NEW! Barnaby's Shorts (vol 4) now published.

Barnaby's Shorts (Volume Four)

Ten more coffee break sized stories from Barnaby Wilde. Including another tale from the Vertigo labs, a boy and a bear in the woods, a winter's tale of murder, and a true story from Crete. A touch of romance, a hint of sci fi, a portion of mystery, a morality tale and a thread of humour.
Stories that are just the right size to read in bed, on the train or in the bath.
What happens when a man gets the wrong coat after the Opera? Why does a man find himself marooned on a featurelss plain wearing an orange jumpsuit? Can there really be a bear loose in the Surrey woods? What actually happened in the Tunnel of Love? Who will be the last man standing?
Answers to these questions and more in Barnaby's Shorts (volume four). available now to download in the ebook format of your choice.
Details of all Barnaby's ebooks can be found at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk                 

Barnaby thinks about pancakes

Today is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the start of Lent (Ash Wednesday). Traditionally, Shrove Tuesday is the last day to use up rich fatty foods before the forty days of fasting leading up to Easter, begins. In the UK (also in Australia, New Zealand and Canada) eating pancakes was a way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season began. In other parts of the Christian world different traditions have arisen, serving the same purpose. In Lithuania, people eat a type of doughnut. In Finland it is common to eat a pastry called laskiaispulla (sweet bread filled with whipped cream and jam or almond paste). Worldwide, the day is also often celebrated with carnivals and parades.
Spare a thought, however, for the folk in Iceland, whose idea of fun is to eat salted meat and peas on Sprengidagur (Bursting Day) as Shrove Tuesday is known locally.
Whether your preference is for sweet or sour, you'll find a rich mixture to tempt you at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk where you will find good ebooks to download on any day of the year.
Happy reading.

Barnaby wonders about Q?

Barnaby is wondering why we need the letter Q? It seems to him that it's pretty much redundant, since just about every word containing the letter Q could be just as easily spelled without it by using K or KW instead. For example, kween, kue, brusk, kwarantine or rekwirement. It's such a weak letter that it always needs to be supported by an adjacent U anyway. Why do we not just reduce the number of letters in the alphabet by one and do away with it altogether?
We might also manage without X, replacing it with KS as in boks, foks, or ekstrakt, or Z as in zylophone.
Saving two letters from our current 26 is almost a 4% saving, a rate you'd be delighted to receive on your savings at the moment. Just think of the savings in keyboard manufacturing costs alone.
Then there is Y. It seems to do pretty much the same job as I. We could replace Y with I in most cases, such as iellow, or roughli. If necessary, you could always add an e, as in flie, or purifie.
For that matter, we could do away with C as well. We already have K, which would cover the hard C sound in kake or kalkulate, for example, or S, which would cover the soft C, in fense or twise. There might be a problem with the 'ch' sound as in much or cheese, though, so maybe this is a step too far.
So, Barnaby is considering a campaign to shorten the alphabet, even though he would have to change his own name to Barnabi.
In the meantime, if you'd like to make the most of the whole alphabet, why not go to www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk and download one of his ebooks that use every existing letter? Before it's too late.