Celebrating Fathers

For years, I got quite worked up about the fact Mother’s Day is always on the shortest day of the year (not the Winter Solstice, but because the clocks move forward). And then Father’s Day is on the longest day of the year (but not when the clocks go back). For several years the Summer Solstice fell on the same weekend, so I had to run around doing stuff for my husband, his father and mine before I could drive down to Avebury to celebrate with like-minded people. So this year, with it being on the 15th, nearly caught me out, and I looked into why it wasn’t on the 22nd as I would have expected. A few keystrokes later, I discovered it’s celebrated in the UK on the third Sunday in June.

A little more digging brough up some interesting facts, like the fact it’s a secular celebration, unlike Mother’s Day, which in Britain stems from Mothering Sunday in the Christian liturgical calendar. Having said that, In some European Catholic countries, Father’s Day has been celebrated on 19 March (St Joseph’s Day) since the Middle Ages in honour Joseph of Nazareth, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the legal father of Jesus.

The one in June celebrated in the UK is a relatively modern tradition, adopted from the United States. where the first unofficial Father’s day was held on 19 June 1910. It was introduced by Sonora Smart Dodd from Arkansas, who wanted to honour her widowed father’s dedication to raising six children after his wife died in childbirth. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honouring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. From there, it was made a permanent national holiday by President Richard Nixon in 1972.The idea spread internationally, and by the 1970s, it became popular in the UK. Many people celebrate with cards, gifts and homemade school projects. The day often starts with children preparing breakfast in bed, followed later by a family meal. Dad is treated like royalty and not allowed to lift a finger – not even to make a cup of tea.

Other countries have their own traditions, including:

In Germany, Father's Day – Vatertag - (also known as Männertag gentlemen's day/boys’ day out) is celebrated on Ascension Day - the Thursday forty days after Easter. One tradition involves young and older males taking parts in hiking tours. They take small wagons filled with beer and Hausmannkost - simple, hearty dishes prepared at home. Alternatively, they ride beer-bikes, but the general idea is plenty of fun, beer and no responsibility.

First promoted In France by the manufacturer of cigarette lighters “Flaminaire” in Bretagne (1946 to 1969) known for inventing the first gas cigarette lighter, who had the brilliant idea to boost his sales by pushing the then little known holiday. At the time, smoking was a sign of masculinity and virility and a cigarette lighter was the perfect gift choice. Officially recognised in 1952 (on the third Sunday in June), dads and father figures got nominated for a national prize by the social services of each town hall or mayor's office.

In Paraguay, Father's Day is celebrated with a traditional banquet of Paraguayan food like chipa (cheese-flavoured rolls), mbeju (starch cake) and sopa paraguaya (similar to corn bread).

In Thailand, Father's Day takes place on 5 December, (birthday of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej). Traditionally, Thais would celebrate by giving their father figures a canna flower, although this is not as popular anymore. They also wear yellow and light candles to show respect for the late king, who was seen as the "father of the nation".

In Japan, traditional gifts for Father's Day include sake (Japanese rice wine), shochu (Japanese liquor), gourmet food and various sweets.

My Cover Designers 3 - Getcovers

Post-pandemic saw a new era, and 2022 saw me releasing three books in the Calamity Chicks series with my own cover designs (more about those later).
Then I heard Keith A Pearson, a phenomenal Time Travel author on Ken Bruce's Popmaster, and it was a defining moment. After reading a stack of stories by Keith and Adam Eccles, I was inspired, and abandoned my retro chick-lit series.

I had the idea of a bunch of 30-something nerds - like a British version of Big Bang Theory. But I couldn't just do a straight Time-Travel adventure - my fascination with Dungeons and Dragons, meant I did a genre mash-up - given the growing interest in series like Big Bang, Stranger things and even iZombie, I hoped I'd be onto a winner.

As ever, I'd left it far too late to ask anyone, so I had a go myself, based on the general lad-lit covers format of plain background (left). Pitiful, eh? Then someone mentioned Getcovers, and they did a phenomenal job in just under a week (right). Talk about a transformation!

I managed to squeeze books 1 and 2 in before the end of 2022 - which was a tough target, as I didn't start Just in Time until November, but thanks to NaNoWriMo, I wrote it in a month. Two years later, I pubbed the sixth book, and here are the glorious covers. Didn't they do well?

I cannot recommend this Ukrainian outfit enough.
Every dealing I’ve had with them has been an enjoyable experience thanks to the friendly, helpful project managers, and the designers have taken on board every note and quickly tweaked the cover to my satisfaction.

I was so impressed, I got them to redo the Calamity Chicks covers. The differences between my covers and theirs are subtle, but they have a huge impact.

Eurovision Winners – Part 3

So it took a while, but continuing our tradition, I watched the movie: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.
Although it's only been a year since I last saw it, as ever, there were one or two wee scenes which caught me unawares. I hadn't really clocked quite how many previous contestants bought into the idea.
There were a whole bunch of cameos from actual Eurovision winners including:

• Salvador Sobral, the Portuguese singer who won the contest in 2017 with “Amar Pelos Dois,” who appears briefly as a street performer in Scotland.
• John Lundvik, who kicks off the song-a-long, is a Swedish pop singer who placed fifth in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv with the song “Too Late for Love.”
• Anna Odobescu represented Moldova in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, where she performed “Stay.”
• Bilal Hassani represented France in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, with the song “Roi.” He made it to the finals, ultimately placing 16th.
• Loreen is a Swedish pop singer who won the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan, with her song “Euphoria.”
• Jessy Matador represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 in Oslo with “Allez Ola Olé,” which placed 12th.
• Alexander Rybak is a Belarusian Norwegian singer and violinist who has represented Norway in two separate Eurovision Song Contests. In 2009, he won the contest with “Fairytale,” which features some very energetic violin playing, and In 2018, Rybak returned with “That’s How You Write a Song,” which placed 15th.
• Jamala is a Ukrainian singer who won the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 with “1944,” a song about Stalin and Beria’s deportation of the Crimean Tartars.
• Elina Nechayeva represented Estonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018, placing eighth with “La Forza.”
• Conchita Wurst, the stage persona of Austrian singer Thomas Neuwirth, won the contest in 2014 with “Rise Like a Phoenix.”
• Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal, with “Toy.”

As promised, here’s the second lot of winners, from 1956-1989.

Year	Country	Song	Performer
1956	Switzerland	"Refrain "	Lys Assia
1957	Netherlands	"Net als toen"	Corry Brokken
1958	France	"Dors, mon amour"	André Claveau
1959	Netherlands	"Een beetje"	Teddy Scholten
1960	France	"Tom Pillibi"	Jacqueline Boyer
1961	Luxembourg	"Nous les amoureux"	Jean-Claude Pascal
1962	France	"Un premier amour"	Isabelle Aubret
1963	Denmark	"Dansevise"	Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann
1964	Italy	"Non ho l'età"	Gigliola Cinquetti
1965	Luxembourg	"Poupée de cire, poupée de son"	France Gall
1966	Austria	"Merci, Chérie"	Udo Jürgens
1967	United Kingdom	"Puppet on a String"	Sandie Shaw
1968	Spain	"La La La"	Massiel
1969	Spain	"Vivo cantando"	Salomé
	United Kingdom	"Boom Bang-a-Bang"	Lulu
	Netherlands	"De troubadour"	Lenny Kuhr
	France	"Un jour, un enfant"	Frida Boccara
1970	Ireland	"All Kinds of Everything""	Dana
1971	Monaco	"Un banc, un arbre,	une rue"Séverine
1972	Luxembourg	"Après toi"	Vicky Leandros
1973	Luxembourg	"Tu te reconnaîtras"	Anne-Marie David
1974	Sweden	"Waterloo"	ABBA
1975	Netherlands	"Ding-a-dong"	Teach-In
1976	United Kingdom	"Save Your Kisses for Me"	Brotherhood of Man
1977	France	"L'Oiseau et l'Enfant"	Marie Myriam
1978	Israel	"A-Ba-Ni-Bi"	Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta
1979	Israel	"Hallelujah"	Milk and Honey
1980	Ireland	"What's Another Year"	Johnny Logan
1981	United Kingdom	"Making Your Mind Up"	Bucks Fizz
1982	Germany	"Ein bißchen Frieden"	Nicole
1983	Luxembourg	"Si la vie est cadeau"	Corinne Hermès
1984	Sweden	"Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley	"Herreys
1985	Norway	"La det swinge"	Bobbysocks!
1986	Belgium	"J'aime la vie"	Sandra Kim
1987	Ireland	"Hold Me Now"	Johnny Logan
1988	Switzerland	"Ne partez pas sans moi"	Céline Dion
1989	Yugoslavia	"Rock Me"	Riva

A few fun facts and figures:
The performer and the songwriter(s) of the winning song only receive a medal or a trophy, while its participating broadcaster is invited to host the following year's contest. Since 2008, the performer has been awarded a handmade trophy of sandblasted glass in the shape of a 1950s microphone, while the songwriter(s) and the broadcaster receive smaller versions of the trophy.

Ireland and Sweden have won seven times, more than any other country. Ireland also won the contest for three consecutive years (1992, 1993, and 1994), the only country to ever do so. Three countries have won twice in a row: Spain (1968 and 1969), Luxembourg (1972 and 1973) and Israel (1978 and 1979). Serbia is the only country to win with its debut entry (in 2007).[b] By contrast, Portugal holds the record for waiting the longest to achieve their first win, doing so in 2017; 53 years after their first appearance in the contest. Two people have won more than once as a performer: Ireland's Johnny Logan, who performed "What's Another Year" in 1980 and "Hold Me Now" in 1987, and Sweden's Loreen, who performed "Euphoria" in 2012 and "Tattoo" in 2023.

The United Kingdom has finished second sixteen times at Eurovision (most recently in 2022), more than any other country. France has finished third and fourth eight times at Eurovision (most recently respectively in 1981 and in 2024), and Sweden has finished fifth nine times at Eurovision (most recently in 2019). The country with the most top three places that has never won the contest is Malta, having finished second in 2002 and 2005 and third in 1992 and 1998. Another island nation, Iceland, has also finished second twice, in 1999 and 2009.

With Portugal achieving its first win in 2017, Malta now also holds the record for longest wait for a first win, having first entered the contest in 1971 (although Cyprus has more winless appearances, with 36 since debuting in 1981, due to Malta taking a break from 1976 through 1990). Spain holds the current record for longest drought by a winning country, having last won in 1969. They are followed by France (1977) and Belgium (1986).

Eurovision winners - part 2

A week ago today saw our family's first virtual Eurovision party, with Chris and Sophia in Horsham, Jo in Lancaster and Steph in Canada. It was fun sharing opinions over a WhatsApp group and we'd already decided the UK entry was one of the best for years. Good to see it get some jury votes, but as ever, the European public saw fit to punish us with nil points. Goodness knows what poor Iceland had done to offend them though - it defo deserved way more.

The keen-eyed among you will wonder where part 1 is - it was actually posted a couple of years ago - you can check it out here. But because I use these posts to search for stuff, I'm gonna do the most recent ones first from 1990-2025 and the next post will do 1956-1989. So here they are:

Year	Country	Song	Performer
1990	Italy	"Insieme: 1992"	Toto Cutugno
1991	Sweden	"Fångad av en stormvind"	Carola
1992	Ireland	"Why Me?"	Linda Martin
1993	Ireland	"In Your Eyes"	Niamh Kavanagh
1994	Ireland	"Rock 'n' Roll Kids"	Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan
1995	Norway	"Nocturne"	Secret Garden
1996	Ireland	"The Voice"	Eimear Quinn
1997	United Kingdom	"Love Shine a Light"	Katrina and the Waves
1998	Israel	"Diva"	Dana International
1999	Sweden	"Take Me to Your Heaven"	Charlotte Nilsson
2000	Denmark	"Fly on the Wings of Love"	Olsen Brothers
2001	Estonia	"Everybody"	Tanel Padar, Dave Benton and 2XL
2002	Latvia	"I Wanna"	Marie N
2003	Turkey	"Everyway That I Can"	Sertab Erener
2004	Ukraine	"Wild Dances"	Ruslana
2005	Greece	"My Number One"	Helena Paparizou
2006	Finland	"Hard Rock Hallelujah"	Lordi
2007	Serbia	"Molitva"	Marija Šerifović
2008	Russia	"Believe"	Dima Bilan
2009	Norway	"Fairytale"	Alexander Rybak
2010	Germany	"Satellite"	Lena
2011	Azerbaijan	"Running Scared"	Ell and Nikki
2012	Sweden	"Euphoria"	Loreen
2013	Denmark	"Only Teardrops"	Emmelie de Forest
2014	Austria	"Rise Like a Phoenix"	Conchita Wurst
2015	Sweden	"Heroes"	Måns Zelmerlöw
2016	Ukraine	"1944"	Jamala
2017	Portugal	"Amar pelos dois"	Salvador Sobral
2018	Israel	"Toy"	Netta
2019	Netherlands	"Arcade"	Duncan Laurence
2020	Contest cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2021	Italy	"Zitti e buoni"	Måneskin
2022	Ukraine	"Stefania"	Kalush Orchestra
2023	Sweden	"Tattoo"	Loreen
2024	Switzerland	"The Code"	Nemo
2025	Austria	"Wasted Love"	JJ

A few fun facts and figures:
Relatively few winners of the Eurovision Song Contest have gone on to achieve major success in the music industry. The most notable winners who have gone on to become international stars are ABBA, who won the contest for Sweden in 1974 with their song "Waterloo", and Céline Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988 with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi". More recently, Duncan Laurence, who won for the Netherlands in 2019 with "Arcade", experienced worldwide streaming success with the song as a sleeper hit throughout 2020 and 2021, with the song becoming the most streamed Eurovision song on Spotify. While Måneskin, winners for Italy in 2021 with "Zitti e buoni", subsequently achieved worldwide popularity in the months following their victory.

Changes to the voting system, including a steady growth in the number of countries participating and voting, means that the points earned are not comparable across the decades. "Amar pelos dois" by Salvador Sobral holds the record of the highest number of points in the contest's history, earning 758 points in 2017. "Fairytale" by Alexander Rybak holds the largest margin of victory in absolute points, a 169-point cushion over second place in 2009. "Non ho l'età" by Gigliola Cinquetti holds the record for largest victory by percentage, scoring almost three times as many as second place (49 points compared with 17 by the runner-up) in the 1964 contest. The lowest winning score is the 18 points (of the 160 total votes cast by 16 countries) scored by each of the four winning countries in 1969.

Under the voting system used from 1975 until 2015, in which each country gives maximum points to its first place choice, "Euphoria" by Loreen won the 2012 contest with the most ever first place votes earned, receiving first place votes from 18 of 41 countries (excluding themselves). The 1976 winner, "Save Your Kisses for Me" by Brotherhood of Man, holds the record of the highest average score per participating country, with an average of 9.65 points received per country. The 2011 winner, "Running Scared" by Ell and Nikki, holds the lowest average score for a winning song under that system, receiving 5.14 points per country.

My Cover Designers 2 – Icy Sedgwick

As luck would have it, when one door closed, another one opened, in the form of the incredibly talented Icy – a lovely lady from the 10K Angels group. Unfortunately, I was extremely prolific during the Icy years, and rarely gave her enough notice, however she always came through with something fabulous.

The first cover was a prequel to the Hengist series, which I’d always envisioned writing at some point, and she created this truly unique cover using a photo I took of a yule log and matching with the concept of the parchment background and single object foreground. Senna’s story captured people’s imagination, and several readers wanted to know more of what happened before the start, so Nature’s Tribe ended up being 4-books instead of the three I’d imagined.
Ultimately, Hengist expanded into a 13-book saga, with a third series. This culminated in the very 1st book I wrote featuring Archer and Rory as adults. Icy pulled out all the stops, designing some breath-taking covers for the Colour of Light series, undoubtedly my favourite ones ever.

Interspersed with these two were the YA books I wrote many years before Hengist, and the Bryant Rockwell covers are cleverly done with lots of symbolism in the colour and background to the roses.

Next I collected together a bunch of my very first short stories, weaving a narrative around them featuring and extremely sassy 30-something Lexie. These were way more adult – my version of 50 Shades of Gray, so I published them under my pseudonym, Ro Green. Also as Ro, I pubbed 3 juke-box Musical books, based on stories suggested by some of my favourite bands, Journey and City Boy.

The multi-talented Icy has many more strings to her bow (including a fabulous podcast), and I thoroughly recommend you check out her books here.

My Cover Designers 1 – Anthony and Rebecca

In my 16-year publishing journey, I’ve been privileged to work with some phenomenally talented people, and it’s time to give credit where credit’s due to the handful of artists who have paired my scribings with gorgeous front covers. And that’s not all – Anthony Askew, a friend of my son’s, designed my very own white horse – Blaise, used as a trademark symbol in all the Hengist books.

Back in 2009 when I looked into getting my first book published, I came across an outfit called AuthorHouse, and drove down to Milton Keynes for a presentation, which resulted in my signing up for a publishing package costing a humungous £675.
Not my finest hour – suffice to say I learnt a very expensive lesson.
Only good thing to come out of the publication of Subterfuge on 22 May 2009 was the cover. They took my mockup and made it look amazing.

Anthony Askew

The following year, I discovered I could create books with Lulu at no cost, and I’d taken some photos I wanted to use for the covers of the first 3 hengist books, so I got Anthony to turn them into covers. Unfortunately, I had little idea of the young adult market, and my daughter reckoned they looked more like the covers on text books. She was so right.

But I did have fun getting a lad in my tutor group to come in and pose as Reagan at my kitchen table with a bunch of witchy artefacts.
Turns out he was a proper drama brat (son of an actor) and he and Steph ended up in the school production of Dracula Spectacular.

For the book tour of Archer and Rory, Anthony also created these fabulous posters (above), the third one of which resulted in the second set of Hengist book covers (below).

And he also created the most amazing book trailer for Archer.
But then he set off on his travels so I needed to find someone new.

Rebecca Stirling

One of my author buddies put me in touch with the amazing Rebecca, and she created fabulous covers for my 1st two standalones as Ro Green, followed by the re-release of Subterfuge as Fox Among Wolves, which turned into a trilogy – due to reader demand!!!

Then she came up with a fabulous concept to re-brand the Hengist stories, which turned into 5-book series.

And she also created the most amazing book trailer for New Kid in Town - the Bryant Rockwell first book. You'll need to unmute it to hear the soundtrack.
Oh, and did I mention she's also a brilliant author? Writing beautifully-crafted fantasy, (mostly shifters) as Keri Armstrong. Check out her books here.
Unfortunately, as often happens with us creative types, Rebecca took on too much, so she had to give up the cover designs, but I still count her among my friends - she's the one who came up with my nickname JRo!

Thankfully, another fabulous female stepped in to fill the breech. More next week.

My Audiobook Adventures

This episode started a decade ago when I first looked into getting an audiobook for Archer. I listened to half a dozen different narrators, but none the voices were quite right. I even got a brilliant demo from a fabulous actor/director I used to work with at Marconi, but it was not to be.

Back in January this year, I got a message from a chap offering a sample of him and a talented female. They were very good but, yet again, the voices weren’t quite right.

Imagine my surprise when I was invited to take part in a beta trial of Amazon’s new “Virtual Voice” initiative. Having been very impressed with the narrators on Office 365’s Word program, I was more than prepared to give it a go.

Three weeks later, I’m nearly finished the second run through of Time and Time Again, and let me tell you, it’s been an adventure.

To be continued very soon ...

My Instagram Adventures

This began back in January, when my fabulous daughter-in-law, Sophia, gave me a whirlwind introduction to the platform, transforming my unused account with a couple of posts and reels, and showing me a handful of tricks. In a little over two weeks, I had 8 posts, a couple of reels and a couple of dozen followers – pretty much all of whom I knew. Then the fun stuff started. My first scammer pretended to be some kind of spiritual guru, but turned out to be a teenage boy who basically just wanted money. For goodness sake. If he'd just approached me honestly and offered the sort of promotional services he reckoned he could provide, I'd have snapped his hand off. But nothing angers me more than scammers, because as a self published author, I've been targeted by these low-lives my entire writing career, over a decade.

On Sophia’s advice, I trawled through dozens of authors websites looking at the type of content they provided, and picked up a few tips along the way. Most of February was spent creating book trailers for each of the six books in my latest series, a genre mash up of time travel and dungeons and Dragons, set in a UK version of The Big Bang theory, with several nerdy 30 somethings.
The first Time Doctors book, Time and Time Again, takes us on a journey back to the early 2020s reminding of some of the miseries in surviving a global plague. Lest we forget.

Because this is yet another brand new genre for me, I'm right back to scratch in terms of marketing, despite selling thousands in each of my mediaeval, magical and military series. And several hundreds more in my young adult and coming of age series. I'm not even going to talk about my very own 50 Shades series because basically I never promoted that one too much because it didn't sit so well with the type of books I like to read.

Hence the foray into an entirely new type of marketing with all the frustrations and heartache of a (massively) steep learning curve. One of the more eye-catching tools for hooking in potential readers is the book trope graphic, so this was my next project. Apparently, they really work, because all of a sudden I’m getting half a dozen messages every day from “influencers.”

The first one I engaged with happily took my money (all $74 of it) to post a review which suddenly had 12.7k likes in a matter of hours, then not a single one since. She even had the brass neck to ask for a tip!
All's well that end's well - with Paypal's help, I got a full refund.

Time Doctors #6 - D & D Scenario

Lizzie's turn at DM results in five different scenes, each based on a previous scenario. However, she has scant idea of running a DND session.

Time Doctors #5 - D & D Scenario

Norseland

Ben dreaded his turn at DM, having seen how well the others did. But his passion for all things Marvel and particularly the Norse mythology aspects meant he didn't do a half-bad job of creating a scenario where his housemates could let loose with their inner heroes.

Time Doctors #4 - D & D Scenario

Dragon Quest

Georgie's turn in the hot seat, and she
relishes the opportunity to eviscerate
a few of her real-life dragons in fiction.
And it turns out, one or two of her
housemates also have issues with
monsters in their past.

Mothering Sunday

Picking up from last week's post, this is the sight I'm greeted with every morning when I return from my daily constitutional. You gotta love a narcissi.

In a few hours, my gorgeous daughter, Jo, is treating me to a meal at the Kings Arms in Mickleton in lieu of tomorrow’s celebration. Hopefully I’ll remember to take some pix and share them here.
Yesterday. My fabulous hubby, Brian, made a comment about the timing of this celebration, because the house is filled with my favourite flowers from our garden, namely daffodils and camelia. That’ll be where the missing vase went then!
I knew I had a spare vase on the kitchen windowsill, but when I went to put a few blooms in it to brighten Jo’s room it wasn’t there. Here’s me ranting about how I must be going crazy, hoping to prompt him into owning up he’d broken it, but he focussed really hard on the gadget he was fixing. Some kind of detective I am – the clues were all there! Got there in the end, though.

His comment was off the back of my annual rant about how Mother’s day always falls on the shortest day of the year (literally only 23 hours long because they rob us of an hour), and it’s usually far too cold to sit outside.
Whereas Father’s day falls within a week of the longest day of the year and all the gang are pretty much guaranteed to turn up and share an al fresco meal. But not a barbie since we retired it due to lack of use!

I first noticed the disparity when I was heavily into pagan rituals, travelling down to Avebury every solstice to watch the sun rise and join in the celebrations with drumming, fire-poi and awesome ales from the Red Lion.
Many times, it fell on Father’s day and I’d have to do the rounds of my hubby, his father and my father before I could even think about driving down there. But I somehow managed it.
Nowadays, I’m happy just to raise a glass on the evening before and light a candle. You can pretty much guarantee I’m up at sunrise to go for a pee, so I always look East and fire off a blessing.

Spring has Sprung

We arrived at our Welsh caravan on 3rd March to open it up for the new season, to be greeted with the news the stream which a few dozen yards from our pitch had flooded, invading our next-door neighbour’s garden storage bin, rendering their lawnmower unusable.

Thankfully, ours was okay and we got everything set up in reasonable time, the major snag being the hole in the poo-bag wasting a precious half-hour searching for Sasha’s bowel-dump amid the thousands of poo-shaped/coloured mini pine cones. And the inevitable 3 times it took to reconnect the water hoses after the pressure had blown them off twice. And we won’t go into the gory details about my thumb getting trapped in the collapsible clothes dryer – just thank goodness I always bring ice for the 5pm G&T!
With below-freezing overnight temperatures, we had the gas fire and several electric radiators on all night – a first. We kinda missed the Shrove Tuesday pancakes, but because I had flour, I tried making some for Wednesday breakfast. Note to self: lard works so much better than butter/oil.

A mere fortnight later, the second jaunt couldn’t have been more different. We travelled down in record time – only 2hours/5 mins door-to-door (thanks to absence of loo-stop!) – and were unpacked and settled in after a swift half hour. Glorious!

The two walks around Machynlleth and Darowen hills were fabulous, and Thursday’s equinox brought with it 19°C and sunshine! I even managed to scrub down the two North/East-facing outside walls which the winter months always turn green. That’s half the job done.
Spring always brings out the best in Wales with several thousand hosts of golden daffodils, and best of all are the adorable newborn lambs – even the most curmudgeonly grouch couldn’t fail to be enchanted by their antics as they prance, leap and gambol around their ever-vigilant mothers. Proper little joybringers.

This is the farm on my favourite part of the walk around Darowen and, for most of the season, there's a cute farm shop filled with the tastiest courgettes, garlic and a myriad of vegetables. Definitely a highlight of our stays in Wales.