22 December: X-Rays

On this date in 1895 German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen made the first X-ray, of his wife's hand. 10 things you might not know about X-rays:

1. Because he was German, Röntgen named his discovery X-Strahlen - Strahlen being the German word for a ray or beam. X is used to indicate an unknown quantity in mathematics and was added to indicate that he didn't at first completely understand how these rays worked.
2. Like so many significant scientific discoveries, it was accidental, while the scientist was working on something else. In Röntgen's case, it he was working on the conduction of Electricity through gases. He found a ray that would light up a screen some distance away, and then found that if he passed his hand through the ray, the image of the bones would be projected onto the screen. From there is was a small step to work out that if he replaced the screen with a photographic plate, he could record an image.
3. His first subject, his wife, Anna Bertha, was, by some accounts, somewhat creeped out by the X-ray of her hand, and is reported to have commented, "I have seen my death!" The medical profession were much more interested and it wasn't long before doctors were using them to find bullets in human bodies and to diagnose fractures.
4. Röntgen's accidental discovery netted him the first Nobel Prize for physics.
5. People used to think X-rays were perfectly safe and put them to uses that would horrify doctors today. They became a curiosity at carnivals and even children's parties, where people could view the bones in their hands. They were a common sight in Shoe shops, too, as a way to ensure customers got shoes that fitted perfectly. Until the dangers became aparent, they were also used as a beauty treatment - removing unwanted hair.
6. It wasn't until 1904, when Thomas Edison's assistant, Clarence Dally, died of cancer at the age of 39 after working extensively with X-rays that people began to realise they weren't as safe as they'd thought. Thomas Edison, after seeing the nasty effects they had on his assistant, declared that he was afraid of X-rays. However, it was also discovered that X-rays could kill cancer cells and could be used as a cancer treatment. They also helped deal with another huge killer of the time - TB. An X-ray of a person's lungs was a more reliable way of diagnosing the disease than listening to someone's chest, and the disease could be spotted earlier, which meant it could be more effectively treated. They also discovered that the element barium absorbed X-rays and by giving a patient barium to eat, or as an enema, they could diagnose problems in the digestive system.
7. X-rays aren't just useful tools for doctors and dentists. They have other uses as well. Astronomers use X-rays transmitted from objects in space to make new discoveries far beyond our solar system. The Black Hole in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy is one example. You'll be relieved to know that the Earth's atmosphere is thick enough to prevent X-rays from distant objects reaching us on the ground - X-ray telescopes are deployed in space. Egyptian Mummies were X-rayed so scientists could find out about them without unwrapping them.
8. X-rays were instrumental in the disocvery of the structure of DNA thanks to a technique called X-ray crystallography. A woman named Rosalind Franklin took X-ray pictures of the molecule, but sadly died before she could get any credit for it.
9. In 2009, a Museum of London poll voted the X-ray the most significant modern scientific discovery, winning more votes than penicillin.
10. The art world has made use of them, too. X-rays of paintings by old masters have shown how the artists altered or overpainted their works. Some discoveries have been quite creepy. An X-ray of a buddha statue from China showed that the statue had a human corpse inside it, folded into the same lotus position as the statue.

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

21 December: National Robin Day

Today is National Robin Day. The robin, as well as being a popular subject for Christmas cards, is Britain's national bird. Here are 10 things you might not know about them.

1. They are members of the thrush family and so are related to Nightingales and Blackbirds. In fact, they're sometimes mistaken for nightingales, because they often sing at night, usually under artificial lights. If you're awake for the dawn chorus, one of the first birds you'll hear is probably a robin.
2. There are a couple of legends that tell the story of how the robin got his red breast. One is that a robin sang to Jesus on the cross to comfort Him, and the red breast is from drops of His Blood. Another says the robin used to carry water to souls in purgatory and their breasts were scorched by the flames.
3. Why Christmas, though? Probably because postmen in Victorian times wore red uniforms and were nicknamed "robins" or "redbreasts" and so the robin became a symbol of Christmas greetings.
4. Sports teams with red as a predominant home colour sometimes use "the Robins" as a nickname. As well as the colour, it's thought they choose this little bird as an emblem to represent agility and darting around the field. Crewe Alexandra, Cheltenham Town, Bristol City and Swindon Town are examples of football clubs using the nickname.
5. Robins are fiercely territorial and will fight to the death to defend their patch against other robins. In winter, both male and female robins hold their own territory and sing the same song. In Britain, the robin's territory is usually not far from where it was hatched, although some robins from Scandinavia migrate Mediterranean for the winter.
6. They tend not to live very long. There's a massive mortality rate during their first year of life, making the average lifespan just over one year - however, if they survive their first year they can live as long as eight years, and according to Wikipedia there has been a robin which lived for 19 years. The most frequent cause of death is being killed by a Cat, followed by getting killed in a dispute over territory. At least they no longer run the risk, as they did in Victorian times, of being turned into a lady's hat as robin skins were popular adornments for hats back then.
7. It's possible, though quite difficult, to recognise individual robins by their breast patterns, as each one is unique.
8. Robins will eat anything - fruit, insects, Spiders - even Cheese - but their favourite food is mealworms.
9. When mating, a male robin will bond with a female by bringing her food and feeding her, which can be mistaken for an adult bird feeding a chick. This is important as this is what the male will need to do when the female is incubating her eggs, and once they hatch, both parents share the task of feeding the chicks. So the female will want to be sure she's picked a mate who is good at finding food. Robins can raise as many as five broods in a breeding season with the male taking full responsibility for feeding the previous brood of chicks while the female incubates a new set of eggs.
10. Both male and female robins have red breasts. The red breast, particularly in the male, has evolved to help the bird defend its territory. This is probably why young robins don't get red breasts until after their first moult. A territorial scrap will start with the birds singing to each other, and then jockeying for positions on branches to best show off their red breasts to each other.

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

20 December: The Osmonds

On this date in 1962 The Osmonds made their debut on The Andy Williams Show. 10 thngs you might not know about the Osmonds.

1. There were nine siblings in all, eight boys and just one girl, Marie. The two eldest siblings, Virl and Tom, were never part of any of the singing groups as they were both deaf.
2. However, Virl had enough hearing to follow a rhythm and it was he who first taught his younger brothers their dance routines when they became pop stars.
3. Their father, George, was in the military and he met his wife, Olive, in 1944.
4. The first of the Osmond brood to sing in public were Alan, Wayne, Jay and Merrill, who first performed at their church singing Oh Dear Lord in Heaven, and were well received. Their parents then wondered if they could turn them into a singing group which might earn enough to buy hearing aids for the two deaf brothers.
5. Their first Hollywood audition was a failure when bandleader Lawrence Welk, who they'd gone there to meet, didn't show up. To take the lads' minds off it, George took them for a trip to Disneyland. There, they put on an impromptu performance for the Dapper Dans, a barbershop quartet who were working there. People stopped to listen, entranced by these four cute and talented kids, which led to them meeting Walt Disney himself and being offered the chance to appear on a show called Disneyland After Dark. In 1962, they appeared on the Andy Williams Show for the first time.
6. By 1975, they'd hit the big time with girls screaming at them everywhere they went and way more money than was needed to buy a couple of hearing aids. The original four had been joined by Donny and Marie, and later, the youngest brother, Jimmy.
7. Sadly, though, it would all go wrong thanks to some dodgy business partners who committed fraud and embezzlement, which resulted in the family being almost bankrupt by 1985. George refused to file for bankruptcy. Instead he sold everything they had and the Osmonds would perform at any gig they could get, although by that time, their popularity was waning. However, they persevered and managed to pay off the debts.
8. You probably know the Osmonds were Mormons, and it's normally a requirement for young Mormon men to go on missions - however, the Osmonds believed they could spread the word more effectively by carrying on with their musical careers. Their album, The Plan, was a Mormon concept album.
9. In 2007 the entire family (more than 120 of them, including all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren) planned to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show to celebrate their 50th anniversary in showbusiness. Sadly, although George Osmond was meant to appear with them, aged 90, he died a few days before the show was recorded. The family decided to go ahead with the recording as a tribute to him. The show aired on the day of his funeral.
10. In 2019 the performing Osmonds consist of original group members Merrill and Jay who perform as a duo (Alan and Wayne retired for health reasons); Donny and Marie still perform together with one of Alan's sons, David, as Donny's understudy. David is also part of a second generation group with his brothers as well as having a modest solo career.

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

19 December: Ripley's Believe it or Not

On this date in 1918 Robert Ripley began his Believe It or Not column in The New York Globe. 10 things you might not know about Ripley's Believe it or not:

1. When Ripley first conceived the idea, it was a Newspaper cartoon about sporting feats and was called Champs and Chumps. In 1919, the name changed to Believe It Or Not as items that weren't about sport were being included more and more often.
2. Ripley's first cartoon featured people who could walk, run and jump backwards, and records in skipping rope and the three-legged race.
3. While Robert Ripley's job at the New York Globe gave him opportunities to travel a lot, which did inspire some of his strips, most of the featured facts were discovered by a man named Robert Pearlroth who spent 52 years of his working life combing through books in the library. He was chosen because he knew 14 different languages and so could extract facts from magazines and journals that weren't in English. Pearlroth sometimes spent seven days a week in the library and the staff would have to tell him to go home when the library was closing.
4. In 1929, Ripley's fact finding uncovered the fact the the American National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, had never been officially been adopted as such. This led to 5 million Americans signing a petition to Congress to do something about it. In 1931 a law was passed stating that The Star Spangled Banner had been formally made the US national anthem.
5. As well as Mr. Pearlroth toiling away in the library, another source of fascinating facts was the readers, who were invited to send in information about oddities from their home towns. Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, had his first drawing published in Ripley's strip when he wrote in claiming that his dog could eat pins, tacks, screws, nails and razor blades. That same dog was the model for Snoopy.
6. Robert Ripley himself was an interesting character. Born on Christmas Day 1890, in Santa Rosa, California, he always wanted to be a cartoonist, and submitted cartoons to his school magazine. He became the owner of a number of odd items such as a whale penis, a fish which could only swim backwards, a Chinese junk ship, and a shrunken head from Tibet. He also collected female housemates from around the world, so his household could be described as a multi-national harem. He didn't drive and often worked wearing just his dressing gown and his mother's Wedding ring.
7. He married a film actress called Beatrice Roberts in 1919, but they divorced in 1923.
8. Even his death could have featured in one of his cartoons. He was filming the final (13th) episode of the first Ripley's Believe it or not TV series when he collapsed and died at his desk, apparently of a heart attack.
9. It may have started with a newspaper comic strip but it certainly didn't end there. In 1930, the radio show began and was followed by a TV show, several short films, a web site (ripleys.com), computer games and museums, sometimes referred to as "odditoriums" all over the world. There was even talk of a feature film starring Jim Carrey in the early 2000s, although I could find no evidence it was ever made.
10. While the company which now owns the franchise insist that every fact is rigorously checked before it is included, some have been subsequently debunked, including the story of 1,200 Turkish prisoners being executed by accident in Napoleon's time, and the one about Frank Tower, a man who allegedly survived the wrecks of The Empress of Ireland, the Lusitania and the Titanic.

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

18 December: Mother Goose Day

Panto season is upon us, and today is Mother Goose Day, So here's all you need to know about Mother Goose.

1. Who is Mother Goose? She's said to be the person who wrote all the nursery rhymes we know and love, such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Little Bo Peep, Jack and Jill and Baa Baa Black Sheep.
2. She's also responsible for well known Tongue Twisters like "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."
3. The first mention of her in the English language was in the early 18th century, when a book of fairy tales was translated from the French Contes de ma Mere l'Oye (Tales of My Mother Goose), by Charles Perrault. It was followed by a compilation of nursery rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle. However, Mother Goose was known as a folk figure way before that. References to her in French literature date back to the 17th century with sayings such as "like a Mother Goose Story".
4. Was she based on a real person? Some say the original Mother Goose was the wife of the French king Robert II who was known as "Goose footed Bertha" and was famous for telling children incredible stories. Or it might have been Charlemange's mother, Bertrada of Laon, who was known as "The Goose-foot Queen". There is even evidence to suggest she might have been the Queen of Sheba.
5. A more modern legend suggests that the original Mother Goose was Elizabeth Foster Goose, the wife of Isaac Goose, who lived in New England. When she married Isaac, she had six children from a previous marriage and Isaac had ten. She spent a lot of time singing nursery rhymes to her grandchildren and their friends and her son in law allegedly collected them into a book. No copies have ever been found, however.
6. As well as writing nursery rhymes, Mother Goose stars in one of her own. It's fifteen verses long, beginning with "Old Mother Goose, When she wanted to wander, Would ride through the air On a very fine gander." The poem goes on to tell of Mother Goose's adventures with the golden Egg.
7. According to the poem, Mother Goose has a son called Jack.
8. She is depicted as an old lady wearing a tall pointed hat. She has a strong chin and rides a flying goose.
9. Mother Goose is also a Pantomime. The plot of the panto is based on an acient Greek legend about a goose that laid golden eggs. This makes it the oldest story to be adapted into a pantomime.
10. The plot of the pantomime is as follows: Mother Goose is behind with her rent and the bailiffs have come to evict her. A good fairy sends along the goose who lays golden eggs. The goose is traditionally named Priscilla. Thanks to Priscilla and her golden eggs, Mother Goose is now rich. The Demon King has a bet with the fairy that no-one is ever content with what they have. The fairy claims that Mother Goose is, and the Demon King sets out to prove her wrong by tempting Mother Goose with youth and beauty. If she gives up Priscilla, she will gain access to a pool which will make her young and beautiful if she bathes in it. She soon realises beauty isn't all it's cracked up to be, as her friends no longer like her. So she goes to get Priscilla back, having lots of adventures on the way, usually ending with going to Goose Court and winning her case.

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

17 December: Dionysus

Today is one of the feast days of the god Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, best known as the Greco-Roman god of Wine.

1. His parents were Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. This makes Dionysus unique among the twelve Olympian gods as he is the only one to have a parent who was mortal. It didn't end well for Semele, who faced the wrath of Zeus's wife Hera when she got pregnant. She died as a result of Hera's jealous rage. Zeus saved his baby by sewing the foetus into his thigh until it was ready to be born.
2. Hera's jealous rage didn't end there. She had the Titans rip the baby to pieces, but his grandmother, Rhea, rescued the pieces and put them back together. Dionysus was then raised by mountain nymphs. When Hera found out he was still alive, she drove him mad, which resulted in him wandering the world and teaching humanity how to make wine. However, even Hera accepted him in the end, when he recovered his sanity and joined the gods in Olympia.
3. In art, Dionysus is usually pictured as a young man with long dark hair, less athletic than most Olympian gods. He wears a crown of Ivy, animal skins or a purple robe. He carries a staff made of fennel, called a thyrsus which has a pine cone on the end, and a magical cup of wine which is always full.
4. He had a number of superpowers which included making vines grow and turning himself into a bull or a Lion. He also had the power to drive mortals insane. He could also bring the dead back to life, which he did for his mother, Semele. It was Dionysus who granted King Midas the power to turn everything he touched into Gold.
5. The names Dennis and Denise are derived from Dionysus.
6. He wasn't only the god of wine. He was the god of wine-making and the Grape harvest, and also of revelry, ecstacy, fertility and theatre.
7. He was said to lead a fun loving, wild life and had a band of female followers called the Maenads, who had loose morals and were often drunk.
8. While this would suggest he probably wasn't the marrying kind, he did marry - his wife was Ariadne, a princess from Crete - and they had six children.
9. There were two main festivals celebrating Dionysus. One was the Dionysia, the oldest of the two, celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice, and probably began as a celebration of the wine harvest. It consisted of a procession in which people carried jars of wine, loaves of bread and phalluses, followed by dramatic performances and competitions. Later on, a different festival was held in urban areas in the spring. This also included a procession which would be led by people carrying a statue of Dionysus and leading bulls, which would be sacrificed to the god. The drama contest would feature a number of categories and the entrants would be celebrity dramatists.
10. The ancient Greeks believed that when people got drunk, Dionysus entered them, which explained why people could have widely different personalities when under the influence.

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

16 December: Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on this date in 1770 - or at least we think so. 16 December is the best guess seeing as the only record is of his baptism the following day. Here are 10 facts about him:

1. The year of his birth has been disputed as well. Beethoven himself thought for years that he was born in 1772. It's thought this may have been because his father lied about his son's age. Ludwig was a musical prodigy, and Beethoven Senior may well have passed his son off as being two years younger to make him seem even more impressive than he actually was. We do know that Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.
2. Even as a child, Beethoven would sometimes improvise on the Violin rather than play the music on the score in front of him. This annoyed his father no end and he would scold the boy, calling his improvisations "silly trash" and telling him his "scratchings" would never amount to much.
3. Beethoven's father pushed him hard as a child. A failed singer himself, once he realised he had a talented son, he pushed the boy hard, forcing him to practice for hours every day and beating him when he made a mistake. By the time Beethoven was 18, his father had become an alcoholic and could no longer work, so Beethoven was the family's main breadwinner.
4. We don't know exactly when Beethoven started writing his musical compositions down. The earliest composition to still exist dates to 1782, when Beethoven was 12. It was a set of nine variations for the Piano, in C minor, unusual for the time and very hard to play. By the age of 22, he'd moved to Vienna and was playing concerts for the Austrian nobility.
5. He was just 25 when he started to lose his hearing, and was completely deaf by the time he was 46. He had to ask people to write down anything they wanted to say to him. His deafness meant he had to give up conducting and performing, but he went on composing for the rest of his life. In 1802 he wrote about feeling suicidal, but the fact that he still felt he had music inside him to bring out stopped him from ending his own life.
6. One of his famous pieces that he wrote after this is the Moonlight Sonata, although Beethoven himself never called it that. He gave it the more prosaic title of Piano Sonata No. 14. A few years after he died, a German poet called Ludwig Rellstab commented that the music sounded like moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne, and the name stuck. He wrote one opera, Fidelio. It took him ten years to write.
7. He was an admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte for a while and dedicated his third symphony to him. However, when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven went right off him and scrubbed his name off the manuscript. Some modern reproductions of this piece of music include Napoleon's name scrubbed out to make it look authentic.
8. Much of what we know about Beethoven's life and what sort of person he was is thanks to him keeping a diary. Deafness wasn't his only health problem - he had a whole raft of ailments and often looked dishevelled. He wasn't particularly handsome, either, but women were attracted to his talent, passion and refinement. He was engaged twice but both engagements fell through. When he died, he left a letter addressed to "Immortal Beloved." Nobody knows who she was.
9. Beethoven died at the age of 56, likely as a result of his heavy drinking. His last words are sometimes quoted as "Applaud, friends, for the comedy is ended" in Latin, a line often used at the end of a play in the theatre. However, it's more likely his last words were "Pity, Pity, too late," to a friend who'd brought him a gift of several bottles of Wine when he was on this deathbed. 20,000 people attended his funeral.
10. Beethoven's music sometimes shows up in quite unexpected places. The film Saturday Night Fever features a disco version of his fifth symphony; The King's Speech features his seventh and Die Hard features Ode to Joy, which was also adopted as the anthem of The EU in 1972. His music has even been sent into space, included on the gold record sent up with the Voyager probe.

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