Dear friends

I've had some beautiful emails recently, all of which deserve long and lazy responses, but the time just vanishes, so I have to keep them brief. Please forgive me if I don't do them justice.

    One thing I will mention is that often is seems that the WHAT'S NEW! section of the Blob isn't as obvious as I'd hoped. There's a link to it at the top of the page and also at the side. I mention it so that you can quickly see if an arm has fallen off or something, or maybe there's an answer there to questions you were afraid to ask.

    It makes it easy for us all. It's been wonderful that there's so much interest as the page views climb to the 27,000 mark.

    In the meantime, here's something you don't see every day. It's a tray of persimmons Tracey picked from our little tree in the back garden. When friends cleaned up the backyard for us last year, they heavily pruned the persimmon tree. It did it the world of good, and the huge crop (this is only a third of it) is the result.

And now, back to my Alaskan story, which is coming along pretty well. It involves an owl, a hot night, a Bangladeshi refugee and my right arm.

    Truth is definitely often way stranger than fiction. You just can't make this stuff up!