ASK FOR THE MOON

Happy New Year, and best wishes for the new decade.

This morning we were able to continue the family tradition of walking on Budleigh Salterton beach, and I am no longer a climate change sceptic.

It is definitely getting much colder.

Although I think that has more to do with me getting older than any new ice age, but it was absolutely freezing in the wind.

I finished another John Lawton book, Old Flames, before the end of the year, and will review that in a few weeks as it will be one of my contributions to Kerrie's Crime Fiction Alphabet meme at Mysteries in Paradise.

I have now decided that Lawton makes a deliberate mistake in each book as a test to see if readers pick it up. That or he needs a new editor.

'We sat out the next dance. He bought me a martini and I was desperate for a ciggy by then, and he took out two from his cigarette case, put them in his mouth, just like Humphrey Bogart. Lit up both and passed one to me. I thought that was so good mannered. So romantic.'

Every movie fan will know that scene from Now Voyager [1942], but it was not Humphrey Bogart but Paul Henried, who famously lit both cigarettes and passed one to Bette Davis.

Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid starred together with Ingrid Bergman in another classic movie, Casablanca, so perhaps the confusion was understandable?

I have now moved on to read Dying Gasp by Leighton Gage, a powerful book that will be my first entry to Dorte's Global Challenge 2010.