Hello, this is Thursday. I think?
Hello,
This is the third of my combined newsletters. If you’ve missed the previous two, check your spam folder or check out my website blog. Normally I’d be writing about my books or related themes but at the moment, I think this is more helpful.
Just to let you all know my cousin is home safe and sound. I hope that all your loved ones are also well. There’s no two ways around this, we are living in interesting times. We are all in this together.
Now, thank you for all your e-mails. They were great fun and I hope by now I have replied to everyone. there were a lot and I’d hate to think I missed anyone.
Sorry to everyone that I made you wince when I said “me and the boys”. What can I say, other than my editors never do my e-mails. But I think that’s obvious.
My tale of woe
Anyway, let me tell you about yesterday. I went to the supermarket. That’s a thing now, a visit to a supermarket. We don’t tend to do a big weekly shop, we do little and often but I realised that that was resulting into frequently needing to leave the house. So it was time to go and do a big shop. Off I set and pulled up in the car park and noticed the queue. Well, that was something new, queuing outside a shop, waiting for food. How very soviet Russia. I tried to spin a dystopian angle, but quite frankly the sun was shining, the air was warm and the birds were singing. The queue of people,separated by 2m spacing, was quiet but smiling and there was no traffic sounds. It was lovely.
Pushing my trolley in woolly gloves was odd, and the gloves were a bit self defeating when the hand held scanner’s touch screen didn’t recognise my glove. I had to then take my glove off and had to give myself a small shake, as I touched the screen with my finger.
Finally, I got to the till and had another moment when I saw the bill. It was like a bloody Christmas shop. Thank God I had treated myself to a nice bottle of wine.
As I pulled up into our drive I was still reeling from the size of the bill and wondering if the scanner’s screen was contaminated. My mind was still racing as I opened the boot and my lovely, and not cheap, bottle of wine, rolled out of the bag and smashed on the floor.
Next time Steve can go shopping!
In other news the UK shared a mass clap at 8 pm on Thursday. Millions of us stood as awkward, embarrassed Brits, on our doorstep and then realised we were united in cheering and thanking our NHS workers and all the volunteers and support staff that are going to work to try and help us all through this. Cleaners, drivers, carers, nurses, doctors, volunteers, grocers, farmers, everyone is helping and its marvellous.
I’ve been doing a daily workout with Joe Wicks at 9 am with Joe Wicks. I’ve also been running with Steve, that’s been lovely, he can no longer swim or play squash so this is his workaround. I did try Dancing with Oti but I just don’t have enough floor space and kept kicking the dogs.
Anyway, enough of that here are some more things for you to do.
Citizen Scientist –
there are lots of excellent projects that you can actively help participate in from the comfort of your armchair. You can help scan the universe for aliens, crunch numbers for medical research or count sea birds and monkeys. Some of these you can do while you’re asleep, you just let the universities use your computer’s processing time.
Have a look, there are some incredible things to get involved with. I am going to start monitoring British rainfall in the 1800s.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bmj9jv/7-ways-to-donate-your-computers-unused-processing-power
Start searching for asteroids, earthquakes and aliens.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/index.php
Study the rainfall – https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/edh/rainfall-rescue
This site is the mother-load of things to get involved in from all around the world. Have a look the depth and range is incredible. https://www.zooniverse.org/projects
Listen to
Patrick Stewart read from Shakespeare. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMXfrpukaIU
Ronny Woods reads passages for those struggling at the moment. Really good stuff in there.
Liz Fenwick reads passages from her favourite books. https://www.facebook.com/liz.fenwick.author/
LeVar Burton reads Neil Gaiman https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/levar-burton-reads/e/50902715
Odds and Ends
Learn how to make pasta with Nonna – Live streaming from an Italian grandmother. https://nonnalive.com/
Tour Historical Sites https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/03/5-virtual-tours-of-historical-sites/126924?fbclid=IwAR1XTx4JQ5spN3AEMCbnBpffI1dU7485I40wW1AfCb190SFHlZLknDoqPMI
Finally,
Thank you to everyone that downloaded my books I hope that you enjoyed them. I can’t do anything about dropping the price on Ariana Byrne but for those supporting me and buying that, thank you enormously. I’m trying to write the next ones as fast as I can but I am struggling at the moment. I’ve also realised that my walking guides and cycling guides will be massively delayed on account of not being allowed outside much.
SNAFU TTFN
Liz
😀
Liz Hurley as well as being the owner of this blog, runs a bookshop in Cornwall, right by the sea and writes books. You can buy them in her shop (of course), Waterstones and other outlets as well as Amazon.
When she’s not reading, she’s writing and when she’s not writing, she’s walking. And when she’s not doing any of that she’s binging on box sets and sleeping.
This website is for her fictional works. Her Cornish non-fiction title and walking guides can be found at www.dreamingofcornwall.com
