{"id":6530,"date":"2023-09-11T23:55:33","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T13:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=6530"},"modified":"2023-09-11T23:55:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T13:55:33","slug":"what-ive-been-doing-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/what-ive-been-doing-lately\/","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019ve Been Doing Lately"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not writing, unfortunately, and not much book reading either, hence the lack of blog posts. <\/p>\n<p>What I have been doing is:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; growing big, crunchy, delicious <a href=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/my-favourite-books-of-2022\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">radishes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/radishes-1024x769.jpg\" alt=\"Freshly picked bunch of radishes\" title=\"Freshly picked bunch of radishes\"width=\"660\" height=\"496\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/radishes-1024x769.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/radishes-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/radishes-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/radishes-1483x1113.jpg 1483w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Apparently what you need to grow large radishes is lots of sun, lots of water, lots of organic fertiliser, and being ruthless when thinning the seedlings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; sewing a quilt. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Quilt-1483x1113.jpg\" alt=\"Multicoloured quilt with hand quilted stitches\" title=\"Multicoloured quilt with hand quilted stitches\" width=\"1483\" height=\"1113\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Quilt-1483x1113.jpg 1483w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Quilt-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Quilt-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Quilt-1024x769.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1483px) 100vw, 1483px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hand-quilting while listening to podcasts or audiobooks is very relaxing and I have now managed to use up almost all of my fabric and batting stash, so hopefully I will not be tempted to do any more sewing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; painting my bedroom pink. It looks very cheerful now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; chatting with producer Lucy Butler about a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelucybutler.com\/a-brief-history-of-montmaray\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">television series she\u2019s working on<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;ve also been doing less fun stuff, such as working at Day Job and having an infected tooth extracted, but you don&#8217;t want to know about that.)<\/p>\n<p>Some miscellaneous memoranda:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; From the <em>Smithsonian Magazine<\/em>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/icelandic-town-goes-all-out-save-baby-puffins-180981518\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">An Icelandic Town Goes All Out to Save Baby Puffins<\/a>. Did you know baby puffins are called pufflings? Pufflings!<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Here I am, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wordsense.eu\/murder_holes\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">being quoted in a dictionary<\/a>! (I do not think it is a proper dictionary.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Excellent discussion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mumsnet.com\/talk\/am_i_being_unreasonable\/4862042-timmy-will-be-played-by-a-border-collie-wrong-just-so-wrong?page=1\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> regarding whether Timmy the dog from the Famous Five was a border collie or not. I especially liked the speculation about why George in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/mediacentre\/2023\/the-famous-five-cast-with-first-look-images\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new BBC series<\/a> is wearing modern clothes while the rest are dressed in 1950s clothes (\u201cMaybe she is from our time and Uncle Quentin invented a Time Machine and she got sent back\u201d) and whether Julian grew up to be Tory MP <a href=\"https:\/\/ghosts-bbc.fandom.com\/wiki\/Julian\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Julian Fawcett<\/a> from <em>Ghosts<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Speaking of <em>Ghosts<\/em>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/mediacentre\/2023\/ghosts-series-5-final-series\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fifth and final series is released in November<\/a>. I love this show and I\u2019ll be sad to see the end of it. (Obviously I mean BBC <em>Ghosts<\/em>, not the American one, which looks awful, although hopefully it\u2019s making the original creators lots of money. Fellow Australians, you can watch Series 4 of the proper <em>Ghosts<\/em> on ABC iView now.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not writing, unfortunately, and not much book reading either, hence the lack of blog posts. What I have been doing is: &#8211; growing big, crunchy, delicious radishes. Apparently what you need to grow large radishes is lots of sun, lots of water, lots of organic fertiliser, and being ruthless when thinning the seedlings. &#8211; sewing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/what-ive-been-doing-lately\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What I\u2019ve Been Doing Lately<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6,293,7,15],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-6530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-books","category-childrens-books","category-film-and-tv","category-the-montmaray-journals","tag-enid-blyton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6530"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6540,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530\/revisions\/6540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}