Showing results by narrator "Sally Cook" in All Categories

Spiders sometimes create terror, admiration and fascination and in this account spiders are heroes and victims. They induce one arachnophobe to pull over in blind panic as one of their members crawls out from behind his car pedals while he is driving at speed along a country road. Another toys with a spider, bouncing it up and down on its web as if it were a yoyo. Spiders create strong reactions in many of us. This story takes us into their web of life.

The author has a bad bout of insomnia and tries all sorts of ways to overcome it through a varying list of remedies. She knows that kangaroos are grazing on dewy grass just over the road and that she has a blanket of brilliant stars above her house but these comforting images do nothing to take her into sleepy oblivion. In this humorous account she recalls her miserable journey.

Roadworks and train station overhauls are confusing this author who has driven into oncoming traffic, avoided a kangaroo crossing a new roadwork barrier, got lost and couldn't find her train station carpark and who believes her amygdala must be growing as she negotiates new roundabouts, traffic lights, new road hazards and witches' hats. Follow her journey.....

Queuing is about the history of queuing, strange things that have happened in queues, the longest queues ever, when did humans form the first queues, which animals queue and why. What have been the most unusual queues and where, The future with virtual queuing...

Remote looks at the extensive use of the word and in particuar the invention and increasing use of remote controls from flushing toilets and closing garage doors to drone warfare to plantary exploration. The story lools at future uses of remote controls, their contribution to an enormous...

Just Do It implies high action, taking a leap, defying the odds, making a go of things. But there is the nagging daily obligation of Just Doing everyday chores. What are these and what were they for the average person in the Middle Ages in Europe. And what nay Just Doing It mean in the next 24...

Haberdashery looks at elements of the Rag Trade from Medieval times with the earliest haberdashers of the 1300s to tailoring in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries along with secret pattern making, famous drapers such as famous writer H.G. Wells and the earliest tailoring guidebook of the...

Luis Armstrong's trumpet is buried undeground, so is a blackened fingernail from a Hiroshima survivor. And who would think that one of Cher's dresses would be buried as well as a script for Gone With The Wind. And then there are the items deliberately sent into space as well as accidental...

Mirrors is a look at the panopoly of mirrors we confront in our modern daily life - for better or worse. Ongoing self reflections are unavoidable and come in all forms from the expected to the unexpected.

Walking Towards Gold tells the story of the author's pioneer colonist forebears who arrived in newly formed Adelaide, South Australia from Portsmouth, in June 1838 and how thirteen years later three of them walked 580 miles from Adelaide to the Victorian goldfields pushing a wheelbarrow.. There are intrepid accounts and interesting descriptions of early Adelaide and life on the Victorian goldfields. This is part of the Downer family's story.

It's Not Your Fault delves into what can only be described as communication nightmares as a patient of the medical system. This true accounts show how fragile the trust between medical practitioner and patient can be and how it can be psychologically compromised bringing about negative effects. For example the author was already halfway through her first pregnancy when a well known and respected obstetrician/gynaecologist began treating her for infertility and the possibility of a dangerously big tumor. That large lump turned out to be a baby.

The author is in court with a murderer, she is invited to drink tea from a urine filled pot, she covers theatre and cinema reviews as a London reporter, she works amid opulent carpets and heavy old typewriters with former criminals below in the printing works. She rides a Honda 90 motorbike across the English Fens on her way to cover stories in March, birthplace of the fabled March hare. She writes stories about a drunken turnip planter, a man named Jack Spratt, and another man who didn't travel as far as his own bees.

Ivy tells the story of a brave young woman who was awarded a special war commendation in signals during World War II in the Women's Arny Corp. She disarmed a German officer pointing a pistol in her face, survived strafing by a German bomber as she walked along a farm path as a Land Girl and lived in a garage with a dirt floor and cold water tap after migrating to Australia, She raised three young children after her husband dropped dead aged 39.