Hey Ho, what fun it is!

Whilst I frame out the next chapter in my mind, I am searching for some herbs and treatments for my heroine, who I have left in dire straights. She is in desperate need of treatment, poor girl, and it has to be done with all the latest skills and knowledge.

It would be so easy for me to write, say, "the woman applied crushed herbs to the wound" when all the more knowledgeable smartarses out there would immediatey condemn me for my ignorance. "What herbs" "how was it prepared", or worse yet, "that herb was not imported into the country until a hundred years later!".

So I am spending a little time "at the drawing board" as it were.

Don't think, however, that my time is wasted, for it most definately is not! I have what has become a second hobby almost, and this is called "Stinkybaiting". What on Earth is that, I hear the muted whisper, as if you care, but I'm going to explain anyway.

Stinky is one of my friends in America, and she, dear sweet thing, has led a rather sheltered life. Like the huge majority of her compadres, she is totally and utterly unacquainted with the English Language as used by we Brits. OK, she speaks, writes and understands that form of English that our Colonial Cousins fondly call "English", but it does have its differences, and that is where the fun lies.

As Winston Churchill once said "We are two Great Nations, divided by a common language" - he was so right.

Stinky is a dabbler - she will dabble in the new, she wants to learn, and has not yet learned to leave alone! Example. I posted in one of the groups that I was "dead chuffed" about something. One of our other friends, said that he had to ask what the word meant when he first heard it.

I asked if he was disappointed when he learned, and Stinky, right on cue, asked "what does it mean?", so I explained its more common useage, as I have learned in growing up.

So, dear Stinky has a new word, and she seems to have grasped the rudiments of its use. However, I have cautioned that she does not wear it out, for it is a very fine dividing line between making a comment and inviting a smack in the gob!

Or, put it this way "Some of the sentences she has used already with the word, would not win her the best cream cake at the vicar's tea party!"

Oh, and to answer your question, Stinky Dear, yes - if my book should ever come to be published over there, it will be translated for you!