3 September: Welsh Rarebit Day

Today is National Welsh Rarebit Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about Welsh rarebit.

1. What is it? Basically, fancy Cheese on toast. It's made from a sauce of melted cheese and various other ingredients poured over slices of toasted Bread and served hot.
2. Ale, Mustard, ground cayenne Pepper or ground paprika, Worcestershire Sauce and Béchamel sauce may be added to the mix.
3. Why “rarebit”? This word, by the way, has no other use except the name of this meal. It's a corruption of Rabbit, “Welsh rabbit” being first recorded in 1725 and the variant “Welsh rarebit” being first recorded in 1785 by Francis Grose. Welsh rarebit contains no rabbit meat, however, so it's still a mystery. One theory as to how the dish got its name comes from Betty Crocker's cookbook. She suggests that Welsh peasants weren't allowed to eat the rabbits from their landlords' estates, so they ate cheese instead, although there's no other evidence for this.
4. The word “Welsh” in archaic English meant "foreign, non-native", perhaps meaning that melted cheese on toast was seen as quite exotic back then!
5. That said, a 1747 recipe book by Hannah Glasse gives recipes for English and “Scotch” rabbit as well as “Welch rabbit.” According to her, to make Welsh rabbit the bread must be toasted on both sides. The cheese is toasted on one side, laid on the toast and the other side of the cheese is then toasted with a hot iron. For Scotch rabbit, the bread is toasted on both sides and buttered. The cheese is toasted on both sides before being placed on top. For English rabbit, the bread is toasted and soaked in Wine. The cheese is placed on a bettered plate with a couple of spoonfuls of white wine, covered with another plate and placed over hot coals for a couple of minutes, then stirred, with mustard added to taste. This mixture is placed on the bread and browned with a hot shovel.
6. Welsh rarebit with an Egg is called buck rarebit.
7. Welsh rarebit mixed with tomatoes or Tomato soup is called a blushing bunny.
8. Welsh rarebit is mentioned in a 16^th century joke book. In the tale, God gets tired of all the Welshmen in heaven “with their krakynge and babelynge” and asked St Peter to do something about it. Saint Peter went outside and shouted “Cause bobe, yt is as moche to say as rostyd chese” and all the Welshmen ran out to get some, whereupon Saint Peter dodged back inside the pearly gates and locked them all out.
9. In the early 20^th century, there was a comic strip about Welsh rarebit. It was by an American cartoonist called Winsor McCay and was called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. It was about the weird dreams the characters had after eating cheese on toast before bed.
10. September 3rd is National Welsh Rarebit Day.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

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2 September: Krishna

Janmashtami or Gokulashtami, is an annual Hindu festival that celebrates the birth of Krishna. In 2018, it falls on 2 September. Here are 10 facts about Krishna.

1. He is often pictured with Blue skin, although one translation of his name means ‘black’ or ‘dark’, suggesting he might have actually had dark skin. The blue hue may come from the fact that blue is often associated with spiritual energy.
2. He is a form of the Hindu god Vishnu, or an avatar – the original meaning of the word. He was born to the sister of an evil king, Kamsa, who had overthrown his father. When Kamsa heard a prophecy that his sister's eighth child would kill him, he put his sister, Devaki, and her husband, Vasudeva, in prison and every time she had a baby, he'd kill it. Devaki and Vasudeva prayed to Vishnu for help, and the eighth baby was Vishnu in human form – Krishna. Vasudeva managed to smuggle the child out of prison, with some divine assistance whereby a sea parts just for him, and swapped him for a female child. Kamsa tried to kill the little girl, but she transformed into a goddess. Kamsa kept on looking and sending demons to kill the baby Krishna, but he defeated them all and survived.
3. As a child, he was nicknamed the Butter thief, because he used to steal butter.
4. In art, Krishna is often pictured with pots of butter, peacock feathers and a flute. The peacock feathers may be there simply because they are beautiful and associated with nobility. The flute is there because Krishna played the flute. As well as playing Music for all the young girls in his village, and also the cattle, and delighting them, the flute is said to play the sound of “OM”. Another possible symbolism is that the flute represents a human Heart which needs to be emptied so Krishna can fill it with his breath.
5. He also has a conch shell which, when he blows it, is said to send powerful reverberations all over the world.
6. Krishna has 108 names, one of which is 'Mohan', which means 'bewitching' and 'a charmer'. Some of this other best known names are Gopal, Govind, Devakinandan, Shyam, Ghanshyam, Hari and Girdhari.
7. His love life was interesting. He had eight principal wives, Rukmini, Satyabhama, Jambavati, Nagnajiti, Kalindi, Mitravinda, Bhadra and Lakshmana, who were commonly known as 'Ashtabharya'. Each of them bore him ten sons, but his most beloved consort was a woman he wasn't married to, Radha. She was one of the girls he played the flute for as a young man. Their relationship is a common theme of Hindu poetry, and was even used in a 2010 Supreme Court decision to make pre-marital sex lawful. If living together without being married was good enough for Krishna and Radha, the court argued, then it was good enough for young Indians in the 21^st century. Krishna had 16,100 wives aside from the principal eight. These were women which he rescued from a demon Narakasura who had forcibly kept them in captivity. None of their families wanted them back, so Krishna married them all to protect their honour. It is said he never slept with any of them.
8. He is a central character in the important Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita.
9. He once brought someone back from the dead - his Guru Sandipani Muni's son to be exact. He and a companion, Balarama, asked their guru what he would like as payment for giving them knowledge. He said he wanted his son, who had disappeared during an ocean voyage, brought back from the dead. When they went to the place where he'd disappeared, they discovered that the guru's son was being held prisoner by a demon who lived in a conch shell. They took the shell to Yama, God of Death, and asked him to bring the boy back. The guru got his son back and Krishna kept the conch – the same one mentioned in fact #5.
10. Krishna died as a result of a curse by an angry queen, Gandhari, who had lost all 100 of her sons in the Kurukshetra war. Krishna went to her to offer his condolences, but that wasn't enough for her. She put a curse on him to the effect that, in 36 years, he would perish along with the Yadu dynasty. Krishna didn't like the Yadu dynasty much and was totally in agreement that they should be wiped out, and if it meant he would die too, it was a price he was willing to pay to get rid of them; so he replied, "Tathastu" (So be it).

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

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1 September: C J Cherryh Quotes

C J Cherryh, the US sci-fi author, was born on this date in 1942. Here are 10 quotes from her.

1. Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!
2. Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing.
3. There are three kinds of people I've found: those who think the universe is good, those who believe it's corrupt, and those who don't want to think about it any more than they can help. I prefer the first two.
4. Never start a war with something you can't talk to.
5. If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death.
6. Poisoning rarely happens in a well-managed kitchen.
7. Some cool, clear night, drive to a country place where city lights don’t block your view. Turn off the car lights. Get out and look up. And see our real neighbourhood.
8. What we individually deserve isn't as much as what we collectively merit.
9. Were the seeds of next things always there, in the circle of the year, and was that how the world worked its miracles?
10. Change, son of mine, should be applied like salt to a dish—best taste it, understand it, and then decide.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.

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31 August: Caligula

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (better known as Caligula) was born on this date in 12AD. 10 facts about Caligula.

1. Caligula wasn't his real name. His real name was Gaius Caesar. Caligula was a nickname dating from when, as a small child, his father took him along on some of his military campaigns and dressed him up in a miniature soldier's uniform. This amused the real soldiers, and it was they who gave him the nickname. Caligula means “little boot”, after his miniature soldier's boots, or caligae. He hated the nickname.
2. Emperor Augustus was dying around the time Caligula was born. He named his stepson Tiberius as his heir, under the condition that Tiberius adopt Caligula’s father Germanicus and make him his heir. However, soon after Tiberius came to power, he sent Germanicus on a mission during which he became ill and died. Suspicious, or what? His mother Agrippina accused Tiberius of murder, and in response he accused her and her older sons of treason and had them imprisoned. Agrippina starved herself to death and neither of the brothers survived, either. Caligula was a young child and wasn't sent to prison, but to live with his great-grandmother Livia, instead. She kept him out of the public eye until Tiberius's son died and Tiberius needed an heir. He summoned Caligula and adopted him, making him an heir.
3. When Caligula became Emperor, he was popular at first, and did some good things. He freed unjustly imprisoned citizens, gave bonuses to soldiers, and eliminated a highly unpopular tax. He completed construction on the Temple of Augustus and Pompey’s theatre. He started work on an aqueduct to improve Rome’s water supply, and an amphitheatre. He rebuilt the walls at the temples of Syracuse and built a city in the Alps.
4. But about six months into his reign, he got sick. He recovered, but was a changed man afterwards. It isn't known whether it was a physical illness or if he was poisoned, and whether the changes in his personality were down to paranoia or the effects of an illness, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, hyperthyroidism or Wilson’s disease. When he recovered, he had most of his family executed or exiled.
5. Summary executions, incest with his sisters, talking to the Moon, believing himself to be a god, making his Horse a consul – did he really do all of that? Was he as bonkers as people make out? If he was completely unhinged, it would have been possible for the lawmakers of the time to remove him from power, and if he was that crazy, how did he manage to come up with a feasible plan to conquer Britain, later successfully carried out by Claudius? It's entirely possible that a lot of Caligula's outrageous behaviour was invented by his enemies or exaggerated by biographers after his death. Fake news is nothing new.
6. He loved Gold, and had a temple built for himself with a golden statue inside. The statue would be dressed daily in whatever outfit Caligula himself was wearing. People even left offerings there, such as Flamingos, peacocks, and other exotic animals. He identified with Jupiter, the king of the gods, and would dress up as him. There is a story that when Caligula was forced to give up his invasion of Britain, to save face he declared war on Neptune, God of the sea, instead. He ordered his soldiers to whip the waves and collect seashells as the spoils of war.
7. Caligula was afraid of Lightning, and would wear a crown of laurels on his head, because laurel trees were supposedly never struck by lightning.
8. He was fond of clothes and jewellery, and had the best and most expensive clothes money could buy at the time – the more ornate, the better. He was a bit of a cross-dresser, too. Not only did he dress up as gods such as Jupiter and Neptune, but the goddesses, such as Diana and Juno as well, and he had a collection of female Shoes.
9. It's alleged that he built a floating bridge across the Bay of Baiae just so he could ride triumphantly from one end to the other. There is no evidence that he actually did this, but there is evidence of huge pleasure barges which had marble décor, mosaic floors and statues. They were sunk when he died and re-discovered in the 1920s and 30s. However, they were mostly destroyed by fire during the second world war.
10. Caligula was the first Roman emperor to be assassinated. He was stabbed 30 times by the Praetorian guards at the Palatine Games.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

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30 August: Slinky

Slinky Day: A Slinky is a toy in the form of a spring, which can appear to “walk” down a flight of stairs. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Slinky toy:

1. The Slinky was invented by an American naval engineer called Richard James. He was trying to make a spring which would keep sensitive instruments balanced in rough seas. He accidentally knocked on of his springs over and watched as it “walked” from the shelf to a pile of books to the floor. He saw its potential as a toy.
2. His wife, Betty, came up with the name after paging through a dictionary to find a word which summed the invention up. Slinky is a Swedish word meaning sleek, sinuous or graceful.
3. Each Slinky is made from 80 feet of wire. The wire is flat, with a high carbon count and a diameter of 1.5 millimeters (0.0575 inches).
4. More than 300 million Slinkies have been sold worldwide since they went into production, using 50,000 tons of wire. If all the Slinkies ever made were joined together, they would circle the Earth over 126 times.
5. The Slinky factory is located in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and till uses the original equipment designed and engineered by Richard James. Slinky is the Official State Toy of Pennsylvania.
6. It's more than just a toy. It is also an educational tool which can be used to demonstrate laws of physics to schoolchildren. The rules which govern the mechanics of a Slinky are Hooke's law and the effects of gravitation.
7. They have even been taken into space to be used in zero gravity experiments. A Slinky doesn't work too well in space. "It won't slink at all," Dr. M. Rhea Seddon said in a video to show how popular toys behave in space. "It sort of droops."
8. During the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers used Slinkys as mobile radio antennas.
9. They can even be used to make Music. In 1959, composer John Cage created an avant garde work called Sounds of Venice. One of the sounds in it is the sound of an amplified Slinky. If you hold a Slinky in the air and strike one end, it makes a metallic tone, like a laser gun sound, which sharply lowers in pitch. The effect can be amplified by attaching a plastic cup to one end of the Slinky.
10. Slinkies entered the Toy Hall of Fame in the year 2000, and in 1999 they where depicted on a US postage stamp.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.

Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest

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29 August: Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson  was born on this date in 1958, meaning today would have been his 60th birthday. Here are 10 facts about Michael Jackson.

1. Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana and was the eighth of ten children born to Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson, a steelworker and former boxer, and Katharine (née Scruse). Both his parents were musical – his mother played Clarinet and Piano and once aspired to be a country-and-western performer, and his father played Guitar with a local rhythm and blues band.
2. Michael Jackson won more awards than any other music artist alive or deceased: 23 Guinness World Records, 40 Billboard Awards, 13 Grammys, and 26 American Music Awards. In 1984 he won eight Grammys – the joint highest amount ever won by one person in a single year. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one for himself and one as part of the Jackson Five). He's possibly also the best selling: Thriller is the world’s best-selling record of all time with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.
3. On the subject of Thriller, the video, narrated by Vincent Price, almost never saw the light of day. Michael had been brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, and the church objected to the subject matter. They threatened to banish Michael and he was going to destroy the video, but instead he compromised by adding a disclaimer: "Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." Even so, it was the beginning of the end for Michael and the Jehovah's Witnesses – he disassociated himself from the church in 1987. A final fact about Thriller – the costumes worn by the zombies came from the Salvation Army.
4. Michael was an inventor, too. He patented a Shoe device which allowed dancers to lean forward at gravity defying angles.
5. He hated the nickname “Wacko Jacko”, given him by the press due to his eccentric lifestyle. That said, he knew well enough that the wacky label only helped when it came to self-promotion. He never actually tried to buy the bones of the Elephant man, but he didn't deny the story. He even leaked made up stories to the press himself, like the one which said he slept in an Oxygen tent in order to defy ageing.
6. In 1988, he bought 2,700 acres of land in California for $17 million, which became his Neverland ranch. The ranch had a theme park, a menagerie, and a movie theatre, and was protected by a security staff of 40. By 2003, the property was worth $100 million.
7. Michael was known for his exotic pets, the most famous of which was Bubbles the chimpanzee, adopted from a Texan research facility. For a while Michael took Bubbles everywhere with him, but as the chimp got bigger he got more aggressive and had to be given away. He's been living in Florida since 2005. Other exotic pets included a boa constrictor called Muscles, a python called Crusher, two llamas called Louis and Lola and a pet ram called Mr Tibbs.
8. Ever wonder why he often wore a Black armband? It was to remind people of children suffering around the world.
9. His vocal range as an adult was F2-E♭6. As a child, he was a boy soprano. When he listened to his songs with the Jackson 5 from those days, he said that he thought he sounded like Minnie Mouse.
10. St Vincent, an island in the Caribbean, once issued Michael Jackson stamps, while the residents of Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire went even further and gave Michael Jackson a royal title - making him a king of a village.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

28 August: Saint Augustine of Hippo

Today is the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, Father of the Church and prolific writer. Here are some words of wisdom from his writings.

1. The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
2. Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.
3. God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.
4. Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
5. There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.
6. In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.
7. God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.
8. Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.
9. The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.
10. Pray as though everything depends on God. And work as if everything depends on you.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

27 August: CS Forester Quotes

Born on this date in 1899 was C.S. (Cecil Scott) Forester. Some words of wisdom from him.

1. There is still need to think and plan, but on a different scale, and along different lines.
2. I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.
3. Novel writing wrecks homes.
4. A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.
5. There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.
6. When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.
7. The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.
8. I'd rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.
9. A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.
10. Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

26 August: Prince Albert

Born on this date in 1819, Prince Albert was the husband of Britain's longest reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. They were married for 21 years until his death in 1861 at age 42. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born on August 26, 1819 at Schloss Rosenau, in Bavaria, Germany, to Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. His full name was Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel.
2. He didn't see his mother after he was seven, because she committed adultery and she was exiled from court after the resulting divorce and forbidden to see her children.
3. He and Queen Victoria were first cousins, and had even been delivered by the same midwife, Charlotte von Siebold.
4. The first mention of a possible marriage between the two was in a letter from Albert's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, in 1821. One of Albert's uncles was Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831. He thought getting the two cousins together was a great idea, too, especially since Victoria was going to become Queen of England. So he did a bit of matchmaking. He suggested to his sister, Victoria's mother, that she should invite Albert, his father and his brother, over to stay so the two could meet.
5. Not everyone agreed. William IV thought Prince Alexander, second son of the Prince of Orange, would be a much better match. The young Victoria, meanwhile, wrote in her diary about the eligible young men presented to her. Alexander, according to Victoria, was "very plain", while Albert was described as “extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and Blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful." Bingo. They married in 1840. He wasn't formally given the title of Prince Consort until 1857.
6. He was a reformer, a patron of the arts and interested in science and industry. In 1841 he became chairman of the Royal Commission, set up to promote the arts; in 1847, he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and campaigned to update the curriculum there to include science and modern history as well as the traditional mathematics and classics. He also campaigned against child labour in factories.
7. He and Victoria had nine children, all of whom survived. It's possible this was down to Albert's enlightened ideas about how to run a nursery.
8. Albert organised the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the specially built Crystal Palace. The exhibition was very popular and attended by people like Charles Darwin, Samual Colt, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. Albert used the money it raised to establish the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Royal Albert Hall (originally known as Imperial College London) and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
9. In 1861, Albert's diplomatic intervention prevented a war between Britain and the United States. The incident was known as the Trent Affair, the forcible removal of Confederate envoys from a British ship by Union forces during the American Civil War. Even though Albert was gravely ill at the time (he would die a few weeks later) he intervened to soften the UK's response to the incident and averted a war.
10. He died, aged just 42, in December, 1861. The official cause of death at the time was typhoid fever – but he'd been suffering from abdominal pains for two years before that. Modern historians believe he may have suffered from Crohn's disease, renal failure, or abdominal cancer. Although he requested that there be no statues or memorials built, there are plenty, the most famous being the Albert Memorial in London. The towns of Lake Albert in Africa and Price Albert in Canada are named after him.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

25 August: 007 Day

The birthday of Sean Connery is 007 Day. Here are ten things you might not know about James Bond.

1. We all know his favourite alcoholic drink is Martini, “shaken, not stirred”, but what about other food and drink preferences? Despite being British, he doesn't like Tea and much prefers Coffee. Tea, he says, tastes like mud and was responsible for the downfall of the British Empire. His favourite meals when not on a mission are grilled sole, oeufs en cocotte and cold roast beef with Potato salad. On average, in the films, Bond has a drink every 10 minutes, 53 seconds.
2. He was the son of Andrew Bond, a Scottish man from Glencoe, and Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. He was orphaned at the age of 11 when his parents died in a mountain climbing accident, after which he lived with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond, in a village called Pett Bottom in England. It was thanks to his father's job as a Vickers armaments company representative that James is fluent in French and German, because the family lived abroad.
3. While Ian Fleming never told us what James Bond's date of birth was, other writers have given him a birthdate of 11 November, in either 1920 or 1921.
4. He went to Eton briefly, but was expelled for “trouble with a maid”. He then went to Fettes College in Scotland, his father's school. He went to university in Geneva and learned to Ski in Kitzbühel. He became a 00 agent at the age of 38.
5. In the films (From Dr. No to Quantum of Solace) Bond has killed 352 people (with Pierce Brosnan being the most murderous, killing 135 people during his tenure) and slept with 52 women (after losing his virginity at the age of 16, in Paris). About two thirds of the women he sleeps with try to kill him. He has been shot at over 5,000 times – so owes his life to the fact that bad guys are always rotten shots.
6. James Bond is a heavy smoker, smoking 70 cigarettes or 3 and a half packs a day. At least, he was. He's not been seen smoking in a film since he had a cigar in Die Another Day. Daniel Craig has never been seen smoking in a Bond film.
7. What does he look like, according to the novels? He has been described as looking like the composer, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael. The more detailed description says he is of slim build, 183 centimetres (6 feet) in height and 76 kilograms (168 lb) in weight. He has blue-grey eyes and a “cruel mouth”, short, black hair, “a comma of which falls on his forehead”. He has a three-inch scar on his right cheek and a faint scar of a Russian letter, marking him as a spy, carved by a SMERSH agent, on the back of his hand.
8. According to Kingsley Amis, James Bond is good at a lot of things, but isn't the absolute best at everything. He may be the best shot in the Secret Service, but his instructor can still beat him. He may be an excellent driver, but Sir Hugo Drax is better and causes Bond to crash his car. Bond's skills include skiing, hand-to-hand combat, boxing, judo, underwater swimming and golf.
9. When off duty, Bond lives in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea. He has a Scottish housekeeper called May.
10. He was named after a real life ornithologist and author called James Bond. Ian Fleming happened to have one of his books to hand when trying to come up with a name for his character. James Bond has an Asteroid named after him and also an island in Thailand, at least colloquially. It is about 40 metres (130 ft) from Khao Phing Kan and is 20-metres (66 ft) tall. The proper name is Ko Ta Pu, but since 1974, when they were featured in The Man with the Golden Gun, it has been popularly called James Bond Island.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

24 August: The Shipping Forecast

Today, the British institution known as the Shipping Forecast celebrates its anniversary.

1. What is it? Basically, it's a weather report and forecast for the seas around the British Isles. The Met Office produces it, and it is broadcast four times a day (0520, 1754, 2101 and 0048) on BBC Radio 4.
2. Why Radio 4? Because it is broadcast on longwave and can therefore be clearly received at sea all around the British Isles regardless of weather conditions. Before Radio 4 existed, it was broadcast in the BBC National Programme until the Second World War, and after that on the BBC Light Programme (which became Radio 2). In November 1978, Radio 4 took over Radio 2's longwave frequency and with it, the Shipping Forecast.
3. It started in 1867 as a series of messages sent by telegraph to harbour towns to warn them when a storm was coming. Since 1859, when the steam clipper Royal Charter was wrecked in a strong storm off Anglesey and many people died, there had been efforts to communicate storm warnings to shipping, pioneered by Robert FitzRoy who was the captain of Charles Darwin's Beagle and later became an admiral. It wasn't a success at first, and FitzRoy became depressed and frustrated. This coupled with his own financial troubles and poor health, drove him to suicide. He didn't live to see his efforts bear fruit, but he does have a sea area named after him.
4. There are 31 sea areas. Many of them are named after coastal features like estuaries (eg. Forth, Tyne, Thames), islands (eg. Wight, Lundy and Hebrides), towns (eg. Dover, Plymouth) and sandbanks (eg. Forties, Dogger and Bailey). German Bight is an indentation on the Northern European shoreline. Rockall and Fastnet are both named after islets. Malin is named after Malin Head, the northernmost point of Ireland. Biscay is named after the Bay of Biscay, and Trafalgar after Cape Trafalgar.
5. The sea areas have changed a little since the early days. Forties, Humber, Dogger, Thames, Wight, Shannon and Hebrides are the only names from the original list still included. Minches was absorbed into Hebrides in 1983; North and South Utsire were added in 1984;and, in 2002, Finisterre became FitzRoy, after the admiral mentioned above. Finisterre comes from the Latin meaning “the end of the earth”, dating back to when people thought the world was flat and any ship going beyond Finisterre would sail off the end of the Earth. The re-naming didn't go down well with the listening public - there was an outcry but the decision was implemented anyway.
6. A piece of music is played before the 0048 broadcast. The piece is called Sailing By and it was written by Ronald Binge in 1962. The purpose of the music is to ensure the Shipping Forecast starts at exactly the same time each night, even if the programming on Radio 4 is running late.
7. There are strict rules about the Shipping Forecast. It can only be 350 words long (although the 0048 edition has 380 because it includes Trafalgar) and takes nine or ten minutes to read. That's why it sounds so cryptic to anyone who has never done a sailing course. For example, "In the English Channel, there are strong winds, followed by a stronger wind in less than twelve hours time with some light rain, but good visibility" is reduced to "Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, four or five, increasing six soon, rain or slight drizzle, good". It always begins with the words "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at xxxx today." (although some announcers use the date instead of "today". The numbers refer to the Beaufort Scale of wind strength. Imminent means within 6 hours, soon between 6 and 12, and later means after 12 hours. Good, moderate and poor refer to visibility; veering means the wind is changing in a clockwise direction; backing means anti-clockwise. The forecast works clockwise around the 31 areas, from the North of Britain.
8. The forecast is surprisingly popular, listened to regularly by hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom don't even need to know what the weather is going to be like at sea. Strictly speaking, ships don't need it so much these days as they all have forecasting technology on board, but they still listen to check their instruments are working properly. Why do people on land, who often don't even understand the jargon, listen, though? Many people say the soothing voice of the announcer saying familiar words helps them fall asleep, a bit like a bedtime story for grownups. It has been described as being like poetry, or a lullaby; or that it reminds us Brits that we are an island nation with a proud seafaring past; or that it transports you to an exotic faraway place, or makes a person feel safe tucked up in bed while mariners are out there coping with the storms. You realise just how popular it is when a plan to change the broadcast time in 1995, by just 12 minutes, caused such an outcry that there were debates in Parliament about it and the plan was scrapped.
9. It's such an institution that it has been mentioned in dozens of songs, films and TV shows. Blur, Wire, Radiohead, The Prodigy and Jethro Tull have all recorded songs which reference the Shipping Forecast and some of its areas. On TV, in Keeping Up Appearances, Hyacinth phones the Met Office for the shipping forecast before visiting a yacht which is moored on the Thames; and Howard and Hilda in Ever Decreasing Circles use the need to get home in time for it as an excuse to leave a party. In the film and book, Kes, the protagonist calls out "German Bight" as the teacher is calling the register, and calls the name of a classmate, "Fisher" - because German Bight follows Fisher in the forecast. An extract of the Shipping Forecast featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London and it even trumps Cricket! During an Ashes match in 2011, moments before the final wicket fell and England won, it was time for the Shipping Forecast - so the live broadcast of the cricket was cut. By the time the cricket broadcast resumed, the match was over.
10. The forecast was taken off air during both world wars, and it was temporarily taken off air for two years in 1993 - causing an outcry, needless to say. Otherwise, it has been on at the same times every day except in 2014, when something went horribly wrong, and even though there was someone reading the forecast, it wasn't broadcast. Thousands of complaints ensued. It has only been broadcast on TV once, in 1993 as part of the Arena Radio Night, when BBC Radio 4 and BBC 2 set up a simultaneous broadcast. Other than that, it's only on TV as a recording used during the closing credits of Rick Stein's Rick Stein’s Seafood Lover’s Guide. There's even a Twitter feed, but that hasn't been updated since 2014. In the 1983 children’s cartoon The Adventures of Portland Bill, many of the characters are named after features in the Shipping Forecast.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle