dovegreyreader scribbles

...seven swans-a swimming

We went to Exeter yesterday and saw far more than seven swans-a swimming, more like seventy, all very agitated, and with the tidal River Exe rather oddly overflowing its banks we had to jump and paddle right through them to get back to the car, none of this helped by a well-meaning person feeding them into a state of mass swan-upping madness and wing-flapping hysteria with added swooping-plopping seagull input. The Queen is Seigneur of the Swans on the River Thames, I'm not sure who has the privilege in Exeter but they wouldn't have wanted them yesterday.
Someone will have to help me out and find a link between swans and the moon somehow, because I can't and Rick Stroud doesn't seem to have one either, but is has to be The Book of the Moon today and you'll see why in a minute.
But first, Happy New Year's Eve.
I'm sure you're all in a terrible rush stuffing mushrooms and making the canapes but perhaps have a break, a calming moment, take five and have a listen.
There was a beautiful song I loved years ago and I was extremely happy to rediscover it for today, Once in a Very Blue Moon by Irish singer Mary Black
and what an incredibly soothing singer she is on the day when that rare event occurs, a blue moon.
Thanks to Rick Stroud I now know there are two meanings to the phrase 'once in a blue moon'.
The newer meaning refers to a full moon occurring twice in the same calendar month which happens about once every two and a half years, apparently there were about forty in the twentieth century and tonight there will be one of those.
This a picture from earlier in the year and I Want to See the Moon by Louis Baum, but I love it so any chance to use it again.

The older meaning refers to the fourth full moon in a quarter year that normally has three...are you keeping up...and we had one of those back in February 2008.
We'll have another one of these new versions on 31 August 2012.
Tides will be unusually high in the season of a blue moon which explains why the River Exe, was flapping over its sides yesterday.
Blue moons can also be caused by atmospheric conditions, Krakatoa's big event in 1883 caused the moon to appear blue for the next three years.
So all this and more I have discovered from Rick Stroud's fascinating The Book of the Moon and truly, you will never be stuck for something to read with this one to hand. The most incredible miscellany of all things lunar, a compelling combination of scholarly and readably entertaining and I'm amazed at how often I have picked it up to check something out since I've had my copy.
Lunar farming could be the way forward. The evidence for biodynamics is gathering out there thanks to people like Professor Frank Brown who put in over a million potato hours to discover that their metabolic rate rose and fell with the waxing and waning of the moon.
And now I have to find out which phase of the moon I was born under; gibbous (bigger than a semi-circle, smaller than a circle...at last I know that too) and I'd be a helper or a carer, waning gibbous and I'm a revolutionary tyrant in the making, balsamic and I'm going to be dreamy and contemplative.
Incidentally I'd never heard of a balsamic moon but it's the last phase before a new moon.
Now apparently care must be taken when releasing dreams under a blue moon as their potency will be very strong so perhaps that bodes well for the lucky winners of a copy of this book in today's New Year's Eve prize draw, but you'll have to concentrate...and don't ask how we've got this organised but somehow we have.
Three copies (from UK publisher Doubleday) can go to winners in the UK and Europe and three can go to winners in the US (from US publisher Walker) so names in comments and perhaps the US entries could mention they are in the US and somehow Rocky the Lunarcat will sort it this end.
And while you work all that out and before you head back to the canapes, here's a perfect little video produced by Rick Stroud who is also a film director.

...six geese-a laying

Six geese-a laying?
Easy, there's only one book for today.

Names in comments for one of four prize draw copies of The Snow Geese by William Fiennes if you missed out last time, and still happen to be one of the four people in the world who haven't read William's amazing account of his journey following the migrating snow geese across the United States and up to their summer breeding grounds on Baffin Island in Canada.

'The Snow Geese settled into a gentle and rhythmical octet of storytelling , eight alternating parts, journey – sojourn and finally a homecoming for both the geese as they arrive in Foxe Land and for Will as he contemplates what home means

‘Not all returns are retreats, and if I wanted to go home, it wasn’t a dream of escape, it was because love can’t exist without the pain of separation, and so much of what I loved was there.’

five go-o-ld rings and the winners are...

Copies of The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig will be on their way to today's winners, send addresses to dovegreyreader at gmail dotcom

Congratulations to

11 Iris

33 Helen

56 Rob Spence

...five go-o-ld rings

It had to be a gem of a book today and I hope you think it is.
Discovering The World of Yesterday, the autobiography of Stefan Zweig this year has been to add one of those 'gold dust' books to my shelves.
It's Stefan Zweig's eyes that I am always drawn to whenever I see a picture of him; few have eyes that seem to show sorrow and joy at the same time but his do.
A man of great self-effacing humility coupled with a vast and unerringly perceptive and sensitive vision of the world around him. Casting that eye as he does over the early part of the twentieth century and offering his view of a world in turmoil makes for incredibly moving and enlightening reading.
I've read half in the old University of Nebraska edition and am reading the second half in the new Anthea Bell translation published by Pushkin Press and I'm not rushing this one, there is too much to miss and I don't want to miss a single detail.


My thanks to Pushkin for three prize draw copies of The World of Yesterday wrapped in this beautiful cover (and I agreed to add the Arts Council funding logo at their request)  and thanks too for news of more Stefan Zweig to come in 2010.
Fear will be published in January and I'll be first in the queue once the ink's dry.

'Finding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother tedious after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover’s former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear.
Written in the spring of 1913, and first published in 1920, this novella is one of Stefan Zweig’s most powerful studies of a woman’s mind and emotions.'

Names in comments for the chance to win a copy of The World of Yesterday and read up the early twentieth century in a way you may never have quite read it before.

four calling birds and the winners are...

First I bring you news of a fiendish Boxing Day literary quiz with prizes over on normblog...we're very exercised over the questions here and the game is on.

Congratulations to today's winners, addresses to me at dovegreyreader at gmail dotcom and a delightful copy of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats will be heading your way soonest.

6 Lesley

8 juliette 8367

13 Mary McCartney

24 Sarie

...four calling birds

Right listen up everyone, Rocky here and if there are four calling birds out there I have my eye on them for dinner.

She's asleep on the mat in front of the Aga the sofa so I've taken the liberty of getting on here with my very own prize draw.
I mean it's all very well all these high falutin' posh books but really I know there's only one book you'd all really like to win and it's my favourite and the pictures aren't bad either.

Old Possum of course wasn't really paying attention and seems to have missed a trick with me but it's good to see me old mucker Mr Mistoffelees, or Mr Lotsoffleas as we used to call him when his tail was turned.
Then there's Old Macavity.
Do me a favour, the bafflement of Scotland Yard?
I don't think so, of course he wasn't there, never set foot outside the house, it was all a very clever attention-seeking ruse that the rest of just wouldn't stoop to.
I'm a bit sick of him actually, all this 'there's no one like Macavity' rubbish gets right up my snout.
Mongojerrie and Rumpelteazer did their best poor things, house-wreckers the pair of them but I see no point in going to that much bother to annoy the minders, I find one lick of the butter dish drives them wild enough here, minimal effort involved in that and I can get back to my mat (huh...£1 in Tesco's...that's what they think of me)
I of course can't possibly tell you my own 'deep and inscrutable name' we cats keep that to ourselves but I can tell you I was called Rocky after my predecessor Corky, they just swapped the letters round (is that lacking in imagination or what) and I do have a bit of a flat boxer's nose which they laughed at but I think it looks distinguished. I just have to bear it all with grace and dignity.
 
Anyway, look me old chums, names in comments and thanks to Faber (and Faber) you could be the lucky winner of one of four prize draw copies of this amazing book and trust me I'm going to take advantage again and I'll be back with an associated prize draw before Twelfth Night that you will not want to miss.
Meanwhile at least Old Possum knew something about me

I know a cat who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce

'three French hens' and the winners are...

Four copies of Shouting at the Telly will be winging their way to

 8 Debbie Smith

12 Wendy

16 Anna Boland

25 Marion Webb

Addresses to  dovegreyreader at gmail dotcom and prepare to laugh.

...three French Hens

Are you fed up with the TV yet?
We've had to search around for good things but couldn't miss The Royle Family, everyone singing inanely in the car, the satnav dishing out the instructions and Sue Johnson as Barb pipes up from the back seat,
'Isn't it amazing how that woman knows where we're going when we only decided for ourselves on Friday.'
Priceless and unbeatable every year.
Today's book seems about right for the moment, the hysterically funny Shouting at the Telly Rants and Raves about TV by writers, comedians and viewers edited by John Grindrod, and this one is a wry trip down memory lane as well as a look at what's out there today.
Remember Howards' Way?
'...people in pastel clothes having extra-marital affairs and debating the pros and cons of fibreglass boat design. Whole scenes could consist of someone giving a flipchart presentation about tank-testing a lightweight catamaran.'
I could hum the theme tune if someone could give me the first three notes.
Everything gets an airing from Dallas...Lucy, the Poison Dwarf, 'even her fiance avoided her, preferring to stay in a coma' to Corrie and Deirdre's glasses...'the Hubble Space Telescopes' plus lots of hilarious takes on programmes you will have forgotten about but will quickly remember.
The only connection I can make to the theme of French Hens is a reference to The Good Life  and Tom and Barbara's chickens and yes I had a pair of dungarees the same as Felicity Kendall's too. Did you see the now annual repeat of the Christmas special with the hand-knitted jumpers the size of billowing spinnakers for Margo and Jerry and they'd bought Tom and Barbara a cow.
My thanks to Faber (and Faber) for four copies of Shouting at the Telly all needing good homes.
Names in comments.

Christmas Eve, 'partridge' & 'turtle dove' winners are...

Rocky here me old muckers, had a bit of a subdued Christmas Day after a contretemps out in the fields with a beast of unknown origin which got a grip on the old neck area. Milked it for all it was worth and spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa (yes really) next to the Tinker who seemed to be offering the most sympathy, as everyone drifted in and out of consciousness (Glasgow Coma Scale 3) watching a film about a boy who bought a goat thinking it was a unicorn...huh, they saw him coming.
Christmas Eve winners for an 'either / or'  Bloomsbury Classic

1 Margaret

2 Sue J

21 Ann P (whose prize draw planets are aligned right now, well done Anne!)

26 Claire

35 Margaret 46

50 Fran

...Partridge in a Pear Tree and the lucky winners of a copy of The Music Room...and I can hardly believe that Michael Daniels' Psychic Number Generator has looked favourably on someone in great need, but clearly fortune favours the heat-deprived as well as wounded cats...

8 Rhys (yes, really Rhys... no mate, I couldn't believe it either)

32 Helen Poole

42 Lynn M

47 Sarah

...Two turtle doves and the winners of today's Mystery Trollope are

22 Janis Goodman

25 Victoria

31 Lesley-Ann

Check it's really you against comment numbers in the original post and if you can e mail addresses to herself at dovegreyreader at gmail dotcom with the book title in the subject line or similar and I'll do the rest.

....two turtle doves

Boxing Day, my favourite day of Christmas, after all the mayhem a day to rest and read and eat turkey sandwiches and force down another Quality Street, though all the good ones are going and soon we'll be left with the golden toffees which I don't touch fearing dental expenditure.
Despite my best efforts some of these Twelve Day links to the prizes on offer are a bit tenuous (if they are there at all) and I'm wondering if you'll see one here?
Hmm, two turtle doves.
Now you may recall the Reader Magazine send me a mystery classic every three months to read and write about for their Readers Connect feature and this time I was sent a great big fat lesser known Trollope.
I didn't name it and I'm going to keep it a mystery for now, but I am reading it and now I'm in, and past the scene setting and the people introductions, the story is shaping up into a wonderful read so it won't be leaving my side today and I hope for good progress. But why read in solitude?
It would be good to have some company so if anyone fancies the challenge of a mystery Trollope too, and be assured you'll know when it arrives through the letterbox, names in comments and the Oxford World Classics edition of ???? will be winging its way to three lucky winners.

...a partridge in a pear tree

Happy Christmas again everyone, and if anyone's out there and reading this we're here, raising a glass to you all and wishing you a peaceful and happy day with festive greetings from Devon.
The first of the daily Twelve Days of Christmas prize draws has to happen today or we'll be getting our partridges mixed in with our hens and that would never do, and the best book I could think of to set us off on our merry way had to be one of my favourite reads of the year.
Last year the Queen's Christmas broadcast came from her Music Room but I've been to a very different one this year, so for those of you who missed out last time four copies of The Music Room by William Fiennes,

'William Fiennes is the master of the poetic and lyrical memory, there is a gentle melody to this book which not only recalls his incredible childhood growing up in the inherited family seat which happened to be a castle, but also growing up with his older brother (by eleven  years) Richard. There is a brother who has died in a tragic but largely unspoken accident before William's birth and also some twins inbetween but this is predominantly about Richard who suffers from a severe form of epilepsy....
The castle provides a magical backdrop to an enviable childhood; water-filled, pike-laden moat, gatehouse, turrets and battlements, medieval chapel and acres of unlived-in rooms and attics stuffed full with not the normal stuff of lofts. Forget the Christmas decorations and Fisher-Price toys you can't bear to part with, William wanders around trying on old armour and rattling sabres...

Names in comments and Rocky will do his best once he's recovered from his bowl of turkey bits.

Christmas Eve in Devon

Christmas Eve, this was the sky from the sitting room window a few days ago, the moon looking beautiful, and twinkling off to the left, am I right, is it Jupiter at the moment...Dark Puss are you there, you usually confirm this sort of thing for us.
Carols have been trilling away in my ears all week and much as I love the traditional ones I also love those of John Rutter, so here's Angels' Carol to listen to as you read if you want.

We are doing very quiet Christmas chez dovegreyreader and sending festive greetings of the season to every one of you.
Having been iced in all week, only the Land Rover gets us to the end of the lane and we had to tow Jim the Postie out yesterday, which all seemed like good enough reasons to leave traveling any distance to the men of the house and they've valiantly battled out with lists and returned laden.
Five of us will gather here, Bookhound and I and the Tinker, Offspringette arrives today doubtless ready to sleep for a week after her first term of teaching practice, the Gamekeeper will be on puppy duty and doubtless we'll have a webcam conversation with the Kayaker sitting on a beach somewhere in New Zealand.
We've had the usual tree light failure only resolved by the Gamekeeper persuading ( I don't think he was armed) a local shopkeeper to sell him the lights out of his shop window for £2 yesterday, the last set in town. We have the decorated bough in the kitchen and everything looks about right, plus we'll do the usual homemade crackers with the same things in them from the last ten years.
With apologies to all vegetarians, the turkey and its twenty friends had lived a happy and contented free range life down on the farm until the Gamekeeper turned up on Tuesday and sang them all some carols, after which the end probably couldn't come soon enough and now ours is in the fridge.
I've spent some lazy fireside afternoons this week surrounded by books (there's a surprise) reading the first twenty pages or so of several and gathering in a good pile of reading to see me through, but how surprising the choices have been.

Any search for traditional Dickensian nostalgia or 'nothing but happiness' books has been thwarted by a glut of page-turning contemporary reading; a few books not out until January but already I think The Convent by Panos Karnezis will be a star read for 2010.
I won The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman along with two more books in KevinfromCanada's Booker contest and am enjoying that as much as I knew I would.
M.R.Hall's The Coroner and  The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale, those precious commodities, real and unpretentious novels, good well-written stories, unputdownables.
Another title which I think may be set to do huge things in 2010 because I hear it's selling out fast, Important Artefacts and... by Leanne Shapton; the breakdown of a relationship delineated via the photographs and descriptions of the couple's possessions in a saleroom catalogue. It requires a subtle sort of two, almost three dimensional concentration which I hope to discover in the next few days.
I have been looking forward to Dogboy by Eva Hornung since I first heard news of it back in September and as my copy arrived yesterday I've moved it straight onto the pile... the tale of a modern-day Mowgli in post-perestroika Russia and apparently it'll make me cry...we'll see.
Plus have no fear, I do have something typically Christmassy and nineteenth century, the Mystery Trollope for the Reader Magazine, so that's me sorted for a few days and I plan more.
How about you?
I'd love to know what you'll be reading and watching... could someone look at the listings and tell me what not to miss?
I think most blogs shut down down for Christmas on the basis that it's almost a crime to sit on a computer when you're supposed to be playing Monopoly and throwing the Rubik's cube across the room for the umpteenth Christmas in succession, but I'm mindful that not everyone finds Christmas a happy, jolly sociable time and plenty of people spend it on their own too.
I'm also 'on duty' for my online HV day job over Christmas and New Year, perhaps the most difficult and demanding time of year for those who have been bereaved or had a stillbirth, so I'll be here.
Do stop by for a virtual mince pie if you feel so inclined, hopefully we'll meet up in comments over the next Twelve Days of Christmas for the daily prize draws and there are some great ones coming up (and entries will close on each of those quite quickly or I'll get muddled and Rocky will get lost) plus the occasional light post...things like The Day Rusty Met Rocky.
Meanwhile, we might as well start as we mean to go on etc, scroll on for Christmas Eve gifts.

Christmas Eve prize draw

Just to get us in the swing of the Twelve Days of prize draws to come, names in comments today to win a copy of either A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz or Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D.E.Stevenson from the Bloomsbury Classics range, three copies of each so six winners.

Rocky is uncertain...

...about the arrival Chez dovegreyreader of nine-week old Rusty, the Gamekeeper's gundog puppy.

Rusty was in great need of a bath and will be staying indoors in the warm for a few weeks until he's been to the vet for his injections and has plumped up a bit to cope with kennel life.

Rocky was spooked by the V.E.T. word and is definitely not impressed with news of an indoor dog...

Mrs Scrooge, and the winners are...

Congratulations here are the lucky winners, and copies of Mrs Scrooge by Carol Ann Duffy will be winging their way to

4  Nancy J

17 Mieke

45 Lynn Brown

47 Jenny Lee

57 Jenny Ryan

62 Mirren

83 TJ

86 Sue A

Check it's really you next to your comment in the original post here then e mail your address to me at dovegreyreader at gmail dot com, and if you could mention the title in the subject line that would help.
PS - Lined through means I've heard from you...thank you

On letters....

"The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives.  When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for."  ~Jane Austen

Oh Jane, if only you  had plighted your troth to Harris Bigg Wither he would have been as devoted as Bookhound, jumped in the Phaeton Fiesta and taken them to the post office for you.
This last week I've hardly picked up a book but I have hand-written fifteen (yes really, hand-written...fifteen) letters in fountain pen.
Information for the pen and ink addicts amongst us....Lamy Safari with Lamy blue black ink, changing to the Pluminix pen with J.Herbin's Violette Pensee to ring the changes.
All written on beautifully silken smooth Clairefontaine notepaper and that's for the notepaper fanatics.
Unlike Jane's, my letters seem unlikely to make it between the covers of a Folio Society edition, but I am still loving this utterly exquisite book and I've dipped into it frequently through the year, except I have to keep closing it to stroke the cover. Like so many Folio Society editions it feels like a crime (to me) to keep them on a shelf in a slip case, I'm afraid this one's out and flaunting its beauty constantly.

Mine have been letters to people I could just as easily have emailed but somehow the leisure and pleasure of sitting at the kitchen table with the radio on and thinking about each person I was writing to, even though just for that short time, seemed to justify and confirm the importance of something that I shamefully haven't made the time to do properly for several years. I should have written more but fifteen felt like plenty and I have also limited myself to two sides of A5 which is where I used to go wrong years ago, the first person got six sides, the next five and a half, descending to complete exhaustion and a 'hope you are all well' in the rest of the cards.
I do love to receive any news from friends whether it be the newsletter or a few lines in a card, love to hear how all the children are doing, good on them for their firsts at University, Olympic medals, world records, being the first to set foot on Mars and other successes in life, but I've decided to aim for the hand-written from now on.
I hadn't realised how good it feels when you can make that letter-writing time available, going out to work in previous years has meant I have rarely had the time to do it properly.
Time to just sit and think about friends.
People I may have given little thought to through the year but somehow I don't want to loose touch, so I've commented on news we may have already received from them, sympathised over increasing infirmities, consoled over broken marriages (both partners...I hate the trickiness of the moment when you are expected to take sides) congratulated and condoled over matches, hatches and dispatches and generally shared our news.
The cards are done, the shopping is sort of done, this weekend was spent blinging up the house and putting up our decorations and each day brings more cards and more lovely news from friends.
I love Christmas for its difference to the everyday, that mid-winter moment to take stock and replenish and the final word on letters to dear Jane Austen and Jane Fairfax in Emma, though times might have changed just a little...

"The post-office is a wonderful establishment!
The regularity and despatch of it!
If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!
So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears!
So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong -- and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost!
And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder."

Imran Ahmad's Christmas update and prize draw copies of Unimagined

That's it, the sun sinks slowly in the west and the shortest day has been and gone, tomorrow we get 7h 57m 27secs.
Those of you who have been visiting here for a while may recall Imran Ahmad's review of his year last Christmas following the publication of his book Unimagined.
Imran has had another very eventful year including a massive, self-funded speaking tour of the United States and one or two other places too,

"...I do a speaking tour of Java, and it’s an absolutely wonderful experience.  The Indonesians are a gentle, humorous, good-natured people (even though I generally avoid sweeping generalisations).  After one talk, at a university, the Professor brings forward an envelope and something in a cylindrical wrapping, saying that they have something for me.  I’m going to get an honorary doctorate!  At last!  I failed to get a PhD in Chemistry the usual way (by doing the hard work). They turn out to be a Certificate of Appreciation and a mini-umbrella.  Well, that umbrella will be useful in England, because a doctorate would not keep the rain off me. I can always frame the Certificate of Appreciation."

and you can read more about it here.
Imran has also very kindly offered two draw prizes, a copy of Unimagined and also a copy of the audio version of his book for which he auditioned to play himself reading about himself and was thrilled to get the part.
Names in comments and Rocky will oblige. 

The Shortest Day.

We might have peaked a few hours ahead of ourselves with this picture of sunset over the Shortest Day Woods, but just in case today is one of those rare days of late when we don't have a glorious sunset here's Thursday's to be going on with.
From today onwards the sun will now set further and further this way >>>>> slowly making its way back around the horizon as we watch and wait patiently for the Longest Day.

It all makes me want to sit and contemplate were it not for the fact I'm working at the day job through Christmas and New Year, catching up with friends and still have Christmas shopping to do, suddenly there doesn't seem to be much free time this week.
But in looking back over a year of very happy reading there are quite a few books that have been making me stop and do a great deal of thinking. I've dipped in and out of them, set them aside for a while, picked them up again and kept them nearby. Roger Deakin's Notes From Walnut Tree Farm has been a constant companion and John McGahern has been a very close second with Love of the World, a collection of his essays.
I'm rarely if ever stuck for something to read but sometimes I really want to stop as one trail fades out and I need to find another, and a book of good essays can be a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration; books that will light a blue touch paper and Love of the World has certainly done that with its introduction by our Ulyssesian friend, Declan Kiberd.
I'm interested to note how a really good introduction can draw me in so perfectly and completely into a book, set me up for what may be to come without telling me too much or displacing those fledgling ideas of my own about what may be ahead. It's a fine balance and I give up on plenty of introductions; those that are giving it all away or planting too many definitive assessments before I've had a chance to formulate some thoughts of my own. Declan Kiberd treads the line quite perfectly with a very moving tribute to a great writer, giving his own impressions of this man of many talents and here describing John McGahern's strengths as a book reviewer,

'He held that it was the duty of a reviewer to report as exactly as possible the very process of moving from page to page through a narrative: how he felt, what thoughts occurred, the final feelings on closing the volume. Precisely because his reviews were occasional, there is an elegiac quality, a sense of sadness in shutting not just the book but a window on a world which may never be seen again.'

John McGahern sometimes found the act of reading incommunicable and, in my own small way, I know that feeling too. Sometimes I sit here and spend a very long time and many drafts later trying to translate the emotional experience of reading a book into the right words.

'If happiness was something to be felt but never fully described as it was being experienced, the same was also true of reading. Its risky pleasures can be hinted at, anticipated or reconstructed as an experience, but never with the full cohesion of the elements that made those moments.'

I truly understand that, and I expect so many of you do too.

Then this, still in the introduction but I've read it countless times it's so full of insight,

'He wished to slow down the speed of our reading, so that people might learn again how to identify and savour the everyday...intrepid, self-admiring intellectuals lusted after the exceptional, castigating the everyday as banal and routine: but McGahern rendered the dignity of ordinary people's lives.'

You see, how can you not want to read more John McGahern ?
Appropriately I have That They May Face the Rising Sun at the ready.

Once I'd read this

'...he feared a loss of the old courtesies in a world of push, rush and bustle.'

I was off and away with Love of the World and much more here about this book and John McGahern's writing in 2010 I feel sure.

Daylight here in the south west will be a mere 7h 57mins 25secs today, come back at sunset which will be at 16.11 GMT for a prize draw from a good friend of us here at dovegreyreader scribbles.

Rocky's Snowy Day

 



...that'll be a 'no' then.

Mrs Scrooge by Carol Ann Duffy

Stuck for a stocking filler?
Well this might be the answer, a little 5" square edition of Mrs Scrooge - A Christmas Tale by Carol Ann Duffy, illustrated by the inestimable Posy Simmonds and published by Picador. What's not to adore about this little book which having read several times over and registering something new each time, have now offered a permanent spot on the Christmas shelf.
I'm really looking forward to taking dovegreyreader scribbles along to the inaugural Wenlock Poetry Festival in 2010 and my thanks to Anna at Wenlock Books for the invitation. Carol Ann Duffy is one of the patrons and I'm very excited about hearing her speak and read there.
The World's Wife has been on my Essential Book shelf for a very long time.
A whole festival dedicated to poetry will be a first for me, I'll be reading a lot more poetry in preparation and you'll be hearing more about it here in the coming months and of course during the event in April.
In the words of Carol Ann Duffy,

"The Wenlock Poetry Festival will appeal to two audiences; both committed readers of contemporary poetry and the 'open-mindedly curious' - those willing to allow their natural reservations about poetry to be overcome."

But back to Mrs Scrooge, old and alone but for Catchit the cat, the last sitting tenants in a block of boarded-up flats,

and living a curiously twenty-first century life of protest about everything from the annual Christmas turkey massacre to 'No Runway 3', to saving the planet, and very unpopular she seems to be for it. Whilst self-centred Scrooge may have ignored the ills of the world, Mrs Scrooge is his complete antithesis, every injustice requires her input and it is encouragement and solace that the Ghosts of Past and Present deliver to her on Christmas Eve, whilst the Ghost of Christmas Future has something very uplifting to reveal.
Posy Simmonds' illustrations are quite perfect for their detail and emotion.


When I read this... the Ghost of Christmas Past telling Mrs Scrooge

'This is the past, it cannot come again...it is the gift your soul gives to your heart.'

and this when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes her to the Arctic Circle

'Tears like opals,
                        fell then froze,
on Mrs Scrooge's cheeks as she looked.
She stood upon a continent of ice
which sparkled between sea and sky,
                                                      endless and dazzling,
as though the world kept all its treasure there;
                                                                  a scale
which balanced poetry and prayer.'

Well reading that I know why Carol Ann Duffy is the Poet Laureate and why I have loved this little book more than I can quite say and why you need to scroll down a bit further for gifts.

Prize draw copies of Mrs Scrooge by Carol Ann Duffy

.... and why I have asked for eight prize draw copies of Mrs Scrooge by Carol Ann Duffy for you, because I'd love you to read it too.
Names in comments on this post and Rocky and Catchit will choose the winners this weekend before they fall out and have one of those dreadful 3am yowling encounters 'neath the bedroom window.

and the winners are...

Just for the record Rocky is being assisted by this number chooser for the festive season and the Unique Numbers setting suggested for prize draws.
I've been very busy this week finalizing arrangements on all the book giveaways so lots to look forward too and Rocky's got the sleigh in good order.
Congratulations to the four lucky winners of Eighty Years of Book Cover Design from Faber

8 Janice
47 Ruth M
49 Anne P
70 Penny

and three lucky winners of a copy of A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark

9 Kylie Purdie
56 teadragon
59 jillbe

Also still waiting to hear from Juxtabook and Richard Sheehan who were winners here

Check to be sure it's really you on the original link and addresses to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com and if you could put the book title in the subject line that would be a huge help to Rocky's clerical support (me)

He's busy resting up as you can see.

The Devon archive...

Last call for entries for yesterday's prize draw for copies of Eighty Years of Book Cover Design , we'll close comments this evening and post winners' names later and likewise for A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark.
I also left Faber with permission to use some of the pictures of Ted Hughes from the archive on here.
I'm not sure how clear I have made my devotion to Ted & Sylvia down the years (!) and nor am I sure whether I've ever led you over to this corner of the Book Room before, but it is quite special so lest there be any doubt about my HughesPlatholatory here's a sneak peek...I've got it bad haven't I?

My own little archive, just about everything written by or about them can be found on these three shelves and sometimes...this is how sad it is... the same book in different editions and a few signed ones too.
I haven't added to it for some time but that's how obssessed  diligent a collector I have been, because there was a time when I wanted and needed to know it all. Perhaps the best buy was the chance discovery of an entire collection of less available books about Sylvia Plath lodged with a US online bookseller by a university professor there.
That was a bit of a boat-pushing-out day, who'd have thought they'd end up in Devon.
So some pictures of Ted Hughes that I'm sure you may have seen elsewhere; please forgive the self-indulgence, I just want them on dovegreyreader for posterity and I expect you'll spot some other familiar faces too.

An unusually posed and suave Ted Hughes.

Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes on the right, looking more like Ted.

Ted Hughes with T.S.Eliot and W.H.Auden

and this one needs no words...

Faber and Faber

One of the many treats on my trip to London was the chance to set foot in a couple of publishers' archives. More of my mesmeric staring at the green and very pleasant land that was the shelves at Virago soon (yes really, ALL the modern classics) and my sincere thanks to Faber for the chance to peek into their new premises alongside the British Museum (and incidentally overlooking my lovely old nurse's home in Bedford Place.) It was lovely to meet Gemma who so kindly sorts out Faber reading copies for me and prize draw copies for you and to meet all the office staff upstairs, along with archivist Robert downstairs working in amongst all that history.
Faber also have an online archive which you can access here
I think if you've been reading for any number of years you know Faber covers by a sort of invisible osmotic process, they seem to me a prime example of marketing that filters in and stays put without you really noticing and that's all been enhanced this year by two things.

Firstly the very luscious 2009 Faber diary which has been our kitchen diary for the year.
That sounds like a bit of a sad demise but for many years the kitchen diary and its holy place on the worktop has been one of the most important of books in the house and even with fewer of us living here we still all need and use it.
I have been amazed through the year as I turn the page to a new week to find a book jacket I know and a week's thinking about it has then ensued every time I go near it write things like 'hair 11am' or 'septic tank emptying 3pm' or 'airport 4am'...that last is the Kayaker and thankfully involves Bookhound not me, as does the septic tank appointment, I'll stick with hair.
But I have also been subliminally absorbing the covers in the Book Room where I have been test running Faber and Faber Eighty Years of Book Design by Joseph Connolly. Now it wasn't until I took this picture that I realised how clever the actual cover design of this book is, you somehow don't see it when it's there in front of you and nor does the picture give the idea that the book measures 11 inches x 8 and a half inches (sorry no metric here).

It has sat on the side all year and every day, as I walk in the room, I turn over to the next page so it's been a year full of Faber surprises in the Book Room as well as the kitchen.

Joseph Connolly likens his time spent researching the book in the Faber archive as akin to a 'kid in a sweetshop' and having been there I'd upgrade that to 'chocolate factory with vat loads of luxury centres'  plus I stood in front of the picture of Ted Hughes on the wall and worshiped and touched (yes touched) the copy of Birthday Letters on the shelf. I don't care what anyone says about Ted, everyone rushes to add all the bad bits but how on earth can there be any doubt that he deserves to be commemorated in Poet's Corner?
We shouldn't even need a debate about that.

So along the way, book-room testing my tome I've learned little snippets too.
There never was another Faber. Just the one, Geoffrey who pursued a career in publishing after his pregnant wife Enid discovered that living in close proximity to the family brewing business was 'too disgusting for words'.
Along came T.S.Eliot to help. He stayed for the next forty years and personally I think he made quite a useful contribution...

 

Prize draw copies of Eighty Years of Book Cover Design

Names in comments for the chance to win one of four copies of Eighty Years of Book Cover Design by Joseph O'Connor and treat yourself to a Faber year of your own.
Perhaps clear out a space in the fireplace, you'll know when he thuds down the chimney with this one.

Uselysses

I've put off writing this until the very last minute.
It's 8pm on Tuesday 15th December, I've even watched One Man and His Dog and been immersed in Border Collie outruns and lifts and shedding, all to put off the inevitable a fraction longer, but it's no good, I'm here Team Ulysses, solidarnosc and all that as we gather at Camp 'I'm Losing Count' and hands up any one who found this month's reading easy.
Right, you all go off to the soup tent where I'm sure Joan has this month's thermos ready (thank you Joan) and the rest of us will just huddle around here and offer words of solace to each other, some words of comfort to drip gently and soothingly into the ears of anyone else who might have struggled this month and we'll join you in a minute for some enlightenment.
Or was it just me thinking what on earth happened there?
Shall us strugglers all agree... what's the point in fighting it, everyone says that Oxen of the Sun is the most challenging chapter in the book, the one foreshadowing James Joyce's technique that he would fully develop in Finnegan's Wake, the chapter most likely to have the unsuspecting reader falling flat on their face.
How mean is that just when we'd passed the halfway mark and were thinking we'd reached the top of the mountain and could take in the view, hug each other, send messages home and plant a flag or two to celebrate the conquest before embarking on a slow and leisurely descent down the other side.
The confusion ambushed me after that false sense of security I had wrapped around myself after Nausicaa. Surely the most readable and normal of chapters to date, it hardly felt like the same author, I could have been reading a 'normal' book. In fact I'd strangely really enjoyed Nausicaa, fascinating for the content which was the cause of much of the book's celebrity banning and I had turned to Frank Delaney's James Joyce's Odyssey, A Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses in the sweet hope that he might help me through Oxen of the Sun when I came across this with reference to Nausicaa.

'Nausicaa had Ulysses banned in the United States. When it was published in the Little Review, a civil servant responsible for protecting New York from Vice brought the publishers to court. Intellectual and artistic defences, the thoughts of Freud and Cubists, were produced to confound the allegations of obscenity. But finally it was Gerty MacDowell showing Mr Bloom her drawers that lost the publisher's case.'

At least we now know what all the fuss has been about all these years and of course nothing like as shocking as I had imagined, in Joyce's own words Nausicaa written in a

'namby-pamby jammy marmalady drawersy style with effects of incense, mariolatory, mas**rbations, stewed cockles, painter's palette, chit-chat, circumlocution, etc etc.'

and I only substitute the ** because you have no idea how much spam a word like that attracts on a blog, I'd be out there in comments 24/7 on fil*h watch.
Then onto Oxen of the Sun and I felt myself floating above the page, it was a bit of an out of body reading experience if I'm honest, I was looking down on these words and drifting my way through it. I fell asleep three times and floated along to the end having surrendered long before. This chapter took James Joyce a thousand hours to write and I feel bad for not having done it justice, designed in those 'nine segments to correspond with pregnancy' which I only know thanks to Frank Delaney, who also adds that James Joyce kept a diagram in front of him as he wrote crayoning in the monthly growth of an embryo.
Only the footnotes and and Frank, along with Declan Kiberd, have given me the first clue about what went on and I guess it had to happen eventually and all quite a shame because this was the maternity hospital scene which would have appealed if only I could have stayed awake.
Definitely one for the audio book I think, I expect the words have a poetic quality that I failed to see hovering above the page as I was.
We can also take comfort (or not) from the fact that George Bernard Shaw never finished Ulysses (and we most certainly will...won't we?)  but he was very struck by this chapter, believing it to convey

'an accurate picture of the foul-mouthed young Dublin rakes, the notorious medicals, that he wanted to form clubs of them for the sole purpose of making them read Ulysses, dare they continue to live, he opined, without reforming profoundly and extensively.'

and my thanks again to Frank Delaney for that insight, thanks Frank you really have saved my bacon this month, but I can't wait to hear your thoughts and I'm hoping you can shed some more light on it all.
Are you hanging on in there?
It really is downhill all the way to Bloomsday now.

On words...

I've always thought a Thesaurus is an amazingly useful book and at one time collected any I found but sad to confess I have become much lazier about getting the Roget's (bought because it had nice rounded page corners and I liked them) off the shelf these days and often click to an online version.
It can be the easiest mistake to slip into, that regular use of the same word when writing a blog and I'm always looking for different ways to say 'brilliant' or ' treat' or ' interesting' if only to make life and language more varied this end, but really I have a feeling you all spot those regular repetitions too.
So when I was offered a copy of the new two volume Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary from Oxford University Press it seemed folly to say no because it's likely to be the first and last time I place quite such a valuable book on my shelves, but more importantly because its value is immeasurable in other ways.
This might not be a book you ask for in your Christmas stocking either unless you are a shoe size 30 or above; the stocking just won't cope and the bed post is likely to snap or you'll pull the mantelpiece off the wall because they are stunningly heavy, but good to know (or hope) that they might be in your local library.
Once you get past the idea that a book is an object of such beauty that it surely has to be too precious to lay a finger on, there's something awe-inspiring about holding in your hand ... well metaphorically that is, the Levenger book pillow is doing sterling work on the desk...

holding, touching, reading and using the culmination of a project started in the 1960s to take every word in the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary and

'map them onto a vast classification structure, so that words with similar meanings would be grouped together,'

As if that wasn't enough to be going on with the scholars then

'undertook to arrange words according to their history: in any category or sub-category, the oldest words appear first, while those that have entered the language most recently are shown last.'

Forty years and many hundreds of thousands of person hours later the completed work contains nearly 800,000 meanings, organized into more than 236,000 categories and sub-categories.
Phew, this is truly phenomenal and to see it is quite a humbling experience.
There it is, on my desk, access to every word I could ever wish for.
I've been dipping into another book, this one entitled On the Death and Life of Language by Claude Hagege and published by Yale University Press and though I hadn't thought languages were quite my subject, since the Big Book of Words has arrived I'm becoming increasingly curious. I don't think it is something I had ever even considered before but currently there are 5000 languages and by 2100 there will only be 2,500; twenty-five languages die each year representing a huge cultural loss.

'As crucial repositories of culture, languages give permanence to traditions, proverbs and knowledge of our ancestors and survive the transience of speech.'

In the light of that how significant that cover then becomes.
Claude Hagege focuses on the regeneration of Hebrew as a modern language, tracing its history over the course of the twentieth century  and considering what has contributed to its rebirth but also examining  Cornish, Gaelic, Yiddish and Creole .

'Cornish was a victim of the reformation and began an irreversible decline. It had almost completely died out by 1800.'

By the end of the nineteenth century Cornish was making a bit of a comeback apparently, a grammar was recreated and a vocabulary adapted for contemporary use. A mere 1000 to 1500 people now speak Cornish fluently but it is cited as a remarkable achievement by Claude Hagege.
And there's me living five hundred yards away and didn't know that either.

So now I just have to sit down with my propped-up Big Book of Words and find my way around it, like all good Thesaruses Thesauri every good Thesaurus I've come across it's not alphabetical, but any chance turning of the page reveals something of interest. I've spent several engrossing evenings just reading words and their meanings when I really should have been reading Ulysses...can it really be the 16th again tomorrow?
I'm a terrible one, as you know, for inventing a word to fit my purpose which is all down to slogardy and I really must raccomode all that to mine own encherishing. It will certainly be conducive to my halesomeness and I will be seeking an operatorious use of language in the future but will try not to look to greenery-yallery in the process.
More about the second parcel from OUP containing the equally impressive two volume Oxford Companion to the Book very soon, as you can see I've had to dedicate a special shelf which sits just behind my left shoulder.

A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

I wonder if anyone else had the chance introduction to the writing of Muriel Spark that I did?
I would have been about fourteen, maybe fifteen and dare I say fed up with a school library that was full of tatty and ancient over-borrowed books. Should anything new arrive, often a gift from a school leaver, I'd borrow it whatever it was, just for the chance to have and to hold a brand new book.
Shallow I know, though I do still have that 'thing' about new books, but occasionally it paid dividends though I must have wondered quite what as I lugged home a hardback copy of the Complete Short Stories of Muriel Spark on the 408 bus from Cheam to Wallington and then walked it home.
One story from that volume has stuck in my mind ever thereafter, The Black Madonna and I then devoured the rest of the book.
I suspect my reading of Muriel Spark, for whatever reason then went the way of all things and I have read her sporadically ever since. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means but I don't think I have ever read A Far Cry From Kensington until now.
Off the shelf another book, Muriel Spark by Peter Kemp, this one a library reject last borrowed just the once from Cleveland County Libraries and to be returned on 7 Jan 1977, and bought by me years ago for £2.50 should the day ever dawn when I took a shine to Muriel again.
The fact that this was published in 1974 and A Far Cry From Kensington in 1988 confirms what I already knew but hadn't quite appreciated; the depth and longevity of Muriel Sparks' literary career and perhaps how much catching up I have to do.
By 1974 Muriel Spark had already written enough to merit a critical appraisal of her work and the introduction, though doubtless dated, does offer some wonderful anecdotes and insights into her life and writing.

'Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact...if fiction is not stranger than truth, it ought to be'

Novelists emerge as professional liars, the art they engage in that of deception and Muriel Sparks' own books declared in her own words to be 'a pack of lies'. I think Fay Weldon said as much of her own writing in her dovegreyreader asks...replies.
Peter Kemp then goes on to elaborate that, in reading the work of Muriel Spark,

'To approach them looking for naturalism, then -- fidelity to the usual, steady reflection of all the probabilities --
is to invite disappointment.'

It was Peter Kemp's suggestion that Muriel Spark's books usually focus on a semi-closed society, a self-contained community, that helped to shape my thinking about A Far Cry From Kensington.

This is 1954 and the world seen through the eyes of young, war widow Mrs Hawkins is the world of publishing and the life in her 'rooming house' populated by a disparate range of highly amusing characters. Mrs Hawkins self-consciously well-proportioned, which, as Ali Smith points out in her introduction to this new Virago edition,

'...literally larger than life. large enough in a post-war time of rationing and utilitarian discomfort to suggest a comforting abundance to everyone who simply looks at her.'

Blessed not plagued by insomnia, an older Mrs Hawkins reflects back with enjoyment on the world that was hers, the people and the events that have shaped the life she lives now adding in some age advice about insomnia too

'Insomnia is not bad in itself. You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can. You can put your mind to anything most of the time...for who lives without problems every day? Why waste the nights on them?'

My favourite housemate needless to say, Kate Parker, the district nurse waging a war of her own on unseen germs 'the work of the devil.'

'She was very thorough and eager about her cleaning, indeed about everyone else's house-cleaning; when she entered anyone else's room , for a cup of tea or to take their temperature, she would often say, politely, 'Your room's nice and clean.' If she failed to say this it meant your room wasn't clean.'

Time's are hard, the working day is long and through the first-person of Mrs Hawkins, an editor for Ullswater Press, Muriel Spark takes an acerbic look at the world of the novelist, satirising the publishing industry in the process and in the way that only an insider can.
This is pure Muriel.
Offering advice to would-be novelists Mrs Hawkins suggests

'You are writing a letter to a friend...write privately not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over and want more enchanting letters from you...remember not to think of the reading public, it will put you off.'

Throughout the authorial voice steps back in to remind us this is a novel

'I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book.'

but of course it might all be 'a pack of lies' too.

A deviously plotted hate-campaign from a writer Mrs Hawkins has called a pisseur de copie leads to tragedy at 14 Church End Villas, South Kensington but Muriel Spark has a way with tragedy. It certainly isn't overwrought and there is always comedy, yet scratch beneath the surface, find the cracks and society's shallowness and prejudices are mercilessly exposed.

In the words of Peter Kemp as he sums up the novels of Muriel Spark,

'The facts to which they insistently return - that men are lonely, divided, prone to deceit and treachery, die and do not want to - are hardly comfortable...These books may be elegant but they are elegant disturbers.'

Prize draw copies of A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark

Names in comments for a chance to win one of three prize draw copies of A Far Cry From Kensington in case you haven't read it, might have done but can't remember, remember it well but your old copy's fallen apart/ gone to the charity shop / been borrowed and never returned etc.
We'll turn this draw around quite quickly too, the feline is waxing up the sleigh runners, we need to keep him interested.

and the winners are...

So we've launched the festive cat into orbit which means the Christmas prize draws are underway, a few more coming up this week before we head into the Twelve Days of Christmas bonanza when there will be books to be won every day between Christmas and Twelfth Night. So we can singalong and send partridges and French hens and gold rings and leap with the lords and milk with the maids and wish we hadn't eaten quite so much chocolate.
Meanwhile, congratulations to today's winners, copies of Legend of a Suicide by David Vann loaded on the sleigh and on their way to

35 Anna D
38 Gill
41 Richard Sheehan

and copies of Excellent Women by Barbara Pym to

3   Nan Crawford
22 Betty
39 Juxtabook

If you can put the title into the subject line that will help and send your address to dovegreyreader at gmail dot com so that Rocky can key it into his TomTom and point the sleigh in the right direction, as you can see he's up for the task so expect him down your chimney any day....it'll be messy, sorry.

Santa Paws is on his way...

It's happening, we're starting to feel a bit seasonal and festive now since we've been very busy with all the Christmas cards and I hope you didn't think we'd forget all of you. Bookhound's been busy, Rocky posed very patiently and we just wondered if you'd mind if we saved on the postage and you printed it off yourself  or saved it on your desktop or something?
News of recent winners and a wonderful Twelve Days of Christmas daily book prize draw to follow later today.

 

Is it really next week?

Surely not, but I think it might be so I absolutely have to spend this week conjuring up Christmas from somewhere, it's swooped down all of a sudden and I haven't known a year feel quite so un-seasonal in recent history, so we're off to find the bough for the kitchen and drag in a tree from somewhere.
I spent Saturday in the kitchen doing cards, except I had to make them first, but with the radio on a bit of Christmas cheer filtered through, though I'll swear it was only last week we packed up the deccies and put them in the loft.
The view from the window is doing its very best to be misty and seasonal and they tell us the cold weather cometh this week which is good because the wisteria is very confused and in bud, someone has to tell it not yet.
This was Thursday morning.

I'm sorry I think you might know this view as well as we do now but I could, and do, stare at it for ages so you might as well share the moment. There's that mist rising over the Tamar in the distance which always holds my attention for the longest time because it moves and lifts very fast, then the next time you look it's back down again.
Sometimes taking a picture seems to show up things I miss, these trees usually blend into the whole view unnoticed.

I'm watching that clump of woodland on the rise in the middle very carefully as the shortest day approaches, and I'm willing a clear day because the sun sets exactly and centrally behind those trees on December 21st and we'd lived here a few years before we saw that.
You do of course know of the big show-off porker of a cat in this house but he does have two feline hand-maidens who dote on him but who are much shyer about the publicity.
As I sit up with my pot of tea and a book and take in that view in between sips and chapters,  in slips Muffy, who like the clockwork creatures of habit that cats are, and after a night out doing who knows what around the fields or perhaps sound-o in the log shed, shoots up the stairs and onto the quilt every morning without fail, curls up and is asleep like this until the hairdryer comes on (which she hates) .
So we were never going to let cats sleep on beds were we?
Do we have a choice?

She's not a lap-cat, none of them are, but she is a very insistently be-near-you cat.

Curtain raising

No, not another theatre trip but in order to make way for the Christmas tree I decided to pack away the sewing machine which has been sitting out all year in the hope that I'd use it more, make ten quilts or something but, apart from running repairs on ripped trousers and a few minor piecings here and there, sadly I haven't so away it went.
This was the only cue I needed a day or two later to decide to make some new curtains for the bedroom.
So I heaved it all out again...well Bookhound did.
When I decide to make curtains I have to move fast before the moment passes.
In the car, into town and Tavistock, for all its retail shortcomings in comparison to John Lewis in Oxford Street, (which I discovered all over again while I was in London,) does at least have a good-ish shop for fabric. The shop has been having a Closing Down Sale for about the last fifteen years but still shows no sign of departing and I'd miss it if it went.
It's an Aladdin's cave if you dig around past the usual suspects, large and insipid florals, travesties of toile de joie and modernist swirls all doubtless to someone's taste but not mine and all of  which I discarded before I quickly came up with some fabric I could live with.
And right at the back some more which would look perfectly lovely gorgeous in the kitchen also much in need of a window revamp.
The kitchen being an on-the-spot decision necessitated a phone call home to get the measurements and the young man in the shop then offered me their in-house curtain making service which I politely declined.

'Good gracious me no, these'll be up at the window before you close this afternoon'

and he looked at me a bit oddly, as if people who make their own curtains are an endangered species to be pitied. 

'Well we'll sort out how much material you need anyway.' he said reaching for his calculator.

'Oh no, it's alright,' I said, 'I can do that too.'

In fact our windows are small, Im 50 does nicely.

True to my word the bedroom curtains were started at 4pm and hanging by the time the 6 o'clock news came on but as I stitched I could have put money on this happening...

Why does the bobbin thread always run out 6" from the very last seam edge?
The kitchen curtains weren't far behind and I'm loving this Nordic-looking fabric so much I went back yesterday to pick up enough fabric to do two more windows.

Now imagine a shop with hundreds if not several thousand bolts and rolls of fabric in it.
You can't move in there for choice but often there's only one roll of each, so tell me, what are the chances of two people wanting the same fabric at exactly the same minute on the same day?
Therefore please imagine my horror as I approached MY roll, now at the front where I'd left it the day before, to see a middle-aged man with his hand on it, and a woman with a zimmer frame alongside, who turned out to be his mother asking whether he was he sure he liked this one, telling him how much fabric he'd need...double width...full drop...two windows...hmm a lot.
They were quite boisterous and extrovert and voluble, holding court, whereas I'm a really quiet shopper.
Mentioning that I was also hoping to buy some fabric off the same roll cut no mustard whatsoever, lemon-sucking faces and shaking of heads as he carried the roll very close to his person (lest I grab it I suspect, because I could barely conceal my desperation) to the counter with the mother and zimmer following and proclaiming loudly,

'First come first served, they'll just have to measure ours out first and you'll have to see what's left.'

Now in fairness I'd have done exactly the same in their shoes, it's lovely fabric and a dream to make up because of the squares and lines, plus the reverse is a stripe, so it doesn't need lining.
I was tempted to say,

'Terrible to sew up...frays like mad...awful stuff'

or do a sharp intake of breath and say,

'Surely you're not thinking of  that design in any quantity, it'll make your eyes do funny things,'

But why would I be buying more?
I now want to give an award to the young man in the shop who remembered me from the day before.
As the man in front, clutching the roll to his bosom, dithered about whether to have the shop make up the curtains, and perhaps they should have a quote for that first etc etc, the young man turned to me and I put in my request for a mere 4m 50.
Sharp intake of breath from the direction of the zimmer frame,

'You just measure ours out first,'

'Naaah, ' he said winking at me 'there'll be plenty on there.'

Now I could see their measurements written down, double width 2m 50cms drop, with turnings etc that's 11m gone already and that's only one window, they had another one lined up.
My 4m 50 was quickly measured off and I couldn't bear to look behind me to confirm whether the zimmer frame was in the attack position, which I felt sure it was, as I paid and ran all the way to the Square and Bookhound waiting in the car.
'Phew, that was close,' I said, 'put your foot down quick let's get out of here.'
I think he thought I'd done the bank, but I had the curtains up at the windows by 5pm again just in case we'd been followed and the man and his mother came knocking on the door asking for their fabric back.
Bookhound's happy hyperdecorationaemia continues and long may that persist unchecked, meanwhile my work is complete, I feel my debilitating bout of curtainitis is abating.

Knut Hamsun

It's winter, time to read books by dead writers.
I usually sidle over to my rather well-read Joseph Roth shelf and look there for inspiration, but for a bit of variety (because I'm also still in revolutionary France) I'm going to head to Norway sometime soon and see if Knut Hamsun fits the mood.
Before I start can those amongst you who know about this please sort out my pronunciation?
Is it Kanute? Nute? Nut? Kernut?
My thanks in anticipation for the answer from someone out there.
To hand a complete set of the novels of Knut Hamsun to accompany my read of Ingar Sletten Kolloen's biography Knut Hamsun 'Dreamer and Dissenter' and Hunger has arrived from Canongate, so I'm good to go when the moment feels right. Already I feel that sense of anticipation at the discovery of a writer of whom I know so little and quite appropriately I'll hope to at least start that trail in the year of Hamsun's 150th anniversary but doubtless not finish it until well in his 151st even his 152nd...
A word about the books themselves because the cover artwork is sensational and collectively quite a thing of beauty, sometimes a set of books just earn their keep for that alone. It's going to take me an age to read them all and I'm advised by those that know over at Souvenir Press not to rush but to savour them gradually, so there will be plenty of time to enjoy the paintings of Edvard Munch which grace these covers in the meantime.
I knew even less about Norwegian painter Munch beyond that one stolen painting, The Scream but I was interested to discover this quote from him on the subject of his art

"We want more than a mere photograph of nature. We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity. An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one's innermost heart."

I still know little about Knut Hamsun either and that adds a degree of excitement to any new reading trail, but I suspect his writing may perhaps also fit these criteria if he lives up to his reputation as

'irrational, eccentric. strange and compelling - a man uncomfortable in his own time.'

The poor country boy with a mere 252 days of schooling yielding a brilliant writing career, heralded by the likes of Henry Miller, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann as one of the greats, yet a man who 'stepped outside literature and into politics' with his fascist sympathies. Accused as a traitor and sentenced for that treachery, Knut Hamsun's books were apparently burned in his homeland but, with his reputation largely rehabilitated beyond Norway at least, my hope is that Ingar Sletten Kolloen's biography will cut through some of the confusing details I've gathered from online sources and offer a reliable assessment of a writer I'm quite looking forward to reading.
Now no problem to do the sensible thing and read Knut Hamsun's books in chronological order whilst the biography ticks slowly along in the background, which I think should mean starting with Hansum's first novel Hunger, then Mysteries followed by Victoria and Dreamers from this selection.
Or does anyone suggest starting elsewhere?
Who knows, I might just be nearing completion for next year's publication from Souvenir Press of the new translation of Knut Hamsun's final novel, out of print since the 1930s, The Ring is Closed.
In the immortal words of others who were also up against the might of the Norwegians, and may have preferred it to be literary rather than polar exploration, I may be gone sometime.

The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall...in performance

Sadly unlike the Prince Edward Theatre in Old Compton Street where I wouldn't have felt out of place in my slippers, the same cannot be said for Plymouth's Theatre Royal. A modern concrete edifice built in the early 1980s, not a thing of beauty in my eyes, though we mustn't grumble because it does house a regular dose of culture if we choose to drive into the city and take advantage of it.
In fact after seeing The Pitmen Painters and enjoying it so much, Bookhound and I did an appraisal and decided we must go to theatre-luvvie land much more often, well as often as a good production stops by, because we've even found seats in the house that we love.
Years ago we took the children to a panto there and made the mistake of the Upper Circle. I don't normally get vertigo but it is incredibly steep, quite disorientating and I felt I really should have had the children roped together and in safety harnesses.
But the Dress Circle offers a great view of the stage, not too near not too far, even sitting behind the tallest man in West Devon again wouldn't have mattered and Bookhound says he can even forgive the lack of leg room as long as he's enjoying the production. So we have already booked our seats for the Alan Bennett comedy Enjoy starring the inestimable Alison Steadman along with David Troughton and playing next March.
Absolutely no one annoyed us either which was a pleasant surprise, no back row singing along.
It's interesting to see a modern play in performance that you have previously only read, to then discover how much more is revealed, and of course there was so much I had missed by playing all the parts myself as well as trying to perfect a Geordie accent.
The play is based on actual events just before and after the second world war and concerns the rise to fame of the Ashington miners who, following on from successful evening classes in Geology and Evolution, organise an Art Appreciation class for themselves under the auspices of tutor Robert Lyon. Lyon pitches in with his standard slide show but it quickly becomes apparent that there has to be a  better way to tutor an audience with little or no knowledge or experience of art and so he persuades the group to start painting for themselves with startling results.
What on earth do I know about assessing acting and performance?
Well, not a lot beyond the annual village play but with a cast line-up that has been together since The Pitmen Painters first opened two years ago it was obvious no one was going to forget their lines and nor did the hand appear from the wings to pull back the reluctant curtain because there wasn't one.
It all seemed superb to me, impossible to pick out any star performances, everyone a winner but mention of Ian Kelly playing the part of Robert Lyon seems appropriate. Life events and fame do little to change the Pitmen Painters, it is the very middle-class Robert Lyon who undergoes those subtle and emotional shifts in attitude and whose hubris is reduced a notch or three and Ian Kelly captures it all with great sincerity.
The humour was of course spontaneous and much more evident than my solo reading, often deeply poignant too because this is a play with some serious messages just beneath the surface. Art and what makes great art, who decides what is great art alongside the fickle nature of the market and the collectors who swiftly move on to the next best thing. This is all balanced alongside a group of miners who seem to know so little about their new subject, but who actually know so much, in fact they know the things that matter and rapidly reduce a subject highjacked by the elite into its purest form.
The debate about the difference between an upper class blob of paint on the paper versus the working class blob and relative values will stay in my mind forever as will every one of these characters, and the incredible final rendition of the Gresford Hymn which makes a perfect finale. Sung in beautiful harmony to a silver band accompaniment, this was written in 1934 to commemorate the Gresford Pit disaster, a gas explosion which claimed 266 lives.
The Pitmen Painters has now returned to the National Theatre in London, running until January and most definitely worth seeing if you are in the city.
Final words to Lee Hall from his introduction in the programme and which somehow touched a real chord with me,

'That the Group managed to achieve so much unaided and unabetted should remind us that dumbing down is not a prerequisite of culture being more accessible. That is a lie perpetrated by those who want to sell us s**t. Culture is something we share and we are all the poorer for anyone excluded from it'

Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll

Any trip to London requires that some time be spent in and around Bloomsbury, it's a necessity and it was good to meet up with Curzon (who has visited here from the early days I think and comments every once in a while) at what is fondly known as The London Review of Cakes Bookshop and also good to meet Rachel who works there and keeps me in touch with bookshop events.
Appropriately, as today is joined up for blog-tea with Cornflower day, it's but a short hop from there across Russell Square to Persephone Books in Lamb's Conduit Street and they very kindly gave me shelter for various lunches and teas during my three days of London gallivanting. It's no hardship to sit in amongst all the books, I addressed a few catalogues to help out, and this time I explored the seventeenth century cellar complete with seventeenth century spiders and also took in the annual Persephone Lecture delivered by Bee Wilson.
You might remember the venue and the chairs from last year, The Art Workers Guild in Queen Square, a short walk from the shop and delightfully historic surroundings in which to sit and listen to Bee talking about A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell.
The Guild was Founded in 1884 by twenty-five painters, architects, sculptors, designers and craftsmen who, drawing in William Morris a few years later, established themselves as a diverse group who promoted education in all the visual arts and crafts, maintaining high standards of design and craftsmanship in any way that may be of benefit to the community.
Bee's talk was fascinating and made more so as she handed round a tub of isinglass for us to sniff.
I'd heard of it from that 1930's Household Wants Indicator that sits on our kitchen wall but I had never really known its purpose.

Prepared from the air bladder of sturgeon and predictably vile to smell I tell you, utterly vile but regularly used as a clarifier in the cookery of yore and the beer-making of today.
I can only wonder who on earth discovered the clarifying properties of a sturgeon's air bladder and how?
Cornflower and I had already decided on Agnes Jekyll's Kitchen Essays, first published in 1922, for this month's tea party and I have a feeling Karen will have prepared something quite delicious from the book and hopefully without the use of isinglass.
Browsing through, it occurred to me how slightly foodily squeamish we've become these days despite the best efforts of Hugh Fearnley Roadkill and, in contrast, what strong stomachs cooks used to have who, working in cahoots with the butcher 'who must be not your enemy but your friend and ally', were busy cooking up a storm in the kitchen as follows

'Having removed the brains from half a calf's head, put it in a stewpan with a little salt and water to cover, and bring it to the boil....simmer gently for five hours, then strain and leave to set. Next day remove fat, and clarify, adding a turtle tablet...'

Eventually this will be set before the eager diners as Consomme Fausse Tortue for which elderly alderman and hunters home from the hill and the rigours of the chase will bless you...yes really.
Can you imagine the complaints to the BBC if Delia Smith started scooping out calf's brains...probably with a tool she's designed specially ?
Or perhaps Sainsbury's would sell out of calf's brains the very next day and Lakeland will put the scooper into mass production, who knows.
We've hardly recovered here from the memorable day Delia pulverized anchovies in the food processor. I had three little screaming children on my hands until I explained that I felt sure the fish were already dead when she pressed the switch, but the nightmares were of the great anchovy massacre for weeks afterwards.
Something called Fritto Misto however really does read like a transplant list, brains, liver, kidneys, sweetbreads (is that spleen?) lights (is that lungs) but Agnes (who was the sister-in-law of Gertrude the gardener) approaches it all with gusto assuring us that this will most certainly remind one of that visit to Venice and the silent gondola gliding along mysterious canals...which all has me quite worried about what might be floating around in those same canals.
Offal has most certainly gone out of fashion but I was raised on a good deal of it and I'll bet some of you were too.
I was also raised on rice pudding and this recipe for Dundee sounds like just the thing to divert the mind from sweet little calves.

'Boil sufficient rice in milk until cooked rather firm, sweeten and fill in therewith a fireproof glass or nice-looking dish, adding a spendthrift's spreading of juicy home-made marmalade, and leaving a small valley in the centre for the following mixture to fill in: Butter, 2 1/2 ozs., melted but not allowed to oil, adding to it while warm, 2 1/2ozs. sugar and the yolks of 5 eggs mixed well together and beaten till light. Pour this all over. Bake in a not very hot oven from 1/2 to 3/4 hour. It should be a pleasant cafe-au-lait brown on the top, like the ideal sponge cake, and there should be enough for six people without the second helpings they will ask for, which are as inartistic as encores at the opera.'

Kitchen Essays is a lovely book combining both recipes and social history with sections as various as A Dinner Before the Play, A Motor Excursion Luncheon, Recipes for the ' Too Fat' or the 'Too Thin', Food for Artists and Speakers, Bachelors Entertaining, A Shooting Party Luncheon so really without much ado I think we should head over to Cornflower and see what Karen has conjured up for us

'Let us housekeepers give more of our best brains to the work. We must put those thoroughbreds, Imagination, Generosity, Invention into harness with our jaded hacks, Custom, Thrift and the Commonplace as they drag along Time's hurrying chariot to the often depressing sound of the family gong.'

I wonder if it's Consomme Fausse Tortue?
Or even better that 'excellent pacificator' Home Cured Tongue.Choose two large fresh ox-tongues turning them every day in their pickling bath for from 3 to 4 weeks and letting them lie in the pickle...

On critics...

"The process of critical thinking is based on the intellectual values that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which include: clarity, accuracy, distinctness, clearness, thoroughness and fairness."

I'm wondering if you can fight your way clear of licking all those paper chains and set aside the Christmas cards for a minute and ignore the fact that you should have made the cake in October and it's too late now so you'll have to buy one, and help me out here instead, because I'm just going to throw out a lot of questions at you today and I'm really interested to know what you think.
The aftermath of doing a radio programme, I discover, is not unlike giving evidence in court for the way the experience hangs around and then waves all those things at you that you could or should have said. I was looking around for a definition of critical thinking and there are many but that one seemed to fit the purpose, because since I did that programme last week there has been some really interesting debate happening around the 'tubes', as Bookhound's non-computer savvy, octogenarian fisher-friend and author calls the internet.
It's also quite challenging and can be very constructive to raise my head over the parapet occasionally and take dovegreyreader out visiting... just not very often because it can also be very distracting to the purpose and to my concentration, but I do learn a lot along the way.
Much of the debate on Facebook has been about the beleaguered nature of literary criticism and the demise of the critical voice in the press and woe is us, where will we be without it and I thought it would be good to know what you all felt.
If you listened to the programme you will know that my opening gambit was

'I'm not a critic, I won't even call myself a book reviewer, that would seem far too presumptious...'

I've since been described by one critic as 'naive' and, not wishing to get above my station here, but sometimes I wonder whether naivety occasionally allows for new inexperienced eyes to look at the old ways and spot the flaws?
It was certainly one of the joys of having a student nurse or a midwife out on a community placement and working alongside me in those old NHS days, someone to question how I did things, why I did them in the way I did, had I taken into account this or that change in attitude.

I'm checking in with the old Bloggers v Critics chestnut again, and whenever I do this the more my early suspicions become truths in my mind with the idea that the internet, and perhaps bloggers in particular, caught the critics in their ivory towers with their pants down (that might be too much information.)
I'm thinking in particular of the sharp-end literary blogs; in the words of Philip Hensher about this blog, the 'disinterested' ones and I think Matthew Arnold in his essay The Function of Criticism might have thought of that first in relation to a critic's credentials.
So disinterestedness and perhaps applied to the likes of Mark Thwaite at Ready Steady Book, Stephen Mitchelmore at This-Space (who I have almost forgiven for calling me the Leni Riefenstahl of Richard and Judy's middle England... chocolate would just about put it right) and of course John Self's Asylum (John currently on blogging paternity leave) to name but three of the many excellent litblogs out there.
Likewise I feel it's the internet that we've all had to accommodate especially in a professional capacity.
Many professions have been exposed and subjected to intense root and branch scrutiny with the arrival of the voice of the ordinary people across the web and with it new levels of responsibility and to me that's no bad thing. Secret cabals have been shattered, opened up and cleaned up, take the NHS and clinical governance, NICE guidelines and evidence-based practice.
Was there ever a  more tightly closed door than that of General Practice until Harold Shipman?
Who'd have thought you would now be able to go online and rate your GP's performance?
Amongst many other changes GPs have had to learn to manage the patient who attends a consultation clutching a metaphorical sheaf of suspected illnesses gleaned from wrongdiagnosis.com, don't go there, everything seems to lead to Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.
I'll bet it's all been painful for GPs but they've done it.
One of the issues for me when I started writing this blog was that of transparency, trust and honesty because I was suspicious and beginning to wonder what might be behind some of the criticism and book reviewing I was reading.
At a very simplistic level how could I be sure that that person hadn't had dinner with that person last week or that critic hadn't held a long-running grudge against that author and was serving that old dish called revenge nicely chilled?
Critics rarely if ever declare an interest, do you think they should?
Does it bother you if they don't?
I'm reminded of the glowing review I read for a book whose excellence had somehow passed me by and it all left me a bit mystified. A little bit of surface scratching on the tubes and I discover that the critic had been heavily involved (the tutor) in the creative writing course of which the author was a graduate.
Call me suspicious but I smelt a very large unethical, unwritten rule-breaking rat.
The rest of us, in whatever profession we may be are likely to be governed by codes of conduct, ethical considerations and a whole lot more, often it's an expensive annual registration process and we face disciplinary procedures if we cross those boundaries.
Now of course I'm not suggesting things need to go that far for critics, we can but hope nobody dies as a result of a critic's folly or that people need legal protection from their foibles, but is it time for critics to sign up to something similar?
Is there an unwritten code of conduct amongst them?
Or can they carry on with those coffee-house conversational beginnings cited in the Facebook debate last week?
I know what qualifications of mine make me different from them but what qualifications and experience would you expect a critic to have?
If 'critics' like the one I met in last week's radio programme are paid to be nasty how can we be expected to trust their opinion?
What makes a critic different from the rest of us?
Do we trust what they write?
If so which critical voices in particular do we trust or have those great voices really all but disappeared?
Is that enough to keep you going?
Please have your say because who knows one or two of them might read it and have their say too.

My Father's Places by Aeronwy Thomas

'I always knew whether my father was working or reading his forbidden detective novels. If you passed and heard nothing he was reading, for as soon as he picked up his fountain pen he spoke every word out loud. For him, the sound of the words was integral to the poem. Sometimes his voice was loud and booming, at other times I had to put my ear to the thin door to hear his mumbles. It seemed like a secretive, incantatory rite.'

I suspect that finding out about the life of a poet, of whom you know little beyond their hedonistic lifestyle, and doing it via the memoirs of one of his children might be a good point of entry.
'Point of entry' is my new phrase, shamelessly pilfered from a conversation with the lovely people at Pan Macmillan last week as we debated those books that offer a good way into a writer we may have struggled with.
How many times have I struggled and surrendered, but apparently it's all about starting with the point of entry book and I think the idea works well when approaching a life too.
I had read My Father's Places, a portrait of childhood by Dylan Thomas' daughter Aeronwy Thomas and published by Constable before I then picked up My Life with Dylan Thomas double drink story by Caitlin Thomas and how glad I am to have approached his life in this order because, Aeronwy's, like The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith, was a book I read in daily doses and really didn't want to end.
In contrast Caitlin's account can't end soon enough for me.
Aeronwy through her own eyes seemed to have to make do with the crumbs of parenting that were scattered her way by two madly egocentric people indulging in a fiery, centre-stage relationship fuelled by drink
...and crikey could they drink...Dylan would down twenty pints a night, Caitlin wasn't far behind.
The relationship was volatile, physically violent and very vocal with Dylan entering a self-perpetuating cycle of escape and absence that often left an unwilling and fierce-tempered Caitlin holding the parental fort, and to be honest I shuddered at all of it.
The couple never spent an evening home together and by that I mean never, as in 'not once', there were bars to be propped up, drinks to be foraged by Dylan and Caitlin the masters of scrounge and if you might be wondering who was at home looking after the children, the answer is no one. In 1943, for the first months of her life Aeronwy suggests she was fed and left alone every evening at 7pm in a little room in a bomb-torn London flat whilst Caitlin and Dylan went off to the pub.
As they grew older the children looked after themselves in the evenings, a young Aeronwy usually having full responsibility for the care of her baby brother Colm whom she tried so hard to hate and would leave lying under bushes in the hope everyone would forget about him, but whom despite her best efforts she came to love, though with reservations. Life at the Boathouse offered freedom and the potential for an idyllic childhood, but there was something fundamental missing from the equation and there was little Aeronwy could do about that, she compensated hard in other ways.
Unsurprisingly there is a sense of detachment to Aeronwy's writing, a genetic belonging and an upbringing , if you can call it that, (more an existence with uncertain, shifting boundaries and unpredictable degrees of discipline,) which raised a spirited handful of a child, precocious, self-reliant, independent and willful, desperate for attention and striving always to procure it from her father. It needed great powers of persuasion to extract on ounce of his time and even then it would be distracted and fleeting, always threatening to end but when she did it usually involved reading aloud.
Yet  through the eyes of the daughter there is no overt sense of self-pity, this is just how it was, Aeronwy knew no different and so to her Dylan Thomas was 'round like a benevolent teddy bear' and capable of tenderness whenever she could manage to persuade him to notice her. Those briefest of moments of his time became precious and loaded with memory for Aeronwy who spent her latter years(she died of leukaemia this summer) dedicated to the promotion of her father's work; in his death perhaps looking for that compensation and a closeness that she had yearned for but never received in life.
Poignantly Aeronwy reveals at one point in the book that her father only ever wrote and dedicated one poem to her, that search for signs of love and affection seems thwarted at every turn.
How interesting too that Dylan Thomas was so incredibly close to his own father, met him each morning in Brown's Hotel in Laugharne to complete the Times crossword, and yet he was such a helpless, hopeless father himself. More about Caitlin as a mother when I have finished reading Double Drink Story.
Despite the sturm und drang and the traumas of such a dysfunctional family life My Father's Places is an excellent read and easy to spot  those elements of denial. Aeronwy is perhaps unwittingly candid about her life but equally guarded about passing judgement on her parents, making endless allowances as children in these circumstances often do.
On their return from a lengthy US tour the, parents bring back virtually nothing for the children but that's alright, it had been expensive staying in hotels, buying drinks and Caitlin, so overcome by the abundance, buying quantities of clothes for herself with money she didn't have. The begging letters go out and the funds trickle in again and Aeronwy lives in a child's world 'unmarked by trouble'.
I think we see a very different world indeed.
News of her father's untimely death was broken to Aeronwy who was by this time at boarding school

'The teachers were worried and asked pupils to check whether I was grieving at night. No, they reported no signs of grieving. No one could understand that I carried on my life at school as if nothing had happened. Writing about my father's death is cathartic, though all my activity on his behalf during most of my life has been a form of reconciliation to his death.'

Chasing my tail

I'm still doing the washing and sorting out a mountain of books that have arrived this week and planning next week on here and oh, hold on, is it less than three weeks to Christmas?
Surely not, haven't done a thing, please don't tell me you've all shopped, wrapped and posted already.
But thought I'd share my Make-It-Up-As-I-Go-Along sock which is coming along nicely after several train journeys.

I'm pleased with that striped heel flap which was 'turned' round about Pewsey.
Plus in true headless woman book jacket tradition I can show you that it's finally perishing cold enough to wear the Rowan jumper.

and fat boy Santa Paws will do some prize drawings tomorrow, he missed me terribly...not.

Inner Child - December

'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of voices I sometimes hear a moment before I sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.'

There was only one book it could be this month and my copy is almost this exact size.

There's something so completely in tune with my childhood about that Edward Ardizzone cover, so many books of the fifties and sixties that bore his trademark illustrative style come to mind.
That's all made me hunt around for them and I'm adding in a few more from  the 1960s that possibly came out too late for me to appreciate them as a young child but I still treasure them, the Nurse Matilda series by Christianna Brand, also illustrated by Edward Ardizzone who was her cousin.

'Once upon a time there was a huge family of children and they were terribly, terribly naughty...'

Let's Hang On to What We've Got...

I'm trying to recall the last London musical I saw and I think it might be that occasion we took out a mortgage and trekked off to London with three pre-teenage children to see Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat and I feel sure it was at the Palladium, but I can't remember whether it was Philip Schofield's run or Jason Donovan's or someone else entirely.
This is all to demonstrate that I don't go to musicals very often so and so could have plumped for anything and been happy. The other five members of Girl's Night In on the other hand are a well-musicaled bunch and so we were hard pushed to find something that one or other of them hadn't seen as we went right through the list. Billy Elliot, Oliver, Sound of Music, Chicago, you name it they'd seen it twice already so in the end Jersey Boys it was.
At this point I think I have to adopt the Westend Whingers critical template and assess everything from the doorman to the usher to the ice cream seller, except I was too excited to notice as we set foot in the the Prince Edward theatre in Old Compton Street.
Don't you just love these old London theatres and hope they keep on going forever?
Everyone surging into the foyer off the street, the lighting and the carpets all giving that warm, cosy feeling that makes you wish you'd brought your slippers and all adding to that sense of anticipation?
The Prince Edward opened in 1930 so it oozes Art Deco style with a stage that copes with expansive sets which have in the past accommodated a swimming pool or allowed a car to be driven onto the stage. The lights went out for the first few years of the war but were then discreetly switched back on in 1942 for some recordings for broadcasting to the troops.
Enter stage right the greats, Vera Lynn, Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby.
A Cameron Mackintosh £3 million refurbishment in the 1990s upgraded everything except the number of ladies toilets it would seem, and Girls Night In nearly missed their interval ice creams (Haagen Dazs chocolate chip 10/10...the Whingers will be cringing at this, we didn't touch the bar, elbows not sufficiently pointed) In the end one of us claims, in a loud and desperate whisper, 'three babies in four years' (usually me) and bolts into the empty disabled facility, which might all be too much information so please feel free to ignore that....that said the Whingers don't usually describe the facilities so someone has to do it.
For anyone who doesn't know, and I didn't until recently, Jersey Boys is the story of the rise to fame and fortune of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and we all pondered quite how we seemed word perfect on the songs but lacking in any knowledge of much else.
Once those bass notes start and the music pours out we were all away with the fairies and loving it and I'll bet plenty of you know the songs too, Sherry, Can't Take My Eyes Off You, Working My Way Back to You, Bye Bye Baby (own up every single one of you Bay City Rollers fans) Rag Doll, Who Loves You, December 1963 (Oh What a Night), Walk Like a Man, Big Girls Don't Cry.
Fantastic singing from Ryan Molloy as Frankie Valli, love or hate the falsetto he has it to perfection, great stage production and I think we would have been 100% content were it not for the people in the back row across the aisle, behind and to our right.
Now I think back to going to see Godspell in the 1970s.
I'm sure it was the Roundhouse and I know it was David Essex because he autographed my arm in the interval when the audience were invited up onto the stage and the plan was never to wash it again. Sadly Sister had other ideas on duty the next day, but the show was wild, we danced in the aisles and sang along but that was completely de rigueur for Godspell.
I'm not quite sure what's de rigueur theatre singalong etiquette these days?
It didn't seem to say Sing-a-long-a Jersey Boys outside and really we'd paid £52.50 each to hear Ryan Molloy and the others sing, not the back row who had to have been in drink or they might just have stood a chance of being slightly in tune, and nor did we benefit from their running commentary which was hardly sotto voce. Of course everyone joins in for some bits but not the whole lot and it seemed as if it was perhaps their 50th visit
'Oh this bit's really sad'
'Any minute now he's going to sing Cry For Me'
'I love this next one'
'Oh I enjoyed that better last time'
You do that British thing of looking round and glaring all to no avail, someone says something also to no avail and management were called in the interval (not by us, too busy queuing for the Ladies and fretting that we'd miss our ice creams.) A large and menacing looking bouncer was positioned alongside to keep order but could do little but say ssshhhhhh every so often and ended up making more noise. Personally I'd have had them placed in the dungeons (or the ladies toilets) prior to transportation on a convict ship where they could have sung to their heart's content in time to the oars...few rounds of Who Loves You and they'd have been down under in no time.
When the entire house finally stood up to do that arm waving and singing and looking an idiot thing for the finale and the encores, the annoying back row then complained loudly to the bouncer that it wasn't fair because they couldn't see...Big Girls Don't Cry we sang full volume...Walk Like a Man we shrilled along with Frankie. Forget revenge as a song best served cold, we swayed and waved and sang our hearts out along with the rest of the house.
Oh What a Night we trilled as we walked to the tube, fantastic.

Home again...

Well, I've been there and done all that and now I'm home and today's that day...1.30pm Radio 4 and if perchance...well I suppose it could happen...someone hears it and decides to pay us a visit expecting something erudite and bookishly interesting, I can only apologize because this is about as good as it's going to get today and I don't know about tomorrow either because I'm telling everyone I might have left the country.
But I have to say a huge thank you to all of you and to David Vann for some wonderful comments after that amazing dovegreyreader asks... on Legend of a Suicide this week and perhaps any new arrivals who have wandered in and are wondering how all this works could scroll down to Monday and pick it up from there.You are most welcome, you'll soon get the hang of it all and this week is a perfect example of what a blog and its readers can do, i.e. I go away for five days and leave you all to it.
Meanwhile I have had the best time in London, done that third theatre trip and had a great weekend, and then stayed on and met lots of people who love and read dovegreyreader and that's all been very humbling to be honest. I tap away in splendid isolation down here in Devon and feel as if I'm talking to all of you each day, here and in comments much as we would if we met face to face, but it's also good to get out from behind my desk and meet people and as they all now know to their cost I can talk for England about books and the blog and how it works and so much more besides.
I've had quite a few meetings with publishers to see behind the scenes and let them know I'm a real person (I think they do know that now) and have set up all sorts of prize draws for the next few weeks and heard about plenty of very exciting new books in the pipeline. My thanks to everyone for their kindness and hospitality, their conversation and their enthusiasm for what happens here and I'll tell you more as we go along. I've been into some very interesting inner sanctums as well as a visit to a publisher's archive where I'd have been quite happy if the door had slammed shut and I'd been locked in for a week...well with tea and cake being passed in through the window that is. I'll give you a clue, there was a very nice picture of Ted Hughes in there.
Five days in London, have Oyster card and feet and will travel, it's clear London is gearing up for 2012 but the city never ceases to excite and impress me, even if my feet don't quite feel as if they belong on the end of my legs at the moment.
Picture to prove I really went and did London things with Girls Night In and my apologies for any blurriness, just blame the London Eye it kept moving.




Of course I've been phoning Bookhound here and there and he'd been a bit vague about what he'd been up to and driving home he was even less specific...oh well a bit of this and that...and I've been on to the insurance company because the Kayaker turned his back for five minutes to look at a promising New Zealand river and his camper van was broken into and he's had everything stolen (this is a first, he has paddled the world, who'd have thought it in NZ?)  passport, kayaking gear, all his clothes, the camera (yes the very one I'd held hostage) the lot ...and went to the market and had a wander...and the Gamekeeper lost his car keys in the grain store.
And I'm thinking well that's odd, who'd have thought it, give me five days home alone and I'd have had a project on the go.
So I walk in the door and think, hmmm see the kitchen floor's in need...then I smell the paint and I follow my nose up the stairs and it's done, he'd been planning it for weeks apparently.
After fifteen years of living here Bookhound has finally decorated the bedroom.

The Nightingale's Song by John Caple

I'm hard-pushed to describe exactly how I felt when a stunning catalogue and an invitation to the London preview of Somerset artist John Caple's solo exhibition, The Nightingale's Song arrived.
My first introduction to the paintings of John Caple was through Nell Leyshon and the hardback cover to her novel Black Dirt and the pictures quickly connected with me in a way that one artist rarely does.
Nell very kindly sent me a copy of John's book Somerset which has been perched open on a bookstand by my desk every since. I stare at it, disappear into it, turn the page to a different picture every few days but it's been a book that I have completely and regularly immersed myself in from the moment it arrived.
Something seems exactly right when I look at John Caple's paintings, from style to colour range to atmosphere, I pick up an honesty there making that deeper significance very available, and to someone like me who can stare at a picture for ever and not see what I'm supposed to, that's all very heartening.
In John's own words...

'I have looked for descriptions that have sensed the invisible hand of nature shaping everyday lives and the fascination this inspired.'

The Nightingale
mixed media on board
32 x 44ins

There is something genuine and unpretentious to these paintings and perhaps this biographical detail explains that,

"He is entirely self-taught and as untroubled by contemporary art as he is unbothered by academic training. His work requires neither. He has worked out the way he paints entirely for himself, a manner of painting that is straightforward, simple and perfectly suited to the job. It belongs to that long tradition of English folk art that one sees in medieval church carving, samplers and early English pottery."

Initially I sensed a likeness to the St Ives paintings of Alfred Wallace but there's a vast difference and this information from the JM Gallery website confirms what I thought I knew but couldn't quite express,

"In the twentieth century the folk tradition was often confused with naïve art, yet an important distinction exists between the two and that distinction in many ways helps to understand John's work. Whereas a naïve artist paints entirely from within a private, enclosed world, an artist like John Caple is expressing stories and sentiments that have a shared ownership. In the twenty-first century he is an oddity amongst painters - though that is an observation that will trouble him little."

Now imagine how I felt when I discover that the preview is to be held from 6-8pm this evening on the day that I will be boarding my train home from London at 3pm....parrot...sick as etc and how grateful I am that the gallery have very kindly said I can go in and sneak a preview of the preview and just see John's paintings for real.
I'll report back, but for anyone in London between 3-22 December 2009 don't miss the chance to see these paintings if they strike a chord with you too. The exhibition is on at the John Martin Gallery, 38 Albermarle Street W1 (Mon-Fri 10 - 6 Saturday 11- 4) just around the corner from the Royal Academy.

Final words to John Caple

'In the west country there is a word Wisht which describes all that is uncanny, mysterious and enchanted and can be applied to pretty much anything...the cusp between dusk and dawn, the edge of a wood...Heard but rarely seen, the nightingale's song represents the numinous presence of nature, conveying the awareness and the enchantment of these unseen realities.'

dovegreyreader asks... David Vann (part two)

Who should we read? Which books mustn't we miss?

Here’s my Tuesday Top Ten from The Book Depository blog.  I also have to add Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which has had such a tremendous influence on me, and Ross Raisin’s God’s Own Country, which has an amazing voice.  He’s truly talented, a gifted story teller.  I’m envious of his use of language.  I’ve always been a big fan of Tobias Wolff, also.  And for new hardcovers this year, I loved Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Penelope Lively’s Family Album, and William Trevor’s Love and Summer.  So many great books.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Proulx is a master stylist. Using Anglo-Saxon diction and meter (in the second paragraph, for instance, "hive-spangled, gut roaring" and "ham knuckle, buttered spuds"), she heaps up content. Sentence fragments and lists cut away everything grammatical, everything unnecessary. And this is appropriate for a protagonist learning to be a reporter, learning to write newspaper headlines. Quoyle is a fabulous creation, unwanted and unloved in a novel that finally is a love story.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

In my opinion, our greatest American novel of the last fifty years (despite Beloved's great scope and considerable claim), an heir to Melville and Faulkner. Takes a garbage genre, the western, and raises it to high literature. Offers no access to thoughts or feelings but tells character entirely through landscape and violence written as landscape. Borrowing from Faulkner, extends literal landscapes into figurative landscapes. As with Proulx's The Shipping News, I reread this book simply for the sentences, for their unlikely existence.

The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop is a great poet accessible to all. In her poem At The Fishhouses, she often chooses one fine detail to evoke a larger space. The sparse bright sprinkle of grass, for instance, creates a hillside. She was a painter as well as a poet, and she unifies her opening scene with silver moonlight, then emerald. We watch brush strokes and don't become distracted. Our attention is held by the shift in the quality of light, from opacity to translucence. This is theme developing, leading toward the moment we'll reach into "absolutely clear" water and taste it on our tongues, encountering a kind of knowledge.

The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

Every sentence in O'Connor is about character. In Everything That Rises Must Converge, for instance, Julian is a model for what a divided protagonist can be: he can never speak of the old family mansion without contempt nor think of it without longing. As in Faulkner, O'Connor's characters are driven by race and class, many of them longing for a return to the Old South, but in O'Connor, the battle is more desperate and vicious. She's the writer that every American short story writer has to contend with.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

This is the novel declared the greatest American novel of the last 25 years. Not only does she extend literal landscapes into figurative landscapes, she also uses ghosts and other doubling as a way to reveal the stories behind her characters. Truly epic in scope, and gorgeous in every sentence.

The Riverside Chaucer

All of Chaucer's works in Middle English, with extensive notes. Everyone should memorize the opening 18 lines of The Canterbury Tales, because this is the beginning of literature in English after the collision of Old English and French. These lines show our language at the most beautiful it ever was or will be. The Germanic sounds not yet gone silent, the French vowels not yet shifted and made smaller. A remarkable event, two languages collided together, not just one borrowing from the other. A double lexicon, double metrical heritages, two ways of speaking and imagining, two class structures. All that was possible lives in Chaucer, and since then we have steadily turned the language into a doormat.

Beowulf: A Student Edition edited by George Jack

This edition in Old English is the most accessible, I think, because there are vocabulary notes beside every line. This is the easiest way to read our oldest English epic in the original. And why read Beowulf? Not only because of the uneasy relationship to Christianity and the look into an earlier culture, but also because the poetic line shows a different way of conceiving of experience and story. Hronrade is a whale-road, for instance, a name for the sea, and the syntax is different: Often Scyld Scefing, enemy bands, many peoples, took away mead benches, terrified earls. Beowulf offers a link to how we imagine story and self, people and place.

The Aeneid by Virgil

Maybe it's because I'm American, and our empire is corrupt and dying, but this epic which calls into question the founding of Rome seems particularly relevant. Most beautiful in the original, because a Latin sentence is far more flexible than an English sentence (mostly because of declensions but also because of poetic conventions and sound), but there are many great translations. The abandonment of Dido, Turnus in the end: there are many dramatic moments here that still feel current.

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

Can there be a better subject for a novel than the fall of aristocracy and the rise of the middle class? Ornate but not burdened, lovely and elegant, this one can make you want to hand all your money back to the aristocracy. Like rare birds. Maybe we should keep them.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins played in the movie based on this novel, and they are truly great, but the movie fails anyway, because this novel does something a movie can't. The final crisis is a slip in narrative voice, a dissolution of syntax and diction as the butler admits his heart is breaking. This elegant and subtle voice, in its great formality and distance, allows the exploration of all that is most private in us, and its look back on a life wasted really is heartbreaking.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

In the title essay, Baldwin combines three portraits -- of his father, of himself, and of Harlem in the 1940s -- to devastating effect. A great short story writer, also, he builds to a scene in a diner in which he realizes he could have been murdered and also that he was willing to commit murder. His analysis of race and rage takes as its target, finally, his own heart -- and because of this I've always thought of the personal essay as having this aim -- but it is no less an indictment for that. Perhaps because he was the ultimate outsider, black and gay and an ex-pat, his portrait of America is still true in nearly every respect.