dovegreyreader scribbles

Barney...

Some of you will know this already from Facebook, and my thanks for kind messages...we've said goodbye to our ageing Labrador Barney this week. Bought for the young Gamekeeper by the Tinker from a very local breeeder and given the Kennel Club name RobsMate Barney, just because we could and because everything that had gone before seemed so posh, and we weren't.

Heading for fifteen is a good age for a Labrador but it was the rightest moment in the grand scheme of things, having half-made the decision twice if not three times in the last year or so. We'd decide, get ourselves psyched up and then be confounded when his creaking joints miraculously un-creaked and he would look us in the eye, say 'Not likely,' and skip out of the kennel, bouncing round the field like a puppy.

We'll get him through the Winter and give him a lovely warm garden Summer we decided, but not another Winter. But in the end it was clear he was in a lot of pain, and trekking up to the woods with us out of faithfulness rather than pleasure, yet if we left him behind he howled until we came back and we could hear his gruff, high-low cuckoo bark (Barney's very own distress call) echoing around the valley.

 

It's the toughest thing about pets isn't it, this departing, and the closing of that chapter of your life spent with them and all that has happened in that time. For us, three children grown and flown. Barney was never a small dog, the huge paws gave it away even as a puppy and he would emerge from his kennel like a jump jet, bouncing three feet off the ground on the spot and greeting you with the same unbridled joy every single time. But for all that he was a gentle dog, he really let the canine side down because he adored cats, they weren't for chasing they were for licking; Rocky would take any amount of it and Magnus too. And he was a scamp too, unguarded rubbish bins were always for emptying and scattering around the garden.

We gave him a fine last day on Thursday, last walk to the woods, last Bonio, last hugs, before our lovely vet came to us at home and wafted him off on his peaceful journey in a corner of the garden that Barney loved whilst cradled in Bookhound's arms.

I took Nell up to the woods, now a carpet of bluebells, whilst it was in progress. Up the green lane, through a vale of sniffly tears and it occurred to me how often we have walked that thinking path, and what emotions must have been taken up and scattered there through history.

Holloways have so many uses.

To our surprise the vet recommended that we let Nell see Barney before we buried him, so we did and it was quite extraordinary. They have had a lovely rapport this last year, he endlessly tolerant of her playfulness and puppy ways, she looking up to his seniority in the pack (it was always Barney who initiated the call for someone to go out and feed them at 5pm) and always keeping an eye out and waiting for him to catch up, the slowest ship in the convoy on any walk.

 

Nell rushed across to Barney, him looking for all the world as if he was asleep in the sun, and did her usual rolling-around-look-at-me-Barney-aren't-I-gorgeous routine before realising that something was different, eventually just sitting by him quietly and calmly, looking at him and at us. How normal it all felt and how odd that we invest dogs with so many human emotions and characteristics, yet feel we should spare them that moment to understand and say goodbye in whatever way dogs do it, who can know.

We tucked him up and had a little ceremony, and as luck would have it the Tinker and I had lifted all the daffodils ready to plant elsewhere, so bless him, Barney will be pushing up a grand display over in woodshed corner come the Spring.

 

 

 

 

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Thinking about Oklahoma...

...and sending good wishes and warm thoughts to anyone affected by this devastating tragedy.

I've just been watching the news, and the massive tornado cutting a swath through those communities, and trying to imagine 200mph winds and how terrifying that must have been. I'm hoping America have the U.K. equivalent of Shelterbox and the means for people who have lost everything to create at least a temporary home very quickly.

And then the most heart-warming moment of the woman being interviewed on Sky News at the site of her flattened home, and grieving the loss of her dog, at which point out crawled the missing dog from underneath the debris, almost right next to her and into her arms.

Take care America, as always at moments like this, we are thinking of you.

 

 

 

Just to say...

Some of you may recall, as part of the Edward Thomas project on here a couple of years ago, a lovely post that included some pictures of a beautiful, hand-illustrated and bound edition of Edward Thomas's poem Adlestrop, done by ninety-year old Harold Page, Fran H-B's father.

Fran has been a daily visitor here for years, comments regularly, and we meet up occasionally, and indeed Team Edward Thomas saw that work for real as Fran brought it with her when we took tea with author Matthew Hollis as part of the project.

On arriving in Sussex for a few days walking the South Downs with Fran last Monday, before I headed into London, she broke the news that Harold, now ninety-two, had been taken into hospital the day before. All was stable and family support was in place, and Fran had very much wanted my visit to go ahead.

We talked a great deal about her Dad during my stay, and I was almost brought to tears by the sight of the most beautiful book, hand-written and bound by Harold which displayed some of his work as a gift for members of the family. As an artist, with architect's training, Harold had quickly excelled at the art of calligraphy which he took up as a hobby in his seventies, rapidly gathering in diplomas which should have taken many years to achieve.

I had never met Harold, but I learned from Fran that he was a quiet, gentle unassuming man, immensely modest about his talent and utterly thrilled when he saw that blog post and imagined others seeing and enjoying his work.

It was with much sadness that I received Fran's e mail to say that Harold had died suddenly but peacefully on Friday afternoon, and I just wanted to send Fran, her Mum and her family, our love and thoughts and to wish them gentle days ahead. 

Harold Page has left the most incredible legacy in his art work and we can but hope for an exhibition, or even a book eventually, I can promise you it would something to behold.

 

Happy Birthday to...

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it first...

'It is one of the blessings of old friends, that you can afford to be stupid with them...'

and I wouldn't normally subject friends to the public Birthday spotlight here, preferring to just embarrass close family, but I have to make an exception today for a very special friend (and she will kill me for this) who has had a very hard time of late, and I am sure some good wishes wouldn't go amiss.

I'll call her Wiz, because I always have; one of my oldest friends having met in 1972, student nursing flat-mate, next door roomies in Nurse's Homes various, compatriot on the horse-drawn caravan holiday around Ireland (why?) me cutting up her food when she fractured her scaphoid (roller skating), my best mate and there for me when my brother died during my nurse training. There followed many, many days when I did not want to walk onto a ward full of sick people and Wiz and Bookhound kept me going. Wiz was the bridesmaid at our wedding and, at 5ft heaven-knows-how-much, she was still taller than me in ballet flats while I teetered on my very 1970s wedge heels.

We've kept in touch down the years, survived three babies each but Wiz has always put me to shame in one department. Whilst I settled in my armchair with a pile of books once all that child-rearing time became mine again, Wiz took up serious training and rowed competitively when the rest of us were letting the mould grow on the plimsolls. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she recently took up Polo... yes, on a horse... the stick, the galloping, the chukker, the works. 

Anyway, Wiz had a really serious encounter with a naughty patch of ice whilst out riding her bike back in early December last year, almost six months ago to the day, and in an instant her right side had hit the road very hard indeed. So fast that she didn't even have time to put out her hand and fracture her scaphoid again, so had a car come around the corner next she would have been in trouble, but as luck would have it the next one along was a doctor, also on a bike. Wiz has had to have a new hip which she didn't want as she liked the old one, except it was very broken, and recently more surgery to mend her dislocated and crocked shoulder.

I went up to see her back in February and it dawned on us that we had known each other for over forty years now. We yakked and laughed the day long, as well as taking a crutch-assisted walk up the road, the only time I've ever been able to keep up with her if I'm honest.

Keeping cheerful when life throws so much at you, and when you are in so much pain... and when you are used to being so active, takes some doing, and I can only begin to imagine how hard the tough days have been, but Wiz has managed to keep smiling because, as we agreed, what else can you do.

Unlike Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, this is reality, not fiction, though, as we pondered when we met, it's hard not to imagine the setting-off-five-minutes-later scenario, and she may have been calling the ambulance for the doctor. But you can't change what has happened and have to make the best of it, and Mr Wiz and Family Wiz are doing a fine job of looking after her. I send her a book every few weeks and we keep in touch most days, and summer and warmth are coming so things will look up soon I feel sure.

And I say that to anyone else out there who is going through the mill at the moment too, for whatever reason, hang on in there.

But to Wiz, Happy Birthday me old mucker, as old as me again now for just a few months... and careful with all those candles now...

And if you wanted to send birthday wishes from your corner of the world I am sure Wiz would be absolutely delighted to read them. 

Happy Birthday to...

...the Tinker, who, to crown his week, is eighty-eight today.

It's all been a bit of a Tinker fest on here lately hasn't it... he'll be asking to fade into the background again any minute, but we couldn't let the day pass without sharing his 'two-fat-ladies-bingo-call' birthday with you all.

For his birthday we have bought him...well...er... hopefully a completed Tinker's Cott will suffice for this year as I haven't had a chance to get near a shop.

And how I love this picture... especially now that his prize-winning tapestry, and all the others are under this roof.

 

Mission Accomplished...

Dear Blog

We did it!

The Tinker is in, and we only have about thirty boxes left to unpack and then he will be properly in. He is loving his little abode which is very quickly starting to look like home.

My thanks to the Happy Campers for posts this week, and for all your comments, especially about To Kill a Mocking Bird; I am planning a re-read in the light of all your insights. Coming early next week the other Happy Camper has written a wonderful report on Hilary Mantel's talk at the Bath Literature Festival, you won't want to miss it, our 'ilary was on top form as was the Happy Camper with some brilliant note-taking, for all of which I am very grateful.

Meanwhile this evening, settling down to write a blog post with some pics, my computer socketry has developed an earth leak and keeps tripping out the electricity for the entire house. We've narrowed it down but it's a daylight job so I write this in haste from my iPad via Blogsy and I hope it works, more to follow. For sure you will want to know just how many miles of skirting board I have painted this last week, and how much time I have spent thinking what a stupid idea skirting boards are anyway...until I see them done and think how lovely they look.

I hope you are all settling in for a lovely restful Easter weekend, predicted to be the coldest on record here in the UK, but with three woodburners on the go we plan to take no notice of that little detail, we have cake we'll be fine.

Did you all have hot cross buns today??

We did, and also remembered that last year we sat out and ate them under the apple trees as it was so warm...

 

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Happy Mothering Sunday

I think I use the same picture every year but I love it, and though it's a bit ahead of itself this year as the primroses are only just starting to proliferate along the lane, they do make a nice virtual bouquet. It always reminds me of the little posies we were given at Sunday School to take home.

So a happy Mothering Sunday (here in the UK but please do feel included wherever you are) to anyone who 'mothers' or cares for (or about) someone else (which I think should include everyone) and special thoughts too for those who, for whatever reason, have a mum-shaped gap in their lives.

It's a gap which can often seem so huge on this day of all days.

So please do enjoy your virtual primroses and violets, put them in some water straight away (probably dunk the stems in some hot water...Curzon might be along to advise) and have yourselves a peaceful and gentle day.

Retirement... silver linings, and a face-off with prawns.

I received a very unexpected and brief phone call from my online day job employer ten days ago. Due to government funding cuts they would regrettably be terminating my contract from the end of March after four years of working for them. I would be unemployed and I was home alone and couldn't reach Bookhound to tell him...and couldn't talk to anyone until he knew. Well I can't deny that as I walked the dogs around Rocky's field afterwards, on a wet, grey dank afternoon, I was in a state of complete shock. I hadn't seen it coming feeling sure that a service that is so relatively cheap to run, and can achieve so much whilst offering essential support to existing, over-stretched NHS services, would continue to attract the required funding.

I have always understood, and indeed often explained to others, that shock, and the impact of receiving a shock, can be about doubting your resources. It was an explanation offered during a training course on Unrecognised Loss many years ago and it seemed to make sense. The initial reaction when that risk of being overwhelmed seems high, and with it comes an element of fear and numbness, perhaps a bit of panic, perhaps a bit of free-floating anxiety mixed with denial.

That might sound dramatic, but the job has been a demanding one, working alone at my desk from home as an online HV for the biggest UK parenting website with a million plus members, dealing with all their loss and bereavement, death of a child, miscarriage and stillbirth and cancer and serious illness forums. No face to face contact and working under a different name, words have been all I have had to work with, and the job inevitably became part of me, though the different name was a conscious and ultimately successful effort to allow for some detachment. Even so I have poured heart and soul into trying to do it professionally, safely and well, but that melts no ice where government funding cuts are concerned, and, as I am self-employed, rights within an organisation are few when employed staff on contracts also have to reapply for fewer posts, and where the expectation is that one of them will pick up my role on fewer hours, so I won't be needed. Though I have only met them a handful of times I will miss my colleagues too, and our skype chats together through long shifts.

Who wouldn't, under such circumstances, like to think that of course they are the only person who can do their job and that no one would ever do it better, but that is never the case, no one is indispensable, everything changes, someone else will do it their way and differently and I begrudge it to no one, it happens. So it was decision time for us... stick it out for the money until the end of March... fight for the job if no one wanted it and I assume it goes to advert under equal opportunities employment law... or serve out notice and leave at the end of this month, if not immediately.

In the end the decision was made for me as I logged on to do my next shift and read the member's posts that were waiting for me. I have replied to over 4000 in my time, and each response readable by any member of the public, so I have to assess thoroughly and think very carefully indeed about what I say, and how I say it, and who else might be reading and be affected by those words... and at that precise moment for the first time in four years I couldn't think of a word to write.

Not a single word left.

It had gone, my heart wasn't in it....and I will admit I shed a tear or three and handed in my notice for the end of January. Time to let it go.

I quickly realised that this was a loss in its own right, but what had also really gone were all my layers of self-preservation, very carefully established over the many years I have been doing this type of work. A semi-permeable one that allows me to try and understand someone's grief and sorrow or their life difficulties, and beneath that a cast-iron one that stops me feeling it as if those problems were my own. It is a delicate finely tuned thing to which I have paid great and constant attention, and received regular supervision to maintain, and suddenly those layers had dissolved and I knew it was time to stop.

In fact might it really be time to RETIRE from my entire nursing career...

Those of you have been reading here for a while will know that I 'retired' from the NHS just over four years ago now, but I was offered this job hot on the heels of that, and I took it on as a new challenge, which it has most certainly been. Perhaps my steepest learning curve to date, but I have learnt so much from doing it and a great deal about myself too, and it has been a privilege to have been given the opportunity to be alongside people (mostly young mums) with words, and through some of the toughest, most horrific and frightening times of their lives. At times when people are doubting their resources it is amazing what the written word can achieve, this much I do know.

However the decision to stop immediately was finally made for me following an encounter with a plate of prawns last Thursday. It was a lovely celebratory lunch with the Tinker and I thought it was a little unusual that my scalp seemed to come up in large itchy lumps while I was eating.

Health Visitors only assume one thing with itchy heads and I was trying to think how I may have caught head lice.

Things took an all-over-the-body turn for the worse overnight, even with anti-histamines, and when it suddenly and rapidly spread to my face, lips and mouth through a sleepless Friday night I knew I might be in trouble. By the time Bookhound took charge and shipped me into casualty early on Saturday morning, I resembled a hybrid of Miss Piggy and that Spitting Image puppet of the Queen, my face felt fit to explode and I truly wished the rest of me belonged to someone else. The receptionist couldn't help but stare and was probably thinking crikey this is collagen and botox gone badly wrong, so I couldn't help but slur, through rapidly closing lips...

'People pay a fortune for a trout pout like this.'

It's a case of not realising just how awful you feel until you start to feel better, and I am thanks to the ten days of high dose steroids and anti-histamines I have started, and that is certainly me and prawns done for, and emergency strategies in place for future rogue encounters. But I of all people also know how easy it is for these things to slip through auto-immune defences lowered by stressful times, and the doctor (and I agree) felt sure that recent events had encouraged the prawns to rampage unchecked.

I am atopic as it is with hay fever and interestingly have always loathed fish and other shellfish, the smell of it as I get older even more so, and prawns have only sneaked in under cover of sauce as a token gesture, so clearly our bodies do have unwitting mechanisms for protecting us.

Apparently I now look like Bagpuss, which may or may not be an improvement on the Queen, but in any case I have stopped work with immediate effect. Doing this step-by-step because it feels like 'big', I will make the very final decision about my forty-one year nursing career when my NMC registration is up for renewal in July. It's about being in control of the things you can be.

So what next...

Well, whilst I always feel it is most beneficial in the long run to stand still and reflect, and take time to be with and to become accustomed to any sort of loss or change, we are a family who don't hesitate to start finding silver linings, and the most obvious one was staring us all in the face....even my double-the-normal-sized face.

You may remember my mini-series How to Build an Extension to Your Home. Well Bookhound has been working away at it... a kitchen and cloakroom added onto an existing sitting room, bathroom and two bedroomed self-contained end of our lovely home and with its own staircase, and it is almost completed; now ready for fitting out and decorating.

The plan had always been to have a holiday cottage here with the option that it would always be available for the Tinker to live in should he want to. 

Well he does want to..

So we are all systems go to have it ready for him to move into by his 88th birthday in April and I cannot tell you how excited the whole family is at the prospect. As you know we love the Tinker's company and he loves ours, so to have him here with us will be very special. He will live as independently as he wants to in the newly named Tinker's Cott, but we will be nearby should he need us, and as a welcome bonus the flowers in our garden are likely to take a dramatic turn for the better.

It's the perfect solution for us all, and I feel sure you will be hearing the occasional Tale from Tinker's Cott eventually.

Meanwhile having spent my working days telling others to care for themselves I am going to do likewise and hopefully have a calm, quiet, reflective, dog-walking, leaf-scuffling, stand-and-stare, knitting and reading kind of week and just 'be', whilst shaking off the Bagpuss look. My apologies too for absence from Team Middlemarch discussions this weekend, I will catch up soon, and though I have lots of posts written and ready to share on here I am going to hold them off for now.

So I hope you will forgive me if dovegreyreader scribbles takes a little sleep along with dovegreyreader until next Monday, in which time I will have created a natural divide between that 'working' life and this next one, and I will see you on the other side, retired, relieved, recovered, renewed, refreshed and ready to share more books and walks and knitting disasters, and to make twelve lovely new sets of curtains.

 

 

 

Just between ourselves...

I am going to be in really serious trouble for telling you this, but since when has that stopped me, and I know it won't go any further...

Happy Birthday Bookhound... 60 today.



 

The Arctic Convoys and the Ushakov medal

It's all got a bit messy and confusing but as a veteran of the Arctic convoys the Tinker is very interested in all this which has featured in the press here and on BBC News in recent weeks...

The British Arctic convoy heroes who risked their lives to help transport crucial supplies to Russia during World War II have been told they cannot accept a medal for valour from the country.

The Russian Embassy wrote to survivors of the notoriously perilous sea campaign - who saw 3,000 of their comrades killed - to inform them it intended to award them with the Medal of Ushakov as a symbol of the country's gratitude.

But the Foreign Office has blocked the Russian's government's plans to honour Britain's Arctic heroes, because it said it would break rules surrounding the acceptance of medals.

Russia has already awarded the Ushakov medal to veterans from Australia, Canada and the U.S. for their role in the Arctic convoys, which ferried vital supplies and munitions to the Soviet Union to help fight off the advance of Hitler between 1941 and 1945....

The Foreign Office said permission to accept a foreign award could not be given if a UK award had been given for the same services, and pointed out that the Arctic convoy veterans were eligible for the World War II Atlantic Star.

A spokesman for the veterans, Commander Grenfell, has previously dismissed suggestions that the Atlantic Star - created in recognition of a separate Naval campaign and extended to include those who served on the convoys - was adequate recognition for survivors of the terrifying trips as he continued to press for a specific Arctic medal.

A statement from the Foreign Office said: 'The rules on the acceptance of foreign awards state that for permission to be given for an award to be accepted, there has to have been specific service to the country concerned and that that service should have taken place within the previous five years.

‘Additionally, permission cannot be granted if they have received, or are expected to receive, a UK award for the same services.'

The Russian Embassy said the Foreign Office decision was a matter of 'deep regret', and added it hoped the British government would disregard the 'bureaucratic formality' and change its position.

Last year Commander Grenfell told of the sense of betrayal among Britain's Arctic convoy survivors over David Cameron's failure to introduce a specific Arctic medal.

While in opposition the Conservative pledged to recognise the veterans with a dedicated commemorative medal if elected.

But after becoming prime minister Mr Cameron pointed to the extension of the Atlantic Star Medal to those who served in the Arctic as a mark of the nation's gratitude.

But campaigners argue that 95 per cent of the 66,500 men who served in the Arctic Convoys had already earned the Atlantic Star before being conscripted on to the dreaded ‘Russian Run’.

Commander Grenfell said that most Arctic sailors had been drafted from the Home Fleet and so would have been eligible for the Atlantic Star regardless.

Like I said all a bit confusing but sad for the last remaining veterans of which the Tinker, at 87, is one of the youngest. But anyway the Tinker had applied before all the hoo hah and when something Russian arrived for him a few weeks ago he was delighted with it....

 
It is the Medal of Ushakov and now we fully expect the Tinker to be taken off to the tower for having it in his possession. He is very grateful for the award, because it was indeed jolly nippy up there and pretty dangerous too....here are his thoughts...

In every area of conflict during WWII, men who participated were awarded a Campaign Medal, that is all except one, the Arctic Convoy campaign. The Russian Government have indeed granted Russian medals it is true, and recently they have asked all living veterans of the Arctic Convoys, and there won’t be very many now, to apply to the Russian Embassy for the Order of Ushakov to be awarded by a grateful country.  I therefore applied and after a considerable time, received a Russian commemorative medal as a keepsake but which cannot be worn, together with a letter apologising for the fact that the British Government would not give permission for the award to be made.

Personally, my nose was not put out of joint, we had our medals, but what of the memory of 30,000 Merchant Navy men who died under those bitter icy conditions in a bitter campaign, all of whom were volunteers.

They deserved more than that.

The Tinker's account of the Arctic Convoys will be on here tomorrow, and he may or may not be marching in the town's Remembrance Day parade, but he takes great pride in his medals...

 ... and his highly symbolic off-white Artic convoy beret.. off-white to signify the colour of blood on snow.

Saturday afternoon...

Another Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK and the lino-cutting stuff is arriving; just the basics to see how I get on, given that I haven't done this since I was about seven, and I find it hard to believe that we were entrusted with such lethal tools at such a tender age, but we were and no fingers disappeared. I have a wooden handle with five interchangeable weapons of lino destruction at my disposal, along with a pack of ten card-sized pieces of lino to practise on and three larger, more expensive ones for 'best.' I am up for Nancy's idea of floor tiles but am currently trying to figure out how I can sneak the tool into B&Q and do a test gouge.

Anyway, I sat down yesterday afternoon and had a go.

Sad but not unexpected news came of the death of a very dear friend and health visitor colleague at lunchtime. I had spent some time with Jeannie earlier in the week and the comfort of knowing it was a peaceful end helped a little. I listened to Vivaldi's Gloria, soaring music which always sends my thoughts up and away, while I tried my hand at some lino cutting for a couple of hours.

Here's the end result via a bit of computer editing and flipping over so that the letters read the right way round, because I am still waiting for the paint and the roller to arrive.... but I couldn't wait to see how it might look.

Bookhound drew the outline of the cat and the letters for me, because the book on how not to draw like a six year old that Curzon recommended hasn't arrived yet, and I was feeling a bit wimpish. If it had been down to me that would have said SUNGAM when I finally get to press my first effort, and may not have looked much like a cat. But what therapy, I can see I am going to love his.

I just chiselled away contentedly remembering happy days when Jeannie and I had laughed together like drains. Jeannie wrote a brilliant blog about her brush with breast cancer called Getting it Off My Chest which I have mentioned here in the past. I have been reading it again and am reminded, as if I would ever forget, how great Jeannie was at finding the funny in the difficult (health visitors seem to be very good at this for some reason.) Who can forget the wig she christened Heidi, and what a laugh we had at that coffee morning.

Having faced down the breast cancer and received the all-clear it was time for Jeannie and her family to properly enjoy her retirement, so it seemed desperately unfair that she should be diagnosed with a completely unconnected primary brain tumour this time last year. While we all wailed 'That is SO unfair,' Jeannie would say 'Well, why not me' and took on the surgery, the radiotherapy, the next round of chemo with her customary courage. She made us all promise that we would let her know if she lost her marbles, but of course that needed all of us to have ours there in the first place which we all agreed might be tricky these days.

Always a keen reader, Jeannie had read voraciously in the last year so it was a pleasure to keep her furnished with bags full of books and she came along to the Endsleigh Salon just two months ago in June, knocking the rest of us for six with her intuitive and spontaneous debate about a wide range of books on our theme The Seven Deadly Sins. I had gone to collect her and we had agreed that the minute she felt tired I would take her home again, by 10pm I was yawning and Jeannie was still having a whale of a time. Having read Good Evening Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter Downs in preparation, Jeannie talked lucidly about one story, Miss Burton, with its undertones of greed, envy and jealousy and we had a wonderful debate, enough to make me hope and believe that Jeannie would just go on for ever. Sadly we all knew that wasn't to be.

It was a privilege to sit at Jeannie's bedside this time last week and in the company of another lovely friend. We massaged her hands and feet and chatted to her in the sure and certain knowledge that she could hear us as she prepared to set off on her next journey... at one point we saw a flicker of a gentle smile. RIP Jeannie, we are all going to miss you dreadfully, but we will never forget you and wherever you are I know there will be laughter.

A colourboration...

I hope you see what I did there, all will be explained.

In amongst all the other books I am still reading Colour - Travels Through the Paintbox by Victoria Finlay, albeit at the speed of a snail, and you are probably all so fed up with me mentioning it that you'll be glad when I creep to the final page, but with the Red chapter pending I had an idea.

I have a very lovely friend who is doing a very lovely thing right now. Ellie and her partner Adrian have set off on their journey of a lifetime and this is really serious travelling, no messing, because Ellie has put all her books in storage.

Thus far they have driven across Europe, through Italy down to Sicily, across to Africa, back to Sicily, Italy again (they like Italy) and now Albania, Macedonia eventually heading east, and they have very kindly taken me along with them. I have been no bother at all, I have a little virtual seat in the back of the camper van thanks to their blog Wherever the Road Goes which I have been following with much pleasure and enthusiasm. They have promised to be ready for visitors and there's loads of room on the roof rack if anyone wants to tag along. Inbetween visiting every ruin between here and Albania (they research diligently and miss nothing) we have had one or two dodgy moments with the old camper van, but Adrian is Mr Spark Plug and seems able to right most wrongs, while Ellie goes out shopping for local food. 

En route the photos have been tremendous as I knew they would be. Ellie has been to stay chez dovegrey and took some beautiful pictures while she was here, so I had this idea that perhaps Ellie and I could do a collaboration colourboration (new word) on the subject of Red. Ellie knew of Victoria Finlay's book, she owned a copy and in fact even knew of its approximate whereabouts in a blue box in a yellow warehouse in England, which I thought was impressive. But I also thought that whilst I scrabble around here seeing Red and thus far my imagination has only noticed the pillar box along the lane, Ellie could be doing likewise on her travels, and we would sort of bridge the geographical divide between us thanks to the internet (which they find on intermittent campsites) and with the inspiration of the paintbox and a collage each.

So Red will be our next challenge and I suspect Ellie's pictures will be a darn sight more exciting than mine if these are anything to go by.

Seen any nice patterns I asked...Cue a bridge in Porto, shadows and arches in Segovia, a gas shop in Tunisia, octopus pots in Tunisia, salt piles in Sicily, dried mud in Vulcanelli, salt pans in France, Porto again ...

Chillies in Sicily,  a bread stall in Kairouane, pears in Palermo, vines on Etna ,sundried tomatoes in Sicily, a roof in Monreale...

We will be simultaneously posting our Seeing Red collages soon and I hear Macedonia has already been fruitful so I had better get my skates on.

 

The Tinker's Day

Thank you for all your good wishes, the Tinker has been very thrilled to hear from you all and we have had a lovely day.

Took him on the Park-and-Ride to Plymouth Museum...but didn't leave him there.

In fact when Bookhound and I were in the Museum on Saturday, and browsing around the Maritime Gallery, we came to a standstill next to this display...

This is a model of the Iron Duke, the Tinker's first ship as a fourteen-year old boy bugler in 1939.

On Monday we contacted the curator of the Museum to tell him we had an artefact of our own who knew the ship intimately, and perhaps the Museum might like to meet him, and if so could we bring him in on his birthday, and would the Museum like a copy of the Tinker's book Bugle Boy.

Well it all went swimmingly well.

Our thanks to Mr Overton and his staff for making us so welcome. Offspringette joined us and we had a grand time, and the Tinker, of course very well up on his dates, bombings and sinkings, proved to be a sparkling primary historical source...

as well as being able to point out that this picture in the book...
...was taken standing next to that black door there ..

We had ourselves another photo shoot too. It's hard to imagine that the boy standing next to that door on board that ship at Scapa Flow could ever have believed that all those years later he'd be standing here next to a model of it isn't it 

Then off to find some lunch and back in the afternoon for another visit to the Scott Centenary exhibition. Mr Overton gave us some fascinating background information about it all and I had blurted out about the blog post before I realised this would also mean fessing up to the photos. In the absence of anyone to ask I usually snap away without flash until someone stops me, or snatches my camera off me, or marches me away to the cells and no one had. It was fine.

It is rare that we manage to visit any exhibition twice but I am so glad we did because who knew that I had missed so much first time round.

How on earth did I miss the knitting and the clothes...

Or the fact that the expedition set off laden with baby milk..

It was good to have another really close look and proper read of all the exhibits. I come over all wobbly at the idea that it may be some time, if ever, before something like this is gathered in one place at the same time again.
Congratulations to Mr Overton and his team at Plymouth City Museum for a job well done, and even better, the cheeky chappy who had been a victim of my flat camera battery last Saturday, now preserved for all time on dovegreyreader, especially for you..

 

 

This morning I have but one very important thing to say...

 

Happy Birthday to
 

The Tinker
 

87 today.

and here he is, about 83 years ago, perched outside his grandad's pigeon loft.

The Ides of March was yesterday...

... which meant it was thirty-seven years to the day since my brother Malcolm died at the age of twenty-four. We had always been Malcolm and Lynne and suddenly I was just Lynne.

I never know quite how the day is going to work out, have never known even after all these years whether I will get off lightly or will I be ambushed. All of which confirms for me that losing my only sibling was not about 'getting over it', or ever forgetting him but about mourning however I have needed to at any given time. It is a guiding principle I have adhered to in order to find a way through and around that allows me to think about him peacefully, which I have been able to do for many years now. 

Thinking about motherhood too this week, and with sons of my own also in their twenties, I understand even more perspectives as the years go by.

And that old chestnut about 'time being a great healer' which I now realise (and with thanks to Carol Staudacher's book A Time to Grieve for confirming this ) is not necessarily about how much time has passed, but what you do in that time, and about feeling what you feel whenever you need to feel it. 

I woke yesterday and was thinking about it all immediately...some years it may be much later in the day, but on a whim I googled the name of Malcolm's consultant who had specialised in leukaemia and bone marrow transplants at the time. Still in practice and now one of the country's leading professors on the subject, and there was an e mail address and I wondered...shall I.

I thought then about those anguished conversations he used to have with us about the risks of bone marrow transplants then very much in their infancy, and how he would lie awake at night as he tried to make those decisions about confronting and taking that risk given that so many of his patients might die anyway. In the end, over the eighteen months he lived after diagnosis (which was made three weeks after he had married,) Malcolm never made it into complete remission, and none of us were a close enough bone marrow match. The risk of graft versus host disease was considered too great at a time when immuno-suppressive drugs were also in their infancy and the transplant couldn't happen.

Then I thought about the letter the consultant wrote to us after Malcolm died and which is in my safe-keeping.

It is dated 18th March 1975, just three days later, and given that March 15th had been a Saturday that impresses me.

He couldn't have written to us any sooner.

But then I notice that his letter is in response to one from my mum and the Tinker who had written to thank him. They must have written to him the same or the next day.

In his reply the consultant says...

..."as must be obvious to you, we will miss him very much indeed as his personality and will to live was an encouragement to us all in, what at times, becomes a very difficult task.

     At present it is impossible for you to think of anything but sadness, but I must say to you that we learned a great deal about the management and ultimate control of this very distressing disease from Malcolm's case, and hope that his loss will not be wasted, and he may ultimately have contributed to the cure of leukaemia..."

And ever since, whenever I have read encouraging headlines about improving outcomes for leukaemia, or I hear of people who have been treated successfully for any form of cancer I smile inwardly and happily and think about that letter and that life.

It has taught me never to doubt the power that a letter can have from the day it arrives and for time thereafter. I have often remembered and written letters on the strength of it, and that I may not have written otherwise, so in the end I did send an email yesterday to say thank you...again.

And then today, on March 16th, it is 'sunny' again, and we celebrate the Kayaker's birthday and know that our winter is over and no matter the weather, spring is really here. And something I have also learnt and kept tucked up in my heart, is that those we have lost do live on within families in the quietest, most mysterious and unexpected ways.

I don't know if anyone knows and loves Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley as much as I do, I recommend it far and wide. It can offer solace and comfort to both the children it is meant for but also to the adults who may read it with them...

As Mole, Frog and Fox ponder the skills that dear departed Badger has taught them, Mole speaks for them all...

'As the last of the snow melted. so did the animal's sadness. Whenever Badger's name was mentioned, someone remembered another story that made them all smile.
One warm spring day as Mole was walking on the hillside where he'd last seen Badger, he wanted to thank his friend for his parting gift.
    "Thank you, Badger," he said softly. believing that Badger would hear him.
    And somehow Badger did.'



 

 

 

What day is it...

It's been a bit like that for the last forty-eight hours, and it's not even as if I've crossed a time zone or anything, but I have had a whirlwind few days and have some thank yous to make...

Thank you to Bookhound first of all for chauffeuring me to and from stations to the tune of about 170 miles in two days, and 100 of them after midnight last night to meet the 1.15am into Exeter, which was delayed thanks to a gas leak at Bridgewater. There is something heart-warming about this late-night sight when I arrive at Paddington too, as long as I get on the right train that is...

Home beckons but aren't trains eerie places when they are stationary, on dark tracks in the middle of nowhere, complete silence and you are almost the only person on board. But how grateful I always am to find Bookhound waiting for me on the platform, he takes my bag(s) and copes with an instant rush of enthused chatter. It's usually Tedburn St Mary before I remember to ask how he is. 

Thank you to The Biographer's Club for inviting me to take part in their 'What do Reviewers Want' panel discussion alongside the newspaper literary editors. I struggled a bit when it came to the question of my editorial policy etc as in...well...er... it's what I fancy reading, but I hope I was able to convey what I wanted to say. That whilst the review pages can give us all a good starter for ten, we now have the blogs that can give a wide range of  books some legs and help them run, and hopefully the two are now working as a complement to each other rather than with any sense of opposition, as seemed to be the thinking in the early days.

Thank you to all the friends various who came to the event and especially Diana who did make it from California at the beginning of her UK visit, and who I really hope is now thoroughly enjoying her London week before some walking in the Cotswolds. How good it was to be able to introduce Diana, who had won a copy of Magnificent Obsession in the prize draw here, to Helen Rappaport the author who was also at the event. 

Thank you too to Rowena who comments here and who had travelled from 'oop north to be there. Rowena gave me a box of Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes. If you want to know Can a Cupcake Save a Life then the answer is a resounding affirmative. When I eventually headed back to my room after the event, and after a busy day, and with that sense that my blood sugar might be non-existent, I savoured one over a cup of tea whilst doing that thing you should never do which is think of all the things you meant to say but didn't. Rowena it was delicious, and you will be pleased to know that I kept my hands off the other two which you asked me to share with Bookhound...I notice one has gone already and we can't blame the Gamekeper any more

Thank you to The Penn Club in Bloomsbury who, if you don't know of them, are the very best budget option accommodation in London which means I really should keep it a secret. Run by the Quakers, a central and homely location off Russell Square, the rooms are always clean and warm, lovely breakfast included and peaceful sitting rooms plus a key to the front door which all makes it feel like I have a home away from home when I am away. So much so that I woke with a jump at 4am because I heard a car outside and thought it was someone trying to steal the dogs, because no car ever goes past home at 4am. As I went to leap out of bed I realised the wall was in the way and I wasn't in Devon at all, but I was wide awake so praise by for iPads I say. I am the world's worst for feeling very homesick and very fed up in hotels, the Penn Club has proved to be the answer for my whistlestop London visits.

Thank you to Spitalfields because I had the most wonderful walk around an area of London that has changed out of all recognition since I was last living on the doorstep in Whitechapel. A real and fascinating shift in both culture and economy, and as I wandered along Brick Lane nothing seemed to bring that into finer focus than the site of a mosque and a church sitting happily side by side, and I am sure this is the mosque that had previously been used a synagogue??

I have been following the blog Spitalfield's Life for quite a while now and was delighted to read more in that recent Random Spectacular journal. This is penned by an anonymous scribe known as The Gentle Author, who is writing a post a day about living in Spitalfields and who has just this week published the book of the blog. I have ordered a copy and can't wait to read and write about it more.

Thank you to one of my oldest friends, as in years known, Gt Ormond Street student nurse life shared & bridesmaid's duties done etc. Finally I am in London on the day that she looks after her sixteen month-old granddaughter in Bloomsbury, and with a toddler in a buggy we had our passport into Coram Fields, no entry without a child, and a favoured venue for us as junior nurses charged with giving those children well enough to leave the ward some fresh air for the afternoon. There is nothing to beat those friendships which survive time and distance, and which you pick up seamlessly where you may have left off. Both of us have staggered towards nest-emptying, both of us agreed we never knew it would take so long (as in thirty years of our lives) or how hard it can be for the fledgings to support themselves and keep a roof over their heads etc these days, but of course we also had a good nostalge over tea and cake too.

Thank you to Penguin Books for the Bloggers event at Waterstones in Picadilly, twelve authors talking about their books. Cost implications mean I am able to get very few of these unless they happen to coincide with something else, so to manage two in a matter of weeks feels like something of an achievement. It was good to meet even more bloggers that I haven't met before, the both very lovely Rachel at Booksnob and Naomi at Bloomsbury Bell, and I particularly wanted to get to this event because I have always wanted to meet Nell Leyshon. It was Nell who introduce me to the work of John Caple after I wrote about her novel Black Dirt here back in 2007, so it was an absolute delight to thank her and then
talk like fury about it all. My other big reason was to talk to Penguin about a project I want to to do here with you on Robert Macfarlane's forthcoming book The Old Ways mentioned yesterday. It was so good to meet and talk with Robert, and to hear him read from the book plus I now have the project sorted and agreed, so more about that next week.

And finally, thank you to the Fire Brigade who obviously eventually sorted out the gas leak at Bridgewater and allowed the train to glide through the station, onwards and westwards and home.

 

Now We Are Six...

Well, almost 3000 posts later and when I thought I'd be fed up doing it after a couple of days, dovegreyreader scribbles is six years old this week, so I thought I really should be posting the obvious poem from A.A.Milne...

When I was One,
I had just begun

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive, 

When I was Six...

and when it came to the last line I couldn't quite bring myself to announce that I thought I might be "as clever as clever".

Then I thought about writing some navel-gazey thing about what dovegreyreader means to me...and how much I love doing it....and...and... but in the end I decided that you all know that by now so I would spare you.

I did have an interesting time trawling back to the beginning though, so I thought I'd take you on a tour of some of the posts I have enjoyed writing the most ...

I stuck a pin in the screen on the left-hand sidebar and picked a favourite book from each year..

2006 A Long Long Way ~ Sebastian Barry

2007 The Emigrants ~ W.G.Sebald

2008 The Room of Lost Things ~ Stella Duffy

2009 The Other Elizabeth Taylor ~ Nicola Beauman

2010  Dart ~ Alice Oswald Part One  & Part Two

2011 Annabel ~ Kathleen Winter

And then there was six years of  Country Life to browse and moments like this ...

A Day at the Vets...if you hate cats skip this one

and I love those days when we can talk the hindleg off a donkey about something as exciting as this...

Inkwellness... 

and what about the days when we can have a good laugh...

dovegreyreaders you shall go to the Royal Wedding

or the days when we traipse out in our pyjamas to look at this..

Lunar Eclipse One & Two 

My goodness, we know how to have a good time here in Devon, talking of which I have ten days off work to look forward to now and will be in London mid-week for the 'event' at The Biographer's Club ... if you are there please do say hello afterwards. Either side of that, and after all the mayhem of emptying the nest, I plan a nice restful week of reading and writing.

Meanwhile, please pour yourself a cup of tea and help yourself to a slice of blog-birthday-book cake...and I really wish I could say I made this but I can't, someone very clever out on the interwebs did and I just google-magicked it onto here for us to eat...

And thank you ever so much for sticking around everyone, it is still very lovely having you here xxxx

 

Our nest...

....has, for thirty of the thirty-five and a bit years that Bookhound and I have been married, mostly looked like this...

The nest is plenty big enough for five of us and at various times in recent years occupancy has been variable, with college and university and travelling, or those moments when children go off somewhere and we home the goods and chattels and the kayaks and the kettles and the cutlery and the bedding and the beds and the ...and the ...and the. 

Then they come back and go off somewhere else and take some of it, but leave another lot in its place, and somehow we have been used to this odd traffic, and, whilst Offspringette (now teaching) and the Kayaker (now land-based and working for a big UK outdoor equipment company) have been off and settled in their homes elsewhere, we have always had one permanent fixture called the Gamekeeper, who since college has worked very very hard at learning his trade in order to build up the experience and the countryside wisdom that his job requires.

It seems a very long time since this picture was taken and published in the Shooting Times... a young lad desperate to work at the job he loves...

And I'll own up...at times it hasn't been easy for him or us to keep that dream alive, but for the last two years he has had a permanent keeper's job, and this coming week our last fledgling is leaving the nest as the Gamekeeper, and the very lovely Girlfriend of the Gamekeeper move into his Gamekeeper's cottage. Cue excursions up into the loft all weekend as we search out kettle and plates and cutlery and saucepans and curtains ...and...and etc

He will only be about two miles up the road, which feels like near enough for his two dogs to find their way back home to the third who is staying if they so choose, but hopefully not the washing. And we will have to call him back when we need to move furniture because he can do most of it with one hand.

But Bookhound and I are looking at each other and feeling slightly incredulous that we have really only ever had five years on our own together, and wondering quite what life will be like now...

...with no Size 12s to trip over as we come in the door

...no smelly wellies

...no weaponry

...no larder full of energy-laden carbs

...no fifty-four sludge green, muddy coats in the boot room

...no cartridge cases/squirrel tails/other things in the washing machine

...no dead things hanging on the verandah

...no ferrets to escape

...no doors shutting and trucks going out at 5am

...no trucks coming in and doors shutting at 2am

I don't want to say it too loudly but we think our nest might finally be empty and it could be time to get on with the next bit of our lives. We have had some very exciting plans in the offing for quite a while, and though we still have a lot of work to do we are hoping they can now come to fruition...remember the extension that Bookhound was building??

And I never actually said what it was for... well it will be a very nice kitchen ...another one, so watch this space and think..

...book-lined holiday cottage sleeps four or more

...woodburning stove

...open fields as far as the eye can see

...'that' view from the bedroom windows

...miles and miles of fantastic walking on the doorstep

...new-laid eggs (our chickens are making a comeback)

...resident dowager cats

...bimbling old dog to borrow

...empty bran wolery to watch which might just fill the day someone is looking

...Bookhound's legendary cream teas

...nice hotel up the road for a posh evening

...peace perfect peace 

...and all in the splendid area of outstanding natural beauty that is the Tamar Valley. 

 

 

A Dickens of an Evening.

It being a little on the chilly side I decided against the Barouche and took the Brougham out for a test drive yesterday. I just wanted to make sure it is in fine working order and the springs are oiled and the upholstery is brushed before Team Middlemarch leap aboard, but whilst out I left my card at the homes of friends various.

In fact I went to visit a friend who has just had some heap big major surgery, and with more arduous treatment to come will clearly will be needing books (my spare copies of Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James and A Diary of the Lady, Rachel Johnson's hilarious account of her first year at the helm of the magazine) and also some watching (twenty-eight episodes of The Pallisers) for which she was very grateful.

Then off to a quilting lunch with two more friends (basically we eat then quilt and chat for a few hours) and I am deligthed to say the Brougham is in sparkling shape and ready to welcome you. It was all a relaxing end to a working week, and one where the evenings have been spent finishing Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens - A Life, so I was well in the mood for Tavistock's pre-Christmas Dickensian evening last night. This is unusual because I am more often to be found in denial that Christmas is even going to happen until about December 22nd, and then I really wish I'd thought of it a bit sooner.

Anyway Bookhound and I fought our way through the traffic and the road blocks to the Tinker's very convenient town centre bijou residence and parking space, went to call for him...we all stopped muttering 'bah humbug' and set off for a wander around. The town was packed to the gunwales, and the atmosphere was relentlessy cheery and festive as we said hello to friends and bumped into bands playing carols around every corner...

The Mayor, the Town Crier and his Consort were all joining in outside the Indian restaurant..

In fact we know the Mayor from Bookhound's days with him in the Dartmoor Rescue Group, the Town Crier sings in the Sultans with Bookhound, and his Consort is the Vocal Harem (my Tuesday evening choir) MD, so more 'hellos' in between verses of Oh Come All Ye Faithful.

Hogs were being roasted at every turn...and not a lot left of this poor little creature...

The Parish Church lit from within looked Dickensianly perfect..

The Golden Gallopers were out in The Square...

Unusually tall people were walking along Duke Street

Charles Dickens himself and...well, was it Catherine or Nelly, were out and about meeting and greeting his public..

This poor chap was being punished for the ills of the world...I am always amazed at how much venom and force people can invest in throwing a freezing cold wet sponge at someone they don't know...

And then I found these two clowns posing in front of an inflatable woolly mammoth... truly no genuine Dickensian evening should be without one.

Guarding our collective cholesterol from onslaught we avoided all bacon baps, hog-burgers, chips and other greasy temptations and repaired to the Tinker's for a cup of tea, whereupon we agreed we had had a lovely time. The town had put on a fine display of cheer and goodwill given the misery that resounds nationally, and we decided that it did not seem but 'twas five minutes since the Tinker had put his decorations away last Christmas, and, if that was indeed the case, he might as well have left them up.

Our version of one dog and his boy...

I'm catching up after a couple of wonderful London days but I thought this picture needed to follow right on from the post about Eva Ibbotson's book... this is our 'boy', with a very baby Rusty, now two years old and the very best, most faithful and hardworking friend a gamekeeper could ever wish to have.

 

Two Bridges...

Two Bridges Hotel up on Dartmoor perhaps the perfect setting to meet up with an old acquaintance. Not old as in old...you know what I mean. Someone I had met via an online reading list many years ago, and though we had met in person a few times, it was a part of a larger group and we had never really had the opportunity to sit down and talk together properly, or perhaps cross that bridge from acquaintance to friendship. A shared love of books make that inevitable really don't they.

Anyway, B was down here on holiday from her home in Bronte-land, and I arrived a bit early and nabbed the fireside chair that didn't have the cat in it..

And in fact we were too hot and moved across to the sofas in the bay window, where our cream tea (minus the cream) but with scones the size of cushions was mixed with a couple of hours of wonderful and fairly intensive bookish chat, and we had an audience.

The hotel assured us they weren't being fattened up for the Christmas menu. Chance would be a fine thing, these geese were very assertive. That one at the front tapped on the window when he saw our scones.

And we talked blogs too because B has just started writing about all her travels to literary places, which I am very pleased about because it saves me the trouble of going. I had discovered Milady's Boudoir, who knows how, but knew there were treats in store when I read B's account of a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. My interest was piqued because I have the delightful little Pushkin Press volume of Henry James's letter to Isabella by the bed and often dip into them, but had no idea about the museum. I left a comment and so our acquaintance was re-kindled.

By her own admission B is enjoying keeping a record of her travels and observations for herself and that was the purpose of her blog (Milady's Boudoir now signposted in Visiting, over here>>>>) but I have to say I am enjoying them very much too, and it has created a welcome opportunity for us to get in touch and hopefully keep in touch again.

Thank you to B for a really lovely afternoon. Clever interwebs.

It's a puppet...

Some comedy catch phrases have just found their way into our family vernacular and I'm wondering if your family might be similar??

'Fork 'andles' from The Two Ronnies can start us off on a trail of helpless laughter...

'There's a dead bishop on the landing' from Monty Python...

'It's a Norwegian Blue' ....more Python.

And for some reason 'It's a puppet' from Brian Conley. Who can know why but it crops up from time to time, and usually never in relation to anything remotely puppet-like, but we all latch on, it was the way he said it I think.

So imagine my delight when Offspringette, returning home this week from her nomadic travels around New Zealand and the US, presented me with my gift(s)

It's four puppets and my delight knew no bounds, sitting here doing little plays while I think what to write.

Canada Week

It's Canada week here this week.

Probably not anywhere else, just here, but I happen to have read a couple of good Canadian books recently so my thoughts on those will appear, but also, Mrs KevinFromCanada is in the country, and even better than that is in the county. Sheila is on a walking holiday across Dartmoor and Exmoor with two friends Jill and Sally who we met on their visit here last year.

It's quite complicated this year because I am going to pick up with them for a half day's walking mid-Dartmoor, mid-week, but I am so looking forward to catching up with all the news, and I must remember to tell them that the blueberry bush they bought us did survive the harsh winter, just as Jill said it would,
and even better we harvested a little crop of fruit from it about a week ago.

So add in the Giller Prize longlist announcement which always shoots the CanLit onto my radar more than usual and it all seemed like a good week to fly the maple leaf.

Talking of KevinFromCanada, he and Mrs KFC have come up with something generous and innovative to celebrate Kevin's second year of blogging. An initiative in partnership with Calgary's up coming writer's festival which I'm looking forward to hearing about when I meet up with Sheila later this week.

So without more ado, let Canada Week celebrations commence.

 

Do you think he's bought me a reef...

...for our Coral Wedding Anniversary today??

Thirty-five years, and if no reef seems forthcoming at least I've made us a little quilt.


And just as we have every year since our Silver Anniversary ten years ago, our thoughts on our special day are also very much focused on the tragedy of  9/11 and all it has meant since.

and the Blatchford Cup goes to...

for Best Exhibit...

Placed into my hands by the Worshipful (apparently) Mayor of West Devon.

and I shared the WI Trophy for Most Points in Handicrafts thanks to...

and...

plus a second for the felted picture.

The Tinker gained two seconds for his tapestry and his picture, and we'd best not forget Bookhound and his Cox's Orange Pippins.

Or his highly successful, Guess the Weight and Length of the Atlantic Salmon, given that the theme of this year's show was the Tamar Valley, and a fly fishing demonstration may have resulted in casualties.

Roll Up...Roll Up...go on have a guess, what do you reckon, weight and length?

Sorry the prize has already gone, it was a lovely hamper of goodies.

And we won the local cider yet again in the raffle.

Meanwhile, our neighbour, as the crow flies, took a massive eight (or was it nine) trophies home in the fruit, veg and flower classes which serves him right because that's a lot of polishing, and also explains where all the goodness in our soil has leeched away to... even if his house is a mile away.

Right, you'll be very pleased to know that's an end to this shocking bout of bragging and boasting..oh  apart from one more little 'thing' tomorrow that is, and then we have an autumn of great reading coming up, and I am very much looking forward to settling down with it all.

 

Village Show entries

I hope you are not getting a bit sick of all this because I'm sorry but now it's the Village Show entries, and the hive has been very industrious this year.

The Tinker has entered that lovely railway viaduct in Class 74 Embroidered Article (we'll see if the WI judge lets it through...it looks more like embroidery than tapestry to us) and his William Morris wallhanging in Class 74 Tapestry Article. It was done some years ago, hangs in our sitting room but as yet un-entered in any competition.

I've gone for a whopping, most-ever entries this year, five classes in handicrafts and have had the loveliest time making...
A Hare With Amber Eyes of my own.. (Class 77 Any Handmade Article)

The stained glass piece now called 'April 27th' as that is the day we have agreed that the sun sets right in the 'V' of the bit of the Tamar Valley that we can look towards and down into Cornwall (Class 75 A Sewn Article)

Now the wet felting. Well the experimental pieces have ended up mounted on a machine quilted linen backing as something of a first attempt and I fancy I might just call this 'Edward Thomas' and think of that red flower as a poppy, because it was certainly the book in my mind as I made it. (Class 79 An Item of Felt)

As if I could pass up Class 76 A Knitted Article, and finally these socks are finished, using the ball of hand-dyed wool someone sent me, and the wool Offspringette (currently in Atlanta, Georgia after a very long Greyhound bus journey from Iowa) brought me back from her trip to Shetland. I have to admit these are a little unusual so who can know what the very strict WI judge will make of them. And the time lapse was so long between one sock and the next I had completely forgotten how I'd done that pattern around the top..

And lastly, and my goodness I have only just squeaked this one to completion, Class 72 Any Item of Patchwork.

Even though is is just 30" square there was much more hand quilting left to do than I had first thought,but I love hand quilting and I hate to skimp on it so I'm hoping I have done a proper job.

All was going well until I had a bit of an insurgency over the border. It did have a 3" wide calico border which I marked up with a chain design and had quilted half way round in brown before I woke up one morning and realised it ruined the whole thing. Out of proportion for the size and delicacy of the piece. I unpicked and thought easy, just trim the white and stitch it round to the back as binding.

Rubbish. Half stitched and it looked terrible, so I unpicked again and holding my breath, because this thing is getting smaller by the day, I took a rotary cutter to it, trimmed all layers back and machined on a much narrower coral pink binding. To my complete relief I woke up the next morning as happy as larry with it and strode onto to the finish line.

I'll tell you what it is called tomorrow. for reasons that will become clear.

So that's us entered, let battle for the Blatchford Cup commence, it's the taking part that counts

 

 

The Tinker's Tapestries....a few more

Ah yes the trains. The Tinker likens this to painting with wool.


and this one of  the Ribblehead viaduct which was my mum's favourite sight as she travelled on the Settle to Carlisle railway, from Liverpool to the Yorkshire Dales, for childhood holidays at a little place called Countersett Hall near Askrigg. The Tinker took my mum back there to visit in the year before she died, it was a place that brought back special and very happy memories for her of a past that had remained so vivid, whilst the near present had sadly started to fade. I love this picture and am always reminded of my mum telling us how she'd count the arches with great excitement and know she was getting nearer.

Then we must move onto the Ottoman empire because the Tinker did two lids for ottomans and one footstool for me (currently beneath my desk with my feet and a cat curled up on it) in this design which we all fell in love with

I think you've all seen this and the next one several times over but I could and do look at them all day so I'll add them here for completeness. The Elizabeth Bradley done in a single very large piece

and another piece also very large

and here is the Tinker with the coveted village show Blatchford Cup for it, which he won a couple of years ago.

The spin offs from all these are cushions various, smaller versions of the designs because I always love them so much and to use up the wool.
Coming next... all our entries for today's show which have to be staged by 12 o'clock so I've timed the post for then, plus a glimpse of the Tinker's new work in progress, because I had noticed some idleness which will never do for an 86 year old as talented as this, as I'm sure you will agree.

Clever Tinker xxx

The Tinker's Tapestries.

I promised you an exhibition of the Tinker's tapestries and as it is village show day today I thought you might enjoy a little exhibition of your own here with several posts through the day, whilst the Tinker and I fight it out with all-comers for Most Point in Handicrafts and The Blatchford Cup for Best Exhibit. The Tinker has won the cup before... I haven't, we are usually beaten by a galleon made out of three million matchsticks or similar.

So I took myself around his little apartment with my camera and we should probably start with my mum, because I think we all caught this love of needlecrafts from her... the Tinker made her these

My mum's embroidery was meticulous and exquisitely detailed, from The Wise Men..

To Widecombe Fair (incidentally, it's Widecombe Fair next Tuesday)

My mum then bought the Tinker this kit in a sale for £16 and in effort to keep him awake in the evenings after he retired. He calls it his early work and finds fault, but I'd be pleased enough to finish anything to be honest.

He moved swiftly onto this Glorafilia Doll's House and then did one for me as well...no that's a lie. I liked his so much I bought one for myself, did three roof tiles and he finished it for me.

Then it was time for some Kaffe...

Coming next, the trains and the Ottoman empire...

 

The Birthday Tree...

One of the worst things about moving house, apart from the fact that you arrive at the new one and find the view might be nice but the house isn't actually as big as it first seemed,

...and the water supply's a bit dodgy,

...and the boiler has to be condemned,

...and you throw out the resident curtains you've paid for because they bear no resemblance to the ones you agreed to buy,

...and it's darker at night than you ever thought possible and the electricity goes off and you can't even remember where the stairs are let alone find the candles and a box of matches,

...and you've a inherited stupid burglar alarm that goes off at every whit and twit and calls the police and you don't know how to stop it,

... and it all needs far more work than you first thought,

well all these things are bad enough, but worse it turned out was what we had to leave behind at the old house.

Our first home, a gorgeous little end of terrace cottage bought mostly by the Halifax Building Society for the princely sum of £12,300 in 1980, perfect for babies and small children but not perfect for teenagers, and so we moved here seventeen years ago and if there was one thing we would have brought with us had we been able to it was our neighbour's tree.

Actually there were several things because after watching The Victorian Kitchen Garden Bookhound had built us an exquisite little traditional brick-based Victorian greenhouse which couldn't come with us either, and come to think of it the kitchen was really nice too... and we had an en suite bathroom which I've never had since, but anyway, no regrets.

The tree we discovered was a Eucryphia, always clotted with masses of beautiful white flowers in early August, and therefore resplendent on the day that I came home from hospital with a tiny little firstborn, Offspringette.

So we called it the Birthday Tree and we loved it.

And each year we'd have the birthday party out in the garden underneath the gaze of the Birthday Tree and its gorgeous white flowers.

I wouldn't have thought it possible to grieve for a tree when I should have been more worried about the fact we were having to pipe water from a cattle trough and there were bits of dead 'things' coming out of the taps, but grieve I did. It was a connection none of us could bear to lose and we quickly realised we would need a Eucryphia of our own in our garden here, so we bought one straight away and had a little planting ceremony.

Then it was in the wrong place so we had to move it which set it back a little, and we waited in vain for flowers.

Then we had a huge and terrible disaster with a chain saw in the wrong place at the wrong time and five foot was accidentally lopped off  what was by now a six foot tall tree, which didn't do it much good either.

There were real tears and Bookhound hid in the shed for a while.

I would drive past the old house and covet the house that had proper water coming out of the taps, and covet the Birthday Tree. We would make a point of passing by each August just to enjoy the towering mass of flowers. Then horror of horrors a few years ago the tree was chopped down.... no I'll bet it was 'hacked down mercilessly while people stood around saying, great, look at all the light we can have now' or something. It disappeared without trace and a horrible new fence appeared around our lovely old home and we went into mourning for the Birthday Tree, all the while looking at our own rather stunted and withered version.

Our version is a funny shape because we have been too scared to touch it since its accidental amputation, let alone prune it, and after two frozen winters, the leaves were looking patchy and brown and things were not looking hopeful.

So there we were, sitting out on the garden seat this week and lo verily what did we see...

 

Happy Birthday today Offspringette, who has travelled from Christchurch to Chicago via Los Angeles this week, and here at last are some flowers for you on our own Birthday Tree.

 

Happy Birthday to...

....yes it's Bookhound's day.

If you add the numbers together he's only 13 really (no not 49 and not 67) and I will be likewise later in the year which surely can't be right, how did that happen when we still feel about 7 (25). But what a lovely post-Christmas ritual this has now become after 35 years together (how did that happen too) a nice extension to the festivities as we start each New Year off with a birthday, and you'll be pleased to know I've got the hang of it now.

Shove some candles in the left-over Christmas cake, figure out whether we remembered to save some presents back from Christmas, or did we give him everything on the day (he was thrilled with the kettle de-scaler by the way) unscramble some Christmas wrapping paper, make a card (he really hates fuss) and then pootle off somewhere to walk along a beach or something and blow out the cobwebs and be ready to start our new year.

I'm hoping we'll back in time to catch the episodes of Downton Abbey that we missed first time round and then, forget candlelit dinners in posh restaurants...  where else can we be in the evening but glued to the radio for The Archers 60th anniversary double-episode-much-lauded-disaster debacle. I'm a bit out of touch but can only lay the plot-line at the pregnant Helen's door, the BBC haven't been able to keep their hands off the poor babies this Christmas, however Nigel's untimely demise seems to be a close runner up with Lizzie dropping dead not far behind, or I suppose Brookfield or The Bull could spontaneously combust or something.

I've actually bought Bookhound 1500 roof slates (best Cornish Delabole, accept no substitutes) and I'm going to get him a special slating hammer too...not quite as posh as this $99 one, I'm thinking more £9.99 @ B&Q.

It has the look of the medieval weaponry about it don't you think... with a touch of climbing the North Face of the Eiger thrown in, but I know he'll be really pleased with it all because very soon he'll be back up on his roof ready for Phase Two of How to Build an Extension to Your Home and here's a picture I know he'll love...the suitably dressed Dad & Lads building crew on a tea break.

 

Remembering...

Remembrance Day, so that can only mean one thing... time to share another story from the Tinker's little memoir Bugle Boy, which for anyone who may not know is a published collection of his memories of going to war at the age of 14 in 1939 as a Royal Marines boy bugler.
I haven't mentioned the Tinker, (father of dgr ) in a while which is most remiss of me, but he is very chipper, walks twice as fast with the double pacemaker, sends you all his regards and reads here every day.
In case anyone's wondering it was Our Susan (Hill) who gave him that nickname and based on an incident I recounted to her concerning the regular gatherings of the Tinker's little band of octogenarian World War II veterans, which always seemed to involve some mischief and the need for an ambulance for one of them.


That's him, the little lad on the left in the cover picture and all ready to go off to a battleship in December 1939.
He did a wonderful thirty minute live question and answer interview about Bugle Boy on Radio Devon recently, so the book's still available out there and still being read which is lovely. And because it is the bugler playing Last Post and Sunset on Remembrance Day that always brings a tear to my eye, I have tagged on a picture of our own 'at the going down of the sun moment'  here last night, it was breathtaking.

My Debut

The first time Mum and Dad said they would come down
to Eastney to see me filled me with excitement. I knew
they would feed me and make me financially sound for a
short while and, of course, I could show off in my new
uniform. I suppose it was a month after I had arrived but
it had taken at least three weeks to assemble all my kit.
The accoutrements were no problem but the uniform had
to be specially made, after all at 4’ 8” I was not exactly off
the peg, besides which we had to be trained in how to
comport ourselves when out of barracks. In those days,
when a Royal Marine went out he wore white cotton
gloves and carried a silver-headed cane, something I was
sorry to see discontinued, it made you feel a little special;
but there was a drill to it all that had to be learnt before
you were allowed out.

It was a Sunday, as I remember, and they would meet
me at the barrack gate at 2 p.m. by which time I had
cleaned my buttons, boned my boots to the best possible
shine for a new pair and starched my cap cover. We never
had white-top caps then, just blue caps, but we donned
cap covers between 1 May and 1 October and they had to
be starched. A word about my boots; they too had to be
made, by the cobblers in the barracks, from greased cow
hide that took weeks and weeks of boning before getting
the required polish. They were size six and each boot had
116 hobnails, a heel plate and a large toe plate; when I first
put them on I felt like a deep-sea diver.

Two o’clock came eventually, I left it for a few minutes
to make sure they would be there to see me march up to
the Sergeant on the gate, and there they were, in earnest
conversation with the Sergeant. Drawing myself up to my
full height, I halted in front of the Sergeant.

‘Po/x 3943 Boy Bugler L. Chester, permission to leave
barracks Sergeant.’

My father was bursting with pride and my mother had
tears in her eyes; I was terrified. Whilst I stood there with
my proud parents watching, he did a 360-degree inspection
of me, including a bird’s eye view of my cap cover,
because I’m sure he was 7’ 6” tall.

‘You have dust in the welts of your boots, go back and
clean them properly.’

My father’s pride at that moment knew no bounds, my
mother shed some more tears and I was completely
humiliated. I have said that after three weeks we were
completely streetwise, we had ways and means for all situations.
For this one I went back to my barrack room, sat
on the bed for ten minutes then walked back again.

‘Why didn’t you clean them like that the first time,
laddie?’

In those halcyon pre-World War Two days, I’m sure
that was the way of the Royal Marines, more so with the
recruits: they endeavoured to break your spirit and then
proceeded to build you up to what they wanted – sheer
blind obedience. It worked, unless you were as cunning as
us boys who had nothing to break down in the first place.

Happy Birthday to...

It's one of those three annual Embarrass a Child days so please excuse the indulgence while Family Dovegrey wish a very Happy Birthday to the Gamekeeper, surely not twenty-five years ago today that I gave birth to this little chap, all 8lbs 6ozs of him.
Third baby in four years so I had to be prised out of Tavistock Maternity Home after the usual ten day stay; this one spent wondering why I had so few visitors. In fact I had loads but everyone said I was always asleep so they just crept off again.
I love this picture taken at first meeting... can't you just see what mischief the pair of them are plotting for this little invader. A matter of days before the event, that little Kayaker there, aged two and a half, had found himself a ladder and climbed onto the shed roof (because it was there) and no amount of bribery would persuade him down. Being too large to climb the ladder myself I had to ring Bookhound at work to come home and deal with.

Meanwhile, as if this week wasn't hectic enough, I'm off to a hotel up country today for two days of intense, work-related conferencing, so if I am tardy in comments that will explain it and many thanks to Fran for the Celtic blessing in comments yesterday, I shall need the wind in my sails this week:-)

Happy Birthday to...

Forgive the indulgence but I get three goes a year on here to embarrass a child and so I must just wish Offspringette a very Happy Birthday.
Isn't she sweet... and look at that thing called a nappy pin.
We had a bit of a traumatic time between us on this day back in 1981. I was a typical nurse and therefore a pregnancy disaster, with pre-eclampsia, an emergency full term delivery and my little 5lb 2oz firstborn bundled off for ten days of needles and tubes in intensive care, which almost broke my heart. I wasn't too well either but knew if I could only feed her myself she'd pick up fast, and eventually had a bit of a tantrum about it all, the sort of tantrum you're only capable of in those first early days of motherhood. Of course I was right, some things you just now, and thereafter if I couldn't get up to SCBU she was brought down to me on the ward day and night to feed, this back in the days when test-weighing before and after a feed was considered an accurate way of showing that you weren't feeding your baby enough and therefore a bottle was required. Please don't tell me off now for putting an extra cardigan on her before they took her back to weigh, because she and I had a little chat about it all and planned our escape from what was the old Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth.
This picture was taken when we got back to the peace and quiet of the now sadly defunct Tavistock Maternity Home, where ten day post-natal stays were the order of the day, and I was allowed to stay a bit longer to recover and get the feeding properly established without cheating. Having been the local health visitor they were very kind to me, failing at breast feeding didn't seem like an option if I ever wanted to hold my head up around this town again. For my sins this little scrap then fed 2hrly day and night for months afterwards to make up for all that lost growing in utero, but we managed.
Babies in towelling nappies, hobbles in dressing gowns around the beautiful gardens in the sunshine, lasting friendships made and compulsory afternoon sleeps on beds before being woken for tea and homemade cake were the order of the day in the Maternity Home; crying babies wheeled off to the nursery if they wouldn't settle, where the heat used to be turned up so that they would (shock...horror) and they did, and we all emerged whole and healed and ready to give this motherhood thing a bash, those really were the days
Happy Birthday little one x

Lady Day...

You could be forgiven for thinking that Lady Day is on March 25th not July 6th, and is actually about paying your rent on time, or traveling to your new farm, or celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, or eating waffles if you live in Sweden, though perhaps not necessarily in that order.
Or perhaps you thought it was a tribute to Billie Holiday whose nickname was Lady Day.
I doubt you thought it was anything to do with a sneaking off to W.H.Smith's to take a look at a magazine but ye gods, today is The Lady day, the dovegreyreader interview with the very lovely Stephanie Cross. I have to say a very big thank you to Stephanie who took the trouble to travel all the way down here from London for the day and had gone to a great deal of effort in preparing her questions, and please don't ask how many pics Bookhound took before a few emerged that I was even half happy for Her Majesty to flick past...because indeed 'tis rumoured...

Happy Father's Day...

...to all of them everywhere.
and to the Tinker... thank you for being there Dad x 

and of course to Bookhound,

With love from Offspringette, the Gamekeeper and the Kayaker xxx
who I'm sure won't forget...

Pokarekare Ana...

The choir I belong to did a little 'set' at a concert held at Tavistock College for local choirs this week, all part of the Tavistock Sings Festival.
It was amazing to see how many people out there are loving singing, and perhaps the most impressive (well, apart from us that is!) was the Tavistock College Gospel Choir.
Tavistock College the main secondary school for a vast rural catchment area, our children went there, but with 2000 pupils it's a behemoth of a place to manage and discipline and has defeated several head teachers in recent years. The press this year has not been entirely favourable and the school has currently been placed on special measures, but let me tell you the gospel choir does it huge credit. Sixteen or so teenagers, boys and girls who made a sound that belied their numbers, perfectly pitched, fantastic harmonies, fresh and enthused young faces, and the roof was well and truly raised, as were the audience to their feet, when they sang their versions of Bring on Tomorrow and Lean on Me.
Another choir however did have me biting my lip a bit as they sang Pokarekare Ana, that well-known unofficial anthem of New Zealand, and I was done for and couldn't help but think of the boy again.
All this week's talk of adventurous sons (and daughters) and nephews and godsons... because not everyone has children but most people doubtless know of one not a million miles from them... and I wonder if occasionally like me you also feel that strange and direct emotional connection with the mothers who saw their sons set off for the trenches so readily and eagerly.
I can sometimes see it writ large all over mine...
So of course I miss mes enfants when they are away, but the Kayaker's twenty-seven, still a free spirit and loves to travel, plus we speak on the phone or skype most weeks and he sends us parcels. One arrived this week full of all sorts of New Zealand bits and pieces ...why are other countries' newspapers so fascinating?
And a memory stick full of pics so we've had a great time browsing and lapping up the beauty of the country and the sheer depth of colour, and  this time I think I can safely say no dolphins were harmed in the taking of these photos.

Bit of tree-hugging,

Could be be writing a diary....or a book...

Queenstown, I can think of worse places to hoover...

Still doing what he loves best...

and of course as you might expect, fitting in a bit of bird watching.

Cruise ship conversation...

So the Tinker is on board his cruise ship, having a fabulous time and it's land ahoy as he approaches Antigua (and to be exact, because someone's sure to notice, I took this picture two years ago and it's Jamaica) and who knows, perhaps he's got his copy of Wolf Hall to hand which he's really enjoying, so he strikes up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him and it went something like this...

'Do you like reading? ' he says (great chat up line Dad!)

'Oh yes,' she says, 'I love books.'

'My daughter writes a blog about books' he says

'Oh really' comes the reply 'What's it called?'

'dovegreyreader scribbles' he says.

Silence....

'Don't tell me you're the Tinker!'

Happy Birthday to...

...the Tinker (father of dgr and seen here holding his village show cup, the year his tapestry beat my knitted socks...huh) who is eighty-five today and we'll be feeding him up because he's off on a big adventure next week... three weeks of luxury cruising around the Caribbean, where he'll have to eat every twenty minutes, so we must get him trained up for the task.
Those who have been visiting here for a while may remember that I went along with the Tinker and his friend last time when the third friend dropped out at the last minute.
I saw Louis XIV poodle clouds on the flight out...

and had any pre-conceptions about cruise holidays well and truly re-shaped to the good as I wallowed in my state room and sat out on my balcony watching the flying fish leaping out of the Caribbean, whilst trying to imagine just how exactly the sea bed beneath could be six miles deep and forcing myself to eat a disgraceful amount of food which just kept appearing....it seemed ungrateful not to somehow.


The Tinker has (we always touch wood) been very fit and well since he had his pacemaker done last year so in the company of some lovely friends, and with no long-haul flights to Galveston to meet the ship this time, he should start the cruise feeling relaxed and ready for lifeboat practice as long as we get him on his way to Southampton on time.
At his request we are sending him off with a copy of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall for balcony reading as he's read so much about it here plus a full e reader and at my suggestion we've also bought him a travel journal to write in while he's away.
He'll be heading from Southampton to Madeira and thence to Antigua, Tortola, St Maarten, St Kitts and St Lucia so if you bump into him please say hello. Fearing that his grandchildren were having all the fun, and that all the excursions might be booked up, he has already reserved his helicopter flight over the volcano on Montserrat and the submarine trip around Antigua.

The boy done good...

With apologies to anyone who's fed up with all this whale talk...but it's the Kayaker on NZ TV so I have to put it here for posterity...

Family Britain 1951-1957 by David Kynaston

Bookhound, being a man of conscience, often dashes out if he hears Jim the Postie's van in the lane to save him the trouble of getting out, and I can usually tell by the tone of their voices what to expect...incredulous and apologetic from Bookhound suggests an armful and often a monster tome (usually non-fiction) will be in the mix.
I love them but I also look at these doorstops and think, well it'll be 2012 before I turn the final page of that one and under the circumstances there's only one bookmark to use.
I often have books like this as a backdrop and may dip into them on an every-so-often basis building up a reading trail around them, so we'll have to do 'early assessment'... or 'interim appraisal' in order to offer fledgling thoughts on some of these chunksters in progress.
This one's a corker...Brasso, Brillo, Lifebuoy, Silvikrin,Toni Perms, rompers, knicker elastic, Green Line, trolley-buses, jumping jacks, cap guns, Uncle Mac, Nellie the Elephant and so the back cover blurb continues, I was bound to love it.
I have a feeling I may finish it long before 2012 because David Kynaston's Family Britain 1951- 1957 is my kind of history, social, relevant, page-turningly readable and completely fascinating, especially if like me you were born in the middle of it as us Coronation year babies were.

Clearly these were the years when I didn't take too much notice of what was going on out there because like all young children I was at the centre of my own universe, but I could so easily have been that little girl in the swimming costume on the cover. I don't think we ever took our buckets and spades to the banks of the River Thames, but we were regulars at Bognor Regis where perhaps I was a little housewife in training, because apparently I would happily spend all day doing this...

Well look, someone had to do it and thankfully I'm over it now but who knows what reading  this book might explain?
After all we were the generation that forsook scrubbing the floors for something else entirely and I know I have my mum in particular to thank for that...I knew from a very young age that, as a woman, I would have the education and the career that she had lost to the war.
Family Britain 1951-1957 part of a series to which I had paid little attention entitled Tales of a New Jerusalem and which will cover Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. The first volume Austerity Britain must also have thudded past me unnoticed so I will have to backtrack.
Within this 700 page volume are two separate books and the first, The Certainties of Place, opens with the King and Queen visiting the 1951 Festival of Britain and at least I have the stamps to show for it.
The Festival itself something of a minor post-war miracle and seemingly, like the Millenium Dome, not without its naysayers and critics and I am already marveling at the depth of David Kynaston's anecdotal research, placing as he does so effectively well-known figures within the context of the times.
Footballer Bobby Robson continues to train three night a week at Fulham, whilst working as an electrician by day.
Princess Margaret's foot is accidentally trodden on by 'over-keen reporter' Keith Waterhouse...what was it with HRH Margaret's feet?
Struggling young actor Kenneth Williams finds it all 'madly educative and very tiring.'
Vere Hodgson (of Few Eggs and No Oranges fame) bought a cup of tea and a roll for 6 1/2d and was delighted.
Marghanita Laski and Dylan Thomas were impressed, as was a seven-year old John Simpson, though obviously in his pre-BBC days.
Sir John Barbirolli was not impressed but waited four years to say what he really thought about the Festival Hall.

These were also the days of the migration of the London population out to the twelve New Towns and though smaller houses were the new order, the luxury of indoor toilets and warmth more than compensated for the cramped, single-room conditions that many families had been living in. New communities had to be created out of the people and the buildings, and there was much dismay about shared front gardens and wire for fences which revealed the contents of washing lines to the world and its mother, and what on earth was supposed to happen at a Community Centre?
No one really had a clue and for many this all took friendliness a step too far.
David Kynaston even makes politics fascinating and few writers manage that for me.
Labour can't quite decide what they stand for, Anthony Wedgwood Benn is starting to emerge on the political scene and the word is he's not to be trusted (how interesting that I now see him as one of the few to trust) and Margaret Roberts is about to marry Dennis Thatcher.
At the cinema the film of the moment is The Lavender Hill Mob and husband and wife Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier are doing their own thing with Anthony and Cleopatra, Foxhunter is jumping at the Horse of the Year Show...I could go on and on.

Though it's these details that are making the book such a winner for me, it's not just a nostalgic wallow. David Kynaston is explaining the world and the times I was born into and setting it into a context I had never quite appreciated. The post-war anxieties, Labour's pledge to create the classless society dubbed disparagingly by Churchill as 'Queuetopia'

'We are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait his place till his turn comes.'

and there was my family with its working class roots, a foot on the housing ladder and living slap bang in the middle of all that.
David Kynaston utilises a wide range of women's voices too, Mollie Panter-Downes, Barbara Pym, Nella Last, Vere Hodgson and Frances Partridge, all the women diarists and journalists who were keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.
The death of the King brings the nation to an abrupt halt.
Well actually it brings the BBC to an abrupt halt with the suspension of all programmes and a diet of solemn music for the entire period of mourning,  which soon wears very thin with even the most die hard Royalists. The nation's loyalty tested to the limits without their daily diet of entertainment and Mollie Panter Downes told the New Yorker as much in her regular letter.

'there are few English who do not say frankly that the time has dragged like a year and who are not relieved it is over.'

Interesting too are the details of that famous picture of Queen Mary with two Queen Elizabeths in mourning, which created quite a stir when the Daily Express published it prompting loud mutterings of shocking impropriety. But I had always wondered about those veils which from film footage had always seemed impervious to light, so I was pleased that David Kynaston solved the mystery with an extract from the Crossman diaries,

'After the coffin came the most extraordinary sight, the Queens and Princesses...clothed in dead black, swathed and double swathed with veils so thick they couldn't read the order of service through them.'

Magic Moments one of the songs my mum and I used to sing and this book is full of them. (Que Sera Sera was our other favourite and that's probably relevant too.)
So I'm galloping on now, Barbara Pym's Excellent Women has just been published (and finally I've read that) and David Kynaston, my friendly guide, is about to delve into education. I'll be back with an update but searching around for some fiction to suit, quite by chance I started A.S.Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden, which couldn't be more appropriate for the era. I'm in complete reading clover right now.  
Scroll down for gifts.

Dyeing

This last week I have been mostly tidying and dyeing and please note the careful placement of that 'e'.
Rev, Cheryl's into dyeing (again note the 'e') and on my recent visit to Cambridge and the vicarage I was completely enthralled by her dyeing room (definitely note the 'e') and a glorious array of hand-dyed fabrics using natural plant dyes. These are subsequently stashed and stitched into Cheryl's equally wonderful quilting projects. Cheryl has lifted her technique way beyond mine, I'm stuck firmly in the traditional, Cheryl's quilts and wall hangings are modern and laden with significance and I loved them.
So when I took to dyeing I couldn't help but think of my visit to Cambridge except I haven't been sweating over vats of woad or out trapping cochineal beetles for my purposes.
We are making keen headway on the house mess.
Though the nest never quite seems to empty with this boomerang generation, the Kayaker's departure to antipodean shores for a year feels like a bit of a staging post, a time to sort out bedrooms, clear out what has been the shared teenager's sitting room for years and most importantly deal with the Kayaker's whim which had overruled all dissent and dyed their sofa covers Bermuda Blue.
Fair dues, it did look bright and jolly and yes the sea really is that colour when you go there, but we were all a bit sick of it so a simple transformation to a nice shade of indigo was suggested and agreed by me, with me.

This is actually Grand Cayman but just angle your computer screen towards you a fraction and it's Bermuda Blue alright.
Once I decide on these things I have to do them NOW.
No time to procrastinate and wonder where I can go picking woad, it's straight into town at 4.30pm to pick up some Dylon stuff for the washing machine and the salt and set this slouchy couchy mess off on its journey of transformation into a grown-up sofa.
I don't know about you, but two days of this clearing out thing and hardly any reading time and I've about had enough. One room transformed into a minimalist paradise whilst all the clutter seems to be scattered everywhere else between the doorway, the back of the car and the seven miles to the tip.
In the midst of all this anguish, and despite postal strikes, a book arrived to cheer my very being and I kept eyeing it on the kitchen table all day as a sort of antidote to all this parental rite of passage that was going on, this reclaiming of the home.
Meanwhile dyeing a sofa cover and all its cushions is a recipe for torrential rain, then of course when you try to get the thing back on, that sofa seems to have grown at least a foot since you last looked and naturally there has been internal shrinkage of piping cord.
Re-clothing the now grown-up sofa akin to a jolly good cardiac workout.
More about how my day was strangely and unexpectedly salvaged by Changing My Mind - the Occasional Essays of Zadie Smith, tomorrow.

A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz

'Can you lend me five shillings to pay for this unicorn, Mr Kandinsky?' Joe said.
'For a unicorn,' said Mr Kandinsky, reaching for the box he kept his change in, 'five shillings is tukke cheap.'
Later Mr Kandinksy made a careful examination.
'Clearly,' he said, 'this unicorn is without doubt a unicorn, Joe; unmistakably...it only has one small horn budding on its head.'

So little Joe, is the lone child with the huge imagination and this is one of countless magical moments in A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz, the latest addition to the Bloomsbury Classics range.

Joe's father is absent in Africa so, whilst his mother Rebecca works at a milliners, five year old Joe is cared for by the tailor Mr Kandinsky and his able assistant Shmule, the prize wrestler in training for the big fight with Python Macklin.
Mr Kandinsky weaves magical tales for Joe and unicorns predominate. This is the world of the street markets where you can buy anything, kittens, herrings, hokeypokey ices, puppies, sarsparilla and local specialities like jellied eels, cockles and whelks.

So when Joe, a desperate little nurturer whose day old chicks die with great regularity, comes home from the market one day with a 'unicorn' of his own, actually a little baby goat with a single horn, Mr Kandinsky keeps the magic going.
No more plot details, that's enough to set the scene on this little bubble of childhood magic determinedly floating in a world of post-war hardship and change. There is little money, employment is becoming scarcer and poverty beckons, but the adults who surround Joe spare him any of this. He is allowed to be a child, to be independent and escape on vast flights of fancy and imagination, to play and to wonder and Wolf Mankowitz allows us to see the world around him through Joe's eyes.
I couldn't have been more delighted when this arrived in the post box last week and opened it in an instant.
A Kid for Two Farthings, a book that feels like an intrinsic part of  a 1950's childhood because I remember reading it and the fact it was first published in 1953, the same year as Bookhound and I were 'published' makes it extra special.
Somehow  film tie-in editions seemed far more acceptable then, how could you fault this 1955 cover?
Bookhound remembers the film in minute detail.

He comes from a large East End family who lived in Bethnal Green, and though he didn't do much treading of cobbles or have to cope with the outside privy, because new town life beckoned soon after he was born, he would have been born within the sound of Bow Bells...if they hadn't been lost in the Blitz. When I asked him what he remembered about the film it was a myriad of lovely memories of David Kossoff's moving and emotional performance, unicorns, the incredible Diana Fluck (who by this time had sensibly changed her name to Dors)  and a very sad ending.
Now of course we've had to order the DVD.
I read on enthralled and had a wonderful nostalgic wallow, not only for a childhood book but also for the East End of London where I lived and worked for a year (at the London Hospital, Whitechapel) in 1975, and where I met Bookhound of course. I lived there little knowing that the area was on the cusp of great sociological change, it was then still a world predominantly populated and worked by the Jewish and long-established East End families and the Kray twins were still a regular topic of conversation. We used to go for a drink in Ronnie and Reggie's local, the Blind Beggar just because we could; the talk was still of the Mad Axeman escaping from Dartmoor with Kray assistance and speculation still rife about whether his demise had been under the concrete pillars of a motorway.
A Kid for Two Farthings is a beautiful read with a wonderful ending; sad but hope-filled as the adults around Joe prepare him for life by allowing him the freedom to be a child, softening the blows but still helping him to cope with loss. Nurturing his independence at a time when children seemed to be safely cared for by everyone around them in a known community as Joe is happily able to wander off on his own. I love the moment when he comes home with the 'unicorn' and no one bats an eyelid...my mum might not have been so pleased.
Mr Kandinksy is a bygone treasure who would now need an enhanced CRB check and have to be registered as a childminder with regular Ofsted inspections. No criticism of those processes because I  understand were we are with all that in 2009, and nor am I naive enough to believe every five-year old was as safe as Joe wandering around the streets of the East End, but nevertheless these were those carefree innocent days when those worries didn't prevail. As a reminder of the book's immediate post-war setting there are hugely poignant and understated moments, easily overlooked, when we know how acutely the recent holocaust dwells in Mr Kandinsky's memory,

'Sadly beating his fist on the bench Mr Kandinsky sang:
Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
The angel of death to destroy utterly...
Shmule's low voice joined Mr Kandinsky's cracked one in the chorus. Together they finished the song.
'One kid, one kid, which my father bought for two farthings.'

What a perfect and wonderfully atmospheric read this has been, entirely suitable for capable child readers and published in larger print accordingly, how lovely to see it back in print, nice one Bloomsbury.
Scroll down for treats.

9/11

I've been holding off for a long time but have had this week marked as a reading watershed, back home after a visit to Cambridge, some outstanding reads finally finished, Booker selection back on the shelves and so now I'm definitely allowed some French Revolution.
Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety has been the most irresistible of temptations, but before opening I thought I'd just have a glimpse and a reconnaissance of a book that Erika had recommended and which has just arrived, Dancing to the Precipice - Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution by Caroline Moorehead. Lucie a diarist and by all accounts a remarkable primary source for much that went on, observer, commentator and participant, happily for us (but perhaps not for her) in the right place at the right time as the heads rolled.
Much more about the book when I've made inroads but thus far I'm very impressed, and something that always appeals in books like this is the setting of the historical context with mention of other contemporaneous events. So Lucie's birth coincided with the opening of Beaumarchais's new play Les Deux Amis, the paper had a long article about the eclipse of the sun along with debate about the new smallpox inoculation, James Cook had discovered Australia and plotted the transit of Venus on the way back, harvests were bad and the economy was faltering.
So, whilst never forgetting what today's date has since come to signify, I thought what a jolly good idea, I'll thieve that and do 1976 for reasons soon to become apparent.
Living in London the year of the scorchio summer, the drought, night duty at Great Ormond Street and sitting out on the balconies feeding babies at 3am because it was too hot inside, nursing finals, tap dancing to Lullaby of Broadway, Brotherhood of Man won Eurovision (forget the song it was because they pulled those skirts off...errata...wrong, B of M kept their skirts on!) , the UK ended the Cod War with Iceland (2009, first find your cod) the first ever outbreak of Legionnaire's disease followed by the first known case of Ebola virus, Big Ben suffered metal fatigue and stopped chiming, the chimpanzee became an endangered species, Microsoft was officially registered as a company and on September 11th, the last fine Saturday, Bookhound and I plighted our troth.
Here we go again...he'd have got less for murder, he says it every year and heaven knows how many times I've been near to committing it, though I'm currently holding off because he hasn't finished landscaping the garden yet.
Thirty-three years ago today and please do note my 1976 pageboy haircut and the guipure lace Juliet cap and know also that the wedding gifts were acceptable in any brown and orange colour combination and we were especially pleased with the Ali Baba linen basket and the Russell Hobbs automatic kettle, both the height of domestic fashion. We had no need of cutlery because we had saved up our Green Shield stamps for that and twenty books had gained us a complete set.

The Desk

Last week started in a very energetic fashion for Devon as Offspringette and I headed out to help furnish her with teacher training equipment, i.e. a desk, chair, printer, clothes suitable for looking like you're in control of the classroom hordes as opposed to being one of them etc.
I was providing the wheels so we scoured Plymouth City boundaries and beyond thoroughly, and I really do mean completely and utterly, to find a desk that would suit (corner fitting, curved at front, nice-ish looking but within budget) so we actually never got as far as clothes.
Don't flat pack things look lovely when they are all made up in the shop?
Bookhound insists that the word Ikea is a Swedish suicide cry and a danger to health; presenting him with a flat-pack 'anything' does nothing for the entente cordiale around here, it's best to flee at dawn and return after sunset.
Anyway, we saw the desk and knew it was perfect; pine, curved to fit a corner, nice drawer pack, would fit the space perfectly, Offspringette can look out of her window and glimpse Plymouth Hoe and the sea beyond and write teacher-ly essays and even better the shop agreed it wouldn't fit in the Fiesta so they would deliver it within the hour.
We picked up a flat-pack chair from somewhere else and decided we'd be fine with the construction, what's all this fuss about a few bits of wood.
We dashed back to the house and decided to cast on and knit up the computer chair as a preliminary to the big one.
Emptied all the bits out...no screws.
Not even a sniff of one, nada.
Typical Britain we thought, here we go.
Phoned the shop and quite honestly I think it's rather a daft idea to sell chairs with the screws already screwed into the relevant holes so you've got to go through all the bother of looking stupid on the phone and then having to unscrew them all to screw them back up again.
Well, I suppose it gave them a laugh until closing time, but the chair then went together in a jiffy and we were on a roll.
True to their word the desk arrived and we emptied out the bits in systematic fashion...many hundreds of them because drawers have runners and then there were these wooden peg things and complicated invisible screw fixings. Then of course 'corner' means things at right angles and left angles, like shelves underneath for printers and well, how many fixings do you think it takes to assemble a corner desk?
Let me tell you it's easily into three figures.
But the instructions had helpfully numbered every part so of course this was going to be Build-a-Desk-by-Numbers, just follow the pattern. We'd just find the numbered pieces and knit it all together, except the pieces aren't numbered at all, that would be far too stupidly helpful.
The diagrammatic calculation in pictures on the box declared 1 person + 1 screwdriver + 2 hours = 1 desk.
This was going to be a walk in the park ... 2 people + 2 screwdrivers + I hour =  1 desk
Well...er not quite..2 people + 2 screwdrivers + half a pine forest + hundreds of screws + a little bit of bad language + several cups of tea + several re-makes + 3 hours = 1 desk + 3 drawers still waiting to be made.
Getting dark and time for mother to call it a day and head home.
This grainy picture has come over the mobile as proof, the drawers it would seem are now done, just look what we made!

An Awfully Big Adventure

An unusual mid-week departure from books today, and I make no excuse for the nepotism because I hope you'll understand it's all in a good cause.
We nipped in to Plymouth to be proud parents and wave Offspringette off on her latest personal challenge - awfully big adventure last week.
I have to say, probably like many of you, we're used to this. At 18 it was the solo Greyhound bus trip around America or else it's the Kayaker off to paddle the Zambezi or the White Nile.
A couple of years ago Offspringette threw in the coveted media job ('you'd better sit down'... was how that phone call started) to go and help a fund-raising trip skateboarding across Australia.
Yes, really...I know, we thought that too.
If I wonder where she's got it from, I suppose this skateboard bit and the wheels 'neath the feet thing could be partly my fault, and then we always get the 'well you did bring us up to be free spirits' explanation.
Being a garrison city and naval port, Plymouth and the surrounding area has suffered its share of tragic losses in recent months and years. All our children sadly now know how it feels to lose friends in times of war; it has touched all of them either as school friends or part of their wider social circle and prompted by the tragic death of the fiance of a good friend in Afghanistan in January this year, Offspringette is off and doing a Help For Heroes fund-raising solo skate trip of her own.
Familiar with Scotland, having studied Film & Media at Stirling Uni and then Glasgow-based with BBC Scotland for three years, the trip starts as far north as she could get on Shetland.
Then it will be off to Orkney to follow in the Tinker's wartime footsteps, before powering along on something called a long board (like a skate board but bigger) all the way down the east coast of Scotland to the English border.
Well, that's the strategy barring equipment malfunction or knee failure and already the hospitality has abounded in Shetland and the donations are coming in.
Most trips like this take along a support team but Offspringette wanted the solo endurance challenge so she's carrying everything in her rucksack and when you know she's a pint-sized 5ft 2" you'll see what a challenge that is. She's has worked incredibly hard to fund this trip herself along with some helpful equipment sponsorship (that board arrived from the US just days before, thank you America)  so every penny raised will go to Help For Heroes.
I'm not asking you for money, though she'll be thrilled and very encouraged along the way if you do donate, (and you can do it online) but please feel under no obligation; however this is the place where I can say to the world how immensely proud we are of her philanthropic endeavour and can share that with all of you.
Nothing like your children for making you realize what matters in life and for making you feel bad about lazing in an armchair reading a book, whilst occasionally indulging the thoroughly self-aggrandizing thought that perhaps you might have done something right through all those dazed and exhausting years of child-raising.
As I'm her mother I worry a little bit, so I can also say to her...STAY OFF THE MOTORWAY and thank you to RAF Lossiemouth who have promised to keep an eye out for her when she's in the vicinity.
The plan is to take all summer to do the trip, hopefully raise far more than the projected £500 for Help for Heroes, write a journal along the way and spend plenty of time pondering 'what is this thing called life' as she skates along the highways and byways, before rolling on into post-graduate teacher training in the autumn.
On reflection what a great way to arrive in the teaching profession, with a few years of work and life experience behind you.
Plymouth Hoe in the sunshine and Offspringette's real name finally revealed, fancy naming your first-born after your favourite 1980's shop, and as if you needed to ask, of course she's going to check out the knitting shops for me while she's in Shetland:-)

Tinker and Fowey update

Just a very quick update for all the Tinker (father of dgr) followers out there, he has had his new spark plugs installed today, told the surgeon he hoped he was getting a new pacemaker and not some eBay refurbished thing just because he was 84 and is now very pleased to have a pulse worth taking again and will hopefully be home over the weekend.
It was also lovely to get back down to Fowey this afternoon to meet and hear Amanda Craig talking about Hearts and Minds. The wind was whistling around the marquee, the guy ropes strained and clanked, the roof was billowing and at one point I quite thought I was tea-running on board the Cutty Sark.
A great event and some good questions about the book and its themes.One in particular about trust which exercised all our imaginations given the current atmosphere of mistrust now prevailing in this country towards those in whom we had all placed ours.
Thank you also to the very kind person who sent me an e mail saying how refreshing it was to hear about the Tinker's honesty after a week when dishonesty and deceit seem to have been the norm.
Hasn't it made for depressing reading, bless her, we'll only have Ann Widdecombe left soon...Ann for P.M. I say, our Ann would get it all sorted.

The Tinker's Ticker

Doth it never rain but it poureth forth multitudinous hospital visits?
So my first real proper trip out today, with proper walking, was back to Derriford to visit the Tinker who was whisked into hospital yesterday with a pulse rate below thirty that none of us really felt was compatible with staying upright, but somehow he was.
Needless to say he walked onto the ward and they haven't let him leave his bed since.
His electrical circuits are shorting out and have gone haywire so he's going to be fitted with a pacemaker imminently and was this afternoon wondering whether this will mean he gets a better TV signal and will he set the alarm off every time he goes in W.H.Smiths. His face lit up when I handed over his e reader with the 100 books and then we wondered whether he'd now get interference on that.
In fact his friend Podge (seated) already has a pacemaker so we think it's a clear case of gizmo envy.
We must sound like the family who never take anything seriously and though we do always see the funny side of things (the Tinker and Bookhound already busy discussing the cartoon potential) I know you will all understand that being helpless to assist or be there I was actually beside myself yesterday. I surrendered to that inevitable bout of post-operative weeping while Nurse Bookhound valiantly dashed back and forth in Carry On mode between his patients.
Hattie Jacques would have been proud of him.
A.S.Byatt, my new best friend, saw me through the day and I am very grateful to her all over again for The Children's Book which is a novel of such glittering and dazzling brilliance I have to keep remembering to breath while I'm reading.
The Tinker meanwhile is also convinced that when they are running out of blood upstairs they are nipping down and taking another armful of his to help out, we aren't out of the woods yet but we are all still smiling bravely.

The Blessed Hours of Anaesthesia.

"Do you read much?" the nurse had asked me at my pre-op check a few weeks ago.
"The thing is we need you here by 7am, starved since midnight but we might not 'do you' until 4pm, a book might help pass the time."
Nine ravenous hours of waiting and thinking about it all, this would all need to be mind over matter, calm and careful military planning, in fact a schedule, that's what I needed.

7am - 8am : Settle in and knit, watch everyone else in day surgery waiting area (like an airport lounge minus Borders & Starbucks) and try and decide what they are having done, while they do the same to me.

8am - 9am : Read some of Book One.

9am - 10am : Knit some more of the new and therefore exciting Noro socks with iPod playing soothing Joni-wish-I-had-a-river-I-could-skate-away-on-Mitchell.

10am - 11am : Read some of Book Two.

11am -12 md : More sock knitting more Joni-I-could-drink-a-case-of-you-Mitchell

12md - 1pm : More of Book One etc

So I had a bag packed to the gunwales and nine hours of pre-operative play scheme organised, all to take my mind off the matter in hand as we joined the worryingly long queue of ready-starved, nervous-looking day cases waiting for the ward to open.
My heart sank, it was indeed going to be a long day but undaunted I settled into a chair and embarked immediately on Hour One. I was really looking forward to Hour Two as well because I'd made a good start with Book One The Children's Book by A.S.Byatt.
All jettisoned into oblivion when my name was called at 7.10am to be told I was first on the list.
"First on the list ????
But hold on, I've got nine hours of activities planned here...books, knitting..."
To no avail, fetching flight garment donned, passport checked, ticket checked, luggage checked in and spirited off to the ward where I'd land...did you pack this yourself...any liquids...sharp objects (uergh knitting needles). Then a quick chat with the pilot and the engineer about the flight path, previous flying experiences, possible turbulence and adverse conditions, birds in the engines, diversions, hidden metalwork, hazards on landing that sort of thing and before you could say "Z victor one to control tower, do you receive me" there I was taxied out to the runway outside Theatre 14 by a very nice nurse called Gladys and waiting to take off.
I'd just watched the news and heard that Swinfluenza had hit Devon so glancing at a stack of theatre supplies I couldn't help noticing 'Made in Mexico' stamped across the boxes.
I spent a happy few distracted minutes wondering how long viral droplet infection could survive on an intermediate host and realised this knowledge was by now too far down to retrieve.
Next thing the anaesthetist was telling me a terrible joke...
'Why did the banana go to the doctor's?"
"Erm, well I'm not really sure"
"Because it wasn't peeling too well!"
This completely took my mind off any thoughts of asking whether he'd been sure to check the tubing was on the machine the right way round or was the surgeon in there washing his hands thoroughly, and to be honest I think they took one look and thought let's get this one under quick before she starts.
And that was that, those blessed hours of anaesthesia.
Two hours later I'm waking up and tentatively searching for the damage...four keyholes?
Well I suppose one each for the knife and fork, the periscope's got to go in somewhere and then there has to be an exit strategy.
Oddly (though possibly not, given what's been pumped into the veins) I then felt surprisingly high, mostly at the thought of no more of that miserable fat-free diet I feel as if I've been on forever.
"Could you pass me that A.S.Byatt book please?"
Well it seemed worth a try. Over-ambitious it has to be said, but I did manage quite a bit of Book Two Lesley Blanche's Journey Into the Mind's Eye before the euphoria wore off and everything else set in.
No slacking with day surgery.
First signs of life and you're dressed and in the chair and just to make sure you're on-message, the bed's stripped in case you're tempted to get back in. Then you have about four hours to wait while they make sure you're not haemorrhaging for England or anything and in which to eat a biscuit if you truly want to get out. This procedure notorious for the post-op nausea, so whilst the broken noses and limb-settings were woofing down cheese and pickle sandwiches within ten minutes and going home, it did indeed take me four hours to force feed one digestive biscuit, crumb by wretched crumb.
Filled to the rafters with enough drugs to Lucy me up with the diamonds I even walked to the car and having fallen into bed and slept and read and slept it all off for a couple of days here I am, sore but good to go albeit very slowly for a couple of weeks.
I also think siestas should make a comeback here in the UK, mine will.
Bless Derriford Hospital, they often get a terrible press locally but I couldn't fault them; excellent nursing, meticulous infection-control procedures, sent me home with enough substantial pain relief to flatten the town which, thanks I think to an excellent surgeon, I haven't needed beyond the usual.
Bless Nurse Bookhound too who has been running the Convalescent Unit with a very assertive Hattie-Jacques-like manner. His aseptic technique may be ready for assessment within the week, just a little quibble about sorting his patient before he attends to the ferrets in future.
And bless all of you for your lovely kind messages and e mails all so very much appreciated.
There might be the odd interlude but I think we're back on dovegreyreader schedule here tomorrow.

Planned engineering works in progress.

If everything goes according to plan I'm submitting to this today and will hopefully emerge a few stones lighter.
No not liposuction but hoping that they find the stones they are looking for and leave everything else where it's supposed to be and all preferably via a keyhole rather than an A4 letterbox.
Talking of digging around, I've been fiddling behind the scenes here and have updated my profile with a piece I wrote recently (unpaid) for a newly published book on book publishing and marketing.
Unfortunately I could only have a review copy of the book if I guaranteed to write about it here and of course it would be dishonest for me to accept a book under those circumstances, so I have yet to see it.
Seemed a shame to waste the writing effort so I have posted that piece under the About link at the top left over here <<<<< I think you know it all by now and to save you the time and effort of slogging through it I just wanted to share with you all the final sentence and one of the most important reasons for writing dovegreyreader scribbles.

"I get a lot of mail off-blog from visitors who tell me that they read it daily, that they buy the books, that often the blog and the books have been a life-saver through trying times and just how much it means to them.
I always reply that it means just as much to me too."

A few days of pictorial intermission will follow while I recover my equilibrium from this little encounter and normal service is scheduled to resume very soon.
Coming up, 'dgr asks...' with Helen Garner talking about The Spare Room and Amanda Craig on her new book Hearts and Minds plus prize draw copies of both books, a remarkable new children's book, more Orange longlist thoughts and of course there's the Brontemania to report on.
We've just got to talk about this amazing new Bronte book, The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan.
Jude is quite elusive but he has been prevailed upon to submit to the gentle glow of the standard lamp and the virtual cream tea too and answer our usual questions and yes, prize draw copies of that book too.
I think that's enough excitement for one day.

Happy birthday to...

I have to say a very big Happy Birthday to father of dovegreyreader The Tinker who is eighty-four years young today.
If the day goes to plan, Bookhound and I will nip into town for the first Book Fair of the year and then collect The Tinker and bring him back to have lunch with us. He's quite capable of driving but there will doubtless be some toasting of his good health with a wee dram or three so I'll get him home again because I'll be the sober one.
The Tinker and I went out for walk this week, gloriously warm sunny day and I'll warrant it might seem a bit of a morbid place to take your dad in the week of his umpteeforth birthday, but this is The Tinker and we had been promising ourselves a trip to explore Tavistock's original old cemetery in Dolvin Road. There's nothing we like more than a good wander around a cemetery and this is one which we've all walked past for thirty years and never set foot in, and with it came a different view of familiar buildings, there's the Town Hall in the background and the Auction Rooms in the foreground with the unseen River Tavy in front.
 
'Don't I bring you to some nice places' I said and we laughed.
The Dolvin Road Cemetery no longer in regular use (other than for access to family vaults we think) and dates from the 1830s, though may have been used earlier for plague victims, but we did find the very first burial dated 1831 and I've had a great time doing some online research into it all. Perhaps this confirms the local story that the family of Eliza Robjohns headed for the Antipodes and planted the eucalyptus tree nearby in memory of their daughter.
You wonder how it's possible to enjoy yourself wandering around a cemetery but we couldn't help but ponder all the deaths and their stories. There was something going round in about 1850, they were dropping like flies and we wondered was this the Tamar Valley typhoid and cholera epidemic, then what about all Eliza's little babies and then Eliza herself ?
The trees are magnificent, great vast sweeping yews and cedars, the sort you only seem to see in old churchyards or Hotel Endsleigh-like places down here these days.
A great deal of restoration and preservation work has been done here in recent years, collapsing graves and trees in need of care and attention all meant it was closed to the public for a while, but now sporting a fenced walkway which we looked over our shoulders and then ignored for a better look at all the names and places on the headstones.
Had either of us disappeared into a vault we'd have reported back what we could see before being rescued.
I was imagining them all reading Jane Austen and the Brontes, the Tinker said they probably couldn't read.
He was busy imagining King Charles hiding up a tree and bemoaning that if it was raining anywhere in his kingdom it would be raining in Tavistock. This is all a mish-mash of truth because King Charles did hide in a tree somewhere in the country and he did visit the town in 1644 and he did say that about the weather, but perhaps didn't have knowledge of this exact tree. So all in all we'd invented some fascinating histories for all these people by the time we reached the far end, and look, here's one for 'anyone who lives in Tooting'..
...shouldn't take long to find.
The Tinker was born at 1 Holderness Road and grew up in Woodbury Street Tooting, so he has an affinity and is now frankly amazed to see that those houses now fetch £300,000, and that's just for the ground floor. A week's rent in 2009 would have bought three of them in 1929.
Here is The Little Tinker on his grandad's lap in the garden of 5 Woodbury Street, probably 1929-30 in the days when gardens looked like this.
That pigeon loft's probably on the market for 200k now and I suspect the Tinker would verify it was far more comfortable than the house, but as he says 5 Woodbury Street for all its tin baths and sculleries was home.
Too late for the carpet of crocuses in the cemetery and too early for the bluebells but then suddenly we came upon a grave that told its own story.

"by the accidental discharge of his companion's Gun while assisting to pull it over the fence"
That tragedy just makes this Gamekeeper household shudder, the home where gun safety is like a religion and an unbroken gun anathema.
I discover that anathema is Latin for 'doomed offering' and that was certainly the case for young John. Beneath that inscription the verse, and you can only begin to imagine what a distraught day that must have been for the Seccombe family in 1852 to cause them to place this cautionary tale on John's headstone.How amazing too that we and now you have stood witness to this family tragedy in front of John Seccombe's gravestone some 160 years later, and I have found out a good deal more since so some flesh on John's bones (sorry) soon.
But I digress and must away to help light eighty-four candles.