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A Happy Halloween Gothtail (cocktail!)

You may remember our delicious Scottish-themed cocktail: Caledon , which we shared on Christmas Eve in 2024. This remains one of our most popular blog posts, so we thought we would share another one for you on this All Hallow's Eve! With that in mind, I am pleased to introduce you to: The Raighvan Park , inspired by Judith Crow's novella, The Folly at Raighvan Park, which you can find here . Here are your step by step instructions for creating this gothic beverage (have we just invented the gothtail ?!) It's deliciously dark, as you might expect, with a hint of the upper-class style of the novella. You will need: 1. Port  2. Patron Xo Cafe (you could use any other coffee liqueur) 3. Soda water with lime 4. Ginger ale 5. Pepsi Max 6. Liquorice Time to put them all together... 1. Pour one shot of coffee liqueur into a large wine glass. 2. Add one shot of port. Remember, a gothic gentleman loves his port! 3. Now onto the non-alcoholic additions... include two shots of soda wat...
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Happy World Book Day - Class Novel 2

As promised, here is my 2nd class novel suggestion for a primary school classroom. It has been tried and tested in my own classroom and the children loved it.

 "Children of Green Knowe" by Lucy Boston is a really great story to read in the lead-up to Christmas.
Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

""Tolly" Toseland 7 is rowed up to great-gran Linnet Oldknow by servant Boggis - there has always been a Boggis at Green Knowe. The real "castle" is over 900 years old. Gran tells old family stories, and songs. Over the generations there have been many who can see, hear, and feel the ghosts, evoked by white-on-black illustrations. Toby 14, Alexander, and Linnet 6 linger after the Plague, as does the cursed topiary Green Noah."

While it is my policy to use the blurbs from Goodreads on my blog, quite frankly, I don't think this blurb does the book justice. It seems to have been written by someone who is trying to bring the book up to date. And, yes, the story is quite old fashioned but what is wrong with that? Sometimes we need a bit old-fashioned.

The children in my class really enjoyed this book, complete with animals, ghosts and a rather scary tree. There are some lessons to be drawn from this book and I will post the lesson plans tomorrow (Friday).

Happy World Book Day!

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