dovegreyreader scribbles

Save Braille

I tend not to venture into the realms of political activism on here but there is an online petition currently active on the 10 Downing Street website that I think is worthy of attention to all lovers of books and reading, especially on the eve of World Book Day and its promotion of reading as an inclusive activity.
I asked Clare to write this piece for the blog just to explain and if you are a UK citizen and wish to add your signature to the petition you can link to it here.
If any fellow bloggers feel able to give it a mention too I know Clare and many others would be very grateful.Please feel free to copy and paste what she has written here onto your own site if you wish.

My name is Clare Gailans.  I am totally blind and have used braille as my means of literacy since starting school at five, that's to say for over 40 years.  I have always told people what a wonderful system braille is, and had imagined it would always be offered to those who need to use it to read.  Technology makes it very much quicker to produce now, and the Disability Discrimination Act requires information to be produced in it if it is the most appropriate format for the recipient.
This is all very well for us adults, but it is becoming clear that shortages of qualified personnel, money, or perhaps just plain arrogance, are creating a situation in many mainstream schools where blind children are not taught braille, and those with useful sight are often denied it until their sight has further deteriorated.  By this time many of them already hate reading, which is a huge extra strain on them throughout the school day - a stressful time for many children at the best of times.

Apart from the people close to me, books are my first love and I came to them through braille.  Books can be listened to with enjoyment, but this is not literacy.  I could not have enjoyed sharing my love of books with others through email, or made virtual friends with so many lovers of books such as Lynne, without being able to write, spell and punctuate.  Listening to voices as a poor second to literacy would not have taught me these things. 
Without first learning to read words I could not have mastered music through braille notation, which has been the key to my employment for the past 25 years, and my obtaining a degree in music from Cambridge before that.  Braille has also been the difference for my husband and me, through such activities as music and chess, between being merely tolerated in the sighted community and being fully accepted, indeed sometimes looked up to, for our contributions. 
It has helped me in a variety of voluntary activities, and to instil a love of reading in our two sighted children.  I could not run our household efficiently witout it, in every department from cooking to labelling the many reams of paper which have to be filed, and which without braille would all feel identical.

Please sign this petition as Lynne has kindly done, and circulate it to your friends and families.  I have recently learned that deaf people were almost deprived of Sign Language in recent years, but that there was a resurgence in the nick of time before the skills were widely lost.  Braille is 150 years old and has stood the test of time.  There can be nothing else that does the job (the multiple jobs) nearly so well.

Facing the Light on the eve of World Book Day

My first contact with Adele Geras was through her wonderful children's book The Fabulous Fantoras which I blogged about in the very early days. Adele kindly let me post the pattern for knitting The Dream Cushion from the book on here.I'm still dreaming about mine, one day it will be made.
I've just finished Facing the Light and this has been a real diversion from my current reading fare so all the more welcome for that.
A vast family saga replete with lies, secrets,skeletons in cupboards and all building towards that final showdown at matriarch Leonora's 75th birthday party.The daughter of a celebrated Edwardian artist, Ethan Walsh, Leonora has devoted her life to keeping his memory and his work sacred.
Her family have other ideas.
It's a bit like watching a TV soap when you know a party spells trouble and this is going to be no exception.The tension builds up slowly but surely as the family arrive, the marquee is erected, the food is prepared, the flowers are arranged, the gifts are given all as the flashbacks gradually fill in more and more detail.
Some wonderful and memorable characters intricately and beautifully drawn and lots of speculation and interweaving of past and present relationships all entering and exiting this massive stage that Adele (I think we are on first name terms) has created.I can't imagine how many post-it notes she had dotted around to remind her  about all this, it really must have required advance personnel skills to keep this family in order.
This is one perfect hot water bottle read par-excellence, a book to curl up with and award yourself one of those total immersion reading experiences.
I'm even more delighted that Adele stopped by for a virtual pot of tea,scones and cream and the dovegreyreader asks...armchair.That will be on the blog tomorrow to celebrate World Book Day and the publication of another of her books, Lily A Ghost Story. This is a great little read aimed at "those who may have lost the reading habit or just want a short fast read". I read my copy ages ago and though I may not be the target audience I wasn't disappointed.
Meanwhile prepare yourselves for tomorrow, my sides still hurt from all that laughing and I daren't get on the scales.We really went to town on that clotted cream and don't mention the shoes...please.

The Angel Makers

The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson arrived via Scott Pack's free give-away and I was just going to slot it into its place on Mount TBR (To Be Read, if anyone's in any doubt) and thought I'd get to it eventually. But you know how it is, you open the book, read a page or two, ten, fifty and then you can't put it down until it's finished.
It's difficult to talk about this book without giving away great swathes of the plot because it's based on a true story, so look away now if you want a great read full of surprises.
Read on if you still want a great read, still full of surprises but you know roughly what's coming.
The plot rang bells and yes, it is based on the true story of The Angel Makers of Nagyrev, the group of women living in Nagyrev in Hungary who were estimated to have poisoned up to 300 people between 1914 and 1929.
The problem began when the men of the village went off to fight in the First World War and in their absence were replaced by some rather dashing, smooth-talking prisoners.The husbands returned to find themselves somewhat outclassed in the charm department.
The poison of choice was clever and painful and by all accounts the killing all became so easy it then became the first line of action against anyone remotely annoying.
Jessica Gregson presents the this fictional account from a very sympathetic point of view. The scenes of domestic violence and the imbalance of power it creates in a relationship have real latter-day resonance. At several points I was almost shouting at the pages and Jessica Gregson steered me cleverly into being well onside for the retribution, in fact I was quietly cheering.
Apart from the fact that the denouement felt a bit rushed and tempus fugit maximus quickly towards the end of the book this was a great,unputdownable read and I was then intrigued to look up some background on original events.
I often find present tense writing (it probably has a more technical name) a bit annoying, and don't ask me to explain why, I have no idea,but I was halfway through this book before I had spotted it so it can't have been that annoying.
E mail me with your snail mail address if you are a book blogger who would like/ be able to read this quite soon, blog about it and then be happy to post it on to another book blogger.
There are some books you can't keep to yourself and I'd love to hear what others think about this one and in case anyone is worried about Devon bugs travelling, I'll put the book in the freezer at -18 degs for a day or so before I post it!

Travels from my sick bed

Yes it was inevitable and as the aching and the cough set in I knew I needed to quickly gather some illness reading around me.
It's always a dodgy moment, are you going to be well enough to read? Staying upright seems to be difficult but reading is fine.
So far so good and in fact while Scott Pack was sitting up for his all-night Oscar vigil I was having those viral-induced nightmares (even though I wasn't watching the Oscars) that lead you to a pot of tea at 2am and a good book.There's just no point in arguing with these things.Dose up and curl up is my motto.
I started and became very deeply engrossed in When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson, this is very good indeed, dropped off for a few hours, made another pot of tea (Lady Grey seems to be about all I can deal with) and re-started The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney.I'd already managed about 75 pages of this about two weeks ago and then life intervened. I'm well into that again now and can't wait to get back to it.
Lest I get bored with North London or the Canadian wilderness I also made a great start on Kokoro by Natsume Soseki so I can nip over to Tokyo if I feel so inclined.Japanese reading is deep but ultimately very gentle and soothing. It has a sway and a rhythm to it like no other.
No need to start a fourth book as I have a fall-back in Volume 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time.
Travels from the sick bed, just what the doctor would order I bet, and it's back to bed I go.

Sunday Confessions on Monday

The postman is getting more and more fed up with this.He's been off sick for two weeks with the Village Flu (I think we have a mini-pandemic going on) and has now resumed his daily trudge to the door with parcels and it's taking a lot of smooth talking to keep him happy.He also keeps telling us which son he's seen with which girl in which pub and we keep saying we don't want to know.
This is a rural problem, you can have no secrets.
Realising the error of my ways in neglecting Alan Clark's diaries, two volumes quickly arrived and these, as I've said make fruitful and fascinating reading. I'm going backwards and having read about his death,my eyes are out on stalks at the sheer drudgery of his time as MP for Plymouth.
More books from the very kind Peter Owen and in there The Demanding Dead More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural by Edith Wharton, Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, a Japanese best-seller by all accounts and Loving Mephistopheles by Miranda Miller. This gets a good write up from Hilary Mantel so looks promising.
I was quickish off the mark and bagged one of the free books on offer over on Scott Pack's blog so The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson has arrived "the bleak Hungarian plain, 1914,an isolated village shrouded in superstition and rumours of witchcraft..." I've resisted opening it but have only a mere shred of willpower left. Update: willpower dissolved, 120 pages in, very good indeed thus far. Update 2: Finished will be on blog very soon.
I've done a book exchange with A who comments on here and lives partly in France, so in return for an unread hardback copy of Moloka'i by Alan Brennert (it's on its way A) which was making me feel guilty I now have Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas which comes highly recommended and a couple of books in French! This will be ambitious but one is by Amelie Nothomb and not yet translated,Cosmetique De L'Ennemi so needs must when you are starving.Also Les Grands Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier also in French and yes, this could all end in beaucoup de tears avec des grosse stamping of les pieds.
I also decided to plan ahead for this attempted monthly read of a volume of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time  and so I ordered Book 2, A Buyer's Market. Book 1 is going well but this is going to be a ridiculously expensive way to read these, too late now, I'm hooked on these manageable little books.
Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin has been on my list for ages.Old hunting grounds for me and many a happy hour spent in Coram's Fields as Gt. Ormond Street student nurses when we would wheel children out for some of that fresh London air.You could only go into Coram's Field if you had a child with you.This copy came from my local Indie so yes, it has the electronic tagging device stuck firmly inside the back cover, grrrrr and more grrrrr.

Harriet Devine's Blog

There can be no secrets in this world of blogging, almost like living in a village in Devon to be honest, so I was delighted having outed CraftyPerson (who has revived her blog) to see that she in turn has very cleverly outed regular visitor here Harriet Devine.
Harriet started her blog back in September, kept very quiet about it, posted twice and then let the dust settle until Ruth and I stumbled by and caught her in the act of polishing and painting as if her life depended on it.I think she's now finally ready for visitors, it's looking very smart in there.
I reviewed Harriet's book Being George Devine's Daughter on here a while ago and I have quite a few of her English text books on my shelves.
Currenty she's taking us on a little jolly through the poetry of John Donne and of course she's a keen reader and always bumping into film stars so there's plenty to look forward to.
Usual ploy,announce to the world, get the crowds beating a path to the blog door and the writing carries on and we all love that.
Sorry Harriet!

Basket case

Doesn't he look gorgeous? Currently the only male in the house who is up and about because man flu has struck. Actually I'm not even going to joke about it because they are a sturdy breed down here and it takes a lot to flatten them and I'm bound to catch it and will want lots of sympathy.
First the Gamekeeper (this unheard of) who says he caught it in the Village Shop and then as he emerges Bookhound succumbs.This is good news for the dogs.With both masters out of action I would have four of them to walk and that's not funny.
My patients here have all been quarantined with the occasional jug of water and some ibuprofen and paracetemol thrown in the door.Glass test now and again to check for any non-blanching rash that may be a sign of a fulminating meningitis.
I know enough to be reassuring but probably lethal really.
This sounds harsh but it's for their own good, I find if you fuss them it just makes them worse and they start hammering on the floor for attention thinking you are sitting downstairs waiting for their summons. I thought my response time to yesterday's request for a hot water bottle was quite good, it wasn't 18 weeks that's for sure. So when I supplied one of those nice wheatbags, dutifully warmed to be told that no actually he'd meant a real hot water bottle things got a little tense.
It is like having the virus of Damocles hanging over me because it can only be a matter of time before it's my turn.Things happen fast apparently, one minute you're OK the next you feel as if you've been run over by a bus and you start coughing, then things go rapidly downhill.
If it all goes quiet on here you will know what has happened, I'll be festering away, ignored and unattended in a corner somewhere.

Irene and I are almost friends

Irene Nemirovsky has rapidly become critically untouchable.
Even my wretched confession on here about my temporary Suite Francaise failure generated passionate comments in support of the book and the author.I spent the day with head hung low because I hadn't immediately adored it and it's almost a given that you must.
There's a ground-swell of diverse and fascinating opinions on Irene Nemirovsky and I read this piece Truth, Lies and Anti-Semitism by Stuart Jeffries in yesterday's Guardian with great interest.It's a balanced and honest piece but he's a very brave man.Offering evidence that threatens to stain Irene Nemirovsky's reputation is a bit like suggesting Mother Teresa ran a house of ill repute but I'm pleased that someone is at least trying to get some balance and two-way discussion on all this.
Carmen Callil is not best pleased for a start.Having heard her speak passionately about her book Bad Faith, an expose of one of Vichy France's most despicable collaborators, I'm not in the least surprised to see she has mounted a sturdy defence of Irene Nemirovsky.
I was trying to read without buying into the back story but this would seem to be prohibited.When the first sentence waiting on opening a book of hers is "Irene Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942" you know exactly what is expected of you as a reader.
It's like treading on egg shells trying to offer a balanced and critical opinion and John Self has done an excellent job of extracting the wheat from the chaff over on his blog
It seemed like a good idea to get hold of David Golder and read it quickly before I'd heard too much about it and, though it's a book whose content leaves me puzzled, I'm pleased to declare I may be on slightly better terms with Irene. However, if I read this through the same lenses I'm supposed to be wearing for Suite Francaise then the debate really does become very confusing.
Firstly I enjoyed it, a cover to cover read that kept me engrossed in a way that Suite Francaise hasn't yet.
David Golder himself, a thoroughly ruthless Jewish business man, a grotesque, unloved and unlovable character,

"shoulders wracked by a nervous, asthmatic cough, which filled his mouth with bitter phlegm...an enormous man in his late sixties...flabby arms and legs, piercing eyes the colour of water...a ravaged face so hard it looked as if it had been hewn from stone by a rough,clumsy hand."

Despite being blessed with a wife, her lover, and a daughter (who you really do want to slap) and their combined extravagent lifestyles to support, there was but one brief moment in the whole when I was allowed to feel any sympathy for David Golder and it was so brief that it could almost have gone unnoticed.
I'm more confused than ever about the to and fro debates surrounding Irene Nemirovsky's life and writing and about what she was doing with this her first book and I'm not alone it would seem.
Few if any redeeming features for her own kind in this book whatsoever.
But why should that bother us?
Carmen Callil argues that "our culture is now suffused with political correctness.She [Nemirovsky] didn't dislike Jews.She disliked some Jews." Callil goes on to suggest that "people have got to stop treating Jews as sacred."
That aside it's a brilliant delineation of the simultaneous power and vacuity of pre-war, pre-stockmarket -crash wealth and reminded me of that world so expertly described from the other side by Irmgard Keun in The Artificial Silk Girl.
Meanwhile, to prove how keen I am to revisit Suite Francaise and how much I know it will never happen with the current edition and THAT suitcase, I've ordered the original.
That's how daft and desperate I am.

Ion, Alan, the diaries and Brentor

It was my great pleasure to meet Ion Trewin at the Long Barn Books editorial board meeting last week and also of course to do my usual and ask in the politest possible way " who are you?".
When you've lived down in the back-end of Devon for 30 years or so you circulate in rather narrow circles even if they are in the nation's most unspoiled market town (though according to this the dog walkers have a problem) so this new world is all very exciting but I do have to ask the most obvious of questions.
Susan has done a wonderful resume of Ion's publishing background over on her blog but I was particularly interested to discover that he also edited Alan Clark's diaries.
I do at least know who Alan Clark was.
Son of historian Kenneth Clark, eminent politician, MP for Plymouth (Sutton) from 1974-1992, frequently a Minister of State and of course a keeper of a diary for almost 45 years.
How many times have I passed these diaries by?
But now with good reason to explore them Volume 3 arrived first, so it's been Alan - A Life Backwards as I've started with his ending.This volume The Last Diaries : In and Out of the Wilderness makes for poignant reading,especially with my nurse's hat on and an honours degree in hindsight. Alan, famous hypochondriac that he was, yet clear as a text book, catalogues the gradual onset of all the signs and symptoms of his final diagnosis, a massive brain tumour.All this long before it is detected and then amazingly only 3 months before he died.
Perhaps a man who presented so many symptoms and ailments to his doctors it was all like that radar chaff that diverts the attention from the target.He must have been a difficult patient to assess thoroughly and objectively.
I had been unaware that Alan Clark lived for some time at Bratton Clovelly, what is it about Bratton?  James Hewitt, notorious "friend" of the late Diana, Princess of Wales lived there.
It's also regular health visiting territory for my team so we all drive those lanes a great deal.
The diary reveals that Alan Clark would often stop at Brentor Church on his way there. Another surprise was that he was a devout and god-fearing man who actually stopped here to pray.
Brentor Church is one of those striking, rocky-outcrop landmarks you take completely for granted when you live here. I drive past it several times a week.
Years ago it was one of our great places to take three energetic children togged up in puddle suits and a collie dog in tow on a wet and windy afternoon in that dread hour before tea, bath and bed.Nice steep but safe enough climbing, wind to take your breath away and this exquisite miniature church at the top to go into and dry off and probably annoy people like Alan Clark.

Stunning views across to Plymouth Sound and Whitsand Bay in the distance.
St Michael de Rupe is still a "working" church for the summer months.
We'll venture up to the top any day soon and take some pictures of the 4th smallest parish church in England, a mere 37ft long by 14ft 6" wide.There's a churchyard and graves up there and it is still used for the occasional wedding.
Meanwhile I've made grand progress with Alan, a Life Backwards.Volume Two Into Politics has just arrived, and I will now eagerly anticipate Ion Trewin's biography of this unusual and fascinating man hopefully for publication in 2008.
Read the diaries and you definitely want to know more.

Don't miss this!

Whatever you do don't miss out on Chicago based Bluestalking's fabulous childhood photo shoot.
I have tears streaming down my face and beyond.It's so lovely to see an all-American happy child.
Doesn't that horse look a bit edgy and nervous too?
I don't feel half so bad about my hat now.

Thinking Day

I'm sure it's today, February 22nd, Thinking Day.Event of the year for devoted Brownies like me and for some reason the excitement was all about the fact that you were allowed to wear your uniform to school.
Now what I'm stuck on is what we were supposed to think about.
Was it the international Brownie family?
Was it Lord and Lady Baden-Powell?
Was it Elves and Fairies?
Mushrooms?
Or was it just other people?
Don't laugh,I know I don't suit a hat.

Booker-thon 2007

I see the Booker judging panel has been announced and sadly I don't seem to be on it again.
This year though, good news, the longlist is to be limited to 12 books.Very welcome after the scurry of the last few years when those of us who have always had a go at reading along have had to source 20 or so books from the library service or beg from publishers.
Then try and read them in an impossibly short time, Booker-thon 2006 will take you to all those posts and the madness that it all was.
Every year I say I won't do it and every year something grips me and I can't bear not to at least try, thereby maintaining my 100% record of NEVER choosing the winner.
I might as well admit it now, I'm constantly in training, always at the peak of fitness, so fully expect the dovegreyreader Bookerthon to be on again as usual.
Anyone going to join me?

Endsleigh Salon- February

Endsleigh Book Salon last week and another great bookish evening, all warmly hunkered down around a crackling log fire in the grand environs of  Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford's little holiday cottage.Someone's got to do it so we do.
We've come to the conclusion that we can now offer long range weather forecasting for the second Tuesday evening each month.Whatever the weather is doing it will be extreme, we've fought our way there through electrical storms, torrential rain every time and last week flooded highways and byways.
It was Spies and Spooks evening and as always the reading choices can be stretched to the limits of personal interpretation.
Two people had inadvertently read an early and a late Ian Fleming so we had some excellent James Bond debate and plenty of observations to be made about how his style had changed and of course the films, lots about the films.We had plenty to say about the Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt type of spy, then we debated why they all came from Cambridge? Didn't Oxford supply any?
Spy on the Roof of the World by Sydney Wignall had a great airing from a fine advocate who had pilfered it off her husband's shelves and surprised herself by enjoying it. We have quite a few Dartmoor Rescue Group connections in our midst who love a bit of a wander in the outdoors with the added excitement of a previously unclimbed mountain route to deal with.
I'd gone with a small collection of Edith Wharton's Ghost Stories and also taken along The Victorian Chaise- Longue by Marghanita Laski.I read it a while ago and actually it was all so eerie and spookily terrible that I couldn't bring myself to read it again.Poor Melanie and that malevolent bit of antique furniture, with its ominous brown stain on the berlin-wool tapestry cover as she becomes "locked in the time and body of a Victorian".
I think my unease may inadvertently just have put everyone else off reading it too.
Ghost Stories by M.R.James got the thumbs down from its reader, times have changed and we decided it takes a lot more to scare us these days, like Marghanita Laski.I do think Edith Wharton still has immense power to disturb and unsettle and I have a new little volume of her ghost stories from Peter Owen to check out soon,The Demanding Dead : More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural.
Someone else brought along The Road by Cormac McCarthy, two people had read it and reckon it's 21st century reading at its scariest.
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon was also not well received by its reader.Someone else had also disliked this parrots for cash story (apparently that's what it boils down to), well actually hated it, so we hit on a great new idea.
We will have our very own Room 101 box and if three people think likewise about a book, in it goes.
I am reader number three for The Final Solution so Michael Chabon's fate rests with me.
Next month we are all spoilt for choice as we have War as our theme.

Announcement Craftyperson is blogging again

If there is one thing I am DELIGHTED about it's this.
Ruth, who visits here at crack of dawn each day, thought we wouldn't notice as she finally gets her blog act together, moves to a new blog home,revamps her soft furnishings, splashes some nice paint on the walls, scatters a few rag rugs around the place and is posting on a regular basis.
It's not for want of nagging her to death believe me, one post then months of silence while she crochets Wembley Stadium or something.Even leaving cryptic comments like "are you still alive?" didn't work.
Mrs CraftyPerson is Mrs Creative extraordinaire, give the woman a ball of wool and expect a miracle.
I had a unique spin round Liberty's of London in her company recently and had a job to keep up as her eye for colour had us dashing all over the place.
There's method in my announcement.
If enough people know she's blogging, they'll visit, add craftyperson to their blog links and she'll have to keep on doing it won't she?
Oh yes and by the way,do keep an eye out for her book.
Yes, her book...The Art of the Quilt, heck she's really going to kill me for this but I love this book, look at it often and my copy has a lovely inscription.
I suspect I can now expect death by crochet hook with my guts literally spun on her wheel for garters, hand dyed a very fetching colour (could it be turquoise? I love turquoise) and knitted up into something much more useful.
I think the only way to get myself off the hook is actually to pick up the hook and promise to learn to crochet this year, she's already bought me the hook and the book.

Eucalyptus mysteriosus

As we waved goodbye to Offspringette this week after her sojourn here post Oz, it seems apt to mention Eucalyptus by Murray Bail.
It would seem I'm about eight years behind with my reading and everyone else will have read this at least twice.I will certainly read it again because it's one of those books with so much in it to miss first time round.
I hardly need to go into detail because I'm sure you all know it, but it's the most elusive and beautifully woven story of one man's quest for the National Eucalyptus collection to die for and the seemingly impossible challenge he then sets any suitor who wishes his daughter's hand in marriage; name all those trees.
I had quite thought a eucalyptus was, well a eucalyptus, silly me, there are hundreds of different ones and it is around the botanical names of these species that each story is woven, part fable, part fairy story and making a magical and almost surreal whole.
The sense of place is acute and tangible, laden with the mystery and ambiguity of the tree itself and I loved it.Often, as I read, I was carried along in a great tide of unknowing, there were links I wasn't making I know, but that didn't seem to matter, this is writing with an abundant depth to it and I know I have barely scratched the surface of this book.
It seems an impossibility to write a book around one type of tree but Murray Bail constantly invests the eucalyptus with great depths of personality,
"..the eucalypt stands apart, solitary, essentially undemocratic..a pale ragged beauty...an egotistical tree...it draws attention to itself "
He has peopled his landscape with trees as characters so effectively that I'm thinking I should now go out and talk to ours, especially since bookhound has "trimmed" it, it's probably weeping.
A fabulous read that has left me with that wonderful sense of negative capability that some books just do and which I love.
Sometimes I don't want everything cut and dried and explained.
I think this might just have paved the way for my read of David Malouf.

Sunday Confessions on Tuesday

A day in London for the Long Barn Books editorial board meeting and within a dove's flutter of Waterstone's flagship store in Piccadilly, so I was never going to come home empty handed.
There is something completely and utterly intoxicating to those of us regularly deprived of the experience; to walk into a really huge book shop and just smell those books (and the toilets in this instance, more on that in a minute).
I love going into this branch in particular because, back in 1972, one of my best and most elegant of school friends went to work in this very building as a trainee buyer when it was Simpsons the department store, while I pootled off in my K Skip Rosamund shoes and a lot of starch down to my ankles to be a student nurse in the slightly less grand environs (then) of Bloomsbury.I was thinking of her in this still splendid and stately environment, though I bet the toilets were a lot cleaner back then.
Waterstone's, this is your most glorious store and you can't afford bad water closet days.
Who's in charge? You really need to sort out that hourly rota, "This toilet was last checked at...on...by...".
I'm not neurotic about it, in fact after 30 years of health visiting it takes an awful lot of filth and dirt to impress me, but I'm bound to notice this sort of thing and I think I could actually see the E.Coli leap frogging over the MRSA. Some swabs and petrie dishes would have yielded spores galore.The smell wafting out of the door, the filthy roller towel long past its final tug and dragging on the floor, washbasins and toilets "out of order" and the electric hand dryer, dead as a dodo.
You are likely to spend hours in a shop this size and eat in the lovely restaurant or coffee shop too, so clean facilities are essential, a bout of Rotavirus or Norwalk is not.
In the end I was a model of buying restraint knowing what was sitting at home in Mt.Unread.
But I couldn't resist a set of Enter a Fox,The Smoking Diaries and The Year of the Jouncer by Simon Gray.Curzon and Susan have both enjoyed those recently, I'm sure I will too.
I'm just barely flexing an ankle at A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.I'll try Volume One, A Question of Upbringing and see whether I want to read the other eleven.It lends itself in this format to a book a month but I'm not sure how I'll fare. Something has always scared me off these, heaven knows what.Probably just the sheer volume of continous reading but coming to it for the first time will be interesting.
Feeling chastened and mean about my Irene Nemirovsky failure I snapped up David Golder in an attempt to read it before any massive hype or reviews pitch up under my nose. I've finished this already  and I can declare a rapprochement so I'm hopeful that Irene and I will become friends after our Suite Francaise fall out.More soon.
Finally in the post, via Adele Geras,(thanks again Adele) a lovely signed copy of Linda Newbery's Set in Stone, winner of the Costa Children's Book Award.
In my hands in Waterstone's Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford and I was oh so tempted, but I dithered and dithering is fatal.
I put it back, persuade me someone.

dovegreyreader asks...Ralph McTell

It was a bit surreal having Ralph McTell, the troubadour nonpareil, singing a line of From Clare to Here over the phone to me on February 14th.
The folk scene was it for me in the 60's and 70's, many a glorious hour spent in Bunjie's off Leicester Square, so I've grown up with Ralph's songs from those early days of strumming the chords to THAT song (Streets of London) which we didn't mention once.It was a bit of an anthem for those of us who heard it long before it became a hit.But of course there is much more to Ralph's repertoire than that and the fact that he can still tour and fill concert halls wherever he goes suggests I am not the only one who loves his music and his guitar playing.
So dovegreyreader asks...welcomes Ralph McTell to the virtual armchair in the Tamar Valley just before he heads off on his tour of Australia this week, and with very grateful thanks to him for sparing the time to do it.

dgr: Always a musician…

Ralph: I was always always affected by music and wanted to make music for as long as I can remember. Music and magic fused into one as a little boy, I was fascinated by both. Music affected me spiritually and like magic was uplifting to me, my mum used to sing to me when she was in the kitchen,sad 40’s songs of parting after the war. I thought she was making them up but she was expressing everything, so they were very affecting for this little boy.
I’ve always been aware of the power and the hugeness of music but I didn’t really play anything until I got my first harmonica and I went around playing that, it was in my pocket constantly and learning to whistle was important because that meant I could play tunes. My grandfather gave me a one string fiddle made out of a cigar box and I played that for a while. It was always there, I always loved music, we got an old piano from somewhere and I plonked around on that. 
I've got quite a good ear so I just taught myself but not very well but when the guitar came along and the music, the American folky kind of bluesy guitar style well that was it.
I knew what I wanted to do and that just took over my entire life.

dgr:Your finest musical moment...

Ralph:I’m still waiting for it I think.
It sounds vain to say it but I think most musicians who’ve had a long career would say this. Apart from the obvious, aren’t we lucky to be able to do this for people, to create some sort of resonance between the performer and the audience which is the most marvellous spiritual thing, some nights you don’t ever want to do it again because it went so perfectly.
There are not very many of them, but some nights are just wonderful and those are all fine musical moments.
I think the other finest moment you look forward to is putting the pencil down having finished a new song and play it through and all the bits are brought together, the rhyme scheme, the spirit of the thing, the rhythm, the accompaniment.if it all sits right that’s a wonderful magic moment and that’s all I crave really.

dgr:Childhood reading...

Not very much for myself I’m afraid, I was spoilt because my old mum, even thought she was dog tired would read to us most nights, adventure stories, the Secret Seven, Famous Five. Sometimes some fairy tales when we very small but she didn’t like those because they were usually rather mawkish. As little boys it was a very special moment, mum sitting with us because she was out all day working and we were little street herberts really. But she’d learnt this from being in service, she was a nanny’s assistant to the Marquis of Hertford she read very well, so we had that and BBC’s Children’s Hour on the radio, which was a blind medium really. I used to read stories out of comics with pictures but I was lazy as far as books were concerned and I’m still not an avid reader.

dgr:Teenage angst reading...

Not until I was out of the army, reading and the army don’t go together it was all about shedding your softness and hardening up, I was a big gawky lad and I had to grow up quickly. But when I was baled out and got back to college there was a wonderful movement beginning, Woody Guthrie songs and Jack Kerouac writing and I just fell for it like I did with modern jazz as well and I thought it was all about unravelling the mysteries of life.
So I did start to read, poetry and a few books, Beat poetry and stories and then fell big time for God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell which was I suppose fanciful Americana and then the brilliant books by John Steinbeck, Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat, I loved them and they were all in harmony with what was going on with my guitar and in my head and they were hugely influential.
And I still aspire, Steinbeck’s basis for short story writing is much the same I think as I would try to put into song writing.One of the most illuminating books for me was Conversations about a Novel by John Steinbeck which was bought for me in the early 70’s by a roadie from a band of mine and was a book of letters Steinbeck wrote to his publisher every morning before commencing his work on East of Eden. Fabulous book

 
dgr:Inspirational reading...

Ralph:When I was walking backwards from what I saw as the entrapment of religious belief indoctrination and so on, spiritual books still held a fascination for me and like most people who grew up through the 60’s and 70’s, I tilted at mystic religion but there was one book above all others that helped me through a bad time and it was the writing of Herman Hesse, namely Siddhartha.
What I took from the book was that you shouldn’t be afraid, that you are part of the world and you will make it resonate in a small way, even just by your footsteps, and if you listen and you look there could be enough of you, I’m not saying I’m an intellectual, please don’t think that, but if you have the ability to intellectualise it a little bit, to think a little deeper about it, it makes sense to me and then you have your lot of kindness and peace and that’ll do me because I have music and arts and other things and that will do instead of religion.

 
dgr:  A lot of people feel quite inadequate about their reading, thinking I’m not a literary person, I haven’t got a degree, but most people read and take something from it don’t they?

 
Ralph: I believe they do but you see when you write words you’re trying to write all the time and you don’t want to copy somebody else so you’re trying to find original thoughts and you think and hope that through the subtlety of whatever your message might be people will glimpse that each song is a little piece in the jigsaw that relates to your philosophy.I’m delighted when people are moved and touched by books and by songs because we’re all in it to communicate if we’re not why do we do it?

dgr: It's easy to be judgemental, classifying people by what they read, if somebody gets something from whatever book it is they read then that’s perfectly valid, do you think it's the same with music?

Ralph: Well it’s absolutely the same as music, some people can listen to an old blues player playing an out of tune guitar and they’ll get it, some people can listen to Charlie Parker playing the most unbelievable bee-bop solos on a bad saxophone and they’ll get it, others won’t get it. They’ll get it from somewhere else and they may never get it from music at all. There are plenty of people who don’t “get” paintings and don’t understand colours.
If you can get a handle on what the artist is trying to convey, it’s so uplifting and worthwhile. I say to someone who doesn’t get jazz, well listen a little bit more until you do, people often say it’s boring, well do it until it’s not boring, it’s kind of a Buddhist thing I think. Whatever medium, whatever turns you on and opens your head to other ideas, even if you understand it and disagree, that’s OK too…I do wish I read more.

dgr: Recent reading?

Ralph: I’ve just re-read Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie’s book Bound for Glory. Somebody very kindly sent it to me and I wish I knew who they were because I can’t thank them and I’ve just bought a first edition of that. Right now I’m reading an autobiography of an Irish writer and singer called Tommy Sands, The Songman, A Journey in Irish Music.
I’m equally likely to have a book of Dylan Thomas or Seamus Heaney poems by the bed. I read mostly in the evenings, I can’t give up time during the day to read, that feels like a total indulgence, I should be doing something else like practising the guitar.

dgr:For those of us in thrall to the Irish writer Niall Williams, could you please tell us the story behind From Clare to Here?

Ralph: Now, it follows on rather nicely from what I was saying about Woody Guthrie, the idea of the young socialist Ralph being all rebellious and trying to be strong and brave and all the rest of it and could do without Jesus and all that. Woody Guthrie’s message was a simple belief in humanity, the working man would triumph eventually although he was condemned in the main, through his education, to do rather lowly jobs.
I was more than qualified to do better than I did, but I wanted to work in as many manual fields as I could and I had dozens of jobs. But the happiest job I ever had was on a building site in South London, paradoxically opposite the grammar school where I was supposed to have been educated.I got fit and happy and well and strong as a horse and worked there for about eight months before an accident stopped that. During that time I worked with the Irish gangs, I noticed they were paid a bit more money than me and I was put together with a young fellow who was clearly lying about his age, all I remember is that his name was Michael.
I was playing a little guitar by that time and loving it and I was full of the poetry of work and music and young manhood and we were down in this trench and in an effort to bring him out of this ghetto mentality that a lot of the Irishmen had when they came over here in the early 60’s, it was a drink culture and they didn’t break out of their own very much, I tried to make conversation with this young fellow and it was very hard work.
One day I was rolling a cigarette in the bottom of this trench and I can remember it as clear as if it was yesterday, because we were way down, at least 12 foot deep with shoring and he was whacking away with the shovel and I said
“Oh it must be very strange for you Michael, being here in London" and he just said
“Ah sure it’s a long way from Clare to here”.
And if he’d said to me it’s a long way from here to Clare it would have just gone past in the conversation.We had an expression “Oh that sounds a bit Irish”, when we mean a bit convoluted, the subject and the object are in the wrong place. And I thought that’s it absolutely, it is a long way from Clare to here, that’s a poem, that’s worth examining because which came first, home or where he was?
Plainly he’d said home is more important, it’s a long way from where I’m from to where I am, rather than from where I am to where I’m from.
It stuck in my head.
I’d wanted to write a song in the 70’s about the continued exploitation of cheap labour again coming from Ireland.It was called The Lump at that time and it was uninsured work, trucks would drive round to various positions and say I’ve got work for 6 blokes, like the old dockers system, and I remember reading about beds that were never empty, one lot would go out and another lot would come in and I just got that opening line
“There’s four of us share this room” then the word craic. I didn’t even know how to spell it at the time, a lovely Irish word meaning how’s the tempo, how’s the mood, is there any fun in it and suddenly I got this betrayal of the ideal, of going away. I know mass doesn’t rhyme with craic but lots of things don’t rhyme and I had a first verse then all of a sudden...

(Sings) “It’s a long way from Clare to here”

And there it was and I just listed, as sometimes happens, the frustration and the boy who never settled down, just wants to get drunk and fight and get rid of his anger that way and another one not writing home like he promised to and the dreams of home and money disappearing and the song wrote itself in about an hour and has proven to be quite a hit, quite a few people have recorded it now.

There's four who share this room as we work hard for the craic
And sleeping late on Sundays I never get to Mass

It's a long way from Clare to here
It's a long way from Clare to here
It's a long, long way, it grows further by the day
It's a long way from Clare to here

When Friday comes around Terry's only into fighting
My ma would like a letter home but I'm too tired for writing

Chorus

It almost breaks my heart when I think of Josephine
I told her I'd be coming home with my pockets full of green

Chorus

And the only time I feel alright is when I'm into drinking
It sort of eases the pain of it and levels out my thinking

Chorus

I sometimes hear a fiddle play or maybe it's a notion
I dream I see white horses dance upon that other ocean

Chorus

It's a long, long way from Clare to here.

(If this song remains a mystery to you, listen to a bar or two here and check out everything else Ralph-ish at the Leola Music website)

With grateful thanks again to Ralph McTell for this interview.

 

 

Our Argyle moment

Lest there be any doubt about this family's Plymouth Argyle credentials here it is.
Our moment.
The Kayaker's (on the left) mascot picture and me so overcome in the tunnel waiting for my little boy to run out on the pitch I didn't realise I was blocking the way.
Peter Shilton, player-manager at the time gently lent over and whispered "Excuse me" very politely in my ear. He had nice goalkeeper's legs, I remember things like that.
I think I'd also been overcome by the heady aroma of all that wintergreen liniment.
There could well be a case of rural matricide later today when it becomes known that I've shared this with the world.

Oh yes, and look, they play good teams sometimes too

David Baddiel declines Mary's Crowded Bed

I've mentioned The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh before and Mary must be delighted because she's has had some great publicity for the book in this weekend's Times Book review.
To be honest I've got no time for anyone who even hints at a moan about the vast numbers of free books they are sent for review, FREE BOOKS! But that aside David Baddiel is apparently more upset that he's now seen as "British Culture's token Mr Jew" and anything remotely bookish and Jewish is being sent his way.
Phew, what a thing to be vexed about, I'd be quite pleased to be seen as British Culture's token Health Visitor/ Sock Knitter/ Quilter and be sent free books.I'd live with it, probably have a little grumble when yet another breast feeding / child abuse/ dropped stitch / piecing nightmare blockbuster came my way, but I'd manage, and I'd always send a thank you note.
Back to The Crowded Bed, David won't be reading it because although it looks like "a solid piece of upmarket fiction, something inbetween Joanna Trollope and Anita Brookner..." we needn't worry about the rest.
That's all we need to know and I'm delighted for Mary Cavanagh to have been pitched into this territory because the book deserves it, even though David has judged the book by its cover alone which as you know is something I would NEVER do!
This book almost slides into my Reading the Doctor's Writing venture because Mary was a GP Practice Manager  for many years and she will know GP's and their world almost better than they know themselves.
I didn't know this until long after I'd read it anonymously and in manuscript form and I had an A4 typed page-turning day that I remember well, I couldn't put this sheaf of paper down.
No cover to judge it by, no knowledge of the author, a completely pure reading experience.

Here's an extract from my notes about the book at the time, I've doctored them slightly for fear of spoilers.

"Mary writes supremely well, her method for handling non-linear narrative is impressive. I never get confused, always know exactly where I am and I enjoy the variety and pace this gives her writing.
Impeccable research lightly imposed on the reader sums up how I feel about all the background. For example the Jewish content is fascinating, enough to interest me and complement the plot but not too much to put me off. I’ve read several books by the likes of Chaim Potok who understandably ‘does’ Judaism perfectly and in fact Mary has captured this same gentle, caring, worrying, over-protective feel to the faith and the way of life it creates.
The medical information is accurate and I learnt something new about the best way to administer a lethal injection and leave no trace should the need arise!
Some very difficult subjects were handled extremely well. Those covered have to be amongst the most difficult but Mary made these understandable and in fact set up circumstances that made it almost inevitable and the nearest to acceptable it is possible to achieve.Safe writing hands indeed.
Novels that offer optimistic outcomes on these situations are rare, this book could offer a great deal of positive encouragement to many"

The Perfectly Lovely Gorgeous Quilt

At most surgeries I've worked in, eventually word gets out that I like quilting and invariably a group of staff will emerge who have always wanted to learn, so we start with a beginners class and they are quickly addicted.The last surgery cottoned on big time and ended up with this beautiful set of wallhangings for their waiting room.Scroll down to The Abbey Surgery Team link, fight your way through the staff lists and there they are.
I moved on to another GP practice 7 years ago and currently the "Girl's Night In" group still meet monthly but came along to Week One about 5 years ago with intros like "You know I've never threaded a needle". That is never a problem and I've yet to teach anyone who hasn't picked up the basics, caught the bug and become a proficient quilter very quickly. That's not down to my teaching, it's down to the craft itself which is so welcoming and wonderfully all-consuming once the basic mysteries have been revealed.
Here's the "Girl's Night In" first attempt at a group quilt and made for a baby expected by another member of staff, in fact we've just finished our fourth one of these, it's clearly a fertile place to work.
A rather grainy photo and nervous breakdowns over tiny little mistakes...spot the applique butterfly concealing a hole snipped while cutting quilting thread, but I just kept saying, "Don't worry, it's perfectly lovely gorgeous" and so that is the name we gave this quilt.
We also bought baby Joe a pair of sunglasses because it's quite a dazzler.
We've re-convened after Christmas and, with no babies on the horizon that we know of, it was be down to work on all our own unfinished projects.
I'm sure you're all really good and finish everything you start but surprise, surprise, I don't and so I'm going to share a few more of my UFOs on here occasionally, some of them go back decades.You will be shocked I'm sure.I clearly need to hone my completer-finisher skills.
Sunday confessions later and shock revelations about the state of the toilets in the world's largest bookshop, bet you can't wait.

The Camel Book Drive Library

Apart from Offspringette and the Boardfree Challenge I don't think I've ever mentioned a charity on here because it's one of those things that I think is very personal to each and every one of us, we all know which, if any, we support and why.
I'm also never quite sure where I stand on the idea of buying ploughs and goats for Africa but I think the idea of The Camel Book Drive Library  (thanks to Bluestalking Reader for the info) does look sound and worthy of note.
It's often difficult to find genuine projects that actually deliver what they say but this one seems to.

Shock news...Plymouth Argyle's Cup Run is on

Shock news...The Pilgrims, Plymouth Argyle have beaten Derby 2-0 at Home Park and are in the Quarter Finals of the F.A.cup.The QUARTER FINALS!!
This last happened in 1980-something and is etched in my memory.
What happens next is this.
Green and white will be festooned across a 25 mile radius of the city.
Every shop window will be suitably attired.
Every car will be dangling green and white things.
Now we all have no choice but to become ardent Argyle fans.We will quickly become well aquainted with the inside leg measurements of all the players, what they eat for breakfast, why they love playing in Plymouth and we'd best just give in gracefully and go and dig out our scarves.
What then happens is that they draw Chelsea and the whole city and beyond (Tavistock now becomes bosom pals with neighbouring Plymouth you understand) spends weeks saying we can beat them...perhaps we could?
We've got our share of Barrys, Garys and Lees but we have one or two Lilians, Hasneys, Akoss and Sylvans too lest we be thought too provincial
They're not that good Chelsea really are they?That Jose Mourinho's got nothing on our man Holloway.
Get them at home and that sea air would make them all sleepy, we're in with a chance.
No,it's a done deal, Semi-Finals here we come.
Fair weather supporters us...Ar-g-y-aaaaaaaa-llllllllll

Adele Geras parties again

You all know how it is...party famine and then along come three in a row, just like buses.
How does she do it? My wardrobe couldn't stand the strain. Adele Geras sends required details of her latest party in the perfect surroundings of the V&A Museum in London.I've seen the Chihuly's and they are indeed stunning, what a backdrop this must have made. I'm loving all this vicarious party pleasure but Adele tells me she has one more before the season is over and she'll be hanging up her party frocks for a while. I suspect she's quite exhausted and will need a holiday.

Thursday evening, in the half hour between the museum closing and the doors opening again to admit the guests flocking  to Orion’s Author Party, the whole of the reception area was transformed. Flowers appeared everywhere, champagne flutes and other glass were ranged on what used to be the circular reception desk and the Chihuly chandelier - which is astonishing and astonishingly beautiful - hung over us like something from another world. And believe me, ‘flocking’ is the right word. There were apparently six hundred people circulating in the very impressive vestibule, and I spoke to scarcely any of them. Some of the people I was most looking forward to seeing just didn’t emerge out of the crowd. One of these, Jon Appleton of Orion Children’s Books, tells me by email that he was wearing patent leather shoes with silver trim and I wish I’d seen both them and him.

What I did see: Ian Rankin in a black shirt printed with a white flower pattern. Rachel Billington in a brocade jacket, white on black, a Chinese pattern. Her sister, Antonia Fraser was also in black and white and looked fantastic. I had a conversation with both halves of the writing partnership which is Annie Sanders: Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders. Annie was in a crisp and beautiful white blouse and black trousers. Meg had a scarf round her neck that mirrored the Chihuly above us: intricate and interesting. Her glittering necklace was beautiful, but I can’t remember the name of the designer. Too much champagne. Too much noise. She was in conversation with Kate Harrison who looked very pretty in a top printed with a red and black Japanese design. I saw flowers but Kate reckoned she’d spotted mushroom clouds and the nuclear power symbol, but perhaps only because she was feeling paranoid about her next book.

Erica James looked very stylish in black with a necklace of glittering amethyst flowers, but the prize for Jewellery of the Evening goes to Judith Elliott of Orion Children’s Books. Her necklace looked like a bright gold snake, twisted up in to a vaguely Egyptian shape, but Judith assured me that it wasn’t real gold at all, but simply a rope of gold stuff -.plastic? I don’t know - which you slipped over your head and made into any shape you liked. Fabulous.

Francesca Simon, of Horrid Henry fame, was wearing a cloth-of-silver jacket and agent Rosemary Sandberg looked as glamorous as ever in black.

Catriona MacPherson was in floral printed jersey and looked super and she was with agent Lisa Hoylett who was wearing the most beautiful black suede shoes on vertiginous heels. I wondered how she managed to look so comfortable. She also had on a real fox fur, which had once belonged to her grandmother and which she’d inherited. It looked both elegant and sinister, as fox furs always do.

The prize for the most original outfit goes to a woman whom I don’t know. I asked her her name as I was on my way out of the party but I didn’t write it down (some fashion reporter I am!)  and now I’ve forgotten and I apologise. She was elderly, small, and dressed in a long skirt, a dusty- pink velvet figure-hugging jacket in the Edwardian style and to top it all, a straw hat with red and pink silk roses decorating the brim. She looked magnificent, as though she’d stepped out of one of the V&A’s galleries.

We were allowed to go and see Kylie’s clothes, which are on show there now and apparently bringing in more crowds than any exhibition ever held in the museum. I don’t know what these looked like on stage, but I can report that up close the fabrics were ghastly: synthetic , and seeming to give off static even as they stood there. The colours were unsubtle. I felt quite sorry for poor Kylie having to put them on and appear in them in public.

And finally: I caught a glimpse of Marie Helvin who must be nearly as old as I am  and looked about thirty-five. I said it last week and I’ll say it again, models are not like the rest of us. She was very, very slim and tall and plainly dressed in what looked like black trousers and a grey T shirt and she was quite dazzlingly beautiful.

Le Sabotage amoureux

I haven't posted about Amelie Nothomb in a while but that doesn't mean I've stopped reading her out of choice, the cupboard is almost bare and I'm reduced to famine rationing because supplies in English are running low after that very greedy feast I had in the early days.
So it was a real treat to savour every word and last hint of flavour out of Loving Sabotage in one of those all-in-one-sitting Amelie reads.
Children will be children,but this gang of corps diplomatique offspring really do take the whole thing to the limits.We follow as they re-enact the wars of the nations in miniature from the safety of their respective compounds during a placement in 70's Peking.Their Secret Weapon has to be witnessed and probably smelt to be believed and then some, little parents of invention indeed.
Amelie Nothomb really does write the world of the child with ease and this was another cracking read.
However most interesting was the afterword as Amelie gives the impression that this is nearer to truth than fiction, in as much as it can be considered as such through the eyes of herself as a seven year old. Witness the irate letter she received from the original Elena who recognised herself in the book and was most displeased.
As Amelie notes "In French an old proverb says:'It's only the truth that hurts'.Elena's reaction could well be the proof that I invented nothing:if she was furious, it's because this story is true"
All very interesting.
Just one Amelie book to go in English and then I may have to dust off my O Level French before I can proceed, wish I'd paid more attention to Mademoiselle Deadman.

The Wrath of Roth

Don't quite know how I've got the nerve to use such a terrible heading, just needed to get it out of the way really and it is appropriate here.
It seems to be happening with great regularity now, a grey winter's afternoon, woodburner gently humming away and I just pick up another Joseph Roth book and don't get up again until it's finished.
This time The Wandering Jews, written during the 1920's and finally published in 1937, a book that floors you, leaves you stunned and just sitting quietly listening to the silence.
I have rarely if ever detected anger in Joseph Roth's fiction to date and so I was intrigued to read this non-fiction account of the Jewish communities scattered across Europe and witness genuine and barely repressed fury in Roth's own foreword as he is watching and writing so prophetically about the rise of extreme German nationalism.
Joseph Roth left Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and became something of a wandering Jew himself though he makes no reference to his own background in the book.
This one a translation by Michael Hofmann and there was something in his preface that made me think of the writing of Penelope Fitzgerald as he describes Roth's " lifelong sympathies with 'simple people', the dispossessed 'guests on this earth' and his antipathy to a selfish, materialistic and increasingly homogenous bourgeoisie".
Penelope Fitzgerald commented during an interview "I have remained true to my deepest convictions - I mean to the courage of those who have been defeated, the weaknesses of the strong"
As Hofmann identifies, Joseph Roth senses that things will get steadily worse for the Jews of Europe but hopefully bearably so, "what happened instead was the Holocaust".
I think if you like Penelope you'll love Joseph, neither of them waste words and both seem to get to the kernel of the thing with the ease of an unassuming yet deep wisdom.

dovegreyreader asks...

I read Niall Williams, then I start humming that lovely old Ralph McTell song From Clare to Here, unearth my shrine of Ralph memorabilia and start playing all the music again and before you know it guess who has agreed to stop by for dovegreyreader asks..?
I'm really grateful to Ralph McTell for taking time out from recording today and his very busy pre-Australia tour schedule to answer the questions over the phone and that will be on the blog next week.
As can see, apart from the fact that Ralph and I both know all the words to all his songs and we've both been to a lot of Ralph McTell concerts down the years, we have one or two other things in common.
Here's a little snippet of our conversation

DGR:You grew up in Croydon?

Ralph:I did

DGR: Mitcham for me

Ralph:I know it very well

DGR:Now  I read somewhere that Father Christmas at Kennards in Croydon gave you a mouth organ and that started you off on the music trail.

Ralph:He did and yes, it did.

DGR: Hmm, well he gave me a doll’s hairbrush so you see life could have been so very different couldn’t it?

Ralph: Well I’m lucky there, I’m glad I didn’t get the doll’s hairbrush, I would have been a hairdresser and you would have been a harmonica player.

I'll post the interview next week and you can read all about Ralph's inspiration, his reading and yes, how From Clare to Here came about and no, we didn't mention Streets of London once.

 

Imran Ahmad, international man of mystery revealed

Me and My Big Mouth's suggested read of Unimagined a Muslim boy meets the West by Imran Ahmad is mission accomplished and yes, I'd have jumped board meetings and dashed round to a secret agent with this one too.
Nice work Mr Pack.
Life for Simon Templar wannabee Imran begins in mid-monsoon in 1962. What follows is a mixture of memoir interwoven with a lifelong (to date) and exceptionally well-balanced examination of comparative religion through Imran's questioning Muslim eyes.
Doesn't that sound boring?
But no, far from. I was hanging on very detail of his life in Hampton (I know someone else who lives there...) because he delineates racism, apartness, adolescence, student life, religion and so much more through his own very unique perspective and we also get to revisit the 70's and the 80's and all those little things we'd forgotten about.
Triumph Toledos, haven't seen one of those in years.
It's a part-funny part-serious book and it works like a dream.
But the bit that had me enthralled was Imran's time at Stirling University and this had me constantly calling out to Offspringette, still resident here in Devon post-Oz but back to Glasgow very soon.
Which hall were you in? Imran was in AK Davidson (...Andrew Stewart)
Oh look he mentions Loch Airthrey and Bridge of Allan (...really?)
You could see the Wallace monument from your room couldn't you? (...sometimes)
Oh guess what? He's just had coffee in the MacRobert (...the MacBob, mother)
Did you walk up the Dumyat? (...do you mean the duh-my-at?)
I remember the day in 1999 very clearly when we deposited Offspringette 500 miles from home in her breeze block cell to begin a long 4 years at Stirling University and the pesky 3rd year American Exchange (Lawrence, Kansas) which had been half the point of going all the way to Scotland.
It all proved terminal for our old Shogun so no wonder Imran had trouble in a Renault 5. We are in fact better known at Tebay services than our local pub.
Originally apparently a mediocre looking self-published book with a cover that Imran says he spent at least an hour working on, Unimagined is now reformatted into a special and I think important book with the added bonus of that perfectly lovely gorgeous little cuddly Imran on the front.
I loved the book, but more than that I love Imran's planned book launch in support of The Shooting Star Children's Hospice on Saturday March 3rd from 2pm-6pm at Hampton School.
This is all very good indeed.

Spontaneous combustion reading

There are page-turners and then there are the other books, the ones that you are reading so fast the whole thing is nearly on the brink of spontaneous combustion in your hands.
If you get your hands on The Painted Messiah by Craig Smith (due for publication in March) put the oven gloves on and sit on an inflatable cushion because I got paper friction burns on my fingers and pressure sores elsewhere because I could barely move until I'd finished it.
Trust me it lives up to its claim to be a "blistering action thriller".
Things were so tense that at several points I had to remind myself to breath, and could probably have done with intubation and some intermittent positive pressure ventilation (life support machine)to get me through.
This book came courtesy of Newcastle based Myrmidon Books who have a "medium term goal to become the UK's most influential independent publisher of commercial and literary fiction outside the capital".
They are on track with this one and they will need to be at £16.99 for a hardback and £11.99 for paperback.Even though the books are going to be aesthetically pleasing, top notch paper and production and I have paid the same for lesser quality, these are going to eat large chunks out of  the average book-buying budget.
That aside, this "lean and agile" publisher kindly sent me a great big fat parcel of books and this one looked quite innocent until I gave it the first few pages treatment.
I don't come across enough books like this; possibly the most recent was The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman which I also loved and needed resuscitation when I'd finished.
The book is based on the legend that,after the scourging of Christ, Pilate commanded that a picture be painted from life and that this original image of the face of Christ still exists.Cue this fast paced thriller that cuts back and forth between modern day ruthless Knights Templar in Switzerland and events in Caesarea in AD 26.
Craig Smith's research, described at the back of the book, sits lightly but informatively on the whole and the end result is a well-written book full of engaging characters and a tension that defies description. Except Craig Smith does description with ease, this book is like reading a film, you are right in there visualizing the action.Some of the high octane action scenes left me tachycardic and dyspnoeic (pulse racing and breathless...I'm sharing the medical jargon today)
Frankly it's left me in need of some intensive care and litre or two of intravenous chamomile, especially after that final denouement when I had to do a bit of a freefall parachute jump with a square canopy when I'm only trained on the round ones (health visitors are trained in everything)
This is definitely the book for that long haul flight or the arduous train journey, you'll be there in a flash, but be sure to pack the portable defibrillator just in case.

Made for Laughter -Reading the Doctor's writing

Leading the "Reading the Doctor's Writing" trail, it's been quite a few years since I read Dr Sheila Cassidy's books Audacity to Believe and Sharing the Darkness but I was inspired so to do after hearing her speak at several study days and courses.
So I was delighted when some off-blog correspondence with Philippa (who often comments here and on the Hill Blog) came up with an offer of Sheila's latest book Made For Laughter.
We agreed on one of those lovely book swaps and Philippa requested On Being ill by Virginia Woolf which seemed like an appropriate exchange.
Sheila Cassidy is best known as the young doctor who was imprisoned and tortured under the Pinochet regime in Chile for treating a wounded revolutionary and all this is recounted in gripping detail in this book.
On her return to the UK Sheila eventually settled in Plymouth, here in the West Country, and has since spear-headed the development and continuation of the hospice and palliative care services for this area.
Just how much I was quite unaware until I read this book which once opened I couldn't put down.
I'm not a great lover of autobiography, always that uncertainty about whether I'm really reading a warts and all account.
You instantly know this one is different.
I get the feeling that Sheila Cassidy tells it exactly like it was and this book is just riven with a transparent honesty laced with genuine humility about problems,personal failings and struggles and plenty of mea culpa as she recounts her life to date.
As the blurb says, this book is "a story of grace under pressure" and much that speaks from the heart and to the heart of anyone who reads it.Sheila's journey of faith is well documented and there's something quite uplifting about hearing that she has eschewed organised religion and all its trappings in favour of her own daily and constant acknowledgement of her beliefs.
For many years unknowingly on the run from the post-traumatic effects of her harrowing torture in Chile,  Sheila eventually had to sit down and face up to it all.It's that old millstone round the neck thing.The suitcase with contents bulging out of the sides and the traveller sitting on the lid trying desperately and to no avail to close it, eventually it becomes a pointless exercise.Suddenly the time is right and the whole lot can be taken out, washed, repaired, ironed, folded and put back in neatly.
Amazingly the lid will often then shut quite easily and stay shut.
Now in her late 60's, retired from front-line medical practice but maintaining her role as a psycho-therapist, Sheila now finds herself in new and richly deserved territory
"I don't remember being so well or so happy for a very long time...happy and peaceful in my heart"
this after her own recent and very ironic encounter with breast cancer.
I'm pleased to report that she rates knitting amongst her relaxing occupations alongside watching The Bill and Casualty.I do hope she's turned a heel.
All I can say is read this one for the story of a unique and very remarkable woman who has unstintingly left a large and very generous footprint on life for which many people, both knowingly and unknowingly, will be extremely thankful for many years to come.

Rocky's Nature Diary

Sorry, far too wet to go and look.

Sunday Confessions

Some nice surprises this week.
A weighty parcel from a new Indie publisher, Myrmidon which had the postman staggering to the door. Contained within, Thirteen by Sebastian Beaumont, The Painted Messiah by Craig Smith and The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.Look carefully and you'll see what happened with the Craig Smith and you'll read what I thought about that this week.Then I just sneaked a peek at the Tan Twan Eng and an hour later remembered that actually I'd been on my way to empty the dryer.These are looking good.
Dr Phil Whitaker, one for my 'doctors who write' reading project, kindly sent me his latest Freak of Nature and I had ordered The Face which arrived at the same time.Thanks Phil,more soon.
I'm still stocking up on classics, more Zolas because I am a born-again Zola-ite, L'Assommoir and The Kill and I plumped for a Balzac as I have never read any, Cousin Bette looked accessible, we'll see whether I become a Balzac-ite too.
When Me and My Big Mouth says "read this" you don't have much choice so Unimagined a Muslim boy meets the West by Imran Ahmad was here at warp speed (oh Book Depository, how do I love thee). I've sneaked a preview of this too and that's become a full-blown read.It is shaping up to be as remarkable as Scott says, a very unique voice.
Is that Imran on the cover? If so he's adorable and I just want to sit him on my knee (then,perhaps not now) and will forgive the weeny print.It is indeed a painfully insightful book and painful on my sight, thank heavens for my new specs.
Lastly let this be known, the tenderness of sons.It is entirely possible to train them to be kind and thoughtful young men, as the Kayaker returned from a trip to Plymouth clutching a copy of The  Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney for me, after my gnashing of teeth that very morning at having left it on the shelf pending paperback.

The past is a foreign country

"The past is a foreign country:they do things differently there"
Finally, at last, I am reading the book, published in the year all us Coronation babies were born, and I should have read it long before now.
The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley in this very nice New York Review of Books edition.
Cometh the hour cometh the book eventually.

The Costa low-down, what you really need to know

Am I ever grateful to dgr roving reporter Adele Geras for agreeing to be a judge at the Costas just so we could get an insider view like this, yes yes book awards all very lovely but here's what you've really been dying to know.

You know how it is: the room is packed. Your gold-and-silver sequinned handbag is hanging from the crook of one arm; the champagne flute is clutched in your other hand and your eyes scan the crowd for friends, celebs, famous writers, and anything unusual which might be interesting for Dove Grey’s readers.
I had hoped to give long and detailed accounts of everything, but the truth is, what I got was a kaleidoscopic impression of many outfits and a good look at a few. The few belonged to the other judges, with whom I was closeted for a couple of hours and most were seen on people floating by, on the platform to get awards and at the party afterwards. I did try to mention winner Stef Penney’s apple-green halter necked taffeta dress and black shrug in the piece I wrote for the Guardian and they cut it. There you go! Dove Grey is more indulgent of these frivolities.
So here’s where you’ll get the lowdown. Or some of it…there are a few pictures up on the Costa website and I’ve asked for some more shots to put on my own website and I’ll alert Dove Grey’s readers to that when it happens.
Sophie Kinsella was the first judge I met. She has the tiniest waist and looks about sixteen. She didn’t appear to be wearing any make-up and has a flawless complexion. She was in a wide, almost crinoline-type black taffeta skirt which was caught up around the hem with black taffeta bows. Her top was black too, but that skirt was the thing. Very Gone with the Wind and she looked amazing.
Elaine Feinstein was wearing the best wrap. She was in a plainish black dress but over it…wow! All the glories of  Byzantium seemed to billow from the folds of her long silk stole, which, when she was presenting the Poetry prize to John Haynes, fell from her shoulders like a stream of molten gold.
Carol Thatcher wore a black, Chinese-style silk trouser suit but the lining was lime-green satin which showed in wide, turned-back cuffs. She had a fuchsia silk scarf around her neck and that made a beautiful contrast with the black and the lime green.
Kate Adie was smart in a black taffeta suit, with the peplum and jacket revers edged with frills, over a pink silk t-shirt or camisole. She, too, has a wonderful figure.
Erin O'Connor is a model.Has any of you met a fashion model? They are a different order of creature altogether: taller, more elegant, more beautifully turned-out than any one else around.
Erin had a black hat covering her hair, trousers that seemed to go on for ever and I was mesmerized by her mouth: red and just the right red and the kind of make-up that mere mortals never seem able to achieve. She was also extremely sensible and had good judgement, I thought. If you look at her in the photo you’ll see that she’s quite unlike the rest of us.

As for the men, Clive Anderson was short of cufflinks and had them brought to him. Francis Wheen was sporting a delightful, colourful waistcoat and Simon Mayo had on a Fifties-style thigh-length dinner jacket: grey with a black velvet collar. Very dashing.
Bud McLintock, who organized everything most efficiently,  also looked amazing. She’s very tall and statuesque and in clinging, black low-cut jersey (I think it was jersey…I couldn’t go and examine fabrics closely, you understand) she was a real knock-out.
Are you curious to know what I was wearing? I have to deal with shortness and plumpness and went for black velvet two-piece with Spanish-type frills at the hem and the cuffs, sprinkled with a few sequins.  I had on beautiful teal suede shoes, too, which were fine at first but began hurting like hell after midnight.

Once we got out into the main crowd, things began to blur a bit. I did catch sight of P.D James in the Ladies and she was looking lovely in a turquoise chiffon blouse with long sleeves worn with black trousers.
Emily Maitlis from Newsnight was in the skimpiest black dress I’ve ever seen. It was like a short tube of satin, ruched and allowing lots of Emily to be seen. It struck me that she was much thinner than she appears on TV.
You couldn’t really talk to anyone properly. Jacqueline Wilson, the Children’s Laureate, is one of my oldest friends and I couldn’t do more than kiss her and notice that she was wearing a lovely, transparent blouse appliqued with flowers in red, and blue and green. It was super to see her in something other than black.
Anne Fine’s guest was her agent Anthony Gough and he looked less like a penguin than the other men, because he’d interpreted ‘black tie’ as meaning just that: a normal tie, only black. Anne herself looked smashing and I’m sure she was beautifully-dressed but she was sitting down and I only saw her face. The lights weren’t bright either, which was something I was quite pleased about.
Esther Rantzen was my neighbour at dinner and she was in navy-blue John Charles and some very gorgeous jewellery. A woman across the table whose name I never discovered gets the prize for the best necklace of the evening. It looked like small, irregular stones made of silver, strung together. Annie Eaton of Random House wore a necklace of pretty red discs, and I also spotted a few Chloe handbags and shoes that were so minimal they had to be Jimmy Choos or Manolos.
I went up on stage to present Linda Newbery with the Children’s books category award. Linda is enviably slender and she wore a tailored dark mauve brocade jacket over a camisole and her skirt was layers of stiffish black tulle. She looked splendid.
Mariella Frostrup was the Mistress of Ceremonies. She had on a dress in the shape of a long petticoat: white section on top and black below.
My guest was my agent, Laura Cecil, and she was wearing a beautiful skirt with lines of sequins running from waist to hem. Her shoes are always beautiful and on this occasion they were black slingbacks, powdered with some kind of discreet glittery stuff, which looked magical.
I wish I could have lined up every woman there and examined her closely…there was too much to look at, too much to think about, and far too many outfits to admire. These are just some highlights. It was, as they say, a night to remember, even leaving aside the books. And please do all read the winner. “ The Tenderness of Wolves” is superb. It will be made into a movie and they will leave out lots of things, so read it right now.

Thanks Adele, you clearly punished your feet in the name of dgr scribbles and they must need some soothing , that's a pair of socks I owe you!
Now who can I send to the Orange Prize ceremony?

 

I want those shoes

I had quite a big and important meeting at work this week.Managers from afar making the journey up tor and cross moorland to find us and claim us as their own.
I'm part of a small locality team of just six health visitors so when we have big important meetings there's not much chance of being able to sneak into the back row and keep your head down...not that I can ever keep my mouth shut at these big important meetings anyway.
The NHS is going through its biggest round of changes since, well its last round of changes and the impact eventually makes its way down to the grass roots no matter how much you try and avoid it.This meeting was a three-line-cancel-all-clinics-commit-to-attending-whip affair and I had really meant to brush up on the salient points of Every Child Matters and the National Service Framework for Children and Young People and the latest on Social Inclusion (Cabinet Office document chapter four) beforehand.
The problem was that a whole load of books had arrived in the post and so the night before, I'm ashamed to say, I was far more engrossed in I Want Those Shoes by Paola Jacobbi.
This came as a thank you from the wonderful House of Anansi Press in Canada in return for answering a questionnaire, and good on them for honouring those of us who responded from overseas.
I warmed to the cover for a start, cocoa-eau-de-nil is my current favourite colour combination but I opened it and everything I've known all my life was immediately set out before me.

"This book is dedicated to women, who understand.
And also to men who don't.
But who, in the end, grow to appreciate"

Swiftly followed by this

"The madness of women
That need for shoes
That will hear no reason.
What do millions matter
When in exchange you have shoes"

Paola Jacobbi proceeds to dissect and explore this addiction with all the grace of a true shoe-aholic.
"They can cost a fortune, yet while money itself does not bring happiness, money spent on a pair of new shoes can bring exaltation...whether you're fat or thin, short or tall, beautiful or ugly, the shoes your heart desires will fit you like a charm"

The chapter headings tell you it all, this is a very funny, extremely perceptive must have book

Moccasino Comodino (The Comfortable Loafer...for the woman who has her head screwed on right and plenty to get done)
The Imelda Syndrome (...Imeldistas are rarely happy people, at least with their shoe collection)
The Point of Life (...the pointed shoe has the attraction of a forbidden game)
Women in Boots (...it is said that it was partly thanks to a pair of boots that Joan of Arc ended up burnt at the stake)
The Pump and the Eternal Illusion of Being Audrey (...pumps are the shoe equivalent of the white shirt)
Globalization and the Crisis in the Western Slipper (...just the word itself - "slipper" - is a downer)
Rain:A Divine Punishment (...remaining elegant in snow or rain is a virtual impossibility)
The Mysterious Magic of Red Shoes ( a chapter of their own)

But the chapter that had me in a state of all-out hysterics was this one
A Brief Course in Self-Esteem (About the Length of a Shoe Strap) and this is specifically about Mary Janes. Now if I ever wear these I do feel about 6 years old and very inferior, I've got small feet too which just adds to that child-like look so I don't wear them but now I know why,

"To wear the Mary Jane you need to have highly developed self-esteem.They're for confident women, who believe utterly in their own existence regardless of the shoe they're wearing.In other words - an endangered species indeed, the heroic Great Pandas of femininity"

My self esteem's not bad but clearly nothing like that needed to wing it in a pair of MJ's with strap and buckle.

Another useful chapter What Men Say When They Talk About Shoes

"So what do men make of a woman who can help them choose a pair of shoes? Pretty much the same as what they think of a woman who understands the Offside Rule: i.e., that she's the bees knees"

There's a glossary at the end and in it this entry

Kruschev, Nikita: Soviet politician, who, during a fiery UN session, removed one of his shoes and banged it on the table. This story has got nothing to do with this book, but I mention it merely to draw attention to the fact that a woman would never have done such a thing.

How I hope there's a sequel, because if I have a problem with shoes it's nothing compared to my addiction to bags, there is something ultimately satisfying about transferring my belongings to each successive new bag of my dreams.
I can't be alone in that one?

PS Coming up, Adele Geras is going to do a fashionista report for dgr scribbles on the Costa Awards ceremony, forget the prizes, what was everyone wearing, that's what we really need to know.

Our snow day

What a great day we've all had in the snow, the Kayaker was first out, up at crack of dawn and off on the snowboard.

I wasn't up quite so early but couldn't wait to open the curtains, it was sure to be like a winter wonderland.

I hope those of you who have been tobogganing on your slopes appreciate the sacrifice we've made down here in the South West for you to have a day of pleasure.In fairness our lovely weather man, David Brain did warn us that our contribution to the plan was keeping the temperatures intentionally mild enough for maximum overnight precipitation for us and glorious snow by the time it reached your cold fronts.
Oh and the Kayaker? That was Bulgaria a few months ago.

Costa Penney (sorry)

I think I recounted my dithering moment on here some time ago and I had put it onto the BIP (Buy In Paperback) list.
I KNEW I should have splashed out on the hardback! Canada? Snow? 19th century wilderness? What on earth was I thinking of?
Huge congratulations anyway to Stef Penney who has won The Costa Book Award for her first novel The Tenderness of Wolves, now I can't wait to read it, what with all that snow we have piled up outside the door...

dovegreyreader asks Niall Williams

So a warm welcome to Niall Williams, my first guest in the dovegreyreader asks... armchair in the valley with lamp trained on countenance. After reading this  I'd best make a declaration, I'm not professing to be an interviewer, others will do a far better job.
No, I'm just plain nosey and I love talking to people, just think of me as the Mrs Merton of the blogworld.
What a brick Niall is to travel here through all that snow, thank heavens the gritter lorries were out. We've thawed him out, the cushions are plumped and he's tucking into the scones and cream already. Rocky has taken a real shine to him so I do hope he's not allergic to cats. He's been an absolute saint to take time out of his busy writing schedule to do this for me and I'm very grateful.
I've made no secret of my love of Niall's writing and I could have gone on all day but I'm limiting these to just six questions. I did however sneak in a final 7th one to Niall which I felt it my duty to ask and which he's still thinking about.

Always a writer? If not how did you achieve it and who or what have been the greatest influences on your work?

I was always a reader. As a boy I fell in love with Estella in 'Great Expectations' and thereafter I think sought in Dickens for such women, such strong emotion. When I went to college in Dublin to study English and French I was influenced by everyone. First DH Lawrence, then William Faulkner, Joyce, Yeats, Baudelaire. Whole years were spent inside books. And sometime then I began to write, probably to try and replicate that intensity of feeling I had as a reader. My first short story, 'Love' was published when I was nineteen in the national newspaper, The Irish Press, thereby giving me the first real prompt to take this most arduous path of equal parts doubt and rapture. Later influences are a whole throng. I admire many writers, but the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez when I first encountered them took my breath away.

Can you describe an ideal writing day for you?

I write for about three hours, always first thing in the morning, in the front room in Kiltumper overloking the big garden and the valley. I write out loud, saying the words as if I am the storyteller and the listener. Afternoons I try and get outside, to be in the garden, or go to the  Atlantic which is not far. I allow myself to believe that this too is part of a writer's working.

When you’re not writing….

I don't have any exact schedule, or ever set myself word counts or such things. I write as I feel I can, just trying to figure out where the book is going as my hands touch the keys. When not writing I try to be outside.

Your desert island books …

As above I think. Dickens of course. Shakespeare. The usual suspects. For a novel I have just finished on the last year in the life of the Apostle John, I returned to the Bible and found it startling and original and profound as a book.

…and if you could choose where to put your “ island” where would it be and why?

IN 2002 we took the children out of school and travelled around the world for a year while all the time I was writing 'Only Say The Word.' The two places that most stay with me are  Patagonia for its sheer austere otherness. And NewZealand, a country of unparelleled beauty I think.

Recent good reads?

The most striking almost classical book I have read recently was ' Gilead' by  Marylynne Robinson. I know it is not to everyone's taste, but I read it in small savourings and really thought it perfect.

One final question Niall...is it a long way from Clare to here?
Sorry, sorry, just couldn't resist.

 

 

It's going to...

It's been soooooooo exciting because tonight, on the local South West news the cameras were out filming live with the gritting lorries.
We're a very demanding audience down here with an insatiable appetite for sensation, and frankly I'm glad they've sensed that we might be getting bored with the nightly shots from the Branscombe Napoli wreck so this was just what we needed (they took another container off today in case you were wondering, it was an orange one)
As we looked out of the window, sure enough we could see the amber lights of the lorries flashing away across the roads of the Tamar Valley.
Then we watched the weather forecast and heard that the weather people are going to stay up all night to keep us in touch with developments.
Everyone was predicting chaos in the morning rush hour.
It's going to snow.
OK, right, we're ready, go on then SNOW!

From here to Clare and back again once more

Having driven several people into a maddening bout of nostalgic permo-humming of Ralph McTell's song From Clare to Here I had to check it out again properly for myself only to find a sorry dearth, here in the valley, of Ralph on anything since our LP days. Just one CD, Travelling Man and no sign of it on there, so the search began and ended on his website and now I have Songs for Six Strings.I also see he's heading off for a tour of Oz this month but will back for us in Truro in April.
I usually read to a background of music and will often spend ages choosing exactly the right sound. Companion music suggestions to reading would be so useful, not all books are like An Equal Music by Vikram Seth where you can buy the CD to accompany the read.
From Clare to Here is trilling away as a I type and with old Ralphy favourites like Mrs Adlam's Angels, Factory Girl and Old Brown Dog, Songs for Six Strings is the perfect accompaniment. Proper job as we say down this way.
These should be all the clues you need to know that it's Niall Williams in the next sentence.
As Ralph crooned I finished Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams and emerged from this magical, lyrical world again.I close his books and sit there blinking, not quite sure where I am or which world I'm in.All I know is that words have taken me somewhere new and different as a reader.
This one is about fate and how it will have its way in the end as Nicholas and Isabel and "an inheritance of damaged dreams" pursue their seperate journeys through life.Miracles do happen.
I particularly like this next sentiment and I didn't write it, Niall did..

"Wives create their husbands.They begin with that rough raw material, that blundering, well-meaning and handsome youthfulness they have fallen in love with, and then commence the forty years of unstinting labour that it takes to make the man with whom they can live"

Forty years?

Reading the Doctor's writing

I've been ambling around the shelves looking out any books by Doctors who have turned writer and I've come up with quite a few.I think they probably bring unique insights to their writing and we are lucky to have those that cast off the stethescope and pick up the pen.
This has been sparked by my current read of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Dr Vincent Lam which won the Canadian Giller Prize 2006.A collection of interwoven short stories by a Toronto based emergency physician.More about it soon but I'm reading it during my lunch break and it's proving ideal, enough of a distraction but not so much that I find it difficult to walk back into the surgery and concentrate on an afternoon's work.
I quickly found A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov.I've read a few of these and they are remarkable for their humility and lack of arrogance as I recall.On call as a lone practitioner in the depths of rural Russia in 1916-17, so pre-revolution and plenty of wolves which makes a change from the sheepdogs which we run the gauntlet of down here.Haven't killed one yet but it's only a matter of time, they love barking at tyres.
Then The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.I knew I had to at least get it off the shelf and confront exactly where I'd left the bookmark on my last attempt. Every time I start this I'm overcome (by p171 last time) to just go and sit on a balcony in the Alps and wrap a blanket around me while I consumpt along with all the other inmates.It's not lack of enjoyment that stops me, it's just an overwhelming lassitude, Thomas Mann describes it all so well.
Another favourite is When a Doctor Hates a Patient by Richard Peschel.
I bet you didn't know they did this did you? You thought they all loved you.
This is one of those books that links up medicine and literature, recounting true events in the life of a young doctor and flagging up literary situations that try and make some sense of them. Published in the 1980's this must have been one of the earliest of the medical humanities books, but an excellent way for any health professional to face up to their own "fears, hatreds and limitations".Back in 2001 this had become an impossible book to find, mine came at great expense from The Book Dock, Harbor, Oregon, is it still there?
There are plenty more docs I should mention, Somerset Maugham, Alexander McCall Smith, Oliver Sacks, Danni Abse, A.J.Cronin, I'll get to them eventually.
I've also found a UK doctor who writes. He's lined up both for me to read and he's agreed to do dovegreyreader asks...look out for more about Phil Whitaker soon.
Message for the Tinker If you go to that Dr Whitaker link turn the sound DOWN , the rest of you turn it up full volume and get the fright of your lives. NHS Direct may be able to help if you get chest pains.
Many thanks to Mary Cavanagh for the introduction.
Nor should I omit this GP because he's very local indeed.My copy of Country Doctor: Tales of a Rural GP by Dr Mike Sparrow has gone missing so I will have to get another one.

Go Seth!

Congratulations to local lad Seth Lakeman, a singer and fiddler in the modern folk tradition who never forgets his local Dartmoor heritage, up for four gongs at the Folk on 2 awards this evening.
I posted about this album ages ago and I still love it.

Labour of Love

It's a while since I finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, a book that filtered into my must read list after a strong recommend from Ex Libris in Ohio.
The premise was very me and although this looks as if I'm giving away the entire plot, it's no more than you are told by the blurb though I could have been put off by "the redemptive power of love".Someone needs to find a new, less corny way of saying that.
It's winter 1964 and an orthopaedic surgeon is forced by a blizzard (snow, good start) to deliver his own baby, except unbeknown to everyone it's twins (well he was an orthopod).The second baby is born and he quickly realises the baby has Down's Syndrome.He makes the split-second but life-changing decision to take advantage of his wife's semi-conscious state and asks the nurse assisting to take the baby away to an institution.Said nurse does no such thing but flees to another city and raises the child as her own.
The rest of the book covers the life-long effects on everyone and it's a riveting read as you see the effects of David's well-intentioned but obviously flawed decision on his wife Norah and remaining child Paul.
In tandem you follow Phoebe's life growing up in a home where she is loved and nurtured.
There is only one thing preventing this from becoming a 5* great read for me.
I am not particularly clever at spotting where a book could use some judicious editing. I normally read what I'm given and that's that.I'm the one that devoured every word of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke and would have happily sold a cat if I had thought for one minute there were pages of edited out chapters up for sale on eBay.Likewise I happily romped through a proof copy of  The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox and enjoyed every word, while everyone else said it needed to lose 200 pages and many said we could actually do without all 694.
So what about The Memory Keeper's Daughter?
Well at 401 pages and no double spacing it felt about 100 pages too long.Don't ask me which bits should be cut, that's someone else's job but condensed down I would have been raving about this book. There were times when, even though I was loving it I felt it was ticking along for the sake of it.
Don't let any of that put you off, this is a book well worth the reading.

Eucalyptus Signata

I decided with the background music established as techno-didj for now I might as well read Eucalyptus by Murray Bail and then I could pick Offspringette's brains before she returns to life North of the border.
It's such an absorbing read that I immediately needed pictures of a Eucalyptus tree for here.

I was going to say I'd rifled Offspringette's camera but you'd all have spotted sun too low in sky for Oz.This is right here in our Tamar Valley garden about an hour ago.It was just about the only tree growing when we moved here.It's been climbed and tree-housed for years and still has a perch in the branch for that extra special view.I have no idea what variety it is but having discovered,thanks to Murray Bail, that E.Signata is known as the Scribbly Gum, I think that will do nicely.
Here's the view from our Scribbly Gum.

I had myself a little wander around just to catch anything else you might like to see and found the Chaenomeles looking pert and pretty.

and drifts of wild snowdrops nestling out in the hedgerows in the lane.Perhaps early by my usual benchmark as they've been out for a few weeks now.My mum died on February 17th 1997 and on the morning of her funeral on February 27th I got up very early and picked armfuls from this same cluster and countless others to take with me.

Sunday Confessions

I've had rather an overdose of Hermione Lee purchasing this week and it's all left the plastic in need of some resuscitation.Both expensive hardback books but thankfully nothing to grumble about on the quality of the book itself.I haven't done the rip test on the paper but it looks high grade.
Firstly Body Parts: Essays on Life Writing because after my read of Hermione Lee's introduction to On Being ill by Virginia Woolf I was keen to read more of her writing and too lazy to trot around my shelves and find all her introductions in books various.
I'm especially pleased to find in this volume a piece on Penelope Fitzgerald and another excellent essay entitled Reading in Bed. Much more on all these soon but a great deal to think about around the subject of biography contained therein.
On the subject of which she is here.
The eagerly anticipated Edith Wharton has arrived in the valley and sumptuous barely covers it. She has swept in for her visit with her unruly red hair plus an entourage of 854 pages and that will be my next reading trail once I can ease Thomas Hardy out of the guest room (he spends hours in the bathroom, what's he doing in there for goodness sake?)
I'm mad keen to get back to the US women writers and Edith is the perfect way in. I'm hoping I don't get Whartonia though because I've only just recovered from that nasty bout of hyper- Gaskellitis I caught at Christmas.
My own fault I know, I gorged.I'm pacing myself with the Hardy, just a small daily dose.
April in Paris by Michael Wallner, not yet published but kindly sent by John Murray and this is too tempting to resist for long because I'm in a heightened state of red alert for Blitz/WWII reads. I've had a public failure to connect with Suite Francaise, The Tinker's run off with Bless 'Em All which I did enjoy, so now we'll see how this one fares.
Charlotte Mendelson's When We Were Bad came from Macmillan and I'm now getting very excited about proofs, who needs covers? It's still a blank slate read for me as not for publication until May so no lit.supp. reviews yet.
Lovely.
This is starting to get a bit like not hearing the scores for a football match, fingers in ears...la la la la, Susan Hill was reading it the last I heard so there may be reader opinion over there too.
A copy of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures  by Dr Vincent Lam came from his editor in Canada.This is my spare copy and, when the quest to find a doctor nearby who reads is successful, this will go their way for a diagnosis.Might have to feign QoF points for it or I'll have to pay them
That was not a nice thing to say so I've crossed it out.
Half Cut Publications sent me a book of short stories Residue by Andrew Hook "unflinching emotional close-ups effecting daily life" should that be "affecting"? No matter, whether cause or effect, there's my specialist day-job subject if ever there was one.
Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush has caused whoops of delight and much frantic winding of my Yarn Yard skeins of the month into knittable balls of wool in readiness.This was my BAFAB prize over on Write From Karen, who's already had one very big thank you from me, but here's another one, THANKS KAREN.This book will get a sock post of its own because it is a heel-turner to beat them all.
Finally, and I always seem to have one of these now. A book I felt I of all people should at least have on the shelf as a precursor to perhaps reading it one day, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.

Antipodean Gifts

There's always been an order to these homecomings
In the door, unpack the gifts.
Plenty of time for the next bit, pot of tea, eggs and bacon, open the post, washing machine meltdown.
Priorities, we are the family of the travel gift.
There is no question, if any one of us travels anywhere we bring back something for the others.The kayaker, usually reduced to penury on his travels, now brings back a stone from each river he paddles. It's free, probably would not be a good idea if everyone did it, but we have the rivers of the world in a bowl on the kitchen table to show for it.
Offspringette upheld the gift tradition and I have been delighted with mine.
Any great Aussie read was my parting shot, so I'm very excited to finally get a copy of Eucalyptus by Murray Bail all the way from Books Kinokuniya in Sydney, complete with eco-bag.I've also gained a frog and a lizard for the frivol corner on my desk.
But look, I also have a lovely little Ugg boot for my keys, I am Mrs Ugg Boot around the house but forbidden to wear them outside for fear of Colleen Rooney lookalike remarks. I think Uggs are probably so the year before last that I'm safe now.
Finally a pen from Sydney Olympic Park and the last gift is a sound effect.
The child who could mimic ANYTHING now does a mean impersonation of a kookaburra.
There's been trouble over in the desk frivol corner already, Jane "Crocky Dundee" Austen has her hands full and will that pen be as mighty as a sword?
I'll keep you posted.

The weary traveller returns

Today we're quite excited because Bookhound is waiting at Heathrow with fleecy blankets and woolly socks to receive Offspringette arriving back from the Boardfree Oz challenge.
It's been a touch and go week with flights cancelled and then reinstated because of the BA strike action and then of course I got in a complete muddle about the times. Friday/ Sydney departure so that's er, well is it still Thursday here? Arriving today but is that really yesterday?
There's no doubt new friends have been made who will be missed and plenty of places to stay in Oz now on offer but it's back to reality.To Glasow and no job, but the experience of a lifetime to go on the CV and plenty of time to ponder the next challenge.

The Dessies

I made an unusual discovery a few years ago, there are legions and legions of readers across the world who adore the books of D.E.Stevenson and they are known as The Dessies.They have an online reading list and share their joy in her books and they are everywhere.
Dorothy Emily Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1892 and her father was the first cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson and grandson of the Robert Stevenson who built the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
You won't find many DES books in print and nor will you find many in second-hand bookshops because these have been largely written off as the trashy, lightweight reading of the early to mid part of the 20th century.
That pronouncement will rightly send a shudder through the ranks of the Dessies and I don't share the view either.Perhaps it's a lesson in how we should never write something off in that way because DES has left a legacy of social history in her novels, microcosms of life as it was then and viewed through a lens of her own.
Now I'm feeling generous so I'm going to let you into a secret.
If you find these for sale anywhere it will be in the old 1960's Fontana editions or tatty well thumbed hardbacks (DES books always come well-read) at jumble sales or in those boxes on the pavement outside the charity shops for about 10p each, buy the lot and you just might hit the jackpot.
Take a turn around abebooks and just see what some of her books are fetching today.
Check out Miss Buncle's Book on Amazon.
So now I've let the cat out of the bag.
I found some lurking in the box in our local  hospital waiting room for 10p each to raise funds for equipment.I felt a bit bad (briefly) buying four which probably raised enough money to buy one of those rubber things to go on the end of a crutch when the books could possibly be worth enough to buy a  whole crutch, perhaps even a pair.
Now I've checked out the prices there could be enough copies in boxes in hospital waiting rooms across the land to clear the NHS debt.
I've only read a few and yes agreed, the writing and the subject matter may be not of our time, but they are endearing,enlightening and thereby good relaxing reads all the same and the best by far for me has been Miss Buncle's Book. I can't bring myself to tell you what I had to pay on abebooks for this tatty old Fontana edition.
Times are hard in the village of Silverstream for Miss Buncle so she turns her hand to novel writing and no one is more surprised than she when Disturber of the Peace is accepted for publication under the pseudonym of John Smith and then becomes a runaway best seller.
There is a small problem, Miss Buncle has used her village and its inhabitants, all very thinly disguised, as her material.Soon word spreads around the village and there is uproar as the residents start to recognize themselves and all their foibles and then point the finger at all the wrong suspects.Of course not at Miss Buncle because after all, she's a single woman of very small brain.
I've read a couple more excellent DES books amongst them Amberwell, one of the most heart-wrenching delinations of  neglected children of wealthy parents in the 1930's that you could ever read.
Dorothy Stevenson definitely still worth looking out for.

It's a lot less bovver with a hover

Sorry I couldn't resist that but it's late and I just had to install a new gizmo, if you hover over any links on here now a little preview screen comes up with a picture of the site.
I can't claim to have made this discovery all by myself, Petrona helped, thanks Maxine, I love it!
It all looks far too clever for words and I hope the blog doesn't implode with the stress of it all.

dovegreyreader asks...

This has taken me an age to get sorted but I'm starting a new little series on here called dovegreyreader asks...and am delighted that to kick off the venture my first victim guest will be Niall Williams.
I have a few more in the pipeline and if a certain singer who reads would hurry back from doing his concerts he's on my hit list too.I decided that if you don't ask...
If any writers/ blog commenters/ fellow bloggers/ prime ministers/ the Queen/ pop idols/ Strictly Come Dancing Champions/ Ralph McTell/ people who love books/ people who publish/edit/sell books/ Alan Rickman / George Clooney do stop by here, and would be prepared to be placed in a comfy armchair with a pot of tea to hand, plus scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream nearby as I angle the glow of my very gentle spotlight upon your countenance then I'd be delighted to hear from you,
Don't be shy, do e mail me. We can do gluten-free and low cholesterol if you'd prefer.

Bless 'Em All by Allen Saddler

Succeeding where Suite Francaise failed this time round, Bless 'Em All by Allen Saddler .
There's nothing I enjoy more than a novel about the Blitz so I was delighted to get my hands on this one which is exactly that and published by Peter Owen this very week.
Not only that but one of its central settings is a wholesale book warehouse in London and there are plenty of detailed references to the world and traditions of publishing at this time.
I've always had an unproved (by me) but probably obvious theory( to anyone) that the Blitz must have taken out vast stocks of readily available books by the popular authors of the time and is that why some of them are so difficult to track down now, and so expensive to buy when you do find them?
One writer I'm thinking of in particular is Richmal Crompton.
Richmal Crompton wrote the William books, for which of course she will forever be remembered very fondly. What is less well known is that she wrote about fifty novels for adults and these are very difficult to find now, just Family Roundabout in print.
I know because I have scraped together a collection of about twenty but it's taken forever and you have be very eagle-eyed to snap them up on eBay.Take a look at this random example at abebooks.
More about those next week.They are a feast of good reads and rare but lovely dust-jackets on a few, not a naff suitcase in sight.
In Bless 'Em All Allen Saddler has written a fascinating "social history" novel that as well as being a well-paced enjoyable read also presented some unusual and lesser spotted wartime attitudes, probably prevalent at the time but heavily censored in the post-war propaganda years of British Blitz spirit.The book is peopled by a lovable and sometimes less lovable cast of characters, and not always the stereotypes we might assume.You get a real sense of the desperation and disruption of people's lives and the hardships and constraints of the constant bombing.There were few if any reasons to be cheerful and more often than not people weren't and Allen Saddler certainly tells it very much like it probably was.
I shall pass it onto the Tinker as a primary historical source for his verdict.
I seem to have inadvertently slipped into a WWII reading seam and this may be a good point to resume and finish Carmen Callil's Bad Faith.On the back of my Suite Francaise failure this might lead me  into it from a different slant.
Alongside Bless 'Em All I have been constantly dipping into several other companion reads, more on those soon too but this is definitely a book to add to your WWII shelf if you have one.