Yo Yo - why?

Y'see, now I'm cheating.  The title of this post is designed to entrance you, to draw you in... to persuade you that there is some intrinsic question about yo-yos of which you were previously unaware.

They go up.  They go down.  that's pretty much it.

No.  I am sniggering behind my hand at my own cleverness, for this week's post should really be entitled 'why oh why oh why'... do you see what I did there?  Oh, you did.  Oh well.  Anyway.  Such is the title because I have been 'tagged'.  No, it's not another one of those ankle-jewellery ones, and besides I've been absolutely stringent in not approaching either David Mitchell or Tony Robinson since the last round of injunctions, I know when I am beaten and I have reconciled myself to the fact that neither of these are going to be popping round with an unsuspected diamond and any amount of unrequited longing.  No, this is a different form of taggage, one I have been given by the lovely Catherine Miller, on her blog, which you can have a squizz at here ... where she fetchingly entitles it 'why,why,why' but that would give me a blog heading of 'YYY?' which is just odd, even for me.  And I am linking to here also, because I think this is where the idea came from, which is right and proper because we all know that 'why?' is a question most often asked by small children, even about things that they already know, because they need to check that the answer hasn't changed in the last five minutes.

Surely I cannot be the only mother in existence who has, from either boredom, shortage of time or sheer devilment, answered the 'why?' question with a variety of answers?  For example - 'why are sheep white?'
'well, dear, because they are bred to have white wool because then it's easier to dye it different colours when you're making something from the wool', becomes 'because someone washed them' and then 'because all the blue ones died horribly in a tragic accident'... oh.  It was just me... Oh well.  That probably explains quite a lot about my children.

So, in the spirit of the 'why', I shall think of some of my own...

Why, when I self-admittedly have all the sensitivity of a large carrot, do I have the ability to feel every tiny little lump in my bed at night?  Even weeny little crumbs assume enormity and wedge themselves under my buttocks, ensuring a sleepless night unless I strip the entire sheet off and remake the bed.

Why are clouds?  They hang there, in the air, and no-body thinks it is odd.  I mean, yes, I get the whole condensation thing but...doesn't anybody else think they are downright suspicious?  Especially for things you can't even touch... there will be aliens behind all this, you mark my words.

Come on, you can't tell me they're not planning something...

Toffee.  Why?  Delicious and everything but, really, just advanced self-dentistry in a block.

Why are weekends so short, compared to any other two days of the week?  Take, say, Tuesday and Wednesday.  They positively creep past, sixty minute hours and everything, and yet Saturday evening is gone in a flash and two crates of Guinness.  Oh. Feel I may have answered my own question there.

And finally.  Why, when I buy something and get it home and it isn't what I thought it was going to be, don't I just take it back to the shop?  Why do I make excuses for it and fiddle with it and eventually find it a use as something that it patently isn't and isn't even any good at, but keep using it as anyway?  I refer you to the lampshade tea-pot cosy, the cordless-drill coat hanger and the treadmill cat-bed.

And now, apparently, I have to tag some other, innocent bloggers, who are probably sitting there all innocently at this moment, staring out over the lovely landscape just outside their windows and thinking of...well, knowing my friends, nothing very much.  And I must press them to think of unanswered 'why's' of their own?  Just one question there - why?

So, if you are tagged, please feel free to have a tantrum and moan and throw things and never speak to me again...  because, here you are...


Margaret James 

Kate Johnson 

Talli Roland

Sue Jackson

Chris Stovell

Please feel free to ignore me, chaps, but if you want to think of some 'why's' - now is the time to vent your spleen!  And, if you can only think of Y-fronts, then come join me in the increasingly feverish attempts to remove the leg-tags!

I'm coming, boys!  I'm coming!  Just wait for me to get this tag off....

Book Stuff - yes, real, stuff, about books!

You can't have failed to notice my slipping you a quick one this Wednesday.

Oh.  You didn't notice?  Well, never mind, because I shall reiterate.  No, that's nothing to do with lino - why would you think it would have something to do with lino, when have I ever talked about lino?  Why would you even need to know about lino?

This week, the new cover of my new book, which is new, was revealed.  It looks like this: -

There.  A slightly different angle from the Wednesday one, but, you know, it's a book, you can turn them round and look at them sideways if you want, and this cover is designed to allow you to do just that!

So.  As you can see, it's entitled Hubble Bubble,and  has a very nice picture of a cauldron, a bottle of poisonous-looking stuff and an old book, so I think that you can guess what it's about.  No, it's not my book of recipes.  No-one would pay for that, because most of my recipes are written on little pieces of paper and shoved into inaccessible places, for the good of mankind, although I still maintain my 'Jam and Baked Bean Rice Krispie Crunch' is a noteworthy advance in the cause of cookery.

This is a book about witchcraft.  But pretty rubbish witchcraft, as practiced by a group of women who each have one specific wish they perform spells in order to get.  Mainly though, it's about Holly Grey, a woman who doesn't wish for anything, because she's happy with her life the way it is, doesn't believe in any of that 'magic' twaddle and is far too busy working, visiting her brother and hanging around with her friend Megan to have time for prancing around anything at all.  Let alone a cauldron.

But, you know I wrote this book?  And you know my books are never simple, don't you?  So this one has a lot of truly chaotic elements in, some involving actual elements - well, it snows a lot at one point.  A lot.  It is set in North Yorkshire, where it does sometimes snow quite a lot.

Like this.  There is also an incident of childbirth - but if it's all right with you I won't put up a picture to illustrate that, we all know how it goes, don't we? Like trying to get an umbrella out of a chimney without putting it down first.

There is also a woman who works in BHS, so if cushions and lampshades are any kind of 'trigger' for you, then approach this book with caution, some bonkers people, some people who are really quite normal, a Jeep, handcuffs, motorbikes -  and a Welsh journalist called Kai Rhys, who not only doesn't believe in magic, he doesn't believe in anything very much at all.

And you have to wait until June to find out what the hell it's all really about.  Mwhahahhahahahhahaha!

Oh, and there's also an enormous, sticky, badly-behaved, scruffy dog called Rufus.  Who's based on my dog, Tiggy, only is much, much bigger.

Imagine this, only huge.  And without the laundry basket.

A midweek quickie...

Just popping by, lovely people, to let you have a quick squizz at this....

Out next June, from Choc Lit!

All right, all right, you can go about your business now. Go on... no, there's nothing else for you... No, I'm not even going to do The Dance...

Oh, all right, if you insist....


...there.  Happy now?