So now it looks like many Labour MPs think that they simply don't have enough seats to justify and sustain an alliance with the LibDems - not to mention Gordon Brown's unpopularity, resignation, and the uncertainty over the future of the party's leadership - and that Labour will withdraw ( Read more... )

What a fabulous few days we've had! Today is the day it all comes together, I guess. Yesterday I felt that the most likely outcome would be another election - the thing nobody wants ( Read more... )

Is kneading really necessary? I make bread quite a bit and only ever knead the dough for a few minutes - five max - till the dough is nice and smooth and round. Most recipes say knead the stuff for fifteen, which is hard work and really dull. But am I missing out, I wonder? Elizabeth David's book 'English Bread and Yeast Cookery' has a recipe ( Read more... )

I was so pleased to see that an essay had been posted at hp_essays at last. And then I read it. Sigh. It’s so strange that there is such a constituency of people who dislike and disapprove of the Harry Potter series and yet remain fascinated by it. Why is this? I used to listen to ‘The Archers‘, but when Brian Aldridge had an affair with ( Read more... )

Pretty much the first moment on my own this year. School started a week ago but my littlest one has had a tummy bug and only went in today. I've thought about closing the lj - I've never done much with it, and HP discussion is thin on the ground now. There's always deathtocapslock, I suppose ( Read more... )

Barack Obama has been elected, the Bank of England has reduced interest rates, Labour have won the Glenrothes by-election, but I’m going to have a moan about an obscure lj Harry Potter community, deathtocapslock.
( But HP is over, isn't it? )

You read something, have some idea or ideas about what you’ve read, start writing, and the ideas multiply and zoom off all over the place arguing with each other. Then you realise that there’s an awful lot you don’t know, and that you misunderstood something essential in the thing you read anyway, and off you go again ( Read more... )

Just when I was becoming seriously disillusioned with the Labour Party along comes J. K. Rowling and reminds me what it's supposed to be about. Hope it reminds the Labour Party too!http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7626589.stm

This morning the garden was ablaze with sunlight. It was more ablaze than ever before because we've had to fell the large ash tree that has shaded it for the last fifty years and more. It was a hard decision, but turned out to be the right one because the tree was quite badly rotted a fair way up its trunk. There are four houses within falling ( Read more... )

If I lived in Haltemprice and Howden just now, I'd be getting ready to vote Tory. Crikey.