Lou Morgan's Blog, page 4

Those who can… teach

If you saw Dame Helen Mirren’s speech at the BAFTA awards, you’ll know what this is about.

— There will be a short interval to recover from the overwhelming awesome… and we’re back in the room —

The most important teacher I had was a lady called Sonja. I’ve long been forbidden from calling her “Miss Charles”, because she says it makes her feel old – but, like everyone who has been asked by one of their schoolteachers to call them by their first name, I still flinch internally every time I say i...

Roses are Red…

Waterstones have been running a Valentine’s-inspired feature on their blog and across Twitter: they asked some brilliant authors to come up with their own Valentine poems, all beginning “Roses are red”.

You can read the results here, and look at the poetry that everyone on Twitter has been posting by searching the #rosesarered hashtag (although as is always the way on Twitter, you’ll get a jumble of other stuff on there too).

And of course I couldn’t resist joining in…

Roses are red,

Your lips ha...

Haggis Lasagne

I’m not much in the habit of blogging about food (usually because I’m too busy stuffing it into my mouth to pause long enough to actually consider it) but I mentioned my husband’s plan to make haggis lasagne on Twitter over the weekend and… well, it seemed like it was a thing people liked the sound of. A lot.

So. I’m pleased to report that haggis lasagne, as a thing, works. It’s pretty easy to adapt a standard lasagne recipe to make it (there’s also a variationhere, plus the Guardian’s article...

The Ghosts of Home

I guess I’ve always felt a little rootless. I grew up in a small town in west Wales, and when I left for university in London aged 17, I never really went back. Sure, I was back there for the holidays, but that was all: I didn’t really go back for weekends and it didn’t feel like I had to be there. Most of the people I’d grown up with had either headed off to their own universities, or stayed firmly put and rather viewed the rest of us as traitors for running off to The Big Assorted Smokes (w...

But I’m no good at dancing – and yet I have to do something…

Some years, you get to December and you look back at the 12 months that have gone before and you wonder how the hell you’re still standing. This is one of those – and, weirdly, seems to have been for so many people. (Was Mercury in retrograde or something?)

I could list the things that went right, or the things that went wrong – but then I’d probably just start laughing, because sometimes it’s the only thing you can do. I fell, and I got up again and I fell again and got up again so many times...

Merry Crispmouse

Christmas is coming, and we all have that one person who’s impossible to buy for, don’t we? The one who already has everything, or always says they don’t want anything. That one.

Well, here’s the solution. The gift for someone who has everything.

A taxidermy mouse chess set.

(Failing that, why not try the taxidermy Pulp Fiction rodents, or the utterly terrifying monster pendants-not taxidermy, before you ask…)

The Salt Trail

I stumbled across the trailer for an indie film, THE SALT TRAIL, made by Mark Waters this morning.

It looks absolutely stunning.

(That shot of the palm trees. Woah.)

You can read a little bit more about it here.

Vincent Chong mini-Q&A

Fresh from his recent World Fantasy Award win and just in time for Christmas, Vincent Chong – one of my favourite artists – has announced he’s releasing limited-edition prints of some of his work, including the art he did for editions of The Shining and Dr Sleep.

Vincent Chong illustration for “The Shining” limited edition

Even if those don’t take your fancy, his art is gorgeous (I have a ridiculous amount of it around the house, including a print of his “Fallen Angel” – natch – in my kitchen)...

Gravestones to die for

I was puttering around the internet this morning doing some research on the proper names for different types of gravestone (because that’s the cheery sort of person I am). I didn’t necessarily get very far, but I’ve come back with all sorts of eye-opening bits and pieces.

Like this…

How’s this for trivia: the sticky-outy bit on older, traditionally shaped stones are called the “shoulders” – or occasionally, the “wings”. How did I not already know that?

Trivia 2: “taphophilia” is a love of funera...

Lefou, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking…

It was this article that got me started: reporting on research conducted by Girlguiding UK which concludes that sexism in the UK is widespread enough to impact “most aspects” of girls’ lives.

“Girls identified sexism as a priority issue for their generation”, with three-quarters saying sexism affected “most areas of their lives”, says the report.

Of the 11- to 21-year-olds questioned, some 87% thought women were judged more on their appearance than their ability.

More than a third (36%) of all t...