In which birds are saucy...

My dearest Mother, 

Life is quiet in the country. It is much different to Town life. Everything is so much more vivid. It is beautiful.

I no longer miss the sights and sounds of London as I have taken up the hobby of bird watching. Apparently it is a great passion of the Squire, Mr Ramsbottom. He has been showing me all the places that the little Tits can be found.

Last Wednesday he took me to a secluded clearing on his property and showed me a White-Breasted Nuthatch. Mother, it was exhilarating.

He has also shown me his collection of art. He is a wonderful artist. I confess my favourite was his watercolour of the Red Bellied Woodpecker. Oh mother, it was beautiful, he gifted it to me. It is now hanging in my bedroom where I can see his Red Bellied Woodpecker every day.

I have heard tales, as well Mother, that there is a nest of Tufted Titmouses nearby. Mr Ramsbottom and I have made plans to seek out these little darlings and expose them to the county.

 There is also a dance scheduled in the next week. All of the eligible young men and women in the area will be there. Oh I do hope they like me. I am making such and effort not to be the spoiled brat that you sent to the country as punishment.

Do you think any of them will be interested in bird watching as well? I do hope so. I would dearly love to tell the tale of how I stumbled on to the home of a Brown Thrush.

I hope to hear from you soon, dearest Mother.

Your loving daughter, 

Euphemia

Another Book Review - Brace Yourselves, It's Going To Be A Bumpy Read

So, having been informed that my evening’s reading was going to be a novel by Lisa Marie Rice, I was not expecting good things, especially since it was called Fatal Heat and two dangerous novellas.
It wasn’t as bad, or as funny, as I’d hoped, but it was in no way good. At all.

 

First Story: Fatal Heat.

There is a sniper dude and plant geneticist.

The sniper is such a fantastically good sniper that he doesn’t even bother to take a spotter with him to kill an apparently sick and twisted bad guy who is just killing and torturing people with impunity. And you know the bad guy is a bad guy because the sniper watches him behead a few people and whip a woman for apparently kicks and giggles. All the while the bad guy is standing out in the open. Sniper Dude gets his shot off and bad guy’s second in command knows immediately where the shot came from and before Sniper Dude can react, he is shot in all sorts of places. Injuries occur and Sniper Dude is somehow rescued by magical unseen forces and whisked away to the U.S to recuperate.

I don’t have a problem with the whole “Let’s shoot the bad guys” thing. I just have a problem with the whole “I am a lone sniper with no back up, let alone a spotter, and somehow I am injured and rescued before the bad guy’s minions can climb the hill and get me, torture me and kill me.”

So magical rescue happens and, after his time in a coma, he forces his wounded his body to walk again by strength of will alone. According to this book, abusing your body and forcing it beyond its limits works as a rehabilitation technique. All those people who go to university and train for years to help people learn to use their limbs again are useless.

So, a friend in his platoon/unit/dorm/whatever gave him the keys to his holiday villa next to a beach so he could recuperate and get back on his feet, so to speak. It is there that he meets the niece of said friend who has a dog that is impervious to commands except by the Sniper Dude.

Cue instant and fiery attraction to each other. They have dinner and get down to the horizontal mamba.

Meanwhile, Plant Lady has been sent some rather disturbing information from a fellow sciency person in Argentina or somewhere. I really was just skimming by this point. And this sciency friend hasn’t been heard from in a week. Sciency friend finally gets through and sends the info to Plant Lady and Plant Lady is conveniently kidnapped after making a copy and hiding it on a thumb drive.

Sniper Dude comes back from his doctor appointment/getting sexy supplies/grocery shopping and discovers that Plant Lady is gone and her dog has been shot in the head.

Why is it always the menfolk who buy the sexy things? Can't the women decide they're going to sexy themselves up for their men? Do they not have the nerve to get lingerie or "naughty supplies"? Ugh.

Anyways, Back on topic.
 The dog doesn’t die. The dog is wounded and is well enough to assist Sniper Dude in the rescue of Plant Lady from the evil island lair of one of the employees of the company she works for, and who is arranging to make lots of money from a new corn that grows super fast but seems to have the added side effect of giving everyone who lives near it cancer.

There is also a whole scene about how Sniper Dude has to swim to the island and puts the dog on a dingy and swims the three miles across the bay.
Blah Blah Blah.
Basically it’s all about how he hasn’t swum that far since being wounded and he finds this untapped source of energy to drag himself to the island by focussing on his love for Plant Lady.

The dog, by this stage too, is a well trained and quiet tracker, sniffing out his human with skilled efficiency. Sniper Dude may be all exhausted but he is able to subdue and dispatch all the bad guys who were supposedly hired because they were all about the violence and the money. They got taken out by a crippled and exhausted man and a dog that was too stupid to learn to “Sit”.

In the end no one died. Science Friend is safe, Plant Lady is safe, the idiotic dog is fine, and Sniper Dude gets better.

It was better than the other two stories in so far as much as it actually had more of a plot and less of an ‘I am the big strong man and I must protect my woman at all costs, and the women swanning around all free spirit and independent and getting into mischief.”

The second story sucked mainly because of the last words.

“Darling, your pickle. Best. Pickle. Ever.”

Oooooookay then.