Our Kindle book offer, starts 18th August!

Summer Special Discount Offer!

Starting at 08:00am PST* on 18th August 2016 for just 7 days, you can pick up fancy a dirty weekend? the travels of a navvies' cook for Kindle for just $0.99, that's a massive 57% discount!

The offer price will last for just a week, so make the most of it and grab your copy before the promo ends.  Original list price was $3.00.

Price is valid until 25th August 2016 at 12:00am PST and only on Amazon.com!

* (that is 4pm in the UK)

https://www.amazon.com/d/B00AR154RQ

fancy a dirty weekend? the travels of a navvies' cook by Anne Nichols

One woman's story of her life amongst a group of waterways restoration enthusiasts, known as navvies. Unsuited to the physical activities of navvying, she offered her catering skills to the group, travelling round the country in the back of a van, feeding anything from 6 to 1000 people at a time. It offers an insight into the world of the volunteer movement on the canal network as seen through the eyes of the woman who kept them very well fed.

Technical Details: 

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 354 KB
Print Length: 121 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Yobunny Enterprises (20 Dec. 2012)
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
Language: English
ASIN: B00AR154RQ
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
Not Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Reviews:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating stories and great recipes 13 Feb. 2013

By Angela Bowey - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle Edition

The author describes some hilarious experiences with a canal restoration "flying squad" of expert fixers on some of Britain's derelict canals. She also shares some great recipes from those days. A really good read.

Awake the Dragon!

Today is a significant one for me. There is a new Leader of the Labour Party. One who will, I believe, bring the party back to its roots and make changes for the better for society as a whole.  Because of this I have decided to cease political posts on this blog and instead have set up a new blog for political and social issues. If you want to follow my thoughts in these areas you will find the new blog at http://awake-the-dragon.blogspot.co.uk/

This blog will continue as the ramblings of my creative side. Thanks for reading so far, and I hope you will stick with me here and perhaps also dip your toes into the other blog! 

Photographing a Templar... ?

My book of poems and photographs is almost complete... in fact I just need one more photo and it's done. The problem is that the photo I need is of a Knight Templar, and there are very few of them to be found in the 21st Century, so I'm having to apply some creative thought as to how to solve that problem!

A Butterfly Mind is a collection of my poems, accompanied by photos taken by me or my partner (BJ Morgan), and will be published shortly... when the Knight Templar photo issue has been resolved!

Giving him a helping hand!

For some time my partner has been "thinking about" having a website to promote his writing, but as this has not happened, I decided to help him along by creating him a site. He seems to like it - in fact he spent several hours playing with it yesterday, so I'm hoping he may be fired with enthusiasm by it. The hardest part about publishing titles on our own imprint is the marketing and promoting side, and we as authors and publishers have to do it all ourselves, so with a little luck his new website will help promote his book Moonbeams!

If you'd like to pop over and see it, and perhaps drop him a line to say hello, I'm sure he'd be thrilled. Even more so if you have read his book and would like to send him some feedback about it, or write a review. You'll find the website here: BJ Morgan [author]

The Crochety Rabbit

This week has been mainly taken up with crochety things. No, not crotchety - I'm not getting irritable in my old age! Crochety, as in the age-old hand-craft of crochet. Making things from yarn using a hook and one's hands. I find it relaxing and therapeutic, sat listening to a radio drama, whilst my fingers twist and hook the yarn to make shapes, which in time become garments or accessories.

This week I have been making crochet flower brooches, after a friend in Poland asked me about them. Late last year I'd made some hats which had a flower attached, so thought it would be fun to use the flower as a brooch design. They work well, so I now have a Quality Street tin (yes I know it should be a Roses tin but...!) containing pink, lime green and lavender roses (so far, more colours to follow!)  Making each one different has been fun too, some just one colour, others bi-coloured, some with a bead centre, and others with an attached leaf.

They look super on a lapel, a hat, or attached to a bag. They could also be stitched onto a blanket to make a flowery detail...  I can sense another design coming on!

 

My crochet items for sale are available from my ETSY shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheCrochetyRabbit

or visit my website to contact me or see my other crocheted items

http://thecrochetyrabbit.yobunny.co.uk/

Sharing the muck!

A recent comment on Facebook about muck-spreading, from my friend Sue Millard at Jackdaw E Books, reminded me of something which happened when I was a teenager and was dating a local farmer's son.

My mum was a passionate gardener and she and my boyfriend got on like the proverbial house on fire - she made fab apple pies, which he loved!  Anyhow I digress!  One day he'd arrived in his car (a VW Beetle) to collect me, as we'd arranged to go to a steam fair at Levens Hall, so off we went. It was a *very* hot August Bank Holiday afternoon, and we parked the car in the middle of the field allocated for parking, and went off to enjoy the event. When we came back 3 hours later it was to find the Beetle sat alone in a huge open space in the middle of the field - with a definite haze around it. As we approached we detected the smell... which got stronger the nearer we were to the car... looking puzzled I wondered what it was, and the boyfriend - looking very sheepish - confessed he'd brought two large sacks of farmyard manure for mum's garden, but instead of dropping them off for her before we went out, he'd left them in the boot of the Beetle - which, as you most probably know, is at the front of those cars - so we travelled home with an incredible smell of well-cooked manure wafting back over us!

Fancy a dirty weekend? :)

No, it's not an invitation to an orgy! Dirty weekends involve navvies, canals and (usually) mud... lots of it! This is all about my new book -  it's the story of the years I spent travelling up and down the country in the back of a Transit van, with a team of mad navvies (volunteer canal restorers). I went along to cook for them, so it's stories from the camps I cooked on, along with some of the recipes I used.

If you like canals or cooking, and enjoy a giggle, then fancy a dirty weekend? is the book for you.

Join me as I cook my way round the waterways of England, feeding a horde of hungry navvies in some of the oddest kitchens you could imagine. Some have a cooker... some have two... but only bits of them work; some have heating... some don't... and it's minus 6 degrees outside! Pack your earplugs as everyone snores; someone sleepwalks... and the accommodation is next to a canal basin... lock the doors and hide the van keys! There's never a dull moment on canal camps, and the navvies themselves could never be described as dull!

fancy a dirty weekend? the travels of a navvies' cook, by Anne Nichols, is available from Amazon for Kindle. In the words of one reader, it's a "delightfully funny book" and "a thoroughly entertaining read" - why not give your chuckle muscles some exercise and join me in the navvies' kitchen?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AR154RQ

Why a blog?

Well why? Or perhaps, why not?  I like writing, and a blog seems like a good way to let me ramble on about the literary, arty and crafty aspects of my life. I decided to include all my interests in the one blog, as I'm not organised enough to do one for each interest! So, I hope you'll join me as I chat about my books, plays, painting, crochet, knitting, and a myriad of other craft-related stuff. :)