(Michel Faber's horror story with aliens and more on the A9 in Ross & Cromarty....)

I know the locale for this weird, funny and wonderful book pretty well - the A9 north of Inverness goes through some beautiful coastal landscapes around Tain, but off the beaten tourist track around Portmahomack and Tarbat Ness (the setting for Faber's story) the solitary-ness and isolation become more pronounced...a cracking good read, guaranteed to keep you guessing, and looking over your shoulder if you ever hitchhike!!!

We often overlook the humble skin; it's one of the organs we take so much for granted, but without it we'd just be a heap of squidgy mush. My kids take great delight in declaring my hands 'leathery' and I suppose when you see this, you'd have to agree with them. But my! isn't interesting taking a long hard look at this stuff! We know about fingerprints and all that, but it's so regular as well - fascinating stuff, hurrah for skin!

Dead easy! Put the pie in the oven, the spuds onto boil and prepare the peas & broccers. Set up the camera, place hand on surface, ensure interesting composition and fire shutter...on the 'puter, duplicate layer, convert to B&W via the B&W Adjustment layer; then sharpen, resize and upload for your chums on Pbase. Now that that's done, sit back with an appetising preprandial & wait for dinner to cook...I should add that my digits were perfectly clean for the shot - the B&W and contrasty processing makes my hand look like it belonged to a Victorian urchin....

Wednesday 27th's easy-as-pie entry to the Challenge; click here for other monochromed Pbasers in January