I’ve read most of James Patterson’s novels in recent years and have particularly enjoyed the Alex Cross series. Alex is a Washington police detective, psychologist and profiler who is responsible for catching several high profile serial killers who have a habit of taunting and endangering him and his family.

Pop Goes The Weasel, one of the earlier Alex Cross novels starts out with the murder of a young black prostitute whose body is dumped naked in Washington. Alex ties the murder in with others that have occurred where the victims clothing and identification have been removed. His boss doesn’t agree and orders Alex to investigate another higher profile case of the murder of a businessman, but Alex and his lifelong friend police officer John Sampson continue to investigate the series of killings in their own time.

This isn’t a whodunit; we learn right at the beginning that the serial killer Geoffrey Shafer works for the British Embassy in Washington and has diplomatic immunity. He has a wife and young family who believe that he is Mr wonderful because that is the way that he behaves towards them. In private Geoffrey carries out an online fantasy game called the Four Horsemen with 3 other ex British secret service officers. In the game Shafer’s name is Death and the aim amongst the 4 players is to create a ‘better’ fantasy than the other 3 players but none of the players are sure if the other players stories are just fantasy or true.

Alex Cross is a widower with 2 children and a girlfriend called Christine. Early on in the novel Christine accepts a proposal from Alex and they go on holiday with his family to Bermuda. During the holiday Christine disappears and it is months before Alex discovers whether she has been kidnapped or murdered, or whether or not Christine’s disappearance is tied to the murder investigation.

My Review

Although I have enjoyed reading all of the other novels in this series I didn’t find Pop Goes The Weasel  as gripping as the rest. Perhaps because the character of Geoffrey Shafer wasn’t as believable as James Patterson usually makes his characters. The plot was a little too intricate to be believable and at times I lost the plot with it.

What I like about the Alex Cross series is the interaction between Alex and his family – especially Nana. Alex’s elderly grandmother Nana lives with and looks after him and his 2 young children. A wise lady, who at over 80 has more energy than most of us at half of her age. You often find humour in their conversations and the love between them is apparent.

James Patterson has invented a strong well thought out character in Alex who is dedicated to his family and job. At times the job seems more important but then there are heart-warming scenes with his family to temper the more gruesome accounts of murder.

The story also shows how police forces may differentiate wrongfully between crimes and the classes of victims. Prostitutes are human beings and have just as much right as businessmen not to be offended against and investigations should have equal importance.

Although I got a bit lost during the last few chapters the ending was satisfactory with a few surprises. Pop Goes The Weasel is certainly worth reading if you like this genre, but I would advise that you read the series from the beginning through rather than in a mixed order as I have.

Patricia has been writing reviews and articles for several years. You can find more of her work and free writers tools worth over $3000 at the Creative Writing site.

To learn about making money from writing visit www.cashwrite.info

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One Friday afternoon my friend Karen rang to see if I was going out as usual that evening. I didn’t want to and that was unusual for me, but normally a crowd of us went out together and just two of us seemed strange. After a certain amount of cajoling I agreed to meet in in Bradford, 10 miles away from where I live during the early evening.

We went to several bars and then a night club. We had a few laughs but without the rest of the crowd the night out seemed like an anti climax. I was more than ready to go home when it came time to catch the late bus at two o’clock in the morning.

When I got home I felt hungry and also as normal wanted to eat something to soak the booze up to lessen the chances of a hangover the next day. As I hadn’t wanted to go out I hadn’t bought in anything to make a cold sandwich as usual so decided to put a beefburger under the grill. While I was waiting for my burger to cook I went into my sitting room and sat down on the sofa to take my shoes off.

The next thing that I was aware of was feeling groggy and rather disorientated. I was still sitting on the sofa, my shoes on the floor and I felt really tired. I stood up to go to bed and suddenly thought that I was hungry. It then crossed my mind that I had put a burger under the grill but hadn’t eaten it. It was at that point that I realised that I could barely see through the thick fog of smoke that was swirling around me.

‘Burning burger’ I thought as I rushed towards my kitchen. What I saw as I entered the kitchen would probably have alarmed me more if I hadn’t been half out of it. Flames were starting to take hold on the pine wood at the side of my cooker. The flames had spread from the blackened remains of a teatowel that had been on the top of the oven and hanging partially over the front of the grill. The flames didn’t take long to put out and it was easy enough to make the kitchen safe. I went to bed still hungry – the burger was cinders.

It took me a while to remember what had happened when I eventually woke up in the late morning. At first I thought that I had been dreaming until I looked in the bathroom mirror. My face was covered in black soot and there was even soot up my nostrils. There wasn’t much damage, just needed to replace a work surface and some of the wood in my kitchen and I was finding soot around the house for months afterwards.

I was lucky to escape unharmed, but what was really lucky was that I had forgotten to switch my alarm clock off for the weekend as I normally did on Friday mornings. You see it was my alarm clock ringing at 6.45 am that woke me up and saved my life. The burger had gone under the grill at 3.00 am so I had been asleep for almost 4 hours before the alarm went off.

I was then and I am today, 100% certain that I would not have woken up without that alarm, I was too far out of it. As my kitchen furnishings are pine I was lucky to catch the fire before it really took hold. How much longer would I have survived inhaling the smoke? I don’t know.

Not long afterwards I bought some smoke detectors  and installed them. I check my smoke alarms regualarly to see if the batteries are working. I don’t intend to put myself at risk again knowing that my alarm going off and waking me up as it did was highly unusual – really a fluke saved my life!

Click now to find the best smoke detectors with reviews and fire safety equipment for your home at http://bestsmokedetectors.co.uk

I’ve been living off cold meals all week because of my cooker breaking down and my failure to buy a new one last week and it’s getting pretty boring. The television that I bought instead of a cooker is still sitting on the sofa because I can’t make my mind up whether to take the new one upstairs and have a bigger TV to watch in bed or take the old one upstairs and buy a Freeview box  for it or get Virgin digital upstairs as well as downstairs. I think that it will be the former because the new TV is much lighter and easier to get upstairs.

This week I needed to buy some new curtain hooks first before looking for a cooker again. My cat Sparky had jumped onto my bedroom window and got caught up in the curtain. The plastic curtain hooks  broke in half and the curtain came down on top of her, giving her enough of a fright to go and hide behind the vacuum that she normally runs away from. I had to put up with daylight too early in my bedroom for a couple of days until I could get into town.

We went to the market my mum and I. We meet every Friday for lunch and have done for over 20 years. This week we went to one of the several cafes on the outskirts of the market and after some excellent sandwiches we went looking for curtain hooks on a stall that hasn’t changed since the market opened nearly 40 years ago. Lots of plastic containers full of buttons, fancy pins, press studs, hooks and eyes, plastic eyes for stuffed toys, needles, bobbins of cotton, a variety of different types of cloth and anything else that you can imagine you would need for sewing.

I said that the stall hadn’t changed but there was a massive difference. For many years it was owned and run by 2 elderly sisters, but today a young gay Asian man served me. At first I just thought that he was from one of the clothes stalls and looking after the stall as a favour while the stallholder nipped out. I asked for curtain hooks and he asked which type of curtains they were for, reeling off the different types quicker than I could think. He obviously belonged on that stall and it was a real pleasure being served by him, in fact more of a pleasure than the previous owners! I got metal curtain hooks so that should stop the cat from bringing it down again, just hope it isn’t the wooden curtain pole on her head next time.

I then went looking for a cooker at the Co-op and found what I was looking for straight away, though it costs quite a lot more than the same model on Amazon. A ceramic hob  again but instead of a double oven with combined grill I chose one with a grill and an oven. Every time that I’ve had a combined grill/oven the grill has broken down just after the guarantee has run out. I figure that with them separate neither will get used as much so I might have more of a chance of making the grill last longer. I also made sure that the on/off buttons were straightforward, I’m getting really fed up with complicated appliances that I need to read instructions for every time that I use them.

I’m really looking forward to cheese on toast again and I’ve just realised that I won’t have to give my old cooker the clean it was due because it’s getting taken away ha ha.

I passed my first year of stopping smoking last month and as my bank account was growing nicely I decided to treat myself to some new electrical items. I had a bit of a list for different reasons.

Alarm Clock

My old digital one still works but I am fed up with it. If I just happen to press the wrong button by mistake when I’m setting it the alarm could go off 2 days late or at 5.00 pm instead of 5.00 am. I can’t figure out how to get it back to the right mode without the instructions which I seem to have lost. I decided that this alarm clock  is too clever for it’s own good and that I wanted a simple, straightforward one.

Microwave

I’ve been thinking that I need to replace my current microwave  for a while because some of the lining has scratched off in the bottom and things don’t seem to cook as evenly as they did. I get the feeling that it’s going to break down sooner or later and as it was only a cheap model I’ve had my money’s worth out of it.

Oven

I haven’t done well with ovens in recent years. My first one was a gas cooker  with eye level grill and that did well. I replaced it with a cooker with a ceramic hob when I got a new kitchen. That got damaged when I had a small kitchen fire and the oven that I got with the insurance payout wasn’t as good. The oven/grill part and 2 of the rings went after about 3 years and the one that I replaced it with has the same problems a few years on.

I also can’t use the fan oven  because you have to set the timer to use it and I’ve never been able to figure that out and there is nothing in the instruction manual to show you. That sounds as if I’m thick but there are just several buttons with different symbols and it’s not clear what any of them are. It’s another of those products that is too clever for it’s own good.

DVD Recorder

My old DVD recorder  broke a while back and I haven’t replaced it because I’m on Virgin cable which has catch up TV. It doesn’t catch up on films though and I never seem to be able to watch good films when they are on.

There isn’t much choice of shops that sell electrical appliances in the town, most of them moved out to industrial estates and as I haven’t got a car it’s either limited town shopping or the Internet. The first shop that I went into had a reasonable amount of choices for all of the items that I was looking for.

The manager or owner apologised as I went in because he was short of staff that day. There looked to be a few assistants around but all were busy with customers. That was ok by me because I like to have a good look at the items that I’m interested in and make my decisions based on features and price – often spending a bit more than I originally intend for extra features.

I was astonished to find that there wasn’t one single price label on any of the hundreds of products displayed there. I felt annoyed because I like to decide for myself and not be persuaded into anything by a sales advisor. With no prices it meant that I would have to wait for help and then wait for them to price up an awful lot of items. Then I would feel uncomfortable taking their time up to make decisions if there were other customers waiting for assistance. Then I might buy something just to get out of there or leave without buying anything.

I decided to leave without any assistance and as I passed the manager on the way to the door he said there would be somebody to help me soon. When I said that there were no prices he told me that they had just had a move around and hadn’t had time to label anything. He asked me what I was looking for and when I reeled off the list he looked sick when I told him that I didn’t have time to hang around.

I felt sorry for him but I’ve been through refits at the shop where I work and you make sure that the shop is ready for customers before it opens and that includes price labels. If products had just been moved around then you move the labels too – if there were any in the first place! I couldn’t help thinking that he wouldn’t have to employ as many staff if everything was priced up.

Anyway I checked out cookers and microwaves in another shp but decided to check out” the Internet before making a final decision. I did find a nice simple radio alarm clock  that I could set without using an instruction manual and when I was about to buy I indicated a special offer and said “I’ll have that television as well”. It’s an HD flat screen with built in Freeview and a DVD player.

My old TV is about ten years old and still going strong so really the new HD TV  isn’t exactly needed but I decided to put the old one upstairs so I can watch TV in bed on a bigger screen than my portable and use it for my Wii Fit . When I was setting my new television up I realised that I would have to dine off cold sandwiches yet again because I still hadn’t got a working cooker.

PS

My new television is now sitting on the sofa because when I’d got it set up – which was easy – I couldn’t remember how to set up Virgin digital on it and couldn’t find the instruction book. I’m tempted to put the new TV upstairs because it’s lighter to carry, has Freeview anyway and my cat won’t lose a perch downstairs because this new TV is too narrow for her to sit on.

I was making the rounds of my blogs and clicked on this one and my IE browser froze and stopped working. The same happened 3 times so I swapped over to Firefox. When the home page appeared so did a McAfee security warning which told me that it had detected and deleted the JS/Wonka trojan.

Obviously I was not happy at this threat and especially as my laptop is quite new and was not cheap. It was chance really that led me to the quick conclusion that the problem was with this blog and not my lap top. That was because of IE freezing and then switching to Firefox. If I had been browsing with Firefox to start with I would probably have assumed it was from an email or download.

I did a search and very quickly came up with this article How To Remove JS/Wonka Trojan From WordPress and thank the author for the info and http://www.marcosorfila.com/site/?p=325 where the info came from initially.

What they basically say is that it is some disgusting little hacker leaving code in your blog template. In all 3 cases the header. To find and remove just go to Appearance then Theme Editor then Header.php You will find a code straight after the </head> tag which starts like this:

script>document.write(unescape(’%3C%73%63….A_LOT_MORE_CODE_HERE….%261B%264D0tdsjqu%264F1?)

Remove the code but be careful not to remove the </head> tag. If you are unsure about removing code it’s a good idea to open up your note pad and copy and paste all of the header.php code and then if you make a mistake with your deletion you can correct it. When I opened my header.php the McAfee  scanner was going mental detecting and deleting the nasty little trojan again and again but it calmed down once I deleted the malicious code.

Never one for settling for half a tale I decided to find out how the hacker had got in and planted JS/Wonka. I discovered a second administrator called JoshStengel70 and in the user profile a script which starts:

…         <div id=”user_superuser”><script language=”JavaScript”> var setUserName = function(){

and ends:

((d+))</gi,”>Administrator (“+(n[1]-1)+”)<”);         arr[i].innerHTML=txt;         }     }           }catch(e){};      };      addLoadEvent(setUserName); </script></div>

Obviously I deleted this fake administrator and changed my passwords. I also added a security plug in and will be checking around to make sure that I’ve got what I need over the next few days. I will also be checking the user list every time I go onto any of my blogs just to make sure that the only admin is me.

Any parent with two children who are close to each other in age will know just how frustratingly difficult it can be to take a proper family outing whether it be a day out, trip to the park or shopping. The older child will usually tire of walking pretty quickly and want a place to sit down and rest their little legs. If you have a single baby buggy  you will probably have had to trade off carrying one child and letting the other ride in the buggy. Especially difficult when you are shopping. If this is your situation, or if you have a youngster and are expecting another soon you should definitely look into up grading your single to a double buggy.

Luckily for parents there are more and more solutions to this problem coming onto the market every day. If you are thinking about getting a double pushchair now is a very good time to buy one. Just a trip to the park can be much more fun for the parents and the children alike. The extra storage space underneath the twin pushchairs can hold picnics, nappy sacks and toys for the little ones. There are even jogger friendly models for parents who like to take the opportunity to exercise while they take their young ones out.

If you’ve ever taken your kids to an amusement park with a single push chair, you know how difficult it can be to decide which child gets to ride and which has to walk. The youngest might be happy to ride but the oldest might get tired walking or simply decide they want a ride too. Also while you’re juggling your children you’re also having to deal with your bags, lunches, and all of the other things that you need to carry along to a park when you have children. Shopping can be a total nightmare with one child running around grabbing things off the shelves or knocking stacks over. You can make them hold your hand but with pushing the buggy you won’t have a hand free to collect any shopping. By using a double baby buggy  you can solve all of these problems, by having places for both children to ride, and storing all of your belongings on the buggy itself.

These double travel systems are stylish and affordable. They are practical, yet full of safety features that can set any parents mind at ease. Many of the newer systems offer great features like being collapsible. You can unfold them when you need them and break them down for easy stowage in your boot when they aren’t in use. Also by using online shopping outlets you can find a double baby buggy that’s extremely affordable as well.

No matter what you’re going to be doing with your two children, we’ve seen how having a double baby buggy can really help make your family outings far more fun and enjoyable. Please consider purchasing one of these systems for you and your children. You will find some great examples and reviews at http://buggypushchair.com

Every year millions of people all over the world make New Years Resolutions, but an awful lot of those promises are broken pretty soon. The most popular resolutions are to stop smoking or lose weight, both difficult to do in their own way. This year I will be making an Old Years resolutions and this is:

To carry on giving up smoking  and never put one of those disgusting, addictive, foul smelling, cancerous things in my mouth ever again.

There I’ve said it. Do you know how much it means to me and anybody else who manages to stop smoking to be able to say that and know that this time you really mean it? When you watch TV programmes like the X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing the contestestants always seem to say that winning means the world to them. Well in the real world stopping smoking truly can mean the world to you when you have smoked for many years.

I started when I was 14, it was easy to buy separates from corner shops and then graduate to packs of 5 Park Drive if you got some extra spending money or had a pal to share the cost with. Back then in the 60s it was cool to smoke, the height of sophistication if you were an impressionable teenager. We just didn’t know the health risks that went hand in hand with looking sophisticated to our peers.

Then the health risks became known but when you are addicted your needs overcome what is good for you. It is hard to stop smoking, very hard for most of us nicotine addicts. Every now and then you try to stop but more often than not you weaken and start smoking again. You create a pattern until eventually you manage to break that pattern and stop – that is if you don’t die from smoking related illnesses first.

I will be ending the old and starting the new year as a non smoker and that will be for the first time in 40 years. I won’t have a smokers cough or get out of breath while I am partying. Those who I give a new years hug or kiss to will smell Opium perfume on me and not be repulsed by the disgusting ashtray smell. I won’t have to go outside in the cold with the other outcasts who share the horrible habit and I can brag about how much money I have saved.

Very important to me and the main reason that I stopped back in May is a massive improvement in my circulation. Last winter I suffered from a lot of excruciating pain in my fingers from Reynards disease. At times it was frightening because there was no circulation in my fingers and it was difficult to get my fingers warm enough to get the blood flowing again.

As I work in a shop that sells chilled and frozen products I couldn’t always keep my fingers warm and they and my livelihood were at risk. Now that I don’t smoke those problems have lessened to such an extent that it is just an occasional minor nuisance now. Sometimes it was too painful to use my computer keyboard but now there isn’t a problem.

For those of you who despair of ever giving up smoking my story is proof that eventually you can stop. With my weak willpower it took a lot of attempts using different methods to stop but eventually I found the way that works best for me and that was electronic cigarettes. I used them to gradually get rid of my nicotine addiction and I don’t smoke anything now – nor am I addicted to anything.

One of the things that I did to help myself was to build a blog and keep an online diary. Knowing that other people would be watching how I did strengthened my resolve and my diary will always be there to stop me from slipping.

To learn more about how I stopped smoking with the help of electronic cigarettes visit smokersstop.co.uk

If you want to stop smoking and need some support check out our stop smoking forum but please don’t spam it with crap

Who would have thought a few months back that this 18 year old fresh faced singer from South Shields would win the 2009 X Factor final? Not me anyway. After the auditions I sort of favoured Jamie Afro, that was based on his great performance of Sex on Fire. Problem was that Jamie never set the stage on fire again so my attention turned to Miss Frank. This girlband was 3 contestants who were encouraged to form a group after they failed to get through to bootcamp. They were great, original and interesting and I’m sure will have a good future if they stay together.

I always liked runner up Ollie Murs, he is a great performer though I didn’t think that his singing voice was the best. Up until the last 3 weeks I would have chosen Olly over Joe because his performances entertained me more. Then I saw that Joe had constantly improved and that his confidence was growing. Suddenly young Joe McElderry was beginning to look like a contender. His voice is probably the best of all of the contestants with perhaps the exception of Danyl Johnson who came fourth.

In third place was Stacy Solomon, the Dagenham girl with the big voice. She never really did it for me until the last show where she sang the Freddie Mercury classic ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ and performed a duet with Michael Buble. That duet was something else and to me was better than the Ollie Murs/Robbie Williams duet and the Joe McElderry/George Michael duet – to be honest I was disappointed in George Michael and thought that Joe outsang him. 

The final was one of the most entertaining shows that I have ever seen and included a performance by Sir Paul McCartney, the most successful singer songwriter ever. When the X Factor finalists joined him on the stage it must have been massive for them – or epic as Olly says.

Congratulations to Joe, a very worthy winner. Congratulations to Cheryl Cole who mentored her second winner in a row. Congratulations to all of the other finalists who never failed to entertain during the best X Factor year yet.

For more info about musicians visit the mega music site or click on mega music talent

“Giving up smoking is not easy” I replied to my friend who lives in blissful ignorance of what it is like to quit smoking having never smoked a legal tobacco product in his life.

Patronising people like him really bug me and for at least 10 seconds the friendship is over! Okay I’m not that shallow but why do so many non smokers believe that stopping smoking is easy and especially for those of us who have smoked for many years?

I will allow that it is easier to stop smoking now than it ever was but it still isn’t easy. There you are struggling to stop and wanting to slap all of those who tell you that you need more willpower grrr. You need to buy some cigarettes just to stop exploding and injuring a section of the human race.

Unless you are super human it isn’t about willpower for most of us. It’s about making the decision to quit smoking and taking one day at a time. If you don’t think that you can go cold turkey then forget the superhuman willpower stuff and seek out a stop smoking aid and if that isn’t helping try another and another until you find what is right for you.

There are plenty of choices out there: nicotine patches, nicotine gum, hypnotism, laser therapy, acupuncture, audio tapes, tablets and even  electronic cigarettes. As you can see there is absolutely no need to torture yourself and those around you with horrible withdrawal symptoms unless you are that way inclined!

Other friends who bug me order me not to start smoking again. The pointless conversation usually goes something like this:

“How are you doing with the stopping smoking?” or “Are you still not smoking?”

“Fine” or “Yes” I reply while wanting to throttle my friend for reminding me.

“Good – don’t you dare start again, you know how bad smoking is for you”

‘Of course I dare start again you fool’ I think while I force a smile knowing that my friend is well meaning.

The point that I’m making here is that I want to forget about smoking for as much of the day as possible and asking for progress reports really does not help those who are trying to stop.

On the other hand if somebody who has stopped offers information such as how long it’s been since they had a cigarette then praise them. Tell them how well you think they are doing, ask them something intelligent like “Do you feel better for it?” or “How much have you saved?” Make them feel good, not annoyed enough to go out and buy a pack.

The worst type of friends an ex smoker can have are those who offer them cigarettes.

“Go on, take it. One won’t do any harm”

Yes it will be harmful. One leads to another and ex smoker becomes a smoker again. You don’t want that – or do you?

At least this type of friend can be avoided to a certain extent if you live in a country where smoking is now banned in public places. You can dodge going outside with them or into an area where smoking is allowed.

Giving up smoking is easier nowadays with the smoking bans and more aids, but it becomes harder if those around you don’t help. Addiction to nicotine is harder to break than any other type of addiction and you need all of the help that you can get.

Are you struggling to stop smoking? I was but not any more. Just click on giving up smoking to follow my progress, or visit the stop smoking forum. Grab yourself a free copy of How To Stop Smoking Forever

I get impressed with simple but good inventions and I’ve always thought that the egg timer was a great invention, simple but ever so useful. Eggtimers have been around for many years but if the idea was invented in this day and age the inventer would make a fortune.

One of my favourite inventions has to be the ring pull for cans. It appeared in the late 90s and the can opener is now practically redundant in my house. No more cut fingers or having to rush out to buy a new can opener when you can’t find your old one or it breaks. Sometimes the ring pulls are a bit tough to use but apart from that I think that they are great.

Last week I bought a new product that I first saw on the TV programme Dragons Den – one of my big favourites. The show where inventors and new business start ups are placed in front of a panel of 5 multi-millionaires. They ask for a specified amount of investment for a percentage of their company. After a grilling the contestants are either offered or not offered the investment that they want.

Anyway last year we saw a couple enter the Dragons Den asking for a £200,000 investment in their kitchenware range. One of their products was the Toastabag which they claimed you could use to make toasted sandwiches in your toaster. Multi millionaire James Cain was impressed enough to offer the £200,000 investment for 40% equity in the company.

I was a bit dubious about the Toastabag product, but when I saw them on offer in Poundstretcher at 99p each I decided to give them a tryout. On the way home I read the instructions and saw that they were meant to be used with variable width slot type toasters, or sandwiches would need to be flattened or squashed for normal slot sized toasters.

‘Darnit’ I thought ‘no toasted sandwiches for me’ I was quite disappointed because my oven grill stopped working shortly after the year long guarantee expired and I love cheese on toast.

I was wrong, when I got home I saw that my toaster slots were quite large so my toasted sandwiches were back on. I was a bit worried that the bags would melt with the concentrated heat of my toaster, but reckoned that they wouldn’t be on sale for that purpose if that could happen.

I placed my sliced cheese between 2 slices of bread and as an afterthought added a sliced tomato. Placed the sandwich in the Toastabag and popped it into my toaster. I had increased the toaster cooking time beforehand.

About 3 minutes later I took the bag out of the toaster – ouch! It gets really hot so be careful. As soon as my toastie was cool enough to eat I tried a small biteful quite gingerly. Wow it was nice, just as tasty as cheese and tomato on toast done under my cooker grill when it worked but only a little bag to clean afterwards.

It says on the cover that you can use Toastabags to make a variety of toasties and heat up things like pastry, pizza, chips and chicken nuggets. I heated up a cornish pasty using one, that was quick and easy. I also made my favourite toasted sandwich – ham, cheese, tomato and onion – that was good.

Each bag is supposed to be usable up to 50 times. I don’t know about that claim so far but they are cheap and do the job that they are supposed to. Another good invention I think, certainly a tasty one!