30th April: Rhubarb

Another French Revolutionary Calendar observance today: Rhubarb. Here are ten facts about rhubarb you may not know:

1. Rhubarb is a member of the buckwheat family (Polygonaceae) and botanically speaking, it’s a vegetable, not a fruit.
2. The word rhubarb comes from the Latin word "rhababarum" which means "root of the babarians." The Romans labelled people who ate rhubarb "barbarians."
3. It originated in Asia and the Chinese used the roots as a laxative. It is mentioned in The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic which is thought to have been compiled about 2,700 years ago.
4. In medieval Europe rhubarb was highly prized and very expensive, due to the cost of transporting it from Asia. It was several times the price of other valuable herbs and spices such as cinnamon, opium, and Saffron. By the mid 1600's, rhubarb was double the price of opium in England. Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo noted in his report of his embassy in 1403–05 to Timur in Samarkand: "The best of all merchandise coming to Samarkand was from China: especially silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, Pearls, and rhubarb..."
5. In temperate climates, rhubarb is one of the first food plants harvested, usually in mid- to late spring (April/May in the Northern Hemisphere). Rhubarb grown in hothouses is available before that. The first rhubarb to hit the market is forced rhubarb which is grown in the UK around Wakefield, Leeds, and Morley. This area has been nicknamed the "Rhubarb Triangle". It is grown in sheds with no light and is harvested by candlelight. This produces a sweeter, more tender stalk. West Yorkshire once produced 90% of the world's winter forced rhubarb.
6. The leaves are toxic, so never eat them. Rhubarb damaged by spring frost shouldn't be eaten either as the toxic substances in the leaves can migrate to the stems when this happens. During World War I rhubarb leaves were mistakenly recommended as a food source in Britain and several people were poisoned.
7. Though not often used today, the word ‘rhubarb’ can also mean ‘a heated argument or dispute,’ according to Merriam Webster. The word ‘rhubarb’ is known as the word actors mutter in order to simulate background conversation.
8. Rhubarb stalks can be eaten raw. A stick of rhubarb dipped in sugar used to be a common treat for children in the UK. It is still eaten this way in western Finland, Norway and Iceland. In Chile, Chilean rhubarb is sold on the street as a snack with salt or dried chilli pepper.
9. The Russians took rhubarb to Alaska in the 1800's because they thought it would protect the people from scurvy.
10. Quakers on the American East Coast were sent rhubarb seeds by Ben Franklin. They called it the "Persian Apple" because they saw it as an exotic fruit from somewhere in Asia.

29th April: St Catherine of Siena

Today is the feast day of St Catherine of Siena. Here are some things you might not know about her:

1. She is one of the two patron saints of Italy, together with St Francis of Assisi. She is also patron of Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA, Europe, illness, miscarriages, people ridiculed for their piety, sexual temptation, sick people, and nurses; and against fire and bodily ills.
2. Her birth name was Caterina di Giacomo di Benincasa and she was one of 25 (yes, 25!) children born to to Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer, and Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet. She was one of Twins born to Lapa at the age of 40. The other twin, Giovanna, died.
3. Catherine was a happy child and was given the nickname "Euphrosyne", which is Greek for "joy" and the name of an early Christian saint.
4. She is said to have had her first religious vision at the age of five or six, and vowed to give her life to God at the tender age of seven.
5. Her family didn't respect this wish - they had other plans for her. When one of her older sisters died in childbirth, her parents wanted her, at sixteen, to marry the widower. Not only was this incompatible with Catherine's religious vocation but the man had been inconsiderate to his first wife. So Catherine went on hunger strike and cut off her hair so she wouldn't be as attractive to men.
6. She finally got her wish after being taken by her mother to the baths for her health. You could say the baths weren't very effective - Catherine fell seriously ill with a violent rash, fever and pain so her mother finally agreed she should go to the local Dominican tertiaries. Within days of arriving at the convent, Catherine recovered. The tertiaries weren't keen on her being there at first because they were otherwise all widows. They taught her to read but she didn't live with them. She went back to her family home she lived in almost total silence and solitude.
7. Later, she was involved in politics. She travelled with her followers throughout northern and central Italy advocating reform of the clergy; she used what influence she had to sway Pisa and Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league; she worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She wrote letters, including a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, asking him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States.
8. She died of a stroke aged 33, probably caused by what today would be deemed severe anorexia. For years, she had eaten virtually nothing apart from Holy Communion every day. Even her confessor thought this was unhealthy and tried to persuade her to eat properly. Catherine claimed she was unable to, and that her inability to swallow was an illness.
9. Her followers tried to smuggle her head out of Rome in a bag and return it to Siena. When stopped by Roman guards, and ordered to open the bag, they prayed to St Catherine, believing she would want at least part of her body in her home town. When opened, the bag appeared to contain nothing by rose petals. Due to this story, St Catherine is often pictured holding a Rose.
10. She was canonised on 29 June 1461 by Pope Pius II; on 1 October 1999, Pope John Paul II named her as one of the six patron saints of Europe; In October 1970, Pope Paul VI named Catherine a Doctor of the Church; she and Saint Teresa of Ávila were the first women to receive this honour.

28th April: Hyacinth

The French Revolutionary Calendar celebrates hyacinths on this date. Here are some hyacinth facts for you.

1. The word hyacinth comes from the Greek Hyakinthos, a handsome young man who was loved by the sun god Apollo. One day they were practising throwing the discus but the jealous god of the West Wind, who was also in love with Hyakinthos, blew the discus back and it fatally wounded him. From his blood grew a flower which the god Apollo named after him.
2. Native to the eastern Mediterranean, hyacinths were brought to Western Europe in the 16th century and first cultivated in Austria in the 1500's.
3. During the 17th and 18th centuries, only very rich flower collectors could afford to grow them. Because of the hyacinth's pervasive perfume, the bulbs were exorbitantly expensive.
4. Hyacinths are often associated with spring and rebirth. They also represent constancy.
5. The meaning also varies according to the colour. Blue means Peace and Serenity, Orange means Satisfaction and Passion, Pink means Sensitivity and Love, Purple means Elegance and Pride, Red means Courage, Desire and Love, White means Purity and Innocence, and Yellow means Happiness and Friendship.
6. The French word for hyacinth is jacinthe, and in Spanish, jacinto. The Farsi word is sonbol.
7. Grape hyacinths are not hyacinths at all, but belong to the lily family.
8. Water Hyacinths are the only large aquatic plants that float on water. They float on water using the bubbles trapped by their roots and air spaces in the leaf stalks.
9. If you want to grow them, choose a spot with loamy soil and full sun exposure.
10. The cut flowers are often sold with roots still attached to make the flowers last longer. Don't cut these off, just give the stems a good rinse.

27th April: World Tapir Day

Today is world Tapir day. Time for ten facts about these unusual creatures:

1. There are four species of tapir: Baird’s tapir, Mountain tapir, Malayan tapir and Lowland tapir. They are all endangered except the Lowland tapir, which is vulnerable.
2. They eat plants and are important to ecosystems because they defecate seeds as they wander around. The seeds sometimes get stuck around their backsides and germinate there, giving the tapir a green bum.
3. They are similar in shape and size to a Pig, but their nearest living relatives are actually Horses and Rhinos.
4. Tapirs weigh between 500 and 800 lbs (225 to 360 kg). They can grow to over three and a half feet (1m 10cm) tall. The average lifespan of a tapir is 25 to 30 years.
5. A group of tapirs is called a “candle.”
6. The tapir's nose is prehensile and can be used to grab leaves. It has another use, too - tapirs are excellent swimmers and sometimes feed on aquatic plants. When swimming, or walking along the bottom of a river, they can use their noses as snorkels.
7. A tapir's penis is huge and also prehensile, meaning it can grip its mate with it to ensure insemination. (It looks rather like the tongues of the vampires in the TV show The Strain.)
8. They may come across as peaceful vegetarians, but they can be vicious. In 1998, a female tapir at the Oklahoma City Zoo bit off a zookeeper’s arm at the bicep when he entered her enclosure when she had a young calf.
9. Tapirs have four toes on their front feet, and three toes on their back feet.
10. In Chinese and Japanese folklore, tapirs are thought to eat people's nightmares.

April 26: Saturn

It was on this date in 1514 that Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn. Here are some things you may not know about the planet with rings:

1. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is the most distant of the five planets easily visible to the naked eye from Earth, (the other four being Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter) and hence has been observed since ancient times.
2. The rings, however, aren't visible to the naked eye and so nobody knew they existed before the invention of the Telescope. Galileo was the first to see them in 1610, and even he mistook the rings for moons. The rings extend from 6,630 km to 120,700 km from Saturn's equator, and are about 20 meters thick. They are composed of 93% water ice and 7% amorphous carbon. The rings are thin enough to disappear to observers on Earth at certain points in the planet's rotation. This happens about every 15 Earth years. They are made up of particles ranging in size from specks of dust up to 10m.
3. Saturn has 62 known moons, 53 of which have been named. Scientists believe there are also hundreds of "moonlets", larger bodies within the ring system. The largest moon is Titan, which accounts for 90% of everything orbiting Saturn, including the rings. Another major moon is Enceladus, which has a similar chemical makeup to comets, and could have microbial life.
4. It takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days (29 1⁄2 years), to orbit the Sun.
5. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h (500 m/s), higher than on Jupiter, but not as high as those on Neptune. At the poles of Saturn, there are permanent storms raging. The one at the north pole is hexagonal in shape. The sides of the hexagon are about 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long, longer than the diameter of the Earth. There are also huge storms which happen fairly regularly during the planet's northern hemisphere's summer solstice, about once every 30 earth years.
6. Saturn is the only planet of the Solar System which is less dense than Water—about 30% less.
7. Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture. Its astronomical symbol (♄) represents the god's sickle and is known as the "crescent below the cross".
8. Saturn is a gas giant, but it is thought to have a core of iron–nickel and rock surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid Helium, and a gaseous outer layer made up of 96.3% molecular hydrogen and 3.25% helium. The upper atmosphere contains ammonia crystals, which give the planet its yellowish hue.
9. Saturn's Surface area is equivalent to 83.703 Earths and its volume equivalent to 763.59 Earths.
10. In astrology, Saturn is associated with precision, ethics, purpose, career, authority, stability, karma, boundaries, anxiety, practicality, reality, and time. The Saturn Return (when the planet arrives back at the point in the zodiac where it was when the person was born) is said to mark significant events in life.

25th April: Feast Day of St. Mark

Today is the feast day of gospel author St. Mark. Here are some facts about him:

1. Mark wrote the second gospel, which is the oldest and shortest.
2. In art, he is usually pictured writing his gospel.
3. He wasn't one of the twelve apostles, but was an early missionary, travelling with Paul and Barnabas. He went with them on the first ever missionary journey, but for reasons unknown, turned back. We don't know why, but Paul refused to let him travel with them again. However, when Paul wrote to Timothy from prison, he asked for Mark's help, so Mark must have redeemed himself with Paul in the end.
4. Saint Mark was born in Cyrene, a city in the Pentapolis of North Africa (now Libya).
5. His symbol is the winged Lion. Christian legends refer to Saint Mark as "Saint Mark The Lionhearted", because he was thrown to the lions and they refused to eat him.
6. He is patron of Barristers, Venice and Egypt.
7. Mark is said to have founded the Church of Alexandria. The Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria claim to have grown from this original community.
8. He died on a visit to Alexandria, when the pagans of the city resented his efforts to stop them from worshiping their traditional gods. They put a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he was dead.
9. In 828, relics believed to be the body of Saint Mark were stolen from Alexandria by two Venetian merchants with the help of two Greek monks and taken to Venice. According to a mosaic in St Mark's Basilica, sailors covered the relics with pork and Cabbage leaves. Muslims are not permitted to touch pork, so this stopped the guards from inspecting the ship's cargo too closely.
10. In 1063, during the construction of a new basilica dedicated to the saint in Venice, Saint Mark's relics could not be found. Legend has it that Saint Mark himself intervened and extended a ghostly arm from a pillar in order to point out where his relics were.

24th April: Anthony Trollope

This date in 1815 saw the birth of the writer (and inventor of the pillar box) Anthony Trollope. Here are ten things he said:

1. And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.
2. A man's mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency.
3. No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
4. Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you’ll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.
5. Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
6. Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.
7. This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.
8. Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.
9. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
10. What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?

23rd April: William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is thought to have been born on this date. We don't know for sure - he was baptised on the 26th and it was customary in those days for baptisms to take place three days after a birth. Likewise, his exact date of death isn't known for sure but his funeral was on 25 April 1616 and funerals were usually held two days after a death. If this is the case, he died on his 52nd birthday 400 years ago today. Here are some little known Shakespeare facts:

1. He was one of eight siblings. His parents were John and Mary Shakespeare (nee Arden). Aside from William, their children were Joan (who only lived 2 months), Margaret, Gilbert, another Joan, Anne, Richard and Edmund. Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway, was eight years older than him and already pregnant with their first child, Susannah, when they married. They went on to have twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died aged 11; only Susannah had any children, a daughter, Elizabeth, who died child free - so there are no living descendants of William Shakespeare around today.
2. One of Shakespeare’s relatives on his mother’s side, William Arden, was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I, imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.
3. Shakespeare didn't only write plays, he performed in them, too. There is evidence he played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It, and that he performed before Queen Elizabeth I and James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work. Not only that, but he was a successful businessman and property owner in his home town of Stratford on Avon. He also a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the company’s profits, as well as earning a fee for each play he wrote.
4. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play at 1,770 lines long, a third the length of his longest, Hamlet, which takes four hours to perform.
5. Shakespeare's poetry was written during a plague outbreak which meant all London theatres were closed to prevent the spread of the disease. With no demand for plays, Shakespeare wrote poems instead.
6. Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Scholars believe he had a vocabulary of up to 29,000 words - twice as many as the average person. According to Shakespeare professor Louis Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the Bible – only once and never again.” According to reports, Shakespeare wrote quickly and with ease; Fellow playwright Ben Jonson said “Whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line.” Despite all this, it is believed Shakespeare's parents, and even his children, were all illiterate.
7. Two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, have been translated into Klingon.
8. Shakespeare never published any of his plays himself. To his mind they were intended to be performed, not read. After his death, two of his fellow actors – John Hemminges and Henry Condell – recorded and published 36 of them posthumously under the name The First Folio, the source of all Shakespeare books published.
9. Virtually no information exists about Shakespeare’s activities from 1585 to 1592 so this period of time is called “the lost years”.
10. When he died, he left most of his property to Susannah. His wife only got "my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” being the bedclothes. Before he died, he wrote a curse for his gravestone: "Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones." It worked - though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the remains in Shakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed. The only disturbance was when the residents of Stratford had his grave marker altered in 1747 so that it showed him holding a pen instead of a bag of grain.

******

The Complete Works of Julie Howlin (so far)

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)

Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

Jigsaw

Within these covers you will find murder, mayhem, ghosts, romance, dungeons and dragons and alien vampire bunnies.


Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon 

E-book Amazon Kindle

New! From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Createspace, Amazon, Amazon Kindle

22nd April: National Jelly Bean Day

It's National Jelly Bean day - so here are ten sweet facts about jelly beans.

1. No-one is quite sure what the origin of jelly beans was, but they're generally thought to derive from Turkish Delight.
2. They date back at least to the US Civil War, when people sent them to the soldiers. The first advertisement for them was in 1905, in the Chicago Daily News. The jelly beans were on sale for nine cents per pound. Each colour of jelly bean used to be sold separately.
3. It takes 7 to 21 days to make a jelly bean.
4. There are 130 calories and 37 grams of sugar in one serving of jelly beans which equals about 35 jelly beans.
5. The original eight flavours were Very Cherry, Root Beer, Cream Soda, Tangerine, Green Apple, Lemon, Liquorice and Grape. Most flavours are fruit or spice flavours, although you can get novelty flavours like liquorice and Popcorn. You can even get earwax, dirt, pepper, and vomit flavours in a range based on the Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans from the Harry Potter books. Very Cherry is the most popular.
6. Jelly beans have come to be associated with Easter, possibly because they look like little Eggs. In the U.S, 16 billion jelly beans are made just for Easter. This is enough to circle the Earth more than 3 times if they were laid end to end.
7. One famous jelly bean fan was Ronald Reagan. He developed a taste for them as Governor of California, when he ate them while giving up smoking. When he became President, a new flavour, Blueberry, was created in his honour. 7,000 pounds of jelly beans were distributed during his inauguration in 1981.
8. They’re gluten free, Peanut free, dairy free, fat free and kosher.
9. Jelly beans have been to space - aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle in 1983.
10. In 2011, Kina Grannis made an animated film using jelly beans. 288,000 Jelly Belly beans of 47 different flavours were used to make the film, In Your Arms.

21st April: The Queen's 90th birthday

Today is the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. So here are ten facts about the Queen.

1. The Queen’s full title in the United Kingdom is: Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. She also has the titles the Lord of Man in the Isle of Man, the Duke of Normandy in the Channel Islands, and the Duke of Lancaster in the land of the Duchy of Lancaster.
2. During her Majesty's reign there have been: fourteen Prime Ministers (Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Holme, Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris); 13 US Presidents (Harry Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Trump); Seven Archbishops of Canterbury (Geoffrey Fisher, Michael Ramsey, Donald Coggan, Robert Runcie, George Carey, Rowan Williams and Justin Welby); and seven Popes (Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis).
3. The Queen doesn't own a passport or a driving licence. She can drive - she learned when she was in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) (The Queen is the only living head of state in the world to have served during World War II, in the ATS. Her service number was 230873) British passports are all issued in her name, so she doesn't need one herself. She's also the only person who doesn't need a number plate on her state car.
4. Her Majesty is known for her love of Dogs (especially corgis) and Horses. Her first corgi was given to her for her 18th birthday and was called Susan (she took this dog with her on her honeymoon); her first pony was called Peggy. You might not know that the Queen is interested in breeding both horses and dogs and created a new breed of dog, the "dorgi" when she mated one of her corgis with a dachsund. She has owned eleven dorgis. Now she has two corgis: Holly and Willow and two dorgis - Candy and Vulcan.
5. The Queen first met her husband, Prince Philip, at a wedding when she was eight; they started writing to each other when she was thirteen. They became engaged in 1946 but kept it a secret until the following year. Elizabeth and Philip are second cousins, once removed and third cousins through Queen Victoria. On her wedding day, she had to use clothing coupons like everyone else to get her wedding dress which was designed by Norman Hartnell. She did her own make-up.
6. The Queen has visited 117 countries - two thirds of the countries on Earth. That includes Australia 16 times, Canada 22 times, Jamaica six and New Zealand 10 times. The Queen was the first British Monarch to visit the Middle East and China and was the first to visit Ireland since Irish independence. She hasn't been to the Moon, but her message of congratulations to the Apollo 11 astronauts for the First moon landing was micro-filmed and deposited on the Moon in a metal container. The Queen speaks fluent French and doesn't need an interpreter on state visits to France.
7. The Queen's birthplace is now a Chinese restaurant (albeit a Michelin starred one) called Hakkasan.
8. In the Maori language, the Queen is known by the term ‘Kotuku’, which translates as ‘the white heron’ in English. In Papua New Guinea she is referred to in the pidgin language of Tok Pisin as ‘Missus Kwin’ which translates to ‘Mama belong big family’ in English.
9. The Queen always wears brightly coloured outfits so people can see her in a crowd. Her outfits are usually made from both new fabrics and incorporating fabric from older outfits, including some dating back to before she was Queen.
10. Her Majesty’s Imperial State Crown is made up of 2,868 diamonds. She has nine royal thrones, one at the House of Lords, two at Westminster Abbey and six in the throne room at Buckingham Palace; and a cushion in her private sitting room at Balmoral embroidered with the words "It's good to be Queen."

****************

My books:

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)

Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

Jigsaw

Within these covers you will find murder, mayhem, ghosts, romance, dungeons and dragons and alien vampire bunnies.


Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon 

E-book Amazon Kindle

From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Createspace, Amazon, Amazon Kindle

20th April: Roses

Another French Revolutionary Calendar observance today - the rose. A collection of facts about roses.

1. There are about 100-150 different species of rose. They belong to the genus Rosa.
2. Roses are associated with Harpocrates, god of silence, secrets and confidentiality. Roses would be painted or plastered around the ceilings of rooms intended for the receiving of guests, to show that topics discussed within were not to be repeated outside the room. In ancient Rome, a wild rose was placed on the door of a room when secret or confidential matters were being discussed. This is where the phrase sub rosa, or "under the rose", comes from.
3. Roses are also associated with the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus. In Christianity, the five petals of a rose are used to represent the five wounds of Christ. Roses are also associated with the Virgin Mary and red rose petals symbolise the Christian martyrs. In churches, a round window is often called a rose window as they often have five or ten segments (the five petals and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof.
4. Napoleon used to give his officers bags of rose petals which they could boil with white wine to cure themselves from lead poison from bullet or shot wounds.
5. A number of places have adopted the rose as their flower. It is the national flower of England and the USA. It is the state flower of four US states: Iowa, North Dakota, Georgia and New York. Portland, Oregon counts "City of Roses" among its nicknames. The rose is the emblem of Islamabad Capital Territory in Pakistan and an unofficial emblem of Catalonia.
6. Roses do not have thorns. Although the sharp things on the stems are usually referred to as thorns, in technical botanical terms, they are prickles. True thorns are modified stems, which always originate at a node, rather than outgrowths of the epidermis on the stem.
7. It takes two thousand rose flowers to make one gram of rose oil.
8. The symbolism of roses in the language of flowers depends on the colour. Red means love, hence red roses are often given on Valentine's Day. Yellow means friendship, white means purity or spirituality, Pink is joy gratitude and admiration, orange is enthusiasm pride, favour and intense desire, lavender is love at first sight.
9. Black roses mean death or the end of a relationship - although black roses don't really exist. There are some which are such a deep shade of red or purple that they appear black, and black Roses can be produced using dyes.
10. A fossil of a rose was found in Colorado, thought to be 35 million years old. The oldest living rose bush grows on the side of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany. It measures at 69ft high and 30ft wide. It is about 700 years old.

19 April: Amaretto Day

It's National Amaretto Day. Here are some facts about Amaretto:

1. Amaretto is an Italian liqueur made from a base of Apricot pits, Almonds, or both.
2. The name derives from the Italian word amaro, meaning "bitter".
3. It is associated with romance, because amaro is similar to amore, meaning love.
4. It is said to have originated in 1525, when a church in Saronno, Italy, commissioned an artist called Bernardino Luini to paint frescoes in their church. The church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, so it made sense to paint pictures of her - so he looked for a model. A young widowed innkeeper became his model and in most versions of the tale, his lover. She wanted to give him a gift, but couldn't afford very much. Being an innkeeper, she had a supply of booze, and came up with the idea of steeping apricot kernels in brandy, thus making the first ever amaretto.
5. The two main brands, Disaronno Originale and Lazzaroni, both claim this tale as their own.
6. Despite its almond taste, Disaronno Originale contains no actual nuts. The company claims its "originale" amaretto's "secret formula" is unchanged from 1525, and that it is "an infusion of "apricot kernel oil" with "absolute alcohol, burnt sugar, and the pure essence of seventeen selected herbs and fruits".
7. The popular Italian dessert, tiramisu, usually contains amaretto or amaretto flavouring.
8. A few shots of amaretto can be added to pancake batter for a richer flavour.
9. A 30ml serving of Amaretto contains 110 calories.
10. Cocktails made from Amaretto include: French Connection, Godfather, Godmother, Hurricane Jenny, Cuban Breeze and Lounge Lizard.

18 April: The Natural History Museum

On this date in 1881 in London - the Natural History Museum opened it doors. Here are ten things you probably didn't know:

1. It was officially known as British Museum (Natural History) until 1992, despite legal separation from the British Museum in 1963.
2. The foundation of the collection was that of the Ulster doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) who was also famous for inventing hot chocolate. His collection, included dried plants, animal and human skeletons. It was initially housed in the British Museum.
3. Sadly, the collection didn't fare well within the auspices of the British Museum in those days. The museum staff didn't care much about natural history - much of the collection was sold to the Royal College of Surgeons, or was burned. In 1833 the Annual Report states that, of the 5,500 insects listed in the Sloane catalogue, none remained. Staff were employed not because they were experts, but because of who they knew. In 1862 a nephew of the mistress of a Trustee was appointed Entomological Assistant despite not knowing the difference between a butterfly and a Moth. Later, the museum acquired a huge collection of shells from the conchologist Hugh Cuming and these weren't well cared for, either. Dr. George Shaw (Keeper of Natural History 1806–13) said he'd tread on any shell not in the 12th edition of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae. Many of the labels blew away when another curator's wife carried an open tray of specimens across the yard in a gale; others were removed by an employee simply because the display had been arranged by a colleague he didn't like! Eventually the Treasury refused to entrust the museum with specimens collected at the government's expense.
4. This changed after the palaeontologist Richard Owen was appointed Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum in 1856. He wanted more space for natural history - and since space was limited in the existing building, that meant a new building. Today, the museum’s collection contains over 70 million botanical items, 55 million exhibits of animals, 9 million relics from archaeological digs, and 500,000 rocks and minerals. In 2013 the Museum became the UK's third most popular visitor attraction. 5.4 million people visited that year.
5. In 1864 a competition was held to design the new museum. The winning entry was submitted by the civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke, who died shortly afterwards. The scheme was taken over by Alfred Waterhouse who substantially revised the plans. There were originally going to be wings on either side of the main building, but these were abandoned for budgetary reasons.
6. The central axis of the museum is aligned with the tower of Imperial College London (formerly the Imperial Institute) and the Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial.
7. The most iconic exhibit is the Dinosaur skeleton - a 105-foot (32m) long replica of a Diplodocus carnegii skeleton, in the central hall. Dippy, as the model is affectionately known, was given to the museum by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It is a cast of the original skeleton held in Carnegie's own museum. It cost £2,000 to make and was shipped to London in 36 crates. Mr. Carnegie later had more casts made and shipped to other capital cities around the world, making Dippy the most-seen dinosaur skeleton ever.
8. Also on display is the parallel skeleton and model of a blue whale, weighing 10 tons and 25m long. The whale skeleton has been on display since 1938, over 40 years since the whale was beached in Wexford Bay, Ireland. While the model was being built, there was a trapdoor in the stomach which workmen used for sneaky cigarette breaks. Before the trapdoor was sealed forever, they placed coins and a Telephone directory inside.
9. In the grounds of the museum there is a wildlife garden. In 2007 a new species of insect was discovered there.
10. The museum has featured in numerous films and books, including Disney's One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing; a dinosaur skeleton is stolen from the museum; a group of nannies hide inside the mouth of the Blue Whale model - except there is a good deal of artistic license - they are seen looking out through whale's teeth, and blue whales don't have teeth. Additionally, the film is set in the 1920s, before the Blue Whale model was built.