Big Granddaughter (12) is writing (and drawing) several graphic novels - as you do - and when she was here last weekend she decided to make a small "Worms and Shakespeare" booklet. No idea what inspired her - well, Shakespeare, obviously. I give you some extracts.
I like the ruffs.
Littlest Granddaughter was taken by Daughter 2 to visit the other grandparents in Nottingham, where there's an impressive wintry display at the local garden centre. Son-in-Law 2 is still away at the Birmingham Rep for another six weeks. D2 is a noble person. 3 months of single-parenting.
And I ... have been busy with stuff like making four Christmas cakes, writing cards, organising my choir's Christmas concert... you know the sort of thing.
British traditional Christmas cakes are rich fruit, ie with lots and lots of sultanas, raisins, chopped peel, glace cherries, almonds, so the mixture is very heavy and stiff. For, I would estimate, 48 years, I struggled to make the cake tin lining stay in place while I filled the tin with this concrete-like, sticky mixture. Then a few years ago I had the idea to use clothes pegs. You can remove them when the tin is half-full because the weight of the cake holds the paper in place.
I was telling this to a group of friends the other day - mainly to find out if everyone in the world did this, and only I was stupid enough never to have thought of it (no, it turned out) - and one of my friends, a highly intelligent person, said, "Do the clothes pegs not melt in the oven?"
I'll put it down to temporary absent-mindedness.
