Nancy Jardine posted a link to this fascinating article on Facebook recently. I was amazed. I knew about Mary Anning through reading Tracy Chevalier’s novel Remarkable Creatures, but I’d never connected her with the well-known tongue twister:

She sells seashells on the seashore.

Well, that’s how I knew it, although apparently it should be:

She sells seashells by the seashore.

Remembering that again made me think of other tongue twisters:

Betty Botter bought some butter.
“But,” she said, “the butter’s bitter…”

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…

And our own family tongue twister, discovered while on holiday in Switzerland:

Das Schloss Spiez

If you don’t know how to pronounce German, it should be something like this:

Dass Shloss Shpeetz

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Author of the Day

Mary Grand interests me for several reasons. One is that she lives on the Isle of Wight, which I’ve visited many times. My other half fondly remembers family holidays there. But the main thing that first interested me about Mary is her first novel, Free to be Tegan, about a young woman who leaves a particularly strict cult. The similarities to and differences from my debut novel, Neither Here Nor There, didn’t escape me. Now, Mary has a new novel out: Hidden Chapters.