Staying Above Water

Sujata Massey 

It takes just two tanks of gas to get the 11100 miles between here and Southern Louisiana--and no tolls to pay either. I know this because last week, I drove there with my husband to see his mother and brother and the rest of the family. Sharing the driving made it relaxing, as well as our decision to stay in old hotels and inns both ways. 

Louisiana is the kind of place where there’s so much to look at, taste, and feel that I inevitably become interested in something unexpected. This time, I saw the rebuilding of houses after Hurricane Ida. I casually use the expression 'keeping my head above water' to express that I feel too much is going on. But in Louisiana, that phrase is literally something people worry about  every fall. 

 

Tony grew up with his older brother, Don, in Metairie, a near suburb of New Orleans. A few years after the destruction of 2005’s disastrous Hurricane Katrina, both my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law worked hard to rebuild their properties. And then they both made decisions to get farther away from the Gulf, settling in the towns of Mandeville and Covington. These neighboring towns lie on the north side of Lake Ponchartrain, a massive body of water that has a 35-mile long causeway that connects it to New Orleans and its near suburbs.  

 

While still classified as South Louisiana, my inlaws' new home base--part of St. Tammany Parish--is too far to be at risk from a gulf surge. However, there is that lake I just mentioned.  630 square miles.  

Don’s spacious house was built on pilings 20 feet high. It lies about two blocks from Lake Ponchartrain. My mother-in-law’s nursing home in nearby Covington was built far from the lake. However, it is vulnerable to the threats of wind damage and power outages.

 

Tony remembers many hurricanes from his childhood in the 1960s through the early eighties. He recalls the routine of piling into the car and evacuating to a motel in Northern Lousiana whenever the evacuation orders came. After 1969’s devastating Hurricane Camille, my late father-in-law, Sam, took Tony and Don on a road trip  along the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi so they could see things like massive fishing boats run aground into the middle of shopping districts. 

 

Katrina is the biggest hurricane on record for Lousiana. Reaching Category 5 status in the ocean, it reduced slightly to a Category 3 hurricane when it arrived in New Orleans. The water surge was so forceful that several New Orleans levees failed. Much of New Orleans flooded, with people drowning in their own houses or on the road when they tried to flee. Katrina caused 1577 deaths in the state, with smaller numbers of deaths in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Florida, as well as plenty of property destruction. 

When Katrina came, Tony's family was safely evacuated to North Louisiana. However, their homes in Metairie were damaged. Don's home had flooded; even though it was less than a foot, that was enough moisture to destroy all the walls. Part of the roof was pulled off at the house in Metairie where the boys grew up and Tony's mother, Harriot, still lived. Harriot came to live with us in Baltimore for several months, until Don had overseen the completion of repairs to her house; his took a lot longer. 

They were among the lucky ones. Other people never were able to salvage their houses and became renters. Thousands of people left New Orleans as disaster refugees, their homes and possessions destroyed, and settled in other parts of the country. 

 

Katrina brought so much pain that Hurricane Ida arriving in 2021 seemed like a cruel cosmic joke. I’d planned to be in New Orleans in September 2021 for the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. In late August, I reluctantly cancelled my hotel and flight because Delta was spreading exponentially in Louisiana--faster than anywhere else in the country. Enough Bouchercon participants were cancelling for this reason that the convention organizers opted to cancel that year's convention, postponing the hotel reservation for a future year. Lo and behold, Ida announced she was coming into town that very weekend. 

 

Ida came on Sunday, August 29, with 150-mile an hour winds and heavy rains. Evacuation had been recommended and most people, but not all, had left New Orleans. Fortunately, the redesigned levees held the water from flooding the city. The greatest damage came from the fierce winds. An estimated 92 people died due to the storm in nine states.

Tony's mother stayed in the nursing home and all was well there, given its good location and back-up power sources. Don, his wife and youngest daughter evacuated north. It was a good thing, because their part of Mandeville was flooded, leaving two feet of mud in the open area under the house where his cars would have been parked, if he hadn't removed them. 

House elevated on pilings in Old Mandeville

 

People in Louisiana are used to storms, and they clean up as fast as they can afford--and if FEMA and insurance come through for them. This time around, because of pandemic supply chain problems, construction supplies took months to arrive—and construction workers were in short supply, as they are across the country.  

 

A neighbor's house on temporary risers

 

As I walked around the neighborhood filled with lush trees and tropical foliage, I noticed most houses were on pilings, and others were in the process of being raised, with blocks underneath. I gazed into the neighborhood's ditches, a historic and simple way to assist with the diversion of overflowing lake water. These ditches are cut into the earth alongside the roads near the lake. The ditches held murky water, weeds, and occasionally, visitors from the lake. We were advised to go out walking carrying a long pole in order that an alligator might emerge and behave aggressively. During our walk, it turned out the gators had better places to be. 

 

 

I paused at one house right on the lake that was vastly bigger than the others with an unusual wrap around style. Someone had recently bought the acreage, which originally had an old, small house on it. The original house had very inexpensive flood insurance. In order to keep the same low insurance rate, the home buyer could not tear down the original residence. Instead, he built his dream home  to encapsulate the old one. And yes, it’s on stilts—but because he elevated at 15 feet, rather than 20, the space below isn't highenough to house all his vehicles. 

The truck on the left just can't make it in

 

Mandeville has a charming historic section nestled along another stretch of the vast lake. In "Old Mandeville," you can eat biscuits and shrimp and grits at Café Lalou and shop for candles and vintage towels at a number of small shops.  The town was developed as a summer resort community for wealthy New Orleanians to visit in the mid 1800s through the early 20th century. Most of the historic cottages in this area were built so long ago nobody thought about elevation from possible lake flooding. Many of the vintage cottages still rest on the ground, while others are getting a boost. 

 

Classic old Mandeville cottage

A historic lake-side building in the process of rising

While we were in Louisiana, we visited Randy, my husband’s close friend since primary school days in Metairie. Sitting together in 79-degree warmth of a back yard in Covington, Randy mentioned he was part of the Cajun Navy.   This informal volunteer group—which came together around Hurricane Katrina--is a term for the owners of private small boats who drive them into flooded areas to rescue people trapped in their homes. 

 

Randy has driven his boat as far as Texas to assist in rescue missions down flooded highways. When Ida came and power was lost to many neighborhoods around Lake Ponchartrain, repairs were delayed because of giant fallen trees that blocked access to streets. Randy got in his own truck, brought some saws from the garage, and went to a neighborhood and chopped the trees apart so the neighborhood could be entered. He did this because he knew about a friend's elderly mother living alone in this cut-off neighborhood. He got to her and brought her out to stay with him and his own family until her neighborhood's electricity was restored. i

The ongoing work of Randy and other volunteers in Louisiana reminds me of a legendary water rescue in Europe known as  Operation Dynamo.  In the aftermath of the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940, 338,000 British and Belgian soldiers were trapped on the beach in France. Nazi forces had control of the town. British people living along the coast sailed out to rescue them at the French beach, assisting the Royal Navy. Saving so many lives was a miracle and surely essential to the Allies ability to continue the war and ultimately defeat the Axis powers.

 

To drive away from the threat of surging water, leaving everything behind to uncertainty, is a fear I've never experienced. Just as I could not picture myself commandeering a boat on flooded highways. But with a lifetime of storms, people can gain extraordinary strength.  

Whatchamacallit

 Annamaria on Monday

During a recent phone call, my California friend Molly giggled when I said, “waste time standing on line.”  She teased me for being “such a New Yorker.“ The rest of the English speaking world, according to Molly, uses the phrase “standing in line,“ not “standing on line.”  As it happens, having traveled over great swaths of the United States on business trips of my past, I know quite a few expressions that change when one moves about the country. Here are a number of examples of different words used to describe the same thing, depending on where you are. 

Pop? Soda? Tonic? Coke?

Sub? Hoagie? Hero? Grinder?

Turnpike? Highway? Freeway?

Boonies? The sticks?

Salad tomatoes? Cherry tomatoes?

Sneakers? Tennis shoes?

Circle? Roundabout? Rotary?

Chifforobe?  Armoire?

Jimmies? Sprinkles?

And my own particular favorite: In the relation to the corner, is this desk…

Catty-corner?  Cater-cornered?  Caddycorner?  Catawampus?

Suppose a fictional detective says, "I found the body in an armoire, in a house out in the sticks.  The obvious suspect stood in a corner behind a catawampus desk. On it lay a half-eaten hoagie, ice cream covered with sprinkles melting in a dish, and a half empty bottle of pop." 

Any knowledgeable reader will throw the book across the room and shout, "Boston? Wisconsin? New Jersey? California?  Make up your mind!"

What Have I Come Upstairs For? The Memory Game

Zoë Sharp

I would be the first to admit that I have a dreadful memory. Faces? No problem. I even recognised an old colleague from a local paper we briefly worked for in northern England thirty years ago, who I spotted sitting on a bench at a theme park in Florida, so not quite in context. But names? Hopeless. I regularly go upstairs and forget what it is I went for. And shopping without a list is a nightmare.

So, I was intrigued to be recently re-reading Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown and come across the section on dramatically improving your memory. Derren Brown, for those of you who are not aware of him, is part illusionist, part psychologist, and all showman. The Guardian newspaper described him as, "Clearly the best dinner-party guest in history – he’s either a balls-out con artist or the scariest man in Britain." His various TV series over here have dumbfounded and entertained in equal measure, and while the rather knowing style of his book took a bit of getting used to, the information contained in it is just fascinating.

And why is this relevant here? Because, if I understand him correctly and extrapolate accordingly, fiction writers should have the best memories ever. Elephants should be as fickle goldfish compared to us lot.

Why? Because we exercise our imaginations on a regular basis.

Ye-es, it foxed me to begin with, but stick with me on this one, OK? And do give this a whirl. I tried the example in the book and was amazed that it worked flawlessly.

Making a List

You see, Brown claims that most people, given a list of twenty disparate, unconnected words, can recall about seven with any degree of accuracy. He gave such a list and suggested that you read it through, and then try and jot down as many as you can recall, in the same order. I took the liberty of substituting my own words. Or, rather, so I wasn’t subconsciously picking words that I might find easy to remember, I asked someone else to do provide the list for me. And here they are:

bicycle

cabriolet

fridge

rollercoaster

muckspreader

pincushion

blotter

hemlock

Shakespeare

thingamabob

nonagenarian

Rolex

Skyline

filter

cauliflower

grandfather

cuckoo

tortoise

carpet

So, having read through them, look away from the screen and try and write them down, in the same order they’re listed here. How did you do? If you got past seven, you’re Marvo the Memory Man and you don’t need to read any further. Put it aside for a bit, and then try again, without re-reading the list, but in reverse order this time. Ah, now that’s a stumper, isn’t it?

How it’s done, according to Brown’s method, is create a link from one word to the next by producing an image that connects the words. A vivid image, with smells and emotions attached to it. If the image is of something that stinks, sniff it. If it’s funny, find it so.

The more Daliesque and surreal, the better.

The elements need to interact in some way, and each little scene needs to be odd enough to be memorable. Some people, apparently, don’t like visualisation and claim not to be very good at it, but we’re writers, for heaven’s sake. We spend our days making stuff up – that’s what we do.

So, here’s my own list of connections between the above words:

bicycle/cabriolet 

A group of Edwardians in striped blazers and straw boater hats, riding along on their bicycles, very slow and stately, but in case of rain they all have cabriolet tops they can raise over their heads, with big curved hinges on the sides like an old-fashioned pram, and tassels along the front.

cabriolet/fridge

A nice little VW Cabriolet, gleaming in white, all colour-coded, and when you climb inside it’s still white like you’re sitting in your fridge, with wire racks and dairy products on the shelves and a light that comes on when you open the door. There’s a big bottle of milk strapped to the passenger seat. The air con keeps it frosty cold.

fridge/rollercoaster

You open the door of your fridge and a rollercoaster track unfurls out of the salad drawer, complete with screaming passengers, and goes careering round the kitchen, making it impossible to sneak down for a midnight snack without waking the entire street.

rollercoaster/muckspreader

The farmer next to the amusement park hates the people who ride the rollercoaster making all that racket, so he always drives his muckspreader along the hedge next to the bottom of the first drop, and sprays them all with cow manure as they hurtle past. Particularly nasty if you’ve got your mouth open as you go.

muckspreader/pincushion

Someone’s come up with a new way of recycling cow manure, which instead of being scattered is reformed inside the muckspreader into neat round pincushions, the size of pillows, which it deposits in a neat orderly row as the farmer drives his tractor through the local ladies’ sewing circle.

pincushion/blotter

The only trouble with the cowpat pincushions is when you stick a pin in them they let out a great cloud of stinking vapour and leak a nasty greeny fluid all over the place, which you have to soak up by putting a blotter under the pincushion wherever you go.

blotter/hemlock

An ingenious murderess decides to soak the blotter on her husband’s desk in hemlock, so he will be gradually poisoned as the hemlock leaches out and into his hands whenever he works late into the night.

hemlock/Shakespeare

The entire cast of a Shakespeare play toast each other with hemlock-laced glasses of wine, thus dying tragically at the end of the first act, not realising that the leading man is a method actor who has genuinely dosed them all with real poison.

Shakespeare/thingamabob

Will Shakespeare finds himself momentarily lost for words and invents a new one – thingamabob – which instantly becomes all the rage in Elizabethan England. Queen Elizabeth I instantly demands he produce one, by royal command, and he has to cobble something together or lose his head.

thingamabob/nonagenarian

Nonagenarian little old ladies can be easily identified by the fact that they’re each followed about by a thingamabob, which is a little bouncy squeaky thing, like a cross between a space hopper and a tribble, which won’t leave them alone. There they all are in the park, swatting at these troublesome thingamabobs with their umbrellas.

nonagenarian/Rolex

When anybody reaches the ripe old age of 90, their nonagenarian status is celebrated by awarding them a Rolex watch. The only trouble is, it’s a big garish one, plastered with diamonds, and the streets are filled with old folk dressed up in flashy watches and gold chains like gangster rappers.

Rolex/Skyline

All Nissan Skyline sports cars comes with a Rolex attached to the front of the bonnet so the driver can time themselves as they lap the Nürburgring in Germany. It’s also used as a means of handicapping the faster ones. The quicker you drive, the bigger watch you have to have, thus not only increasing drag, but also preventing the driver from seeing where they’re going, and slowing them down. At least they know exactly what time they crashed.

Skyline/filter

As a party trick, someone drives their Skyline around the inside of their filter coffee machine, like a fairground wall of death. Round and round they go, until they’re almost vertical up the sides, kicking up great rooster tails of coffee grounds and leaving tyre tracks in the paper filter.

filter/cauliflower

After heavy rain sluices cauliflowers into the drains, you have to insert big filters to stop them clogging everything up, otherwise they create the most awful stench of rotting vegetation.

cauliflower/grandfather

When your grandfather gets on a bit and loses his teeth, the only thing he can eat is mulched up very well-pureed cauliflower, which you have to cook for him in giant vats until it goes grey, and then put through a blender, at which point he packs it into his cheeks like a hamster. Grandfathers only have to be fed once a week using this method.

grandfather/cuckoo

Grandfathers are not acquired in the usual way, but introduced into the family nest like cuckoos, in the hopes that they’ll be cared for like the other family members. Of course, grandfathers can be bigger and more aggressive than other relatives, and often push them out of the nest using their Zimmer frames.

cuckoo/tortoise

Swiss cuckoo clocks are using tortoises instead of the more traditional birds to call the time. At the top of the hour the doors open and a tortoise emerges, very, very slowly, on the end of a spring. It can take these clocks several days to strike noon and midnight.

tortoise/carpet

To keep your tortoise warm in winter, you cover his shell in carpet, preferably shag pile, so there’s all these tortoises ambling about with multicoloured carpet stuck to their backs.

I have to say that Derren Brown’s own list – and the explanation of the links between the words – was probably much better and far more amusing than my own. But you get the idea. If anyone can come up with sillier or more vivid connections, please feel free. But let me know how you get on. Because, it’s rather nice to know that this fertile imagination we have can be put to other uses, isn’t it?

This week’s Word of the Week is dunkelflaute, (pronounced “dun-kel-flout-er”), which is German for ‘dark doldrums’, but which has been adopted by the renewable energy industry for what happens to electricity output from solar panels when the sun doesn’t shine, or from wind turbines on a still day. It could also be applied to what happens to writers when inspiration fails and the words don’t flow. So much more expressive than plain old ‘writer’s block’.

So, they were muckspreading in the field next to the garden last week,

and Dido clearly has NO common sense!

 

The Story Behind My New Book

 

Jeff–Saturday

 

I can’t believe my twelfth Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery-thriller, ONE LAST CHANCE, comes out in three days. What’s harder to believe is that my debut novel in the series –Murder in Mykonos—published in the US just one year before my first post appeared on Murder is Everywhere in February 2010.

 

My how time flies.

 

I guess that’s an appropriate observation, what with the setting for Book #12 being Ikaria, a rugged, mountainous eastern Aegean island that The New York Times labeled, “the place where people forget to die.”

 

Ikaria is a place of myth, folklore, and natural beauty; historically besieged for ages by ruthless conquerors and pirates, exploited for its resources, and forced to serve as a colony for political exiles. Today, it boasts an international reputation as one of the world’s five Blue Zones where populations live exceptionally long lives––attributed in Ikaria to the unintended consequence of its subsistence lifestyle centered on gardens, goats, orchards, olives, local wine from native vineyards, sea, and rigorous physical activity. It's also now a tourist draw for those in love with nature and a healthy lifestyle.

 

Evdilos

Agios Kirikos with Statue of Icarus in foreground

I’ve been to Ikaria several times, but it took the intervention of the writing gods for me to realize that in looking for a place to set a contemporary mystery-thriller that neither ignored nor emphasized the effects of the pandemic––yet at its core is enmeshed in its consequences––Ikaria’s unique history of successfully enduring and overcoming the most rigorous of challenges, and its international reputation for longevity, made it the perfect setting for my tale.

 

Before getting to that story line, a bit more background on Ikaria may be of interest.

 

Reputedly inhabited since 7000 BCE, Ikaria’s mountainous rocky terrain, lack of decent ports, brutal winds, and reputation as the poorest island in the Aegean, discouraged virtually all but pirates and conquerors from paying it much mind.  Pirates roamed the Aegean, raiding islands for booty, slaves, and women, often slaughtering those inhabitants they didn’t spirit away. 

 

During the 16^th century, marauding pirates so viciously terrorized the Aegean, that for eighty years Ikariots lived hidden away in secret mountain villages, a period that to this day Ikariots remember as their “century of obscurity.” As a consequence, Ikariots built camouflaged homes utilizing ravines, caves, boulders, and mountain hideaways to evade those scanning the hillsides for signs of life, and laced their homes with hidden passages and false walls should they be detected.

 

The scourge of pirates ultimately passed, giving way to a more insidious breed of plunderers.  The island’s once-vast forests of ancient oak, pine, fir, plane, and cedar trees fell victim to indiscriminate logging, a voracious charcoal industry, and in more modern times, opportunists seeing forests as an impediment to their plans for developing or farming the land. It was as if the world viewed Ikaria as nothing more than a place to exploit or ignore, leaving hardy self-reliance the Ikariots only means of survival.

 

In 1829, when Greece obtained its independence from the Ottoman Empire, Ikaria remained under Ottoman rule. Not until 1912, when Ikariots tossed out the Turks, did it join modern Greece—following five proud months as the independent country of the Free State of Ikaria, complete with its own flag, anthem, and postage stamps. But joining Greece did little to change the Ikariot’s historical skepticism toward outside help, and for much of the 20^th century, the Greek government gave little more than sporadic assistance to the island, while using it as a place of banishment for thousands of political dissidents––a decision that unleashed a fateful unintended consequence upon the entire nation.

 

After Greece’s dreadful starvation years of World War II—and four more years of Greek civil war between nationalists and communists––the Greek government banished thirteen thousand alleged communists to Ikaria.  Many of them were doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other educated creative types. The government wouldn’t allow them to live with locals, and their movements were restricted, but with so many needing places to stay, and the government offering little assistance in the way of food and shelter for the exiles, they ended up living in virtually every unoccupied house on the island. Many of those homes were in desperate need of repair, so the exiles fixed them up. Over time, locals came to regard them as welcome guests, not criminals, and after their banishment ended, many came back as tourists to visit the friends they made during their years of exile.

 

The government had chosen Ikaria to serve as a place of containment for those with unwelcome political views, but instead created a sanctuary and breeding ground for dissident thinking. When the Greek government announced shortly before the 2004 Olympics that it had crushed the nation’s most notorious terrorist organization––whose members had gotten away with murder, kidnapping, and robbery for almost thirty years––its key captured leaders were from Ikaria.

 

Now on to the story line for ONE LAST CHANCE.

 

When Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis’s long time administrative assistant (Maggie) returns home to Ikaria for the post-pandemic funeral of her 104-year-old grandmother (Yaya), she learns that Yaya is but one of many elders who died unexpectedly within the past month—all bearing identical bruises. Maggie’s quest for answers turns stereotypes on their heads, tackles real world issues, and reveals that much is not as it seems.

 

Back in Athens, Andreas and his chief detective Yianni pursue a smuggling and protection ring embedded in the Greek DEA, and its possible involvement in the assassination of an undercover cop. As leads in the elder-killings on Ikaria and the DEA corruption case converge, and danger mounts, Andreas and his crew realize there are international intrigues at play that might well stretch beyond the reach of the law. 

 

While they race to prevent yet another untimely death, Maggie’s faith in humanity, the church, and the very legal system she serves is tested in ways she never could have imagined. Leaving Andreas with but a “Hail Mary pass” last hope for securing justice for the victims.

 

Bottom Line: One Last Chance has Andreas Kaldis and his crew distilling, seemingly unrelated events down into a core motive for unthinkable acts perpetrated upon Ikaria’s oldest survivors of pandemic times by those they trust most; and emerges as a case study on the difficulty in proving wrongdoing and exacting justice.

 

I’m honored to say that Booklist awarded One Last Chance a starred review, calling it “the best yet,” and Publishers Weekly wrote, “breathtaking beauty radiates from each page… this entry will appeal to fans of Donna Leon and Louise Penny with its attractive characters and rich setting.”

 

Finally, if you’d like to participate in an upcoming virtual book event–either to praise or pound me–here’s my speaking schedule for the week of April 4-8, including links to access each event.

 

Monday, April 4, 7:30 p.m. ET
The Poisoned Pen Bookstore
Scottsdale, AZ
Virtual event, join via YouTube or Facebook Live!

Tuesday, April 5, 7:00 p.m. ET
Mystery Lovers Bookshop
Pittsburgh, PA
Virtual event, register here!

Thursday, April 7, 8:00 p.m. ET
Book Carnival
Orange, CA
Virtual event, join here!

Friday, April 22, 9:00 p.m. ET
Third Place Books
Lake Forest Park, WA
Virtual event, register here!

Thanks for bearing with me through this exercise in Blatant Self-Promotion (here’s more if you’d like to see my newsletter), but one must pay for the pencils. If you’d like to order a copy of One Last Chance, you can do so through this link to my website.  And if you’d like a signed bookplate for your copy, just ask me and I’ll be happy to send you one. 

 

–Jeff

A day in the life....

                                    

                                          Picture from the Euroasian Lynx Rewilding UK

Things have been going a little strange in the land of the heather. Last week it was hotter here than it was in Madrid.

And then yesterday it snowed.

The Scottish Government have been up to their usual nonsense by planning to ban the famous square sausage, also know as the Lorne sausage. As a veggie I couldn’t really care less as the vegan rolls on sausage are not covered by the ban.

A slightly more interesting thing is that Scotland for some reason is going back to the 1200s or before and thinking of re-introducing wolves into the wild, along with wild boar and the European black bear. Also maybe as a slight nod as how successful this could be there’s talk of Edinburgh zoo releasing two of their European Lynx into the Great Glen. The powers that be seem to think that these wild cats will know the difference between feral rabbits which they are supposed to kill and local livestock such as the wee lambs. To say nothing of the small black haggis – you have seen pictures of them here on this blog site.

Not to be outdone London zoo have announced the birth of an animal with a similar genetic mutation to albino-ism. This  gives the animal a slight blue colour. In a clutch of five hedgehogs, two have been born with this mutation and while they are not blue blue they are definitely not hedgehog colour. They are more of a colour that might be called Cornflower Ice on a paint chart.

The Italian embassy, following the ruling of Norway ( or was it Sweden?) has asked for a ban on pineapple being offered as a topping on all takeaway pizzas. As I think pineapple on pizza is pretty close to Satanism I think this could be a very popular move.

Meanwhile, post pandemic, Lego have announced hugely increased profits and will soon be bringing out life sized Lego pieces. The plan is that these are not toys but you can sit and talk to them if you are lonely, or take them into the office just to give a wee buzz around the place.  Faces and clothes are interchangeable.

It’s been widely reported that avian flu has now got a few hotspots amongst the domestic fowl population of Britain. I think there are two outcomes of this. One is that we can’t buy free range eggs in the shops as all birds have to be kept away from any contact with wild birds. And some birds on the south coast of Englandshire,  incarcerated for the first time , have started to lay oblong eggs. These have been passed fit for human consumption and are now available in very trendy west end restaurants in London.

Another thing that is rocketing in price at the moment are building materials, wallpaper and paint. The house market is so vigorous – remember that we have a system of buying houses almost like a silent auction – people  are just building on extensions and once again the tartan paint is proving very popular.

Popular one coat tartan paint; Royal Stewart.

And if you think that the world isn’t strange enough, somebody filmed the Loch Ness monster last week and not one of them, but two. Caught on camera in the middle of the Loch! The wave patterns, direction of movement, strength of wakes, all show that the two creatures were very big and moving independently. Halfway through the film, one of them turns left as if it has forgotten to turn the gas off.

                                        

                                                          A handbook of Nessiness.

 These are the things that are reported on this little island of ours on April 1^st  2022.

One of them is actually true.

Any guesses as to which one?

Caro