"Paid in full with one glass of milk"

One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to
door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin
dime left, and he was hungry.

He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house.
However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door.

Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. She thought he
looked hungry so brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, then asked,
How much do I owe you?

You don't owe me anything, she replied.
"Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness."

He said..... "Then I thank you from my heart."

As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but
his faith in God and man was strong also.. He had ! been ready to give up and quit.

Many years later that same young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled!
They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare
disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes.
Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room.
Dressed in his doctor's gown he went in to see her. He recognized her at once.

He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to
save her life. From that day he gave special attention to her case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won.

Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked
at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open
it, for she was sure it
would take the rest of her life to pay for ! it all.
Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill.
She read these words.....

"Paid in full with one glass of milk"
(Signed)
Dr. Howard Kelly.

Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed:
"Thank You, God, that Your love has spread broad through human hearts and hands."

There's a saying which goes something like this:
Bread cast on the waters comes back to you.
The good deed you do today may benefit you or
someone you love at the least expected time. If you never see the deed
again at least you will have made the world a better place - And, after all,
isn't that what life is all about?

Now you have two choices.

You can send this page on and spread a positive message.
Or ignore it and pretend it never touched your heart.

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds."

(Bob Marley, Redemption song.)

"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."

(Einstein.)

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book."

(Groucho Marx.)
"Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice against anyone, anywhere in the world."

(Ernesto (Che) Guevara, in a letter to his children, a few months before he was killed.)

"The man who never made a mistake never made anything."
(GK Chesterton.)




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Guess what? It's here.

So wonderful. I'm holding my book. I'm a bit wobbly. I am going to carry it around everywhere with me. The cover is stunning. It looked good on screen, but it looks so much better in the flesh, so to speak. Wow. Now it's real. Now it's real.

Photo with author and offspring coming later!

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Lordy, what a day. Totally exhausting but some moments were great. Seriously great. First off, I turned up at the University at 9am for 3 hours of Open Day cover with Laura from the Health Centre, who was wonderful company. Thank you, Laura. Meeting people and trying to sound normal isn't my favourite activity ever, but I think on the whole it went okay. Though there were one or two people who just stared at me as if I were an alien. Perhaps I am? That would explain a lot ... However, most students/parents were lovely. And the venue was better too - we were in the University Hall rather than Seasons Restaurant, so I could actually hear what people were saying, hurrah ...


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Yet more strange dreams last night. This time, Lord H and I were in some kind of bar which had a room at the top filled with bees. There was something ghostly going on, and we kept having to try to find the bees and contain them in some way as this would help solve the hauntings. It was all very mysterious and quite surreal really. We never did quite get to the bottom of it ...


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Queen of Teen beats the Best of the Booker!

News just in... the Queen of Teen award has registered more votes than the Best of Booker poll!

Just to remind you, the authors running for the award are Meg Cabot, Cathy Cassidy, Lisa Clark, Grace Dent, Cathy Hopkins, Sarra Manning, Karen McCombie, Joanna Nadin, Louise Rennison, and Jacqueline Wilson. The organisers reveal that the competition is fierce, with no clear leader at this stage.

Vote now on the Queen of teen site. Voting closes on 28th September, and the crowning ceremony will be held on the 29th, and I will be there! Hurray! I'll report back on the shiny tiara action.

In the meantime, if anyone has questions they would like us to put to the shorlisted authors, please let us know in the comments, or email us.

And now... announcing the Chicklish Queen of Teen spotlight posts! We will be running a series of posts focusing on each shortlisted author in turn. The first one is below...

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Have spent a large part of today focusing on Gelahn the evil mind-executioner in Hallsfoot's Battle and actually it's gone surprisingly well. I now have about 32,800 words under my belt - well, I suppose I do enjoy writing on the dark side best of all, and the mind-executioner is nothing if not dark. Though I do like to think he has a certain evil charm. If only to me. And he has his reasons, you know - the Elders of Gathandria aren't entirely squeaky-clean in the making of a vengeful madman. Though, with so much more pain and agonising death to come, one shouldn't be sympathising too much with Gelahn. In the final reckoning, his choices are deliberate. At least that's the plan. Though it may yet turn out to be a fluffy fantasy romance between Gelahn and his super-sized ego - who can tell?...


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Ooooo, Harrison Ford or Richard Gere? Well I choose both and add Bruce Willis, James Woods, Rob lowe, Bon Jovi, Tim Mathieson, Bruce Springsteen and of course the beautiful bald black guy from Weeds – not to mention the beautiful bald black guy from Dexter. I didn’t plan on adding younger men but those last two just popped into my old head so it can’t be helped; there are tons of luscious young men out there but I don’t want to be slavering over them – that would be unseemly.

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Years ago Phillip Parker King stood on a hill near his property Dunheved. I imagine he felt very pleased with himself, his success and the building project that was about to take place. A small church was about to be built on the hill, a church that would fulfil the wish of his mother, Anna Josepha King. The land had been set aside some time ago and now, at long last, building had commenced. The resulting church was named, Church of St Mary Magdalene, consecrated in April 1840. It still stands today in a suburb of Sydney, St Marys, on South Creek near Parramatta.

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A fairly quiet day at work today as we’re all waiting for the non-Fresher students to arrive back next week – though I have been tackling the horrors of filling in my annual review form. Groan. How I hate work reviews. I have to polish up my professional head specially for the purpose and, believe me, a high shine doesn’t sit well on it. I am also slightly flummoxed by the note that tells me I must complete said review form whilst taking the University’s six strategic imperatives into account. Now there’s a truly dehumanising phrase if ever I heard one. I feel quite weak at the thought, m’dears. I was further flummoxed when I briefly glanced to see what these great tenets are: Quality; International impact; Distinctiveness; Collegiality; Professionalism; Sustainability. All very worthy, I'm sure, but: eh??!!? Lord save us, really I’m none the wiser. Neither am I convinced that my international impact stretches that far here in the administrative backwaters. I think I might have to lie down for several hours and have another Starbucks. Maybe two ...


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So Tania, tell us about the book.

Well, it's my first collection, it's called The White Road and Other Stories, and it's published by Salt Publishing, a wonderful small press in the UK where “small” actually means dynamic, innovative, great lovers of writers and writing. It contains 27 stories, half of them “flash fiction”, less than 500 words long, and half of them “science-inspired” meaning that they took as their inspiration articles from New Scientist, the UK science magazine (see below for more about this).

It was published on September 1st. As of the time of writing this, I haven't seen a copy yet, since I live in Israel and the postal service is appalling, but the publication date was, nevertheless, wonderful, a dream come true.

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