Madeleine

She's lovely, and yes I agree with Athena about the temptation of a book not being available at such a good price another time!

Been raining since yesterday afternoon, and quite a cold wind too. Meant to be having a work "team building afternoon" in the local park, but it's showing no sign of clearing up at the moment, despite a warm and sunny weather forecast!

Hi and welcome, do you have any favourite authors?

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Just got: the Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch (finally published!) Last Seen by Lucy Clarke (just seen that Lauraloves has got this one too)

After being very threatening and cloudy for a while last night, which finally blew over, it's now raining, and much breezier and cooler.

The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon - this latest instalment of the Commissario Brunetti series is slightly different, in that it isn't, for the most part, about a murder. Instead it's a bit of a cold case - at a tedious dinner party given by his in-laws, Brunetti is introduced to an elderly friend of his wife's mother, who wants him to find out what really happened some 15 years ago, when her grand-daughter was allegedly pushed into one of the canals and, although she was rescued, sadly she was underwater long enough to suffer brain damage, and as a result was left with the mental age of a 7 year old. After all this time, it's difficult to prove it was anything more than an accident (and not a suicide attempt as some have suggested); the man who rescued her was a known drunk back then, and is even more so now, but he is the only definite witness. But Brunetti does his best, and despite being thwarted at pretty much every turn, he persists. This is another enjoyable book, with some nice dry humour, and plenty of food too! It's quite languid, but there are a few twists later on, and Brunetti and his family and colleagues (well some of them anyway) are likeable as ever. 8/10

Can I join you? I don't like large gatherings either, and I agree about small talk - it's just a way of passing the time, and neither party is probably that interested anyway.

Song for Whoever - Beautiful South

Good Morning, Midnight by Reginald Hill

Fathers

Relations

I watched the first episode last night, and really enjoyed it - one sex scene but it was done quite tastefully! I thought it was good overall, and quite well cast, although I found Clare's voiceover a bit annoying, I think there was too much of it. But apart from that, I loved it.

Great review Will, I have this book so will try top read it fairly soon. I enjoyed The Snow Child but felt it flagged a bit towards the end, so I'll be interested to see how this one compares.

Me too!

I love those regional terms of endearment, I used to speak to a Scottish lady quite often who always called me "hen", and ,my friend's mum, who was also Scottish, used to call everyone "pet". Hard to believe some people find these terms offensive or sexist!

Did he use a real egg - well done by the way - we used to use a potato at my school sports day.

Keeping up with the food theme, I've never eaten oysters (and wouldn't want to either).

That's hot Athena, we had that a couple of weeks ago and it was horrible, especially at night. It's cooled down a bit here now, and we had a storm yesterday evening, bit breezier today.

We finally had a storm last night, luckily it was quite considerate and waited til I got home from work! It rumbled around for a while from about 6.45, then the deluge started around 7.15, and then it stopped and brightened up, just in time for me to go out and play boules with my walking group, so it was very well-timed. Afterwards the ground was barely even wet, you wouldn't think it had rained at all, but saved me watering the garden anyway. Bit cooler today, but lots of rainclouds so I'm not sure what it's going to do.

It's Friday again!

Sitting

Pleased to see that the new Charlaine Harris adaptation "Midnight Texas" will be shown on the Syfy Channel from the end of July (27th I think).

This is one of my favourite crime series, and they're all worth reading, I love Ruth, she's very believable and has a lovely, dry sense of humour. And the setting is great too.

There's a Moon over Water in Central London, or there used to be; it might have been demolished to make way for Crossrail, I think I've seen a couple of others as well. A pub mentioned in (I think) Barnaby Rudge is quite near where I live, I've been there a couple of times but not for a while now. Dickens did stay there, as did (so it's rumoured anyway) Dick Turpin (notorious highwayman)!