I Need a Few Shortcuts

You can play all day Saturday.  Or you can work on a multi-course Easter dinner.  You can't do both.

Or maybe you can.

I played all day, visiting an aquarium full of tropical fishes, alligators, sharks and tourists (my favorite animal, by the way).  Then I visited a grocery store stocked with more varieties of beer, cheese, soda pop, international cookies, jelly beans, breakfast cereal, cake truffles, pet kibble and even insects than you ever thought possible, . . .

 . . . Then came home and tried to create dinner.

Anything's do-able, with a few shortcuts, like: 

Quicker Lemon Angle Food Supreme

In spite of how much Kate Atkinson's Case Histories annoyed me, I finished it.  Too  many characters trooped through the pages, leaving cow patties along the way.  

Why I would embark on yet another of Atkinson's books I can't explain.  But here I am, up to page 37 of When Will There Be Good News?    I'm already enjoying her wry young British nanny, Reggie.  Reggie comes from the wrong side of the tracks.   Her mother has been through many men.  Her brother slips away from family occasions to steal computers and phones.  Reggie is admitted to a "horrible posh school" on scholarship, on account of her father dying in the service of his country.  Naturally, she doesn't fit in well.  When she escapes, she becomes a nanny to a doctor mom.

Reggie is smart, observant and rather likeable.

By page 37 of the last book, I had met characters that should win the Nobel prize for World's Unhappiest Family.   Things already look much better in the new book.  But we'll see, will we not?