Classic reads from Winti's Give & Take shack

I love, love, love the Give/Take hut behind Manor and often drop stuff off and come out with a little gem in return. There is something quite intriguing about this little hut. You never know what you are going to find and you always have an interesting little conversation with someone else dropping stuff off at the same time. It’s the loveliest way to do a little something for someone else without much effort and my things always disappear fairly quickly. I’m hoping to get one established in our village sometime soon. We have had a few refugee families moving in recently and I think it would help them along a little too.

Anyway, back to Winterthur’s fab Give/Take hut. Yesterday I dropped off an inflatable Hello Kitty bed and came out with a couple of books in English – The Fourth Hand by John Irving and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I have never read Woolf in my life and feel it is a gap in my reading experience that I need to fill so was chuffed to bits to see this sitting there.

And then – lo and behold – if Google pops up today with a Doodle celebrating the lady herself – and 136 years since she was born. Although she died in 1941 at the tender age of 59, she is still acknowledged as one of the greatest writers ever. How amazing is that?

I love reading as much as I love writing but life is so busy these days I struggle to squeeze it in. At best, I manage to creep away from the Gogglebox with hubbie in the evening and crawl into bed half an hour earlier to curl up with a good book. Again, one of my many new year’s resolutions is to read a little every day.

Happy reading!

Children's books are the way forward

Each week I arrange to meet my daughters in the village library after school and proceed to work my way through a picture book in my quest to learn German. I must look very odd to the locals sitting in the tots corner with an over-sized book on my knee but the librarians are lovely and have even started getting dual German/English language books in for me!

And - brace yourselves - I've now worked my way up to the more sophisticated picture book which features three of four sentences on each page - wowee (although I still need to refer to my Google Translate app constantly) And as I work my way through each book I make a note of certain words and phrases in my German vocab list on my iPhone, to go over whenever I have a minute.

And it occurred to me on my last visit that this would be a helpful feature for visitors to my blog. So I have now included this in the right hand column, featuring the book in question. Do let me know if you find this helpful or a complete waste of time.

This week featured a lovely little story about a mole who found an icicle which he thought was a magic diamond. His friends put him right but then the final glittery illustration shows he was right after all. Nature really is magical and beautiful!

Happy reading!

Useful words and phrases this week:

Eine dicke Schneedecke - a blanket of snow

Baumstamm - tree trunk

Wie wäre es mit einere Schneeball schlact? - how about a snowball fight?

Schau mal nach oben - look up!

Eiszapfen - icicle

Prachtvoll war das - magnificent!

Zauberhaft - enchanting