Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Merger, whole body happiness and adventure.

1. If you're enjoying Downton Abbey, and you like Harry Potter, I'd like to strongly recommend Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones. Put-upon Conrad is sent by his uncle up to the big house charged with getting a job as a servant and doing away with someone he should have killed in a former life. He finds himself working alongside Christopher er... Smith another fake servant who will be familiar to fans of the Chrestomanci books.

2. She reclines in her stroller and when she smiles her arms and legs get involved, too.

3. Pete's Tuesday Knights adventure sees our spies on a training exercise with our US colleagues in Maine. To cut a long story short, the president of the Republic of Ireland is kidnapped, and we are given the task of searching a supposedly haunted mansion before she is smuggled across the border to Canada. Pete spends the evening reassuring us that our American friends are not taking the piss and that there are no vampires. "This is set in the real world. No, you can't buy a holy symbol and a chainsaw from the local store. There are no clerics in town willing to be hired." Personally, I'm not convinced by the store keeper -- but he and his Canadian friends are not going to get away with it.

Bud vase, tomato and the poem I needed to hear.

1. Among the faded cut daffodils that I'm putting on the compost heap there is one that will do for another day in a bud vase. 2. For th...