Jane Alexander's Blog, page 19

What's the worst picture anyone has ever taken of you ever?

Anyhow.  I took a look at Facebook yesterday and saw someone had posted a pic of a pal of mine.  ‘Shit,’ I thought. ‘That’s a rotten picture. She never looks that mank.  Not in real life.’ And, within a pulse-beat, said friend posted. ‘REMOVE.’ And the poster did that really annoying thing of…’Oh, sorry. I would.  I will.  Oooh, I can’t work my phone…blether blether blether.’Which actually was quite funny as it was a bit of a case of the biter bit…‘REMOVE IT NOW.’ Ouc...

Dulverton becomes an island

Pic: Gina McIntyre
Last night Dulverton became an island.  The rivers burst their banks; the bridges couldn’t cope.  It didn’t surprise me somehow – I could feel it coming as I drove back over the moor.  A restlessness in the river.  I came through a deep flood on my way into town, thankful I’d followed my instinct to drive straight back from Braunton. I got through fine with the Toyota’s high wheel base but I figured it wouldn’t be long before the road was impassable. ...

Greek restaurants, delinquent Christmas trees and floating in Braunton

I missed my vocation, huh?
Anyhow, we had a good lunch yesterday with the in-laws at Zeus, the Greek restaurant, having not been Raptured on the motorway on the way down to Plymouth.Ron ordered surf ‘n’ turf and Sheila had steak and chips. Both of them went for rare and the waitress nodded approvingly.   Adrian ordered moussaka (the waitress looked faintly surprised), James went for a kebab (a slight raise of the eyebrow) and I ordered the vegetarian kebab. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she s...

My Christmas diet

Ooops. Wrong search. :-)
I’m on a diet.  Well, not a real ‘diet’ diet cos I don’t do those, but really I’ve been getting a bit lardy lately and something had to be done. You know, this food stuff catches up on you.  You go to a party and are loafing around by some occasional table with a huge bowl of stuffed sweet chilli peppers and you pop one in your mouth because they’re there and you think, mmm, that was nice, in fact that was damn nice and so you have another one and a...

Why I haven't blogged

“You don’t blog anymore.” “When are you going to blog again?” People (okay, two of them) keep asking me this and, really, the answer is very simple.  I really don’t have anything much to say.  Seriously, my life is so boring, reading about it would be the literary equivalent of watching the proverbial paint dry.
See, right now I’m sitting at my desk, writing my agony aunt column for Natural Health magazine. It’s so cold that I am wearing the following: thermal vest, jumper,...

Pssst....

Wanna buy this?  :-)


The link is fine, btw. You can click with impunity.  I'm all for imp unity.  :-)

One part Silence of the Lambs, two parts Natural Born Killers, and one part Wizard of Oz.

I met Mr Gerald D. Johnston on the HarperCollins website Authonomy.  I read the opening of his book, Dropcloth Angels and absolutely hated his guts.  Cos the guy can write so bloody well, it’s criminal.  In fact, I commented on his book saying, ‘Tell me you’re agented or that you have them clubbing one another with thick mallets to get their paws on this.’I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book on Authonomy so lauded – even people who baulked at the subject matter (it is dark, very...

The List of Banned Words

The NY Times has a shorter list. 
So, I was sitting in Adrian’s office waiting to talk to BBC Hereford & Worcester about letter-writing.  Why wasn’t I in my own office? Cos I don’t have a phone in mine – well I do, but it doesn’t work – it sounds like someone sunk it in a bucket of water. So, even though he’d just come back from London, I turfed the poor guy out and was sitting there waiting for the radio people to call when I saw this piece of paper stuck to the side of his desk. ...

Paul Freeman talks magic and myth

Yeah, he's a grumpy git. :-) 
Today I’m handing over the blog to Paul Freeman.  Paul’s a good guy, a seriously good guy, and he writes good books.  I always say I don’t really *do* fantasy, yet I’ve read Lord of the Rings a ridiculous amount of times and spent my teens immersed in mythology and magic (hmm, come to think of it, not much has changed).  I’m now dragon-deep in Game of Thrones so…  I don’t know, maybe we all need the occasional flap of wings to fan the flam...

In which I get overexcited about a scourer

While Adrian was away (Belgium this time, on some beer judging panel) it seemed like the doorbell was ringing every two minutes (okay, slight exaggeration but still) and there would be some poor delivery guy standing in the pouring rain with yet another box. Beer, beer, beer and more beer.  Yes, Adrian gets sent a lot of beer. An awful lot of beer. Along with the odd jar of pickled onions. 
So he had this great opening ceremony when he got back last night and all of a sudden th...