October 1st 2013

Here we are now into October.  It makes me feel cold even thinking about it.  But I have known some beautiful days in October.

Well, my old friend that I hadn't seen for 62 years turned up on August the 8th for a couple of days and we recalled our school days ... short trousers and caps... and school dinners, and how we used to discard our inedible meat - which was most of it - behind the old upright piano in the dining room and wondered if anybody ever moved the thing and found it.
I showed him the delights of Barnsley, as much as I could.  The one thing that seemed to fascinate most of all was the statue of Dickie Bird!
It was sad when they had to leave.  But all good things come top an end, as some miserable so and so said.

I was weighed on August 2nd and weighed exactly the same again.  I had weighed exactly the same for two months and it was very annoying, after all I have been through.  So I had a long interview with sexy Linda (of Change4Life) and she went through what I ate on a 'regular' day and between us, we discovered that I was simply not keeping to the correct percentage of the different categories.  I was 90% there, but, according to Linda, it really mattered.  I had to be a 100% right, but that there was absolutely no need to feel hungry.  So I came away from that interview being directed not to pinch pieces of pineapple or the odd strawberry or two or three when I am preparing tea for the queen.  Simply have the prescribed five a day in the appropriate sized portions and no more.  Have another slice of brown wholemeal bread to eliminate any suggestion of hunger pangs, and have a cup of milk a day because my intake of dairy products was below the proportion required.
All these changes were made so that I would never be hungry, and that I would be eating the healthiest diet the NHS could devise for a man of my age and size.  Well I wasn't convinced, but I gave it a go.  I did exactly what sexy Linda had said, and behold, when I was weighed on September 6th, I had lost 3 lbs!
Obviously, I am continuing the regime and hope to have lost another few pounds when I am weighed next Friday, October 4th.
Up or down, or the same, I will keep you posted. 

Sales of THE BIG FIDDLE are well up to the mark, I hear the large prints rights have been taken up by Thorpes.  They are the very nice specialist publishers who reprint the book in a much larger font so that readers who have sight problems can read it more easily.  They have reprinted most of my titles ... all the Angel books, I believe.  By the way, if you prefer to read from your ebook, THE BIG FIDDLE is being published in that form in November.

I have a new title, THE FRUIT GUM MURDERS, another Angel book coming out in March 2014.  Then there's THE MONEYTREE MURDERS, the 22nd Angel book, which I hope will be out by Christmas 2014.  I am also working on another book, which is as yet untitled, so you see I haven't been idle this past summer.

Wherever you are, whatever you're reading, enjoy yourself.  Remember, you're only young once.  Enjoy your reading.