Ailsa Abraham's Blog: Ailsa Abraham, page 58

…Brainy and Bonkers… a ‘Tail’ of Two Kitties… #TBSU…

…Brainy and Bonkers… a ‘Tail’ of Two Kitties… #TBSU….

Around and About on Ailsa’s Birthday

Around and About on Ailsa’s Birthday.

Jane Bwye gives me a birthday present of a lifetime!

Your choice

As writers we get used to several things – rejection, disappointment, criticism and other slightly more enjoyable stuff like good reviews and peer approval.

We have two choices – be “big” people and say “So I was nominated but I didn’t win” or go back to being five years old and scream “not fair”.

It reminds me very much of Kipling’s poem “If”. It may be old fashioned but the values it expresses still count. See here if you want to read the whole poem.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same

Maybe it really is “how” we play the game and not the winning or losing that counts, especially when other people have made efforts and overcome odds, backed you with cash, which obliges us to behave like grown ups. Feel how you like inside but please don’t stamp your feet and yell because the only person you are making ridiculous is yourself.  Of course we are not overjoyed to be overlooked, or not lauded in the way we think we deserve but isn’t it better to be remembered as the one that stepped up and shook hands with the “winner” rather than the bad sport who stomped off in a sulk?

Well done you!

Not fair!!!!!

Edinburgh Book Festival

We are at Edinburgh and if you look carefully you will see ALCHEMY there with the other 20 best sellers!

Huge thanks to Laurence and Stephanie for making this happen – it doesn’t come cheap and takes a lot of effort.

Laurence has been working too hard.

Now read the second

Alchemy is selling well. So get on off and grab a copy of Shaman’s Drum to see what happens next!

As time goes by…

In our usual haphazard way, Badger and I took our honeymoon a couple of weeks before our wedding. This was to ensure good weather and didn’t bother us in the slightest although some people thought it odd.

In a totally-unexpected fit of romanticism, he has suggested that we go back to the campsite where we honeymooned and as luck would have it, that closes on 12th September. Our anniversary is 29th September, so once again, we’ll be having a premature celebration (common problem in men his age).

We’re off to Castellane in the Nice area, not far from Grasse, the perfume-manufacturing centre (guess who is getting smellies for her pressie?). It’s also near the Italian border so we can be very cosmopolitan and zap over to Italy for lunch only this time we will have euros with us in cash so we won’t suffer the indignity of Badger and dog being held hostage while I trot around an Italian town looking for a bank to get my paws on some lire.

As an added bonus, this time we will be starting from the middle of France, not Brittany, so it won’t take us three days to get there either.

Heigh ho for romantic Badger!

Let’s Talk About Thin Privilege — Everyday Feminism

Let’s Talk About Thin Privilege — Everyday Feminism.

HELPFUL HERBS – Post 1

Courtesy of http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/805/

I’ve been asked if I will post some advice on the herbs I use and I’ve hesitated to do this. Let me start off by saying very loudly I AM NOT AN EXPERT. I have not been trained and I use only remedies that I have found to work which were given to me by other people who know.

There is a terrible tendency these days to equate the word “natural” with inoffensive and healthy. Well, I’m sorry but Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade), Monkshood (pictured above- a real killer)  and the most fatal fungi are all “good ole natural products”.

My first suggestion if you are interested in using herbs to help your ills, is to do your research. There are a staggering number of internet sites and books available and I can’t say often enough, look at photographs of the plants if you intend to pick them. Just as some of the most poisonous fungi look like truly nommy ones, hemlock (remember Socrates?) is easily mistaken for other less deadly ones.

Yum? Well actually yes. Schizophyllum commune – tough but edible

Start off with herbs you can buy in the supermarket – look in your store cupboard. You probably already have a few that can be used without any specialist foraging. Rosemary, sage, thyme, turmeric, garlic, ginger… count ‘em up. See? Got a pharmacy in your kitchen already! Well done!

Don’t go out foraging unless you know what you are doing and for the sake of all that is holy please leave fungi alone – I’ve been doing this stuff for years and I won’t touch the damn things. If you know someone who really is an expert – go out with them. I believe “mushroom walks” are organised in some places – go along, it would be fun!

 

Hemlock or cow parsley?

 

OK class – here is your first test – go away and google some answers for me. Both sage and thyme are very good astringent and antiseptics. With which one should you be careful and why? To whom would you not advise sage?

Easy enough – off you go and if you get that right, I’ll do yarrow next time.

How (not) to procrastinate

Julie Ryan has made her way to the Bingergread Cottage today and braved the hounds to share some writerly thoughts with me. She calls it “procrastination”, I am just a lazy sod. Like her, however, I suffer from terminal distraction and find that one job leads to another. Before I know where I am, knitting time has arrived and my authorial duties are unfulfilled. Ho hum!

It’s quite ironic really that since being invited to write a guest post I’ve been putting it off; This isn’t because I don’t want to write it (honestly) but rather because it’s hard to get motivated when a topic doesn’t jump out at you. That’s why I decided that this topic was ideal.

If you’re a writer, you’ll know where I’m coming from. You clear the decks for the day if you’re lucky, sit down to write and decide you need a coffee before you begin. On the way to the kitchen, the cat nearly trips you up thinking it’s time for food. Well, you may as well feed him now or you won’t get any peace, will you? First though, you need to wash up his bowl and even though you hate washing up, it would be a waste of hot water just to do one bowl so you may as well do the dishes while you’re there, after all they need doing and it’ll save time later.

As you stand at the sink you gaze out of the window and realize that some of the plants look a bit bedraggled. With no time to spare, you’re in the garden watering and pruning even weeding though it’s not a job you really care for but someone has to do it, right?

Looking at the state of your hands and clothes a shower is in order. When you resurface suitably cleansed you notice to your horror that you’ve trailed dirt into the living room so it’s out with the hoover. Under one of the chairs you find that jigsaw piece that’s been missing for ages. You go off in search of the box before you lose it again making a mental note to take stuff to the charity shop later.

It’s now time for elevenses but you still haven’t drunk the first cup of coffee that you made as you’ve been so busy. You can’t resist a cake to go with it this time as you sit down once again in front of your computer.

Finally to work except that you need to do some research so you trawl the Internet, notebook at the ready, until you remember an urgent email you need to answer. Three hours later after watching numerous YouTube videos of cats, finding out your IQ level, discovering your mystic fairy name, googling how to upcycle the stuff you were going to take to the charity shop but now don’t need to, you realize you’ve spilt cake crumbs all over the floor and you still haven’t had lunch.

You go to the fridge to make yourself a smoked salmon sandwich that you’ve been looking forward to all morning only to find that your husband has used the last of the bread to take to work. There’s nothing for it, you’ll have to go shopping now.

When you return after having negotiated the swarms of kids on holiday who have nothing better to do that congregate round the supermarket car park, you unload everything and spot the mail. Yippee, there’s a prize of a book waiting for you. Well, it would be rude not to read it, wouldn’t it? After all, you get your best ideas when you’re reading so it’s really research, isn’t it?

You decide to ring hubbie and ask him to bring home dinner as you’ve had such a busy day there’s just not been time to cook anything. He’s truly a keeper when noticing the half hovered house, washing up in the sink, cat hair on the sofa and earth trodden into the carpet, he knows better than to ask what you’ve been doing all day!

Find out more about Julie here ….

webpage www.allthingsbookie.com

Jenna’s Journey www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EXPDZD2

Sophia’s Secret www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LFJGCWA

Insurance claim…

(photo courtesy of www.confused.com)

I work in the offices of a very well-known insurance company and we are used to receiving hilarious excuses for car crashes but this one had us in fits. It beats the “bus stop hidden by pedestrians” and “admitted it was his fault as he’d been run over before”….

Dear Brian

(yes, our publicity robot gets all the fan mail these days)

Please find enclosed a photo to explain the claim form attached. As you will know, we have been clients of XXXXXX for many years now and had a very hefty no claims bonus.

Yesterday we were travelling along the A38 to visit my wife’s mother, as we usually do at this time of the year, behind a removal van. I don’t mean that we always travel behind a removals van but in this instance we were.

My wife was looking in the back to find the Thermos of tea which she always makes to ensure we don’t have to stop as those roadside “ye olde tea shoppe”s are very expensive, so she was unaware of what happened next.

The back door of the removal van flew open as it changed gear to tackle the steep hill up to Okehampton and suddenly an oven hit the front of my car. While braking, unable to see, my wife threw scalding hot tea all down the back of my neck and we veered off the road with the oven still embedded in our bonnet.

You will notice that I am claiming for burns injury. My wife’s cracked rib was caused by her falling out of the car laughing at my predicament.

I do hope you will be able to handle this claim rapidly, Brian and may I say “Wheeeee” to you, as we very much enjoy your television advertisements?

Sincerely…..

PS – Please find a photo that a passing policeman thoughtfully took for us as he said it would “have them in fits down the nick”