GoodReads

Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish! by Stephen Leather

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A great fun short story. Nice character description, i felt comfortable with them in moments. I too (Like Inspector Zhang) like a locked door mystery - I shall look forward to reading more of Stephen Leather's work



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The one where no animals die in the preparation of my dinner

I'm not a vegetarian, but I love vegetarian food, and Indian food, so when a friend of mine offered to lend me her favourite vegetarian cook book (By none other than the famous animal eater Hugh Fearnley-Whatshisname ) I leapt at the chance. And the recipes all looked and sounded great!

But not only that they seemed like they would be easy to make and they sounded tasty! Finally after much scurrying about to find cumin seeds, I cooked the lentil dhal this evening .

And it was so easy, so cheap, so delicious that I've decided I must have a copy of the book for my very own. So if Santa is reading.....

and in all honesty, I recommend you pop it on your Christmas list ... if you don't have a surfeit of cookbooks already, and assuming you've been good this year :-)

Slicing onions (complete with tears - I read on twitter this week that the way to avoid crying when cutting onions was to not get too emotionally attached)

and then boiling the lentils


frying the onions with the cumin seeds

and adding them to the now softened lentils...

and then, grabbing some flat bread and scoffing the dhal!

It has been brought to my attention that this post is not Nigella-y enough. I do apologise.

Remember to take care when eating the dhal by scooping it up in soft flat bread, it could fall into your cleavage, and then where would you be!

Power is cheap

Once upon a time an elf company sold a magic product. They sold it to 100 people, each person had a chat about what they wanted and paid what the elves suggested. They were all very happy with what they paid and it suited them.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

 
50 people paid £1000 a month for the ongoing use of the magic. 50 people paid £100 a month but the elves were happy, they needed £55000 to make a profit.

Then a wizard said it was unfair, everyone should get the cheap price. So he cast a spell enforcing the cheapest price for everyone.

Now the company only made £10000 a month! Disaster!, quickly the company elves recalculated the prices,if everyone was on the cheapest price, then they needed to raise it!

£55000 divided by 100 was £550,so they made that the new cheapest price and the higher price £10000. Now everyone paid £550

50 people were very happy, but the other 50 were very, very sad.

The wizard was very happy indeed. But no one had ever liked the wizard anyway.

The End

Scream Time

sorry no, not scream, screen...or maybe I was right the first time.

We (not the royal we, I do have a husband) have settled on what we consider appropriate screen time for our soon to be teen daughter.

We are not a family that watches much TV, we have never watched before 4pm and as adults we tend not to sit down to watch until about 9pm and we go to bed at 10pm so we are not square eyed. We also try to be discerning in what we watch, sticking to a few dramas (no soaps, no reality tv) and some nature, or history or art and culture stuff.

We have a child though and she is less discerning, loving many comedies, kids shows, reality stuff, whatever and while we try and restrict times and ensure the TV is not actually unsuitable we let her get on with it. For a while we even tried total derestriction (during the summer holiday) hoping she'd get bored and it would lose the attraction, this didn't work, she pretty much watched every waking hour and moaned if we asked her to leave the house with us at any time!

So now we have a fairly strict regime of timings, less TV in the week and never more than 2 hours a day. (screen time is not just TV it includes computer/wii time too but often computer time is actually youtube or iplayer time!) and for a while that seemed to go well but lately the times for TV are seen as a right, an entitlement, with arguments that TV comes first, before chores, before homework. Behaviour is getting worse too and while I know teens do have the whole struggle with hormones ... it all seems so TV orientated.

I guess what I wonder is what you do? How can we cope? Are we unfair? What is normal? Do we seem too strict or not strict enough? Is there ever an excuse for rudeness?

I totally adore DD but some days I can see why some animals eat their young!

Help!

We live in probing times

I know. I'm obsessed. But the news media (at least on line, I don't buy any papers but I bet they are similar) have a new word and damn are they going to use it. I feel I need to buy them a thesaurus.

Lately there have been many horrible stories from the past (and present) uncovered by journalists and others and in many cases the government or another body has started to investigate the incident, to carry out an inquiry, to question, to research, to quiz, to study, to scrutinize....to PROBE! 

Yes gentle reader probing, once the plaything of aliens, has become the new buzzword in news-speak.

Especially appalling examples link the probing to child abuse, but probing is taking place all over the web, at all times of the day and night. You are never safe from THE PROBE!

India Launches Probe against Wal-Mart

CIA launches probe into Petraeus scandal 

FDA probe seeks links to energy drinks and deaths 

British Regulator Probes Controversial BBC Report

Dave Lee Travis arrested by police probing Jimmy Savile sex abuse claims

and on, and on, and on.....thousands of hits on Google news just as a start.

So here Journalists, this is for you, a handy link 

to THESAURUS.COM

You stop saying 'probe' from today, and we can all move on as though this unpleasant thing never happened.

Remember

I remember the fallen.

 I think of the struggle and pain of individual men and women fighting all over the world. 

And I don't like it. 

The remembering of the war, the great war, the war to end all wars, was to ensure it never happens again. We are not doing very well: but still I remember. This year as always I shall be silent at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month and think of the dead. I shall pray that sometime in the future the dead we remember will not be recent dead but soldiers from long in the past. Pray that eventually we will come to our senses and stop killing each other.

Christmas Decoration Swap

We did one last year and I know I've left it a wee bit late for the keen crafters so I'm amending the rules a bit...

If you would like to play you need to, 

• be over 18 or have your parent/guardian's permission to give out your address.
• add a comment here AND email me your name, twitter/blog name and address
• let me know if you would rather send a gift to someone in your own country or are happy to post abroad (I'll do my best but if you are alone in wanting to play in your country this may not be possible)
• be prepared to make/buy a Christmas decoration and post it to arrive by 15th December (or as close as you can if sending abroad)

This year I think the decorations can be handmade or bought or a mixture! You could buy a bauble and paint it for example! (maximum spend about £5 but no minimum, if you can make something gorgeous for 30p go for it!)

There will be a theme and the theme is animals, of course there is a Christmas theme too, so giraffes dressed as Santa, Mary on a donkey, a festive ferret, the world is (almost) your oyster! (hmm Christmas themed sea creatures?)

If you'd like to sign up I need to you to have commented and emailed me by 10th November.

Also why not include a Christmas card with your favourite holiday recipe? Thanks for playing. Spread the word.

We'll need a minimum of one and a maximum of 20 to play. ;-)