Sometimes you trip over a book by chance and thus it was for me with this one.
Mumsie had been redecorating her retiring room and stacked her broken-spined monstrosities of literature in the hall. Since she was not entirely sober, these leaning towers had shed volumes across the parquet and I missed my footing on one that had fallen open.

Nursing a twisted ankle and a bruised derriere I retrieved the offending tome with every intention of feeding it to the flames in retribution. But the cover caught my eye, and instead, I rescued it from being re-interred within the maternal parent’s bookshelf and started reading.

My Review of Dune by Frank Herbert

A family with names that seemed to me highly inappropriate for science fiction (Paul, Jessica, Duncan and Wellington – the last reminding me of a certain furry, litter-picking character), move to a desert planet which is full of worms.

This family seem to be very unpopular and almost all of them get killed off by another family, who have much more genre appropriate names (Glossu, Vladimir and Feyd-Rautha).

Paul survives and goes on to become the hero of the book. He gets to wear a wetsuit which works in reverse, take drugs and ride one of the worms. Oh, there are also some very strange women who go around torturing children and speaking in enigmatic phrases such as ‘fear is the little death’ and other meaningless nonsense.

The best thing about this book is its length. It is fat enough to be perfect for wedging the door of my writing sanctuary closed.

2 stars for such excellent utility!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

“I’m sure you weren’t expecting me.”
The stranger stood in the shadows just outside my door, his face partly hid by the hood of his cloak. His hand gripped around a traveller’s staff, the sort that could be used both for walking and a sturdy defence. I’d have taken him for some vagrant were it not for the large ruby ring that I could see on that hand.
“I can’t say as how I was expecting anyone,” I told him, wondering if I’d be wiser just to shut the door in his face. When you live alone and your nearest neighbour is the other side of the fell, welcoming a stranger into your home after dark is not so wise.
“Can I come in? I just need shelter for the night.”
Now, you can call me a superstitious old woman but I know as well as the next that most all the magical beings you can name from brownies to vampires need to be invited into your home before they can touch you.
“If you need a place to sleep there is the barn.” I nodded to that old ramshackle building my grandfather raised. It’s outlived its name and its purpose long since, but the roof keeps the wind and rain out – mostly.
“Thank you,” he said and dipped his head in a sort of bow, like I was a noble lady or something.
I still don’t know why I did it, but later that evening I took a bowl of my stew and a lump of seed bread out to the barn. I saw a sort of red glow coming through the cracks in the walls and very nearly dropped the tray in fright. Instead, I crept close and peeked through one of them cracks and as I’m standing here today, I swear I saw a red dragon three times the size of any man curled with its nose on its tail and staring right back at me with ruby eyes.
I don’t mind admitting I ran back to the house and bolted the door. Not that would have kept out a dragon, but what else was I to do?
I went back in the morning at first light. The barn was empty. First I thought I’d imagined it all, but where that dragon had been curled I found this very gold piece…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Namaste you wonderful, desirable and aspiring individual! This bijou blog is here to help you achieve your best ever ‘you’. Here, I offer my help and assistance in reshaping your shape and doctoring your decor internally and externally, to bring your lifestyle into line with your aspirations.

Gestures

One of the very first things we all notice about an individual we meet will be their gestures. Do they forever make air quotes? Are they bracing their forehead with the back of their hand in times of stress?
We are what we do and gestures such as these both express our inner essence and shape it through repetition. What is within is always reflected without and what is without will be internalised in turn. So it goes without saying that the very best way to shape your inner essence can be through defining yourself externally by your gestures.
Firstly you need to choose what will be your hallmark ‘defining’ gesture. The one that all those who know you or come into contact with you in life will take away with them as being the essential expression of who you are. So you need to choose wisely and think carefully on both what this gesture is seeking to portray about you and reinforce within you.
Some suggestions:

Pointing with the little finger
Tucking your other fingers behind your thumb, use only the smallest digit on your hand to point and indicate with, thus demonstrating both your humility and your confidence. By using it you are saying to the world that you have no need to use the aggressive index finger to point with, you can do just as well with a little finger and that small is beautiful too.

Spread finger handshake
Instead of presenting a sleek, attack line hand to be shaken, thumb up like the dorsal fin of a shark, offer your hand with the fingers wide apart to show you are not a greedy or grasping individual, but an open and easygoing person, with nothing to hide.

Scratching the third eye
When you are in need of inspiration, instead of scratching your head at random, always aim for the spot above the nose and between the eyes. This shows you are a profound and mystically inclined individual who all should respect. Rubbing it when perplexed is a variant on this theme.

You can come up with your own unique and inspiring gestures to ensure you leave an indelible impression on all those you encounter.

Namaste!
Lucida the Loquacious Lifestyle Coach

Today our amble took us to the tops
Where yellow gorse like honey spikes the air
Below, the grumbling tractors tend their crops
Up here the land is quiet, wide and bare
And no one walks this pitted granite street
Except we two beneath a hazy sky
It almost seems that ours are the first feet
And, looking outwards, ours are the first eyes
The turf, now coarse and springy, bears no sound
Until a calling kestrel silence splinters
A sudden breeze comes spinning round and round
An echo of the killing wind of winter 

Jane Jago

The boot would have caught him in the head. Dai rolled away as it swung in and he took it on the shoulder instead. But the rest of the pack were about to catch up and after the last experience of that, he knew he had two choices, surrender at once or hold on, count the moments and pray. The decision was taken from him as the whistle blew across the field.  Which was just as well because he could not have taken much more punishment.
A hand reached down, attached to a brawny arm.
“Well done, you’re not bad at this are you?”
The mud smothered ball was clutched close into his body and Dai, still winded and bruised from the last assault, took the hand, grateful for anything that might help him back on his feet. A moment later he was reeling back on the ground, shoulder probably half-dislocated as his erstwhile helper was holding the ball aloft and making an earsplitting hooting noise.
Dai lay still, closed his eyes and let the world revolve around him for a few moments. The jubilant cheers and back-thumping slowly faded. It was not the first humiliation he had endured since he had started his career in the Vigiles and he was willing to bet it would not be the last. But at least it would be the last he had to endure on this training course.
This ‘team building’ event was meant to be a treat for the final day. A reward for all the hard brainwork they had been required to put in to qualify for the rank of Investigator. Random draw assigned the teams and they had spent the morning training. Dai had contemplated feigning gut cramps to escape the afternoon match and now he wished he had.
He became aware it was starting to rain. Britannia in the early spring tended to wet and the ground they had been playing on was already part mudslide. The drops were heavy and he decided he was not hurting quite so much any more and probably ought to get up.
“Spado!” He recognised the voice of his team captain and opened his eyes, pushing himself to his feet one knee at a time. A far cry from the players you saw on the sports channels. They would take all kinds of a kicking and just roll to their feet and jog off.
“You must be the most stupid cunnus I ever played in a team with. Giving the ball away to the other side – and that after the whistle.”
“The game was over and I thought -”
“You thought you’d fall for the oldest trick in the book? The rules are merda, Llewellyn – just like what you keep inside your skull. This is harpastum. The Game. They had the ball when the ref got his first view of it after the whistle.”
The anger and disgust on the other man’s face was so intense Dai found himself sinking into a defensive stance. He had no idea how to play harpastum, the messy brawls for glory had never appealed to him, he’d avoided it like the plague during his school years opting for other sports, running and swimming being the ones he favoured most, but he knew how to fight when he had to, that had always been on the sports syllabus in his life. The other man seemed not to notice, he had already turned away and was jogging back towards the building.
Wiping at a splotch of mud which was sliding over his eye, Dai realised he was only spreading more mud as his hand was coated too. In fact, there was not much of him that was not. He squelched back across the pitch, the rain picking up as he did so, and by the time he stepped into the changing rooms, the mud was cascading in rivulets on the floor behind him. He pushed open the door and the conversation dropped as the entire nineteen man team glowered at him.
Dai shook his head and walked past them, heading for the welcome warmth of the shower room. He might have lost the game, but of the five points they had made, two had been his and owed more to his running skill than anything else. The other three had been scored by their team captain, but then that was a man who had been in the under 20s finals at Augusta Treverorum six years ago as he had proudly boasted when putting himself forward for the role. They also seemed to have overlooked the fact that Dai had been the one clutching the ball and defending it with his body when the whistle went. Which, he had been told, was the way to ensure victory in this game. No one had bothered mentioning anything about after the whistle.
They were all gone when he emerged from the shower room, much to Dai’s relief. He had already seen the first purple marks revealed as the mud was washed away and he had a feeling that the following day he was going to be stiff and sore. Fortunately, the following day he would be heading home to attend his half-brother’s wedding and have a week in the fond bosom of his family before starting work as a junior Vigiles investigator for the submagistratus in his hometown of Viriconium.
He was towelling his hair dry and was wondering if he could afford a massage in the baths next door, when the door was flung open by one of the women who had been leading the training course.
“Llew –” She choked off halfway through his name, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Then a light flush of colour brushed her cheeks.
Dai dropped the towel from his shoulders to wrap it around his waist. Well what did she expect bursting into the men’s changing rooms? Romans who did not respect the privacy of non-citizens could expect to get an eyeful of six-pack and extras.
“Apologies, domina,” he said, reaching for his tunic.
“Eh – yes. Well, you were not answering your wristphone so I had to come and find you in person.”
“We were told to keep them turned off or silent.”
“Yes. So you were. So here I am.” She gave a little smile.
Under the cover of his tunic, he undid the towel and finished dressing, aware of her eyes on him and more than a little resentful of the fact she felt free to stare all she wanted. He realised then that he would be glad to be home, away from the coldly Roman Londinium and back in a place where the majority of people he met treated him like a human being.
“What was it you wanted, domina?” he asked, trying to keep the bite from his tone.
“The Prefect wishes to see you immediately.”
The Prefect? He was the man in charge of operations for the Vigiles. A fair few steps down from the Caesar of Gallia maybe, but about as close to that as Dai had ever got. He opened his mouth to ask why and she made a dismissive gesture “That means now, Llewellyn – and after, how would you like to be my guest at this evening’s graduation dinner? We can skip the boring speeches and head back to my place.” She smiled again as she finished speaking and Dai decided she was not at all bad looking for a Roman and very well preserved for her age, which had to be at least ten years over his own twenty-four years. For a moment he was tempted, very tempted. “It’s a sub-aquila apartment,” she said, no doubt hoping to sway him with the promise of the Citizen only levels of luxury which that implied. Instead, it had the opposite effect and Dai found himself shaking his head and tasting a bitter flavour in his mouth.
“You honour me too much, domina,” he said, coldly. It was very obvious she was not used to being refused because her anger was instant.
“The Prefect’s office – now, Llewellyn.”
Then she went, slamming the door behind her.

You can keep reading Dying to be Friends by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Somebody who should have known better once said that a day would come when everyone was famous for twenty minutes. And now it’s here how much do we hate it?

That, my dears, seems entirely dependent on your age.
Mostly people over fifty (with a few frightening exceptions) find it all a bit distasteful and struggle to see what the cult of fame has to offer the world – except inanities and conspicuous consumption.

So why do people engage? 
Because they want to be famous, did I hear you say?

And why is that pray?
The desire for fame seems to me to be both vapid and grasping, and to speak loudly of a life with fuck all in it. 
And you need not look at me like that neither…
I’m not famous: ‘Granny’ might be, but she’s not precisely me. And I ain’t precisely her. So.

But back to the rant you so rudely interrupted.
When I was a younger person you had to do something pretty big to get famous: 

• Climb a shagging great mountain in your flip-flops. 
• Discover a cure for stupidity. 
• Write a post-modern novel post mortem.
• Stop a war.
• Start a war.
• Run faster than whoever was chasing you. 
  And so on.

Now?

• You can be famous for being somebody’s mother.
• You can be famous for who you marry.
• You can be famous for who you sleep with (polite euphemism for shag).
• You can be famous for spending immoderate amounts of money
• You can be famous for making videos of yourself in your bedroom behaving inanely.
• You can even be famous for having a big fat ass.

Tell you what. I. Give. Up.

What would happen if we just ignored the ‘influencers’ and their overblown egos?
Maybe corporate eejits would stop paying them inordinate sums of money to promote products on their websites/blogs/vlogs/whatever. Maybe teenage girls would stop drawing their eyebrows with magic markers and trying to be both thin and fat at the same time.
Maybe we’d go back to famous people being ones who did something positive with their lives.

Maybe.
And maybe not.
Maybe our collective psyche is so fucked up that we need useless celebrity to enable us to get through life.

And that is such a frightening thought that me and Gyp are off to the pub. You lot can do whatever it is you have done to deserve a woman famous for her backside. I need a pint and a game of darts to cleanse my palate.

I walked my brother’s only daughter around the sights, snarling at street corner conmen and would-be pickpockets. The kid just drank everything in open mouthed and adoring every moment. After four leg-weary hours even she was ready for a sit down, and I guided her into Frankie’s Grill.

It’s not the most salubrious joint in town, but the food is good and they know me. I ordered burgers and fries and while we waited I just listened as she babbled. When she suddenly stopped speaking and swallowed as if her mouth had gone unaccountably dry I turned to follow the direction of her eyes.
“Shit,” I said with some feeling, “what’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know. But I wonder if he wants company.”
“Probably. But we ain’t it.”
She regarded me solemnly for a moment then nodded.
“If you say so. Though he sure is pretty.”
He was more than pretty, with the sort of hard-edged handsomeness that turns the knees to water. I laughed.
“Pretty dangerous, kid.”

Right on cue, the server came with our food.
The kid waited a beat. “He a John?”
“He is. Although not one of mine. Now eat your burger before it goes cold.”
The kid applied herself to her plate with a healthy appetite, even managing to finish my fries before she sat back replete.

The man now occupied a booth opposite us, from whence he stared at me with his mesmerisingly blue eyes.
“He looks at you,” the kid remarked, “as if he don’t know whether he wants to fuck you or strangle you.”
“Oh. He wants to do both. Simultaneously.”
The kid looked sick for a minute then firmed her chin.
“Nope. Not my bag,” she gave a nervous half giggle.
“Mine neither. If anybody is getting beaten up I reckon to be doing the beating.”

Then my stalker made a mistake. He turned his gaze from me to the kid, undressing her with his eyes and enjoying the blush that spread from her neck upwards.
“Can you make him stop that?”
“Sure. You just pop to the restroom. I’ll come get you when it’s sorted.”

It wasn’t more than thirty seconds before he came and slid onto the banquette next to me, siting so close I could feel the heat of his lean thigh. He put his big hands on the white tablecloth and I looked at where the black hairs marched across their backs. He spoke first.
“What is it worth to leave the little one alone?”
I didn’t answer, merely turning my head to meet the icy heat of his eyes.
“I asked you a question.” His voice had quite nearly the cut of a whip.
“And I chose not to answer.” I kept my own tones cool and sweetly reasonable. Something I knew would both irritate and excite him in equal measure.
“I will have you,” he groaned. “I will have you bound and naked and at my mercy.”
“I think not.”
“Not even to save the child.”
“You are not interested in her.”
“Maybe not. But I will take her if nothing more challenging is offered.”
I half turned towards him, showing him the white column of my throat. He swallowed and slowly clenched and unclenched his hands.
“Do you want me to call you master?”
“I want more than that. How far are you prepared to go to save the child from the bite of the cat o nine tails?”
“About this far,” I licked my lips and slipped the knife between his third and fourth ribs.
“About this far…”

Jane Jago

I distinctly recall being read to by Miss. Grimdyke in my primary school years. She always wore a dress that looked like a floral tablecloth and, since she had a body like a coat stand, hung on her like one too. Her hair was grey, wispy and coiled into a tight bun. She had the predatory gaze of a vulture and always smiled whenever a parent or another teacher set foot in the classroom. But to us sweet innocent babes she was a gargoyle of ghastliness.

Then one half-term she announced she would be reading a new book with the most unlikely-sounding title that mixed zoo animals with bedroom furniture. None of us innocent younglings had any idea what was about to be unleashed on us, but we all found little problem in identifying with the abandoned waifs who were the stars of the story. Myself, I felt a close kinship with Edmund, the poor misunderstood child.

Anyway, to the point.

My Review of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by Clive Staples Lewis

A group of children run riot in an elderly relative’s house. One of them finds a way into a winter fantasy world. She meets a fascinating half-goat person who feeds her crumpets. One’s own favourite image of the whole tedious book is of this delightful-sounding individual and his umbrella.

The other children inevitably follow. After much tomfoolery, a lion who acts more like a house cat is tied up and killed. For some reason, this changes things. The children become monarchs then wake up and find it was all a dream.

I didn’t really get the point of it all and felt the old ‘good versus evil’ theme was completely overplayed.

A nice enough story for a seven-year-old, perhaps – except the killing of the lion bit.

Two stars for nostalgia.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

This, Carla realised, was what was meant by ‘tea and sympathy’. Only, in this case, it was coffee and sympathy – well latte to be exact – and some comfort-eating chocolate cake.
“So it’s over this time?” Her cup, broad and deep, clicked back on its saucer. “Really? Truly?”
Emmy gave a sad smile. Over the last hour and the chocolate cake, she had burdened Carla’s soul with a gory, forensic dissection of the breakdown of her relationship. Cut by painful cut, from the first misconstrued comment to the final brutal insult.
“Oh it’s over. Dead. Buried. Jake knows it, I know it.”
“You’re sure? Last time – ”
“Last time I was still half in love.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not.”
“So what about Chris?”
Emmy’s blue eyes blinked once, stating clearly that the name was not relevant in her love life and never would be. “I heard from Miranda the other day. Sienna is starting school. Isn’t that incredible? It only seems like last week the three of us were sitting in these very chairs discussing baby names.”
“Emmy – you can’t pretend forever.”
The blue eyes clouded. Emmy grabbed her coffee cup from its brightly coloured saucer and hid behind it. The words ‘I Love Cappuccino’ danced around the rim in bold, red letters.
“Chris won’t just go away,” Carla spoke to the cup.
Emmy lowered the coffee, her face tightly resentful.
“Chris is not involved with this.” Then, suddenly appealing: “Let’s not go there today, Carla hun, please.”
Not for the first time, Carla felt herself being torn between loyalties. Emmy’s baby-blue eyes, pleading, and Chris – dependable Chris – bleeding from a dozen wounds he had never known were being inflicted. Carla shook her head slowly, as the waters of the Rubicon flowed away beneath her feet.
“He’s your husband, not a meal ticket. You have to – ”
Instantly Emmy was by the door, the cup still in her hand.
“I don’t ‘have to’ anything! Don’t you understand? I don’t care!”
The coffee cup arced across the room heading for shattering impact and landed at the moment the door slammed. It bounced on the carpet, with a little spray of coffee and rolled, until it stopped on its handle by Carla’s feet, still safe and in one piece.
Carla bent to pick it up, the words facing her read: ‘I Love…’.
For a moment she clutched it close, then she placed it with extra care on its own saucer, where it belonged.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Namaste you wonderful, desirable and aspiring individual! This bijou blog is here to help you achieve your best ever ‘you’. Here, I offer my help and assistance in reshaping your shape and doctoring your decor internally and externally, to bring your lifestyle into line with your aspirations.

Colours

Colour – or color for those blessed individuals who dwell in the land of eggplants and zucchinis – is not just something surface and insignificant. It is the electromagnetic radiation of a certain range of wavelengths visible to the human eye. A form of radiation that affects you visually. And as we all know radiation can be very dangerous if it is not handled carefully.
The first step is to find your keynote colour – that which resonates with your very soul. The colour that will make you the very best you simply by surrounding yourself with it, and bathing in its ethereal radiance.
A simple task, you might think. But such soul-deep searching is seldom simple. Your true soul colour is not going to be what you might imagine, or even what you might wish.
Everyone knows that we are all drawn to that which is bad for us. We crave the things we are allergic to and yearn for those that make us fat and ugly. The same is true with your colour choice.
You love blue so you wear blue and have blue furnishings. Oh please no! Do not do that to yourself! My heart is breaking here just thinking of the harm you are wreaking upon the most delicate corners of your pure essence with such behaviour.
Your soul colour, the one you need to bathe in to balance and restore your precious inner being, is the one colour you most loathe and despise. The one frequency your conscious mind is seeking to deny and deprive you of so as to entrap you in its coils of materialism! Each time you give in to the urge for your favourite hue, you are allowing a little more poison to seep in.
You must stop.
Now.
Reverse the process before it is too late.
Throw out everything in your wardrobe that is your favourite shade and replace completely with the one you have heretofore not recognised as being the most benign and beneficial. And the brighter the better. If you despise pink, then salmon, carnation, flamingo and fuschia are your future! If you spurn yellow, then let beige, ochre, mustard and lemon fill your life!
And don’t stop with your wardrobe – revamp your entire life from wallpaper to desktop. Let everywhere you go and everything you see be of that hue you believe you hate!
Before you know it you will be vibrant and glowing with the powerful, colourful, radiation you are absorbing.

Namaste!
Lucida the Luscious Lifestyle Coach