Pixabella

As a kid I used to love reading, and Enid Blyton was alays one of my favourite authors. Strangely enough it was never the 'Famous Five' series that I enjoyed the most, I started with Noddy, then as I got older used to love Brer Rabbit, but as a young teenager my all time favourite Enid Blyton books were the Adventure series.

I mention all of this because Enid Blyton has just been voted best author in the UK, beating J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien and many more.

Considering the racist controversy around some of her books like the Noddy series, and the fact so many of her stories have been edited before they were republished I'm really pleased to see her take the top number of votes, she was always my favourite author, and she wrote books for all ages of children from toddler to teenager which is something very few authors seem to manage.

You can see the complete list of top 50 British authors at the Costa Book Awards.

Now that we've made the decision to use bike as our main source of transport (other than buses and trains), we're starting to notice the cyclists around our region and how fit they are.

Cycling in Spain is a very popular individual sport, in Ronda there are at least 2 or 3 major off-road races avery year that take cyclists about 100km around the mountains with very little of it on roads.

At the Olympics Spain has also done well with gold medals from Samuel Sanchez winning the 245km men's road race, and Joan Llaneras winning the men's points race.

These two guys are going to be national heroes when they return home after the Olympics considering that cycling has won two of the three gold medals awarded to Spain. I expect to see a lot more interest in cycling as a sport after this.

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It's all over the news here in Spain, Rafa Nadal is now ranked world number one for mens tennis. His performances lately have been nearly faultless and winning gold in the Beijing Olympics means he has pushed Roger Federer out of the number one spot.

After the Olympics he goes on to the US Open, Federer is defending but Nadal seems ufazed, on TV here he's been saying he's looking forward to meeting Federer again since he still sees Federer as the best player in the world who could easily dethrone him.

Every time we see Nadal play he seems to be a great sport, sure he enjoys his victories but he also praises the other players and he seems so humble accepting his visctory.

I hope he continues to play like a gentleman and that his winning streak doesn't end.

Wow, the cult classic movie 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' is to be remade and they're talking about Marilyn Manson as the kind of actor they want to audition, the idea being they want to bring Rocky into the 21st century and make the film a bit edgier and more contemporary than the 1970's original.

I have to say I'm not really in favour of a new version, I kinda like the cheesy kitschy original, although if I had my choice I'd ditch Meatloaf from the original, I've never been a Meatloaf fan so he'd be no loss, but the rest of the cast made that film and I can't see a remake replacing it.

Of course they probably don't intend to replace the original, maybe the success of the DVD version of Rocky, and the Star Wars franchise is making the Rocky franchise greedy. Either way, I don't think the original will ever be threatened in my heart by a new version, actually a new version would have to be VERY good to get my loyalty.

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For the longest time I've been telling the man to stop eating all that junk food he likes, loads of bread, sweets, chocolotates, coffee that sort of thing.

Today the BBC ran a report on Michael Phelps diet at the Olympics, can you believe this guy eats 10000 calories a day?

This is his breakfast, three fried egg sandwiches; cheese; tomatoes; lettuce; fried onions; mayonnaise; three chocolate-chip pancakes; five-egg omelette; three sugar-coated slices of French toast; bowl of grits; two cups of coffee

Then for lunch he has half-kilogram (one pound) of enriched pasta; two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread; energy drinks

And for dinner, half-kilogram of pasta, with carbonara sauce; large pizza; energy drinks.

Apparently the white bread and pasta is converted to energy almost immediately and he needs that to keep winning medal after medal whereas foods with more fat in them take much longer to digest and release their energy over a longer period of time.

Now how do I make sure my man doesn't read the BBC story?