Janet

Ah, thanks. I haven't heard of that.

Only at weekends!

It's probably screamingly obvious, but what is NW?

I reserved and borrowed it from the library, Claire. I think DVDs are around £2 per week (plus reservation fee).

I'm finding it rather slow-going. I'm half way through and nothing much has happened so far! I wasn't keen on A Room With a View either. I had planned to read A Passage to India at some stage, but I'm coming to the conclusion that Forster is not for me. Chesilbeach loved it though, so it's obviously just a matter of taste.

Thanks, guys. I'm feeling the Hot Fuzz love! I bought a new book today (oops!) - it's Through the Woods by H E Bates - recollections of woodlands in Kent.

I love foxes too. Beautiful.

Just under 200 pages. I'm glad you're enjoying it because I have it (as you know)! I'm still plodding through E M Forster's Howards End (that's not a typo - there's no apostrophe!) for Hertfordshire in the English Counties challenge.

It's so pretty! I went to Wells today and bought a couple of books with my vouchers. This is Wells Cathedral (which has nothing to do with my book buying, but I love it so much, so I thought I'd post it! And this is St Cuthbert's. If we have any Hot Fuzz fans (it's one of my favourite films!) this is the church where the fateful fete took place!

£26 is a lot for a chicken! I'd probably pay £22 for this though!

I've done it myself - it's easily done! Very occasionally I can't work out where it went wrong (I tend to preview my long posts before I post them) and have to bail out and start again!

No worries. If it happens again you could try this - I flicked the thing in the tool bar that looks like a light switch to switch the BB Code offf and then copied it into Word and searched 'quote' and worked it out that way - and then got rid of the extra quotes it had put in at the bottom. Then I pasted it back in and previewed the post (in case it was still broken) to make sure it looked okay and then posted it. Alternatively, you could just ask one of us again!

I want to go to Highgate too.

I've fixed it. You had one quote that wasn't closed off with the [ /quote].

Thanks! I don't suppose it'll last, but it's good while it does! Oooh no, I wasn't implying that! The Royal Mail sell 'Smilers', which are personalised stamps - I thought you might have done that. They cost about 20p each more than 'normal' first class stamps, mind you. The Irish stamps were gorgeous. I've still got it! It was the top one of these... isn't it pretty.

Snap! I read about 100 or so pages of The Children's Book in 2010 but didn't really engage with it, but my Mum loved it and we have quite similar tastes, so I might try it again some time. On a shallow note, it does have the most beautiful cover! Brilliant, that's very helpful. Thanks you for the offer of the loan ( ). As it's got Christmas in the title (even if that's a bit misleading! ), I'd quite like to own it because I really like his books. I think I will buy it with some of my Christmas Waterstones vouchers.

We visited Windsor Castle a couple of years ago, and one of the private buildings has a row of those in the window!

Book #5 Walking Away by Simon Armitage The ‘blurb’ Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining Walking Home, the restless poet has followed up that journey with a walk of the same distance but through the very opposite terrain and direction far from home. In Walking Away Simon Armitage swaps the moorland uplands of the north for the coastal fringes of Britain's south west, once again giving readings every night, but this time through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, taking poetry into distant communities and tourist hot-spots, busking his way from start to finsh. From the surreal pleasuredome of Minehead Butlins to a smoke-filled roundhouse on the Penwith Peninsula then out to the Isles of Scilly and beyond, Armitage tackles this personal Odyssey with all the poetic reflection and personal wit we've come to expect of one of Britain's best loved and most popular writers. In 2010, Simon Armitage – poet, author and university lecturer - set out to walk the Pennine Way… in the opposite direction from the way it's normally walked, walking from Scotland back to the village in which he was born. As a comparison to that inland walk, he decided in 2013 that he would walk again, this time in the South of the country using the South West Coast path from Minehead in Somerset to the Isles of Scilly at the southern-most point of England. Starting his walk on Tuesday 27 August he is joined by various people on each section - some he knew (including, on a couple of occasions, his wife Sue) and some complete strangers who had read about the walk and wanted to join him. On his way he passes various points of interest including the church where the poet Sir John Betjemen is buried, Godrevy Lighthouse, the view of which inspired Virginia Woolf to write the novel To the Lighthouse and a plaque commemorating World War One poet Lawrence Binyon, who wrote 'For the Fallen', the poem from which the famous lines: They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. are taken, which he wrote whilst overlooking the sea in Cornwall. In order to pay for his food and accommodation, his evenings are spent performing his poetry in a variety of establishments – from large private houses to crowded seaside pubs – and at the end of each performance a sock is passed round to enable the audience to give money… if they think he's worth it! I'm not very familiar with Simon Armitage's poems – there are two or three poems in the book that he wrote about his trip – I really liked the one at the end Legends of the Crossings, about a river that obstructed him at one point. I was looking forward to reading this book because, although I haven't walked the Coastal Path myself, I know quite a lot of the towns he stopped in along the way. I found it to be a bit repetitive on occasions and it felt as though his heart wasn't really in it. It was almost as though he just did the walk so that he could write a book at the end of it but didn't really have any enthusiasm for his task. That’s not to say I didn't enjoy it – I did – but I have read more animated travel books. This hasn't put me off reading Walking Home if I come across it on my travels – maybe he'll be more animated on his home turf. Thanks to Kay for the loan of the book. The paperback edition is 276 pages long and is published by Faber & Faber. It was first published in 2015. The ISBN is 9780571298365. 3/5 (I liked it) (Finished 10 January 2017)

It's always nice to see a new blog. Happy reading in 2017

I definitely think listening to them gets easier with practice. I listen to them in the car and don't find them in the least distracting.

That's very impressive. I've started Howards End by E M Forster today for Hertfordshire as I want to read something new rather than re-reading Pride and Prejudice. I wasn't mad about A Room with a View when I read it so I hope this one is more enjoyable!

Happy 2017 Claire - I hope you have good year of reading. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

I think we're pretty much all crazy here! You're welcome. I spotted Nollaig too. In Christmas 2015 Noll's card had a stamp on that said Nollaig. I shared it on Facebook saying what a lovely personalised stamp it was! Even though I knew what it meant, I'd forgotten and thought Noll had the stamps made just for her!

Ooh, can I ask you about Village Christmas, and other notes on the English Year? I kept looking at this (it has Christmas in the title, so of course I did!) before Christmas and trying to decide whether to buy it, but wasn't sure if it was just essays from other books by him in a different volume. Do you know if some of the articles have appeared in his other books?

Someone bought Peter (my husband) that one for Christmas. I'm definitely planning to read it! I think I'd have preferred one of the other titles though - Brexit is so last year!