Sneak Peek

Mr Click treated me to this little beauty last week and a couple of days later it made it to me, travelling all the way from the Netherlands!

Not sure what it is?

Check back next week to see just what's inside.

Wordless Wednesday: Soar

Books 33 & 34 of 2015: Velocity by Dean Koontz & To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Last year one of my colleagues at work realised that I would read pretty much any book he gave me, so took it upon himself to recommend me all the books he enjoyed. When Velocity showed up in the charity donation station, he suggested that I try it before putting it back in the box.

Velocity by Dean Koontz is about Billy, a guy who finds a note telling him to make a decision about who lives and who dies; either he ignores it and a schoolteacher is killed, or he goes to the police and an elderly charity worker will meet her end. He treats it as a hoax and ignores it, but then learns that someone fitting the schoolteacher's description on the note has been found dead. When another note shows up, Billy's not so sure this one is a hoax and he soon finds himself drawn into the killer's game.

This was my first Dean Koontz book thought I was familiar with him from a friend at school. He was really into the Dean Koontz books and I remember several trips to the library when he tried to get me to try one, but I wasn't into this sort of genre back then. Now, with my collection of Kathy Reichs books lined up on the bookshelf, it seemed a lot more my sort of thing.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I felt it was very brutal and gory, which I guess is kind of the point with this kind of a crime book. On the other hand, it did wrap up very neatly and it had a fairly happy ending as well (which I was quite glad of).

The character of Billy was interesting; a guy who gave up on pretty much all of his dreams of being a writer after his fiancée, Barbara, fell into a coma. I would have liked to know more about Billy and Barbara; there was obviously a massive back story there but we only got to scrape the very surface of it. By the same token, I think there was more to learn about Billy and his parents as well. Those stories could probably have been a whole book on their own.

Although the story was kind of complicated in places, I found it to be a fairly quick and easy read. I might pick up another Dean Koontz novel some day.

I followed up Velocity with To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, for Week 18 of the Reading Challenge; a Pulitzer Prize winning book.

Cover

It is a classic story about a small town in the American South, told through the eyes of Scout, a young girl. Her father is a lawyer defending a black man accused of attacking a white woman, something which divides the town and opens Scout's eyes to the world around her, while in the background looms the mysterious figure of Boo Radley. I'm completely over-simplifying this book because I just can't summarise it in a few words. Just read it.

I've read this book several times now and it's definitely an old favourite. I think I was lucky that I never had to read it for school. They had already studied it by the time I arrived in Scotland, and they studied it in England after I left. It meant that I have never had to pick it apart and over-analyse it the way that you sometimes have to do in English classes, so I was just able to read it and enjoy it for what it was.

I always try to pick just three quotes to write up in my book journal, sometimes I might stretch to four or five if they are short ones. It was so hard to just select three quotes to sum up the story. I could easily just copy out the whole book.

I love the character of Scout. In a way there are two Scouts in this book. There's the young Scout who is the central character in the story and then there is the older Scout who is narrating it, looking back on the events that helped shape her. Young Scout is so spirited and quirky, she's the sort of kid who you'd just want to be friends with; I'd love a child as cool as young Scout. Older Scout, who narrates the story, has a wonderful way with words; older Scout is the reason why I'd happily copy out the whole book into my book journal.

One of my favourite things about this book is the fact that it marries the day-to-day children's life stuff with the big serious stuff, like the trial. I can't help but remember my own childhood when I read it; the way that I tried to make sense of the stuff the adults did and talked about, and how my own 'stuff' seemed so important by comparison as well. This book captures the sense of that so well.

It's one of very few books that I can happily rank as a five star book, and I always look forward to rereading it. If you've never read it, you really should.

Sunday Walk, Part 2: St Blane's Chapel & Standing Stones

Yesterday I finished up with our arrival on the ridge overlooking Loch na Leighe. This was where the walk really got a little bit trickier.

I think that we made a little bit of a mistake at this point in our route, as we followed the path round the hill when I think she should have gone down towards the Loch. When we came round the corner we found an electric fence which we had to duck under (we weren't sure if it was on or not, but we weren't taking any chances). Then we ended up on the wrong side of a little river. There were a couple of grassy patches in the middle and we managed to make our way across (with a little bit of team work).

At this point the track crosses the land belonging to Plan Farm (the farm that I did my stint on during lambing season) and I suspect that it's been rerouted slightly. We were following the green marker posts and wound up walking along the edge of a field of sheep before coming up against another electric fence with a marker on the far side of it, and this fence definitely seemed to be on. Again we ducked under, walked up the track and found a gate with a marker pointing through it.

We were concerned about running into a field of cows because we'd seen a couple of fields of them at this point and we weren't sure if our current route was going to take us into one of them, so we were rather surprised to turn a corner and discover three pigs. We knew that the cows might have come towards us (one of the group had a run in with some cows on a previous walk) but none of us were familiar with pigs. We weren't too sure what to make of it when two of the pigs came towards us, but they soon went back to their food and we headed on along the track.

Although there didn't seem to be any cows in the field, they had obviously been there recently. The track was very muddy with cowish deposits left here and there. I started picking my way through trying to stand on the most solid bits of mud and occasionally sinking into it if I didn't move quick enough. Some of the others tried finding a drier route which led them into some gorse bushes.

And so I come to the part of the work which was my least favourite part of the journey. I ended up pushing my along the edge of the drier land where the gorse bushes were; it was slow going as I tried to avoid sinking into the mud or slipping. And that's where it all when horribly wrong.

I put my left foot onto what I thought was solid ground, except it wasn't and my foot started sinking. I tried to find a stable footing with my right and failed. In a split second I realised I was going down. I remember thinking that if I fell to the left I would land in the mud but to my right were the gorse bushes. And before I could decide either way my left foot slipped more and I went forward, landing between a pair of gorse bushes with my right hand in one.

And it hurt!

A lot!

For a second I nearly cried, especially when I pulled myself to my feet (finally finding a patch of solid ground to set my feet on) and discovered a massive thorn sticking out my finger. I pulled it out which promptly started my finger bleeding and had to fumble in my pocked for a nearly clean tissue, while everyone was asking me if I was alright. I wasn't really, my arm and my hand hurt and my pride was rather bruised too, but I managed to follow them across the muddy track to the wall which we all struggled over to get onto proper dry land so I could take in my injuries.

My left walking boot was completely caked in mud, as was my left leg almost to the knee, as well as the knee of my right leg. It was about this point that we all decided not to follow the planned route because we didn't know what the track would be like the rest of the way, so instead settled on walking back along the road; a longer walk but one which would probably be a lot safer.

We walked round St. Blane's Chapel and down the hill, where I located another thorn in my hand which I didn't have the guts to remove myself so got one of the girls to do it for me and pinched a plaster from someone else. About this time I realised that I had a whole host of thorns still in my hand; it took me best part of a week to get the rest of them out.

The moral of this story is, of course, if there's a choice between falling into mud or into a gorse bush, aim for the mud every time. It might be messy and smelly but it'll be less painful than the thorn bush!
The walk back up the road to the car was long but nice. We admired the sheep in the fields, chatted (I think I've helped sell another couple of Fitbits) and enjoyed the scenery. We spotted some buzzards and had a few spotty little snowflakes fall on us as well. We took a brief break at the standing stones and it wasn't long after that before we were back at Kingarth.

Despite the slightly scary walk along the rocks and the very painful fall in the gorse bushes, I really enjoyed the walk. It was great fun getting out and about on a part of the island that I don't often go to. I'm not sure it's a walk I'm going to repeat in the immediate future, but I think I will have another go at it in the summer when the land's hopefully dried out a little more.

It was definitely good for my Fitbit; I hit over 24,000 steps for the day, and I earned my Ferris Wheel badge (for climbing over 75 flights in one day)!

Weekly Rundown: Sunday's Walk, Part 1: Lighthouse & Glencallum Bay

This time last week I was waiting down at the south end of the island for my friends to join me for the day's planned walk. There's a group of about eight of us who have decided to meet whenever possible, usually on a Sunday, for walks around the island.

The island is pretty good for walks because although many of the routes require you to walk along 'main roads' without paths, we're not talking dual carriageways or motorways. In some places they're barely wide enough to qualify as a two-way road and they're fairly quiet at the best of times. You usually have plenty of warning when there's a car on it's way (though more commonly it'll be farm traffic, like a tractor).

There's always enough of us walking that there's someone to talk to and no one gets left behind. And if you can't make a walk one week, you know there'll be another one up in a week or two that you can join in on.

Last week's walk was part of the West Island Way. It's a walk that I have done once before, many, many years ago but hadn't ventured on recently because the last time Mr Click and I tried walking that way there had been some trouble with erosion and rock slides which made the path unsafe so we turned back.

While I waited for the girls to show up, I called my Mum to wish her a happy Mother's Day then wandered up to the cemetery at Kingarth and had a little look around. It's one of those places you often drive past but rarely get out to walk around. My little wander earned me 0.8 miles before we'd even started.

The beginning of the walk was familiar to me, I did the first part by myself a couple of weeks ago when I took a stroll out to Pebbly Beach. The ground was just about as boggy as it had been when I was there last. There were a couple of times where we had a bit of trouble picking our way across and before we'd got very far several of us had wet feet, myself included! It turns out that my new walking boots aren't so waterproof on top.

The path leads up to a kissing gate which is right beside a cave. The last time I ventured this way, I didn't get any further than that. It's also here that the path gets a little more treacherous. The path was narrow; to your right were rocks and a steep grassy slope, to the left was a drop to some rocks and the water. This was probably my second least favourite part of the journey (I'll get to my least favourite bit in a moment).

I'm not the most coordinated of people, I'm pretty clumsy, and I'm constantly finding new and unusual ways to injure myself. On our last walk, when we were required to walk alongside a stream on soft muddy ground, one of my friends commented that I looked like Bambi as I wobbled along. Well, on last week's I ended up with one of the party in front of me and one behind, to make sure I didn't throw myself down onto the rocks; at one point someone was holding onto my backpack to keep me upright while I Quasimodoed over the rocks.

Interestingly, my Fitbit showed a massive heartrate spike at this bit of the journey.

It was worth the trouble though. We came out onto a flattish area which prompted a discussion about how it looked like it was straight out of Middle-earth and/or Jurassic Park (the seagulls flying in the distance could almost have been pterodactyls). There's a lighthouse out this way; Rubh an Eun. It's on a little mini island/rocky bit which you can get to as long as you don't mind jumping over a small chasm. We decided against doing that and headed down to the beach.

This is Glencallum Bay and originally was one of the main routes onto the island. There's a rocky ruin of an old inn at the back of the beach. We stopped for lunch here before beginning our climb up a pretty steep slope on the far side of the beach. The path wasn't immediately clear but it sort of zig-zagged back and forth and made it fairly easy to pick out the route. The scenery was beautiful up there, but sort of dizzying as well.

At one point I was leading the way when I happened to stumble upon a hidden loch. I could see the land dipping behind the ridge we were walking along, so I strolled up to the top to take a look, and was really surprised to see a small body of water down there. This is Loch na Leighe, but I couldn't help but be reminded of the Mirrormere in The Fellowship of the Ring.

And this is where I'll leave us today, it was quite a long walk and it deserves quite a long blog post.

Check back tomorrow to hear about how I demonstrated my crazy clumsy skills.

Last Day in Wales: Doctor Who Experience

My second to last day in Wales was spent helping out in the garden. It was hard work but great fun but a certainly felt it the next day. And the next day has photographic evidence, so that's what I'm going to share today.

When I was arranging my trip to Wales my Mum told me that she had something planned for while I was down. It got a little bit complicated because it then turned out that the thing she'd planned was actually going to be closed on the days I would be there. So I extended my trip and on the day I was travelling back, when we were going into Cardiff for my coach home anyway, we went to the Doctor Who Experience.

I may have been a teeny tiny bit excited.

Just a little.

The Experience is in two parts, the experience itself and then the exhibition. I don't want to say too much about the experience because they're very careful not let spoilers leak out. Suffice to say, the whole thing is done really well.

The entrance is dotted with Doctor Who villains; there's a few Daleks, a Weeping Angel, and an Ice Warrior. The experience has allocated slots so we started at 11:30am, giving us a few minutes to queue up and look at the 'artefacts' that they have in the queuing area. You're given a quick rundown of what to expect; strobe lighting, no cameras allowed, as you'd expect. Then you're handed a pass to the Museum of Gallifrey with a large crystal in it and allowed in.

I'm not going to mention exactly what happens during the experience, but you enter the Museum of Gallifrey where a guide explains that we can look at the artefacts, but not touch because 'we don't know how your human DNA will react to them'. It's goofy, but it's a nice way of telling you 'hands off' without actually saying it like that.

We're able to lock on to the TARDIS and watch it travelling through space. Except things kind of go wrong and we have to help fix them. It's very well laid out, the Doctor shows up, and (my personal favourite) we get a stab at flying the TARDIS.

If you get a chance to go, do it. But go when the kids are in school, otherwise the kids get to do all the cool stuff while the grown ups just watch.

What was it I had to remember?

When the experience is over you can go into the exhibition. There are quite a few blue boxes, three TARDIS consoles (including a recreation of the original TARDIS console), K9, and a little documentary about the woman who created the original music for Doctor Who.

My favourite console was the most recent one because it's virtually as it was when it was last used in the TV series. Of course, when it was last used it was pretty much blown up, so it's been cleaned up and installed in the exhibition. You're able to walk around it a lot closer than the other two consoles. I just liked being able to get up close to the stuff actually used in Doctor Who.

You then move upstairs where they have loads and loads of costumes and monsters (and another TARDIS). I'll admit, I found it a little creepy walking into a room with a clutch of Daleks in one part of the room and a group of different types of Cyberman in the far corner. Of all the Doctor Who villains and monsters, Cybermen are the ones that freak me out the most. It took me a while to work to that bit of the room, I can tell you.

It's fun to see the classic costumes worn by the companions and Doctors. Even though they're just on manikins, you get a real sense of the characters as you walk around. There are little snippets of information about the costumes as well; like Peter Capaldi pushed for a black and white costume as a way of harking back to the original Doctor, and for something relatively simple to make it easy for fans to recreate it.

Another thing I noticed; Jenna Coleman is tiny! Karen Gillan is a giant! It's cool that you can get close enough to the costumes and monsters to get a real sense of the scale that you're seeing on the screen. Of course, being a knitter I got as close as I could to the knitwear, particularly Amy's scarf and the Fourth Doctor's scarf. I did resist the urge to reach over and give them a good squish though.

Space in my case was a little limited so I resisted the urge to buy any of the bigger things in the shop. I would've loved to get one of the 'Police Box' hoodies they had, though when I got home I discovered my favourite hoodie has acquired another hole and I sort of wish I'd splurged the £30 as a souvenir. Instead I just picked up a couple of postcards, showing great restraint.

All in all, it was a fantastic attraction and I'm already planning on taking Mr Click there when we go Wales together next. I'm getting confident enough in travelling around Wales with my Mum, that I reckon I could have a go at finding my way around Cardiff to find some of the filming locations around the city too.


Seriously, if you're a fan of Doctor Who, go. Just go!

Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Chapter 9

I said I was getting back into the swing of blogging things, didn't I? If you were hoping for a blog post about my adventures in time and space I'm afraid you'll have to check back tomorrow. Today it's all about the Bella and Edward stuff. That's right, we're picking back up where we left off with Stephenie Meyer's New Moon.

When we last looked at this book (over a month ago now) Bella was getting pretty close to Jacob. There were also reports of a large bear which had been sighted in the woods, the very woods which Bella and Jacob have decided to start hiking in.

This week's chapter is called Third Wheel. Onward with Chapter 9.

What Happens?

Bella decides to host a get together with a group of her friends. Unfortunately everyone except Jacob and Mike bail on her, which makes the evening about as fun as you can imagine. And then everyone gets sick, but Jacob seems to be sicker than everyone else.

Thoughts as I read:

I'm guessing that Bella is either going to be the third wheel when she goes out with Jacob (and a friend) or Bella and Jacob are going to be hanging out and someone else will show up and be a third wheel, perhaps when things start to get interesting. Or it'll be something weird like Jacob decides to put an extra wheel on Bella's motorbike to help her with the whole not falling off thing. Let's read on and find out.

Time began to trip along much more quickly than before. School, work, and Jacob – though not necessarily in that order – created a neat and effortless pattern to follow. And Charlie got his wish: I wasn't completely miserable anymore. Of course, I couldn't fool myself completely.

Typical Bella, even when she's happy, she's looking for opportunities to be miserable. One of the reasons why she's still sad is because now she's improving on the bike so she's not hearing the Edward voice in her head as much. My guess is she's going to have to find something else reckless to do in order to help bring it back.

Suddenly it's Valentine's Day and Jacob is buying Bella 'Conversation Hearts'. Are these anything like love heart sweets? Bella seems confused by this. Perhaps Edward is the third wheel, even if he doesn't show up, he's kind of already in the third wheel in this relationship. She certainly hasn't bothered getting anything for Jacob because she's not been keeping track of the passing time.

Jacob asks her about her plans for the following day, specifically he asks if they are going hiking or to the ER. It's funny because Bella is so bad at riding a motorbike that ER is synonymous with with bike riding, hehe.

And now I think I know where the third wheel thing is coming in. Bella can't hang out with Jacob on Friday because she's hanging out with her other friends from school; they're going to the cinema, but Jacob's been invited along too so it's all good. And then Bella tells Jacob to bring Quil along too. Definitely going to be a third wheel moment here somewhere.

Of course there has been no such group from school planning to go to the cinema so now it's up to Bella to organise it all. She broaches the subject with Mike at school. Poor Mike, at first he thinks that he's going to get a date out it but he soon realises that Bella's talking about a group thing and he's suddenly not so keen. Mike twigs on to the fact that Bella's bringing along Jacob and his friends.

As it happens when the actual thing comes together there's only a handful of them going; Mike, Angela, Ben, Jacob and Bella. That's like five wheels. Mike's still trying to change the plan as well, making suggestions of more romantic films that they might like to see instead of the blood and guts fest that Bella has chosen. She's not to be dissuaded.

And then she goes home to find Jacob hanging out by her house, in his completed car. Then Mike shows up and Jacob gets a bit Edwardy-possessive about Bella. Jeez, what is it that Bella does to these guys?!

There's a bit of male posturing for a while before they are interrupted by the phone ringing. This is where the third wheel thing comes in. Ben's called to say Angela's ill and he doesn't want to come without her. Well, that's awkward. It's just going to be Mike, Jacob and Bella out for the evening. That sounds like fun. Personally, I'd just call the whole thing off. Which is exactly what Mike suggests.

Bella's all for a cancellation but Jacob's not done with his posturing yet. And Mike doesn't want to be outdone. Now it kind of seems like Bella's the third wheel while the two guys are trying to outdo one another. Bella doesn't help the situation when she then starts bragging about how Jacob build the car himself and they should let him drive. Nice one, Bella. Way to make Mike feel more welcome and less awkward.

It's then revealed that Bella doesn't like music. Well, I think she did, but she only liked music when it was composed for her by Edward. Now all music is bad. I can't imagine not liking music. I like to have something playing in the background whenever I can. Bella, not so much.

Jacob's also too young to go see the film that Bella's picked. Well done, Bella, did you not think to pick a film that your friend could legally go see?

Things really just go from bad to worse. After Bella has smuggled Jacob in to the cinema, he's really not approaching the film in the way it's intended. He takes Bella down with him and soon the pair of them are laughing at the film, finding the whole thing totally hilarious.

On the other hand, Mike's not feeling so good. I'm guessing he's either not a fan of the blood and guts fest on the screen or he's picked up the bug that's going around school. Bella follows him out to check on him and Jacob goes too, I'm guessing to point and laugh or something. It's just as well he did because they need someone to go look in the men's toilets. Jacob shouldn't find this so funny, he's going to have to drive the guy home in his recently refurbished car!

Jacob's pushing for more from Bella, he's decided now is the perfect moment to take his friendship with Bella to the next level. Something else to improve the journey home from the cinema. Bella shoots him firmly down which Jacob takes as clear evidence that she's still not over Edward:

His face was thoughtful, no longer teasing. "It's still the other one, isn't it?"
I cringed. Funny how he seemed to know not to say the name – just like before in the car with the music. He picked up on so much about me that I never said.

Jacob's starting to seem a little bit like Edward here, assuring Bella he has all the time in the world to wait for her to come around. Don't you start being a stalker now, Jacob? On my likeability levels you're almost up there with Alice! There are not enough likeable people in these books!

They talk for a little while longer. I don't really care what they're talking about. But the conversation moves on when Jacob spots the scar left by James biting Bella. And then Mike comes out the toilets, defending himself; he felt ill before the movie started. He really should've not gone. They have to put him in the car and head home but since no one was really enjoying the movie anyway, I suppose driving a puking Mike home is preferable to watching the film.

There's a weird little moment when Bella notices how hot Jacob is, temperature-wise. He's like the complete opposite of Edward.

How could I explain so that he would understand? I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house – condemned – for months I'd been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all – just the one small piece. He deserved better than that – better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

And now I have the Fixer-Upper song from Frozen going round my head.

Hopefully things are about to get interesting, at least I hope Jacob isn't about to start spewing too. Bella drives Mike home and then Jacob says that he's feeling a little bit strange. I'm guessing this is the thing that his dad told him he would understand soon, the shape-shifter stuff that I've been spoiled for. He rushes off, promising to call Bella when he gets home.

Except he doesn't.

So she calls but Billy answers and informs her that Jacob made it home but was too sick to call. I'm guessing that's because he's busy turning into a werewolf or bear or something. Billy's not in the mood for chatting. And before long Bella's puking too. Congratulations, Bella. You've got stomach flu too!

After spending nearly a whole day on the bathroom floor, Bella gets better and calls Jacob to see how he's doing. Answer: No so good. He definitely does not have the same bug as her, and he's being very weird about it.

I'm sure all will be explained in Chapter 10: The Meadow. I guess we know what that means. They're going to find the meadow, and perhaps Jacob will make a revelation of his own there.