The Mysterious Red Fruit

In my fruit bowl I have a red fruit.  Well at least I think it is a fruit.

The Ugly Duckling in my fruit bowl

I'm really not even sure how it got there.  Did I buy it by accident?  Was it a gift from one of my wife's students?  Maybe it is an advanced listening device installed by our landlords?

In any event it has been sitting on our fruit bowl now for a couple of weeks.  When it first arrived we thought it was some sort of tomato because it was green, like a tomato that isn't ripe.  Now it is red.  Does that mean we can eat it now?  Whatever it is?

I suspect that it is one of those Chinese fruits that are so popular at the moment.  Some poor Chinese peasant probably picked it and put it in a train.  The train travelled a thousand kilometres to the port.  From the port the ship took our little fruit across oceans before arriving somewhere in Europe.  Then some truck driver drove another thousand kilometres to deliver it to our shop.
Now, somehow it is sitting in my fruit bowl.

I must eat it.  To do anything less would be insulting to the Chinese peasant who picked it from his (or her) tree, the train driver, the captain of the ship, the truck driver and the shop assistants who made it possible for this fruit to sit in my fruit bowl.  Even though I still have no idea what it is.

Does anybody know what it is and what I should do with it?

Here is another view (if it helps)

BBC 100 Book list

I've stolen this blog idea from my friend Kathy,  the difference is that I've used the official BBC list from 2003


These are the instructions I have used:

Bold those books you've read in their entirety. 

Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie


It looks like I've read 7 of the books in their entirety.  I really don't understand this list though.  So I'm not going to make any more comments.

Half way through NaNoWriMo

Today is the fifteenth of November.
At the end of today I should have written 25,000 words.  A monumental achievement if ever I have seen it (but I'm not there yet).

My characters are woody, the subplot is still very 'sub' and my motivation is waning.  But not to worry!  Today is a new day and who knows what will happen in the life of Daphne and Zbigniew?  (That's what I get for using a random name generator to pick my lead character's names)

Considering converting a subplot into something worth writing about

But today the kids are back at Pre-School after a four day weekend.  We spent yesterday morning at Elim in Lwowek, which was lovely.

Also in the last few weeks we have finished watching the fifth series of Doctor Who - we love Doctor Who - even though he looks like Matt Smith.  (for you Doctor Who fans, I can also recommend this version starring Rowan Atkinson)

I should stop procrastinating now, I had planned to start typing an hour ago.  Only 2,724 words to go today!

(I would also like to make mention of the terrible carnage that occurred in the last four days on Polish roads.  My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected.)