dovegreyreader scribbles

and the winners are...

More prize draws coming up this week so we've sorted out the winners of a copy of The Blue Hour tonight, congratulations to

17 Anna D
18 Maggie
32 Heather Bond

If you could e mail your addresses to me at dovegreyreader at gmail dot com your book will arrive very soon.
Check out these winners too if you haven't already, just a couple we are waiting for.
Jen Dee and Caroline...are you there? It's you.

Dear Diary...Move over Virginia , final instalment

Thursday June 3rd
Busy Bees meeting, I'm in charge - no meeting
I think there might have been rebellion, a swarming in fact because there are no more Busy Bees entries.
Tact may succeed where cleverness fails.
Monday June 7th
Picnic on Mitcham Common, don't want to go.
Unpunctuality is slackness - nothing else.
In between all this I have been enrolled at Guides having passed the essential skills of knots , flags and bed-making (to include envelope corners) been to the library (many times) Birchington-on-Sea and Hampton Court, I'd been to endless C of E confirmation classes and then was confirmed and now I'm obviously getting low on news.
Thursday June 10th
Duke of Edinburghs birthday
Self control is essential to good manners.
Then towards July and my final weeks at Primary school I have clearly switched allegiance from Juliet
July 13th
Carols (my best friend) birthday
Nobody is indispensable.
The end of term is nigh, remember how we did all the work
July 22nd
Spring cleaning.Polished our tables
Culture is one thing varnish another.
We also moved this week, from Mitcham to Wallington and a house on the banks of the River Wandle.
I then seem to have sensibly spent every day teaching myself to swim at Mitcham Baths rather than in the Wandle until
10th August
Can now swim
Let the shipwrecks of others be your sea-marks.
30th August
Went to see Mary Poppins
It's easier to offer objections than to get busy.
and then that's it, off to senior school and no time for the fripperies of a diary but for two further entries
October 17th
Homework, ugh
Success requires pains and brains.
December 28th
Get a new diary
Well begun is half done.
And as for that Sunday School panto?
Well I think it's clear I was a natural on the stage, bringing joy and humour to the performance, and is it any wonder I'm loving Susie Boyt's My Judy Garland Life.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
 

Dear Diary...Move over Virginia.

Happy Independence Day America.
It's Inner Child reading this weekend too and I'm afraid I've lapsed a bit and have had to get last month's book renewed.
I have about a hundred pages of The Secret Garden to go and I couldn't bear to rush the book or the pictures just for the sake of it, I'm enjoying it too much, far too special, so I shall be finishing that slowly.
Digging around in a cupboard recently I came upon an old writing case and there tucked inside was my diary for 1965. Sadly no record of what I was reading.
As you can see, it's a diary with a purpose and there's a little piece of helpful  life - guidance advice at the bottom of each page, things like
Be sensible, though sympathetic
It's hard to imagine the children of today being fed such a line, but I think we were supposed to imbibe and follow and I probably tried my best, so I've included them here for you to see what standards of saintly perfection I was aiming for.
1965, so this is real Inner Child, the year I was a very innocent eleven going on twelve and it would seem there was quite a lot happening besides the Sunday School pantomime, starting with my New Year Resolution.
Can you see those loops in the 'y'? Totally and utterly forbidden if you had been taught Marion Richardson hand writing as I had, but I was about to leave Sherwood Primary School in Mitcham, I think I was on the brink of deciding about my hand writing for myself.
Let's hope the spelling picked up before the Eleven Plus.
Under the Personal Mems page (what's a Mem?) at the front which asks for things like Bicycle No. and Watch No. and diligently filled in by my eleven-year old self, it would seem I was 4ft 7" tall and I weighed 4st 7lbs, a degree of personal symmetry I doubt I have ever achieved since.
A sense of proportion is a vital possession.
I was clearly not a budding Virginia Woolf and my punctuation was as bad then as now. I seem to have been the child of the compact statement, full and frank my diary was not so the year got off to a crackingly good minimalist start.
Friday Jan Ist 1965
Went out roller skating.
A little "ginger" is good for all of us
Saturday January 9th
I went to D.Ss birthday party, (I'm not sure why I went and I can't name him because he's now an eminent doctor, but we shared a table at school and he drew a line down the middle and wouldn't let me put my elbow over it.There was no love lost there. )
Without rivals we may become indolent.
Thursday January 19th
11+ and pantomime rehearsal
Emotional stress precludes sound judgment.
Sunday January 24th
Sir Winston Churchill died
Friday January 29th
Dad went to catafalque
Practice loyalty, courage, fortitude and restraint.
Monday January 25th
Had a bad cold
Few know how to be idle and innocent.
Thursday February 11th
Heard today that I had passed the 11+ (obviously winged the spelling bits)
Get a move on; effort must precede reward.
Monday March 22nd
Juliets dad said that we could build a shed for PDSA Busy Bees meetings
Have not thy cloak to make when it begins to rain.
Thursday March 25th
Went to Juliets to start building
Method saves hours of wasted effort.
I won't bore you but there's an awful lot of 'going to Juliets' and as I recall the shed was a homage to polythene and drawing pins, decked out with pictures of 'saved animals'  and stiflingly hot inside which all culminated in...

Next instalment tomorrow.

Message from Rocky

Hmph... you're too kind, I do all the work and she gets all the credit.
Builders in widening doorways so her head can get through, had me peeling grapes for her all afternoon.
Ha ha, I'll have her sorted by tomorrow, only takes one live mouse released in the kitchen and I'm in charge again.
But we love you all each and every one.
Rocky x

Port Eliot Litfest 2009

You'll know from here that I adore Port Eliot, and you now know that I'm taking you all along to the entire Port Eliot Literary Festival, because the blog is going to sneak across the border into Cornwall and we'll be there for the whole weekend, with a laptop, a wireless signal, a camera and a very big picnic basket and we are going to have one very great big amazing time.
You don't even need to ask if I'll be sleeping in a yurt because you already know the answer, it's a no. Canvas is for painting on not sleeping under etc etc, so I'll be coming home to my bath and bed each night.
I'll also be 'performing'  on the Saturday, So You Think You Want to Write a Blog?
Well I haven't exactly written it yet, let alone painted the scenery or done costumes and rehearsed or sorted out the music and the dance routines or trained Rocky up , so all suggestions welcome, and very quickly too before I start to have sleepless nights.
In fact perhaps I could so some market research now, a sort of 'dovegreyreader asks...the readers' and then I could call it evidence-based research when I get there.
So  if you could enlighten me, I could then enlighten them, and this isn't an ego trip, I can take it, so please be honest and say what you feel especially when you get to question four.

• How did you find dovegreyreader?
• Why do you read it? 
• Does what you read about here influence your reading, if so how?
• What don't you like?
• If you were asked for three words to describe dovegreyreader scribbles what would they be? 
• Bored of Ireland  if you're still there, is it still a 'load of trivial, rambling rubbish' or have things improved around here?

If you've got time after that, take a look at the Port Eliot line up too and let me know who you'd like me to try and nab to say a few words on here, because we're going to be taking along the virtual armchair and it all promises to be very exciting indeed, so we'll talk about that some more and very soon.
I've already sorted out a few people I don't want to miss.
Good friend of dgr scribbles Justine Picardie will be there.
I'm going to be meeting up with Nicola Beauman from Persephone Books
I just have to see Barbara Hulanicki and find out how to make vintage work again and to tell her that my student nurse flatmates and I used to go to Biba if only to breath in the air back in the early 1970s.
Then I must find Kit Berry and her corn dollies.
Kate Summerscale of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher fame will be
'creating a mysterious and intriguing happening to take place inside the wonderful Port Eliot House.'
I'm also going to be a bit of a stalking fan (writers must shudder at the very idea) and try and find Kamila Shamsie to get my copy of Burnt Shadows signed, and then I'd love to catch up with Susie Boyt because I'm reading My Judy Garland Life and me and Susie, we are best friends now.
I'll be in danger of talking to Susie as if I've known her for years, show us that tap dance step Susie, go on...never mind about the Italia Conti school, I didn't go there either but at least you had the skirt...shall we just sing a quick verse of Over the Rainbow...honestly, I promise I wouldn't sing you off the stage.
Then there's Sarah Waters and Port Eliot surely the most perfect setting for any discussion about The Little Stranger and conjuring visions of Hundreds Hall.
Plus, it's no good, I'm too excited to keep this from you a single minute longer because...
talking of 'dovegreyreader asks...' just guess who is sitting in the virtual armchair, 'neath the gentle glow of the standard lamp this coming Monday?
Yes really, you definitely don't want to miss it.

One Million Tiny Plays About Britain by Craig Taylor

I've been reading One Million Tiny Plays About Britain by Craig Taylor, and published by Bloomsbury, for several months now because it's not a book I wanted to read cover to cover in a week or so.The book's been picked up, put down, a few more plays read, left for a while, back to it again, but it's been a constant on the book circuit around the house.
These little dramatic encounters first appeared in the Guardian and many readers were justifiably fooled into thinking they were 'snippets of dialogue snatched from real life.'
It's hard not to read and feel as if you are eavesdropping on real-life conversations when in fact each is a dramatic little play of its own between two people and each cleverly representing and exposing some little nuance of British life.
Two builders on building site.
The mother sitting by her son's hospital bed.
Two mother's standing near a Santa's grotto in Barking.
Two DJs prepare for a New Year's Party in Watford.
Each no more than a few pages long and described by Richard Eyre as 'dramatic haikus'  a 'keyhole through which you can peer at contemporary Britain'.
Craig Taylor must be out there with his wits and his ears about him listening to the great British public to have come up so much that feels so accurate, because as you read you listen and you can hear, and I'm now sitting here wishing I'd walked around all those doctor's surgeries I've worked in over the years with a little notebook to hand.
Just think of all those waiting room gems I've missed, all those front desk observations I haven't really observed.
Having shared an office with district nurses for many years I've listened to enough one-sided phone calls to fill an encyclopaedia, you know the sort of thing,

Nurse - Oh dear that must be awful for you...not since last Saturday...yes, that's five days...no, right...no you don't take them...no definitely not...have you been swallowing them then...oh dear, and they still haven't worked have they...no don't do that...no really best not to...I'll call round later and we'll sort it...well I'll explain how when I see you.

Nurse - He's pulled it out again has he...that can't have been easy...gosh...really...was the balloon...no...it was still inflated?...yes...I'll bet...yes that will have made his eyes water quite a lot.

Mine on the Health Visitor side of the room equally amusing to them so they used to tell me and usually involved asking 'what colour is it?'
But nothing as clever as Craig Taylor who does include a few medical encounters, but mostly these are the moments that anyone of us could witness except I doubt I'd quite be able to define the unspoken embarrassments or expose the prejudices as well as Craig Taylor does.
This is clever dialogue and now I'm intrigued by mentions of  Return to Akenfield, Craig Taylor's 'documentary-portrait of rural England through the voices of its inhabitants.' Not only for its links to Ronald Blythe the original author of Akenfield published thirty-eight years ago, whose new book I'm really looking forward to, but for this as outlined by Andrew Motion in his 2006 review,

'Return to Akenfield is a generous tribute to the generosity of the place it describes, and tells a heartening story about tolerance and resourcefulness. Have the same qualities saved and invigorated other villages elsewhere? It's difficult to say, and reasonable to feel doubtful. The faulty connection between town imperatives and country living remains one of the great national issues of our time.'

Being almost villagers ourselves (fifteen years done, not sure how many before full entitlement) there's much more I'd like to explore there
Michel Faber in his foreword to A Million Tiny Plays About Britain highlights the messy demographics of modern Britain and with it the vast ocean of material available, but also that to describe these in too much detail would entail using more words than the play itself, but he also rightly says everyone will have their favourites.
Mine this week?
Play no 64 (Two sisters are on a train home to Suffolk) and more than that I can't say, but if you lay hands on the book I think you'll find your own favourites too.
Craig Taylor will be performing a selection of these plays with friends at Port Eliot and I can't wait.

'Tis the season of the litfest

July dawns and measured plans are afoot here for getting to some literary festivals.
Having already realised that I won't manage quite as much of Ways With Words at Dartington as I did last year, I've had a good browse through the programme and picked out the events I absolutely can't miss; writers I've read and written about here and others in progress.
It will be an early start to get across the moors in time for a 9.30am start on July 11th to hear William Fiennes talk about The Music Room,

'Books like this leave a feeling, a resonating mood, for me a pitch-perfect sense of optimism and goodness, I think The Music Room might possibly be one to put on the 'Roger Deakin' shelf and revisit every so often, there is something timeless and quite life-enhancing about it.'

On that same day, a showing of the documentary film about the collaboration of artist Leonard Baskin with Ted Hughes. Baskin best known by me for his illustrations to Crow, and later that afternoon Andrew Motion delivers the Ted Hughes Memorial Lecture, 'How Ted Hughes Became'.
Back again for Sunday to hear Sarah Hall talking about her latest novel How to Paint a Dead Man.
I loved The Electric Michelangelo and this book has really impressed me too, and later that day another book which impressed me, Amanda Craig talking about Hearts and Minds and then Jill Dawson on her latest book The Great Lover.
I have just finished The Great Lover and am left with mixed feelings so I will be interested to hear more about it.
Later in the week I don't want to miss Anne Chisholm talking about her biography of Frances Partridge which I'm also hoping to have read before I go.
Then a big day with Hilary Mantel (twice) Penelope Lively and Margaret Drabble so plenty to look forward to and I'll be sharing it all with you as and when it happens.
I've finally got right into Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and can report that for me this has not been a book to read in dribs and drabs. I read the first ninety pages about two months ago, diverted into post-operative reading and, having just read those ninety pages again, now realize that this is the book of the concerted effort, snatched reading just hasn't worked.
Now I'm in, I'm completely in, and right up to my stomacher in Tudor shenanigans and quite horrified at how flimsy my grasp of Tudor history actually is and I'm beginning to wonder if it would help, with a book that feels as complex as this, to have a better grasp.
For someone who was educated on the very site of Nonsuch, Henry's most lavish palace, this is all a bit of an embarrassing state of affairs which can only improve.
430 years on clearly not a lot imbibed through being at one with that Tudor earth out on the hockey pitch.
That's the palace not the school by the way.
Once I've recovered from all that Ways With Words excitement we'll have to do a very quick turn around because just look where we're going next and we might need wellies.

For anyone who hasn't been around at litfest time you might want to check out Ways With Words 2008 to get an idea of what happens, and you can find previous Port Eliot visits here, because dovegreyreader scribbles will still be here but indulging in as-and-when posting rather than same-time-daily.
It's like buses, three at once then a gap so that will be happening from about July 10th onwards but Team Ulysses will still convene on the 16th as arranged (sorry, not letting you off that)
Litfest time is one of the few occasions when I write and publish on here almost immediately the thought has left my mind, so dangerous times ahead.
Unedited, quick proof read for howlers...words like public are always a worry, so easy to lose that 'l'. I'll probably drop a few huge clangers and the typos will abound, but we'll all be having fun and that's what matters.
More about Port Eliot reading to come.