SandDune in 2014: July thread

Welcome to my July thread, which will feature my up and coming holiday in Denmark (as long as I can remember how to get the photos to load). For those that don't know me from previous years, I'm SandDune (aka Rhian), a 53 year old Finance Manager working for a local charity. I live about thirty miles north of London in the UK with my husband of 25 years (aka Mr SandDune), our thirteen year son (aka J), our 2 year old sweet-tempered Staffordshire Bull Terrier Daisy, and 11 year old cat Sweep, who is not sweet-tempered at all as far as Daisy is concerned and whose life ambition is to drive Daisy out of the house. Mr SandDune is an Assistant Principal at the school that my son attends and so our lives tend to be rather dominated by school issues during term time. I'm half-way through an English Literature degree with the Open University and currently studying the Nineteenth Century Novel module.

My reading tends to be quite varied. Historically, I've read a lot of literary and classical fiction, but in recent years (thanks largely to LT but also my University course) I've been branching out and exploring science-fiction, fantasy, children's and YA fiction, and graphic novels. I read very little chick-lit, thrillers or detective fiction. I haven't read much non-fiction during the last couple of years but I hope to remedy that this year.

My selected painting for this month is:

'Five Eldest Children of Charles I' 1637 Anthony Van Dyck (1599 - 1641)



This features one of those huge dogs that seem to dominate in royal and aristocratic portraits, as well as the ubiquitous small spaniel.

Not sure what happened here. It jumped from message 1 to 3 and now 2 has mysteriously reappeared!

Reading Plans for 2014:

This year I'm going to be a little more flexible in my reading plans. Last year I joined the 2013 category challenge but I didn't find that it really suited how I wanted to read, so in 2014 I'm just going to have some general overall goals:

First World War Centenary
As it's the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, I'm intending to read at least some fiction connected with this period:

William: An Englishman Cicely Hamilton

American Author Challenge 2014
I am very poorly read in some of these American greats from the 20th century and so a lot of these authors will be new to me.

January Death Comes to the Archbishop Willa Cather
February William Faulkner not finished
March The Road Cormac McCarthy
April Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
May Eudore Welty not finished
June Galapagos Kurt Vonnegut

Vorkosigan Year Long Challenge
I read Shards of Honour in 2013 and I'm really looking forward to continuing this series.

Barrayar
The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game

Open University reading
The Nineteenth Century Novel at the moment and then Twentieth Century Writing later in the year.

Far From the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
Germinal Emile Zola
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
Middlemarch George Eliot
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Dracula Bram Stoker

RL book group
We read a book a month (mainly literary fiction), as well as the Booker prize short list every year.

January: Christmas meeting
February: No meeting because of illness
March: Tulip Fever Deborah Moggach
April: Brazzaville Beach William Boyd
May: The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes (read previously and didn't reread.
June: missed meeting

In 2013 I read just over 100 books so this plan should leave me plenty of room for random picks and book bullets!

1. The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am Kjersti A. Skomsvold ****
2. Barrayar Lois McMaster Bujold ****
3. Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore Robin Sloan ***1/2
4. Turned out Nice: How the British Isles will Change as the World Heats Up Marek Kohn **1/2
5. We Need New Names NoViolet Bulawayo ***1/2
6. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth Isabel Greenberg ***1/2
7. Longbourn Jo Baker ***1/2
8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie ****
9. Servants A Downstairs View of Twentieth-Century Britain Lucy Lethbridge ***1/2
10. Far From the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy ****1/2
11. Germinal Emile Zola ***1/2
12. Death Comes to the Archbishop Willa Cather ***1/2
13. The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri *****
14. The Testament of Mary Colm Toibin ****1/2
15. William:An Englishman Cicely Hamilton ****
16. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert ****
17. Instructions for a Heatwave Maggie O'Farrell ***
18. Harvest Jim Crace ***
19. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins ****1/2
20. Tulip Fever Deborah Moggach ***1/2
21. The Wall Marlen Haushofer *****
22. The Road Cormac McCarthy ****1/2
23. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James ***
24. Farthing Jo Walton ***1/2
25. Excellent Women Barbara Pym ****
26. The Awakening Kate Chopin **1/2
27. Brazzaville Beach William Boyd ****
28. Giving up the Ghost Hilary Mantel ***1/2
29. The Undertaking Audrey Magee ****1/2
30. House-Bound Winifred Peck ***
31. The Rosie Project Graeme Simsion ***1/2
32. Shades of Grey Jasper Fforde ****
33. Jhereg Steven Brust ****1/2
34. Sargasso of Space Andre Norton ***
35. Eleanor and Park Rainbow Rowell ***1/2
36. Bluest Eye Toni Morrison ***
37. How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide John Sutherland ***1/2
38. Middlemarch George Eliot ****1/2
39. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad *****
40. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith Weedon Grossmith ***1/2
41. A Society Clown George Grossmith **
42. Journey to the Centre of the Earth ***
43. The Warrior's Apprentice Lois McMaster Bujold ****1/2
44. The Vor Game Lois McMaster Bujold ****
45. Dracula Bram Stoker ****
46. The Long Earth Terry Pratchett Stephen Baxter ***
47. Galapagos Kurt Vonnegut ***1/2
48. Wild Strawberries Angela Thirkell **1/2
49. Yendi Steven Brust ****
50. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Douglas Adams ***1/2
51. Whispers Under Ground Ben Aaronovitch ****
52. Rivers of London Ben Aaronovitch ****1/2
53. Orlando Virginia Woolf ****
54. Moon over Soho Ben Aaronovitch ***1/2
55. Doctor Thorne Anthony Trollope ****
56. The Bees Laline Paull ***
57. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ****1/2
58. Angelmaker Nick Harkaway ****
59. Some Kind of Fairy Tale Graham Joyce ****
60. The Waterproof Bible Andrew Kaufman ***1/2
61. Way Station Clifford D. Simak ***1/2
62. Cat Sense John Bradshaw ****
63. Teckla Steven Brust ****
64. Elizabeth is Missing Emma Healey ****1/2
65. The Life of Rebecca Jones Angharad Price **1/2
66. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Claire North ****1/2

And the prizes for 2014 are:

My five star reads:

The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri
The Wall Marlen Haushofer
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

Least favourite reads:

A Society Clown George Grossmith
The Awakening Kate Chopin
Turned out Nice: How the British Isles will Change as the World Heats Up Marek Kohn

Favourite new series:

Jhereg Steven Brust

And for 2013:

My five star reads:

Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope
The Garden of Evening Mists Tan Twan Eng
Tooth and Claw Jo Walton
The Unknown Bridesmaid Margaret Forster
The Lighthouse Alison Moore
The Ocean at the End of the Lane Neil Gaiman
Suite Francaise Irene Nemirovsky
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
Salvage the Bones Jesmyn Ward

Least favourite reads:

Narcopolis Jeet Thayil
The Damned Busters Matthew Hughes
Perelandra C.S.Lewis

Favourite new series:

Mapp & Lucia E.F.Benson

Woot! I never get to anyone's new thread first.
(>2 SandDune: The numbering is OK now. Sometimes LT doesn't catch up with itself right away.)

Hooray for New Thread!! And looking forward to your trip. I ALWAYS have trouble uploading pictures, so anyone else pulling off the task fills me with enormous admiration.

Rhian, congrats on your new thread. When are you leaving for Denmark?

Responding to the Tour de France topic on your previous thread ... I AM SO JEALOUS. As you know, we lived in the area 10-14 years ago, and today's stage went right through Saffron Walden, the nearest market town to our village. I thought of you, and wondered if you would be able to attend. We would definitely have been there if we were still in the UK. I watched the Yorkshire stages over the weekend and was amused by the Frenchification of roads, hills, villages, etc. Hope to catch some of today's TV coverage this evening. Weeknights there's usually a condensed recap of the day's race.

I'm glad I didn't see Cavendish crash in Real Life, however. I would have been so upset!

Hi Rhian - I'm looking forward to reading about your Denmark holiday and am about to go back to your last thread to catch up...

Like your picture... Disconcerting to realize how young those children are, and to think that within five years the civil war would have broken out. I think that makes me realize viscerally how their entire childhoods, almost would have been dominated by war. The only one to escape the reality of it was Mary, who was married at 9 and shipped off to Holland at 10 or 11, the year the war broke out. Minette, the youngest, was taken into exile as a baby, and the others grew up either in some kind of confinement or in exile. Even when Charles II was restored, one had died (Elizabeth), two were dead within weeks or months (of smallpox, I think -- Mary and Henry, who is the baby in the portrait) and Minette, too, would die young. Only Charles and James survived to reach the age of 30. The Stuarts really were a cursed bunch, in so many ways.

Congratulations on the shiny new thread, Rhian!

Hi Rhian - Happy new thread.

Hi, Rhian. Looking forward to your holiday pictures, too!

Happy new thread!

Following along, as usual, Rhian. A new thread is always nice, isn't it?

I was just amazed, yesterday, at how much the spectators were pushing in at the sides--there was hardly room for the bicyclists to go through. Lovely countryside, though.

Happy New Thread, Rhian!

Hi Rhian! Happy New thread! Hope all is going well.

Happy new thread Rhian! I'm embarrassed to admit that I missed your entire June thread :-( Heading back over there to catch up now...

I am waiting to read of your adventure in Denmark Rhian. My current read is set in Denmark/Greenland.

Happy New Thread, Rhian!

>6 laytonwoman3rd: >7 michigantrumpet: Hi Linda, Marianne

>8 Ameise1: Barbara we are going on holiday Tuesday of next week. And for once we are flying from Stansted, which is our local airport, so no traipsing to the other side of London or expensive overnight hotels! For some reason this does not happen very often.

>9 lauralkeet: Laura, we are massive fans of the Tour de France, so were so pleased to go and see it live. The last time it was in the UK it clashed with a family christening or wedding (something like that anyway) and we couldn't go. This time we considered going to Saffron Walden to view it, but decided against it (distance from train station being the deciding factor with lots of road closures), and I'm glad we did because when I saw it on the TV the crowds were unbelievable. Cambridge was very busy, but the race did a loop round the historic centre and so the crowds had more roads to spread out along, and a lot of people were concentrated at the start to see the signing in. And the weather was lovely: once we had seen the race we had a picnic on Parker's Piece where the start took place, and watched some of the action on the big screen there. And where we were standing outside the Fitzwilliam Museum there was a large choir entertaining the waiting spectators, which was great.

>10 tiffin: Tui I was so sorry for Cavendish on Day 1. I mean, it was clearly his fault but to be out of the whole race on the first day must be desperately disappointing.

>11 cushlareads: I'm hoping for decent weather in Denmark! But even if not there should still be plenty to do.

>12 Chatterbox: Suz I hadn't realised that about the Stuart children! My history is clearly fairly lacking in that area.

>13 Dejah_Thoris: >14 BLBera: >15 humouress: >16 The_Hibernator: >17 lit_chick: Hi Dejah, Beth, Nina, Rachel, Nancy!

>18 ronincats: The parts through the Yorkshire Dales were just lovely - it's reminded me how much I like that area although I haven't been to that area for years. We used to go quite regularly as it's near where Mr SandDune came from originally.

>24 SandDune: that sounds like soooo much fun!!

Just popping in to wish you a happy new thread!

>24 SandDune: Fitzwilliam - that's my sister's college! Though (if I remember correctly) the museum is closer to the centre of town than the actual college.

Sounds like a beautiful day. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, Rhian.

(ETA expensive overnight hotels? We just used to have to get out of bed really, really early and drive. Mind you, there's less traffic in the dark hours.)

We're huge Tour fans in this house too, Rhian. I was having a lot of trouble with the accent of the announcer who did the first half (and I'm usually fine with accents...can understand Glaswegian with no difficulty), so was relieved when Phil and Paul came on half way through, plus I really enjoy their colour commentary about the countryside and their insider tidbits about the various riders.

I clearly have accumulated far too much utterly useless knowledge...

Have a wonderful time in Denmark!

>30 tiffin: I loooove Phil and Paul's TdF coverage!

>19 scaifea: >20 msf59: >21 souloftherose: >22 luvamystery65: >23 susanj67: >27 lauralkeet: >28 katiekrug: Hi everyone! It's still taking me a little time to get back to everyone - what with the audit last week and trying to get everything finished before I go on holiday, I've been very busy at work, and that's leaving me tired in the evening. As well as needing to leave an hour free in the evening to watch the Tour de France highlights programme!

>29 humouress: Yes, the Fitzwilliam Museum is quite central and isn't particularly near the college. We thought we'd choose there as it was the start of the route out of Cambridge, so if it was too busy there we could just follow the road further out.

We are no good at getting up in the middle of the night to go to the airport! I usually get so worried that we'll sleep through the alarm that I don 't get to sleep at all. And Mr SandDune refuses to believe exactly how long it usually takes to get out of the house and everything locked up, so we end up with a bit of a mad dash. So now we pretty much always stay the night before if we've got to get to the airport before about 9am (which is pretty much always). But to be honest it's not too expensive as we can usually get some deal to include hotel plus parking together, so it doesn't work out too much more expensive than the parking on its own would be.

>30 tiffin: >32 lauralkeet: Phil and Paul are great! Whenever I've watched cycling races that don't have them commentating it hasn't been the same.

Such a shame though that Chris Froome had to withdraw yesterday: it looked like he was in a lot of pain when he pulled out. But I think it's fair to say that the British public has never taken Chris Froome to heart like Bradley Wiggins. I've been thinking about that and I suppose lack of sideburns doesn't help, but I think part of the problem is that if you are told to support someone because he is British you want to think that that Britishness is genuine. Whereas Froome was brought up in Kenya and South Africa and doesn't live in the UK now, and you can't help thinking that if he hadn't been an international cyclist and wanting to ride for a country where he would get a lot of support, then his feeling of Britishness would have remained quite hidden. It isn't a matter of him not being born here: Mo Farah was born in Somalia, but everyone loves Mo Farah, but he spent his formative years here and clearly Britain is his home. It's just that it seems cynical to me when people change nationalities solely to further their sporting career. Anyway I am now rooting for Nibali after his attacking style yesterday!

Well after lots of tumbles on the cobblestones of Belgium in the Tour yesterday, I took my own tumble in Daisy's agility class. She was doing a series of jumps and I was trying to block her from going round a particular jump rather than over it. Somehow my legs got tangled up with each other and with Daisy, and I ended up flat on the floor with quite a thump, with Daisy licking my face. Apparently it looked quite spectacular! No major harm done, but I am feeling a little bruised this morning. I think I'm quite lucky that I didn't put my hand out to save myself, as last time I took a tumble like that I ended up cracking a bone in my elbow as it had taken all the force of the impact. And also lucky that it was on grass which wasn't too hard as we've had a fair bit of rain over the last few days.

I'm a Tour de France fan too and, as I'm an audiovisual aids technician with my own office, I can watch it live during the day at work. I work in a school and things are quietening down towards the end of term so I have the TV on with the sound down low and keep glancing at the screen as I do my work. I don't usually pay much attention to the first week but as there have been stages in Britain I have been watching. My son, Andrew, took part in the festival at Harewood House over the starting weekend. He's a BMXer and does lots of tricks. He's also a keen road cyclist but not up to professional standards!

>34 SandDune: yesterday's stage was really something -- seemed very dangerous. Froome looked like he was in such pain. I feel so bad for riders who have to withdraw, since they train all year for the Tour. Interesting comments on Froome's nationality, something I wasn't aware of.

>35 SandDune: ouch! I'm glad you're OK and it's sweet that Daisy was so quick to take care of you.

>36 CDVicarage: Lucky you, getting to watch the Tour at work! We have TVs in public spaces in our office building, usually broadcasting CNN, but when there's a match at lunchtime or late in the day (which is often the case), someone usually changes the channel. And suddenly people seem to have great need to walk through the lobbies ...

I quite liked Froome because he seemed humble and understated when they interviewed him last year but Wiggo, of course, was a delightful win. But I never like to see any of these lads hurt, having seen my three cyclists dealing with broken thumbs, concussions and the like after spills. I'm with you, Rhian: cheering for Nibali now. I've never warmed to Contador.

I'm also with you about staying near the airport ahead of a flight. I hate starting a vacation in a mad panic.

And one more point of agreement: having had a bad injury involving a dog and a leash which messed me up for two years, please do take care! How sweet that Daisy showed concern for you.

I'm sorry about the tumble but I'm glad it wasn't worse. Nothing as sweet as a dog looking out for you.

I'm glad to read that nothing bad happened after the tumble even tough bruises aren't so nice.

OUCH re tumble. I'm glad you weren't badly hurt, especially with holiday looming so close on the horizon. Navigating dog leashes can be very tricky...

And wow, yes, I feel for those cyclists. Odd, I'd much rather watch the peloton than the World Cup with its billions of dollars of marketing and investment.

>36 CDVicarage: I will rarely watch live (unless there is a crucial mountain stage at the weekend) but we did once have a fairly surreal Tour de France live watching experience. In 1998 we spent two weeks on Orkney, with three nights on North Ronaldsay, where we were completely fogbound waiting for our plane to leave. As the runway was basically a field there was no chance of leaving until the fog had completely cleared. So we watched Pantani battle with Jan Ullrich on his way to win the Tour while I worried what we would do if the fog didn't clear, North Ronaldsay having only one boat a week!

>37 lauralkeet: Tennis and cycling both used to be the sort of sports where as a Briton I could choose whoever I wanted to support, as I knew a Briton was never going to win! I'd be equally likely to support Froome if he claimed Kenyan or South African nationality, but I suppose I'd have a bit more respect.

>38 tiffin: >39 luvamystery65: >40 Ameise1: >41 Chatterbox: Daisy wasn't even on her lead so I can't even have the excuse that I fell over that! Still, I was feeling a little bit achey this morning but nothing too bad! I'm not completely convinced that her licking was showing concern though - she usually thinks that anyone lying on the floor is obviously there for the sole purpose of being licked!

>33 SandDune: I'm not good at early mornings, but my dad would never have thought of shelling out for a hotel ;0) Mind you, we didn't have too many dark-hour starts, but if we did, it was a matter of packing up everything by the night before, and then in the morning, get dressed, pop the last few toiletries into the suitcase and stumble out to the car to nap while my dad drove. Here in Singapore (which is smaller than London, I'm sure), it's not far to the airport, so there'd be no point in staying at a hotel.

>38 tiffin: but when you mention 'mad panic' I'm worse with daytime flights. Somehow, I'm always only ready about 10 minutes after we absolutely should have left, doing last minute things.

>43 SandDune: Hope you're feeling better, after your tumble. That Daisy sounds a danger, with her licking!

Hope you are feeling much better, Rhian. A fall is never fun, but much less so I find as I am aging. Daisy is priceless! Hipe she is thoroughly enjoying her agility classes.

Yes - I'm with you all - I think much more about falling than I used to - esp. when I go 'off trail' walking in the woods. The other day I tripped over a vine, happily fell in soft dirt, but there was a rock right next to me that I could just as easily fallen on...

>43 SandDune: It's good to hear that you weren't in too much pain this morning! Have a wonderful weekend.

Have got my result for the Nineteenth Century Novel module. I got 87% for the exam element so that gives me a Distinction overall. So far I've got a distinction in three out of the four modules that I've done, so hopefully I'm on course for a first class degree, fingers crossed.

Congratulations on the great result! WOOHOO!

Well done, Rhian!

Well done indeed, Rhian!

Most excellent result!!! Kudos!

Woot! Fabulously done, Rhian!

>48 SandDune: Congratulations! Fingers crossed for the final results.

Well done, congrats on this fabulous result. :-D

Rhian, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Congratulations on the results from your course. Well done!

Very impressed with your score on the final exam. That's got to give you a good feeling going into the weekend, right?

Wishing you a relaxing few days with LOTS of reading. ;-)

Oh, congrats!!

>49 Dejah_Thoris: >50 tiffin: >51 rosalita: >52 Chatterbox: >53 lit_chick: >54 humouress: >55 Ameise1: >56 Ameise1: >57 lauralkeet: >58 michigantrumpet: >59 scaifea:

Thanks for the congratulations everyone - I am feeling very pleased with myself! At the moment I am having a break from attempting to put up our new tent in the back garden. The instructions are clearly designed for people who know how to put up tents, not complete tent novices like us. And to be honest even if you did know what you are doing they are not the clearest. 'Feed in the coloured codes poles' say the instructions - well all the poles being exactly the same colour with no bits of colour on them at all that I can see is not colour-coding in my book! Still we are making progress: the outer part is done - just the inner compartment to go. But it is hot work - from a very cold start to the morning it has now got very hot indeed!

Rhian, congratulations on your excellent result! You must be thrilled. And surely that should let you off tent duty!

Congrats on your exam results! And *shudder* at the tent, which denotes camping, which is my idea of torture. Are you camping for part of your holiday in Denmark? I hope you get it sorted!

>60 SandDune: my daughter was recently with some friends trying to put up a tent. She said the instructions, which had obviously been translated into English, went something like "1. Remove parts from bag. 2. Assemble parts." Needless to say, it took them a long time to figure it all out.

I'm with Katie on tents=torture.

Congratulations, Rhian!

It's 8 pm in England now so I hope the tent is up...

>61 susanj67: >62 katiekrug: >63 lauralkeet: >64 cushlareads: Tent was finally put up (and put down again by 6pm. One of those things that was fairly straightforward ... once you had worked out how to do it! We're not going camping in Denmark, but Mr SandDune and J are intending to go hill walking later in the summer. Previously they have always stayed in a B&B, but decided that having a tent would be cheaper and let them go walking more frequently. So we bought this tent last weekend: it's not huge but it's big enough for the three of us if we all decide to go somewhere. The only reason I was involved in the construction is that I am usually much better at visualising how it is supposed to go together than the rest of the family, so got called out to assist once they had got stuck!

I like tents - I'm glad you got it up and down!

Stopping by with happy weekend wishes and congratulations on your course results!

Coincidentally, today's Baby Blues strip is about camping. Sort of.

Oh wow, I empathize. I'm cr*p with written directions. I seem to have muscle memory with stuff like that. For instance, with knitting -- once I do it, I have learned with my hands, and my hands remember it. I can't follow a written pattern or directions to save my life, however clear it appears to someone else. It might as well be written in Esperanto. Or Kazakh.

>44 humouress: All the holiday flights which we tend to get seem to start at 8.00am in the morning at the latest. Which means checking in at 6.00am at the latest. Which means leaving the house at 4.00am to get to either Heathrow or Gatwick. And if the flights a bit later then it means that we need to brave the M25 in the rush hour, which makes timings very unpredictable. So I just prefer to get there and have done the night before. It's so nice that we don't needed to go through all that this time.

>44 humouress: >45 lit_chick: >46 sibylline: all the aching has worn off now so I am ready to go on holiday!

Congratulations on your excellent result, Rhian!

Ouch re your fall and congratulations on your results! I managed to sit down on a chair that wasn't there recently and ended up with some spectacular looking bruises. Annoyingly, one is just above the elbow on one arm so I haven't felt like wearing short sleeve tops because the bruise is still quite conspicuous.

I hope you enjoy your holiday!

>71 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl

>72 souloftherose: Hope your bruises heal up soon Heather!

Well very little reading going on here. I have finished The Bees by Laline Paull which was reasonable but didn't quite live up to the review I read. And am listening to Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which is very good indeed: I don't understand how it could could have been overlooked on the Booker shortlist for something like We need new Names.

Hi Rhian... Congratulations on your module results. That's excellent news!

I hope you and your family are well, Rhian!

Rhian, I wish you fantastic holiday in Denmark.

I love your weekend pictures, Ameise1. They are always so beautiful. This one reminds me of the Tour de France!

Funny, isn't it - to do so well academically and then get .... stymied..... by a tent!

Happy Friday, Rhian! Was going to say I wouldn't go near a tent with a ten foot pole, but decided that was mixing the metaphor somewhat. Supremely impressed that you attempted it at all.

That would be one heckuva tent, mt.

It's awfully quiet around here. I hope you haven't been arrested for creating mayhem in Denmark, Rhian?

Hope you're having a great holiday!

I hope your holiday is lovely, too, Rhian. Can't wait to see photos of Denmark!

H, Rhian.
Just stoppy by to try and catch up a bit. A huge amount of skimming done! Congratulations on your results and I hope you are having a fantastic holiday!

*wandering through, looking for photos of Denmark...

No pressure or anything. I realize it's a holiday.

Photos?

Apologies to not getting back to everyone previously, but slow wi-fi connection meant I decided not to try and keep my thread updated while I was away, and we've had a couple of busy days since we got back late on Tuesday night so this is my first real chance.

We had a lovely holiday in Denmark. Having had an extra-special holiday in Malaysia last year I was a little bit worried that somewhere so close to home would seem a little tame, but not a bit of it! The weather was absolutely wonderful, high 20's to low 30's every day, and it only rained once all the time we were there (and that was at night). Given that we were at the same latitude as Northern Scotland, the intensity of the heat was quite unexpected. And the sea was also warm enough to swim in, not as warm as the Mediterranean obviously, but perfectly acceptable.

So we had four nights in Copenhagen, a week right at the tip of the Denmark in North Jutland, and a further three nights on Funen (one of the larger islands connected by bridge to the mainland). All quite different areas, and lots to see and do in each.

Rhian, it sounds like you had a fantastic holiday. I was once in Copenhagen and I liked it very much.

Welcome back, Rhian. Sounds like a wonderful holiday. One of my colleagues at work is moving to Copenhagen next week for a few years (job transfer). I'm excited for her and her family. So much exploring and adventure to be had ...

Rhian, your Denmark holiday sounds lovely! Welcome home : ).

What I liked most about Denmark:

• Although the average climate can't be that much different from Britain, the Danes obviously like eating outside far more than the British do. While here, tables placed outside are often very much an afterthought, it's clearly where most people expect to eat in Denmark unless it's actually raining. And so to facilitate this, every single cafe and restaurant provides a copious supply of large fleecy throws, in which to snuggle up when it gets cold. J was incredibly taken with this idea. In practice, it was only chilly enough to even think about snuggling up on two nights, but a lot of places seem to dish them out anyway just in case!

• As my user name suggests, I am a great fan of sand dunes and North Jutland is incredibly well supplied with these. Apparently, a few hundred years ago the area had something of an ecological disaster, caused by a combination of slight sea level changes and over-grazing of the land. Very large swathes of the countryside were covered by wind blown sand to a great depth, rendering farmland worthless and causing villages to be completely abandoned. And while a lot of the sand has now been stabilised, you can still see areas of completely mobile sand that are making their way across the countryside, burying whatever gets in their way!

• Beaches of North Jutland - as you might expect with all that sand there are some great beaches, and as there are so many of them it's easy to find a quiet spot.

• Copenhagen - had a great time but didn't manage to see even half of the things that we would have liked to.

What I liked least about Denmark:

• Prices of restaurant meals: I'd estimate on average they were around 50% more than the price of equivalent meals in the UK. Which meant that to keep within our budget we had to trade down slightly in terms of quality and eat out a bit less than we would have liked. Didn't find most other things too expensive though, petrol, supermarket food, entrance fees and public transport were all comparable to what they are here, and we certainly got a much nicer (and larger) house for the money that we would have got if we'd been down to Devon or Cornwall.

Rhian: Welcome home. It sounds like you had a wonderful vacation. Another place to put on my bucket list.

Sounds like a delightful holiday! I've visited Copenhagen (with my husband when he went on work, and our eldest wasn't at school yet), but not the rest of Denmark. I assume you visited The Little Mermaid?

I love the story of migrating sand dunes - though it can't be too much fun to be in the way of one if it's heading your way.

Welcome home Rhian. Sounds like you had a lovely holiday. I like the idea of snuggly fleecy throws to facilitate eating outside!

Welcome home, Rhian! Your holiday sounds really nice. I am a sucker for a good beach myself even though I don't swim so it sounds like I'd enjoy a trip to Denmark. I hope you're able to post some pictures sometime so I can live vicariously through you. :-)

>74 TinaV95: >75 Dejah_Thoris: >76 Ameise1: >77 tiffin: >78 sibylline: >79 michigantrumpet: >81 humouress: >82 lit_chick: >83 NicolePatrick: >84 nittnut: >87 lauralkeet: Thanks everyone for keeping my thread alive while I was missing in action.

>87 lauralkeet: I think Copenhagen would be a great place to spend a couple of years ... And so well placed for exploring Sweden as well. Although I can't say that I'd fancy learning the language, apparently it is the hardest out of the Scandinavian ones to learn, and the spelling is almost as idiosyncratic as English. But saying that we only came across one person who didn't speak English in the entire two weeks, so it's probably manageable without knowing any Danish at all.

>94 rosalita: Photos will follow (tomorrow hopefully)!

>93 souloftherose: We came across the throw idea in Sweden as well when we were there a few years ago, and it makes the whole idea of eating outside much more appealing on a cooler evening. I did wonder though, that if there was a major spell of rain in the main holiday season just where everybody ate, as most of the restaurants seemed to have quite small amounts of indoor seating.

Well I'm very behind on my reviews but what I read on holiday was this:

Angelmaker Nick Harkaway
Some Kind of Fairy Tale Graham Joyce
The Waterproof Bible Andrew Kaufman
Way Station Clifford D. Simak

as well as finishing off Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Oh, it sounds like you had a wonderful holiday!
And what did you think of Way Station?

She's back! Denmark sounds wonderful, Rhian. That's good to know about restaurant prices there.

Sounds like a lovely holiday, Rhian! Looking forward to some photos!

Sorry about lack of photos. Technical difficulties with Windows 8 on the PC. Am seriously considering downgrading back to Windows 7, I dislike it so much. It seems to have turned me from someone who was pretty competent with computing into a bumbling idiot who can't work out how to do the simplest thing!

Rhian, I have heard several people say the same thing about Windows 8, all people who, like you, are very competent on the computer.

Finally ... pictures!

Here are some waterside photos of Copenhagen (Nyhavn and the area of Christianshavn):





And here are J and Mr SandDune in Hamlet's castle of Elsinore (actually Helsingor).



When we were looking around Copenhagen we wondered where all the money came from to build the very impressive palaces, and the castle at Helsingor is one of the main reasons, as it controlled the trade into and out of the Baltic for several hundred years and imposed a toll on all shipping.

And here are the sand dunes:

First Mr SandDune and J on Rabjerg Mile - slowly moving across the landscape at a rate of 15m a year.





And here is the sand dune of Rubjerg Knude. The lighthouse that you can see opened in 1900 200m from the sea in an area free from sand but by the 1960's had to be closed as the height of the dunes was making its light impossible to see at times. It reopened as a museum but again had to close in 2002 as the sand was burying the buildings. It's now expected to fall into the sea by 2020.

And here are the castle and gardens of Egeskov Slot on Funen:









And the castle of Skovsgaard on Langeland:

Gorgeous photos! Thanks for sharing.

Grenen: the very tip of Denmark where the Kattegat meets the Skaggerak, and the waves come in from both directions. (I got quite wet - I hadn't realised that you paddled along the sand bar)





And our last breakfast:

Lovely photos! I particularly like the different coloured buildings in Copenhagen.

>97 scaifea: Quite enjoyed Way Station but I did find it a little predictable. I'm quite inclined to read something else by Clifford Simak though.

>98 tiffin: On our first night we nearly made a very expensive mistake. We were all quite tired after travelling and wanted to eat quite close to the hotel, and we found a very popular looking restaurant doing burgers, ribs and steak. We looked at the menu outside and it had burgers for about DKK 119 (about £12.50 or 21US$). We thought that was expensive but not excessively so for a gourmet burger and we were all tired and it looked very nice, so we waited 20 minutes for a table. When we got the table we realised that we had been looking at the lunch menu and for dinner the cheapest main courses were around DKK200 (about £21.50 or 36US$). At that point we decided to give up and retreated to a much cheaper burger place next door where we had (very nice) burgers for around DKK89. But after that experience we were very careful!

>105 katiekrug: I've got very few of me as these are the ones I took with my phone. But after battling with uploading the pictures for several days I've decided that Mr SandDune can sort his own pictures out!

>101 lit_chick: I just don't find Windows 8 intuitive at all! I've spent hours trying to do really basic stuff, and I'm finding it really frustrating.

Fabulous vacation photos, Rhian! I just love the canals. Denmark looks very beautiful, and you and your family look well and happy : ).

Thank you for sharing your vacation photos, Rhian! It looks like the weather was amazing. How cool to stand on the tip of Denmark!

Gorgeous photos, Rhian. Thanks a lot for sharing them.

Wonderful photos of Denmark. It feels as though you really captured the place in all its variety. The story of those traveling sand dunes is quite amazing. Is there nothing they can do to stop the onslaught or are they just disinclined to interfere?

The sand dunes are fascinating. Nice photos; they make me think about planning a trip there. It looks like you really explored the country. I like the castle at Egeskov Slot, with it's feet in the lake.

May I say that Mr SandDune looks a bit like Peter from the programme White Collar?

Your photos are beautiful, Rhian. I had absolutely no idea about the shifting sands, which I find both fascinating and a bit dismaying as they can be awfully destructive (and impossible to control, right?). Was the water warm? J is leaving you far behind height-wise, mother! My two soar a foot above me, so I know what this feels like.

Ha! Yes. In my case, it's absolutely essential that my boys grow to be significantly taller than me, since I am so height challenged (it's not my fault, it's the genes).

But I'm going to be so mortified when they do.

wow, beautiful photos. It turns out that Denmark is a place I now want to visit :)

That water looks so clear and crisp, but the sun looks sooooo inviting (spoken of course from a deep dark winter here.) I also liked your tid-bits of information, like on how they could afford all those opulent buildings!

Beautiful photos, Rhian. It looks like a delightful vacation.

>108 SandDune: I just loved Way Station - I think Simak's characters are pretty amazing.
And thanks for sharing all of the gorgeous photos!

>110 lit_chick: >111 lkernagh: >112 Ameise1: Thanks Nancy Lori Barbara. We certainly have come back from holiday very relaxed!

>113 rosalita: Virtually all the exposed sand has been stabilised by the planting of Marram and Lyme grass and by later planting of conifers.

Rabjerg Mile was apparently deliberately left to show just what could happen and is owned by the state. It started off from one coast about three hundred years ago and is estimated to reach the other coast by about 2200 if it is not stopped. (I should point out that the distance between the two coasts here is not very big at all). As the land it is travelling over is mainly reclaimed sand dunes itself it doesn't look particularly valuable. I don't know what they are going to do when the dune gets to the road and railway! Here's a website giving some more details:

http://www.coast-alive.eu/content/rabjerg-mile

Rubjerg Knude was a site of desperate attempts to stop the sand, but apparently they have now given up temporarily as it was just having the effect of making the dune higher and higher.

>114 humouress: There were some gorgeous castles and palaces. Egeskov Slot was the home of the most amazing dolls house that I have ever seen, Titania's Palace, but no one else in the family was even slightly interested in that fact!

http://www.egeskov.dk/en/titanias-place

>115 tiffin: Tui, one of the reasons that I am so interested in the sand dunes and their effect on the ecosystem of North Jutland is that exactly the same thing happened around my home town. There was a prosperous market town that was completely abandoned because of the onslaught of the sand dunes which covered the town and the farmland around with sand twenty feet thick. And the area is still sand dunes, although much more stabilised that the ones in Denmark.

>116 humouress: J is now nearly six foot, the same height as Mr SandDune. But his father and grandfather were both six foot one, so I reckon there's another two or three inches to come.

>117 LovingLit: >118 lauralkeet: Denmark is certainly somewhere I'd be happy to revisit. There were a lot of parts of the country that we missed out completely and I'd have loved to have more time in Copenhagen.

Luscious pictures, Rhian!!

>120 SandDune: Thank you for the explanation, Rhian. I find the whole thing utterly fascinating, as you might be able to tell. :-)

Welcome back, Rhian! The pics are wonderful!!! That huge dune reminds me of Jockey's Ridge on the Outer Banks of NC when I climbed it in 1956 or so. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been back since. It looks as though you had a wonderful time. I won't envy you or I'd have to envy everybody who gets to travel. I simply appreciate the pictures.

I'm not going to catch up with all my reviews in full so here are some very brief thoughts on my finished books:

56. The Bees Laline Paull ***
A worker bee transcends her destiny as the lowest of the low in the bee hierarchy. But the setting in a colony of bees just didn't really work for me ... I mean ... bees?

57. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ****1/2
Great book looking at the cultural differences faced by Nigerian immigrants in both the US and the UK. Can't understand how this was missed off the Booker shortlist, but the last section didn't live up to the promise of the rest.

58. Angelmaker Nick Harkaway ***1/2
A clockmaker trying to live down his father's gangster past, a ninety year old woman going on the run after finishing off her would-be assassins, a mad order of monks, golden bees that are going to have a catastrophic effect on the world as we know it, Angelmaker has just as many ideas as Harkaway's first book: The Gone-Away World. But this one didn't gel together as well for me.

59. Some Kind of Fairy Tale Graham Joyce ****
A reworking of the old myth of a child being lured away by the fairies, but one set very successfully in modern Britain. When Tara returns to her family after disappearing twenty years ago she has apparently hardly aged at all, but can her story that she has been away only six months be believed even so?

60. The Waterproof Bible Andrew Kaufman ***1/2
Green aquatic people who live at the bottom of the sea, a woman who broadcasts her emotions to everyone around her, a man building a boat far away from any water. Lots of interesting ideas but I didn't think the different strands of the story intertwined enough.

61. Way Station Clifford D. Simak ***1/2
A veteran from the US Civil War lives on unchanging in 1960's America, running a Way Station for galactic travellers. But he is starting to attract attention which threatens his peaceful existence.

Love all the wonderful pictures, thanks for taking us (vitrually) along for the trip! Welcome back!

>107 souloftherose: Heather I missed you out up above. One of the things that we noticed in the towns we visited outside Copenhagen was that all the houses seemed to utilise a yellow colour palette, with the occasional brick red one thrown in. It was very harmonious.

Rhian, I was thinking about reading The Bees to fill up my Reading Bingo card, but then saw a few lukewarm reviews and read War Horse instead. Sounds like that was a good decision. Glad to see you enjoyed Americanah. Adichie was on The Guardian Books Podcast last week where they were discussing the book -- you might enjoy listening to it.

Great endorsement of Americanah, Rhian. I've had this one for some time; just need to get to it.

Thanks for sharing your pictures, Rhian. They are beautiful. I loved Americanah, also. Adichie is becoming one of my favorite authors.

>125 LizzieD: The sand dunes were certainly quite hard walking! Especially on days when it was particularly hot as by mid afternoon the sand was getting very hot on the feet!

>127 michigantrumpet: Thanks Marianne.

>129 lauralkeet: Laura, I just couldn't get past the idea of the main character being a bee!

>130 lit_chick: >131 BLBera: I've read Half of A Yellow Sun before and been impressed with that one as well. I don't understand why We Need New Names was short listed for last year's Booker rather than this one. Although they deal with similar topics Americanah deals with it so much better.

I've been having some digestive problems recently, and after a number of different tests coming up with a blank I had an endoscopy last week which has diagnosed it as gastritis. It's obviously being exacerbated by something in my normal routine as the symptoms disappeared completely on holiday. Too much coffee seems like a possible culprit, but I'm waiting for the results of the tests to see if it is caused by H. Pylori bacteria, before they decide what medication is needed.

Hi Rhian, I am just back from visiting my family for a couple of weeks and trying to catch up. I realy enjoyed your pictures of your trip to Denmark and I hope you get the medication that you need to get healthy soon.

Rhian, I hope you get well soon and that you get the best medication.

Rhian, I hope they can figure out the cause of your upset and get you back on the road to feeling great!

OH dear. I'm sorry to hear about the gastric distress and especially that coffee may be the culprit. I have to be very careful too and sometimes have to detox for several days before I can indulge in my favorite drink. I like coffee even more than chocolate!
Best wishes to you.

Sorry to hear about your gastritis Rhian. I hope they can determine the cause soon.

>134 DeltaQueen50: >135 Ameise1: >136 rosalita: >137 LizzieD: >138 souloftherose: The actual symptoms aren't too serious (as well as an unsettled stomach I feel nauseous a lot, but more a sort of 'I'm so hungry I'm feeling ill' nausea, rather than feeling like I'm actually going to throw up) but it had been going on for a while. Apparently it can be exacerbated by stress as well and I have certainly been feeling pretty stressed at work over the last few months, so that's probably not helping.

But I'm obviously pleased it's nothing more serious, as well as pleased that the endoscopy is over. I thought I would react badly to having things stuffed down my throat, and maybe I did, but I can't remember a thing. I was supposedly conscious but sedated but have no memory of the procedure at all, so the sedation obviously worked.

Well, I hope they get it sorted for you, Rhian. It's no fun, I know.

I hope it gets sorted for you very soon, too, Rhian. Feel better!

Same here ... Thinking of you and glad it isn't too awful/serious.

Very little reading going on at the moment for two reasons. We are current redecorating our spare bedroom prior to J moving into it from current (smaller) bedroom. It has been a slow process as the old wallpaper needed to be removed first, and Mr SandDune was being very determined that he knew how to do it. The conversation ran something like this:

Me: you need a wallpaper scorer to make little holes to help the solution soak the wallpaper properly.
Mr SandDune: I don't want to do that -it'll make holes in the wall.
Me: That's what all the advice sites say
Mr SandDune: No, I don't want one. I know what I'm doing!
Later ... a phone call from Mr SandDune while I was at work
Mr SandDune: None of the solution is soaking into the wallpaper at all! Any ideas?
Me: well ...one of those wallpaper scorers that I suggested last week?

Anyway he has now got a wallpaper removal kit (including a scorer) which has worked quite well, so we are now wallpaperless!

Visitors from last year may remember that the spare bedroom was the room that we moved all our fiction paperback books into when the sitting room was being redecorated last year. So the books are on the move again, and are currently in a huge pile under J's current high sleeper bed. Not 100% sure where they are going to end up on a permanent basis!

And also we are still watching the Tour de France! Although the actual tour ended several weeks ago, as we missed the last couple of week when we were on holiday we have been watching one highlights programme every day. Although we knew that Nibali had won, we didn't know who had come second and third, and that is where the battle has been, so we've managed to almost convince ourselves that it's live. Anyway, only the Champs Elysses to watch now (and I don't know who won that stage yet so nobody tell me).

This was the first year for over twenty years that I have missed the last weekend of the Tour. By this time it was fairly certain that Nibali would win so I made do with daily reports by phone from my son!

>140 tiffin: >141 lit_chick: >142 lauralkeet: Well the advantage of having all the tests done that had let up to the endoscopy is I've actually had quite a good health check in the process.
I've got a very low level risk for cardiac disease apparently, and if I was too lose a bit of weight it would be even better, but I think I'm genetically predisposed to have low cholesterol levels.

>144 CDVicarage: We pretty much always miss the last couple of days, but since J has been at secondary school we have missed at least a week, as he finishes school at the end of June (it's a boarding school) and so we tend to go on holiday earlier. But as we wanted to see the tour live when it was in the UK we did go on holiday a little later this year so didn't miss too much.

Where have I been? You've been to Denmark, had an endoscopy (ugh) and are moving books and redoing rooms, as well has having read seven or eight books. So I'm impressed.

I'm sorry you've been having the nausea - even more sorry if the coffee is the culprit, it's a hard thing to give up! On the other hand, the full check-up sounds very reassuring.

It's all I can do not to run out this very minute to buy a set of fleece throws - we're colder than Denmark or you and we treasure every MOMENT of the fleeting warm months and eat outside and hang about outside as much as we can during them - but stupidly - I've never thought of dedicating some throws to keeping us comfortable. This is the time of year when it starts to cool early and it also is a bit chilly early, but a throw would solve all that.

We also have (sounds weird but it isn't) a garage door at one end of our house that we put up in the summer all day - in the summer all the chairs are clustered there (in winter they cluster around the wood stove) and it can get cold sitting right by it too, in the evening, so the throws would be useful there too and let us keep the door open longer.

>146 sibylline: There's something about the idea of snuggling up in a throw outside which is very comforting as well as warm! J loved them, but he is very keen on snuggly things in general. I have a picture of him snuggled up on the one evening when there was a slight chill in the air (only a very slight chill, but he has virtually no body fat) but I have been completely forbidden to use it in any social media sites (not cool obviously). I think he would quite like one of his own.

As part of the redecorating there is a lot of sorting out going on of J's old toys. Who would have known that I could get so sentimental over plastic dinosaurs, but so much of his young childhood was devoted to all things dinosaur that I am. There'd be great dinosaur battles: he'd always have the herbivores and parents would have the carnivores, but miraculously the herbivores always won! And then there was the one Christmas where the thing he wanted most in all the world was a toy glyptodont: that took some finding! So at least some of the dinosaurs are going in the loft.

Rhian, I'm sorry to hear of your medical woes, but at least it looks like you're on the way to finding an answer.

>143 SandDune: I suspect Mr SandDune's problem is Y-linked ;0) A friend of mine recently flew overseas for her daughter's graduation. As she's not working, she went ahead of her husband, but she suggested to him that, since there was a public holiday that Thursday, he could take Friday off and go earlier, but he said he couldn't. Guess what he suddenly realised a couple of weeks later, after the tickets were booked and paid for, and couldn't be changed?

>147 SandDune: Oh, toys; I'm afraid I can't help you there. I'm such a hoarder. I get sentimentally attached to the silliest things, even if the kids themselves aren't.

Glad that the endoscopy was completely un-memorable, and that at least it produced a diagnosis rather than simply leaving question marks in its wake. Now, hoping that the solution is easily found...

I envy you the Denmark trip -- it looks like a fascinating variety of places and experiences -- and I WOULD have loved the doll's house! That is precisely the kind of thing that I still adore. It's the creativity and the craft that goes into making something like that that I find so awe-inspiring.

Clearly, shall have to read The Way Station. I think it was Magicians_Nephew/Jim who first drew my attention to it...

Drove J into town yesterday to buy new trainers. As the crossroads in the middle of town is particularly narrow at one point (nothing to be done about it as very old buildings on both sides) a section of the road before the crossroads is marked 'keep clear' so that cars queuing for the traffic lights at the crossroads don't block it for anything large coming in the opposite direction. Well there was a car stopped about two car lengths before that point which I assumed had either parked illegally or just stopped to pick someone up or for some other reason. You're not supposed to stop there but people do. So I overtook it and pulled up behind the car waiting at the traffic lights: plenty of room not to be on the 'keep clear' area. But then I got much hooting and gesticulating from the woman behind who apparently had been queuing after all. But I'm not a mind reader - if people choose to stop 25 feet before the car in front for no apparent reason how am I supposed to know that they are in the queue?

So then to cheer myself up we went to my favourite tea shop to have cakes. I had raspberry and honey and J had coffee and walnut. J commented that tea shops are a peculiarly female environment, and they are: you very rarely see a group of men in one (in fact I can't ever remember seeing a group of men in one). Men with their families, yes, but not men on their own or in a group. (Actually there were two men on the next table but they were Polish and so can be discounted in a survey of British attitudes to tea shops). But men seem to like a slice of cake just as much as women do. Coffee shops seem more male, it's quite normal to see a man on his own in Starbucks or Costa, but again groups are rare. Is this a peculiarly British thing I wonder?

Rhian, sorry to read that you had to have an endoscopy (but isn't that anaesthetic wonderful?! I had one myself years ago) but at least they've found what it is. I'm sure you'll start to feel better just knowing that it isn't anything terrible.

I saw the new Alan Johnson memoir, "Please, Mr Postman" listed on Amazon the other day when I was looking for something else, so I thought I'd send you a link in case you haven't seen it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Please-Mister-Postman-Alan-Johnson-ebook/dp/B00KCRP9HU/r... It's published in October. I may splash out for the Kindle version as This Boy was such a great read, and I would never have picked it up had it not been for your recommendation.

I hope you get J moved OK - how funny about all those dinosaurs :-)

>150 SandDune: Is this a peculiarly British thing I wonder?
This type of thing fascinates me. We don't have tea shops here, sadly, so I can't comment on the difference between the two. But on the presence of groups of men, while in our local Starbucks they are not exactly rare, I'd say they aren't as common as groups of women or mixed-gender groups. I can think of two groups of men who come for breakfast on weekdays. One appears to be affiliated with a church and the other is a group of doctors from a nearby hospital.

Would groups of men in England be more likely to go to a pub?

>152 lauralkeet: It's a bit of a vague distinction I suppose, as tea shops do serve coffee and coffee shops serve tea! But in my opinion a proper tea shop serves tea in china cups by means of a tea pot. And it should have British afternoon tea type cakes (Victoria Sandwich, coffee and walnut, carrot cake, lemon drizzle, chocolate etc) rather than muffins or Danish pastries. Groups of men would be more likely to go to the pub, but a middle-aged middle-class man like Mr SandDune wouldn't usually go to a town centre pub in the middle of the day. Already with J I can see that he is happy to go to Starbucks or Costa with a (male) friend but going to the tea shop would be seen as an odd choice (although he is happy to go with me as he really, really likes the cakes). I suspect teenage girls wouldn't have the same issues.

>148 humouress: Well, progress has been made with the decorating. Every scrap of wallpaper is off the wall and the ceiling has been painted. We now need to paper the walls with lining paper and then paint the walls and woodwork. We had hoped to avoid the lining paper step but we would have had to spend ages smoothing out the walls without it, so it will probably be quicker in the long run. It has all taken so long because we have been doing sorting out at the same time. I tend to keep a sample of things for sentimental value but we haven't got room to store a lot, so I have to be selective! It's funny, Mr SandDune was about to throw out all the dinosaurs but J knew I'd get all sentimental about them - he knows me quite well I think!

>149 Chatterbox: It seems that there are two different courses of medication depending on whether it is caused by H. pylori or not, and in most cases that will clear it up. One of the things that was causing me to be stressed was that I was getting a bit worried as to what was causing it, and it will certainly help now I know that it isn't anything too nasty! Funnily, I thought I had got the recommendation of Way Station from you but obviously not!

>151 susanj67: Susan, I immediately went to Audible to see if they had Please, Mr Postman, and was disappointed that they had not. They I reread your post and noticed the 'published in October' comment. I'll certainly be reading that one quite early in I think.

Have finished listening to Teckla by Steven Brust, the third in the Vlad Taltos series. Some reviewers seem to not like this one as much as the previous two, and I can see why as it has a much more serious tone as Vlad starts to question his way of life, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

Hi Rhian, I wish you a lovely Sunday.

Both animals were fascinated with the blowing up of the air mattresses prior to the camping trip. Daisy was even keener when J tried one out for size.

We have a chain of coffee shops here, Tim Horton's, which also sells tea. You will find every age and gender in them. Everything comes in a mug. Tea shops tend to be specialty places in little local villages, aimed at the tourist/visitor market--yes, with proper china tea cups etc. The cups are too small to be very satisfying to the male "mine in a mug, please" set so it's usually older folk who frequent them.

Getting a kick out of the mattress testing, as similar goes on here. And I won't breath a word about who wins on the Champs, promise.

>150 SandDune: - Is this a peculiarly British thing I wonder?

Even in Victoria - which is billed as being a somewhat British - tea shops of the British variety are rare. There is one in Chinatown - Venus Sophia - that is styled with comfy chintz style chairs and sofas and your tea is served to you in tea pot, but other than that, options are more like the Afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel but with a price tag of $60/per person, it is not something the average Victorian does as a break from weekend shopping. ;-)

We also have tea shops like Teavana and Davids Tea which are styled like Starbucks but they sell only tea products (no coffee).

We have a Davids Tea too, Lori, but as it's in one of those malls which I avoid like the plague, I never go there.

>158 tiffin: >159 lkernagh: >160 tiffin: We are actually very lucky to have such a nice independently owned tea shop, which serves such beautiful cakes, as even here they are more prevalent in tourist areas, which we are not. Apparently they are all hand made by the owner every morning!

Hi Rhian - I hope your digestive woes get sorted soon. I went through something similar years ago, mostly due to stress, and it wasn't fun.

62. Cat Sense John Bradshaw ****
I read this now because I really enjoyed the same author's In Defence of Dogs.

A lay person's account of the evolution of cats, their domestication, their place in history, behaviour, physical characteristics and place in today's (and tomorrow's) world. This is written by an academic (one of the world's leading experts on animal behaviour according to the blurb on the back) who has written more academic tomes on the same subject, but this book is aimed at a more general audience.

This is one of those books that is full of interesting snippets of information, that I kept relating to my (very uninterested) family. Like the fact that the original Egyptian domesticated cats were originally all grey-brown striped (not blotched) tabbies (exactly like our last cat Ruby) and were about 25% larger than today. All the colours and patterns that have arisen since are later mutations. Or the fact that in 10th century Wales by statute a female cat was worth four pence, (the value of a fully grown sheep, goat or an untrained house dog) and that if the cat could not see or hear, killed her kittens, or failed in her duty to kill mice then the purchaser was entitled to the return of half the purchase price. And in the event of a divorce the husband was entitled to take one cat from the household, but the rest belonged to the wife.

But the most interesting aspect of the book for me was its consideration of the cat in the modern day world, in particular how the actions of most animal charities and pet owners may be driving the behaviour of cats in quite the opposite direction from that which they would want. In the UK overall about 89% of owners have their cats neutered and in some areas (especially the more prosperous ones) it is not uncommon for there to be no pet unneutered tom cats to father kittens. Therefore, virtually all the kittens are fathered by feral toms. Successful feral toms are generally those that are wary of humans and successful at hunting, and it is these characteristics that they will tend to pass on to their kittens, not usually the ones that are most desired by twenty-first century owners. As neutering levels rise, the cats having kittens will be the ones that have a strong inclination to avoid human interaction, and the selective pressure on cats to be sociable to humans will start to go into reverse.

So this was a fascinating book. I would have liked a little more about the indoor-outdoor cat debate which is hardly mentioned, but as this topic seems to be regarded in a completely different light on the two sides of the Atlantic, and this book is on sale in both, the author probably thought it might be less controversial to steer well clear. Recommended for anyone with a interest in cats.

63. Teckla Steven Brust ****
I read this now because: I'm enjoying this series a lot.

This is the third in Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltos series. As readers of the first two books in the series will remember, the Teckla are the peasant class of the Dragaeran empire, continually caricatured as being cowardly and stupid. So Vlad is somewhat horrified, and very perplexed when his wife Cawti becomes involved in a revolutionary movement which aims to empower the downtrodden Teckla and the equally downtrodden human citizens of the empire. And when one of the leaders ends up dead, killed for treading on the toes of a powerful Jhereg boss in the capital city Adrilankha's human quarter, Vlad is determined to ensure that Cawti does not go the same way. But Cawti does not want his protection, and the events that follow cause Vlad to question the validity of his marriage and of his whole way of life.

This seems a less popular book than some with readers and I can see why, as it introduces a more realistic element to Vlad's character. But I enjoyed this ones as well, even though it does have a darker tone. Perhaps it's just me, but I did find the amount of time that Vlad seems to spend doing housework quite appealing in an action hero: in fact the chapter headings of the entire book are centered around his laundry list!

>163 SandDune: Successful feral toms are generally those that are wary of humans and successful at hunting, and it is these characteristics that they will tend to pass on to their kittens
One of our cats is the daughter of a female barn cat and probably a feral tom. She is much more of a hunter than any cat we've ever had. We will occasionally have a mouse in the house and it seems all we have to do is say "oh look, there's a mouse in the house" and within a few hours she has dealt with it. We usually try to capture and release it first, but if we aren't successful, well it's disgusting, but she does her job. She has also been rather aloof, although I'm not sure she's been any more so than some of our other kitties. Still, it's only through intentional effort that she became interested in her human companions.

So that's a long way of saying, I think that book sounds pretty interesting too!

>165 lauralkeet: Another interesting fact about hunting cats mentioned in the book is that until really quite recently, maybe the 1980's, most commercial cat foods were based on the nutritional needs of dogs, as those of cats were poorly understood. So even a pet cat which was being fed a plentiful diet by its owner was frequently not getting a suitable diet to allow it to carry a litter to term without supplementing its diet with regular hunting. So in our current view that cats hunting is a 'bad thing' we are asking them to change their behaviour incredibly quickly in evolutionary terms.

Another titbit of information which I found interesting was that kittens have a much shorter window of domestication than puppies. Ideally kittens need to be handled a lot between three and seven weeks in order to become domesticated. Kittens that are not handled at all until nine weeks are likely to be anxious around people for the rest of their life. This makes a lot of sense to me: as a child we adopted a kitten which was one of litter belonging to a feral cat found at my Dad's place of work. Obviously we didn't know her exact age but we estimated about eight weeks, so just on the cusp of the domestication window. She was certainly grew up to be one of the least domesticated cats I have come across: for her first year at least I couldn't put my bare feet on the floor if she was in the room, as she regarded my toes as some sort of small prey animal. The idea of actually sitting on anyone's lap did not seem to occur to her at all.

>162 BLBera: I think mine may have a stress element as well - I have found the last few months at work unusually stressful.

Cat Sense has caught my attention, Rhian. Thanks for an excellent review! So interesting! Cairo, who has now been with me just over two weeks, is the first cat I've owned on my own. We always had a cat and a dog growing up. Particularly interested in your point that indoor/outdoor cats are viewed very differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Going to go back to your previous thread and see if I can find a discussion.

>168 lit_chick: It's definitely been discussed before but I can't quite remember when. But I can sum it up by saying that in the UK most cat rescue organisations are very reluctant to rehome cats to indoor only situations, unless there are specific circumstances that mean that the cat should not go outside (disability, FIV+ etc). Most will refuse to rehome a kitten to this situation. In the US I believe the situation is completely reversed, with rescues usually refusing to rehome to owners that will allow the cat to go outside.

Only about 10% of UK cats are indoor cats (which corresponds to the level of pedigree cats, which are more likely to be kept indoors because of their value). Personally, I only know one person who does not allow their cat free access to the outside, a neighbour who exercises his cat on a lead. And the rarity of seeing a cat on a lead can be judged by J's reaction a year or so ago when he first saw him taking his cat out: he wanted us all to come and look IMMEDIATELY at such a strange sight!

This cat book sounds very interesting. We adopted a rescue cat who was 1 1/2 years old when we got her 11 years ago. She had spent her first year in the wild and the next half in a cage at the shelter. She has been the most challenging cat I have ever had, completely spazzing out if anyone tried to pick her up, doing an all systems evacuation in her cat cage when we went to the vet (consequently I no longer take her). She decided about four years ago that she Would Not Go Out at all (something must have really scared her). There isn't much interaction with her although she highly approves of me, as keeper of the kibble. We have always thought she was brain damaged somehow but perhaps she was just profoundly confused with the conflicting signals of her nature and the nurture she was receiving.

The cat book looks well worth looking out. We had a cat as a child and I'd have another one if ever our lifestyle allowed. The only indoor cats I know are a pair of Burmans, and even that household has a pair of moggies that are allowed to come & go as they please.

Interesting re indoor/outdoor cats. I just ran across a rant by an English FB friend about cats killing off birds, and I was bemused -- my cats are all indoor cats (and live longer, as a result...) Tigger would quite like to go outdoors, but he is so intrepid that he'd pick a fight with a cougar in five seconds flat. Well, not that there are any here, but there are coyotes in some of the suburbs. In New Jersey, bears prowl around looking for garbage, and a cat would be a nice snack. Add to that traffic -- nope, cats stay indoors. I can't imagine letting a cat out in a major UK city, either. Sorry, but it's just irresponsible. It's one thing if you adopt a cat who has been accustomed to being outside, another if you adopt a kitten.

>172 Chatterbox: Sorry, but it's just irresponsible
I think it's one of those questions where no amount of persuasive arguments will change the other point of view. An awful lot of British cat owners would probably choose not to have cats if they lived in a situation where they felt it was too dangerous for the cat to go outside, certainly I would. I definitely feel that letting the cat outside is something I have to do. It might be more dangerous than not allowing her outside, but then so would not letting J outside. We do not have the dangerous predators which might attack a cat, and some of the statistics I've seen about the different lifespans of inside and outdoor cats seem frankly bizarre, and to bear no resemblance to reality, certainly in the UK.

>170 tiffin: Sounds like you actually did very well with your cat, Tui. This is what Cat Sense says about socialisation of feral kittens, the conclusions taken from a study that the author carried out in conjunction with a British cat charity.

If rescued at six weeks, they were not easy to handle, and very few purred when stroked. Kittens not rescued until eight weeks of age were difficult to handle, and those not found until ten weeks were, at least to begin with, virtually wild ... Kittens that don't meet a human until the age of ten weeks or older are unlikely to become pets, except in extreme circumstances. Instead, they live as 'stray' or 'feral' cats, living on the fringes of human activity but never becoming part of it. Most hunt to some extent, but virtually all depend on food and shelter provided by people, both accidentally and deliberately. Their only window of opportunity for accepting and then becoming attached to people has passed.

>171 Helenliz: I had to look up what a Burman cat was - very pretty! Having read this book, if we got new cats I think I would be likely to get two female litter mates who have been brought up in a household containing a dog. And preferably several small children who have been handling the kittens as much as possible, (and inviting all their friends and relatives to do the same).

>173 SandDune: Yes, clearly the environment is different. In New York, I wouldn't let a cat out -- I saw too many dead animals in the streets, hit by cars, and had too many friends whose cats escaped and simply vanished, to the distress of their children. Even here, my the people across the street from me lost their cat to traffic on Parade Street (where there are no lights...) last fall. And my friend in Barrington, just five miles from where I live, has coyotes that will swoop in to grab cats who get out. There are too many predators. In this environment, I suppose the analogy would be letting kids out to playing knowing that you were living during the era of the Hundred Years War and it was entirely possible that a band of routiers would swoop in. You might do it, but you'd have a damn good reason.

>176 Chatterbox: In my experience, neutered cats frequently don't really go very far, and do seem to develop a certain amount of road sense. Sweep doesn't go outside our garden very often at all (nor did Ruby) and I've never seen her cross the road (which is a cul-de-sac and so not too busy). The (more dominant) cat from the garden behind doesn't seem to go much beyond the three gardens which back onto its own. The cat from across the road can usually be seen sitting on its fence on the other side of the road. You get the general picture.

Well, Rhian, Holly will never be that cosy lap cat but as much as she is able, she loves us, I think. She has become quite the conversationalist, chattering away at me constantly. But the first three months during which she hid behind the rugby kit under the stairs and gave one of my lads cause to name her Tetanus, well, it was a very different story. She is deeply attached to our standard poodle, which is astonishing. And at about ten years old, she learned to play. I often find her catnip mice dotted about the place. ETA: she is now 12 1/2.

For a while, when my former landlord was having work done on the house (new windows, etc.) I had to put a collar on Tigger with the phone # on it. I got calls to come and collect him from as far as two miles away in Brooklyn! Hair raising. It meant calling a car service to embark on a retrieval mission. On the other hand, you couldn't persuade Cassie to go as far as the doorway if it involved encountering People Who Are Not Suzanne And Who Therefore Intend to Turn Her Into Cat Stew.

>178 tiffin: Hilarious, Tui... Molly is the chatterbox among the cats. I'll be on the phone, and Molly will be convinced that I'm trying to convince with her, and sit down near me and start vocalizing away. It can be quite disconcerting to whoever is at the other end of the phone. Yesterday it was the CEO of Carnival Cruises...

Having grown up in England, I'm used to The Cat That Walked by Himself, and here in Singapore, there are lots of cats out and about, both domestic and feral. The first few years after we moved into our house, cats were a constant problem; we don't have pets (... yet), so our garden was unclaimed territory. Our lawn, though, is special 'golf course' grass, because I wanted the soft type of grass I grew up with, rather than the short, tough, wide-bladed local variety, so we had a bit of an issue with the cats' (ahem) calling cards. But one of the cats that I'd see around outside was a neighbour's (I think) long-haired Siamese. Mind you, I doubt cats would have many natural predators in Singapore.

Interesting viewpoints on indoor/outdoor cats, Rhian, with UK taking the reverse view of Canada. I'd love to let Cairo outside, but I am right in town, and I am certain he would not stay in my small townhouse garden. All of the years we were growing up, the family cats all went outside; we would have thought someone out of their wits to keep an indoor cat. Somewhere the thinking changed … and will probably change again.

In New Zealand cats are all allowed outside, and there is an issue with them hunting native birds in the urban areas. A rich philanthropist here is running a campaign, Catstogo, to ban cats from the country.
My beautiful black cat caught a baby rabbit yesterday, unfortunately we couldn't get to it in time. We often rescue their prey, my son has saved the lives of several field mice that they've brought into the house to play with.

>178 tiffin: She is deeply attached to our standard poodle Well, peaceful inter-species relations would certainly be nice. Sweep still as the odd unprovoked vicious swipe at Daisy.

>179 Chatterbox: Wow, Tigger really is a wanderer! There was a TV programme on in the UK recently which fitted radio collars to virtually all the pet cats in a village and a lot of them didn't have a very large territory at all. Tigger would probably have won the prize for travelling the furthest!

>180 humouress: Funny, I would have assumed that Singapore wouldn't have liked free-wandering cats at all!

I adored your photos of Denmark. Gorgeous. You all look so relaxed and happy. I love Denmark. I want to go back for a visit someday and see the town my Great-great grandmother came from. Her family was from Maribo, south of Copenhagen.

>181 lit_chick: I have to admit that until I joined LT I'd never realised that in other places it to keep cats inside. When I worked in Bermuda temporarily back in the 90's I did get friendly with a Canadian woman who used to keep her cat indoors, but I'd put it down to an quirk on her part!

>182 avatiakh: One of the views out forward in Cat Sense was that the impact of cats on bird populations in the UK may be much exaggerated (obviously situation in New Zealand very different). Bradshaw doesn't dispute that cats kill a lot of birds, but as cats will tend to take weak birds which might well not survive anyway (naturally most baby birds would be expected to die before their first winter) this may not be having so much of an impact. And additionally, especially feral cats hunt a lot of baby rats which are in themselves strong predators of birds when older. Interestingly, this view seems to be shared at least partially by the RSPB:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx

Rhian, we have an animal called a fisher cat in these parts (actually a member of the weasel family, not a cat at all). Five neighbourhood family cats went missing this Spring, directly attributed to the fisher spotted in the area. As Holly spends most of her time indoors, by her choice, we weren't concerned but we were very concerned for little Maisie next door who is very much an outdoor cat (her family is from England), and who has no teeth as a result of a disease. Happily, she likes to spend much of her day in my garden, so I keep an eye out for her.

As cities have grown, with new buildings much closer together with much smaller yard space, and with more and faster cars, I think the move to keeping cats indoors has grown in proportion. In the rural environs to the city, we have larger properties so most here are inclined to let their cats out to be cats. I lost a cherished cat to a car when we lived in Toronto. My next cat nearly lost her life when we moved to the city here but got away with losing all the teeth on one side of her face, so I kept her in after that as she would have no defenses against a predator. The next cat, a dear boy, didn't make his first year because of a car. So unless we move to a fairly deserted rural location, I'm quite happy to leave Holly inside. People just drive too fast here.

>183 SandDune: Sadly, some feral cats (and other animals) are pets that have been 'released'. Even more sad are the cats with bent, broken or docked tails.

>186 tiffin: Tui I had written a long reply but it's just disappeared so I'm just going to summarise it now. I don't think we love our cats any less here, we just differ on our view of what is most important for them. To many people here, allowing a cat to go outside has benefits which outweigh the risks. So for instance, the shelter from which we rehomed Sweep, which is one of the bigger ones in this area, will not rehome a cat to an indoor only situation (but then it wouldn't rehome if you lived on a main road either). Our first cat Edward was involved in an accident at the age of around 6 (but survived and lived to the age of 14) and I would have been heartbroken if anything had happened to him, but I still wouldn't have considered keeping him indoors.

>187 humouress: I can't understand how people can just abandon animals. If you can't look after an animal any more surely the least you can do is take it too a shelter?

No, I certainly don't think the British love their cats any less, particularly given the splendid work done there with shelters of every description and the long trail through English lit., of deep and abiding love for people's moggies. I am of the let a cat be true to itself camp, unless there are compelling reasons of health and safety not to. I am glad Holly opted to be an inside cat all on her own because our road is treacherous and we're near a banked corner which certain ones take as though it were Gambon corner in Top Gear.

64. Elizabeth is Missing Emma Healey *****
I read this now because: recently published and I'd read a couple of good reviews.

'Elizabeth is missing' Maud tells her daughter Helen. 'Elizabeth is missing' she tells her carer Carla. 'Elizabeth is missing' she tells her doctor. But no one pays any attention. They tell her not to worry, and that no, of course Elizabeth isn't missing. But if she isn't missing, wonders Maud, then where is she? She isn't at her house, Maud is certain of that. Or is she, for Maud is an eighty-two year old woman with worsening dementia who finds it difficult to remember what she has done yesterday, or that morning, or even ten minutes previously. But Elizabeth is her best friend, her only friend left, and Maud is determined to find out what has happened to her. Her pockets overflow with the notes that she writes to herself to help her remember, but even as she rereads them their meaning slips away. And interspersed with the story of Maud's search for Elizabeth is that of the search for another missing person, Maud's older sister Sukey, who disappeared as a young married woman in the same seaside town in England in 1946. Has she just run away, or is her husband Frank responsible for her disappearance? And what was the relationship between Sukey and Maud's parents' teenage lodger? And who is the 'mad woman' who seems to be pursuing Maud? And as Maud's memory and grasp on reality becomes weaker the two strands of the narrative start to intertwine in her mind.

This is a beautiful and heart-breaking book, as Maud's ability to cope with the world deteriorates rapidly. At the start of the book, she can (just about) cope in her own home with daily visits from her daughter and carers, although her frequent visits to the shops usually result in the purchase of yet more tins of peaches as she can't remember what she went there for. But very soon even simple everyday tasks become more difficult, and words and then names begin to fail her. With Maud as the first person narrator the reader's sympathies are with her throughout, but the character of her long suffering daughter Helen is also beautifully drawn. Although Helen is seen only in snippets through Maud's eyes, who becomes more and more confused at her daughter's reactions, we get a clear picture of a woman who is trying her best to care for her mother, but is at times at the end of her tether with her mother's seemingly meaningless actions.

I've seen this book described as a mystery, and while there is an element of mystery to it, the central elements for me are the character of Maud, the exploration of relationships within families, and the concept of memory itself. Things happen quite slowly and readers expecting a faster paced psychological thriller type may well be disappointed. But in my opinion this is a wonderful book, which I strongly recommend, and even more impressive in being a debut novel.

>190 SandDune: that does sound like a very good book, but since both of my parents are demonstrating different sets of dementia symptoms, I think it might strike too close to home for me.

>190 SandDune: Okay, that's weird: my name's Elizabeth, and I have a niece called Emma Healey. I'll have to check with her to see if I'm missing. :)

Cats tend to be allowed out here, in fact many people won't own a cat if it must stay in all the time. Generally it is a matter of the cat being allowed into the garden for a certain time each day, for exercise, tree scratching, grass eating and garden use (if the cat is so inclined), but then brought inside overnight. As in NZ there is an issue with the native fauna and people are strongly encouraged to bell their cats.

My own cat decided about a year ago (after a sudden influx of neighbourhood cats) that she wanted to be an indoor cat, so after eleven years of opening the door for a scoot to the garden, I'm back to the wonderful world of kitty litter. She still does go out during the day, weather permitting, to lie in the sun, but only on weekends now when I'm there to do door-duty on demand.

>190 SandDune: That is an intriguing perspective for the author to write from, from inside the mind of someone who (to me) is hard to understand from the outside. It sounds like a good book, but I wouldn't want to read it if it has a sad ending. On the other hand, if you told me the ending was happy, I probably wouldn't want to read it. Cat chasing its tail syndrome ;0)

>192 lyzard: Two words : cat flap ;0) Sounds like she's got you right where she wants you.

It took me a while Rhian but I am finally caught up. Thank you for the stunning pictures of Denmark. It looks like you had a great time.

Of course, cats can go in and out here in the states but my son and his wife had an interesting incident when they got their new cat from the rescue facility. They have two dogs and have a convenient doggie door so that the dogs can come and go as they please out into the fenced in yard. And where their previous cat had no desire to go outside this new interloper wanted out like nobody's business and the first day they had him he was gone. Of course the fence presented no problem for this little guy and, well, by the time they found him, several hours later he was a few miles from home. They had to finally keep him in a locked room when they were gone and keep the doggie door guarded when they're home. LOL

>192 lyzard: Too many roaming cats in my townhouse complex for a cat flap! I've had them inside before this if I even leave a door open while doing gardening or carrying things in and out, stealing food and making themselves at home on the furniture. (And occasionally peeing, sigh.)

Ah. So she's got her friends to gang up on you, has she? Told you - wrapped around her furry little paw ...

Rhian, I have to admit that I haven't read all posts due to the European Athletics Championship we are hosting here in Zürich but to the cats discussion: here in Switzerland the cats goes outside, too. We wouldn't have cats (2) if they couldn't get outdoors.

Well, after all the cat conversations our cat is in deep disgrace after launching a completely unprovoked attack on Daisy this morning. The poor dog was just standing quietly outside the back door waiting to come in from the garden, and when I opened the door to let her in Sweep launched her attack.

>191 lauralkeet: Laura, I can see that it would be a little bit too close for comfort. Although for a general reader, or one not so closely involved in that situation I think it is a book that would help foster an understanding of what the older person is going through (as far as it's possible to know of course). I haven't lived day to day with someone with dementia, but it did ring true with my experience of my aunt who died in 2001 aged 91.

>192 lyzard: >195 lyzard: Sweep much prefers to be let out rather than use the cat flap, which I think she sees as being a little bit below her dignity. She does like to go out, and with the weather being particularly warm over the last couple of months she has been spending a lot of time sunbathing. As I said she doesn't go far, probably because with a lot of other cats around her territory is pretty small. But saying that I haven't heard any squabbles between her and the cat from the garden behind recently, nor have I seen it actually in our garden, so perhaps she has established herself as the dominant cat in our garden at least.

>194 brenzi: When we got Sweep we were told to keep her in for at least two weeks before letting her outside, so that she had time to understand that this was her home. And we did have a couple of instances in the first week when somebody (actually Mr SandDune) left the door open and she bolted for next door's garden. It's surprisingly difficult to find a largely black cat in even a small garden if there's quite a bit of vegetation.

I have just had to break off as a large spider has run across the floor in front of me. I have completely confused Daisy by waking her up suddenly from her pre-lunch snooze, and demanding that she catch it. She didn't seem quite sure what was expected of her but eventually trod on it (by accident more than anything I think) and dispatched it that way. To be honest, Sweep is much better at spider catching, having much more of a killer instinct, but she wasn't to hand.

After finishing Elizabeth is missing on audio, I went on to my next audiobook, All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld. So I listened to the first fifty minutes, and it was very gripping but (and this is a big BUT) I can't cope with the British accents of the narrator. Most of the book is narrated in the Australian accent of the book's main character and that's fine, but when it comes to the British accents I cringed every time somebody said anything. I can see that it's a difficult book to narrate: it's set in an unnamed island off the British coast and from what I have read so far I would guess that it's not based on any specific place. (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty well travelled when it comes to British Islands and I can't pin it down at all). So does the narrator choose Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish accents, something from the West Country or the Isle of Man perhaps, or maybe just concoct an accent of her own, which could also work if used consistently). What she seems to have done instead is to use some sort of varied mishmash of all the possible accents and use them quite inconsistently, so a single sentence can have words that sound Scottish, Irish and Welsh. Or maybe she's just really bad at accents. So I've sent the audio back to Audible and got a paperback copy instead ...

>200 SandDune: There is ANOTHER spider, this time behind the TV. The house is being invaded! I have completely failed to interest Sweep (Daisy won't fit behind the TV). I must keep a good watch on it and encourage them to action if it comes out!

I wish I was brave and could cope with spiders.

Great review of Elizabeth Is Missing, Rhian. My mother is experiencing short term memory loss as she approaches her 79th birthday, and my father will celebrate his 80th birthday in December, so this book is of special interest to me. I've added it to my Kindle wish list, and I'll almost certainly buy and read it soon.

>202 SandDune: If I ever get a cat it will be because someone has trained it to catch and kill spiders.

65. The Life of Rebecca Jones Angharad Price **1/2
I read this now because: it's one of the books I bought on the LT meet-up earlier in the year.

This is a book with consistently wonderful reviews. Nine out of the ten reviews on Amazon give it five stars (the other one gives in four): marvellous, wonderful, incredible are only some of the superlatives used. The Independent says it 'stands tall ... as a peak of modern British writing'; the Literary Review calls it 'marvellous'; World Literature Today says that 'Price's lyrical prose breathes an almost magical life into the narrative'. I honestly can't find a single bad review, not even one that's luke-warm. And I have looked because ... I don't like it. I feel that I have missed something magical which everyone else can see, as I really don't understand why this short novella (154 pages) should have gained quite so much acclamation.

This is a fictionalised account of the Jones family of the Maesglasau valley in mid-Wales, from 1903 when Evan Jones brought his new wife Rebecca back to the farm of Tynybraich, until the early years of the twenty-first century. Told through the eyes of their eldest daughter, also named Rebecca, the novella traces the life of the valley and its inhabitants throughout the twentieth century. And as well as the changes that necessarily come into the valley as time progresses, the lives of three of the Jones children are forced by a cruel circumstance far from their Welsh speaking non-conformist roots. For after the birth of their eldest son, the next two sons were born blind and a third lost his sight at a very young age. That meant a boarding school education from a very young age for all three boys, an education that was necessarily in English, and took the sons far from the lives of their parents in their outlook and values. And meant too that there was no money left for the education of the other children, so that the eldest son, who wanted more than anything to be a doctor, had no choice but to farm as his father has done before him.

The problem for me is that the book is so short and covers such a long period of time, that it often seems a mere listing of events, rather than investing those events with any emotional attachment. And although the descriptions are of the valley are beautiful, that isn't enough to make up for the lack of emotional attachment that I felt with the whole.

This is a novel, although its characters are all real people, and indeed the book is interspersed with photographs of the people and places mentioned.The nature of its fictional character is not revealed until right at the end in an unexpected twist. The author Angharad Price is the great granddaughter of Evan and Rebecca Jones, and is introduced briefly towards the end of the book. This was translated from the original Welsh, and it's another Welsh book where I feel something is lost in translation. But whereas the last one Feet in Chains was well worth the read despite that, I didn't feel the same for this. But as I say, this is clearly a minority view.

Excellent review of Elizabeth is Missing, Rhian. This is one for my list, too.

Nice to hear of someone else that can't deal with spiders.

>204 rosalita: Maybe Rhian can run a spider-catching training camp for pets; special discounts for LT-ers.

>203 kidzdoc: Darryl, luckily my mother is approaching her ninety-third birthday with no apparent signs of losing her mental faculties. I had two aunts who both died in their late nineties, who were equally lucid until the end, so it's not inevitable by any means. But I would strongly recommend Elizabeth is Missing.

>204 rosalita: >207 DeltaQueen50: >208 humouress: I'm not doing anything that involves going near any spiders, thank you very much. I should have explained that the reason that I was (trying) to deal with it was Mr SandDune (aka chief spider catcher) and J were away - camping in the Brecon Beacons. I am really very bad indeed with spiders: I will sometimes have to abandon a room completely if there is no one else to deal with it. Luckily both Daisy and Sweep will deal with them. Sweep has much more of a killer instinct than Daisy or our old cat Ruby and she is very interested if they come out in the open and scuttle about, but can't be bothered if they keep still.

I read an ARC of Elizabeth is Missing earlier this summer, and the extent to which the author was able to imagine herself into the mind of the woman suffering from dementia is almost eerie -- it transforms what would otherwise be a quite good suspense work into something on quite a different level. Although my grandfather succumbed to Alzheimer's, that was in 1985, and I don't have anyone close to me suffering from this now, thankfully -- but even so, I found it often too difficult to read very much of it at a single sitting. I agree with >191 lauralkeet: that it might be a tough read for someone in a caretaking position right now, as it so vividly captures the heartbreaking nature of what happens. I remember reading Still Alice, but this beats it, hands down, in terms of getting inside the head of someone with dementia, I think. Or at least, as far as I can imagine.

Re cats... I definitely don't think it has anything to do with loving animals more or less. That said, I do know that if anything happened to Tigger out on one of his long expeditions -- which odds are it would, at some point, given his character as a cat who has very little judgment as to what he should fear or what to avoid/be wary of -- the vets in the US would definitely view my letting him roam outdoors as a problem. I know this, given that in his very brief roaming days, he ended up getting case after case of bites all over his ears from some kind of insect, which had to be treated over and over again at the vet's in NYC. They kept urging me to keep him indoors, and the third time, I got a stern lecture. Since a lot of adoption agencies here want vet references, having a black mark against your name from your vet could hamper your ability to adopt later, if the vet thought you were being careless with the health/wellbeing of your animal by letting him/her roam against their suggestions. Clearly, it is a cultural/social thing. If I lived in a rural area, and/or a place with a fence and few predators, it would be different.

Still chuckling about Daisy squashing the spider by accident.

In Tokyo, we had seasonal attacks by flying cockroaches. Seriously. These weren't the kind you find in nasty apartments, but a kind of pest that would arrive at a particular time of year and then (luckily) vanish again. (same was true of bizarrely long furry luridly-colored centipedes that would sidle across the floor...) My mother would pursue them with the vacuum hose, in a fury. I always wanted to laugh, but never dared. They were nasty, but few in number -- and the spectacle was hilarious.

>210 Chatterbox: I agree, it is the way that Healey seems to get into the mind of Elizabeth that sets this apart as a special book. It's obviously not possible to know for sure, but it seems very plausible. Apart from my aunt, the only real close contact I've had with someone with Alzheimer's was her husband, back in the late sixties and seventies. At least, I say Alzheimer's, I don't remember that word being spoken, but then I don't remember Alzheimer's being talked about at all when I was in my teens. His was very early onset, as he wasn't sixty when the symptoms started too appear, and it was so sad to see his degeneration.

Vets here assume that cats will go outside. I've never seen any information from the vets on even the possibility of the cat not going outside. Lots of advice on neutering, vaccinations, flea & worming treatments, teeth-brushing, grooming and weight-loss, but I've never seen anything from them even suggesting that keeping your cat indoors is an option, let alone a preferred option, or ever been asked about it in a health check.

Flying cockroaches! I worked in Bermuda once where cockroaches were a never ending battle, and apparently they also had flying cockroach season. Thankfully, I was back home before it kicked off as I would not have coped well. Cockroaches are better than spiders I suppose, but they were very large and one flying into me would have traumatised me for days!

Hi Rhian. Both Cat Sense and Elizabeth is Missing sound good and have gone on my wishlist

>192 lyzard: "Okay, that's weird: my name's Elizabeth, and I have a niece called Emma Healey. I'll have to check with her to see if I'm missing. :)" :-)

We've managed to solve the uninvited cat flap problem by getting a cat flap which only opens if it recognises the microchip. So far it works quite well (although on occasion she still demands we open the door for her) but I don't know if microchipping cats is something that's done much outside the UK?

And you have my sympathies on the spiders. I'm better at dealing with small ones but big ones still freak me out and my husband is the designated spider remover.

I'd happily remove your spiders for you, Rhian, but I don't do very well with things that fly in one's face. When I was wee, a moth would have me cowering and calling for my dad to deal with it. I am better about that now but when earwigs go through their winged phase, I'm a ruthless killer.

I had the indoor/outdoor cat discussion with a friend of mine this morning -- we do our weekly grocery shopping together (she has the car; I buy the coffee). She and her son have a cat, and they agreed that the cat had to stay indoors the fourth time they paid animal rescue $350 to retrieve the cat from a nearby tree. (Cat gets up, gets stuck for 2/3 days and can't get down on his own, and the neighborhood's ladders were all far too short.) Cat is now an indoor cat... Happily, Odin (cat's name), after repeated tussles with the attempted killer tree, shows little interest in venturing into the outer world.

I do wonder what people in apartments do if they want a cat companion, however? In NYC, almost no one would end up with cats!

Anyway -- just an example of different strokes.

I love the idea of cat flaps that open in response to one's own cat -- one of the very sensible uses of modern technology.

I think I can cope with spiders better than flying cockroaches. Unless they are very large and fuzzy tropical-style tarantula-lookalikes. In which case you would hear me screaming from the other side of the Atlantic.

>190 SandDune: - Elizabeth is Missing sounds wonderful, Rhian - great review. I'll put it on the list.

Hi Rhian, I've been reading this thread bit by bit over the last couple of days but haven't posted yet. I SO love those holiday pictures and realize how much I miss the North Sea coast and the dunes.. *sigh*
Since my early childhood I spent most summers on Sylt, the most northern German island, always looking at and often taking day trips by ferry to Denmark. On Sylt there's just one wandering dune left, the others have been 'fixed' with grass to stop them from slowly walking over the houses. The yearly progress that one dune takes is clearly visible over the years and I guess it will reach the main road soon.
Yes, food in Denmark is very expensive and those living in the South like to shop across the German border. That Northern part of Germany is not among the richer ones (except for Sylt), so prices on the mainland are low and they make a good bargain. Although I don't know if the new border controls Denmark has re-introduced a while ago make a difference now.

Aaaaargh - spiders! I so try to like them, but the bigger ones disgust me so much, even when they're dead. And I don't trust vacuum cleaners, so I try to be courageous with a glass and a paper and throw them from the balcony, but then I jump around shaking hands and legs and making 'eeeeeeek' sounds and have to clean the glass using gloves a hundres times....
TG they are smaller where I live now!

Have you been to that Paul Kingsnorth event you had booked tickets for?

So busy this week! I've started to reply to people's posts at least twice and have never got to the end of the first paragraph!

>212 souloftherose: We've only had the normal cat flaps, as we've never had a particular problem with other cats coming into the house.

>213 tiffin: when earwigs go through their winged phase I didn't realise that earwigs had a winged phase! Maybe we have different varieties of earwigs - I'm not sure that I've seen a flying one.

>214 Chatterbox: I think the fire service used to rescue cats in trees, but they are reluctant to do so now because of the cost. They will come out I believe, if called by the RSPCA, if the cat has been stuck up a particularly tall tree for some time. Living on a relatively new estate, though, we don't have trees big enough to present a particular problem.

>215 DorsVenabili: Hi Kerri!

>216 Deern: Where I come from the issue is that the sand dunes are becoming too stable and there are conservation effects to destabilise them, which frequently involve taking off the top level of vegetation with a bulldozer! I thought the beaches in Denmark were lovely, at times they seemed to go on and on for ever. We didn't find the food in the shops too expensive, but restaurants certainly were. Unfortunately, I didn't get to the Paul Kingsnorth event, as Mr SandDune and J changed their return from Wales to Friday evening, which clashed with it. But it seemed a bit mean to make them sort out their evening meal themselves after a long journey!

Rhian, I wish you a fabulous weekend full of reading.

Ameise1, you find the loveliest photos! As a gardener and a swimmer, this one is just about perfect.

A visit to the Tower of London today and a chance to see the increasing number of poppies that are filling the moat. By 11 November there will be 888,246 of these hand made ceramic poppies, one for each British or colonial fatality in WWI, in an installation entitled 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red'.

Well, the reasons I have been so busy this week, and unable to spend much time on LT are as follows:

Sunday: wallpapering all day with Mr SandDune.

Monday: As gastritis can be caused or at least exacerbated by stress, my GP has sent me to a five week workshop aiming to develop techniques for dealing with anxiety and stress. First workshop was on Monday, but as it started at four I had to get to work early to make up the lost time.

Tuesday: Back in April I had a speeding ticket, which I was very annoyed about as I do make a genuine effort not to speed, and it was the first driving offence that I had been pulled up for in thirty years of driving. These days, if you have exceeded the speed limit by not too much you get the option to go on a Speed Awareness course, which you have to pay for, but which means you don't get any points on your licence. So I spent four hours on Tuesday afternoon doing that, and had the distinction of being the person there who had been driving the slowest. So I had to go into work early again to make up for the fact that I was out all afternoon.

Wednesday: When I'd got home on Tuesday evening, I'd discovered that Mr SandDune, who was still doing the decorating in J's bedroom, had wallpapered the window very oddly indeed. So the wallpaper had to come off, but we agreed that I had to help. So Wednesday I had to go into work early again to let me get home in time to help with the wallpapering.

Thursday: tried to shoehorn all the household tasks that didn't get done on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday into Thursday evening.

Friday: Spent all day painting skirting boards.
Made the mistake of telling Mr SandDune that he wasn't doing it straight enough, so he decided that it would be much better if I did it!

So all week seems to have been spent getting into work early, getting home late for one reason or another, and spending the time decorating. A nice day out today, but still quite tiring and I'm feeling shattered!

Daisy continues to try to convince J that of course staffies are the perfect size to make wonderful lap dogs!

>221 SandDune: - What a touching and highly visual tribute!

>222 SandDune: - That is one busy week. I find wallpaper to be a bit tricky - kind of like sewing with fabric that is only printed on one side.

>223 SandDune: - Awe.... love that pic! I have fond memories of my sister's 100 pound golder retriever labrador sidling up to my chair, placing his head in my lap, then a paw and before long, he was trying to climb into the chair to join me, just like a lap dog. ;-)

Oh my goodness, Rhian, what a week! Let's hope this one coming is substantially quieter. I love the handmade ceramic poppies; read about these a while ago online. And I love the pic of Daisy and J, along with your caption : ).

>221 SandDune:: I like to think there's a poppy in there with my grandfather's name on it.
>223 SandDune:: My son's very large German Shepherd gets turned into a lap dog every now and then. He tolerates it well. That's a very sweet pic of Daisy cuddling her boy.

I hope you have a more restful week next week. That sounded a bit overwhelming!

>221 SandDune: When we were in London I saw the poppies, too. Not so many as in your photos. This view is so impressive.

>222 SandDune: OMG, what a week. I hope the upcoming week won't be so jam-packed.

Finally got some time to catch up Rhian.

Firstly, though long overdue, I want to congratulate you on your very impressive exam results, although given your input in the group over the last few years I am hardly surprised.

Secondly, I enjoyed your Denmark photos. Nice contrast to Malaysia last year part of which of course we enjoyed with the three of you.

Trust that the weekend enables you to relax a little. xx

>221 SandDune: What wonderful pictures of the poppies; thank you for telling me about it.

>223 SandDune: Well, J seems tall enough for Daisy to fit as his lap dog.

That was a busy week! I hope it didn't exacerbate the stress.

As for spiders, I used to have a problem with them, too; according to my mum it was because one of my cousins had an issue with them, and I picked it up from her when I was small. But I considered it carefully one day, and I had no idea why I should be scared of spiders, so I let a couple of very small ones crawl over my hand, and discovered I was fine with that. So now I don't jump whenever I see a spider.

On the other hand, in Australia (home to the most poisonous animals in the world, I believe) I'd see HUGE spider webs with big spiders sitting in the middle as I walked to the shops, and I'd cross the road to avoid them. I've since been reliably informed (by my then-3 year old son) that they are golden orb spiders, which are harmless, which makes me feel a lot better. But still. I'm not going to be deliberately walking into one of those webs, I can tell you.

So much to comment on since I was last here - first of all, I'm glad the endoscopy was uneventful, and I hope the anti-anxiety workshop will help. My daughter and husband both hold stress in their stomachs and it wreaks havoc with them.

This being Vermont many towns have superb bakeries that offer tea, often in pots if that is what you'd like although rarely offering tea cups (generally you are stuck with the all-purpose mug). They offer coffee too, of course. And they are full of men and women in every variety of iteration from opening to closing, but that is because Vermont men are generally too cool to worry about their manliness. Or should I say.... to appear to be worrying? We have Starbucks too, of course, but most people I think regard that as a place to run in and out and get a coffee, not really a place to hang about in although there is one in the mall where I have been known to hang about waiting for my daughter or whatever.

The police in the US of course, only go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee and treats, unless there is no other option! (It's very good coffee, considering.) I think it is in the handbook of proper police procedure. It's startling how often you notice that right within donut throwing distance of a state police HQ there is a DD!

We really don't have a pub culture either. Some restaurants have a bar area, but not the kind that attract regulars, so the men really have nowhere else to go to meet up.

Re cats - there is an easy solution to the bird problem. You find a fabric with a regular print pattern - not too small not too large - cut a piece and sew it around the 'easy release' collar that most cats wear, so that it has a ruffle visible to a bird but not too irritating to the cat. Birds spot regular geometrical patterns as 'unnatural' and stay away. Our two current cats are not birders (they stick with mice) but a previous one was. Also if you have a bird and window problem you can make strips a couple of inches wide and hang them from the eaves and birds will see them and not crash into your windows. Apparently our windows are ten times the problem that cats are to birds, especially the glass skyscrapers - they kill thousands. Visually, yes, it is a bit odd, but I don't care! Not sure what one could do to a skyscraper either!

I've kept a couple of bins of toys - ones nice enough for my daughter to offer her own children. She played with my husband's boyhood wooden block set too, and those are packed up and waiting for the next gen.

I hope this week will be less frantic.

Well yesterday and today have not been quite as relaxing as hoped. While we'd pretty much finished the decorating (apart from the window frame) on Friday this has been the plan of action for the last two days.

All furniture (apart from wardrobe) previously in bedroom A had to be moved into bedroom B. All furniture (apart from the wardrobe) previously in bedroom B had to be moved into bedroom A. Bed previously in bedroom A had to be transformed from a mid-height sleeper with guard rails to a normal height bed without guard rails before moving. (Discovered in the process that while it is an advantage for the said mid-height sleeper to be very solidly constructed whilst in use, this is less of an advantage when taking it apart, and we ended up having to drill holes into the wooden plugs covering the screws that held it all together.) Large pile of books temporarily stored under mid-height sleeper in bedroom A had to be moved to the over side of the room to allow bed from bedroom B to be placed in the room. Bookcases 1,2 & 3 previously in bedroom B and temporarily stored on the landing had to be disposed of as follows: one to bedroom A, one to bedroom B and one to be chopped up into small pieces. And then books from large pile on floor of bedroom A needed to be distributed between bookcases 1 & 2, as well as bookcase 4 already in position on the landing. Oh, and we needed to go to Cambridge to buy. Mr SandDune a new suit in the middle of it!


After all that, everything is pretty much in the right place now, but I am very tired!

What a super productive couple of days you have had, Rhian! I am exhausted just reading about it. You must feel really good about getting all this work done!

>219 Ameise1: >227 Ameise1: Barbara, your flowers match the poppies! There were volunteers planting the poppies when we were there and I think they are going to continue until 11 November when they will go all the way around the moat.

>224 lkernagh: Well Daisy isn't anything like 100lbs! She is about 19kg, which is about 42lbs I think. It's OK if she keeps still, but she tends to wriggle a lot!

>225 lit_chick: Nancy, I am very much hoping that this week will be quieter! As it is, it is now just gone 9pm and I have been falling asleep since about 8.15pm. J is very indignant that it is far too early for someone of my age to go to bed, and has been making me do mental arithmetic to wake me up. Surprisingly, it has worked somewhat, so I think I might make it until ten before needing to go to bed.

>226 tiffin: It's possible to dedicate a poppy in memory of a relative in return for a donation: the details are shown on their dedication pages and the donation goes towards service charities:

http://poppies.hrp.org.uk/make-a-dedication

Daisy and J have a very nice relationship. He is very good with her and plays with her a lot, and she seems to regard him in the same way that a toddler might regard a much older brother. She loves to trot along after him: most of the time she hasn't got much idea what he's doing, but she's always happy to join in!

>228 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the congratulations Paul. Nearly time for the new course to start, so I am making the most of lighter reading over the summer. Not such chunky books for this one though: no 900 page tomes like Dombey and Son or Middlemarch!

We were really pleased with how the holiday went. After having a particularly special holiday like our trip to Malaysia, it's always possible that the next one will be a bit of an anticlimax, but it wasn't so at all.

>229 humouress: The very idea of Australia's spiders has always rather put me off visiting. I mean, I'm bad enough when I know the spiders are harmless, if I knew they could actually kill me there would be the possibility of a major meltdown! I know it's irrational: the idea of there being poisonous snakes in a country doesn't worry me at all. I can quite logically see that if I don't bother the snake it's unlikely to bother me, but I can't get the idea of malevolent intent out of my head if I see a spider coming towards me.

>230 sibylline: The stomach has actually been much better for the last few weeks. Now that I know the reason for the symptoms it has removed one of the causes of stress, which is probably helping! That's funny about the Dunkin Donuts! I had forgotten you were in Vermont: we had actually started to think about New England for next year's holiday, but at the moment the flight prices are more than we would want to pay so it may have to be put on hold for another time. But if it does come off I will be asking for travel ideas.

We've never had a cat who was a great hunter, although I remember my aunt having one who brought her a little present most mornings. I think Sweep's probably getting a bit old for hunting anyway, and most of her predatory instincts are taken up with Daisy, so as far as I'm aware she's never caught anything since we've had her. The last couple of days I've been watching Daisy with Sweep out in the garden, and I've come to the conclusion that she can't be so completely terrified of Sweep as I thought, as she seems to be playing what can only be described as 'chicken' with her. Basically,she seems to be sidling up to Sweep as quietly as possible so that Sweep doesn't notice she's getting closer. The idea seems to be to get as close to Sweep as possible before getting swiped, and when Sweep does swipe at her, to jump back as quickly as possible. I'm not sure this us going to improve Sweep's temper!

Sounds to me like a plot on Daisy's part to get Sweep into trouble with you. :)

Hi Rhian, I love that picture of J and Daisy. She looks so gosh-darn happy to be sitting in his lap!

>234 SandDune: Ah, but spiders aren't likely to chase you, and snakes can move faster. Cockroaches and geckos, on the other hand, skitter all over the place. So what, you ask, am I doing in a tropical country? I sometimes wonder ...

(Well, every place has its pros and cons. One major pro is that while the kids are growing, I only have to worry about one set of clothes, and hand-me-downs always suit the season. Except, of course, when we go indoors into malls, and have to pile on jumpers for the air-conditioning.)

Daisy playing chicken with Sweep! That made me chuckle, Rhian.

Rhian, I've missed your thread!
I have to say that the picture of J with Daisy is perfect - somebody ought to write a children's book based on it. It's a perfect illustration!
I'm glad that your tummy is better. May it be better yet!
Cats --- ours live on the screened-in porches and come into the house only under supervision. We are less than a block from a major local street and less than a mile from I-95. We also don't want them dealing with neighborhood dogs, other cats, or raccoons. And we still remember the tiny kitten that we tried to rescue a couple of years ago that had feline leukemia. Nope. We'll keep them safe and fed and loved inside.
I can deal with spiders. I'd much rather not deal with snakes.
No tea shops here. The locals don't sit in Starbucks; it's on I-95. The local retired men generally gather in Hardees (a fast food franchise) for their morning coffee. Women don't really gather anywhere.
There. I think I'm caught up.

We've got a trip to London next month and the Tower and the moat of poppies is certainly on my list. My only reservation about the WW1 commemorations so far has been the focus on those who died. It was a sacrifice on their part, but we seem to be in danger of forgetting that those who came back came back damaged as well, both physically and mentally, and very often they had to live with that damage for decades.

We keep discussing decorating a couple of rooms, but the furniture tetris you've described keeps putting us off. And it's not like we'd do the actual decorating ourselves - I have no illusions about our decorating ability!

>240 Helenliz: I just read a collection of short stories about the young women in the war years and what they did. The last story was a reminder of all those young woman who could not marry as there were no longer enough men of marriageable age around.

Rhian - I've been happy to just lurk on your thread for a long while

>222 SandDune: That does sound like a busy week! I'd like to go to the Tower this autumn - we have free entry thanks to work and those poppies look very special.

>223 SandDune: That's very cute :-)

>235 lyzard: >236 DeltaQueen50: >238 lit_chick: I think more than anything Daisy would like Sweep to play with her, as she won't, she's just inventing her own games! Daisy is much happier curled up with someone when she sleeps though. What she would really like is for the entire household to sleep in one big bed with her in the middle.

>237 humouress: I don't have any issues with geckos. When we were in Malaysis we stayed in a traditional house which had geckos living in the ceiling - didn't worry me at all, I liked watching them.

>239 LizzieD: Women don't really gather anywhere. Well that's a big difference to here! Where I live it's definitely all the women who do the gathering! There's a definite surplus of women whose children are at school but aren't working, or are only working part time, so have time for lots of lunch and coffee! And who aren't short of money either, as their husbands' probably have well paid jobs in the City of London.

>240 Helenliz: Well, I think our decorating ended up being particularly complicated as we were switching all the furniture between the rooms, and we were also taking the opportunity to clear out a lot of J's old stuff. But my experience from when we had the decorators in last year is that's it's best to limit the number of rooms done at any one time. Last year we had virtually all of downstairs done and it felt like living in one of those houses where people have hoarded things for years: just huge piles of stuff everywhere that wasn't being decorated.

>234 SandDune: If you do consider coming to New England, please let me know -- We have scads of people coming in and out of Boston. I have LOADS of ideas for you!

Glad you're feeling better. I tend to carry all my stress in my neck and shoulders. Isn't it funny how it affects each of us differently?

Hi Rhian! Sounds like you've been keeping very busy! Hope you find some time to relax!

>241 avatiakh: Hi Kerry! Thanks for dropping by.

>242 souloftherose: Free entry is definitely a plus. I do think that the entry free is exorbitantly expensive: I used my Tesco clubcard vouchers to get in so we didn't actually pay anything either, but for the three of us it would have been £50 (or £55 with the 'voluntary donation'), which most be high enough to put a lot of lower income families off visiting altogether.

>245 michigantrumpet: Well the trip to the US is potentially back on again as I've found some cheaper flights with Icelandair via Rekyavik. The cheapest direct flights I'd found were around £950 each, which definitely fell into the 'I'm not paying THAT' category, and was way more than I was expecting. When the Boston / New York flights came out so expensive I started looking at where else we could fly to for what I considered a feasible amount of money, and interestingly we could fly to a lot of other long-haul destinations much more cheaply. Thailand was particularly reasonable, with flights from around £550, but we could also have flown to Sri Lanka, India and Vietnam much more cheaply.

If we go to New England we'd probably combine with a few days in New York (where none of us have been before) and then do a bit of touring around trying to combine some hiking, sightseeing and a few days on the coast. So we might fly into New York and out of Boston but havn't really got much further than that.

>246 ChelleBearss: Well everyone is back at school next week (actually Mr SandDune has started already) and so I will get my Fridays and Saturday mornings back to do what I want to do!

Just catching up. Love the photo of J and Daisy, and I'm really excited to see the moat full of poppies. How amazing!

Re geckos, I'm ok with them at a distance (if only they were toilet trained, though), but I try not to go down to the kitchen once we've closed up for the night, in case there's one running around and we scare each other.

>247 SandDune: £950! I was going to say you could come here for that amount. Or Sydney, even.

>248 nittnut: Hi Jenn! The poppies really were lovely. I'm tempted to go back at the beginning of November to see the finished picture.

>249 humouress: I think I might be looking too early. We didn't really want to book any tickets yet, just to get an idea of what was feasible financially so the we could start getting some ideas together: holiday planning in our household is a long drawn out process.

Finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August on audio which I can strongly recommend. There's very little reading of actual books going on at the moment as I've been so busy, and tired in the evenings when I do have time.

Edited to add: have just discovered that Claire North the author of Harry August, is apparently the same person as Kate Griffin the author of A Madness of Angels which I also enjoyed, and is in reality Catherine Webb who has written YA novels under her own name.

Hm... I read your thread last night but didn't post because I don't like typing on the mini ipad... And now that I have my office keyboard I completely forgot what I wanted to say. So for now : Have a wonderful weekend!

Oh, it was among other things sth with spiders. I already can't cope with the big ones in Europe, but I still made it to Australia twice despite my issue. Strangely, the small (deadly) poisonous ones were no problem for me, I just hate those really big ones, no matter if harmless or not. A big brown huntsman will make me scream.
I had an encounter with the deadly but tiny redbacks on an outback loo... and I told them (in English of course): "please don't move, I'll leave again in an instant." And they nicely stayed in place. But once we had to end a hiking trip near Sydney early because all trails were blocked with spider nets with huge spiders in them. We even crawled under one, but then the next one was there a couple of meters on and we couldn't get past it. Eww...

Just thought I'd de-lurk to let you know I'm following along - just not much to say, except I would love to see that display of poppies at the Tower of London... Alas, my only time in the UK this fall will be spent changing planes at Heathrow.

If you do decide to visit New England for next year's vacation and want to spend some time on the coast, I know Cape Cod pretty well and would be happy to offer suggestions :)

Tiring day again yesterday. Started off with internet grocery shopping delivery, and man coming around to measure J's room for new carpet. Then off to the uniform school at his school to get his uniform for next term (the only item of uniform from last year that still seems to fit is his rugby shirt). Then into town to look at material for blinds for J's bedroom. Then back home to do a mammoth ironing session all afternoon, as a huge backlog has built up over the last few weeks. And finally, holding a ladder for Mr SandDune while he attempted to pull bits of vine off our satellite dish. Over the last few days reception has been getting increasingly patchy and has now given up altogether. But it's just that little bit too high to reach with our step ladder, so we'll have to borrow a bigger ladder from next door and try again later today.

Rhian, I wish you a relaxed weekend. You deserve it.

>251 Deern: I think I'd be the same with poisonous spiders: it's not the fact that they're poisonous that I find scary, it's the fact that they are spiders. So small poisonous spiders are inherently less scary than large non-poisonous ones. I know that is completely irrational! And spiders inside are hugely more frightening than spiders inside ....

>252 katiekrug: Well your local knowledge might be needed after all Katie! Looks like we will be able to find some flights within our price range after all, so New England is looking a definite possibility. Our only trip to the State previously has been a week spent in Virginia back in the nineties, although we had three weeks in Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) in 2008.

>254 Ameise1: That looks a beautiful garden Barbara, that's just the sort I like!

>255 SandDune: - Happy to help, and will try not to provide unsolicited advice :)

>255 SandDune: Quite so re the size of spiders.

PEI! I've been wanting to go there for ages; apparently there are still some areas that look the way they did when L. M. Montgomery was writing Anne of Green Gables.

Spiders ugh.

What a delightful thought that you might consider New England! If and when it becomes a real possibility please let me know!

Was tickled by yr. description way up there of juggling everything around for the house improvement project!

>256 katiekrug: >258 sibylline: Well, if previous holidays are anything to go by we will probably mull over things for the next four months and then have a mammoth booking session just after Christmas. Of course, we might change our minds at the last minute which is what we did this year: we were going to the Baltic States right up until it was time to book anything, and then it miraculously changed to Denmark.

>257 humouress: We really liked P.E.I. and spent a week there catching our breath on our trip to Canada. Beautiful beaches, although the water was COLD, probably the coldest water that I have ever attempted to go bathing in (I settled for paddling in the end). We were actually staying in one of the more touristy part: J was only 8 at the time, and after 9 days of holiday with no particularly child-friendly attractions we thought it would be nice for him to have access to something a little more child centred. But even there you didn't seem to have to go very far at all to get into some very rural parts which I could well imagine hadn't changed much.

Excellent! (The comment is regarding the prospective New England trip...) Boston, Cape Cod, Newport and of course, here in Providence... then down to New York. You should rent a car so that you can stop off and see some of the scenic small towns in northern Connecticut, like Mystic. Abandon the car once you get to New York, of course, unless you want to lose your sanity...

And LT meetups along the way!

Love the pic of J with Daisy - Daisy is blissed out, clearly, and J. quite happy to have a "lap dog".

I've been watching the poppies grow, "row on row", and I think it's an amazing and impressive tribute....

Hope the gastritis continues in remission!

OK, interesting cultural difference in the news here yesterday, with the US ambassador complaining that he has been served lamb and potatoes 180 times since his arrival last autumn. While that does seem particularly excessive, the fact that interested me was that the US eats a tiny 0.4kg of lamb per person per year compared with the 4.7kg eaten in the UK, (which apparently is nearer the world average). As lamb is probably my favourite meat, certainly when it is roasted, I found that hugely surprising. I probably buy lamb about once a fortnight, and it will definitely be my roast of choice if we go out for Sunday lunch. So my question is - do US & Canadian LT'ers eat lamb? Here's the BBC article:

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29030946

Just for the record, the meat I would give up if I had to would be beef (although that's definitely a me thing not a UK thing). Wouldn't worry me if I never had a steak again in my entire life!

Interesting, but maybe there's no "grown lamb culture" in the US and Canada? Are there herds? I noticed in Germany it strongly depended on the region. Where I lived, no-one ate it when I was a kid and just mentioning it lead to "eeeewwws" everywhere. Those who eat it now had to learn to like it, often during holidays in Southern Europe. In the North however, in the heathlands and dikelands there are herds everywhere and you find it on all the menus.
Btw. the idea of lamb with mintsauce is something that will most foreigners in the UK make shudder - until they try it. Works surprisingly well imo.

>261 SandDune: Rhian, lamb is more of a specialty meat here -- more expensive and not always available in supermarkets. We definitely noticed a difference when we lived in England, and ate high quality, reasonably priced lamb rather frequently. Speaking from my own experience (recognizing there may be many other cultural norms in the US), growing up we used to have leg of lamb at Easter, and that's it. These days many people would be averse to lamb, as they are veal, because they object to eating such young animals who are raised only for consumption (opinion: factory farming conditions are no better for chicken, beef, or pork raised to "maturity").

My other half and I eat lamb on a regular basis, which is helped by the fact that a number of local grocery stores carry lamb in their meat departments. I love the flavour of lamb and prefer it over beef which is more of a North American red meat standard. That being said, my other half and I do not eat pork except for the occasional strips of bacon, while pork is again very popular over here, at least it appears to be if the amount space displaying pork products in the food stores is anything to go by.

Rhian, my husband and I eat lamb, but we are the only ones in our family who do. It wasn't really available in the local stores when I was growing up, just like fresh seafood wasn't, in the midwest. However, when I was a young adult setting up my own household, my aunt and uncle were actually raising lambs and we would be able to purchase one, have it processed and fill the freezer. I love it with lots of garlic, but have never had mint sauce. We have the shanks, chops, shoulder roasts, and occasional riblets and leg of lamb during the year, the latter often on Easter.

Rhian, we love lamb, too. O.k. I've to admit we love all kind of meat. Veal isn't really my favourite one because it so flavourless.

I love lamb but unfortunatey my husband does not. It has become the meat I most often order in a restaurant. Lamb is very expensive here in Canada and is one that most people would hesitate to serve company without checking first as many people seem to have an aversion to it. My husband can't even stand to be around the smell of it cooking which is why I have to resort to restaurant meals!

>262 Deern: >263 lauralkeet: >264 lkernagh: >265 ronincats: >266 Ameise1: >267 DeltaQueen50: I've been thinking about what meats we had as a child, and lamb was certainly the most prevalent. Shepherd's pie, scotch broth, Lancashire hot pot, lamb chops, rolled breast of lamb were all very common dishes, as well as roast lamb on a Sunday. Here lamb is no more unusual than beef, pork or chicken, and it would be unthinkable that it wouldn't be stocked in a supermarket or butchers. These days when I cook lamb I frequently do some sort of North African dish or a curry. I love roast lamb (with or without mint sauce) but hate cooking roasts, so that usually waits unti we go out.

The only time I've had a type of lamb that I really haven't liked was when we were on holiday on the Orkney Islands and we had some lamb from North Ronaldsay. The sheep aren't allowed on the land at all there, only the beach, and they exist solely on seaweed (there's a wall around the whole island to stop them getting at any grass). It tasted very gamey and incredibly salty and I wouldn't rush to have any more.

My mouth's now watering having read the last few posts. I'm not sure I can imagine life without lamb. Roast with mint sauce & gravy it's divine - my favourite roast. Although I would only buy it fresh and in season (no frozen stuff from the antipodes!) for a joint.
I think lamb is a much better base for strong flavours than other meats, it tends to hold its own in a curry, for example, whereas chicken seems to vanish under the flavour. I seem to remember lamb used to be more expensive than beef, and it was a rare treat in childhood for that reason. That seems less of an offset now, but that might be my imagination.

Interesting conversation here about lamb (we are such a good group for diverse topics of conversation). I do not love lamb, but my husband does. As others have said, it's definitely not a common staple as far as meat goes, here in the US, but when I was growing up, lamb patties were a regular item in our dinner rotation. Basically, they were ground lamb formed into a "patty" almost like a hamburger but a slightly different shape, and my mother would cook them under the broiler. We always had them with lima beans and rice. Packaged lamb patties were regularly stocked in our small, rural supermarket, which is surprising to me now, as I can't find ground lamb easily now despite living in an urban area... I find the flavor of ground lamb much less intense and quite like it. Lots of specialty and gourmet burger places here in Texas offer lamb burgers, usually with Greek-style fixings.

I seem to be seeing lamb dishes a lot more often on menus, but that may be due to being older and going to nicer restaurants!

We have lamb quite often though I generally add Middle Eastern or North African spices rather than the roast lamb I grew up with. No frozen lamb here it's always fresh. Our current fav. dish that I've made several times recently is moussaka, which I make with a mix of beef and lamb mince, eggplant & potato. I seem to have adapted a few recipes into my own and wow it's great though a lot of work.
My mother didn't eat poultry so we rarely had chicken but it is a staple in my cooking nowadays. We had a lot of duck (my father loved duck shooting season) though I never ate it, I followed my mother's example and didn't eat poultry till I was an adult.

>250 SandDune: Interesting that Claire North is Catherine Webb and also Kate Griffin. I don't think I've read any of her children's books though seen them around over the years. I have both A madness of angels and the Harry August books on my to read list.

>270 katiekrug: Katie - sumac is one of the spices I add to my lamb kebab mix.

Chipping in to comment that lamb is *the* staple meat here (not surprising, as the country that "rides on the sheep's back"), though personally I have a violent aversion to mint and tend to stick to gravy. :)

It isn't inexpensive - usually better value as a roast than as chops - but it is widely available.

A few years back during a food conversation I had an American friend comment he'd never had lamb and didn't seem to feel that was all that unusual, but it would be unheard of here (except of course for vegetarians etc.).

I am intrigued by all the mentions of lamb with gravy or mint sauce or seasoned as a curry. My favorite is to take a butterfly cut of lamb - bones removed - and roast it in the oven with thick coating of a sauce comprised of mustard seed, Worcestershire sauce and barbeque sauce to seal in the juices. One of these days I will try mint sauce.

Canada checking in. Lamb is often our roast of choice, with lots of garlic cloves stuck in it while roasting, served with mint sauce. We rarely eat lamb chops as they are quite dear here. Lamb curries made with any leftovers from the roast. And lamb roti, Greek lamb dishes, or Moroccan lamb stew the odd time when eating out. Ontario lamb is excellent.

Oh my. I love lamb, but it's very hard to come by round these parts, it seems, and though I love to eat it, I'm not fond of cooking it myself. Lamb curry, though...so, so tasty.

We like lamb too. We can get some locally, which I prefer, but it is pricey, so not as frequent as it could be. My mother was a lamb nut, so we had chops and shepherd's pie and roasts all the time.

Shepherd's pie is one of my go-to comfort meals, I must admit!

>269 Helenliz: I was brought up on Welsh lamb with my Mum being very dubious of the New Zealand version (apologies to antipodeans but I think it was the frozen aspect that she was objecting to). Never quite understood why Welsh lamb was supposed to be better than English lamb (or Scottish lamb for that matter).

>270 katiekrug: I'd never really considered that lamb was not eaten widely in all Western countries! It's so common here. And a kebab from the local kebab shop (there's one on virtually every British High Street) is a rite of passage after any late night drinking if you're below a certain age. At least the kebabs are supposed to be lamb ....

>271 avatiakh: I've never made moussaka, although I do like it a lot. When I was a child it was chicken that was much more expensive, so it was a real treat, although now it seems one of the cheapest meats you can buy (after turkey). Duck I love, I could eat much more of it than I ever get.

>273 lyzard: I had an American friend comment he'd never had lamb and didn't seem to feel that was all that unusual
That would be the same here. I don't think I've ever met anyone who'd never eaten lamb. I've met people who don't eat it, because they're vegetarian, or because they don't eat red meat, or they have an objection to eating cute fluffy animals, but it would be difficult to imagine someone never having eaten it unless they had always been an extraordinary fussy eater or a vegetarian from birth.

>274 lkernagh: Curried lamb is very good, and if you go into an Indian restaurant here the standard curries will always come in a beef, lamb or chicken variety. I will usually have either lamb or chicken: lamb passanda, or lamb or chicken tikka masala.

>275 tiffin: I love roast lamb, but unfortunately I have a mental block about getting meat and potatoes and several different sorts of vegetables and gravy to be ready all at the same time so we usually only have it when we're out!

>276 scaifea: >277 sibylline: It's not the cheapest meat here, although there's not a huge differential. I would miss it if I couldn't have it. I can cope with not eating a lot of meat but I wouldn't want to give it up altogether. Chicken, lamb and pork in the form of bacon would be the tricky ones to give up. I could cope with giving up beef: I've never really understood the attraction of steak at all.

Well Rhian - You certainly have a variety of topics going here: spiders (yuk!), lamb, travel. I really liked The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as well; I would never have picked it up if not for LT. Have you read other books by the author? Under whatever names she uses?

It seems odd that vast swathes of Americans have never had the chance to eat lamb.

I admit it wasn't one of my favourite meats in the UK, because its quite fatty, and being a slow eater, by the time I was halfway through my meal, it'd taste very greasy. But in Singapore, mutton (which is leaner, I think) is common; especially because a lot of the population don't eat either pork or beef, for religious reasons. I'm fine with mutton.

My dad worked in Greece and the Middle East for a while and he loves their cuisines, which of course feature lamb / mutton heavily.

This is what I came home to when I popped out for half an hour this morning: Daisy had chewed all the leather off the heels of one of my smarter pairs of shoes:



She definitely realised I wasn't happy. As soon as I called her a 'bad girl' she took herself off to her crate in disgrace, and refused to make eye contact:

OMG Rhian, this wasn't a pleasant coming back home. The look of Daisy says everything.

>280 BLBera: I must get round to writing a review of The first Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but it's definitely a four star read, or maybe four and a half. I've read and enjoyed A madness of Angels written by her Kate Griffin alterego, but I wouldn't have guessed that they were by the same person. I think I preferred Harry August though, it was just a but different.

>281 humouress: I don't remember ever having had mutton, although I probably have has it when I've been abroad. Now that is something that is hard to get hold of here! I find the fattiness of lamb delicious, although probably not the best for the waistline!

Oh Rhian, how I sympathise! I splurged once on a wonderful pair of blue leather shoes with laces back in the day when Himself and I didn't have a lot of splurge money to throw around. We kept our shoes on the stairs as there was nowhere else for them in a very small house. Came down in the morning to find that the two kittens had had a field day with the laces, slicing the leather on the shoes to ribbons with their little razor kitten claws. Verklempt. Himself tried to fix them for me but they were beyond repair. Fortunately, heels can be replaced, right?

I love lamb, but it is expensive, and often only available around Eastertime. I think most of what we get in our super markets comes from Australia or New Zealand. I can't imagine why we don't raise it here. Every country fair I've ever been to features 4-H kids with their lambs and sheep, and I know they often sell the animals after the judging---so much per pound. So where is that meat going? Or is it just the wool that's wanted? But we aren't known for our wool in America either, are we? My MIL always does a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, and I take the leftovers away with us to make shepherd's pie and a pot of Scotch broth. Last year she bought a boneless roast, and I was very disappointed not to have the bone for soup!

Oh, poor Daisy. So sad when you KNOW you'll be ostracized but you just can't help yourself... Funny, I've never had a dog that chewed shoes. Baseboards, yes. Linoleum, yes. But not shoes.

Oh, Daisy, your look tells me you are well aware you've been a bad girl. Sorry about your shoes, Rhian.

Btw, I've been following the conversation about lamb with interest. I love it, too, but it is expensive here in Canada and not always available; so I rarely have it.

We are having lamb for lunch in Cambridge tomorrow, right?

>282 SandDune: a)One of your smarter pairs? Oh no! Bad dog!!

>282 SandDune: b) Oh, poor baby. She looks so ... hangdog.

Oh dear, Daisy was a bad girl, but one look at that darling face and I am sure forgiveness isn't too far away!

>282 SandDune: Poor Daisy, poor shoe....

ouch! As a bit of a fan of shoes, I would find that almost impossible to forgive - not matter how hangdog the expression.

>283 Ameise1: >285 tiffin: >286 laytonwoman3rd: >287 lit_chick: >289 humouress: >290 DeltaQueen50: >291 souloftherose: >292 Helenliz:
To be fair to Daisy she doesn't usually chew shoes although she has been known to do it occasionally, so I really shouldn't have left them within her reach. She usually just likes to collect them up and put them on the sofa in a little pile so she can curl up next to them. I think it was the fact that these had a very solid heel that attracted her: most of the shoes that get left around are fairly old trainers with no heels at all. But Daisy loves to chew hard things (her favourite chew is a piece of deer antler) and obviously the temptation was too great. Even though this was very irritating (and I will have to buy a new pair as these were the only ones that I can wear with a couple of outfits) I do find it hard to stay cross with her for very long!

>285 tiffin: Fortunately, heels can be replaced, right? In theory, I suppose, but in practice I don't think it would be possible to get something the right colour or shape (the shoes are more charcoal grey than they look in the photo).

Oh, Daisy, no! Ha! Poor shoe, poor you, and poor Daisy - just look at that face! It's hard to stay upset at them when they look like that, isn't it?

Rhian, I wish you a relaxed weekend.

Neglected to mention that I can occasionally get lamb shanks relatively reasonably at Wegman's, and they come hermetically sealed, and freeze well. We love braised lamb shanks with lots of garlic, carrots, onions and a bit of tomato paste for browning at the start. Very melt-in-the-mouthy.

>282 SandDune: Oh, that face! Poor Daisy. So much temptation and just not enough willpower :-) I hope you can find some new shoes that you like. Remember to leave them in their box. In a locked room.

All I can say about lamb is that I'm a Kiwi so I have probably eaten more lamb than anything else. I love it. I don't cook it here (or any meat, really) but I always have it if it's on the menu when I go out. And roast lamb is my favourite thing when I'm back in NZ. I've never had it with mint sauce, though (although that is common in NZ). And I must point out that fresh NZ lamb is available in the UK now - it's not just frozen!!

>294 scaifea: >297 susanj67: I will always love Daisy more than any pairs of shoes, which she probably knows!

>295 Ameise1: Hope you had a good weekend as well Barbara!

>296 laytonwoman3rd: Lamb shank! I love lamb shank but I've never cooked it myself. Must give it a try some day.

>297 susanj67: I didn't know you could get 'fresh' New Zealand lamb, to be honest. I'll keep an eye out for it.

New thread for September is up now, by the way.