12 January

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 12 January:

1. In 1723, Handel's opera Ottone premièred in London. In rehearsals, Handel had got one soprano to sing an aria the way he wanted it (slowly, without too much embellishment) by threatening to hang her upside-down out of a Window.
2. In 1896, H.L. Smith took the first X Ray photograph, of the hand of a corpse with a bullet in it.
3. In 1995, Nurse Valerie Tomlinson was suspended for taking out a patient’s appendix while doctor Tahir Bhatti was on leave. The patient recovered, however, and didn’t complain.
4. Britain’s first supermarket opened on this date in 1948, at Manor Park. It was a Co-op.
5. In 1970, the Boeing 747 jet completed its first transatlantic flight, from New York to London Heathrow.
6. In 1982, Margaret Thatcher's son Mark went missing in the Sahara while taking part in the Paris-Dakar Rally. He was spotted by a search plane and rescued two days later: it turned out he’d got lost.
7. In 1995, the murder trial of US football star O.J. Simpson began in Los Angeles. Simpson was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.
8. In 1999, in Hucknall Nottinghamshire, a safe was stolen from Trent Buses' depot. The thieves no doubt regretted going to the effort of stealing it since the safe only contained 350 tea bags.
9. In 1905, a 'wild man' appeared in East Anglia. He carried a book with drawings and strange unknown writing, and spoke in an unknown language. No one in Scotland Yard could identify the writing.
10. In 2001, at Martin and Newby's ironmongers in Ipswich, a filament light bulb burnt out in the gents' toilet. Not all that remarkable, you may say, but the light bulb in question had lasted 70 years.

NEW!!

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle