The End Of 2022 - Part 1.

    Well hello! Long time no see! No, I haven't disappeared in a puff of smoke or fallen off the face of the planet - I'm not quite that heavy! - or done a fine impression of an Oozlum Bird, but I did need a bit of breather from the blog and to be perfectly honest, I haven't really felt that chatty over the last month or so, what with the weather, Christmas and "other stuff". But now I'm back and sort-of ready to regale you with woolly escapades and yarny adventures!

    But I thought first I would try and finish last year off with a bit of a catch-up. And do know, I had to go and read my last post because I couldn't remember what the hell I'd written about! Turns out it was mostly Christmas Cactus, so lets start there...

    All our plants flowered well and although some of the blooms do look similar, there are some subtle differences...

    ...they never look well though when they go over, more like bedraggled tails of some sort. I don't photograph those. I'm currently waiting for the Hyacinth my Mother bought me for Christmas to flower, it's getting there but it still has a few days to go before it actually blooms. Strangely, I can't tell what colour it's going to be yet, the label says Blue but, I'm not so sure. I'm sure it will be pretty whatever colour it is!

    I finished reading "Heroes In The Wind" by Robert E. Howard and I have to say I really enjoyed it! I mentioned I was going to read this book next, in one of my Blogtober posts but just to remind you, the author is the chap who created Conan The Barbarian, among other characters, and this book is a collection of his stories plus two novellas published in full.

    I have never read any of his work before, although I remember seeing it in the library when I was younger, but like most of us I imagine, I have seen the films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Momoa and James Purefoy. Even so, the stories were in a way a bit of a surprise in that they are largely short affairs but very visual and very detailed - I could see the stories flowing through my mind so clearly it's a wonder why more films have not been made. There were a few stories in the first part of the book that didn't quite work as well for me as others, but that's only to be expected. I'm definitely going to read this book again sometime and I am interested to see what stories are in the other Robert E. Howard collection I have and if they are as enjoyable, but that will probably be later in the year sometime.

    I then read "Whale Adventure" by Willard Price. I used to read his books when I was younger, got 'em from the library, but I never had access to the whole series of "...Adventure" books, so when they were re-published a few years ago I got them all, and I've been slowly working my way through them ever since. It was a quick read, 4 or 5 nights I s'pose, and although I thought I had read it years ago none of it was familiar, so I obviously hadn't!

    I've been reading "Brisingr", the third book in "The Inheritance Cycle" by Christopher Paolini since then, and I'm still not sure I want to! It's been a long while since I read the second book "Eldest", and yes, it does follow on from there but, I'm not sure it reads in the same way. Know what I mean? It's a bit long winded in places too which is never good and I will admit to nodding off a few times while reading it. I'm sure I've read somewhere that "The Inheritance Cycle" was originally intended to be a trilogy, but was then turned into a quadrilogy. I'm already wondering if it's going to be one book too many. We shall see.

    That's it for part one, I'll continue in part two shortly.

    Until then, Goodbye.👋😀