This Wonderful Spanky Life!

Yesterday was the Equinox, and now the nights will be longer than the days. Our beautiful, long, hot summer is at a close. Today is warm and sunny with a brilliantly clear blue sky, so we are still "living easy", but by 7.30 in the evening, it is dark. 

The best thing that happened to me this summer was meeting up with a whole cluster of my blogging girl friends. It still brings tears to my eyes that over the years I have made such very good friends via the blogs. These are special friendships, that take time and effort to establish but a nicer bunch of women I couldn't hope to meet.

The high spot was meeting a dear friend who travelled all the way from the other side of the pond. In fact, it was this friend who arranged the entire meeting - wonderful venue and all! Our own dear Ella!

As you can imagine, we all talked ourselves hoarse! We all felt as if we had known each other forever. You can probably guess that some extraordinarily interesting gifts were exchanged! Here is a selection.

Jaye Peaches gave us all a copy of her latest book. It is brilliant! Jaye is such a clever writer! (And it turns out we came from the same village as children! - you cannot imagine what a coincidence that is. I wonder what the odds on that happening are?) If you've not read any of her books, I can recommend them.

Ella and Sam stayed with us for a while. It was SO NICE! We all got on wonderfully! She even made us some of her special burritos, and our son gave them 11 out of 10!

Dan had a wonderful time when we were alone, trying out those new implements. The wooden spoon has my name on the other side! (A personalised spanky spoon!) I don't care for wooden spoons. They are very unforgiving. But although they are less rigid, I think the silicon implements are the worst. Guess which one Dan liked best? Yes. The large lilac coloured spatula! To be honest, I think I liked that best too. It lights the kind of fire you can feel for a very long time afterwards! (Thank you, Ronnie, dear!)

However, Dan said he still likes our wooden paddle with the holes in it best of all. If he has to choose an implement, that is the one he goes for. I threatened to look for more of them when we are next on our travels! I know for certain they would go to good homes.

Now for my other exciting bit of news I want to share with you. My new book, Ami and the Midnight Geese, will shortly be out on Amazon.

Some of you might already have read it on Bethany's Woodshed. Bethany wanted to combine my first book with my new story, so you may have read the first part before, but I can assure you that the second part is the Ami you know and love to laugh at, in full force! I hope you will also be able to guess who the couple are who are written into the latter part of the book. I always promised that if I got the chance I would write her into a story!

I am beginning to get used to my laptop, but I need to set up lots of stuff on it that I had to hand on my old computer, and the flat keyboard and lack of mouse are driving me insane. However, I will get to grips with it all, no doubt. Any hints on laptops would be welcome!

See you later Alligators!