Dr Page from the uni of Hertfordshire has designed a mini home you can build at the end of your garden which needs no more skill to build than an IKEA flatpack. (I do hope it comes with good instructions. I had a lot of trouble with some of my flatpack chairs, from IKEA - and more so from elsewhere.)
 
It's fine for the agile twenty something year olds - so long as they are not drunk and don't roll over in bed. Now please design a granny flat which somebody with bad legs or a wheelchair could live in. Then young families will have a built-o babysitter at the end of the garden. Add a version for a single Mum with a baby. (Single bed please. No room for a second baby.

Could I save the money I spend on writing holidays by sitting in my DIY shed home for a week and finishing my novel. It would be a great hobby home, for a writer or painter. Plus a bed if you sit up all night finishing the novel or poem or painting or composing a song or opera. And the bed for an afternoon nap, the day after you sat up all night. Or just for meditation.

I won't mention the orgy or the brothel. Let's just stick to the novel - and let the novel include the more adventurous ideas.

I dream of a bed
In a little garden shed
Where I wrote my great novel
That at least one person's read.
Angela Lansbury
Copyright May 10 2014

Harrow Writers' Circle & Pinner Writers' Short Story Competition Winner

The subject for the short story competition was revenge. Here's the winner.

We had several entries from both clubs. Each club chose the top three stories from the other club's entries. Then the six winners were read to an audience of members. We voted for the first and second choice. The score was two points for the stories a voter thought was first place, one point if the story was considered second place. 

After the interval the writers of the winning first and second place stories were announced. Two of the runners up stories were read. One of the runners up was Brian who is a member of both Harrow Writers' Circle and Watford Writers, another group with whom Harrow writers organises competitions.

The story subjects included an illegitimate daughter returning to get revenge on the father who had abandoned her mother, and a vengeful date who was not the wife but the sister-in-law. Lovely cakes were provided for everybody to enjoy by Julia seen in red at the front of the picture. She made chocolate cake, carrot cake with white icing on top and fruit cake. 

Pinner writers meet in Pinner library and a member's home. Harrow writers meets in Harrow Arts Centre and a member's home.

For more details of club meetings look on the web.

Why didn't I win? Revenge is not really what I'm after. I'm too kind.

That reminds me - I should publish my short stories in a collection and expand one of my short stories into a a children's book.

You can see my recent books on lulu.com

Angela Lansbury 

Author, Poet, Speaker

More details from

harrowwriterscircle.co.uk

Scio Will Change Our Lives For The Better

Scio, invented in Israel, analyses everything from the food in your shopping basket to bodily fluids. this is the invention of the century. What can it do?

The Cure For Sickness
   The medical advances will be marvellous. Find out whether somebody has meningitis. Stop sick people getting on a plane unless in a quarantine section or on a special hospital plane.
   Put a plaster on a scratch as soon as you need to and prevent problems. Spot sickness soon enough to cure it. Call the family if somebody is seriously ill. Save hospital queues at self-analyse machines in hospital.

Shopping and Cooking Transformed

   Everyday life will be transformed. Shopping and shipping. All food fresh.
   Calorie count your meals for your diet. Shop sensibly.
    No more horse meat in food when you are paying premium prices. No mistakes in supermarkets when marked down food has already gone off. Spot the worm in the apple.

People and Pets
   Animals, pets. Know if your dog will hurt anybody, or the dog in the street. Identify a lost pet and return it to the overjoyed owner.
   And maybe pick a healthy husband. Or, if you are the nursing nurturing type, find somebody who needs your loving care and appreciates being looked after.

Recycling - growing food in gardens, landscaping edible gardens, recycling teeth and hair

I just did a survey on Survey Monkey on recycling and natural foods and protecting the environment. Some of these companies in your survey are USA and I'm in the UK. the survey could do with a box Add 'don't know' (US stores in UK). Please tell Survey monkey. thanks.

What do I want more of? I was hunting for natural food colour, having watched a YouTube video on home made Turkish Delight using red food colour. I know that beetroot and raspberries are good red colour. (Whatever causes unwanted stains, can be used deliberately to dye food or if edible to dye foods.)

Suggestions I read were cranberries, beetroot powder, or buying from suppliers of natural products.

More Recycling
 I'm also interested in using non damaging food colour and saving your teeth from decay by not eating sugar, not pulling teeth out and not inserting putting in metal nor mercury fillings.

I don't see the point in destroying things. I'd rather save elephant tusks than destroy them which just makes the few we have left more valuable and rare. Better to make plastic ones so widespread that it's not worth the bother of catching them.

People want to donate their own human organs after they die. We should be reusing our milk teeth.

What about saving hair cut at the hairdressers.

Also running classes on recycling - reusing clothes. Schools should teach recycling. In domestic science classes, more on using leftover food, storing leftover food.

Also growing plants from the prune stones and avocado stones we throw away. Turning rose petals and flowers into edible dishes. Growing more in gardens.

A few minutes after this blog I read the news and discovered a group of Chinese women called the Long-horn Miao save their mother's and grandmother's hair to make head dresses. 

Seven a day - portions of fruit and vegetables - how?

    Seven a day seems a lot. We heard rumours years ago that seven was the ideal but that we were told five because seven would seem such a large jump that the majority of people would not even try or would try and give up.
     Cut Sugar Desserts - Eat Fruit Salad
     My late father was late onset diabetic and when he was alive and came round for a bridge evening our system was simply to have fruit salad for dessert.      
     Later another member of my family had a cancer scare. We in my family tried to follow the recommendation on the cancer research sites, UK and worldwide. the cure worked.
     Now we are back to the simple rule that everybody should eat healthily to prevent problems. But we already have a system in place for five. This is it.

Five Portions of Fruit Or Vegetables Each Day
   Breakfast - fruit salad with porridge (add because porridge anti-cholesterol)  1 portion of fruit
   Lunch - meat or fish or egg(s) with 2 vegetables and 1 fruit salad -
   Dinner - meat or fish or egg(s) with 2 vegetables; desert is and either fruit salad or half portion of cake/ dessert or fruit salad and a chocolate or small crackers with cheese
 
For elevenses and tea time either two dried apricots or a spoon of cream cheese and a glass of water. Cut out sugar in coffee. Drink semi-skimmed milk.

   On the five a day system we were indulging in extra sugar from a glass or two of wine, cheese after a meal as well as or instead of fruit, sometimes a meal out including a dessert. We weighed ourselves and if the weight went up after a meal out we were back on fruit the next day, or day three if we divided up a take away dessert.

This was adopted as a diet. I have lost weight slowly. 2014 March my weight is 64.8 which is 10 stone 3 lbs. I have to lose another half stone or stone.  I should have achieved that by the end of the year.

In terms of gym and swim, I am doing aqua swim once a week. I would lose weight faster if I went twice a week or better still every day, if I had access to an indoor pool or an outdoor pool and good weather - no snow, no rain, no smog.

Seven A Day
  Our / Your Choice
Breakfast - 1 portion of fruit.
Lunch - 2 vegetables 1 fruit
Dinner 2 vegetables 1 fruit.

You can weigh your fruit and vegetables or just go by the guidelines of one large fish sized piece or a selection of smaller ones.  Ideally have more vegetables than fruit because of the sugar in fruit.

Tips

Buy fruit and vegetables from a shopping list.

Send your most rule-following person to buy food.

Go straight to the fruit and vegetable area in the supermarket and by-pass temptation.

Order online delivery so you are not tempted.

Cut cakes into finger-size portions like a chocolate to have with coffee.

Share desserts, cakes and biscuits and bread rolls between two or three.

Restrict alcohol to after six pm, like most working Americans.

Drink only at weekends.

Cut out drink except for evening birthdays and New Year's Eve.

Restrict drinking - have a January dry month. 

Give up drink for Lent, Ramadan, Passover, whatever.

  

Moth Orchid, blue

My favourite pot plants are orchids. 

More Garden Flowers in Orange and Yellow