Can you help with reviews for Sell the Pig please?

I wonder if some of you kind Sell the Pig readers can help me please? On the Amazon UK site, 'Pig' has done very well indeed for reviews, with 60 x 5-star reviews.But the .com and French sites are lagging some way behind.

The sequel is now finished and with the publishers, Ant Press. Leading up to the launch of the sequel (for those who have not yet seen the announcement, it's called 'Is That Billinge Lump?') it would be nice to give 'Pig' a boost, especially in the US market.

I have the chance of some excellent publicity but 'Pig' needs at least 25 x 5-stars on the US site which it has not yet got.

If you have an account with Amazon, you can leave your review of any of the sites. So if you have already left a review on the UK site, would you be very kind and add it also to the US one? There's probably a clever way of doing it automatically but I'm a technophobe so I don't know. If it were me I would simple copy and paste.

It really would be an enormous help and I would be forever grateful.

Thanks so much if you can spare the time.

Not just any other family moving to France

It's a cold, wet, miserable day in the Auvergne.  Yes, we do get them. In fact overall our weather isn't that different to that of the UK, only more extreme - our hot is hotter, our cold is colder.  So I thought I'd go and rummage round in the attic for some more photos for you and I suddenly came over all nostalgic and found some family ones.  Not sure if they are what you want to see, but thought it might help you will picturing the family behind the move to France, before dementia, depressed dipsomania and downright dottiness set in.

As ever, I'm in your hands, dear readers, to know what you would like to see.  Do please let me know.

I thought it would be nice to start with one showing a relatively normal family scene, Mother, Father, Brother and me, with my brother's godfather, Fr Leo Rakale CR on a visit from Bulawayo, where my father had met him during his wartime service there.

"Mother certainly had her share of admirers. In fact she went out with the man Auntie Doris went on to marry, before her younger sister did. I have no idea why she waited so long nor eventually made the choice she did.

Recently, when age and dementia have removed inhibitions, Mother has taken to looking wistfully at her wedding photographs and saying: “That was the day. I wonder if I did the right thing?”. A sentiment I have certainly shared throughout most of my life."

Parents' wedding, April 1947 

"My father's job as a newspaper editor came with a heavy social engagement schedule. There were endless civic receptions, cheese and wine parties, film premiers and other such delights to attend, for which mother would put on her finest gowns. And they did make a handsome couple, it has to be said." 

Wilmslow Civic Ball 1962

"Mother was a real looker, with beautiful blonde hair so long she could sit on it, who surprisingly didn't marry until she was 30. Doris was the dizzy blonde who made the good marriage."  

Mother (left) already well into her 80s, with younger sister Doris

Mother (right) in 2004 with older sister Ethel in the lovely home in St Helens

Right, that's your lot, lovely readers.  Sorry the spacing went a bit funny, think I've now sussed what I did wrong and will do it better next time.  As ever, do please leave me some comments and request any pictures you would like to see.