~Killers Of The Flower Moon David Gann A true crime story that makes your blood boil and stuns you into stony silence at the potential for human depravity. In the 1800’s the Osage Indians were run off their reservations several times by the US government, in the end being forced to hand over nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land. In the 1870’s they found land in Kansas that was so hilly and rocky they deemed it of no interest to the white man and decided to purchase it. Then, in an amazing twist of fate, it turned out that…
Pudding&Mess Posts
The Gimlet has a backstory along the lines of the Gin and Tonic. It was created as a way for the navy to incorporate lime juice into its diet to avoid scurvy. These days scurvy may be almost unheard of, but between 1500-1800 roughly two million sailors died of what was a very painful death. In the 1790’s it was discovered that lemons were responsible for holding scurvy at bay, prompting all sailors to be issued a daily dose of the citrus to be consumed in rum. In the 19th century, lemons were switched to limes because they were more…
Should you ever be struck with a sudden inexplicable urge to stand on the northern-most point of the UK you would have to travel to the remote Scottish archipelago, the Shetlands, and it’s tiny rock-island of Muckle Flugga. It features a lighthouse and, well, that’s about it, but its stunning views of rolling Shetland hills and the Atlantic compensate. As far as the most northerly inhabited island, that would be Unst. Unst is a community of about 600 people, lots of cute shetland ponies, a brewery and a distillery. I’m sure the last two are highly vital to remote island…
~Lark Rise To Candleford Think of this show as the BBC version of Little House On the Prairie. It’s all warm and fuzzy and positively bursting at the seams with moral goodness. And I mean that in the nicest possible way because I love both shows. Lark Rise is a hamlet of poorer townsfolk while the market town of Candleford is its wealthier neighbor. Sixteen year old Laura Timmons (Laura Ingalls) is the bridge between the two, her adult voice narrating the stories. She leaves her family in Lark Rise to start a job at the post office with her mother’s…
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley opens with the line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” which is considered to be one of the best in literature. It is a quintessentially British story, evoking a bygone era with its country house setting and people who spend glorious summer days lounging, swimming and partaking of tea on the lawn. It is a classic coming- of- age story which embodies the confines of class structure and the rules and manners of Edwardian England while also encompassing themes of power, forbidden love, memory, lost innocence and the impact of the past on the future.…
The phrase “dog days” doesn’t actually come from our canine friends lolling around in the heat, apparently. It comes courtesy of the ancient Greek and Romans and has more of a celestial meaning than a four legged one. In July, Sirius, known as the “dog star” (because it made up the nose of the constellation, Canis Major, shaped like a dog) would rise at the same time as the sun. Because it was such a bright star, it was initially believed that its energy combined with the sun to create the hottest days of the year – the “days of…
This is a drink of the ’80’s. A time period which doesn’t have a stellar reputation for producing anything of real style or substance. Hot pink lycra, oversized shoulder pads and big hair certainly, but I think most of the cool, classy stuff belongs to a few decades earlier. But it just so happens that I was a big fan of the fuzzy navel back in the day and in a recent moment of nostalgia, decided to mix one up. Turns out there are some things that can be brought back and enjoyed all over again. The fuzzy navel is…
Martin Clunes is an endearing teddy bear of a man with a warm voice and a gentle soul. At least that is how I imagine he would be. His first television appearance was a Dr. Who episode back in 1983 and he’s been going strong ever since. He’s been in a variety of shows over the years with the most well known being Men Behaving Badly (which I’ve never seen) and the one below which shows a very different side of Martin than everything else he has done. Watch a few…you won’t be disappointed. ~Doc Martin Portwenn is the charming…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! This is where I must confront my apparent obsession with books featuring elegantly dressed women on the cover. See here and here. Somewhere I read a phrase that this book was a “substantive beach read” which I thought to be an excellent turn of phrase and one which describes this book perfectly. It’s an easy to read page turner grounded in good writing, excellent dialogue (really, that can make or break a book) and a decently complex…
~Blue Murder In the opening episode pregnant Janine Lewis becomes a newly minted DCI and so takes home a bottle of champagne to celebrate with her husband — whom she discovers in bed with another woman. Ouch. But Janine doesn’t have time to cry over spilled milk —or champagne, which she immediately pours down the sink — and so the next scene shows her taking care of morning madness while getting kids out the door and herself to work. And that is, really, what sets this show apart from others of its ilk. Janine’s home life is messily entangled with her professional…