Chocolate Weighty Question

Now they say chocolate can help you lose weight.

No they don't, what they say is that a little of what you fancy does you good. But too much is bad for you. So is trying to do without altogether. Hm?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2771008/Good-news-slimmers-Eating-bar-chocolate-HELP-lose-weight.html

Publishing an ebook: why, how, first steps

I want to turn my books into ebooks. I have met lots of people who are interested in my books such as Quick Quotations but don't buy. Two reasons are:

1 It's too expensive as a print book.

Even if they don't say this, although some claim that they don't have cash on them but will buy next time.) I can't reduce the price of the print book unless  I run at a loss because I have to pay for the printing as well as the postage and packing. So an ebook would enable me to offer a better price.

2 I don't want to buy a book.
They might be travelling home and not want heavy luggage. The airline has a weight limit. It's a strain on their back to buy books.

3 I'd rather buy an ebook, later. Can you give me the details.
Some might be unsure. If I gave them the ebook details they might later decide to buy or to recommend the book to a friend.

I am considering using the various systems. Lulu.com  Amazon. Others.

We had talks on this offered at both Writers' Holiday and Writers' Summer School.

But the easiest way is to start with lulu.com because my books are already on their system.


http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Video-Tutorials/Video-Tutorial-How-to-Publish-an-eBook-on-Lulu-com/ta-p/175739

Lulu.com have two home tutorials. One is on headings.

Evening Primrose for perfumed evenings - a favourite fragrant flower

An eye-catching yellow flower in a friend's garden was evening primrose. It opens in the evening, between 7 and 9 pm, sometimes so fast you can almost watch it moving like time-lapse photography.

But here it is, bright and beautiful, after lunch, mid afternoon.

If you are out in your garden early, before lunch, you might spot a flower called Jack-go-to-bed at noon, also known as goat's beard. The scarlet pimpernel is said to open early and close between noon and 2 pm. 

You might like to read an amusing article Flowers to set your watch by online in the telegraph.

www.telegraph.co.uk/9391722/Flowers-to-set-your-watch-by.

Many British gardens close for the winter. But a few remain open, especially around the larger stately homes which welcome visitors all year. Check out the National Trust sites for opening hours. You can also look at flowers in Garden Centres. (See my post about Squires Garden Centres in my blog on travel.) 

Evening primrose oil is sold in health food shops, large stores,  pharmacies and supermarkets such as Boots and Tesco. 

If you've got a few seeds to spare, send some my way. I'm on the lookout for fragrant flowers. 

rhs.org.uk told me the heights of three kinds of evening primrose, asked whether I wanted annuals, biennials or perennials, did I want a garden centre to visit within one mile, ten miles, or further, or would I like mail order, and found me 11 mail order suppliers of fragrant evening primrose in the UK. The fragrant one is called oenothera biennia.

Picking green figs - what to do - what not to do

Our tree produced lots of little hard green figs. Researching on the internet we found out that you need to cut back the tree so its energy goes into the buds and not new branches. So I am off into the garden to pull off the figs (one of the recipes for sweet syrupy figs - not the pickled sour recipes). I'm getting white sticky sap from the figs where I break them off, also the leaves I pull off.

I thought I had only half a dozen figs, not enough for the recipe. But this year for the first time, I have a bag full.

The tree is growing like Jack and the Beanstalk, overshadowing everything else, threatening nearby trees, plants, and the conservatory built on the back of the house which is now a lot nearer the fig than the house was when I first planted the fig. (So when planting, think whether your future conservatory or patio might be near that baby 'tiny' tree you are planting.)

I took the precaution of wearing a gardening glove on my right picking hand, with a plastic bag to gather fruit in my other hand. Should have worn the old gardening shoes too. Not just the dew on the grass, or the mud. Nor the insects. Falling sap.

I should have worn a disposable plastic hat. What sort? One of those blue show covers from swimming pools.

My arrive back in the kitchen and I am warned, "Wash your hands and arms now. I've got an allergic reaction to the irritation of the sap on my wrists."

It's hard to get off. I wash the gardening glove as well.

Back in the kitchen I am called, "Got any gloves for cutting up the fruit?"

Yes, I have a box of disposable gloves. Not very thick, but at least they are disposable. You could wear one pair under a glove to protect your skin, another over it to protect the glove.

Now the chopping board will be full of the sap. Should have covered the board and the work surface too.

My family tell me they removed the fig sap in the kitchen with lighter fluid. Really. Good thing I've got a fire extinguisher. Better check the fire extinguisher expiry date - fire alarm batteries, fire extinguishers - all these things expire.

I am going off this fig fruit idea. Now I know why my late mother got tired of making strawberry jam when I was a child and made my father dig up the slug bed, I mean, strawberry bed, and plant flowers.

Next time I'll get the gardeners to pick the fruit. They are already wearing gardening gloves. We have enough fruit to take to our friends we are seeing for lunch. No, we won't take them unripe figs - we like our friends too much, and we want to stay friends.

I have a new swear word. Oh, fig. Fig it.

My travel posts will tell you where to buy jams and chutneys and wines.

Green figs not ripe

Found a forum about recipes from unripe green figs.
gardenweb.com

You could take your fig into your nearest garden centre and ask what's wrong.
Could be plant saving energy because of lack of water or nutrients, pests, winter frost, needs pinching out new growth, cut branches not bearing fruit, wrong type of fig needing pollination.

Recipes from Greece and South Africa. Decide sweet or sour. Pickle or turn into sweet jam.


See my travel blog post about Squires Garden centre; and my posts on that blog on vineyard tours and wine tasting.
Books by Angela Lansbury on Lulu.com and Amazon.
Also see me on Facebook, linkedIn and Youtube.

To be a chicken keeper or not to keep chickens? Which came first the desire for the chicken or eggs?

As a child I won goldfish at the funfair but the fish died. I kept tropical fish. They died. (When I was away in India.) No it was not the cat. I did not have a cat. Unfortunately I was allergic to cat and dog hair as a child.

Every now and then we discuss how nice it would be to keep a cat or dog. My first desire was to keep a cat or a dog, only later did I want to keep chicken which laid eggs. Why keep a cat or dog? My late father's family had a working cat to catch mice - also a working dog to patrol the local church and catch or better still deter would-be thieves.

I like cats, or at least pictures of cats, For five minutes. I have no desire to keep a cat in the house to catch mice because we have no mice, as far as I know.

My relatives had a cat. They moved house and spent days hunting for their cat which went missing. It turned up in their old garden.

What about a dog? First there is house training. The cost of the food.  Finding somewhere to park your dog, or pay for kennels, every time you want to travel has never been an option for my family who are frequent flyers.

We started buying farm eggs. We went to a talk at a Science fair about breeding chickens to lay eggs.

Then I thought, why not keep a chicken and get fresh newly-laid eggs every day? it surely won't be miserable without me if I have to go away for the weekend.

I thought I'd research it. The knowledge might be useful for my novel starting in 1880.

I quickly went off the idea. To keep birds outdoors you have to register with the government. Government websites tell you what to do if your birds get bird flu and what to do about it. How do you recognise bird flu? Bits of your chicken turn swell up and or turn blue. They stop laying eggs and die.

Meanwhile, back in the supermarket, those half a dozen eggs no longer seem so exorbitantly priced. Quite a bargain really. Saves me such a lot of trouble looking after hens.

A post about a poltergeist

Ants, flies, mice, moths, pigeons, spiders, termites; cooling, condensation, draughts, heating, minor earthquake, sloping shelves, vibration from elevators, vibration from underground trains - watch out for sinkholes next year, caused by large ghosts. 

Hall of Heroes in Find My Past

Find my past emailed me about their Hall of Heroes. The only one I already knew was Edith Cavell in WWI. The others included stories involving Wales, the Basque children, the Irish, and Serbia.
findmypast.co.uk

Saving Photos and Finding Lost Photos for blogs, books, emails, greeting cards, cakes and memories

Writing a blog about preparing for Chinese New Year in 2015, I was hunting for my old photos showing hotel decorations with red lanterns, Chinese dragon dances outside restaurants, Orchard Road and Shopping Malls decorations. My laptop ran out of photo storage space so all my photos are lost on a disc storing them somewhere in the office. I could not find my old Chinese New Year photos in my Facebook pages. I found some photos in Wikipedia but it's a whole hassle and delay trying to check whether you have to credit the author and how do you spell their name, can you copy it, do you run the danger off copying the link but not the actual photo.

Facebook For Storing Photos
I found old photos of me and my books and myself in libraries with children on Facebook. But not Chinese New Year in Singapore.

Photos saved in Emails
Finally I checked my own emails with the search for the word Chinese New Year.

Success! Hooray! I had sent photos of Chinese New Year in Singapore to friends.

So now I can stop complaining that gmail has stored over 7,000 emails in the cloud and insists on trying to send me the lot every time I log in. I am truly grateful to gmail for storing my emails forever.

Whatever happens to my laptop, lost, stolen, upgraded, my photos in old emails and still intact and recoverable. So now anything I want to be sure not to lose, I shall email to another member of the family.

Here's an old photo. It has to be one of mine before I found the editing programme I bought for iPhoto which enables you to correct the horizontals.
Orange lanterns for Chinese New Year and a lion.

For my posts on travel go to my blog Angela Lansbury author travel.
You might also like my books on lulu.com

Ghosts and mental health

Adding further to scientific evidence for experiences of ghosts being not ghosts but having other causes from outside the person claiming to experience the ghost or inside their head. Even intelligent people can be fooled into thinking that they have met and spoken to people who cannot be caught on camera, seen by others, nor found next day in broad daylight.

Apparently ghost companions are a real, recognised danger when people grow light-headed on mountains and imagine phantom friends or enemies.

Here is an example of a fit, resourceful man, who in the night has a conversation with a man in his tent who is not there next day.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745714/My-battle-death-angry-hungry-polar-bear.html

Cuddle cots for the stillborn - what about mourning for mothers? Last photos? Hospital photographers?

Cuddle cots. Any new idea which helps grieving families is welcome. I do wonder about the hygiene of adults and children (siblings of the stillborn) touching a dead baby. I also wondered why a mother of three healthy children would go on to have three stillborn babies. I suppose you keep hoping that the next live birth will replace the feeling of loss and write over the memory of the baby which died with the memory of a baby which lived.

Why would anybody want to keep cuddling the baby for 48 hours? Maybe it takes 48 hours to accept that the baby is dead and you can do no more for it.

Some people never move on. They keep the bedroom the same. They keep the photos on the wall. One family, the Alexander wine company, keep on a wine bottle the photo of Alexander, the father of the current (writing this in 2014) company owner's father.

People try to keep the name of the dead person, calling all children, grandchildren, or future sibling by the name of the ancestor or deceased relative.

That's what a graveyard is for. Even if you don't think that on the day of judgement the bones will all jump out of the graves. The authorities just want the name on the gravestone and the date of death in case the police need to exhume the body. But the family often wants a poem or picture. They vista the graves of the dead.

I have moved from mourning a stillborn baby, which doesn't happen to every family, to losing a parent, to anybody living a full lifespan. Now what about increasing number of people whose elderly mothers die in hospital? Should they have cuddle cots?

The mother of a stillborn baby might be in a hospital bed. But what about the widower with the walking stick, worrying about his car getting fined in the hospital car park, or the daughter of pensionable age herself has no chance to rest in hospital before seeing the body for 15 minutes in a morgue (queue and wait for your body's 15 minutes in the morgue bed) or getting the body back in a coffin.

In Victorian times when most people died at home, the dead baby was set up on the mother's knee or in her arms for a first and last photo. The Japanese still have open coffins. (One can still hope that the body will revive. It happened twice in South America in the last couple of years.)

Maybe we are moving slowly, gently, in that direction. Next we will have hospital photographers to take photos of the family with the recently deceased, propped up in bed.

Newspaper story on cuddle cots in Daily Mail online.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2744458/Meet-parents-using-refrigerated-cuddle-cots-buy-time-stillborn-babies.html

Read more quirky, thoughtful and informative posts by Angela Lansbury on travel, restaurants and other subjects.
Quick Quotations by Angela Lansbury in Lulu.com