8 December: Tinsel

Got your tree up yet? If you have, chances are it has some tinsel on it. Here are some facts about tinsel.

1. The word tinsel comes from an old French word, "estincele", meaning to sparkle.
2. Tinsel was invented in Nuremburg, Germany in the 1600s. Back then, it was made from narrow strips of real silver.
3. It was added to trees along with candles to make them sparkle like the stars over the nativity scene. We don't know who first came up with the idea.
4. Tinsel first appeared in England in 1846. Not unsurprisingly, it became popular there thanks to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were pictured in the Illustrated London News with their children, standing beside a Christmas tree with tinsel.
5. However, silver tended to tarnish after a while and look ugly, so people looked for alternative metals to make it from - such as tin and lead. Lead tinsel was still being used in the 1970s when manufacturers were asked to voluntarily stop using lead to make tinsel. It wasn't officially banned, because at the time, there wasn't enough evidence to prove it was a health hazard.
6. Today, of course, it's made of plastic, usually polyvinyl chloride. No longer poisonous but bad for the planet.
7. Tinsel can be dangerous to pets if they eat it - it can cause severe internal problems.
8. Long, thin strips of tinsel not attatched to a thread are known as "lametta". This is the German word for tinsel, and in Germany they also use the word to describe the rows of medals worn by soldiers in full dress regalia.
9. While we associate tinsel with Christmas, it's also popular in India, where it is used to make garlands for weddings and other ceremonial occasions.
10. Brite Star, the company which makes 80% of the tinsel sold in the USA, claims to have made enough tinsel to reach to the moon and back.

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

7 December: Teacher Appreciation Day

Today is Teacher Appreciation Day, so here are ten quotes about teachers.

1. The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don't tell you what to see. Alexandra K Trenfor
2. Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything. Goethe
3. Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. William Yeats
4. I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. Alexander the Great
5. The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it. Aristotle
6. A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson. John Henrik Clarke
7. One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen. Philip Wylie
8. A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard. Eliphas Levi
9. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. CS Lewis
10. I touch the future. I teach. Christa McAuliffe

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

6 December: National Gazpacho Day

Today is National Gazpacho Day. Gazpacho is basically cold soup. Which reminds me of a friend who when told what gazpacho was, said, 'Cold soup? That doesn't sound too hot to me.' Anyway, here are ten facts about gazpcho.

1. What is gazpacho? It's a type of vegetable soup from Andalusia, Spain, made from tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, olive oil and croutons. It's unusual in that it is served cold.
2. Chilled, that is, not with ice, according to Andalusian cookbooks.
3. The word gazpacho derives from Arabic and means soaked bread.
4. It's traditionally made in a mortar. The vegetables are raw. The bread and vegetables, except the tomatoes, are pounded to a paste. The tomatoes are then added, through a seive, so there are no seeds in the mixture. The olive oil and some vinegar to taste are added at the end.
5. The best drink to enjoy it with is a dry sherry.
6. In Ancient Greece and Rome, they made a type of gazpacho with just the bread, olive oil, garlic and vinegar. They couldn't use the two main ingredients of the modern version, tomatoes and peppers, because at the time, they only grew in the Americas, which hadn't been discovered yet. It was the 19th century before those ingredients were added to make red gazpacho.
7. Legend has it that before leaving on his first voyage, Christopher Columbus loaded his ship with barrels of the stuff. The Ancient Greek and Roman version, presumably.
8. Spanish cookbooks classify gazpacho as a salad.
9. Gazpacho from Malaga contains almonds and grapes. Ingredients do vary from area to area and between families. Avocados, parsley, watermelon, strawberries and spices are added to some varieties.
10. If you order gazpacho manchego, you won't get cold veggie soup. This dish is a hot meat stew from La Mancha.

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

5 December: Bill Pickett

Born on this date in 1870 was Bill Pickett, an American rodeo cowboy who was the first African American to be inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1971. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. Picket was born in Texas, and was one of 13 children. His father, Thomas Jefferson, was a former slave. Bill dropped out of school after fifth grade to work as a ranch hand.
2. He was just 5' 7" tall and weighed 145 pounds.
3. He was known as the "Dusky Demon".
4. Steer wrestling, an event still popular in rodeo shows today, was invented by Bill Pickett. It was something he'd needed to do while working as a cowboy in Texas, when it was necessary to catch one steer in areas with heavy brush which made lassoing the animal with a rope impossible. Pickett came up with the idea of biting the steer on the lip once he had hold of it by the horns, as a bulldog would do. The animal would be shocked enough to allow him to pull it to the ground. Bulldogging is an alternative name for steer wrestling. Most cowboys, however, baulk at the idea of biting a steer's lip. That and the objections raised by humane societies meant that the sport was modified. Pickett would often be fined for animal cruelty when he pretended to use the move as part of a show.
5. Bill got his big break when he went to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit his cousin, and while he was there, take part in some rodeo shows to make some extra money. In the audience was Colonel Zack Miller, one of the owners of the 101 Ranch, who put on exhibition rodeos. Bill Pickett went on to work for Ranch 101 for 25 years and became their star attraction.
6. As part of the Ranch 101 show, Bill got to travel, not only all over the USA, but as far afield as Argentina and Britain, where he performed for the royal family.
7. Once, in Mexico, one of the Miller brothers bet 5,000 pesos that Bill could ride a Mexican fighting bull for five minutes. Pickett stayed on the bull's back for seven and a half minutes, but broke three ribs in the process and was severely gashed by the bull, which also gored his horse. The local crowd were angry because to them, it was disrespect for the tradition of bullfighting. Mounted police had to come in to stop the ensuing riot as the crowd threw bottles and rubbish at the 101 Ranch performers.
8. He appeared in a couple of films in the early 1920s - The Bull-Dogger and The Crimson Skull.
9. Most cowboy movies, however, didn't feature Bill Pickett, or any other of the thousands of African American cowboys working at the time. Only recently have historians begun to tell their stories, with the help of Bill Pickett's great-grandson, who was raised by his grandmother, Pickett's daughter, Bessie, who'd told him many stories about Bill as he was growing up.
10. Pickett retired from performing in 1916 and bought a ranch in Oklahoma. It was here, in 1932, that he tripped while roping a stallion. The Horse kicked him in the head, fracturing his Skull. He died of the injury 11 days later. His funeral was one of the largest ever held in the state of Oklahoma.

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

4 December: Brown

Today is Wear Brown Shoes Day. Here are ten things you might not know about the colour brown.

1. The first recorded use of the word brown to describe a colour was in 1000. Its roots lie in Old English and German words for a dark colour, or a shining quality (the word "burnish" comes from the same root). In other languages, the word for brown is often from the word for something brown that people eat or drink, like Chocolate, Coffee or Tea.
2. Words for shades of brown include Siena (from the colour of the soil around the area of Siena in Italy), beige (from the French word for the colour of natural wool), taupe (from the French word for a mole), russet (from the coarse brown cloth of the same name), dun (from the Gaelic for brown).
3. Brown can be made by combining red, Black and Yellow; red, yellow and blue or Orange and black. On TV and computer screens, brown is made by combining red and Green.
4. Brown is a common colour in nature. Wood, soil and animal fur are often brown. The most common colour of the human eye is brown; brown is the second most common human hair colour after black. The word brunette is the French word for a woman with brown hair.
5. Human skin is largely various shades of brown, even though the words "black" or "white" are usually used to describe skin colour. The brown in skin is caused by melanin, a natural pigment which protects the body from ultra violet light. The skin darkens to a deeper brown when exposed to sunlight. "Brown as a berry" is an expression meaning suntanned.
6. Brown is the least popular colour according to surveys, because people tend to associate it with plainness and poverty. Only one percent of people say brown is their favourite colour.
7. The Roman word for poor people was "pullati" which literally meant "those dressed in brown". Franciscan monks wore brown robes to emphasise their poverty, and in England in 1363 there was actually a law passed that required peasants to wear brown.
8. In prehistoric times, cave painters, such as those who painted the Lascaux caves, used a pigment called umber, which was clay composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide. Art using umber has been dated to 40,000BC. The Greeks and Romans used sepia, a pigment made from cuttlefish ink. Sepia was also used by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci. Medieval artists didn't use brown all that much - they preferred brighter colours like red, blue and green. Brown wasn't widely used by artists until the late 15th century. While most brown pigments were made from earth and clay pigments, there have been brown paints made from chestnuts walnuts, and even ground up Egyptian Mummies.
9. Why is poo brown? The brown colour of poo is caused by a chemical called bilirubin, a by-product of the destruction of red blood cells.
10. In the 1920s brown was the colour adopted by the Nazi party as a uniform colour. Nazi paramilitaries were known as brownshirts; voting Nazi was referred to as "voting brown" as that was the colour used to represent the party in election maps. Hitler slept in brown satin pajamas with a swastika embroidered on them, under a brown quilt with a huge swastika on it.

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

3 December: December

10 things you might not know about the month of December.

1. December gets its name from the Latin word "decem", meaning ten, as it was the tenth month of the Roman year.
2. It may be the last month of the year for us in the west, but in the Old Tibetan calendar, the new year began on 1st December.
3. Talking of the 1st day of December - it always occurs on the first day of the week as the 1st of September.
4. People born in December will be born under the astrological signs of Sagittarius or Capricorn and their birthstones are turquoise, serpentine, jacinth, peridot and blue zircon. Their birth flower is narcissus.
5. In weather lore, a thunderstorm during Christmas week means that "the winter will be anything but meek" according to one folk saying.
6. It's a good month to get married, according to folklore. "Married in days of December's cheer, love's star shines brighter from year to year", goes one saying. "When December's Snows fall fast, Marry, and true love will last," says another.
7. Native American tribes, who named the Moon of each month according to what they observed around them in nature at the time of year, variously called December's moon Moon of Popping Trees; when Deer Shed Their Horns; buffalo Cow's Fetus is Getting Large; or Moon When the Wolves Run Together.
8. If you get a clear night, meteor showers you might catch in December are the Canis-Minoroids, the Coma Berenicids, the Geminids, the Monocerotids, the Sygma Hydrids and the Ursids.
9. Awareness campaigns for December include calendars, art and architecture books, colorectal cancer, drink and drug driving, church Libraries, Jewish books, safe toys, human rights and donating treats to animal rescue centres (Operation Santa Paws).
10. 17th century almanacs promote eating food of "hot quality" including Onions, Cabbage, roasted Apples and Pears and the meat of rams, Goats and land fowl (but not waterfowl). They also advocate drinking plenty of Wine (as if we need an excuse!)

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

2 December: Maria Callas

Maria Callas (Maria Kalogeropoulos), Opera singer, was born on this date in 1923. Here are ten things you might not know about her.

1. Her singing ability was noticed at an early age. Her mother pushed her into singing lessons at the age of five.
2. Most of her musical education took place in Greece, where she moved with her mother after her parents split up. She threw herself into her studies, working for five or six hours a day, so that she quickly became proficient at the most difficult arias.
3. She first appeared on stage professionally in 1941, and the following year, had her first lead role, in Tosca. Her breakout role, however, didn't happen until 1949 when she was called in to cover the soprano role in I Puritani in Venice, with just six days to prepare. She aced it.
4. While she might be known as one of the greatest opera singers of all time, during her lifetime, she wasn't always appreciated. There was one note in one aria in the opera Norma, at which her voice wobbled, every time, and audiences at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York booed her for that, every time. At times, they even threw vegetables at her.
5. The fact that she once told an interviewer that her mother could throw herself off a roof before Maria would help her financially, and her bitter rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, didn't help her reputation.
6. In the 1950s it was pointed out to her that she was eating too much. Not only did she need to lose weight to look good on stage, but her weight was beginning to affect her singing. So she lost 36kg (80lb). Rumours as to how she managed it abounded, including that she swallowed a tapeworm. However, her new svelte figure came at a price. Her singing suffered from being too thin, too, giving her vocal strain.
7. She once walked out of a performance after the first act. She'd warned producers of Norma at the Rome Opera House that she was unwell the night before, and told them to have an understudy ready, but on the day of the performance, she felt a little better, and went ahead, but her voice got worse and so at the end of the first act, she cancelled the performance. The President of Italy was in the audience that night, and the press accused Callas of walking out on him in a fit of pique.
8. Her love life wasn't free of scandal, either. She left her husband for Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who in turn left her for Jacqueline Kennedy - but Onassis later met up with Callas in Paris and had another affair with her while he was still with Jackie.
9. Her final stage role, in 1965, was also Tosca.
10. She died at the age of 53 from a heart attack. She was cremated. Her ashes were stolen but later recovered and scattered over the Aegean Sea, according to her wishes.

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