Sunday 27 May 2018

Parrots with rhythm...

Here is something for a wet Sunday. Enjoy!

Tuesday 22 May 2018

If you have ever felt the death penalty is justified...

...do watch this gruelling BBC documentary. Made in the eighties, it follows a young man through the
last fourteen days of his life, leading up to his execution in the gas chamber of Mississippi's Death Row (he was later proved to be innocent). This film shows the sheer brutality of his execution, and the dreadful punishment it inflicted on him, his family and the officers around him who believed in his innocence. Please watch it if you can spare the time. I saw it when it came out, and have just watched it again, and I have rarely been so moved or so enraged by a documentary.

Monday 21 May 2018

God is like the royal family...


...in that if you don't believe in/support him, you don't have to have anything to do with him. And yet people continue to knock them both.

As a supporter of both, I simply don't get it. I know at least two people who are so strongly atheist that they have to keep mentioning it. Why? They need to get over themselves. You don't believe in
God. I get it. Now let's talk about something else.

Ditto the royal family. As anti-royalist friends disappeared with their picnic lunch to find a "wedding free zone" on Saturday, muttering darkly about the expense etc.etc., we settled down to a glorious wedding fest with a neighbour and a bottle of Prosecco. And we loved every minute. The bride, that Dress, the groom, the horses, the wonderfully dignified and beautiful mother of the bride...it was all superb. Apparently our royal family cost us each fifty pence a year, and simple souls like us get so much pleasure from occasions such as that wedding. Anti royalists, you can switch off your sets and go on your picnics. Let the rest of us have our bit of Brexit free fun!

Tuesday 8 May 2018

A book and a pair of royal blue knickers

I know I've been banging on about my books, but needs must. I'm terrible at publicity, but just in case anyone reading this (a) is interested and (b) hasn't read this book, it's out in its new edition on Thursday (cue trumpet voluntary).

A bit about the book*. It started off with leaves falling off a tree - no more - and ended up being partly autobiographical (absolutely not intended). I never plan (not good). I'm a seat of the pants writer. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. But I think this is my best novel, and I also think this is because it's partly written from my own experience. The mad mother in the novel is based on my eccentric mum, the bereavement in the middle is based on my own bereavement, and it was my sons who showed me how to blow up cowpats (thanks, boys). As for the royal blue knickers (one reviewer said this couldn't possibly be credible), those were mine.

At school we had to wear navy knickers for PE, but my mother bought me royal blue ones. To this day, I don't know where she found them, but wear them I had to, and I was mortified. I dreamed of navy knickers; of looking like everyone else. And in the end she bought me some sort of navy briefs, which were even worse (PE knickers had to be bloomer rather than brief). But I forgave her, for as I wrote in the dedication, she took me out of school to pick primroses. Who wouldn't love a mother who did that?

So - please buy my book. It's currently still only 99p on Kindle. You can do this by clicking on the image in the side bar. After all, what else can you buy for 99p?

*Previously the Birds, the Bees and Other Secrets