What a beautiful and thoughtful present. What wonderful commonplace notebooks they would make, but how hard it would be to start!

I have scattered Michael's ashes mostly in our garden here, but also at a garden in Sussex, one in Worcestershire, and six of us gyrated solemnly in the sea at Carne in SW Ireland, and each emptied jars into the edge of the sea. I have kept one small jar to scatter in my next garden, wherever that might be. The poem is beautiful. Thank you.

Oh,such sad news. We love them so much and they us, unconditionally. It won't be the same without her.

When my daughter Doune was married, we had AO's sonnet Wedding printed on the back of the Order of Service (with permission) just for people to read and enjoy.It did not form part of the service itself. From time to time our love is like a sail and when the sail begins to alternate from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat; and if the coat is yours, it has a tear like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions… and this, my love, when millions come and go beyond the need of us, is like a trick; and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck; and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding, which is like love, which is like everything.

You are my favourite gin-soaked dodderer and I am so grateful to the internet for throwing us together! Here's to the next decade!!

Where I grew up in Ireland, we had "townlands" (bit like parishes) and ours was called Hurtletoot. I'm not making this up, you know. All our fields had names; the best ones were Big Drumacalliagh and Little Drumacalliagh; others were more prosaic, like Camp Field and Laundry Field. This all needs to be recorded before it is forgotten ...

If a post from me appears twice, it's because Typepad is sitting on my first. Yes please to a place in the draw!

Fran, let's listen together! I always love the St. John's Advent service and remember the year when Elaine's daughter Helen read a lesson. I hadn't realised that CAD had written a clutch of Christmas poems (maybe the collective noun ought to be a "carol"?) and have nipped over to A*a*on to order a few. Now off to stroke Magnus and whisper sweet cat-nothings into his ear ...

I have to say that some were "educated guesses" but others were gleaned from informed commentary and also using the chapter headings. I may not be 100% correct in the attributions!

On granny-duty yesterday, so my reward is off to the opera today and Wigmore Hall on Sunday morning. Woo hoo!

Today's Food Programme on Blessed BBC R4 was Diana Henry on jam. I was in the queue at the tip dumping garden waste, and it was so tempting I almost gnawed my arm off! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b069gvl7

Chapeau! Great result and the Tinker will be so pleased and proud!

Hoping I get a better chance than those pesky baby rabbits ...

I read some very good reviews of The Watchmaker... and have it as an audiobook from Audible.

When working on a botanical painting, I usually listen to audio books. On looking again at the painting, long after its completion, the first thing that pops into my mind is 'Martin Chuzzlewit', or Dick Francis, or whatever I was listening to as I worked.It seems to have become as much a part of the finished whole to me as my pencil marks, or brushstrokes of paint.

A couple of years ago, Scott Pack (no doubt bending the knee to the venerable Dovegrey in this matter) organised a group read of The Quincunx. Around the country postmen groaned their way round their parcel deliveries as these doorstops were delivered, and off we all set. Where, I ask, is the formidable band of middle-aged lady editors with red pencils when you really, really need one? Palliser seems to run with one idea, drop it, then favour another, and in his Afterword (to the paperback edition, I think) admits to getting a bit lost..... http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/2013/01/social-reading-the-quincunx-authors-afterword.html but aren't we all glad it did get cut down by half? I found this helpful http://gix.pagesperso-orange.fr/quincunx/index and the following, for the delight of discovering that you are NOT ALONE. http://bigreaders.myfastforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=1220start=0 I felt it was more out of the Wilkie Collins stable than that of Dickens, and when I felt my feet weren't touching bottom I'd just keep b******ng on until I felt I might be in touch with the author again.

Another from the 6GMIN team clocking in: it really was "Hamlet without the Prince" but we still managed to have a wonderful time, ate like kings and walked and talked all day!

I'd call the thingummy-whatsit a cachepot; the gardeners would bring pots in from the greenhouse and sit them inside it.

Hoping for a lucky number in the draw here: first prize those wonderful books, second prize one rat, third prize two rats.....

"And all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side".

Arctic Dreams has been in and out of the basket like my right foot at Hokey Cokey over the last few days (Lent seeming like a Good Time to rein in the A****n habit) but at the words "floppy American paperback" all resolve melted and I have ordered that same edition. After all, I have the chocolate brown throw to keep me warm in the Arctic...... I was brought up in the house where my father and his brother also spent their childhoods and their books were still on the shelves. Polar exploration was as absorbing in the 20s as the space race was in the 60s, and I really was introduced to serious reading by these gold-embossed tomes, usually with titles beginning "The Boys' Book of..." and I was profoundly shocked to read that Amundsen ate his dogs whereas Scott did not. One of the reviews compares Arctic Dreams to Chatwin's "Songlines", so there's another psycho-geography re-read coming up.

...and Scarlet Ribbons, Somewhere over the rainbow, Chatanooga Choo-choo...... isn't there a smartphone app which reads "your" sky and tells you what you're seeing?

"Chapeau", Bookhound! We have a cartoon here in the loo with two splendidly mustachioed gents in bed together (shades of Eric and Ernie here) with one saying to the other "Not now! It's time for The Archers!"

No mere woman can iron like a man with military training; when my brother irons a shirt it looks bandbox fresh! The Dovegrey Wider Family clusters around you. XxXxX

What a wonderful post. I too fell under the spell of Masquerade and spent ages turning the pages and admiring the utterly wonderful detail in the illustrations. Just glorious.