1 November: Play a Game of Chess Day

Today is Play a Game of Chess Day. Here are some fascinating facts about chess:

1. Chess is an ancient game which dates back to 6th century India and Persia, where it was known as chatrang. The English word Chess derives from the Persian word for king, Shah. Check, as in check-mate, derives from the same source.
2. The rules haven't always stayed the same. They've been modified several times since 1200 to make it into the game we know today. The Queen was originally a vizier, but by 1475 had become the most powerful piece on the board (people of the time referred to the new version of the game as "mad queen chess"). At about the same time, pawns gained the ability to move two squares on their first move, and castling was introduced. It is only since the 19th century that the convention that white moves first has been observed. Modern rules they'd never have guessed at back then include drug testing (chess is considered a sport) and disqualification if your mobile phone rings during a game.
3. The longest game of chess in a tournament lasted for 269 moves, which took 20 hours and 15 minutes. It ended in a draw. The longest game possible, according to theorists, would last 5,949 moves. There was once a game which lasted four months when Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster, challenged the world, or 75 countries, anyway, to a game. The world's move was decided by a majority vote. It only lasted 69 turns, however. At that point 51% of the world voted to give up.
4. In mathematical terms, there are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe.
5. The word "gambit" is a specific chess term meaning to sacrifice for advantage, which has found its way into everyday language.
6. Today we refer to pawns in terms of their position on the board, but in times gone by they were given names based on commoners' occupations: City guard (policeman), doctor, innkeeper, merchant/moneychanger, weaver/clerk, blacksmith (usually the knight's pawn, to take care of the horses), farmer and in the far left, the "sinister" position, a gambler or lowlife.
7. The rows on a chessboard are called ranks and the columns are called files.
8. The folding chess board was invented by a priest. Clergy were forbidden by the church to play chess, but one sneaky priest still wanted to play, so he invented a board that would fold up so it would appear that he was carrying books.
9. The most expensive chess set in the world is the Jewel Royale set which is valued at over $9.8 million. It was made in Britain by the Royale Jewel Company. It's made of gold and platinum and is decorated with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, saphhires and pearls.
10. We've all heard of computers that play chess against humans, such as Deep Blue, but the first chess playing "machine" was invented in the 18th century by Wolfgang von Kempelon. It took people 84 years to realise that there was a person sitting inside it. The Wizard of Oz of chess!

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

31 October: Witches

Witches. Associated with Halloween, generally believed to be evil, ugly old women who are usually burned at the stake. These 10 facts will show you much of it isn't actually true.

1. We don't actually know the origins of the word, “witch”. A likely candidate is the Old English word wicce, which means “female sorceress,” the same root whch gives us the name of the modern day belief system of Wicca. Or it could come from the Old English wigle, meaning “divination” ord wih, meaning “idol,” or the Proto-Germanic word wikkjaz, meaning “necromancer,” or “one who wakes the dead.”
2. A person need not be a woman, old, or ugly to be a witch. Men practiced witchcraft too, although they may be referred to as wizards, warlocks or sorcerers. People put to death for witchcraft in the olden days included both men and women and even children. During the Trier Witch Trials in Germany, from 1581 to 1593, the 368 people executed included leading men such as judges, priests, and deans of colleges.
3. Burning at the stake was actually a very rare punishment for witchcraft and not even legal in Britain or the American colonies. Most of them were hanged, which as well as being a legal means of execution was a lot less hassle than building a big bonfire. Hangings were much more cost-effective and efficient if you had a lot of witches to get rid of.
4. People got quite hysterical about witchcraft in the 15^th century, thanks in part to theological books about it, such as the Malleus Maleficarum written by two clergyman of the Dominican Order—Jakob Sprenger, the dean of the University of Cologne, and Heinrich Kramer, a theology professor at the University of Salzburg. James I of England got in on the act too by writing his own book on the subject and presiding personally over witch trials.
5. Exodus 22:18, “You shall not permit a sorceress to live,” and Leviticus 20:27, “a man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” was all the excuse people needed to persecute hundreds of people, most of whom were guilty of no more than using herbal remedies or disagreeing with local politicians. Since very little evidence was needed to convict someone as a witch, it would have been easy to get anyone you didn't like, for whatever reason, put to death. You could say they appeared in your Dreams, for example, used magic to steal your partner or put a curse on someone who was ill. A “witches mark” was a common piece of evidence which meant people with extra nipples or even moles or scars could be convicted for no other reason. Another incentive was that the Witchfinder General and his assistants in the 17^th century would be paid £5 (a lot of money in them days!) for every witch they caught.
6. Technically, England’s Witchcraft Act of 1735 was in effect until 1951. As recently as 1944, a woman named Jane Rebecca Yorke was found guilty under the law. However, what Yorke was actually doing was fraud – holding bogus séances. In fact, when the witchcraft law went, it was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. However, laws against witchcraft are very much alive in other countries, like Saudi Arabia, where witchcraft is still punishable by death.
7. A common image of a witch is a woman mixing up dubious ingredients like “eye of Frog and toe of Bat” in a cauldron. Such names for spell ingredients were probably code names for common herbs used to make natural remedies, written down that way to stop others from stealing your recipe.
8. Another thing a witch might be doing is flying around on a broomstick. That idea is thought to originate from pagan rituals in which participants would rub herbal ointments containing hallucinogens on themselves and on a staff which they would “ride.” The hallucinogens would induce the sensation of floating as if they were actually flying.
9. While we may associate witches with Halloween, it isn't the only time of year a witch, or indeed, a modern day Wiccan, celebrates. May Day (Beltane), Midsummer and even (in Sweden) Easter are witch party days, too.
10. Only one of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth has a name – Hecate, after the Greek goddess of witchcraft.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

30 October: John Adams, Second US President

Born on this date in 1735 was John Adams, the second president of the USA. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Of the first five US Presidents, he was the only one not to own slaves. That said, he was opposed to abolishing slavery.
2. He was also the only one of the first five not to come from Virginia. He was from Braintree, Massachusetts.
3. When George Washington became president, Adams proposed referring to him as "His Majesty the President" or "His Highness the President," on the grounds that the heads of things like cricket clubs were called presidents. However, having just got rid of a monarch, the American people weren't too keen on the idea. Because he was of ample figure, this led to his opponents referring to him as "His Rotundity".
4. He was the first president to live in the White House.
5. Before entering politics, he was a lawyer. One of the things he's famous for is successfully defending a group of British soldiers who were involved in the Boston Massacre. Although anti-British sentiment ran high, Adams believed everyone had the right to legal defence and that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.
6. He was the father of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
7. He was a prolific letter writer. Since he was so often forced to be away from his wife, Abigail, he wrote her over 1,000 letters.
8. Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, which, dating from 1780, is the oldest constitution in the world still in use today.
9. At time of writing, John Adams is one of only 10 presidents to serve a single term. He blamed his failure to get elected for a second term on the fact that he'd issued proclamations calling for days of fasting and prayer. He missed out on a second term by just 250 votes. Had 250 more people in New York voted for him, he would have been re-elected.
10. He died at the age of 90, making him the longest lived president until Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan who both lived to be 93. He died on July 4, 1826, on the same day, incedentally, as his rival Thomas Jefferson. His last words were, "Thomas Jefferson survives." Jefferson had, in fact, already died, but the news hadn't reached Adams.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

29 October: The Charleston

On this date in 1923 the musical Runnin' Wild, which introduced the Charleston, opened on Broadway. 10 things you might not know about the Charleston.

1. The first people to dance the Charleston were African American people living on an island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina (hence the name) around 1903. The dances they did were based on dances people used to perform in Africa.
2. The dance came to the stage ten years before Runnin' Wild, in Harlem, New York, but at that time it didn't get much attention.
3. In Runnin' Wild, it was danced to a song called The Charleston by Jimmy Johnson and Cecil Mack.
4. It was different from most popular dances in that it started in the theatre and became popular, whereas most others were popular at social occasions first and were later adapted for stage performances.
5. The Charleston is a dance characterised by a series of kicks and up and down movements executed by knee bends.
6. The best music to dance it to is ragtime jazz in 4/4 time. It can be danced solo, with a partner or in a group.
7. Since 2009, the Charleston has featured on the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. That year, the show was won by Chris Hollins, who used the dance to his advantage, as a means of showing off his personality. He went on to win the contest.
8. One theory as to why a hedonistic dance like the Charleston became popular when it did is because it was a reaction against the grief and loss caused by the first world war the previous decade. People had had enough of mourning and wanted to enjoy themselves.
9. Needless to say, the church and the older generation hated it. One vicar in Bristol commented 'It stinks! Phew, open the windows', possibly because people worked up a sweat when dancing. There was even health scaremongering attached to it. The Charleston, they said, could give you twisted ligaments, water on the knee and even an overstrained heart.
10. The Charleston was even blamed for the collapse of a building in Boston in 1925. The building happened to contain a nightclub, and newspapers of the time reported that hundreds of people dancing the Charleston had been the direct cause of the collapse.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

28 October: Time Day

Today is Time Day. Here are ten quotations on the subject of time.

1. Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its students.
2. Time is never wasted when you are wasted all the time.
3. Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.
4. Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change. Thomas Hardy
5. Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. John Lennon
6. Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live. Albert Einstein
7. Time is a dressmaker specialising in alterations. Faith Baldwin
8. Time is nature’s way of ensuring everything doesn’t happen at once. Woody Allen
9. Time flies never to be recalled. Virgil
10. Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you. Terry Pratchett

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

27 October: Captain James Cook

Born on this date in 1728: Captain James Cook, known for discovering Australia. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His family were farmers, so his first job was working on a farm in Yorkshire. He also worked in a grocery store. The cottage where his parents lived was moved, brick by brick, to Melbourne, Australia, in 1934, where it was rebuilt and still stands today.
2. He knew he wanted to be a sailor, however, and joined the merchant navy at 17. He did well there and by the time he was 26, was being groomed to become a captain. He made the surprising decision to give all that up and join the Navy as a common seaman. The Navy soon spotted his talent, too, and within two years he'd risen through the ranks and been promoted to ship's master.
3. He was a very talented cartographer. His maps of the Saint Lawrence River helped the British a great deal when they launched a surprise attack on Quebec during the Seven Years War. It was this talent which helped him win the command of his own ship in the early 1760s, tasked with charting Newfoundland. His map of Newfoundland was so accurate it is still usable today. It was also a factor in winning him the round the world exploring gig, as his superiors knew he could navigate uncharted waters, and that once he'd been there, they wouldn't be uncharted any more, because he'd bring home new maps. His reputation as an exploer and mapmaker even brought the respect of Britain's enemies at the time, Spain and the USA. Spanish vessels once detained his fleet only to let them go when they found out who the captain was; and US vessles were instructed by Benjamin Franklin to treat Cook and his crews as "common friends to mankind" should they encounter them.
4. He was innovative when it came to the health of his crew. He insisted they bathed every day and he'd also worked out that fresh fruit and veg were vital in preventing scurvy, so he made sure he stocked up with fresh produce at every stop. For longer stints at sea, he took along supplies of sauerkraut, pickled Cabbage. He persuaded the men to eat it by making sure it was on his own table daily, so they'd think it was a desirable delicacy.
5. His first journey to the southern hemisphere was undertaken with the purpose of observing the planet Venus as it travelled between the Earth and the sun. He stopped off at Tahiti to do this, and his observations would help astronomers calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun. While he was down there, he hoped to discover the fabled southern continent. He visited New Zealand, and worked out that it was a pair of islands, not the fabled continent, but got into a fight with a Maori tribe. He did stop off in Australia for a couple of months after discovering the Great Barrier Reef, which damaged his ship. A lot of his men caught malaria and died while the repairs were being done.
6. His second expedition was with the purpose of finding the southern continent or proving there was no such thing. Little did he know he'd already been there! This trip took him further south than any other European had ever been.
7. On his first visit to Hawaii, the natives there mistook him for a god. He just happened to arrive there during a festival to honour a Hawaiian fertility god, and since the natives had never seen white men before, or anything like their ships, they came to the conclusion Cook was a deity. Cook took full advantage of this and glady accepted the gifts they showered him with, but they realised their mistake when one of Cook's men died. Relations with the Hawaiians were strained after that.
8. In fact, Cook was eventually killed by Hawaiians after a row over a stolen boat escalated. Cook was eventually stabbed by a Hawaiian warrior with a knife Cook had given them, and bashed to death with rocks. Even so, the burial they gave him was one that befitted their own kings. There is a monument to him in Hawaii commemorating his landing there and his death. The land around it is still technically part of the UK.
9. Two of NASA's Space Shuttles were named after Cook's ships, the Endeavour and the Discovery. Discovery carried a medallion in honour of Cook on its final voyage in 2011.
10. The Cook Islands in the South Pacific are named after him. So is Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand. There's also a Cook crater on the Moon.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

26 October: 26

On the 26th day of the month, 10 things you might not know about the number 26.

1. A solid with 26 sides is called a rhombicuboctahedron.
2. 26 is the atomic number of iron.
3. The square of 26 is a palindrome (676). It's the smallest number which isn't a palindrome to have a square which is.
4. Switzerland has 26 cantons and the Republic of Ireland has 26 counties.
5. In the US, 26 is commonly the number of episodes in a TV series, so that a new one can be broadcast each week for half the year and then repeated one a week for the rest of the year.
6. A human foot and ankle has 26 bones.
7. In the UK, the A26 road runs between Maidstone, Kent and Newhaven, East  Sussex. The M26 is a short motorway, just under 10 miles long, which links the M25 at Sevenoaks with the M20 in West Malling.
8. In a pack of Playing cards, there are 26 red cards and 26 black cards.
9. In music, there is an Australian alternative rock band named 26, and the bands Paramore and Catfish and the Bottlemen have both included tracks named 26 on their albums.
10. In numerology, 26 represents business, balance, teamwork, harmony, home and family. People with 26 in their birthdate are likely to have all the qualities that will make them successful in business - good managers, able to see the bigger picture, efficient, confident, practical, diplomatic and ambitious. On the down side, they can be bossy and not very tolerant of weaknesses in others.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

October 25: Shoes

October 25 is Shoemaker's Day, the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patron saints of cobblers. 10 things you might not know about shoes.

1. It's thought humans started wearing shoes about 40,000 years ago, and that the first shoes were probably sandals made from whatever was to hand - papyrus, leaves, wood and animal hides. Scientists worked this out by looking at the feet of ancient human skeletons. After people started wearing shoes, their toes became shorter and weaker. The oldest depiction of shoes is in a 15,000 year old Spanish cave painting.
2. Shoes designed for the left and right foot weren't invented until 1818, in Philadelphia. Up until then there was no distinction and either shoe could be worn on either foot.
3. High heels are nothing new, however. The first high heels were made for men - the cavalry of ancient Persia, as heels helped keep their feet secure in the stirrups. Horses were a symbol of wealth, and so high heeled shoes signified a person did a lot of riding - so they became a symbol of social status. In the 16th century aristocratic women began wearing shoes with heels so high that their servants had to help them walk. Prostitutes in Venice used to wear shoes like stilts, so high they could actually fall to their death from them. Eventually a law was passed limiting the height of heels on women's shoes. Today, high heels for men are known as French shoes, because the 5' 5" Louis XIV wore them to make himself look taller, and helped make them popular.
4. Platform shoes date back to Ancient Greece, where the lead actors in tragedies wore them to show their elevated status on stage. Minor characters wore low shoes or no shoes at all.
5. The most expensive pair of shoes ever were the actual Ruby Slippers worn by Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz. They sold at auction in 2000 for $660,000.
6. A method of sizing shoes dates back to King Edward II, who issued a decree in 1324 stating that three grains of barley equalled one inch and hence the grains could be used to measure the size of people's feet. The UK and Ireland still use footwear measures based on this.
7. He wasn't the only English king to make laws about shoes. Henry VIII, ashamed of his gout-ridden feet, passed a law saying that all men's shoes had to be 6 inches wide, so that his own wide shoes wouldn't stand out.
8. 6 out of 10 of all the world's shoes are made in China.
9. It's a stereotype that women go crazy buying shoes. According to statistics, the average woman has 21 pairs while the average man only has 12, with just three pairs being worn on a regular basis. Some women are known for having huge numbers of shoes. Imelda Marcos had 3,400 pairs and singer Celine Dion has 3,000. Danielle Steele, however, is said to have twice as many - 6,000 pairs.
10. A fetish for collecting high heeled shoes is called altocalciphilia.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

24 October: Ariel, moon of Uranus

William Lassell discovered Ariel, a moon of Uranus, on this date in 1851.

1. Ariel is the fourth largest of the 27 moons of Uranus.
2. Ariel's equator measures 3637.3km and its surface area is 4,211,307.6 square km.
3. At an orbiting distance of about 190,000km, Ariel is the second closest moon to the planet. Its orbit takes about two and a half days.
4. Ariel is tilted almost horizontally so that its poles directly face the sun, or away from the Sun, at the solstices. This means it has more extreme seasons than the poles on Earth. The North and South poles on Earth are in permanent darkness or light for a few weeks around the solstices; the periods of permanent light or darkness on Ariel last 42 years.
5. Ariel is named after a character in Alexander Pope's poem, The Rape of the Lock. Ariel is the leader of the sylphs. Moons of Uranus are either named after characters in that poem, or characters from Shakespeare plays. Ariel is both - she's also the spirit who serves Prospero in The Tempest.
6. No space craft has ever been there. The information we have was all gained from a flyby by Voyager 2 in 1986 when photographs were taken from 127,000km/79,000 miles away. Because some of the moon was in darkness at the time, only about 35% of the surface was photographed with sufficient quality to make out surface features.
7. Ariel is thought to be made up of ice and silicate rock. Scientists have also detected carbon dioxide there.
8. The surface of Ariel doesn't have many large craters, but a lot of small ones. Scientists believe there were larger ones once, but they were obliterated by more recent, smaller collisions. This pattern has suggested to scientists that it is the youngest of the planet's moons.
9. There is also a network of valleys criss-crossing Ariel's surface, similar to the ones found on Mars. Some of them are 10km/six miles deep.The floors of the valleys are smooth, suggesting they were carved out by liquid. Not water, as it's far too cold there for liquid Water. Scientists believe the valleys were carved out by liquid methane, ammonia or carbon monoxide.
10. Ariel is the brightest and most reflective of all the moons of Uranus.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

23 October: Scorpions

The sun enters the Scorpio zodiac sign on this date, so here are ten things you might not know about scorpions.

1. Scorpions are arachnids and are therefore related to ticks, mites and Spiders. The scorpion's distinguishing feature is a curved, segmented tail.
2. They can be found on every continent except Antarctica. They like hot, dry conditions so deserts are a perfect habitat for them. That said, they are tough little things which can survive extreme cold as well. Scientists have observed that they can put them in the freezer overnight, and the next day, once they've thawed out, they just walk away. If it gets too hot, they burrow. If there's not enough food, they slow down their metabolism so they can survive on one insect a year. They can even survive being submerged in water for 48 hours.
3. They're solitary most of the time but some species get together to hibernate in winter with as many as 40 of them sharing the same sheltered spot.
4. The smallest scorpion in the world was only discovered in 2014. Microtityus minimus lives in the Domincan Republic and is less than half an inch long. At the other end of the scale are Heterometrus swammerdami, found in India, and Africa's Emperor Scorpion which can grow as large as 8 inches long.
5. All scorpions are venomous with venom especially adapted for use on its particular prey (which might be insects, spiders, small reptiles or rodents). Baby scorpions are as venomous as the adults. Only about 25 of the 2,000 or so known species have venom strong enough to kill a human. We're not on their menu, so they'd only use it on us in self defence.
6. When it comes to making baby scorpions, the male and female perform a courtship dance in which they hold each other by the pedipalps (pincers) and the male leads his partner around until he finds a suitable place to drop his sperm. He then leads, or possibly drags, the female over it so she can take it. That done, he legs it, as if he sticks around, she's quite likely to eat him.
7. Female scorpions gestate their eggs inside their body. They hatch inside her and emerge as tiny baby scorpions. For about a week, until their first moult, they are helpless and so ride around on their mother's back. They're taking a risk, mind you. While some female scorpions actually crush up small insects and feed their young, there is always the danger that if there's not much food around, she will eat her own babies.
8. Scorpions glow in the dark. Or at least, they do if you shine an ultraviolet light on them. They glow a bluish Green colour, and nobody knows why. Scientists have suggested that they use UV light levels to tell them when is a good time to come out and look for food, and even absorb it though their exoskeletons as a way of seeing, but that doesn't explain why it makes them glow.
9. A scorpion in captivity can live for as long as 25 years.
10. In the Bible, scorpions are often used to represent evil, alongside serpents. In the Middle East, however, they are often used as a symbol for protection from evil. The image of a scorpion woven into a Turkish carpet is said to protect the household from scorpion stings.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle