Bridesmaid puts comfort first at the wedding reception

No killing six inch heels like the 'Strictly' dancers for this lovely bridesmaid as she dances with her bride mother.  How sensible. How comfortable. What fun!

This was the loving, joyous wedding of our niece and her man on Saturday. Mr A and I were very glad to be part of it.

LITTLE CROW

Caw stone the crows, I've just realised how significant the handsome black bird has become in my life. 


1. It's the name of my very own company: Little Crow Publishing


2. If you add 'borough' to it it's the name of the town where I now live.


3. A crow features in my last year and this year's Christmas card designs - and will probably do so for evermore.


Someone on the radio the other day said that crows are as clever as apes, maybe even cleverer. For instance, if there is water in a narrow container that is too shallow for them to reach, they just plop stones in until the water level rises and they can have their fill. Bloody brilliant! For a laugh I'd like to try them out with ice cubes but a) it's difficult, and cruel, to catch a crow for experimental reasons, and b) Mr A keeps using all the ice cubes for his campari and soda and not filling up with fresh water. Humph. (Sorry, I realise I'm getting quite a humpher.)

DIAMONDS are not a girl's best friend.

The title of my e-book The Sea with Diamonds refers specifically to the Bosphorus, the stretch of water that runs through Istanbul, glinting and sparkling in the sun. But anyone who has ever seen an expanse of  water with thousands of dazzling pinpricks of light sparking off it will know the effect is just magical - better than any solid carbon diamond - and free.

They say 'diamonds are a girl's best friend' but that isn't true. A girl's loved ones, human and animal, are their best friends, unless that girl is a fool. Or maybe I am the fool and the gold-digging, diamond-loving trollops are the sensible ones. Who knows? Humph!!!

Reading on a Kindle

If you ask somebody who does not own a Kindle if they own one they will often recoil in horror saying 'Oh no! I'm a traditionalist, I enjoy holding a book, turning the pages, I love the smell of it, the feel of it, etc. etc..' And six months ago I would have said the same, or words to that effect. But then I tried to read a book that was so big and heavy that my thumb joints rebelled by inflicting intense pain, and reading in bed was impossible without a crane. 


Then I saw an ad for the new small lightweight Kindle and took a chance and bought one. Oh and what joy! What bliss! I've always enjoyed reading but the difference between reading on a Kindle and reading from a book is like the difference between eating stale bread and a freshly-baked loaf, or having dull sex that lasts three minutes and, well let's just say, the opposite!


And unlike the computer, there is no glare from the screen. It looks like ordinary paper printed with ordinary ink but I know the ink isn't ordinary: it is magic. Magic electronic ink that flips into the shape of letters at the drop of a binary digit. 


It was a pleasure editing my novel THE SEA WITH DIAMONDS on the Kindle and now that is published and selling well I am free to download other books. At the moment I'm reading THE HELP, a truly wonderful book.  


All in all, I love my new Kindle and, to my surprise, I think I love it even more than my books. And that's saying something!

THE SEA WITH DIAMONDS

My new novel, The Sea with Diamonds, is now published on Amazon Kindle and I am more excited than is good for me! I started writing it the day after nine eleven when the horror of the atrocity was still raw in everyone's mind. I imagined being a newly married, pregnant young American woman who had lost the husband she adored. The Sea with Diamonds was thus born.

I named the beautiful young widow Angie and her story starts in New York and finishes in The Bosphorus, Istanbul: the sparkling water her husband had dubbed the sea with diamonds. Along the way, Greek myths sometimes entangle with real life. 

The four main characters in the book are American. The other two main characters come from Tunbridge Wells, England. During the voyage friendships are made and secrets are revealed - but not Angie's. She does not reveal that she has been married, has been widowed, that she is pregnant or that she is intent on killing herself.

This e-book is available on iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Mac and PC with KINDLE APPS.