To eat or not to eat...

First sighting of a puffball at LTF coincides with the camera screwing up so it has been sitting there for two days now – see all the bite marks?  Not ours. Despite always saying we’d eat puffballs because they can’t be mistaken for anything else, we’re not mushroom-pickers by nature and found ourselves wondering if it was something else, something deadly.

However, we can find solace in the blueberries in their first year under cover (hard luck, feathered friends, these are ours)

and the pears that are on their way – first year of fruiting for this tree.  Gravity-defying fruit by the looks of it.  I forgot to flip the picture before uploading it.

We don’t eat these, but neither did the slugs this year.

 And we won’t eat these if they grow up to give us eggs.

And on the subject of first crop, these aren’t doing so badly and if they ripen, we might end up drinking them.

Local authors caught red-handed peddling crime in Hull city centre

Following a tip off, Humberside police raided WH Smith, Prospect Centre, Hull, this afternoon to find two local authors openly urging the populace to take to crime. 

[photo by Linda Acaster]

Although a pair of handcuffs was flourished, both officers steadfastly refused to adhere to stereotype, opening with a single "hello" and not the traditional trio.

Author, Penny Grubb, with the evidence of the Jawbone Gang, the Doll Makers, and Like False Money out in plain view, had a go with “It’s a fair cop”, but the wily officers were not going to be outwitted so easily and no one said, “You’re nicked”. 

Penny was signing books with Sylvia Broady (the Yearning Heart) on a red hot summer day in Hull.  Afterwards, people wandered down to Vanillaon Ferensway for post-signing eats and drinks where Les Pooley provided sumptuous fare.

If the authors were hoping for a wholesale confiscation of books (via the tills), they found the boys in blue dodging a strip search of their wallets, being not so easily led as politicians into mass crime purchase.

A couple of other local authors called in: Linda Acaster, novelist and writing coach and Robert Jaggs-Fowler, physician-poet.  Also on hand was fabulously talented local broadcaster, John Butcher, whose Windy Old Weather CDs are now available from his website where you can try before you buy.

Thanks to Adam and his team at WH Smith, who did the business with some great scene setting, and thanks also to all those who came along.