Angel Jem's City Cottage

Ha! Doesn't it? You try telling that to DP Who has broken his arm in the same way and same part as the Princess, meaning he has to have a plaster for 5 weeks and, since he only has a back slab plaster for a week, he needs to have a whole week off school with me! Literacy (we went to Borders and treated him to a book ), mathematics (we got on the lego website and compiled a wishlist, then added up the amount. Cripes!), and history (he showed me the websites he has been browsing at school. Add to that engendering a love of the classics (we watched part one of The Two Towers ) and we have had a good day without really feeling like work. I have told him that next week it is Times Tables. He'll be glad to get back after that. (and I will miss him!) So, it's a good job I didn't do anything with the plastic cover that I invested in for the Princess. Best £7 I spent this year. And, before anybody asks, I have already told JW (No. 2 son) that he is banned from going anywhere...

If not quite dim, then rather so." Poetry for October, "Twenty Years Hence" by Walter Savage Landor. Couldn't resist it. I love poetry, don't read a lot of it (who does, nowadays?) but I did do an English degree and studied a lot of nineteenth century poets. There is something so fantastic about being able to quote a whole poem at need. My mother, raised in post-war austerity, is of the generation when schools made you learn poetry and she can reel off whole poems word perfect (sometimes better than she remembers what day it is!) while my brief foray into organised literary criticism got me no further than remembering Blake's Oh Rose (8 incredibly short lines that I once spent a 1 1/2 hour lesson deconstructing. You have to love literature to do that!) I have bought the 'poem a day' books and read them (not every day, but often) and I do like to read poetry when I can.... but I still fail dismally at knowing a poem. Wish I could learn at least one. Fa...

Kari at Just Livin Large. Well, who else could Christmas Stockings go to? I swear, I wrote the names out, pulled one out and it was the Christmas Queen herself who won! Now tell me there ain't a God? And, Kari, if you send me the details I shall send you the prize (even though I really love your Christmas signature and want one too. I'm not jealous, Granny Skywalker. Oh no, not me) (not much, anyway) Congratulations & look forward to hearing from you soon! And to everyone else who entered, I am sorry, and better luck next time. Thanks for entering!

I love fiddling around the house, puttering and doing pretty things. If only they stayed pretty! However, I try ;) I like making something in my living room seasonal. During the holidays, this is usually the mantlepiece, with shells and stones gathered from walks on the beach and certificates from school to show the end of another school year and the progress made. At this time of year I fall back upon Keats as my inspiration. I love the fruitfulness of Autumn and, even before children, could never resist the lure of a freshly shelled chestnut (where else in nature can one find such glossy copper-beech-brown?) or a pinecone placed where I can watch the tightly held sections opening out as it dries up inside. I like to change the colour of the flowers I buy from pink or white to yellow or orange, whether Chrysanthemums or Gerberas. I look longingly at the sunflowers in the shops now, too, but since you pay per bloom, they tend to get left behind. One day I will buy a bunch of five and f...

Folks may remember me saying I had started a ripple blanket after the fiasco that was my granny square blanket , when I told DH to tuck off. That is too small, still too small, but I use it in my den as a snuggle cover on cold days, so it can stay too small til I get the willpower/time to undo the naff edging and do several circuits of treble crochet to make it big enough. So, never, then. Anyhows, I began a ripple blanket back in March and set to to finish it for this winter. Those of you who have ever made a ripple blanket will know that the first few rows are fine. It's still small and portable, it still fits in an average-sized shopping bag and it still goes where you go. However, when you're making a king-sized blanket, ( especially when it has to have a decent tuck on pain of death) it soon grows..... and grows..... and grows . And any one can tell you that sitting under what rapidly becomes a heavy and unwieldy pile of wool is not anybody's idea of a good time in sum...

I have a cold so today's programme is; Lemsip (breathe east with menthol to clear the nose) Gingerbread men (2 because they get lonely easily) Medicinal videos (including as previously mentioned Outbreak , I'm ill but at least I'm not that ill My ripple blanket, because when you're ill there's only one thing better than snuggling under a cosy blanket and that's being able to snuggle under half a king sized blanket and crochet the other half. So, I'm in today, and keeping warm. Tomorrow I will go for the fresh air to clear the airways approach, but I think a snuggle day (I may even stay in my jim jams as long as possible(!)) is not too much to ask for,is it?

I read the Mail on Sunday (sorry, but I do) and it had an amazing statistic in it. The average Briton will read 533 books in their lifetime. I'll repeat that. The average Briton will read 533 books in their lifetime. OK, I thought, that's not too bad...... Then I thought again. Hang on, said my little inner bibliophile, you read an estimated 1 book every two weeks (not counting school holidays and cold winter days when the best thing to do is to snuggle under a duvet with Jane Austen). That's 25 books a year. That's 250 books in ten years and your lifetime average in 20...... And if I assume that my reading career started at 12 (when a book a week was slow) then I could have chalked up my first 500 in the ten years before I hit my working life and a career intervened... But hang on a cotton picking minute, are they counting childrens books as well, I wondered. In which case I probably covered my 500 before I left primary school. And do they include text books? So I paus...