Dodo Au Go-Go

It was asking for trouble really.  The minute I posted my Love Bug piece about my delights in enjoying observing and anthropomorphising the wee bugs in the garden, we had an explosion of fruit flies. You know, those itty-bitty little flies that seem to magically appear and hover over the over-ripe fruit in the kitchen? Well, they not only hovered, they multiplied.  They lined the kitchen cupboards in enough numbers to create a moving, speckled look. They got inside unopened loaves of bread and danced. They moved in indignant clouds if you wanted to find a piece of fruit.  But when they moved into the lounge room and onto the bookcase and my books, and then into the bedrooms within hours of each other, they went too far. I resorted to the internet suggestion of an apple cider vinegar trap.  It worked. I'm not proud of having to do it, but it worked. The numbers have reduced dramatically.  I'm not sure what exactly helped them explode in numbers thoug...

It was way back in late 2019 sometime (I think) that the book, Lucinda's Ghost , was published afresh.  The author, Cedrix E. Clarke, held a competition on Twitter where the creepiest piece of (Twitter-length) micro-fiction would win a free hard copy. I'm proud to say that I won with my tweet featuring creepy spiders 😁 I'm not so proud of the fact that, between a house move, pandemic lockdown, a lively toddler, and full-time working from home, I only unpacked my special, signed copy of Lucinda's Ghost on the Easter break 2021.  I started in, resigned to having to read in dribs and drabs as I found snippets of time. But instead, the Reading Gods smiled on me and I got unbroken one-hour stretches to read, race through, go back, savour, drink it in. Yesterday, I had the final couple of chapters to go and I had to start work. I actually pushed out my work starting time, so I could quickly read how the story ended - I couldn't bear to not know! And then, I g...