Sunday, March 20, 2011

The British are coming!...

Book News:

Next week sees the start of UK Fortnight at Brief Encounters Reviews, which will include spotlights on lots of good authors and your chance to win prizes! Enter now to avoid disappointment ... My own special day will be Tuesday 22 March so do pop in to Brief Encounters Reviews on that and indeed any other day. Satisfaction guaranteed.

At the same time, I'm happy to say that Entertaining the Delaneys is now available as a Kindle book both at  Amazon US and Amazon UK and should liven up your Sunday afternoon no end - so buy early buy often. As they say.

During the week, A Dangerous Man received an interesting 4-star review at Goodreads - many thanks for that, Rod. And you can find out what's coming up at Vulpes Libris this week, which includes exciting new authors, Macbeth and the Bay of Pigs, so never let it be said we don't work hard to revolutionise your reading lists indeed.

The latest meditation poems are:




Meditation 504
Even if you give away
everything you have
and the best of your heart

God cannot be bought
by tricks, deceit
or a liar’s art.




Meditation 505
If you must die
make sure there are men
and chariots enough
to mourn you;

the last thing you desire
is the enemies
of your land
to scorn you.


And the Sunday haiku is:

Waiting by the sink
the pink cupcake umbrella
expects a girl, soon.


Life News:

In a last-ditch and, may I say, really rather generous attempt to sort out the pesky middle neighbours (and their increasingly snippety solicitors - how rude can they get!...), we have tried to make contact with the new middle flat buyer directly via his estate agent to ascertain his address, confirm the ownership of the internal stairs, and a couple of other issues our own buyer has asked us for (and which those wretched solicitors won't answer either). The estate agents are proving very amenable, but so far no response from the middle flat buyer or his solicitors. We will wait and see - but K can foresee a time where we simply have no option but to refuse to sign the transfer agreement for the middle neighbours and they no doubt will refuse to sign the same agreement for us. It may yet be that nobody will be able to sell their respective flats, a situation we don't particularly want to happen in terms of our plans (though we don't care two hoots about them, really) but we may have to live with. Ah well. As I say, we will see, but we are in all honesty doing the best we can under very difficult legal circumstances. Sigh.

To cheer us up, K and I spent a really lovely day yesterday wandering around Nymans Garden and nearby Wakehurst Place (Kew). And for the first time it felt really springlike, which was wonderful. The rhododendrons and camellias were beautiful.

Finally, I must say what a gripping, well-acted and truly classy drama last night's Christopher and His Kind was on TV. Matt Smith really owned that role and, for the first time, I began to see what people see in him. Great stuff - more like that, please. TV producers, take note.

Anne Brooke

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