dovegreyreader scribbles

dovegreyknitting...

Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs... so there was all this excitement last night about dovegreyreader getting a mention on Front Row on Radio 4. You too can Listen Again here and my thanks to Natasha Solomons and Damian Horner for thinking of me. Now without wishing to suggest you won't want to listen to the whole programme just whizz about seventeen minutes in and there it is.
And for anyone who's been route marching around the internet all night looking for us and is desperate for some bookish conversation here we are, except it's Saturday so we do everything but books on a Saturday. Just scroll down a bit and you'll find what you're looking for, or follow the links over here >>>> and you'll be sat there all day getting up to speed.
But anyway enough of that I have very important things to discuss with you...mainly, aren't sleeves boring?
I gave myself a few knitting afternoons this week and finally finished it...

But oh the sleeves, that second one just seemed to go on and on and I hit the wall a while back. I have several friends who do both at once but I think that might be even worse for me...though I have to say, I am delighted with the end result.
I'm so rarely completely 100% delighted with everything I make, something usually goes awry somewhere and it has here, it's glaring right at me, you're all sure to spot it too...think cuff and unequal. But as they say, only God's work can be perfect, so once I'd redone that band to include the forgotten buttonholes and slogged through the sleeves I have to say this one is pleasing. Lovely fit, the offset rib is fine, I'm probably as warm as the Jacob sheep and the Mohair goat were and the quirky variations seem to work.
It's a Claire Crompton pattern designed for Spin-a-Yarn over at Bovey Tracey with the offset rib a frolic of my own and the wool was from Blacker's of Launceston.
But as if Blacker's on the doorstep wasn't enough I have to report that we now live in even more perilous and exceedingly dangerous times here in the Tamar Valley.
Becs Clayton has finally opened her new and long-awaited wool emporium The Cornwall Yarn Shop also in Launceston, a mere seven or so miles up the road.

Yes, let's say fifteen to twenty minutes driving taking into account tractors and cows and having to do thirty miles an hour through the village, five minutes to park the car , three to walk to the shop and that's me door to door in less than half an hour.
It involves a border crossing but I managed to be there on March 5th, St Piran's Day, and the sun shone for the opening.

Becs has plans for a coffee shop on the first floor, a workroom on the top floor, weekly Knitclubs as well as workshops and classes. Greeted by the most fabulous selection of the very best wool and patterns, and having come into a modest but unexpected monetary windfall last week, it seemed a treat was in order, (actually I somehow seem to have spent this windfall three times over already) so I started my browse.



Some lovely Noro shelves too

Forgive the indulgence, pictures like this must seem a bit lacking for any non-knitters, the knitters on the other hand might all be out there stroking their screens...
In the end I made a highly enjoyable purchase of some Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed in a lovely shade of delicate pea green ( you can just see it, top left corner, the picture above the Noro) more the colour of tinned peas than frozen, and the Debbie Bliss pattern for the shawl-necked jumper in the Winter 09 magazine.
It's already on the needles because I have to be thinking decent Village Show entries this September since I voted knitting back as a class in its own right at my first committee meeting the other night. Due to lack of interest (i.e. just me and my socks and someone else doing Kaffe Fassets)  it had merged into 'A Handmade Item' which you may recall had the socks and the Kaffe fighting it out with a matchstick model of the Mary Rose or was it a Harley Davidson....anyway it hardly seemed a level judging field even if my socks did win. Committee members seem expected to enter every class in the show so I can see I'm going to be tearing my hair out over rock cakes, five species of flower in an eggcup, four carrots, the longest runner bean in the world and heaven knows what else.
And just ask who came up with the idea for the set recipe baking class?
With the theme "Celebrating the Centenary of Guiding" weaving through the show classes I had a light bulb moment, it could only be chocolate brownies.
As always Bookhound, with impeccable timing, made his entrance back into the wool shop just as I was paying at the till.
Wool shop owners all know that this is the time to go sotto voce and complete the purchase in a pianissimo whisper....thanks Becs.
Anyway, if you're heading down west it now makes a great deal of sense to divert into Launceston and call in at number 3 Madford Lane.


 

dovegreyreading...

I have been disciplining myself to stop messing about and get out for a walk in all this glorious spring sunshine we've been having this week.
Grab a dog and go for a bimble along the lane, light on the back of the eyes...good.

It's been deceptively cold which was a good thing as I accidentally dropped the door key in the granite trough outside the front door as I was faffling around with my camera (better that way round)  and there it sat nicely on the ice ....

Did anyone else have a Troll all those years ago when they were the craze, and very expensive?
Then I've been out, not once, not twice but three evenings on the trot, including a planning meeting for this year's Village Show as I have been invited to join the organising committee, (think Vicar of Dibley and you won't be far wrong) so reading time has been at a premium. When that happens I want to be sure to be reading good books or I get crochety at fifty wasted pages of life and a book I am not enjoying and eventually have to give up on.
No time wasted this week though.
I finished Beautiful For Ever by Helen Rappaport, my thoughts on that on Monday and I'm delighted that Helen has agreed to hover around in comments during the day if anyone wants to chat with her, I certainly have my list of questions.
I hear the book bags are going from Long Barn like...well like hot bags, at the £6.99 buy one get one free offer, plus a whisper of 'dovegreyreader' also helps, and Helen's book currently also available there at the pre-publication special offer price of £10 inc. p&p.
One of the many joys of writing a blog is the unexpected arrival of a book you've been desperate to get your hands on, so when a signed proof copy of David Mitchell's new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet arrived I just had to have a little look which turned into a big look.

1799 and Japan is visited by the representatives of the Dutch East India Company and I have been spellbound by it all, the setting, the dialogue, the repartee, it really is an 'extraordinary novel' and I think one of those I won't want to end.
I was in the 'I love Cloud Atlas' camp and the 'I'm not sure about Black Swan Green' camp so it's never a certainty that I'm going to love every thing David Mitchell writes, but so far so Booker, I feel sure this will be another for my longlist cometh July.
Talking of longlists, the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist will be revealed next Wednesday... so what's going to be there?
Any suggestions?
Back to my reading week and spoiled for choice I settled on So Long See You Tomorrow from the lovely box of William Maxwell books that arrived from Ellen in NY, and not realising that it's a sequel to They Came Like Swallows that's been an unexpected reading joy.

Talking of swallows and evicted wrens as I was on that post, I have exciting news to report...

...droppings on the wren nesting box, I'll bet that's made your day:-)
We think they may have taken up residence which is great news, it's heartbreaking to watch the swallows arrive, bully the wrens out of their winter squat and then find the tiny wren's eggs smashed outside the front door.
I also picked up The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin 'just to see' , and seventy pages later I realised I was very late for everything else I was supposed to be doing.
A famous exiled composer is returning to Cold War Russia for one night only to conduct his final symphony and it becomes an obsession at the heart of Anna's family to get hold of a ticket. It's beautiful writing, every moment of leaden bleakness balanced with a joyful leap of the imagination interwoven with splashes of light and colour. I'm really loving this one.
So that's my booky-walky week, how about yours

Enjoy ~ Alan Bennett

In keeping with our resolve to be the West Country version of the West End Whingers and take advantage of Plymouth's Theatre Royal on a regular basis we set off to see...

No... we just walked past that sign... to get in to see Alan Bennett's play Enjoy last week performed to a packed house.

I was hankering after a pre-theatre supper, whilst Bookhound kept wittering on about a flask of tea and sandwiches in the car sitting in the car park.You can sometimes never be sure if he's joking or not and so I was relieved to see no picnic bags in his hand as we left home, except he told me he'd put them in the boot earlier.
In the end my supper was nearer the mark, though I should perhaps have declined the profiteroles, but who in their right mind ever can?

I'd read a few lack lustre reviews of this recent production of Alan Bennet's play, first performed to ambivalent audiences in 1980 with Joan Plowright, Colin Blakeley, Liz Smith in the starring roles, so we weren't really sure what to expect.
The play tells the story of the last inhabitants of a row of back-to-back houses about to be demolished. An observer is sent in to sit and watch the family and take notes about this fast disappearing way of life in order to reconstruct the home in a sort of living museum-style tourist attraction.
Obviously a bit too far fetched for a 1980's audience but prophetic thanks to the National Trust.
The blurb promised a 'rich and wonderful play...a joyous production' and with the inestimable Alison Steadman and David Troughton starring, how on earth could it be otherwise?
I can remember as clear as day watching Alison Steadman as Beverley in the TV version of Abigail's Party back in the 1970s. I'll bet my next lot of profiteroles that if you saw it you too can recall the way she said 'Demis Roussos'.. with that lovely nasal twang.

Then of course there was Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice,
New to the theatre after a few years' break I see that after both this and The Pitmen Painters, curtains are definitely old hat, you walk in and there is the set, subtly lit and for all to see and ponder which we did as we took our seats.
The first half was funny but not side-splittingly so, someone seated in front of us was laughing when no one else did and we were besieged by the wrapped sweet brigade behind, but we were coping.
Over our tubs of chocolate ice cream during the interval we wondered if this was to be the sum of it.
Oh no, oh very no... the second half had the entire audience weeping with laughter, the sort of uninhibited laughter where you completely forget yourself and are wiping away the tears, blissfully unaware of the person next to / in front of / behind who may not have found it quite so funny and is now writing on their blog about the cackling woman falling about laughing next to / in front / behind them....sorry whoever you are.
In fact I don't recall laughing quite so much in a theatre ever (we don't get out much) and just how did David Troughton as Dad stop himself corpsing whilst lying 'dead' on the floor ...except he had his back to us so may have been rattling with laughter too. As Mam settles down to 'wash the corpse' for the sake of tradition and the benefit of the silent social observer, she discovers to her horror a prowess in Dad's anatomy that quite shocks her....if he's really dead it's with a legitimate smile on his face.
It's a fine line between comedy crossing the line into farce but this one didn't stray. The one liners were shot through with Bennett-onian dead pan expressiveness, the comic timing was perfect, expressions were everything and we really were falling about. Perhaps the London reviewers have seen seen it all, perhaps down y'ere in Plymouth we don't get out enough, but wonderful for an end of winter outing.
This being Alan Bennett the tears of laughter will also as quickly turn to tears of sadness, and Alison Steadman, looking most unlike the Alison Steadman we know, gave a master class in character acting, every nuance given its right emphasis and we left the theatre in high spirits.
If Enjoy is coming down your way, best not to miss it,

'I don't know why it's called Enjoy...it was something waiters said to you when they brought you your meal. I was so used to writing plays with downbeat endings that I wanted something positive...I also wanted the audience to have a good time, so Enjoy is a kind of invitation to them.'

Direct Red - Gabriel Weston...again

Sorry about Monday but this is what has happened since I picked up  Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Watson, it's all come flooding back, I promise we'll stick to the book today.
I'd only really viewed the surgical gods from considerably lower down in the food chain, so I was interested to see what life might be like for a woman supposedly on an equal footing but working

'in a world dominated by alpha males...where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment are necessary tools for survival.'

Indeed they are, but Gabriel Weston bravely and honestly challenges those pre-conceptions and her own thinking around many of the situations she finds herself in. The result is many portions of humble pie consumed and a self-effacing account of life at the cutting edge (sorry) as Gabriel Weston walks her reader through many of those staple scenarios of the TV hospital drama, but with a personal touch that debrides (sorry, I can't stop myself,  it's all begging for it) those surface layers to see what really may lie beneath in the mind of the doctor.
There's the inevitable kudos of those first days of being a medical student until the first resuscitation is required...and forget that promise because it's all reminded me of our first day in uniform.
We'd been nurses for about three days (and I discover that Gabriel Weston would have been about two years old in 1972) all standing chatting on the platform at Russell Square underground waiting for the train to take us back to our nurse's home in Belsize Park. There was a bit of a commotion and then the crowd of passengers around us parted like the Red Sea to allow us to take command of the situation and decide what to do next about the person who had jumped under the incoming train.
Whiter shade of pale doesn't come close and you know those emergency stairs at Russell Square that they tell you not to take because there are so many of them...
But in many ways this is what made this book so special for me, situations of my own that I could identify with, but it matters not whether you are medical or otherwise because so many of the central observations of Direct Red translate willingly to other life scenarios. It's a book about people and how they react to one another and what we all do to try and protect ourselves, whether being done to or doing unto others, this is humanity plain and simple.
Be ready with a strong stomach if this is not your thing because Gabriel Weston doesn't couch (sorry, that was unintentional) any of this prettily or euphemistically. There is plenty that will certainly make your eyes water, one scenario in particular an object lesson for Gabriel Weston in professional pride and quite how we may all compromise our integrity in its preservation whilst convincing ourselves and others that we are doing the right thing.
And prepare for great sadness too, expect to read what it might really be like to suffer a miscarriage for example, but any account that avoided such moments would not be truthful and nor would it have that ring of sincerity and honesty that Direct Red does which explains why it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book award last year.
Meanwhile here's an observation from Gabriel Weston and perhaps something to bear in mind if you ever find yourself in need of surgical attention.

'It is no longer enough to be technically proficient; nowadays, we need to be nice. And this presents the modern surgeon with a great challenge: how to combine a necessary degree of toughness with an equally important ability to be gentle.'

I think I'll just settle for them being stunningly brilliant and proficient at what they do, I always like to check for a steady hand too, neat needlework skills are a bonus and then I'll be thankful for such small mercies and acts of kindness that may come my way, and to be honest, I'll forgive the rest.

Endsleigh Salon update...'School' continued

 
I must bring you news of the other 'School' themed reads from our last Endsleigh Salon evening, because I'd hate you to think we'd just languished around wishing we'd been at Malory Towers, or were thankful we'd missed out on the Abbey School and the Morris dancing.
 
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury, very 1970's bohemian with every kind of 'ism' going on which as I recall, having lived through it, must have been at least feminism and pacifism and I'm sure you can think of a few more. The book seemed to be 75% dialogue, a series of impressions and from where I was sitting the print looked tiny, but Rebecca had read it and enjoyed as I recall, though wasn't quite head over heels about it.
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes and published in 1857 proved very disappointing and perhaps offered a good example of a novel whose imagery is more often gathered from the watching of the film rather than the reading of the book.
Who can forget that little chap being roasted by nasty Flashman.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt might have been that old favourite, a room divider...
'Oh I loved that book.
'Oh God, the worst book I've ever read.'
But if there was any doubt about that one dividing the room you should have seen the ranks take up arms over Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
'Hated it'
'Loved it'
'Adored it'

We do actually say far more than that and there was a great debate about why we'd hated it, loved it and all those other things about both books. Linda and I were sadly united in our dislike, for style, some irritating narrative devices and characters in Never Let Me Go, whilst the village contingent (there are so many of them they could do with a bus now) were unanimous in their admiration.
It's clearly a geographical thing but I have a reread scheduled just in case my current Kazuo Ishiguro revisit can shed new light, because I had read it in the midst of a Bookerthon, often not the most propitious way for a book to endear itself to me. It may sadly however be curtains for Linda with Kazuo though I was more than persuasive about A Pale View of Hills and said nice things about The Remains of the Day too, with tempting snippets about Dartmoor and Tavistock and Creber's all getting a mention therin.
Looking to Chillaton for some moral support...no, they hadn't been as impressed with The Remains of the Day.
Sorry Kazuo, I tried but you win some you lose some.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was on the other hand unanimously received with praise on all sides of the salon.
The Dead School by Patrick McCabe had its reader very exercised in the describing of; bleak but very funny, sort of Father Ted meets Quentin Tarantino and set against a backdrop of the early 1970s, the troubles in N.Ireland and two parallel lives which cross.The final verdict was a great read.
The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee proved to be nothing to do with schools at all but had been a good read however Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi was added in by its reader as the most fantastic read. All added to by her visits to Tehran and the university in the past and how it really felt to wear a burkah and, as we never stop a discussion trail leading wherever it wants to, interesting debate followed about the life and the restrictions then and the current political climate.
Thinks by David Lodge sadly had its reader surrendering at page seventy something and moving swiftly on we all agreed that Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was the fall back option, was a truly beautiful and clever book that could happily have lost its ending and were it possible, been even better.
Lastly The Finishing School by Muriel Spark... and we all thought oh great, what better way to end, that'll be two brilliant Muriels in one evening then, but sadly it was not to be. The Finishing School felt like a very insubstantial read to its reader, riven as it was with themes of jealousy, satire and middle-class values.
Next theme Back to the Land...

Direct Red ~ Gabriel Weston

 I've been in a wallow of gritty reminiscence since reading Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Weston so it's time for this photo again to set the scene and give you a Monday morning smile....yes, yes, the hat...I know it's very odd.
It's perhaps a lesser known fact that there was a time when I thought my future nursing career rested not in a staff nurse's uniform but in the operating theatre.
Even I can hardly believe that at the age of twenty-three and that lifetime of wanting to be a nurse, all that saving lives and dedicated patient care and interaction with living (hopefully) awake and breathing people I had dreamed of, was about to be exchanged for the role of a scrub nurse. Letting my hair go frizzy as the autoclave door swung open, wearing a mask all day long, passing cutlery and needlework accoutrements to a surgeon, counting swabs and ministering to completely unconscious patients.
It was a bit of a one-way street and not what I had intended at all, though to be fair I think my nursing career and my life were both at something of a crossroads.
I'd enjoyed theatres as a student mainly because I'd done my placement in the smaller more intimate learning environment of Gt Ormond Street's branch hospital Queen Elizabeth, Hackney Road. We'd do on call and sleep in sort of flowery bower of a 1930s bedroom next to the theatre and it all felt very important and dramatic to get that 3am knock on the door to get theatre ready for Mr D to operate on an emergency.
I can still remember the cases, 4am and us all clustered around a newborn baby with intestinal obstruction which turned out to be caused by Apple Peel Syndrome when the surgeon finally got in to have a look...the intestines coiled and shaped like the complete peel off an apple.
Mr D was a real gentleman too, quite gave me a false impression about surgeons, talked to everyone as if they were a human being just like him.
Sorry... where was I...was I supposed to be talking about a book?
Anyway I loved it all so just imagine it, a few years later, qualified and looking very Holby City in my nice green scrubs and white clogs, first scrub as a staff nurse in theatres at Gt Ormond Street, bit slow off the mark and the surgeon threw some tonsils at me because my hand wasn't ready to receive. The surgeons were really higher even than the gods in the hospital heirarchy, many of them world pioneers but there still seemed no need to fling some throaty detritus at me.
Mr D would never have done such a thing.
Fielding tonsils was not to be my bag, I was over my love for theatres very quickly after that and hastily went back into starched uniform as per above, staffing on the metabolic unit for the few months I had left to work. I would be leaving to get married and moving to Devon where I had a place to train as a midwife.
That wasn't right either, didn't even make the first day because by this time I had decided I was fed up with hospitals and my future lay as a Clerical Officer in the DHSS as it was known.
That lasted a few months until I had to resuscitate someone who'd collapsed after being told they weren't entitled to benefits.
Then I realised I did like saving lives after all (yes he lived and was probably entitled to everything after I'd finished with him) but perhaps not quite this dramatically and the rest is well-documented history here, health visiting and the great outdoors it was for me.
Sorry...
I got a bit carried away and you will too if you have even a hint of any hospital experience (either side of the bedside, if you see what I mean )
I promise I'll talk about Direct Red tomorrow....no sorry it'll have to be Wednesday I must catch up with Endsleigh Salon tomorrow before the next one.

Who am I?

It's NTTVBG over at Other Stories today , but I do realise not everyone may have read the book or want to join in with that and Rocky's a little too worn out after yesterday to be much help, so I'm very grateful to Rhys who kindly e mailed this week offering to compile a literary quiz  for future use.
I was in party-planning mode so I jumped at that one and how perfect now that we are four and nearly grown up, to be doing a nice quiet quiz instead of all that raucous musical chairs and pass the parceling for a box of Maltesers, and being sick with party excitement as in previous years.

Now for obvious reasons....

****DON'T put your answers in comments****

though feel free to discuss and speculate if you want...or just to thank the quizmaster, and I'm assured that anything that may look like a typo is meant to be there.
E mail answers to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com, I'll forward them onto Rhys who will come back to me with the name of some winners eventually, and I'm sure I can come up with a prize or two...
And if anyone else fancies some fiendish quizmaestering I'll bite their hand off too (and send you a book for your trouble) because I love a good quiz and I'm hoping Rhys will do some more too.

Who am I?
Major clue: all were born between 1700-1900                                            
....and wrote novels that are highly thought of.

 

1. I was born during the eighteenth-century and remained very close to my sister all my life. I made up a place called Hartfield and I have been criticised for not writing about Waterloo or the French Revolution and other important events.

 

2. In my novels I depict characters from a full span of social life. I am called a Romantic or a romancer, I had the unfortunate experience of becoming bankrupt – but I overcame that too.

 

3. I wrote in my novels about the most appalling poverty and brutality as well as people who are comfortably off. I have been criticised for having weak plots in my novels, but they made me rich and I became popular and successful, and in fact I became a performer.

 

4. I am a poet as well as a novelist. A lot of nonsense has been written about me and I am portrayed as a ghost-like figure walking endless moorland – this is not true.

 

5. Believe it or not I am remembered today for only one novel. I made up a character called George Osborne (no relation to the George Osborne of UK politics). My family’s literary influence went on for more than one generation: my daughter, my son in law, his daughter and his granddaughter.

 

6. I have my own ideas about things and I wrote my novels to explain them. I did believe in God devoutly once, but I have changed my mind. My life has been full of contradictions and controversy. I was shunned by society in one way and worshipped by society in another.

 

7. My novels were more highly thought of than my plays. I had a clever brother who became an eminent psychologist, but I kept my distance from him. I was closer to my clever sister but she was often ill. Friendships were very important to me and I enjoyed travelling.

 

8. I think I would call myself a Victorian. I accomplished a great deal by writing my novels, my poems, my short stories but I also truly regret aspects of my life. I wish I had had children and been kinder to my first wife. There was such a commotion when I died. I don’t understand how things could go so badly wrong.

 

9. My eyesight was always a problem to me. I was able to describe my homeland more clearly by living abroad. Did I reinvent the novel I’m not so sure I wrote what I thoughtabout.

 

10. They say I was beautiful to look at but I always thought my sister was the beauty. I suppose I would call myself a feminist but what I really saw was unfairness. The sea was always an inspiration to me and I tried to describe it over and over again.