What Amazon says

1914 – and everything changes for Jessie on a day trip to Blackpool. She realises her true feelings for her childhood friend, Arthur. Then just as they are travelling home from this rare treat, war is declared.

Arthur lies about his age to join his Pals’ Regiment. Jessie’s widowed mother is so frightened of the future, she agrees to marry the vicious Amos Morgan, making Jessie’s home an unsafe place for her. Before he leaves, Arthur and Jessie admit their feelings and promise to wait for each other. Arthur gives Jessie a heart-shaped stone to remember him. But with Arthur far away, their love leaves Jessie with a secret that will see her thrown from her home and terribly abused when she can hide the truth no longer.

Faced with a desperate choice between love and safety, Jessie must fight for survival, whatever the cost.

My review

Most of us have come out of the festive season with a little more than some presents and remnants of tinsel around the house. Many go into Christmas with great intentions especially, if they have been careful all year about weight and exercise, and others say ” What the Hell“ and dive straight into the Eggnog.. Whichever type of reveller you are this is still a great time to give your body its annual holiday and get it ready for the tough year ahead.

Something to think about: Fasting

I will be upfront with you. I do not agree with water only fasts, that starves a body into submission. Whilst I findintermittent fasting(eating within an 8 hour window) suits me, at my age, with my level of activity, and to combat high blood sugar and blood pressure levels. I don’t recommend if you are in working full…

As is my custom, I am serialising one of my past books here on the blog, and over the next few weeks, stories from my 2020 collection, Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries, Sometimes Bitter, Sometimes Sweet. I hope you will enjoy.

Connections – Some are too strong to be broken. Over the years and across dimensions souls reach out to share our lives.

The Wedding Day

Herbert watched from the shadows beneath the oak tree in the orchard as the sun rose, glinting on the windows of the house in front of him. He would have to move soon, to a more secure hiding place, as the occupants of the house stirred and began preparing for the upcoming celebration.

His daughter Phyllis was getting married today, and whilst he was banned from attending, he hoped to be able to watch from a distance at the village church…

It is eight years since William Price King joined Smorgasbord to share music across the genres. It is six years since we have featured the icons and delighted to showcase them again in 2022.

For over 30 years William Price King has been paying his tribute to two musicians who have influenced not just musicians, but all of us as we listened to their music. Nat King Cole and Mel Torme. Certainly many love stories began and sometimes ended whilst dancing to their music. In the next two features on the Jazz greats, William will be sharing some of their most iconic music, the musicians who influenced their passion for music and the highs and lows of their careers and personal lives.

Nat King Cole – The Early Years.

Nat King Cole was born under the name of Nathaniel Adams Cole on March 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. His parents…

I had a great aunt. She was the sort of great aunt that you would conjure up if you wanted to invent a great aunt. Always straight-faced, apparently straight-laced, and thoroughly wicked. I remember the exquisite agony of accompanying her, when I was a child, along the Crwys Road in Cardiff, pausing at every greengrocer (in the days when all their fruit and veg were on display outside), picking up an apple or some other fruit to inspect its quality, taking a bite, sniffing with disapproval, shaking her head and putting it back. By the time we got back to her house, she had consumed her full five a day without parting with a penny.

She was the source of all information on my mother’s side of the family, so naturally I assumed that everything she told us was…

I’m taking the festive and holiday season’s opportunity to take a semi-break from the blogging world.

Why a semi-blogging break?

As a blogger who dislikes not responding to comments, I will be answering comments left on any of my blog posts or pages over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Will I be visiting blogs, reading posts and leaving comments?

Probably not. In the seven years I’ve been blogging, I’ve always found this time of year to be tranquil in the blogging world. It’s an excellent time to do some blog housekeeping and tidy up the blog.

When will my next blog post be published?

My monthly round-up post for December will be published on December 31st 2021.

My first post of 2022 is scheduled to be published on January 3rd 2022.

While I’m away

If you missed my blogging post, ‘Looking For Help With Blogging? Do You Have…

Welcome to the Christmas Book Fair and today some more memoirs to entertain and inspire.

The first memoir is by retired teacher and author Pete Springer...and he shares his experience and is a wonderful guide for anyone considering entering teaching, or would like to develop their skills further They Call Me Mom

About the book

Who Will You Inspire Today? Teachers face this challenge and responsibility each day, but in the process, the author discovers that his students can also have a profound influence on him. Pete Springer takes you on his memorable thirty-one-year journey in education as an elementary school teacher and offers the many valuable life and teaching lessons he learned along the way. Get ready to laugh out loud at some of the humorous and memorable experiences that all teachers face, feel inspired by the inherent goodness of children, and appreciate the importance of developing a…

In February 2014, when I published my first blog post, I never thought that I’d go on to write and publish blog posts that included blogging tips.

Since publishing my first blogging tips post, they’ve become amongst my most successful on my blog.

Where do blogging tips come from?

Mostly from other bloggers. You’ll find hundreds of blogging tips posts all over the blogging world, and, best of all, the majority are free.

Why are blogging tips posts so popular?

Most of us have something to say about writing and blogging as writers and bloggers.They’re usually hot topics for discussion.

I’ve witnessed many posts about blogging and writing getting many comments left on them. Most of these posts get lots of attention and usually hundreds of comments.

Although most of my blogging tips posts come from ideas I have when playing with various buttons and…

In this series, we invite our Crime Cymru authors to showcase an excerpt from one of their books. This week, Thorne Moore talks about researching the recent past and resurrecting childhood memories when writing The Unravelling.

My crime books are psychological mysteries, exploring the causes and consequences of a traumatic event, and I wouldn’t generally class them as thrillers, but maybe The Unravelling comes close. Writing it, I dredged up my memories of life as a ten-year-old in the mid-1960s, setting it in a slightly fictionalised version of the housing estate in Luton where I grew up; new developments on lost fields, post-war prefabs being torn down, streams and gullies disappearing into culverts, muddy farm tracks winding between new cul-de-sacs and avenues. A place that a child’s imagination could easily paint with mysterious secrets and lurking monsters. It was a time when children played freely in the streets, even…