Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

to use my own version of the Royal Mail's certificate of posting until they have sorted out their punctuation? Reading this: This form must be validated by Post Office Limited, please ensure that it is stamped at the time of posting, without this it will not be valid. makes me just .... rage. Boil. Ferment. My inner pedant has risen up and she is not happy. What is even more depressing is that this form is copyright 2010, so it's been around in this happy state for a while now.

Look away now if you cannot get Radio 4.  Or do not listen to The Archers.  This post will mean nothing to you. I missed yesterday's episode of The Archers (long running radio soap - everyday story of farming life, for non UK people who've read this far.)  WHY WHY WHY did David feel he had to tell Lizzie all?  Though thankfully he missed out the "Are you a man or a mouse?" bit.  Was gripping the keyboard moaning SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP, but did he listen?  No.  Did he leave Lizzie and her family to carry on picking up the pieces of their lives?  No.  To salve his own conscience he spilled. And how are they all going to react?  I predict:   Kenton – thinks David monumentally stupid for spilling all but sympathises and tries to broker peace; Shula - distraught but siding with Lizzie; Jill - measured distress for all but edging towards sympathising with Lizzie; Ruth – understands now why David so keen to help Lizzie, sees why he ...

It is not often that I write a blog out of pure passion, or that I feel I have to write a piece before I do anything else, but I have just spent the last 30 minutes or so listening to discussions on Radio 4's Today  on the Ann Abraham's report on the treatment of the elderly in the NHS .  None of it makes remotely comfortable listening.  Various of the great and the good have been trotted on to give their opinion; less bureaucracy, more humanity appears to be the general consensus.   Professor Raymond Tallis asked: "What enables a nurse to walk past somebody dying of dehydration?" Well, I think I can answer that from what I have seen in my own village over the past week or so.  It is a complete and utter inability to recognise that the elderly exist as human beings; that they are the same as you are. That they think, breathe, and feel. I have an elderly friend who was the first person to arrive on my doorstep when we arrived in the village.  I love he...

Meant to comment on this last week. "War Horse", said Horse and Hound on their 22nd April cover. "Behind the scenes of the play taking horse world by storm." And it's an interesting article, looking at what it's like to be a puppeteer. There is though, absolutely no mention of the fact that the play is based on a book, that it has an author, and a story, and is not just frightfully clever people pretending, extraordinarily convincingly, to be horses, and that's it.

who finds the self service checkouts springing up everywhere unbelievably irritating? Having decided that £40 was a bit much to spend on a Christmas tree, we retreated to B&Q who now have cheap Christmas trees (good) but now have these wretched self service things installed. The chap in the queue before us gave up, dumped his stuff, and left, and after the machine had been re-set, it was our go. It's the voice that gets me - all calmly reasonable, and so bloody bossy. Do this... do that.... Pay now... tolerant pause ... Pay now... further tolerant pause... Pay now.... by which time, the idiot human (me) at the other end is steaming, as all payment methods are at the right hand side, apart from the one I want, which is to the left, which Miss Bossy doesn't see fit to mention. Then being reminded "Don't forget your receipt" makes me want to scream "NO you bossy mare, I won't take it!" Of course, all this irritation and fury means nothing whats...

I get asked to donate prizes and vouchers to various horsey organisations and I'm generally pretty happy to oblige. Recently, a certain branch of the Pony Club (who shall remain nameless, but they are not local to me) and Equine Market Watch asked me for prizes. So, always wanting to encourage the younger entry, and having a lot of time for EMW, I wrote off to both saying yes, of course I would help. Had a lovely message from EMW. Nothing from the Pony Club. The message from EMW was so kind, I in fact sent them two books rather than the one I'd originally promised, for which I had a lovely thank you letter, and they've been nothing but kind and helpful ever since. I sent the book off to the Pony Club, and I have heard nothing back. Not a word. I'm prepared to believe they didn't get my email, but the book hasn't been returned to me, so I presume it's there. This may sound rather sour, but if you're supposed to be encouraging the younger entry, teac...

Firstly, sorry to those who commented on this earlier: I left it half finished before I went to meet daughter from the train, and thought I'd saved rather than published. Here is the full thing. There has been a lot of kerfuffle in the press and generally about many of the major publishers' decisions to age-band their children's titles from this autumn. These include HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Hachette and Scholastic. My first thought on reading this was that this isn't new. I remember reading Dragon books in the 1960s, which were divided into Blue, Red or Green dragon according to age, though the divisions: Blue Dragon - for young children, Red Dragon - for boys and girls - Green Dragon - for older boys and girls, (which does make me wonder in passing if Dragon thought children only developed recognisably as boys and girls after a certain age, but I digress) were pretty vague. Puffin Books too used to have age suggestions on them, and I can remember se...

Soon, very soon, I will be living in a registered heritage asset. Aren't I lucky? I used to live in a building, a listed building, but soon it will be a registered heritage asset . Margaret Hodge , the blessed Margaret, inspired mangler of the English language (or at least nodder through of an underling's work) was taxed about this a couple of weeks ago on Radio 4. She laughed. "Oh, we'll soon get used to it," she said. Why should we? Why should we have to put up with this pompous waste of words? For a start, it's lazy. Australia already uses the term heritage asset, so instead of trying to think of something less clunky, our civil servants simply lifted the term, and then debased it still further by strapping "registered" onto it. It is not just ugliness that riles me. My children are used to me leaping up and down when I find mistakes in writing (I have the excuse that one of my other businesses is proof-reading). The thing that drives me to...

The Government have just announced that all children between the ages of 11-14 are going to be taught to cook . Obviously for some schools this will be difficult. They have no functional kitchens, and pupils whose families will struggle to provide the ingredients. But I think this is something that is long overdue. My own Domestic Science lessons, in the early 1970s were a bit hit and miss as far as equipping me for life went. All we ever cooked were sweet things, though I shouldn't grumble: I can still do a mean cake. And thinking about it, in needlework I was taught how to hem, sew on a button and basic mending, which for me have been all the sewing skills I have needed. I really learned to cook as my mother was a staunch believer in good, plain nursery food, so I taught myself out of sheer self-defence, from a black and white Good Housekeeping recipe book from the 1950s. My own children's cookery experience at school has been radically different, and their needlework (or T...