1 January: The Number One

Today is the first day of the first month of the year. Here are some facts about the number one.

1. Multiply any number by one and the answer is the number you first started with.
2. The symbol for the number one dates back to ancient Brahmic script in India, where it was a simple vertical line.
3. Sometimes the number is written with a serif at the top which can lead to confusion with the number seven. Hence 7 is sometimes written with a line through it to distinguish the two.
4. 1 is the atomic number of hydrogen. Staying with the periodic table, Group 1 of the table is alkaline metals, while Period 1 contains just two elements, hydrogen and Helium.
5. The first asteroid to be discovered was Ceres, and so it has the minor planet designation 1.
6. The Bee Gees, Ed Sheeran, Harry Nilsson, Metallica, U2 and Alanis Morrisette have alrecorded songs with the title "One".
7. In sports, the number one is often assigned to particular players, for example, in Football, it's usually the goalkeeper and in rugby league it's often the starting fullback.
8. As well as the number, the word "one" is often used as a third person singular pronoun, eg "One needs to find a job." It tends to be used in more formal contexts with everyday speech usually using "you" instead. It's frequently used in caracatures of the British royal family, so the Queen will say "One is not amused", for example.
9. The M1 was the first full length motorway to open in the UK, in 1959. It runs between London and Leeds. The A1 is a road which connects London and Edinburgh.
10. In numerology, one is the number of creation, the number from which all things spring. People whose birth number is 1 are natural leaders, proud, courageous, strong and determined. They are the people who get things done. They can also be stubborn, demanding and jealous.

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


Goodreads Review for Golden Thread:

This is a standalone book rather than one of the "super" series. Excellent characterization, a "keeps you guessing" plot, and some fairly deep philosophical issues ! Would recommend this to anyone, but especially recommended if you would like to see a completely new "take" on the people with powers / alternate futures / general oddness type story lines. Somebody make the film !

31 December: Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse, the French impressionist painter was born on this date in 1869. Here are ten things you might not know about him.

1. He was born in Northern France, to a family of grain merchants.
2. He didn't set out to be an artist at all. He studied law and when he passed his law exams with distinction, began working as a law clerk. Then he got appendicitis. While he was on bed rest recovering from that, his mother bought him some art supplies to stave off the boredom. He loved painting so much that he decided on a change of career.
3. At a party held by his patron Gertrude Stein, he met a young artist called Pablo Picasso. The two became lifelong friends but also rivals. Matisse once said that their friendship was like a boxing match.
4. He loved both Cats and doves and kept both as pets (what could possibly go wrong, I ask myself?) He fed his three cats brioche every morning, and the doves became models, not only for him but for Picasso as well. Picasso's 1949 work, Dove of Peace was modelled on one of Matisse's birds.
5. As he got older and his health began to fail, painting grew more and more difficult for Matisse. He developed a technique he called "painting with scissors" in which he'd cut out paper shapes and arrange them into works of art with a stick.
6. He married his wife Amelie in 1894. They had two sons, but also brought up his daughter from an earlier relationship, Margeurite. His wife and daughter were often his models. Henri and Amelie were married for 41 years, untio she divorced him because she suspected he was having an affair with her Russian companion, Lydia. Lydia attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest, but recovered and went to live with Matisse as his housekeeper and assistant.
7. Matisse was a big fan of African art and set up a studio in Tangier, Morocco.
8. When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Henri's son Pierre begged him to leave and join him in New York where he owned a gallery. Matisse decided to stay put, because "If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?" Matisse wasn't Jewish and so provided he signed a statement saying he was "Aryan" he could go on exhibiting his work.
9. Matisse spent most of the war keeping out of the way in southern France but his family played active roles in the resistance. Pierre was involved with helping Jewish and anti-Nazi artists escape from France and put on an exhibition of their work, "Artists in Exile". Amelie worked as a typist for the resistance and went to prison for six months. Marguerite was even more active, and was arrested and tortured. She was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp but escaped when an Allied air raid held up the train, hiding in the woods until she was rescued.
10. He died in 1954 at the age of 84. At the time, he was working on a design for a stained glass Window for a church near the Rockefeller estate near New York City. There was a model of the design on his wall when he died, although the actual window wasn't put in place until 1956.

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


Goodreads Review for Golden Thread:

This is a standalone book rather than one of the "super" series. Excellent characterization, a "keeps you guessing" plot, and some fairly deep philosophical issues ! Would recommend this to anyone, but especially recommended if you would like to see a completely new "take" on the people with powers / alternate futures / general oddness type story lines. Somebody make the film !

30 December: Capricorn

The sun is currently in Capricorn, the 10th sign of the zodiac. 10 things you might not know about the zodiac sign of Capricorn.

1. In Vedic astrology Capricorn was associated with the crocodile rather than the sea Goat we're familiar with today.
2. The word Capricorn comes from the Latin for "horned-goat".
3. The constellation that gives the sign its name is Capricornus, which is the smallest of the twelve zodiac constellations. It's also quite faint. The best time to observe it in Europe is at 4am during September.
4. The constellation has been known since Babylonian times. They associated it with their goat-fish hybrid god, Ea. In Greek mythology the constellation was associated with Amalthea, the goat which suckled Zeus, and whose broken horn became the "cornucopia" or horn of plenty. Other Greek myths associate it with a sea goat called Pricus, who was the father of a race of sea-goats. The god Pan is sometimes associated with the constellation as well.
5. In Chinese astrology, Capricornus is symbolised by the Black tortoise of the North.
6. Capricorn is one of the four cardinal signs, which have in common the fact the occur at the turning of a season - the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. People born under cardinal signs (the others are Aries, Cancer and Libra) are said to be active, self-motivated, insightful and ambitious.
7. It's an Earth sign, along with Taurus and Virgo. People born under Earth signs are said to be practical and cautious.
8. Capricorn is ruled by the planet Saturn, and hence the lucky day for people born under this sign is Saturday. Their lucky colours are Brown, Black and Grey. Their birthstone is garnet.
9. Famous people born under this sign include Sir Isaac Newton, Stan Lee, Michelle Obama, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson.
10. Capricorn is said to rule over ambition, tenacity, perseverance, depression, politics, professionalism, social climbing, organisational ability, and in the body, the bones, knees, teeth and skin.

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


Goodreads Review for Golden Thread:

This is a standalone book rather than one of the "super" series. Excellent characterization, a "keeps you guessing" plot, and some fairly deep philosophical issues ! Would recommend this to anyone, but especially recommended if you would like to see a completely new "take" on the people with powers / alternate futures / general oddness type story lines. Somebody make the film !

29 December: Bowling Day

Today is Bowling Day, because on this date in 1862, the bowling ball was invented. Here are ten things you might not know about bowling.

1. Bowling is a very old game. Items have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 3200 BC which suggest people were playing something like bowling all those centuries ago.
2. The first indoor bowling alley was built in New York in 1840.
3. The largest bowling alley in the world is in Japan. It's called the Inazawa Bowling Centre, and has 116 lanes.
4. Bowling was banned in England by King Edward III because he deemed it was distracting people from their archery practice.
5. Henry VIII also banned bowling, but only for the lower classes. He wanted to make it a game just for the rich. In his time, cannon balls were used for balls.
6. In America, a bowling alley was built in the White House as a birthday gift for Harry S Truman in 1948. The lanes were later moved to another building and fell into disrepair. In 1969, another bowling alley was built for Richard Nixon, which was renovated in 2019.
7. Up until 1905, bowling balls were made of wood. In 1905, rubber balls were introduced. In 1959, polyester balls came on the scene.
8. The bowling lane is 60 feet long and traditionally made from 39 strips of wood.
9. Nine pin bowling is banned in every US state except for Texas. Bowling with nine pins became associated with drinking and gambling, hence the bans. To give the game a new start and a more clean cut image, an extra pin was added to make it ten pin bowling - a completely different game that the whole family could play.
10. While it may not seem like the most athletic game on the planet, there are health benefits to be gained from playing. There's a certain amount of walking - up to 60 feet a turn, and handling a bowling ball which weighs on average 14lb helps strengthen muscles. Bowling also improves flexibility, balance and hand-eye co-ordination. It's also a social game.

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


Goodreads Review for Golden Thread:

This is a standalone book rather than one of the "super" series. Excellent characterization, a "keeps you guessing" plot, and some fairly deep philosophical issues ! Would recommend this to anyone, but especially recommended if you would like to see a completely new "take" on the people with powers / alternate futures / general oddness type story lines. Somebody make the film !

28 December: Spider-Man

Stan Lee - creator of Spiderman with Steve Ditko, was born on this date in 1922. 10 things you might not know about Spidey.

1. He first appeared in 1962, in a comic called Amazing Fantasy #15.
2. The character was inspired by a 1930s pulp hero called Richard Wentworth, aka "The Spider", a billionaire who wasn't a mutant, but more of a Batman type character. Another source of inspitation was a fly climbing up a wall at the Marvel Offices. Stan Lee decided his next hero would be able to do that and started scribbling down ideas. At that point, Spiderman could have ended up being called "Stick to Wall Man", "Fly Man" or "Insect Man". The spider idea was rejected at first by the head of Marvel Comics at the time, Martin Goodman, because he didn't think people would take to it - a lot of people hate Spiders, after all.
3. He was brought up by his Aunt May - so what happened to his parents? Richard and Mary Parker were agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who once saved Wolverine's life, before meeting a sad end in a plane crash caused by Red Skull.
4. Peter Parker got his powers while on a school trip to a science lab where he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Next day, he woke up with his superpowers. He was 15 at the time. His powers include climbing walls, his "spidey-sense" which tells him an enemy is near, and the webs he can shoot from his wrists. The webs are strong enough to restrain the Hulk, but dissolve after an hour. He also has a phenomenally fast reaction time - he is capable of shooting webs at a gun which has been fired and catching the bullet in them. Before he got his powers, Peter Parker was a science nerd plagued by bullies.
5. A famous quote attributed to Stan Lee is "With great power comes great responsibility." This quote is from the Spiderman story. At first, Peter wanted to use his new powers to get revenge on those who killed his Uncle Ben; until he remembers something his uncle used to say to him - the above quote. Those words are what made Spiderman decide to use his powers for good.
6. Spiderman's main love interest is Mary Jane Watson, but he's also had things with Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) and Betty Brant, a secretary at the Daily Planet, and a schoolboy crush on Liz Allan. The storyline has him marry Mary Jane, but there's a series of the comics where a possible future is explored in which Mary Jane dies of cancer. The disease is triggered by Spiderman's radioactive sperm.
7. The licence for Spiderman is now owned by Sony who bought it after a disastrous Marvel storyline in which Peter Parker was a clone and Mary Jane was pregnant. The story was so unpopular that people stopped buying Marvel Comics in droves and nearly bankrupted the company until Sony bailed them out by buying Spiderman.
8. Tobey Maguire plays Spiderman in the movies, but he might not have done if Michael Jackson had had his way. Michael was a huge Spiderman fan and approached Stan Lee with an offer to buy the film rights so he could play the role himself. Leonardo DiCaprio was also in the running at one point.
9. Spiderman was the first teen superhero to work on his own rather than be someone else's sidekick. The Spiderman comics also developed the concept that superheroes have everyday lives and problems on top of fighting the bad guys.
10. There is a stage musical based on Spiderman. It's called Turn off the Dark. It opened on Broadway in 2011, and at the time was the most expensive musical in Broadway history, costing $1.2 million a week to run the show.

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 December: Louis Pasteur

This date in 1822 saw the birth of the scientist Louis Pasteur, known as a pioneer of the germ theory of disease, and for deveolping vaccines and the pasteurisation process. Here are some interesting facts about him.

1. He was born in Dole, eastern France. His father was Jean-Joseph, a tanner who had served in the Napoleonic Wars and received the Legion of Honour.
2. At school, he was an average student interested in fishing and art. As a teen, he drew portraits of his family and friends.
3. When he was 26 he married Marie Laurent, who became his assistant when he was carrying out his experiments.
4. The couple had five children but three of them died of typhoid, which may have been what inspired Pasteur to study disease and vaccinations.
5. In Pasteur's time, people believed that microbes and germs appeared out of nowhere. Pasteur's work was criticised because it went against this popular belief. The French Acadademy of Sciences, aware of the debate, decided to offer a prize to anyone who could prove whether or not microbes were spontaneously generated. Pasteur netted the 2,500 franc prize by showing that no micro-organisms grew in sterilised solutions when the air around them was sterilised, too.
6. We tend to associate pasteurisation with dairy products, but he first application of it was in the French Wine industry. If germs could spoil wine and Milk, he reasoned, perhaps they were also the cause of human diseases. He also did a lot of work on diseases affecting Silkworms.
7. He stole a method of vaccination from someone else. A vet by the name of Jean Joseph Henry Toussaint developed the vaccine for anthrax first, and shared his results with Pasteur. Pasteur went on to demonstrate the method in public, taking all the credit and even taking out a patent on it. In fact, stealing other people's ideas may have been something he made a habit of. He told his family never to reveal his notebooks to anyone and for years, they never did - but eventually his grandson donated them to the National Library of France so people could study them. While Pasteur certainly did make a significant contribution to science, he was apt to exaggerate how much of it was his own original work.
8. Pasteur's early work as a chemist involved studying the chemical properties of crystals.
9. An early demonstration of vaccination in humans was when Pasteur used a vaccine his colleague Emile Roux had developed for rabies. It had only ever been tested on Dogs. Pasteur used it on a nine year old boy, Joseph Meister, who'd been badly bitten by a rabid dog. What he did was strictly illegal, as Pasteur wasn't qualified as a doctor. Pasteur was lucky - his experiment worked and the boy survived. Had he not, Pasteur would have been prosecuted. As it was, he was hailed as a hero, although it has been suggested since that the likelihood of Meister developing rabies would only have been about 10% even if he hadn't been vaccinated.
10. Pasteur was a deeply religious man, who was a Christian as well as a scientist. While he did believe science and religion should be kept separate, he admitted that he used to pray while working in the laboratory, and that the more he studied nature, the more amazed he became at the works of the Creator.

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 December: Radium

On this date in 1898 Marie and Pierre Curie announced that they had discovered radium. Here are 10 things you might not know about this element.

1. The chemical symbol for radium is Ra and its atomic number is 88.
2. Its melting point is 700 °C/1292 °F, and its boiling point is 1737 °C/3159 °F.
3. It was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They didn't, at first, isolate pure radium but extracted radium chloride from uraninite. It wasn't until 1911 that Marie Curie, with André-Louis Debierne, managed to isolate it using electrolysis.
4. The substance is named after its property of emitting radiation. The word radium derives from the Latin word "radius" meaning "ray".
5. Pure radium is silvery-white, but when exposed to air, it quickly turns Black. It is, in fact, reacting with nitrogen rather than Oxygen.
6. Only tiny amounts are found in nature. There is a little as a seventh of a gram in a ton of uranite.
7. Radium is the heaviest known alkaline earth metal. Other alkali earth metals include beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
8. It has 33 isotopes, the most stable of which is radium-226 with a half-life of 1602 years. This means any radium that was present when the Earth was formed will have decayed long ago. Eventually, radium decays into Lead.
9. It is not necessary for biological organisms, in fact, it's very bad for them. If ingested, the body treats it as calcium, so it accumulates in the bones and can cause bone cancer. Before science realised this, it was used to make luminous paint for the faces of watches and instrument dials. The women who painted the dials were actively encouraged to lick their brushes to shape them. This led to a famous lawsuit in the 1920s when five women dying from the effects of ingesting radium sued the United States Radium Corporation, who tried to wriggle out of it by saying the women had syphilis. Radium was once an additive in products such as Toothpaste, hair creams, and even in food items and was sold as having curative powers.
10. Even though it causes cancer, it has been used as a cure for the disease. Howard Atwood Kelly was a pioneer of radiotherapy, targetting tumours with it. It was a risky business - some of his patients died from radiation exposure. Radiotherapy is still used to treat cancer, but nowadays, safer radioisotopes are used instead.

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

25 December: Quentin Crisp Quotes

Born on Christmas Day 1908 was Quentin Crisp (real name Denis Charles Pratt), writer and raconteur. 10 pearls of wisdom from him:

1. If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
2. Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
3. There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
4. Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
5. What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
6. The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.
7. I never spend my time doing anything I'll have to do again tomorrow.
8. Men get laid, but women get screwed.
9. The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches.
10. Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

A Christmas Novella

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

24 December: Santa Claus

It's Christmas Eve. Children everywhere are waiting eagerly for a visit from Father Christmas, aka Santa Claus. Here are ten facts about him to read while you wait.

1. You probably know Santa Claus evolved from St Nicholas, but you may not know that he's also said to have absorbed some elements of the god Wodan, who is said to have led a wild hunt across the sky during the destival of Yule.
2. Personifications of Christmas date back to the 15th century, but they didn't look like the Father Christmas we know today. His various incarnations carried bread and a leg of lamb; wore garters, a doublet and hose and had a long, thin beard; rode a Goat. By the 18th century he was mostly portrayed as an elderly fat man with white hair, but tended to wear Green rather than red. Also, he was associated more with adult fun and revelry at Christmas time than with giving gifts to children.
3. Santa owes much of his current persona to the poem, A Visit From Saint Nicholas, aka "The Night Before Christmas". Even then, he might be wearing any colour clothing - not only red, but green, white, Brown or blue. His red attire was fixed in the public's mind thanks to a Coca Cola advertising campaign in 1931.
4. In English speaking countries, Santa's laugh, "Ho Ho Ho" is one of his most important attributes. In Canada, Santa has been assigned the Postcode H0H 0H0.
5. Where Santa actually lives is up for debate. A general concensus seems to be that he lives at the North Pole, but many countries in Northern latitudes like to claim that Father Christmas resides within their borders. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Belarus all make such claims. So does Alaska, where there is a town called North Pole. A Hamburger restaurant in the town claims to have a fly through service for sleighs.
6. Writing letters to Santa with a list of desired Christmas gifts is a long established tradition. At one time, the way to make sure Santa got the letter was to burn it on the fire so the letter would be magically wafted up the chimney and the wind would blow it to Santa. In Latin America, kids tie their letters to Helium balloons. Nowadays many countries' postal services have incorporated special addresses where children can write to Santa and receive a reply. And they do - in the UK in 2006 750,000 letters were received. It's even possible to e-mail Santa these days, but writing an actual letter is still more popular among children. Studies have shown that girls write longer letters to Father Christmas than boys, and they're more likely to ask for presents for other people and refer to the meaning and spirit of Christmas.
7. Another way to communicate to Father Christmas what you might want is to go visit him in a Department store. This tradition began back in 1890 as a marketing tool. The first person to play Santa in a department store was James Edgar. Today, you can get professional training to be a Santa, including how to shape a Beard, how to pose for photos and how to dress.
8. The idea of a Mrs Claus first appeared in 1849 in a short story by James Rees, but didn't really catch on until 1889 when Katherine Lee Bates published a poem called "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride". "Goody" is short for "Good Wife", an old fashioned way of saying "Mrs".
9. Given the number of children in the world, Santa has to call at 842 million households on Christmas Eve, which involves travelling 218 million miles. In order to get it all done it would be necessary for Santa to travel at 1,280 miles a second, and spend just one millisecond at each house. The way Time zones work mean that he'd have 36 hours rather than 24 to get it done. His sleigh would weigh more than 400,000 tons at the start of his epic trip, which would mean he'd need 360,000 Reindeer, not just the traditional eight. As for all the treats left for him, they amount to billions of calories, and Santa would have to jog for 109 centuries to burn it all off.
10. Santa's flying reindeer may have originated from people tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

A Christmas Novella

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

23 December: Christmas pudding

On this date in 1848, The London Illustrated News published the first Christmas supplement with advice on ‘making the Christmas Pudding’. 10 things you might not know about Christmas puddings:

1. Christmas pudding is sometimes referred to as "plum pudding", even though it doesn't have Plums in it. "Plum" is a word used in olden times to mean any dried fruit such as currants or raisins.
2. Christmas pudding used to have meat in it. In the 14th century people used to eat a kind of porridge with beef, mutton, dried fruit, Wine and spices. It might have been cooked inside an animal skin. It was eaten before Christmas as a fasting meal. In the 16th century it had evolved somewhat - it now contained Eggs, breadcrumbs and more booze - Beer and spirits. By Victorian times, it had become Christmas pudding as we know it today, having lost the meat somewhere along the line.
3. Traditionally, the pudding should be made on the Sunday before Advent, or "Stir-up Sunday". The pudding should contain 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples. Everyone in the family should have a turn at stirring the mixture, from east to west (the direction of travel fo the three wise men), and as they do so, make a secret wish. The name "Stir-Up Sunday" doesn't only refer to stirring a Christmas pudding. It actually comes from the prayer of the day from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which starts with the words "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people."
4. The sprig of Holly on top is a reminder of the crown of thorns Jesus wore.
5. Another tradition is to pour even more booze, usually brandy, over the pudding and set light to it at the table. The flames are said to represent the love and power of Jesus.
6. Yet another tradition is to put things in the mix for people to find (and possibly break their teeth on) which are omens for the coming year. The most common one now is a coin, traditionally an old sixpence, which means good luck. This tradition started with Twelfth Night cake, eaten at the very end of the celebrations. This cake would have a dried Pea or bean in it and whoever got it was king or queen for the night. This dates back to the 14th century. The first coins to be used were Silver farthings, then pennies, then threepenny bits and then sixpence. Unless you have an old sixpence lying around, today's equivalent would be a 5p piece. Other items sometimes placed in the pud included a Button (if a single man found it, it meant he would not marry in the coming year); a Thimble (ditto for single women) or a ring (which meant you would get married in the coming year, or that you'd be rich).
7. Christmas pudding is steamed rather than baked because in olden times, not every household had an oven.
8. The spices and alcoholic beverages used to make the pudding were once very expensive, hence the pudding was to be eaten on a special occasion.
9. In the early 20th century, there was a campaign by the EMB (Empire Marketing Board) in the UK to make Christmas pud represent the British Empire. The Board asked Buckingham Palace for the recipe for the Christmas pud served to the royal family and re-worked it to make a pud for a smaller gathering (8 rather than 40) and to make sure that each ingredient represented one of the Empire's colonies (eg currants from Australia, rum from Jamaica, brandy from Cyprus and so on). They then distributed the recipe in Newspapers and magazines, and even handed it out to the public for free. People could also write in to the EMB to ask for a copy. Thousands of people did.
10. Christmas pudding keeps really well - if it wasn't all eaten at Christmas, it could be kept for Easter. Some families even made their Christmas pudding the previous Christmas and let it mature for a whole year.

A Christmas Novella

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle