I made some biscuits aka cookies the other night. It turned into an episode of the Great British Bake Off with the sampling, the analysing, the dissecting both in terms of the actual product and the discussion, but it was good fun, albeing fattening fun.   Fatteningly fine fun. Naturally, I indulged in too many, along with huge amounts of the uncooked mixture, oh the joy. The only thing, of course, is that you can’t really go and re-do the biscuits if they're a disaster after you’ve spent all the time, all the mess-making (oh, the mess-making), and the money to buy all the ingredients. Especially at ten o'clock at night when you're taking them to work the next day for a Bake Sale. However, praise be, they were fine. Absolutely fine. The recipe, replicated below, is for them: Peanut cookies. The only thing I did differently was add chocolate chips to them, as one does when one can. Also, I had normal peanuts that I roasted in the oven for a bit and rubbed most of t

I found this Irish poem, The scholar and his cat , in a book on Celtic wisdom, author unknown. Billie! There seem to be different versions and I won't reproduce the whole poem , but some of the verses I do rather like. Notice the picture of one of my cats, Billie, is as far off catching mice as you can get... I and Pangur Ban, my cat, 'Tis like a task, we are at; Hunting mice is his delight Hunting words, I sit all night. So in peace our tasks we ply Pangur Ban, my cat and I; In our arts we find our bliss I have mine and he has his Practice every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade; I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light.

My love affair with Jack Reacher has come to a bit of a halt. I am discovering that binge reading  Reacher doesn't work for me. Slowly does it, is the way to go, with Mr Child's creation,  so he's on hold for a bit. However, in the meantime... I was chatting to a man the other day who was researching a paper on the late British/Aussie author, Nevil Shute , and I recall reading Shute's "On the Beach" some years ago. So I searched the library catalogue. The book "Pied Piper" took my fancy so I got it out and 24 hours later, on the bus, in my lunch breaks, on the bus again, and at home when I should have been doing actual writing of a romance novel, I have devoured and finished this wonderful story.  It is set soon after the beginning of the Second World War, and is the story of an Englishman, John Howard, who is in France when the German army is advancing.  His pilot son has died and, grieving, Howard heads over to do some holiday fishing, not