Getting into bed with Toad By Jan Needle
First things first – a progess report on my amazing Christmas pudding diet. Over the festives, I lost about two pounds. I will say no more, except that Gemma, my son Dave’s lovely girlfriend, went down to Tesco's after Boxing Day and restocked for the coming months. This time they were only 76p each. Deflation! She bought eight of them. By summer, I will have eaten myself into invisibility. ’Appen. Now down to business. Julia Jones, who among her myriad talents is a publisher, has accepted my first and most beloved book, Wild Wood, onto her list, Golden Duck. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Wild Wood is my version of Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece The Wind in the Willows , in which Toad, Badger, Rat et al are the villains, and the ‘evil rustics’ are in reality the downtrodden poor, more sinned against than sinning. ...