My long lost brother.

The heading for yesterday's blog posting would have been more appropriate for today's so far as Partner-who-drinks-tea-something-stronger is concerned. Her nice new black Hyundai had an altercation with a red car in the entrance to the petrol station. Jo is perfectly OK but Hyundai is now in hospital. Fortunately it is comfortable and may only be in for a day or so.

GB arrived in Exeter on Monday, having spent Sunday night at Pensby. At the time it seemed strange to think of him up there and me down here... When GB come downs from the Island he usually comes through the Cairngorms. As yet he has never got lost. Nor, so far as I'm aware, has he been to Lost.


Lost (Lòsda in Scottish Gaelic) is a tiny hamlet in the Cairngorm mountains, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The name comes from the Gaelic word for inn (taigh òsda); today the hamlet has a few houses, a war memorial and a farm. Following publicity in tourist guidebooks Lost has suffered from regular theft of signs bearing its name.

It seemed so long since I had seen GB - in fact, it was a long time. He's been in New Zealand for the last six months and at best we live 400 miles and a ferry journey apart. That's a long way and a long time to be from your best friend.

It is not unusual for me to cry 'So many books, so little time'. Now I could add the exclamation 'So many recipes, so little time'. Nan has just added a strawberry / rhubarb crunch recipe that sounds delicious.


One of my top 125 fiction books (see the sidebar of my Books blog) is Sebastian Faulkes’ ‘Birdsong’. Written in 1993 it is the story of a young Englishman in France before and during World War I. I am now reading another of his books 'The Girl at The Lion D’Or'. It is equally enjoyable. How fortunate we lesser folk are that writers of the calibre of Faulkes exist to lighten our days.

When I win the lottery and own a mansion I shall, of course, have a magnificent study lined with books. My big regret (my only real regret) when we moved out of our big Victorian house in Liverpool was losing the study which had two of its walls lined with books. Some day I must hunt out a photo to show you. But in my palatial mansion I would also have a wall of pictures from book covers. The unattributed picture on the cover of 'The Girl a the Lion D'Or' would be a candidate for such a wall.

Wall space is the only reason I would want a large house. I could manage quite happily in a fairly small space. I never, for example, found our caravan in the least bit claustrophobic. But there are so many pictures I would love to be able to look at regularly. At the moment our loft is full of them and we rotate them every few months but even after five years of living at The Willows some have yet to make it onto the walls.