I’ve been adding a few Scottish words to my vocabulary during my travels. Guddle means a mess and/or a complex and confusing situation.
A guddle is also a type of fish which can be caught by guddling. The guddling is done with bare hands so quite messy and the word apparently derives from making a mess around water – which is handy for me, as have plenty of photos of various watery subjects in Scotland.
Correctitude means correctness and especially concise correctness of conduct. That’s a pleasingly alliterative phrase, but not somehing I feel able to demonstrate photographically. Or at all.
Oh look – a squirrel!
All my books (except this one and this one which are free anyway) are available to read on kindle unlimited, or KU. If you’re not already subscribed to this service, you are quite likely to be offered a discounted introductory offer (typically 99p for three months) if you click on any of my ebooks. This allows you to read a large range of magazines as well as a huge number of books, and decide if it’s worth continuing at full price.
I think it’s a convenient and cost effective way to try books you might enjoy, but perhaps wouldn’t have bought, due to being unfamiliar with the author’s work. That’s why so manu independent authors offer their books this way.
If you are subscribed to KU, you may like to take a look at this promotion, for a selection of books available throgh the service – including some of mine. I take part in these promotions both to introduce new books to readers, and in the hope of allowing people to find mine.
Read more: Kindle unlimitedForging can mean creating something strong and enduring – to forge a career, legacy or relationship, for example. The encouragement of my grandparents forged my love of gardening. If you forge ahead, you’re taking the lead or making good progress.
Forging can be to make an object from metal by heating and shaping it. A forged banknote is a forgery (fake, fraudulent copy) created by a forger.
You could help me forge my reputation as a writer by reading one of my books and then telling others about it, in person or via a review. As well as buying them online, you can read ythrough kindle unlimited, order at your local bookshop, or request them at your library (ebooks as well as paperbacks now).
The Book Shop at Lee-on-the-Solent is hosting a small literary crime festival on the 28th March 2026. There will be readings and talks by authors, and of course lots of criminally good books on sale.
I’ll be there with my Little Mallow cosy crime series, romantic crime novel Acting Like A Killer, and two collections of short crime stories.
I’m sure you’re aware that a sultana is a dried seedless raisin type thing and absolutely delicious when included in sticky buns which have been toasted and spread generously with butter and… Sorry, got distracted for a moment there.
An apochromatic lens is one which reduces spherical and chromatic aberrations. (The first part is where stuff looks a weird shape in the photo despite being fine in reality and the other bit is that weird purple haze you sometimes see round the edges of photographic subjects.)
You know how you’re aware a thing exists, but it had never occurred to you there was a specific word for it? (Or is that just me?) Well, those little strandy bits in an egg, which join the yolk to the ends of the egg, inside the shell, are known as chalaza.
Abiogenesis is the formation of living organisms from non-living substances. It sounds an unlikely thing to happen, but unless it was created from nothing at all, then this must be how life started on Earth. Unless it was brought here by aliens, in which case abiogenesis must have occurred on whichever planet they came from.
Oh, and the spontaneous generation of living forms is also called abiogenesis. Gosh, who’d have thought that explaining the creation of life would be complicated?
Here’s a fluffy, baby living organism. If you don’t know how babies are created, ask strangers on the bus. You’ll be sure to get a seat to yourself.
If something (or I suppose someone) is lactiferous, then they’re producing milk, or a milk like fluid. That makes sense as ‘lacto’ refers to milk and ‘ferous’ implies having or forming.
Euphorbias can probably be described as lactiferous as the sap of these plants looks very like milk. Don’t go drinking it though, as it’s a strong irritant.