any minute now. Oh, by the way, Red Shoes Bob reckons he can hide up there. ‘No way,’ came the cry from Marion. ‘There’s no hiding place for you, Matey.’ Be afraid Bob, very afraid.

Marion advertised for photo frames and low and behold the CCA have had an amazing donation from the lovely Lorna to get them started on their mission. These were followed by Harry, Jeane and Gillians’ donations. What would we do without social media on these cocasions?

Aimee and her wonderful dancers did amazingly well at the weekend, when they attended the Karen Llewellyn Comp and once again came away with an array of prizes in all categories. Everyone is so very proud of you all.

Arthur, the decorator’s wife sent a handmade gift, which the team thought was, ‘Lovely and thoughtful of her, people are so kind,‘ said Marion.

Clean and Green are in the area doing a wonderful job and were welcome to use the CCA’s  facilities, on the basis that ‘It’s all about community lending a hand and working as a team. Our very own Dianne lent a hand, for the photo shoot anyway,‘ said Marion.

Brickies arrived, to brick up an external door to the computer room, leaving internal access only. Everyone is very security conscious at the CCA, safety first every time. Next week the grinder will be here removing concrete from the outside wall, ‘Out with the old and in with the new.’ says Marion, briskly, a glint in her eye. Perhaps you should hide in the loft after all, Red Shoes Bob!?

JLA are scheduled for the coming  week, assessing what electrical work is left  – heavens – that should be it for the electrics.  Then the CCA had a visit from their  surveyor Richard. Everyone was so pleased to see he had recovered from a broken foot and what’s more, he was over the moon with the progress and left a happy man.

Yvonne called in with a huge bag of Seahouses shells for a display that has been created in the toilet, which  looks fab. The team have run some pictures off Sponge Bob Square pants for the little people’s loo, they even have their own reachable hand towel dispenser which the kiddie winkles think it’s great.

The Forever Young ladies had an Easter Buffet with  goodies galore, and although the CCA is closed for business on Good Friday, the team have decided that this will be an excellent opportunity to hang some pictures in the newly decorated Cross Streets room. The team are determined to re-create the journey they have travelled, however, there is still a way to go and if your picture is not yet printed don’t panic, the team are sure it will appear through time.

Talking of time, here we all are in the midst of Easter, which is Margaret Graham’s  favourite time,  and she and Frost Magazine join everyone of her friends  at Columbia Community Association in sending warmest wishes for a peaceful EASTER and may the next few days be filled with joy, happiness and sunshine.

Information: Columbia Community Association  Columbia uk Community Forum

Memories of Brady Square

A powerhouse business laptop with portability

As with all of the Lenovo Thinkpad range, they are aiming for a certain type of market; the discerning business consumer, those that are looking for office type machines, packaged in portability and ‘set yourself up anywhere’ approaches.  The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is expensive in terms of core components but then it’s meant to be. 32GB of RAM as standard; almost 4x as much as the average consumer who tends to have just 8GB puts it in the territory of users who demand an exceptional degree of power, think creative industries such as sports photographers, architects and designers, think special effects implementers think those utilising the 360 market.

What else does that price get you besides the power? There are so many areas. I could talk about the size of the machine; it still has a remarkably small footprint. The weight of it, barely 1.17kg yet balanced. The material used to make up the body; a mix of magnesium alloy, for the lid and carbon fibre-reinforced for the keyboard plate all give it this polished look.

Out of the box, it looks slick and refined. Compared to other laptops I have tested in the past; you just get this feeling that this is premiership quality. Connectivity wise the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 affords two ultra-fast USB-C Thunderbolt 4 sockets, one of which would normally be occupied by the power connector. Then there are two USB-A connectors, a full-size HDMI, and in models with mobile Internet, a Sim tray. According to Lenovo, HDMI only supports 4K/60 output, so it’s not HDMI 2.1 in terms of output but let’s be honest that is hardly problematic. The Carbon Gen 10 features a 1080p software rich webcam. The screen can dim if you walk away, and there’s an IR emitter for secure face unlock. Nice.

A week into use and I am still enjoying using the keyboard. The depth of the keys doesn’t feel tremendously deep but the keypresses feel sturdy and satisfactory as does the mouse pad and buttons. There is not separate number pad here but you don’t tend to find them on the 14 inch laptops anyway. Keys are well backlit in lowlight conditions and like most of the Thinkpads it has a TrackPoint; a red button in-between the keys which acts like a sort of mouse, although it has to be said, takes some getting used to.

Visuals

I found the X1 Carbon Gen 10’s screen to be very good. My model was the 14-inch 2880 x 1800 OLED display. It gave great colour, with fantastic contrast although I understand that is not the bog standard model. The laptop when fully opened lies completely flat on the surface, affording a maximum viewing range and making it even more compatible for those perhaps wanting to use a separate keyboard. Another thing that has to be said is great is the sound. Two speakers either side of the keyboard take great pleasure in taking care of the stereo meaning that presentations, movies, games and do I say meetings have a great level of sound quality.

Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10:

Testing of the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon Gen10 was carried out with UserBenchmark software using their freely available speed test tool tests. The software not only tests each component such as graphics cards and processing chips individually but compares the results to other users with the same and similar components. This provides the extra benefit of being able to size up a machine, identify hardware problems and explore the best upgrades. The machine I reviewed is a very high-end spec, with 32GB RAM, an Intel Core i7-1260P CPU and 1TB SSD. This spec is high level and perhaps more than what is required for most people users looking to buy a laptop this portable and light. That amount of RAM also limits the number of competitors which could be be taken in comparison as bar just a couple (the Macbook’s, the enhanced versions of Dell’s and the HP’s) most will have lower RAM.

Areas Of Excel

This machine cleared the testing as you would expect. 32GB of RAM demolished every computing task set before it with ease, this included RAW photos and fast rendering times of 4K video used in both Adobe Premiere and After Effects software, the only two machines to beat it in terms of processing was the Dell XPS 15 (2022) and the HP Envy 16, the latter of which other reviewers have noted has a higher depreciation rate owing to the way the chips and processing power is configured within the system. It also handled most games although these were at normal, not enhanced settings. This should be expected; it is after all, not a dedicated gamers machine and is suited towards the business consumer with the needs of a casual gamers requirements being met as an added bonus.

Power consumption was average in the testing’s. The ThinkPad Carbon lasting nine hours off a single charge. Not as much as I would have liked, especially given that over time battery life tends to shorten with the age of the technology but for the business consumer this is not a dealbreaker and is more than enough to last most journeys and meetings combined before a recharge is required.

FINAL Verdict: A very capable machine

The ThinkPad series continues with the trend of delivering a premium quality at a requisite price tag, Here you have an ultra-transportable PC that appears delivers on power, prowess and is best for its desired market, that of commercial and enterprise staff who will require power on the go. Whilst you might spend more on a MacBook Pro, or a MacBook Air in in terms of purpose, the layout and power of the Thinkpad Carbon 10 puts it in a very similar league and with the connectivity that means it is slightly more mainstream.

There’s a lot here to like and love and for that it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars

A stunning looking machine, that combines power and portability but falls short on connectivity.

I have to say straight off the bat that there is so much to love about this machine, there really is. Opening up the box the first thing that hits you is the curves, curves, curves and more curves; it seems like any sharp 90 degree angle they wanted to smoothen and soften it, and it gives you this real prestige feeling; the feeling you get when someone pays attention to detail. The smooth curves  extend to the Bezel which houses the webcam. The second thing that hit me was the lightweight of it. Holding it in my palm it felt light, balanced, but not flimsy.

Looking at its size, It is undeniable what market this ThinkPad is aimed at. At 0.55 by 11.59 by 7.86 inches (HWD), it’s similar in dimensions to the Dell XPS 13 Plus (0.6 by 11.63 by 7.84 inches) and the Apple MacBook Air (0.44 by 11.97 by 8.46 inches), it’s a market for those that crave a powerhouse on the go. This is further evidenced by the designs available, the all-metal aluminum construction version or the discerning vegan leather edition. It’s also evidenced by its price; the bog standard 16gb ram edition arrives at a near £2k price point. Put simply, this is a laptop geared at people in business, where time is money and money is time.

Connectivity

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Trackpad

OK so I have to get this out of the way, one of my biggest disappointments with this machine was the lack of connectivity on the machines. I appreciate that what Lenovo is trying to do here is challenge the Dells and the Apple Macbooks; limiting the connections space probably to keep the the speed and size of the machine compete against its rivals, but to only have two USB-C connectors (that’s right they are the only connectors you have) is just absolutely terrible. Remember back in those days when the Macbooks were relatively new, where you turn up at a training course or meeting and there would be the one person who had one but they needed completely different wires and leads to everyone else? Do you remember what a headache it became and sometimes you would have to make do and watch it off their laptop because they wanted to be different. Yes you get that type of feeling. Out of the box, if you don’t have a multiport adapter you cannot even run a third party mouse with this.  There is no USB, HDMI, or even a card reader. Fine, you can get an adaptor but that costs and you have to carry it as well, which kind of well adds to what you’re carrying which beats the idea of having a laptop in the first place if you have to pitch up with more stuff on the train and in the meeting spaces that would expect to use it.

Visuals

The laptop’s display very good, It houses 13.3-inch IPS panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The slimness of the screen and its surrounding frame is also impressive, the laptop has a 91.6% screen-to-body ratio, and the quality of the visuals is great. Colours are vibrant and bright, contrast making details pop, and the laptop has great wide viewing angles.

On the top of the display is a bump that Lenovo Communications calls a bar. This is a prominent housing for a Full HD webcam with an electronic shutter and his IR capabilities for facial recognition. Next to it are two microphones with Dolby Voice noise cancellation to filter out unwanted ambient noise. While the Z13 serves a definite purpose when open, the bar also has a handy lip that easily opens and closes the slim laptop.

Usability

Almost into a week in using it and it has to be said that typing on the keyboard is a lot of fun. The keys have some base lighting which helps in darker conditions and I found that the keytrokes aren’t very deep, which is probrably down to the slim nature of the machine but each key is well separated out. Lenovo have this thing and the full-size keyboard layout is comfortable to type on.There’s also a fingerprint reader lock for basic biometric security. For those familiar with think pads, Lenovo has developed the TrackPoint; a red button in-between the keys which acts like a mouse, although it has to be said takes some getting used to. Here they have added a new double-tap feature that brings up a range of tools including adjusting camera settings, muting the mic, and even a tool to transcribe speech right into a document. All very good.

Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13:

Testing of the Lenovo ThinkPad was carried out with UserBenchmark software using their freely available speed test tool tests. The software not only tests each component such as graphics cards and processing chips individually but compares the results to other users with the same and similar components. This provides the extra benefit of being able to size up a machine, identify hardware problems and explore the best upgrades. My review unit was equipped with the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U processor and integrated Radeon 680M graphics, paired with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid-state drive for storage. For benchmark comparisons, I compared the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 with other premium 13-and 14-inch laptops. Among those are top models like the Apple MacBook Air (2022, M2) and Dell XPS 13 Plus, two of the best high-end thin-and-lights on the market. For a side by side comparison I also looked at the business-oriented Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10.

Areas of Excel

The ThinkPad Z13 pits its AMD Ryzen 7 Pro processor against the Core i7 CPUs used in most competing systems and Apple`s M2 processor, making it an interesting alternative to most laptops in this price range. But as Intel and Apple move toward architectures that attempt to balance performance with efficiency by using a mix of different processing cores, AMD sticks to the more traditional approach, with every processing core equally yoked for different tasks. The result is a mix of leading scores in tests like PCMark and Cinebench, but the ThinkPad Z13 lands in the middle of the pack in tests. Not being the best but not being the worst. I found the overall performance to still be incredibly fast and this makes it extremely competitive, the 16GB of RAM delivering pure power when it came to resource heavy tasks.  Complex video and photo editing tasks were not a problem, even some FX files and Adobe After-effects at HD levels were handled with ease, which easily matched the performance of other premium ultra portables. Moving into the UHD level though did slow the machine down in terms of rendering times. Here the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 with its 32GB RAM outstripped the competition with only the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio left as its competitor but given that these are different machines in terms of the processing power it’s not the one-to-one comparison that you would usually benchmark against.

Another area where the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 stands out was in the battery test, astonishingly the thin, small laptop lasted nearly 18 hours on a single charge. This easily outperformed its competitors, and here the USB-C brought an added bonus, as the battery supports fast charging, which means you can quickly recharge when you need to. In comparison against the MacBook I found the display to also be brighter and with a wider viewing angle too, this beats its competitors, especially given the size of the machine. That’s impressive.

FINAL Verdict: Premium Price with Premium Performance

I have to be honest, these are tough times for a consumer, regardless of where you are, everyone is looking to cut costs and make savings. The Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 is proud not to be the cheapest out there. BUT, if you are in the market looking for premium ultraportable space and most importantly, power, the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 vindicates the real truth that you what you pay for. It easily competes with the best of the best. Its size, its shape, its design is impressive, and the AMD-powered system has performance that’s delivers. At well under 3 pounds, with nearly 18 hours of battery life, the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 is a powerhouse, and if you can look past the lack of connectivity is an ultraportable laptop, with fantastic performance to go with it. In terms of the score, it’s a solid 4 out of 5 just missing out on the top score owing to the lack of connections and optical drives.