A Day in the Life of Della Parker (AKA Della Galton)

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Tracy Baines

Writing is my day job and has been for 16 years now. So when people ask me if I’m disciplined the answer is yes. No muse = no money = no mortgage payment. It never gets any less scary than that.

However, I also have two hounds. Little Hound – she’s a German Shepherd and Big Hound – he’s an Irish Wolfhound. Big hound likes to start the day with a song. His day starts around six thirty, which means so does mine as I have to run down and shut him up before he wakes the whole street up.

So I start my day with a walk. Then it’s breakfast for all of us, and I retire to my office, which is a summerhouse in the garden. I live halfway up a hill and I have a panoramic view of the surrounding fields and countryside. I never get tired of my “commute” to work!

If I’m working on a novel I write 2000 words and I don’t leave my desk until it’s done. Sometimes it takes two hours. Sometimes it takes seven. If it only takes two, I’ll either write some more or I’ll switch to another “morning job”. I’m at my best and most alert in the mornings.

I stop for lunch some time between 1 and 2.30 depending on how it’s going. In the afternoon I’ll do something easier than writing. This could be editing, invoicing, answering emails, publicity stuff, phone calls, a swift foray on to Facebook or Twitter. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t resist it. I also can’t resist doing things like checking to see if I have any new reviews and eating chocolate. Activities that are usually carried out simultaneously.

Quite often I get “persuaded” AKA hassled by the hounds to go for another walk in the afternoon. Then it’s tea time. I have a handful of very close friends and I try to see them in the evenings – and for the occasional lunch. If I didn’t I wouldn’t see anyone except my fellow dog walkers.

Saturdays and Sundays are not a great deal different. Recently I’ve been trying to have Sundays off. Which is not going particularly well – I’m writing this piece at six pm on a Sunday.

Hmm! Living the Dream.

I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

The Reading Group by Della Parker is a series of six novellas.

They are published by Quercus, part of The Hachette group, and are 99p each.

December, the short story that introduces them can be downloaded FREE.

www.dellagalton.co.uk

DISNEY LAUNCHES BRAND NEW FORMAT FOR MOVIE RELEASES by author Milly Adams

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Disney classics get a supersized update in ‘Big Sleeve Editions’ – stunning 12” vinyl style sleeves to be launched for selected DVD and Blu-ray releases which include Finding Dory, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Aladdin

The Walt Disney Studios continues to lead the way in collectables, as six of the nation’s best loved movies release on a new, never before seen format. The brand’s latest offering, ‘Big Sleeve Edition’, will feature collectable packaging, the movie on both DVD and Blu-ray plus a set of beautiful bespoke artworks.

A mix of classics and new releases, Disney’s Big Sleeve Edition will launch with six titles including Cinderella, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy, Aladdin and Finding Dory with further releases planned next year.

Viewers will have the chance to see behind the scenes footage, deleted and alternative scenes and gain an insight into each story through jam packed audio commentary from directors and stars.

Ben Loades Head of Commercial Development at Disney comments; “We’re thrilled to be launching Big Sleeve Editions this Autumn. We think it’s a great way for collectors, film lovers and families to treasure the movies they love and bring both Disney’s beautiful artistic cinematography and children’s imaginations to life at home.“

Disney’s unique Big Sleeve Editions can be pre-ordered online from the 7th of October at £19.99 and will hit the shelves on 28^th November 2016 at £29.99.

www.amazon.co.uk/b?node=11420887031

This is all about getting in the mood… by Milly Adams

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Margaret Graham

HALF HITCH is inspiring gin-lovers to get into the Christmas spirit by inviting them to their Camden micro-distillery on 1 Dec at 6:30pm to create a bespoke Christmas gin. The event is held in collaboration with The Gin Foundary and marks the opening of the first door in this year’s Ginvent Calendar, an advent calendar celebrating the diversity of gin from all over the world.

Guests are invited to the home of HALF HITCH to create their own festive gin to take home, while discovering the unique choice of botanicals and innovative production techniques behind HALF HITCH, an experience as distinctive as the gin itself, and delving into Camden’s rich background at the heart of London’s gin history.

Celebrating not only it’s first year as part of the Ginvent Calendar, but also the coveted top spot of door number one, be one of a handful of lucky guests to join HALF HITCH on Thursday 1 Dec at 6:30pm to create a Christmas spirit of your own.

Tickets are available for £15 http://www.ginfoundry.com

Address: HALF HITCH Gin Micro-Distillery, West Yard, 53 Camden Lock Pl, London NW1

The best place for us to eat in Oxford – the Old Parsonage

Posted on November 19, 2016 by Jack Shamash

A good place for posh grub

We wanted to go to Oxford to see my daughter, who has just started a course there. And my mother wanted to come with us and buy us a nice lunch. So I started to look for somewhere nice to eat.

I did look online, but the internet was pretty useless: it provided us with a huge number of recommendations among which were a branch of Subway the sandwich bar and some suburban Indian restaurants with names like ‘Star of India’.

So I emailed my friend Andrew. Andrew is a professor who has worked at the university and still lives in the town. He emailed me back. ‘I’d suggest the Old Parsonage – I haven’t been for years but it’s always been good, traditional, on the pricey side and the sort of restaurant you’d imagine from all those films they set in early 20th century Oxford’. So I booked.

Anyway, we went along for a meal. The restaurant itself is about two minutes walk from my daughter’s college, which is very handy.

My children after a good meal

It is a lovely building, and is part of a hotel. It is made of old stone, and looks very rustic and historic. The dining room is hung with oil paintings – most of which appear to be from the first half of the twentieth century.

Now the menu isn’t cheap. Most of the starters are seven or eight pounds, while the mains range from £15 to £50. For starters my son and I had a wonderful French fish soup with aioli (garlic mayonnaise) and croutons. This was done really well done, very authentic – lots of great flavours of fish. My wife and daughter each had beautifully fresh smoked salmon.

The main courses were similarly good. My wife had some very good fish cakes, which were a relative bargain at £15. My mum and son had fillet steak – £32. I went absolutely mad and had a veal chop and kidney cooked in garlic and rosemary for £49.50. My chop was extremely expensive, but immensely tasty. It was cooked beautifully – and it was a big chunk of meat. OK, it wasn’t cheap, but it was a real treat. Oh, and because it was lunchtime, we didn’t drink very much. My daughter and I each had a very acceptable glass of Languedoc rose.

The portions were big, so we weren’t really in the mood for pudding. My son had a very nice pear and apple crumble. Anyone can knock out a reasonable crumble, but what was particularly nice was the delicious custard, which was made of real eggs and was flavoured with fresh vanilla. Add a couple of coffee and the bill for the five of us came to £250.

It was a lovely meal. Not just because of the food – which was very good. It was just a nice place to sit, the staff was helpful and it was pleasantly busy – but not packed.

And in the front there is a sort of bar, which had a stone floor. As we were leaving we got talking to a very nice academic, who had brought his dog and was having a drink with a friend. We were just remarking what a lovely dog he had, when the animal produced a great spray of yellow diarrhoea. My daughter and I fell about laughing. I’m not sure that this is a regular part of the entertainment offered at the Old Parsonage, but it meant that we left with a smile.

Personalised Haynes Explains Manuals – fun gifts for Christmas from Oh My Gift

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Tracy Baines

Are your parts wearing out? Do you need an MOT? These fun guides recreate the appearance and technical style of Haynes vehicle maintenance books but with the vehicle being the human body in various stages of life.

Haynes iconic car maintenance guides have been modified to cover the challenges of being a pensioner, teenager, baby or married couple. How many times have we heard that babies etc don’t come with an instruction manual – well now they do. Follow at your peril. Every manual based on a strip down and rebuild – so now you know.

The Pensioner

Are you parts wearing out? Do you need some advice on rust prevention? I particularly liked the Advantages of being a pensioner section. The Good News: You can live without sex. The Bad News: You can’t live without glasses. There is so much more to keep you reading and much to laugh at.

The Teenager

Not sure whether this is funnier for the teenager or for those who own one – probably both – but full of wise advice on what to say and what not to say to a teenager. Here’s how to understand and handle your teenager until the magic age of twenty and still be laughing at the end of it.

The Baby

For new parents or the perfect present for a baby shower to enlighten prospective owners of the latest model.

Subjects covered include Production and Delivery and Identifying Leaks. Surely something to calm the nerves when it’s most needed. Laughter can get you through most things – even sleepless nights.

The Married Couple

A great gift for weddings and anniversaries taking a wry look at maintaining your relationship and getting the best from your ‘vehicle’.

All written with tongue firmly in cheek these manuals are a humorous and quirky gift and certainly made me giggle in recognition.

They can be personalised with the name of your choice which appears on the cover and the top of each page. You can also include a personal dedication on the inside front page.

It’s a fun gift for Christmas but also for other milestone occasions.

Oh My Gift have a fabulous range of personalised products that are suitable for all the family and all occasions. Put your order in soon to beat the Christmas stampede.

www.ohmygift.co.uk

Games for Christmas from Gibsons – a family-owned British Company

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Tracy Baines

Snakes & Ladders and Ludo

Looking for some stocking fillers that the whole family can share? Look no further than Gibsons Games, a family owned company that produces high-quality puzzles and board games. There’s nothing quite like clearing the Christmas table and settling down for some quieter pursuits and Gibsons have plenty on offer.

Gibsons have been making puzzles and games for almost 100 years and the company is still owned by the Gibson family.

A particular favourite here at Frost was good, old Snakes and Ladders – perfect for little ones and still good fun for older family members. It’s always lovely to have a game that all generations can enjoy and this fits the bill perfectly. The board is illustrated with woodland companions, plump bees, and cheerful toadstools and in place of ladders the counters climb up trees and wiggle down the worms.

Our young testers really loved the fox, frog, rabbit and owl on the ludo board. The wooden counters were easy for little fingers to hold and move.

The double-sided board is made from high-quality cardboard with wooden counters and dice – and the all important instructions in case you’ve forgotten how to play. It’s nice to have well-loved game updated and presented in sturdy packaging that will last. One to treasure.

Gibson Games’ Snakes & Ladders and Ludo was the winner of the Right Start Best Toy Awards 2016 and has been awarded a Silver Practical Preschool 2016 Award.

2-4 players
Aged 5+

RRP £12

Vintage Kellog’s Puzzle

The Gibsons puzzle range has grown to over 250 titles, running from 2 to 2000 pieces, with over 50 new jigsaw puzzle images added every year.

One of the new designs is this Vintage Kellogg’s jigsaw puzzle.

When complete the 250 pieces re-create a nostalgic image of an inviting bowl of corn flakes

The high-quality jigsaw puzzle is made from 100% recycled durable puzzle board and the bowl-shaped puzzle measures 49x34cm when complete.

The puzzle is presented in a beautifully illustrated, sturdy tin, which is perfect for keeping knick knacks in once you have finished the puzzle. Or you could always keep your cornflakes in it. Tin measures 20x14x6cm

RRP £9.99

Pass the Pud

Great entertainment for the whole family, Pass the Pud is a team game for four or more players and everyone’s nerves will be tested to the limits as they answer questions in a race against time to beat the burp. There’s nothing like time pressure to set everyone giggling and when the pudding burps it becomes almost impossible to keep a clear head to answer the questions. This is our kind of pudding – and not a calorie in sight.

Players take it in turns to draw a card from four categories. They must come up with an answer before quickly passing the pud on to the next player who must also come up with a suitable answer – and so it goes on until the dreaded ‘burp!’

The player who is holding the Pud when it burps is the loser and the rival team receives a sixpence. Once all of the cards have been used, the team with the most sixpences are the winners.

Requires 2 x AAA batteries.

4+ players.
Age 8+

RRP £17.99

All products tested were well made with clear instructions and ease of use.

There are many more games and puzzles available at www.gibsongames.co.uk

Welcome To The Club: 100 Parenting Milestones You Never Saw Coming

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Catherine Balavage

Welcome to the Club

100 Parenting Milestones You Never Saw Coming

By Raquel D’Apice

ISBN: 9781452153476

Price: £9.99

I doubt there is a parent who can’t relate to this astutely observant book on parenting. It will have you laughing out loud and grimacing in remembrance. On a more serious note, it makes you feel less alone. Not much feels better as a parent than when you realise you are not the only one in the trenches, making mistakes and dealing with the daily horrors of trying to raise young children. From poop explosions to first smiles, I loved this book and its great milestones.

From the comedian behind the popular parenting blog The Ugly Volvo comes a refreshing spin on the baby milestone book. Instead of a place to lovingly capture the first time baby sleeps through the night, this book shows what it’s like the first time baby rolls off the bed/sofa/changing table, leaving mum or dad in a state of pure terror (it happens). These 100 rarely documented but all-too-realistic milestones—such as “First Time Baby Says a Word You Didn’t Want Her to Say”—provide comfort, solidarity, and comic relief for new parents. Laugh-out-loud relatable text and distinctive paper-cut illustrations of these “bad” parenting moments make this a must-have book for anyone entering the mysterious club of parenthood.

About the author: Raquel D’Apice is a comedian, humour writer and the blogger behind The Ugly Volvo. Her writing has been featured in Slate, BUST, Mommyish, iVillage, Babble, Parents, Circle of Moms, Reader’s Digest and the parenting humour anthology I JUST WANT TO BE ALONE. She also writes regular articles for The Huffington Post. The mother of a young child, she lives in New Jersey.

Oh dear oh dear, I’ve been tasting gin again…

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Margaret Graham

I should perhaps have let Frost Magazine’s Michael Rowan taste it for me as he is the doyen who introduced me to the Gin Club and slightly has the edge on me where this particular drink is concerned, but no, no… You see it’s pink, and I couldn’t inflict that on him. Could I? Because I’m a good good girl.

Edgerton Original Pink Gin tastes as good as it looks: smooth, and full of flavour, and sufficiently complex to be interesting, with a great after taste. Just right for Christmas. Well, to be honest for any time of year, and any day of the week. It really does have the potential to be a regular treat, and of course, not just for women, but for men too.

So I lied, Michael, It was a case of me, me, me. it’s totally suitable for blokes.

The distinctive pink toned Edgerton Original Pink Gin is an award-winning spirit distilled in the heart of London. It is made in small batches from 15 botanicals that are hand-picked from across the globe, including pomegranate – the ingredient that gives the gin its distinctive pink glow.

But how did Edgerton’s arrive at this ‘sip it, enjoy it, and yes, let’s have another gin’?

Martin Edgerton Gill, formerly owner of the London Gin Company discovered that whilst superb taste in the glass is key to the long term success of a brand, colour really works. His creation, the world’s first blue gin “London No 1 Blue”, sold in 2010 to Gonzalez Byass of Spain, has been a huge success.

Rather than retire on the sale of London Gin, he decided – to my immense gratitude – to explore the possibilities of a pink gin.

Gill’s father had spent five years in the Royal Navy during World War II and brought home with him a love of pink gin. My ‘him indoors’ was also RN, a cold war submariner, and has appreciated tasting this Edgerton’s Pink Gin as much as I have. This traditional nautical tipple, consisting of gin and Angostura bitters, was launched in 1824 initially as a cure for sea-sickness. However, its popularity in civilian life grew apace and by the late eighteen hundreds had become a favourite in fashionable bars throughout the world.

Martin who had pioneered herbal teas in the nineteen eighties used his considerable knowledge of herbs and spices to create a totally new and contemporary pink gin. Quite apart from the colour it is as I have said, a lovely and complex gin.

Available to purchase online and at all major department stores across the UK, including Harvey Nichols at RRP £36. http://www.edgertonpinkgin.co.uk/

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