A Few of My Favourite Things

A WordPress weekly writing challenge.

Lemon Drizzle

Mum buys home-baking from local coffee mornings, and one of our favourites is Lemon Drizzle. It is moist and sweet without being too sweet. We fell in love with it, and I always make room for it in my daily calorie allocation. (I still manage to lose weight, and it makes me happy, so it’s not a problem)!

There are lots of recipes for Lemon Loaf online — I compared several before settling for this one from Daily Mail Online: Crunchy Lemon Cake.

It tastes very like the coffee morning cake, though I learned not to use a small food-processor for the batter! There isn’t enough room. Next time I’ll just use big mixing bowls and a hand blender.

Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart)

I love my Kindle, but it would be nothing without the books.

One Kindle feature is that I can rate each book after finishing it. I keep a personal database of Kindle books (mostly so I can keep tabs on which books in a series I haven’t got) but I also note down the scores I give each book.

According to my database, the top scoring book on my Kindle is Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart — I gave it 45 points out of a possible 50. So far it’s the only book on the Kindle that I’ve given five stars.

I was interested in the ‘big brother’ aspect of the story (the scary thing is, I can imagine life turning into that). I liked the fact that the main character had a diary and was wrestling with issues similar to mine (logging the nice stuff and avoiding the bad)…. it just tickled my funny bone.

Although he begins by sounding like somebody you’d prefer to have nothing to do with, you can’t help feeling fascinated by his whole way of life… and you get very fond of him by the end. In fact he’s the most decent man in his social group.

Main characters in books don’t have to be young, beautiful, strong, clever, and sociable… in fact none of these qualities are necessary. They have to seem real and be vulnerable, have to have experienced things I recognize from my own life… and they have to be trying to be good rather than bad.

Perfection is not required in a human being, unless true perfection is having the right balance of imperfections! I think it may have been achieved in this book.

Piggin

…just because everybody needs Piggin Friends!

This boyo here has his own box of trinkets. The bigger and bulkier the trinket, the more he loves it. You don’t leave anything sparkly lying around, because it will disappear into Piggin’s treasure chest.

He has even snatched costume jewellery from beneath other customers’ noses. Mum bought a string of cheap bulky beads from a stall, and another lady said, “Oh, you beat me to it! That’s just the kind of thing I love!”

I said, “I don’t suppose you told her it was going to be worn by a Piggin?”

“No,” she said.

Good call.

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