Eternal Refuge

For the second part of my Bank Holiday Christine and I went to Agatha Christie's holiday home -




( Enjoy the tour )

I have made 15 icons for the challenge "It started with a book" for monthlyinspo round 41.

I chose 2 books.

The first of which is "Gone With The Wind" which I read when I was a teenager. I knew there was a film, but didn't see it for another few years. I believe when Margaret Mitchell wrote the book she actually based Rhett Butler on Clark Gable, and he certainly suited the role well.

The second book was "The Princess Bride". I read it for the first time in 1980, and thought at the time it would make a great film ... and it did.

Enjoy

1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

As ever, all are snaggable, but credit would be appreciated. The credits are available over at my icon journal - d4s_icons

That was certainly a weird clinic.  All 5 of the males were really nice people ... and 2 brought consultants with them!  (One as his father, as the patient was 12, and the other as his daughter as he was in his 90's).  We had one patient who didn't know he had requested private treatment (well that was his theory ... even though he had been happy to get an early appt!!), and one who had surgery yesterday and told us 3 different operations ... so all in all a weird selection!  Still, it made the morning go rapidly!

The sun is out and I have just had a 2 mile walk around the local park (you have seen photos in the past Fridays).  It was so lovely I even enjoyed listening to Ghost Story (my least favourite of the Dresden Files)

Now I am here, complete with a cuppa, so this afternoon is going well.  Although I do have some housework I want to do ... I have received a couple of Easter cards, so thought I would dust that cabinet before I put them up.  I have done the other one, so at least I will be balanced - well my lounge cabinets will, any way!

However, before I dig the duster out I want to make a couple of icons (I realised earlier I didn't have a "cake" one), but before I start that -


30. What was the last book you read?

That could be one of 3 answers!

• This morning, as every morning I read The Bible (I am reading Genesis at present)


• In an evening I am re-reading the second part of the I Would Still Have Loved You verse by slaymesoftly


• Today, at work, in brief gaps I read a fourth part of a trilogy (yes, I know, that's weird!). Yesterday I read part #3, and then found that there was a part 4 ... Father's day ... the series has been about spies in the time of the Battle of Trafalgar

Well icons and dust are calling me!  Hope you are all having a good day x

Had a good weekend - hope you all did so, as well.

Met up with a friend from Church on the Saturday morning in her garden, so it was good to spend some time with a friend.  Something we used to take for granted, now it is special ... but maybe that's good, as well.  It makes me appreciate people, and "events" more.

Anyway - here's the meme catch-up


12 Do you experiment with your hairstyle often, or do you have a classic style you stick with?
LOL - On my graduation Day, in 1983, I was just 22, and other than the colour, the style is the same as it is now!!

13 What’s your favorite childhood story or fairy tale?
I have such fond memories of Rupert Bear ... as Granddad used to cut them out of the paper, and Grandma would read them to the 3 of us.  So it was not so much a favourite story, as opposed to a family memory.

But also look at the last book on my list.

14 What are your Top Ten favorite books?

• The Bible


• Rilla of Ingleside (slightly my favourite of the Anne series by LM Montgomery)


• Changes (my favourite of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher)


• Mary of Carisbroke (by Margaret Campbell Barnes)


• The Following of The Star (by Florence L Barclay)


• When We Were Very Young (by AA Milne)


• Just So Stories (by Rudjard Kipling)


• I never Knew That About England (by Christopher Winn)


• Selection of WWI poetry (I have a couple, but one if my go-to of them)


• Noddy at the Seaside (by Enid Blighton) ... that was my favourite book as a child, and in fact I could actually quote the whole book as a 5 year old!!

Worked this morning, now I have letters to write!!

Well I survived 4 days before "crashing" again ... so took the day off, although sadly my immediate manager has insisted I am tested for Covid, so this afternoon I get the test and hope that it's a speedy answer.  I know it's just my CFS not wanting me to set an earlier alarm.  But these are the days we are all living in, and working in a hospital means the alert needs to be at 200%

The weather is not doing so well, although that means I don't have to water the tubs around the garden.  As mine is patio I have loads of assorted ones (no design, just colours), so that saves me a job!!

One advantage that I have done in in the last few weeks of feeling better is re-reading the full series of Anne of Green Gables.  So lovely to re-read the full set straight through.  It was especially nice as I read the books that had been Mum's, and most were gifts from her parents so it was lovely to read the inscriptions, as well.

Well I had better get on and get the housework done ... where do the hours go?

Hope you are having a good weekend x

While I was in London I went to a couple of "B" locations.

The first is The Banquetting House, which was built in the eartly years of King Charles I reign, and the ceilings are all by Rubens in honour of King James I ... and the sovereign rule of kings.  It became, sadly, more famous later in King Charles reign as the place where a scaffold was built, and he was beheaded there.

Amazingly some years later most of London was destroyed by fire in 1666, but King Charles II managed to save the building by blowing up buildings around it ... and then during the Blitz of WWII it survived ....
( An amazing survivor )

The other B, is The British Library ... you can register and request to see any books of the millions they have stored in the vaults.  However, there are some books, and documents that are on display ... including one of the copies of the 1215 Magna Carta, as well as the Papal Bull annulling it!
( Much prettier than a Kindle )

Many of my f-list do "Reading Wednesday", and then today a few have also posted this, so thought I would do this ...

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series -
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

There are quite a few books on that list that I started and never finished.

I was going to "pop" in to moan about the book I finished last night, to find that my pc had updated itself to Windows 10, and I had to find where things were - luckily I found LJ, so the rest will have to wait until I get that illusive spare minute!!

Anyway, my book.  Story synopsis is girl in her 20's is being stalked, so mother asks a family friend to move in while they find a way to get him caught by the police, so not just cautioned.  Family friend has a nephew staying, and as the story progresses you see that the 2 pairings are slowly building.  It's well written, and flows well.  So, last night I had the last couple of chapters to read and although tired wanted to know what happened.

So last couple of pages, stalker is caught ... THE END!!   Not even a final ... "one year later", or the promise of a sequal, so annoying!

So whereas I would have said it's a good book, now I am left totally in the air and not even enough to set my immagination fully going.  Oh well, lets just add a last line, shall we - "And, they all lived happily ever after".  Yes, much better!

Right must fly - off to dad's, then lunch then work this afternoon.  Have a good day everyone.

I keep saying that I am going to do an update, but procrastination is more my friend than ever.  Then when I get a few moments I cant decide what I want to say, so I have snagged the book of days meme from kazzy_cee

( A bit of a catch up meme )

I have had a pretty good week - busy at work, but have made a determined effort to do "something" each day ... whether it is to write owing letters, or go shopping.  Procrastination and I are great friends!  As I have just said ina  recent icon post, even my artwork gets delayed.  I want to get back to some writing, as well as still wanting to decorate my bedroom in the next few weeks ... so have made a good effort this week.

I have had a shift each day and have worked on a variety of wards, so that I suppose, has made things interesting and kept me focussed.

But, yes, a good week.

And, as part of my focus I even said I would "meme" ... I still have the 5 character meme to finish but am finding my letter hard.  So curiouswombat I haven't forgotten.

Until then I have items to talk about that lupina78 has listed -

Great Britain
Family
Favourite Fandom
Music
Four-legged friends
James Marsters (you didn´t think I´d leave him out of this, did you? *gg*)
Books


( So, if you want to read ramble, click here )