This month has been eventful to say the least!

I have completed a cookery book Poet's Platter, Budget Bake with recipes in which I have devised myself.

A significant proportion are vegetarian, though certainly not all.

The result is that myself and a member of my family have lost one and a half stone since beginning this project in March!  This can't be bad!

I embarked on this enterprise because weight loss organisations usually offer recipes that seem to be for people who can't cook and myself and other attendees did not like their snacks very much.  One person said an organisation's substitute for a famous brand of chocolates was dreadful!

It therefore seemed a sensible idea to experiment and try to find slightly different recipes of my own using healthy ingredients.

The book also includes poetry and one song.

Fare includes Scarborough Fair Meatballs, Green Curry and Lime Sherbet Trifle.  There are three poems and a song for the four sections; breakfast, lunch, special occasions and dinner.

Here is the dinner limerick.

A footballer Leonard, John Tate
Cooked a meal for his hot and rich date

but the oven broke down

on his lamb roasted crown

so they dined in the chippy at eight!

As far as my ongoing French project is concerned, I now know three poems in French and English of twentieth century poet Rene Char; Divergence, (as English), Complainte du Lezard Amoureux (Lament of a Lovesick Lizard) and Les Inventeurs The Inventors. 

Exquisite lines from Divergence are:

La mort sourit au bord du temps
qui lui donne quelque noblesse;

Death smiles on the edge of time
that gives it some nobility.

It is important for poets to read poems in their own language as each one has its own music.  It is wonderful to wake up early, start speaking another language in the early hours and hear the performance develop.

Fifteen minutes French is useful for everyday French!

I have also been working on a screenplay for my site annegaelan16.blog of Wilde's Garden of Eros plus an essay about Arthur Ransome's superb Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study.

Whatever you do don't miss my July newsletter!  

I have an event at Halton Mill on Thursday 26th July from 6 pm to 7 pm titled Oscar Wilde: The Lost Story.  Arthur Ransome: the Man Who Saved a Legend.   This is a talk with films about how Ransome risked his freedom for the sake of ensuring the genius that was Wilde survived into the twentieth century and the threads of understanding Wilde that were lost in scandal.

Also, The President of The Oscar Wilde Society Mr Gyles Brandreth will be entertaining audiences with his wit and wisdom at The Platform in Morecambe!

He has written some cracking books about Wilde where Oscar turns amateur sleuth along with Arthur Conan Doyle solving murders!

As a devotee of that exquisite soceity, I will be going to see him on Sunday 8th July!

Till next time

All the best

Anne