Madeleine

Quite nice this morning but meant to rain later, as Shirley says, you have to be prepared for anything (but I'd say rain is the safest bet!). Glad you're a bit cooler, Nollaig. I hate the heat too, especially if you have to go to work in it, and it has been very humid here too but not as bad as where you are, yuk.

Last week's episode was truly spectacular, I thought the dragons were really well done, and the Battle of the Bar Stewards was also epic. What did everyone think of this week's? A few surprises but I felt it dragged a bit at times.

I love Sleepy Hollow too. Feeling a bit delicate after staying up til gone midnight to watch the last GoT....

Hi Lauren and welcome. Madding Crowd and Rebecca are two of my favourites too. Have fun here!

Same here on Saturday, had to dodge the showers, bit better yesterday but rained most of the night. Ground is still soggy, and various events ie fundraising Open Days for local charities, have had to be cancelled due to waterlogged ground. Noll, you wouldn't want the thunder and lightning we had - took me nearly 3 hours to get to and from work on Thursday, and others had horrendous journeys as well. Think we've had more storms this June than we've had all year so far....

I feel sorry for your teacher Peacefield! Rock candy sounds similar to our rock, we also have candy floss (which I think the US calls spun candy?) which is another sugar overload, I don't know how people eat a whole one!

I'm alternating between the sweltering heat of Outremer (the Holy Land, not sure what part exactly as we keep moving around!), and autumn on Fair Isle.

Never have I watched an episode of Big Brother (although a friend once put the TV on for some reason, but none of us watched it) o X Factor or Britain's Got Talent.

Great news Virginia, good luck with the new job.

Much quieter here although I think there may have been another storm in the early hours, as there was some flooding again this morning which caused more train disruption . Rained a bit but quite sunny and dry at the moment.

I guess taters are potatoes, but what are tots?

And sticks of rock are very bad for your teeth, all that sugar I remember buying them as a child and never being able to eat a whole one, it was so sickly. I know of snowballs as the cocktail too, as Hayley described, so our version is quite different to the US's! I think I've heard of snowcones somewhere. Strawberries and cream is probably the quintessential English summer dish, I think ploughman's lunch is pretty much a year round thing, it's certainly a staple on pub menus.

Horrendous here, storms all nights and some areas have been flooded, so there were no overground trains this morning, underground was rammed, buses were packed but not really going anywhere as the roads were all gridlocked, and there were so many people outside my station and the surrounding roads I thought it was getting quite dangerous as the station was closed and the bus queues were jamming the pavement. Got to work around 11.30. Been really muggy and rainy all day, with more threatened. So much for summer

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I read loads of Enid Blyton - Famous Five were the favourite, and I liked St Clare's as well - and then graduated onto Nancy Drew, although in the end there were so many of them I couldn't keep up - I found out recently that "Carolyn Keene" is actually several different authors writing under that name, no wonder there were so many books in the series! I also liked the Paddington books, and have a vague recollection of reading the original Mary Poppins novel, I might even still have it somewhere.

I do read book reviews, sometimes after I've read a book (if it's a favourite author that I've read before) but if it's a new author then I do look at reviews and hope there's a balanced bunch of reviews on there. I do occasionally get review copies either from publishers or magazines but I don't put reviews on Amazon. I read the blurb on the back of books too, but sometimes after I've read the book I think the blurb bears no relation to what happens in the actual book! A bit like film trailers which only show the best bits....

Hi and welcome!

The way things are going with bookshops closing down, I may be going back to Amazon - I do still buy from them occasionally, but given the dearth of bookshops now, and with the ones that are still around not always having a big selection apart from the obvious bestsellers, I might buy more from Amazon. Yet another branch of Waterstone's closed at the weekend, and there are a couple of bookshops just about within walking distance from where I work, but it's not always possible to get there and back at lunchtime. There are a couple of independent bookshops not far from where I live (although one of those recently closed) and again it's not always possible to get there at the weekend, one area in particular is almost impossible to park in on Saturday, and the shop isn't open on Sunday. So I'd much prefer a "real" shop, but it's not always that easy to get to one.

No I wasn't that impressed by Series 5 either, but then I found the books pretty tedious, book 5 (both parts) is my least favourite part of the series. However Series 6 has been, overall, pretty good so far and not knowing what's going to happen adds an extra frisson! So far I've been proven correct about (Coldhands' identity & The Hound still being alive ) ) (sorry tried to get the how to do spoilers link to work but it seems to have disappeared)

Hardly anything on at the moment unless you like football, so watched a film called "Love is all you need" last night, which is a Danish film but has Pierce Brosnan in so quite a bit of English too, it was quite a nice film, shot mainly in Italy (Sorrento) so it looked gorgeous, nice escape from our dreary grey summer.

It did stay dry over the weekend although it was pretty dull most of the time, had a brief spot of the yellow warm stuff around 4.00 yesterday so sat outside for about 30 mins, then it clouded over again. It started raining in the evening and hasn't stopped since, still going strong now - Inver's post says it all really

I did see somewhere on BE's website a while ago that she might revisit the character Kate Kennedy from "Midnight is..." so I don't think she's done writing yet, hope not anyway! Looking forward to Sleeper's Castle (great title).

Blogger Zoella now has her own book group in W H Smith's (large Uk bookseller), still I suppose if it gets more young people reading it must be a good thing. But a lot of celeb written books seem to end up in the bargain bin pretty quickly - and all those trees died for nothing!

I just find it hard to believe that one of the most powerful men in the world can't seem to be able to do anything about a law in his own country. I've heard how powerful the NRA are, and think it's quite scary.

I'm guessing if you have too many boys they start going all alpha male and fighting over the girls?!