Jane Green's Blog, page 149

Brokeback friends

Three years ago, when I was going through my divorce from my first husband, I went through some moments of madness which included an unnatural obsession with Brokeback Mountain, and walking away from a friend who lived close to me up in Litchfield, and giggled with me over my bizarre Brokeback phase.

(Fyi, I am the queen of reinvention, and there are many things I could be: a lady who lunches; a prairie girl; a Sundance-wearing hippie chick, but a gay cowboy was really a struggle…)

On the day of m

Chicken and Dumplings

Ellina has asked for Chicken and Dumplings, and so yesterday, as a welcome distraction from editing (not as far as my publishers are concerned), I trawled the Internet and came up with three recipes that looked interesting.

I had never made this dish before, but culled from all three recipes to produce something that not only filled the kitchen with the most wonderful smells, but was delicious, and made the Smalls very happy indeed.

The dumplings were, however, dry in the middle, so I am providing

Guardian book list

The BBC or Guardian has just published the top 100 books, and (allegedly) believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

I am faintly embarrassed to be at 61 (recounted!) I very much want to count books on my bookshelf that I have never got round to, but I resisted the urge and have given you the honest list.

I am now off to amazon to one-click some classics that I really OUGHT to have read…

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after t

Bleeding you dry

There is a woman called Kerry Katona who is a personality in the UK. She started off, I think, as a pop star, married another pop star, had some children, divorced, and has run the gamut of reality TV shows and fronting adverts.

don’t actually know much about her, other than what I read on the gossip websites, but it seems she married a taxi driver, has had her fair share of troubles with alcohol, has done rehab, and has just discovered her taxi driver husband has ‘bled her dry’. (The repo men tu

The demise of Figless Manor

When I first moved to America, eight years ago, I had never experienced storms like the storms I found in Connecticut. Of course, as everyone knows, it rains all the time in England, but it’s a grey, drizzly rain, not the pelting, angry torrential downpours I found here, that regularly brought trees and powerlines crashing to the ground, that was so intense if you had to go out in in, you couldn’t drive at any pace other than a crawl or you couldn’t see anything.

The wind would howl, and our firs

Nursery food. YUM

I am back in baking mode this afternoon, and have spent the afternoon cooking up batches of scones, and when I say scones, I don’t mean those oversized (but delicious, nevertheless) huge American mounds you find in coffee shops, but a true, and small, English scone that needs to be piled high with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

And to all those who have complimented me on my slim elegance in my wedding dress - it doesn’t look like it’s going to last long… pulling hot scones out the oven how ca

The dust is settling, and life is continuing after the fl...

The dust is settling, and life is continuing after the flurry of planning our wedding, the wedding itself and our families gathering together, not to mention all your wonderful comments, that have brought tears to my eyes - thank you.

We had both thought that marriage wouldn’t change anything, and in many ways that is true. We still have two nights a week on our own - Beloved with his kids in the city, and me with mine in Connecticut - still have the apartment in the city, and are going about our

Love and marriage

On 3/6/9, at 6:42, I became Beloved’s wife.

And so, hopefully, you will all understand my temporary absence. I have been running around these past couple of weeks, organising my wedding, which turned out to be the most beautiful day of my life.

So very different, second time around. It was wonderfully small - our children, our parents, our siblings. Warm, intimate, and filled with love, my tears started to flow as soon as I walked into the living room of the Inn, and continued until the end of the

Going AWOL

Big, huge, heartfelt apologies for having gone AWOL these past couple of weeks, and particularly for the concerned e-mails a few have sent - I will reveal all in the next couple of days, but for now I’ll just say I’ve rather had my hands full, and haven’t been able to spend the time I usually spend on my computer.

I have also finished the rewrites of Dune Road - called Girl Friday in the UK - and although I had to do more work than I have done on any book for ages, it was worth it, and is a far b

The contents of my purse are now fascinating me further.

Update on the contents of my purse which I have now decided to detail. Please feel free to do the same - I am now fascinated by the things we women carry in our purses…

1 wallet
1 journal
1 pair reading glasses even though I don’t need reading glasses but am planning on converting them soon.
1 pair sunglasses
1 notebook in which to make notes on book
5 tampons
1 disc - no idea what it contains
1 camera disc
2 nail files
4 pens, including one pencil with no lead
1 pack of gum, despite my rule of no gum in t