I've been full of a cold this week and have been trying to up my Vitamin C intake so I was really interested to read about plans to bring the fruit of a Madagascan tree into U.K supermarkets which has six times the amount found in an orange!
The baobab tree - also known as the upside-down tree because its branches look like roots - features in my Dr Midas and the Pirates book but I didn't know its fruit was so good for you - it also has twice as much calcium as milk.
I'd love to be able to buy one here - imagine putting some in your trolley along with your usual apples and bananas - but as the fruit is incased in a hard nut the plan is only for the pulp to be used as an ingredient in cereal bars and smoothies.
Approval for sales of the baobab fruit is also fantastic news for Africa as it will give poor rural communities a potentially life changing source of income.
I love the old Ladybird books and I have a decent collection of them. I really enjoyed reading them as a child especially the fairy tales ones and the illustrations are just classic. Anyway I've just discovered that you can buy print versions of them. I'm very tempted by the Billy Goats Gruff cover which was my favourite story despite its scariness - that troll still gives me the creeps. I also love the non-fiction ones like The Zoo and The Farm and I found the Pirates one handy when writing Dr Midas.
You can order standard prints, art paper prints or canvas prints, at various sizes starting from £7.50 and up to £225.00 at www.ladybirdprints.com and you can discover more about old Labybird books at www.vintageladybird.com
As you may recall one of my characters a robo-dog called Sniffer is based on the beagles my family used to have. I was amused to read this week about an American hound more than 850 miles from where he went missing five years previously. Rocco the beagle was returned to his family after his microchip was scanned at a rescue centre. His owners said he slipped out from under a back garden fence - our beagles were forever escaping! They seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to ajar doors or blown down fencing and when you called them to come back they used to run in the opposite direction. There was many a time when we had to drive round the estate calling our pet's name - or in the case of our last permanantly hungry beagle when you only had to shout 'biscuit' and he'd come bounding home!
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