Book Blurb Friday #9

This meme is hosted by Lisa Ricard Claro at ‘Writing in the Buff’ J

 Each week she posts a photo that could be the cover of a book. The aim is to:

‘Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book.’

Here is this week's photo followed by my offering. 

 

Image copyright Christina Claro 

What holiday are you after? Do you want sun, sea and sand or are mountains and horses more your style? Are you a culture vulture or a hippy? Do you want crowds or solitude? Home or abroad? Self-service or fully catered? Whatever your desire, this book will help you plan your break.

From the cheapest do-it-yourself hiking holiday to the most extravagant, no expense spared spree, you can’t ask for the wrong thing. A snip at £6.75!

(77 words)

Exams and holidays

August is the month of 'news' items about examination results and where the Great British public decides to take its holidays.
It's the same every year. For the exam slot a few nervous teenagers are rounded up and plonked in front of a presenter with a microphone and a camera man. They are asked the routine questions:-
1: What are your predicted grades?
2: What are you planning to do in the future?
3: How confident are you?
The teenagers answer modestly and articulately knowing that later on in the piece they will be quizzed about their results. Sometimes they have to open the results envelopes on camera. The questions now are:-
1: Did you get your predicted grades?
2: Are you pleased/disappointed? (depending on the first answer)
3: What are you planning to do next?
I wonder how the participants are selected. Is there an in-depth interview with the head teacher, year heads, subject specialists so that the students most likely to be successful are chosen? Does the presenter ask for volunteers? This would be a potentially dangerous approach given the volatility and unpredictability of some young people. Are the teenagers primed? They must be for never a swear word is heard on-screen though there is quite a lot of mild blasphemy which seems to go unchecked these days. (Can blasphemy ever be mild? Sounding really grouchy and puritanical here!)
Whatever the process the interviews proceed smilingly, some disappointed youngsters maintaining a stoical approach.
Today it was Scottish Highers results. Later on we will have a repeat performance with different participants for GCSEs and then A-levels. So far we seem to have been spared AS-level results or have they finally been abolished? Education spins round more frequently than a tumble-dryer and if one waits long enough abandoned theories and practices surface again rebranded and shiny.
Following that, viewers were treated to shivering presenters eating ice-creams on deserted windy beaches as the subject of holidays was posed. Apparently the recession is causing more Britons to take their holidays in these damp but beautiful islands. The word that has been coined for this phenomenon is 'STAYCATION' - get it? Clever isn't it? We now have yet another lazy shorthand way of expressing an idea - it will be thrashed to death in the media and no doubt will appear in the OED in years to come. I know language evolves and it is essential that it should but some new vocabulary really should be strangled at birth.
While the worthy, entirely predictable subject of tourism in Britain and the revenue it brings was being explored there were information strips running along the bottom of the screen. These give bullet points of news relating to the subject on-screen. One in particular caught my attention: '13% of Britons have in a staycation' Who prepares the information banners? Was s/he not thinking as the words were typed in or perhaps the person relaying the information was not enunciating clearly. I suppose it doesn't matter as the authors of these snippets are anonymous.

Winston’s July blog

This is one of my July 2009 portraits

Winston here . . . p'rrrrr, p'rrrrr . . .
Well, it's busy here again don'tcha know. Gillian and the children came with their dogs for a couple of days.

On one of the days Gillian cuddled Monty while Marnie clipped his claws. Mrs Human sometimes clips them but says she hasn't got enough hands and Mr H says he'll help but then doesn't coz he gets wrapped up in other things. Then Marnie did mine and she was surprised coz I struggled and Monty didn't and I'm really a much more laid-back cat than him. Anyway, we don't click on the floor quite so much now.

Me and Monty are always pleased to see different visitors. We specially like Foxy coz she's ever so soft. She's almost the same colour as me but the humans say she's fox-red colour. I'm not – I'm hot chocolate. Anyway we look good together, her and me. I rubbed all round her face when she first arrived and she looked a bit confused. Then I heard Gillian telling Mr and Mrs H – they're her parents don'tcha know – anyway she told them that Mouse doesn't let Foxy do that to her. Me and Monty've never met Mouse. She lives in Dorset in Gillian and Paul's house and she's an old cat. Yes, that's right – she's a cat called Mouse.

I don't know – these humans, what would you do with them? Mouse had a sister called Buttons but she was killed on the road when she was very young. I'm glad me and Monty don't go out – well, only sometimes for a quick sniff round the garden. So – two cats, one called after something humans put on their clothes to stop them falling off and one named for a small wild animal us cats normally hunt. As if that's not enough they called one of their dogs Tia, short for Tia Maria – that's a drink – and the other one's dubbed Foxy after another bigger wild animal. I s'pose foxes do look a bit like dogs – we see them sometimes walking across the garden.

When Gillian and the children went home they left Tia and Foxy here. Apparently they're staying for about two weeks for their holiday. Monty's ever so pleased coz he really likes dogs and Foxy don't mind him padding her. She don't mind what he does – she just likes the attention.

Even with these extra mouths to feed it's pretty quiet. Mr H isn't feeling very well – something to do with pigs he thought but Mrs H says he's just under the weather. Funny that, last time I saw him he was under the duvet. Mrs H says he's caught Gillian's cold. Hope the hot sun in France is making her feel better.

I see it's nearly supper-time. Every time Mrs H has moved for the last hour all the dogs have leapt up and followed her, even Tia who's upstairs keeping Mr H company. She and Foxy aren't allowed on the beds in their house don'tcha know but as Mr and Mrs H said, they're on holiday too. It's a bit busy up there at night though and noisy too if they're snoring. Ooh supper – yum!

This is Monty and Jenna in July 2009 and for once Monty's kept his claws to himself

TTFN

Summer Holidays 2009

Gillian and the children arrived on Sunday to spend a couple of days with us. Paul remained at home to finish off some work before they head off to the south-west of France tomorrow for a cycling, walking, wind-surfing, camping holiday (sounds exhausting!)
Gillian brought a huge bag of fresh salad leaves from her Dorset garden complete with a myriad Dorset bugs. She also gave us a bunch of 'Thumbelina' carrots which are not the usual conical shape but more spherical. They taste delicious.

Yesterday they all went home to pack the last bits and pieces leaving Tia and Foxy behind with us for their holiday. No doubt we shall be taking many photographs . . .