Award-winning author of Regency romance, contemporary romantic comedy, novellas. Also serials and short stories for women's magazines, poems for the small press, and anything else that might sell.
I was tagged by Nicola Cornick over on Facebook to do this meme and had such fun that I'm putting it up here as well. It was just lovely having all Neil Young's songs running through my head again.If anyone else feels like doing it, just cut, paste and carry on!
Using only song NAMES from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "My life according to (band name)" Pick your Artist: Neil Young Are you a male or female?: Such a Woman Describe yourself: Natural Beauty How do you feel: Unknown Legend Describe where you currently live: (Get Back to) the Country If you could go anywhere, where would you go: California Sunset Your favourite form of transportation: Cripple Creek Ferry Your best friend is: Out on the Weekend You and your best friends are: After the Goldrush What's the weather like: Like a Hurricane Favourite time of day: Harvest Moon If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: From Hank to Hendrix What is life to you: Bound for Glory Your last relationship: Don't let it Bring you Down Your current relationship: You and Me Your fear: The Old Laughing Lady What is the best advice you have to give: Long May You Run Thought for the Day: Are There Any More Real Cowboys? How I would like to die: Only Love Can Break Your Heart Looking for: Where is the Highway Tonight? If you could change your name, you would change it to: (Once an) Angel Wouldn’t mind: Words My soul's present condition: The Wayward Wind Most Faithful Companion: Heart of Gold My motto: One of these Days
. You'll like this. This is so cool. I visited the fantastically talented Julie Cohen's site yesterday where she is celebrating the launch of Girl from Mars and found this link where you can turn yourself into a comic-book hero!
So I did.
(PS The title is nothing to do with me - the site comes up with that all by itself) .
. Here's a nice little Sunday afternoon mystery. There I was, sorting stuff out (as you do when daughter is coming home from Uni next week and you have to turn what has been a handy dumping ground all term back into something resembling the bedroom she left in January) and I opened up a box (yes, I know, big mistake) that I'd retrieved from my mother's bungalow and found a mysterious envelope bundled up inside. Stamp Helvetica 50 somethings, postmarked Geneva, date possibly 1945 (but possibly not) Address label: "The Lancet" which is a British Medical Journal that as far as I am aware my family has no connection with at all. Inside was a pile of wooden jigsaw pieces. Curiouser and curiouser.
So I shook them out. They were hand cut and not at all regular so... Well what do you think? I made the jigsaw, of course. Now - this is the weird bit. I KNEW that girl in the pink dress. And I nearly knew the woman in the yellow blouse at the back. And the little girl on the right had a haircut the dead-ringer for one I had when I was five or so. She could almost have been me at that age, except I knew she wasn't me.
At this point I had a cup of tea. I mean, she really wasn't me, right? Because this photo-print-jigsaw thing must be a lot older than than that. And why was it in a Red Cross envelope postmarked 1945?
I looked at the jigsaw on and off for the next hour. "That woman at the back looks a bit like Nanna," said son on one of his passages through the kitchen. "No, it's not," I said. "Nanna never looked like that." And then (after another cup of tea) it hit me. The little girl on the right - the one that definitely wasn't me - that was my mother. Which meant that the girl in the pink dress (that I'd KNOWN I'd known) was my aunt. And the woman in the yellow bending over at the back was my Nana.
I rang my aunt to ask if she owned a pink dress with a white collar when she was about eight years old, but she was out. And I still don't know why it was in a 1945 Red Cross envelope addressed to The Lancet. .
The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.
They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.
. You know how you get days when something snaps and you look at a job you've been meaning to do for, er, months and think, "Today's the day!"
Well, today was one of those days. The day when I would chip away at the ice around the top of the freezer so the lid would fit properly again. Ten minutes, I told myself, and I could reward myself with a mug of tea.
Yes.
Only, it's just so satisfying when you ease a whole chunk away from the side, isn't it? So I fetched the sledge-hammer and chipped away some more. And then the basket was in the way, but when I tried to move it, it was actually frozen in, so... you get the picture. By the time I'd finished the sink looked like this.
And under the basket ...
Suffice to say that I decided I no longer needed beetroot from 1994, tomatoes from 1992 or turkey gravy from 1991. And look - I found the bottom of the freezer!
. I blame Liz Fenwick. See, this is my black box.(In a later post I'll show you what's inside it.)
But Liz found another black box. A black box created by Stray to promote a book by Caroline Smailes called - wait for it - Black Boxes.
The book is about choices. And the Black Box Widget is about choices too. In theory, the choices you make when you open it will connect you to a blog (or website) belonging to someone who also made similar choices.
Ha!
What it really does is to steal away all your will-power so you can't help opening the little beauty over and over again. You start off thinking, "Hey, this is cool. All these nice blogs to land in." But after three or four hours, you're doing it because it's so bewitching watching the darling boxes rotate and open up to display more choices. And after seven or eight hours you're doing it because you actually are interested in all the choices you're making.
So, if you are on a deadline, do not open this box
