How to make coconut fudge

First, find a nice recipe for coconut ice, and then botch it!
Seriously.
I can't make fudge.
Now, it seems, I can't make coconut ice either. But I managed to make a delicately coloured slightly caramelised coconut confection that would pass all tests for good fudge except for the presence of coconut!

Now, I didn't want to have a blog that turned into a recipe collection (of sorts), but I also know how frustrating it is to find a page full of talk about an item and then nothing to tell you how to achieve it, so here's the recipe.
4 cups sugar
2 cups coconut
1 cup milk
vanilla essence
and a pinch of salt.

The original recipe I read said throw the whole lot into a pan, dissolve the sugar, bring to a boil and simmer for about 7 minutes, and voila! you have coconut ice. I was not (and am still not) convinced that that length cooking would be long enough, so I looked at other recipes which said boil until you get to the softball stage, so that's what I did. Except it started colouring slightly.

Next time I'll leave out the vanilla, and maybe add the teeniest drop of mint, which might give it that ice flavour that I somehow imagine coconut ice should have.
I should add that I don't even LIKE coconut ice, and no, I'm not pregnant!

So now for the more interesting news:
Yesterday, or was it the day before....
I went to feed the chickens, and when I dipped the bucket into the food drum I saw something wriggling around. So I fished it out with the food bucket, and saw the absolutely most gorgeous gecko in the whole world. At first I had no idea what this was, as it was larger than our normal lizards, and a lot slower, but was too small to be a chameleon, and somehow not quite the right shape.

It had lost its tail at some stage in the past. Luckily the chickens weren't around, so I just put the bucket on the ground and had to sort of pour it out as it didn't want to budge, and then went to feed the animals.

As soon as I came into the house I looked it up, and it was a spotted gecko. And I searched for a picture on the Internet to direct you to, but there wasn't ONE that did it justice, so I've been kicking myself ever since, for not having taken a photograph!

Next time I'll know better.