dovegreyreader scribbles

Starve Acre ~ Andrew Michael Hurley

Bookhound had been out shopping and as he came in the door said...

'I've just been listening to the most amazing book on the radio, think you'd love it. Something about a strange tree and a dead hare...'

It didn't take me too long to find out that the book was Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley, one that had been bleeping away on my radar after a few interesting mentions on Twitter. Adele Geras in particular had rated the book for its unsettling spooky scare factor, and David  Parks' puff  likewise,

'a story that shivers itself deeply into the consciousness.' 

I was in.

I have to say too, that this is a book that might have sold itself to me thanks to Joe McLaren's cover alone. Distinctive, compelling and instantly recognisable on my shelves.

I often check the name of the cover artist but following up on Joe McLaren led me to a post on Spitalfield's Life about his work. If you don't know of Spitalfield's Life hie thee there forthwith because The Gentle Author offers a daily glimpse into London life and you won't be disappointed. I met said Gentle Author at Port Eliot Festival, and knowing they prefer anonymity I will say no more, but  it is a wonderful glimpse into a life fast disappearing. Thank you to whoever sent me a link there because I was enthralled by a series of images from inside the now empty London Hospital building. I shared it around all my student nursing colleagues who had done a stint there with me in the 1970s and we had a good old nostalge about Cavell Home, the 'Big End' and the day Evel Knievel's Wembley jump went wrong and there he was in casualty.

It's now about like three hours since I started this post what with all the diversions (I've had lunch and sorted the washing too) but back to Starve Acre. 

Robert and Juliet Willoughby have moved back to live in Richard's family home at Starve Acre where they are now trying to come to terms with the tragic loss of their five year old son Ewan. Opposite the house is a field where Richard, on bereavement leave from his teaching job, is conducting some mysterious digging works inside a pitched tent. It transpires he is searching for the roots of  the Stythwaite Oak, a long-lost tree, and, despite veiled warnings from neighbours about not meddling, he continues relentlessly with his quest under the guise of academic research. When Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare things start to take a bit of a turn for the considerably worse. 

Honestly you won't believe what happens next...but in the context of the book you absolutely will. Andrew Michael Hurley makes the impossible and fantastical quite plausible.

Slowly the back-story of Ewan emerges; once a normal happy little boy who loved playing in the field but who suddenly turns into the devil incarnate, capable of extreme cruelty and the oddest behaviour. Countless appointments with the child psychologists offer no explanations or diagnosis.

And these two strands of the story weave in and out before eventually merging into the most macabre and ultimately shocking story imaginable, so of course I can't tell you much more about it. When a grieving Juliette calls in a group called The Beacons, and their medium Mrs Forde, prepare for an unusual twist. Starve Acre is all things malevolent, sinister, gripping and tense, and at its centre the traditional symbolism of my beloved hare is maxed out on every level by Andrew Michael Hurley...fertility, rebirth, rejuvenation, resurrection, intuition, life through death, crafty wisdom ...oh my word it is all in there.

I was reminded of several other books too, especially Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel and Lanny by Max Porter, but also Masquerade by Kit Williams with its buried hare, but ultimately this is a unique book, and one in a league of its own for the final denouement. DO NOT READ THE LAST LINE UNTIL YOU GET THERE...DO NOT ...but brace yourself and prepare to put the book the book down and think 'What the *^&%$' .Starve Acre is one of those books that leaves you with an after story to be resolved too, because all I could do was sit there and wonder how on earth this was going to sort out.

If you have read Starve Acre I would love to know your thoughts sans spoilers. I should have added it to my Top Shelf Best Reads of 2019 but it was by my desk waiting for this to be written. Now I've written it I want to read the book again and that so rarely happens.

And any other macabre reading suggestions...

Books that really pull it off...

I read Don't Look Now for our Daphne Du Maurier book group theme last month and there's another one that absolutely nails it too.

 

 

 

 

Spring Inklings

With the greenhouse out there, bandaged to within an inch of its life and under siege from Storm Ciara, I’m sitting indoors and sending good vibes to my sweet peas and hoping they don’t all end up in Wales. My poor old greenhouse, now heading into its seventh year. We have fond memories of the day Bookhound dug out the ground and he and the Tinker raised it...all in a freezing cold, biting wind...

From that to this...it was very pleasing

One of the joys of winter gardening is thinking ahead to next year’s planting, and with the doors to Tinker's Cott (and its garden) opening to holiday guests again in May, and the Barn Owls back in residence, I must start some planning.

Did I tell you the Barn Owls were back. 

The Barn Owl Trust came to repair the box a few weeks ago and two flew out when the ladders went up. We hear them most evenings and have seen them going in at dawn. Can you bear to go through it all again...

Anyway, I’ve been looking back through my gardening journal.

For the notebook fiends out there, this is an Ogami notebook, the paper made of 80% calcium carbonate 20% non-toxic resins. One of the wandering children brought it back from their travels years ago, and its waterproof paper is ideal if I’m out in the greenhouse. It’s also as smooth as ice to write on, I love it

I keep a general record of what goes in when and how it does, barn owls, when the swallows arrive, when things flower and what work we do when, which is all surprisingly useful year on year. It avoids the ‘when did we prune the wisteria last year because it worked’ sort of conversations. Last we heard it was supposed to be February and June, but then we did it in December one year and it was amazing. A lot depends on whether a late frost massacres the buds too, but year on year it seems to survive and last year definitely its best flowering in twenty years or more, scenting the front of the house from quite a distance.

Last year, as well as adding in six new dahlia tubers, I grew a lot in pots from seed which were a happy success. Small terracotta pots and tall flowers all summer long...

Bishop’s varieties various and all formed nice tubers by season’s end so they will hopefully do good things again this year as do all the others...

These a mix of Arbatax, Wine Eyed Jill, Little Robert, Genova and Pink Magic.

But I’m trying to add in new each year so had a lovely time wandering around the Peter Nyssen website choosing a few more. I give them to friends for birthdays and special moments too.

One last year to a friend and ex-work colleague, whose son died tragically in September a few years ago, but whose birthday was in March. I used to leave a pot of flowering bulbs on her doorstep in March (because aren’t those birthdays without the person the hardest thing, and so often forgotten by others). Then last year I thought ‘dahlia’. I handed her this rather sad looking dahlia tuber which she nurtured in a pot in March, planted it out in May, had beautiful flowers to remember him by all summer, and a glorious vase full to pick on the day none of us will ever forget in September.

This year I’ve added in Downham Royal, Rebecca’s World, Jowey Joshua, Cornel Brons, Black Jack and Edge of Joy to our own collection and I can't wait to see them flower.

As for the sweet peas, well last year was my best year ever. I’d sown the solstice variety in October, in pots in the greenhouse, pinched them out regularly, was a martyr to them when we had a frost, and was rewarded with copious fragrant long-stemmed flowers from early May right through to September. I’d often envied those people who said they picked a huge bunch almost daily...well last summer I was one of them.

Vases of them all over Tinkers Cott to welcome our guests and that scent wafting through the house.

This year I’ve added in new (to me) sweet pea varieties Wuthering Heights and Ebony & Ivory (because I liked the sound of them) and have put in a docket to the works department for at least three twigwams to grow them up, if not more. Sowed in October they seem to be thriving...so far.

I grew a few more plants from seed last year too. Several of you recommended Nicandra and I grew plenty but sadly the slugs were on them within seconds. 

The sunflowers however were another lanky triumph.

From seed sown in large pots in the greenhouse in March, and we didn’t plant them out until they were about eighteen inches tall at which point they just shot away and flowered like troopers behind the dahlias and the cosmos. This is the bed in the Tinker's Cott garden (that's the shed, not the cottage) that we dug with my Dad and which was his pride and joy...we're doing our best to keep it up to standard. That row of cosmos seems to deter the slugs. They don't like it and don't seem to explore beyond it to the juicy tender dahlias

Several visitors to Tinkers Cott were met with a jar of sunflowers on the kitchen windowsill. It was good to have enough to pick.

Meanwhile we took a bit of last-ditch risk with the roses last year. Always grown in pots because they never seemed to thrive in our soil, these were they in happier times...

But last year, despite topping up, feeding and pruning, they were poor for a second year in succession and we felt sure they were pot-bound and yearning for freedom. So we ‘beefed up’ (as my dad would say) the best south-facing sunny bed, to the front of the house, and have released six of them into the wild. They’re out there now, facing the onslaught so fingers crossed they survive and thrive.

Your best ongoing rose-growing tips would be most welcome.

Also your woolly aphid remedies for apple trees. The espaliered Cox’s Orange Pippin provided the little blighters with hours of amusement last year and no amount of spraying with anything helped. It might have been down to weather conditions but it would be good to greet them with a deterrent (preferably non chemical) early on this year. 

We need it to look as happy as this again...

Meanwhile, if you have planting plans or recommendations, or news of great successes, please do share them.

PS We are now taking bookings for Tinker's Cott for this year. We had a splendid year of visitors from around the world last year so we'll be doing it again from May through to early October. Please do email Bookhound at dovegreyretreats at gmail dot com if you would like us to send you the all-singing all-dancing pdf with more information and lots of lovely pictures, and if you click on the link at the top of the sidebar >>>> or here it will take you to a blog post

Those in the US might be interested to know that Plymouth is celebrating the Mayflower 400 this year and we are within very easy reach of the city and its delights, and of course the famous Mayflower Steps, the Pilgrim Fathers' final point of departure. 

Film 2020

We're always threatening to go the cinema more often, keep up with new films, stray beyond the parish boundaries to the bright city lights, but somehow we never do. The odd film here and there and then we sink back into the sofa again and watch a box set. But then word reached us that things were afoot in the metropolis. The Vue cinema on the outskirts has had to up its game in the face of competition from the big new all-singing all-dancing cinema in Plymouth City Centre (did I hear £15 a ticket plus £5 to park). To this end all the seats have been replaced with spacious electric recliners and the tickets are a standard £4.95.

There's no stopping us now. 

First up we went to see Just Mercy. A Deep South courtroom drama based on a true story; a sort of hybrid of To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Green Mile, as world-renowned civil rights defence attorney Bryan Stevenson works to free a wrongly condemned death row prisoner. In its own right a superb film (and apparently an even better book) that had a packed cinema on the very edge of their comfortable reclining seats. Actually it was as if I was floating in a parallel universe, completely unaware of the seat, the surroundings, the annoying person with the crinkly sweet packet, the person with the terrible cough...all distractions faded into the background and I think it might have been the same for every person in that packed cinema. I didn't even think to make sure Bookhound hadn't dropped off to sleep (he hadn't). There were several moments in the film that were gasp-inducing, and one in particular, a moment of huge disappointment for the main protagonists, when the entire cinema groaned as of one. I think we all learned a great deal and everyone left that cinema talking about the film. 

Next up was The Personal History of David Copperfield. Now this has had rave reviews over on Twitter and whilst I enjoyed it I'm not sure I loved it as much as everyone else seems to have done. And if it's any gauge of a film's staying power Bookhound dropped off not once, but four times.

It was all a very clever premise, mixing in the adult David brilliantly played by Dev Patel, watching the trials and tribulations of his younger self and there were some very familiar faces in the cast. My unique problem is that I can't quite settle until I remember where I've seen them before, and Bookhound of course much prefers Paul Whitehouse fishing on the banks of a river with Bob Mortimer to seeing him as Mr Peggotty. Mr Micawber was Dr Who, Mrs Peggotty was the rather dense girl in This Country, Jane Murdstone was Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones...and so it went on. There was a great deal of comedy, which masked the utter misery of parts of the book, but I was happy enough with it all and we'd had a lovely afternoon out that had managed to sneak in a visit to Waterstones for a book browse as well.

Anyway the next film choice is down to Bookhound, as long as it’s Military Wives (I know, I know, but for some feel good factor, I'm not hopeful) or Emma.

Meanwhile, have you watched any good films lately...I'd welcome some recommends.

Was The Goldfinch any good...

Miklós Bánffy

A huge great big enormous thank you to those of you who sang the praises of Miklós Bánffy in comments a while ago.

I had never heard of him, let alone the Transylvanian Trilogy, but I know your judgement out there is impeccable and so on the strength of it I ordered Book One, They Were Counted.  Published in 1934, this huge tome arrived and my heart sank a little, only a little, and very briefly when I saw the size of it, along with the thought that there are two more. I added the Kindle version for £1.99 and that has been a blessing on trips out....because I don't want to stop reading.

But let the size of this not deter any potential readers of dear Miklós Bánffy because I have warmed to him as a writer and a person (he had the most unusually soulful eyes) and very quickly become embedded in the dying days of the Habsburg empire (of which I don't know a lot) and the lives of Count Balint Abady and his cousin Count Laszlo Gyeroffy.

I didn't know a thing about Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz (30 December 1873 — 5 June 1950) either, but discover (thank you internet) that he was a Hungarian nobleman, liberal politician, and historical novelist living in a very nice castle indeed until the political situation took a turn for the worse in the Second World War...

Miklós Bánffy populates They Were Counted with alacrity, almost to a point where I felt overwhelmed, but it was a party, it was inevitable and all added to that sense of walking into a crowded room of people, all of whom know each other...but you know none of them. I quickly realised that there was no point in a nicely drawn genogram, it would take me forever, so I have relied on the author's skill in guiding me through the voices and personalities and he does it to perfection. Mild confusions are rapidly ironed out and the most wonderful panorama of a story starts to emerge.

Someone suggested gliding through the politics and enjoying the rest, and to some extent I have done that, though a bit of me would like to understand all this better. Better than 'what' I don't know, because I have no base line for Transylvania and Hungary in 1904, so I am learning new things. In a strange way it segues with my Silk Road reading for all the genetic mixes that the trading route created across the steppes of Asia and into the far reaches of Europe. It is also only a short thirty-five year hop in time, and a slight drift east, to the world of Olivia Manning and The Balkan Trilogy.

Whilst I realise the country was sliced up again after the First World War, the 1922 Bartholomew atlas has come in handy again too and confirms the presence of Banffy...

I would love an audio version of this but to date I don't think there is one, please let me know if you find one, but in the meantime I am wallowing in the book and its world.

Now then is it just me, living down here in the back of beyond, who hadn't heard of Miklós Bánffy or does his name trip off your tongue every time someone asks for a good book recommend...

And thinking along Austro-Hungarian empire lines, does anyone have any more reading suggestions while I'm holed up in this part of the world..

I suppose I really should read Dracula again...

And there's always Joseph Roth's Radetzky March...

But there must be more, and maybe some travel writing too.

 

 

 

 

 

A Question of Upbringing ~ Anthony Powell ( A Dance to the Music of Time - Book One)

‘It doesn’t do to read too much,’ Widmerpool said. ‘You get to look at life with a false perspective. By all means have some familiarity with the standard authors ...but it is no good clogging your mind with a lot of trash from modern novels.”

 

Bless Widmerpool for this and I'm wondering whether anyone else has had any luck with Book One of A Dance to the Music of Time...

If not take heart because it was fourth time lucky for me so this might just not be the 'right' moment for you. It was with some determination that I sat down on New Year’s Eve with A Question of Upbringing (1951) and told myself this just had to be read if I was going to set up this wonderful book-a-month project to launch a new decade of reading. Previous fails saw me no further than page twenty or so and even picking up the book gave me heart sink.

Isn’t it amazing what a different copy can do....and also a pledge to come back here and write about it at the end of the month. Good  font, line spacing and the much-loved no-tussle floppy pages in this newly-jacketed edition from Arrow Books.

I will add that, as usual, a read like this often takes me off in one direction and it is that trail I will share here each month. If you are reading along you may have taken an entirely different path, seen completely different things (in fact I hope you have) and that is absolutely fine and how this works best. Nothing 'gospel' or erudite about my pronouncements, just a starter for ten, so please do add your own thoughts and trails in comments if you want to.

I’m a bit of a genogram person, even with the most straightforward of books, so I was in my element with Nicholas Jenkins, his slowly-expanding social circles and my new Muji notebook with its beautifully smooth paper.

First at boarding school, thence to France and then to university. I'm always mildly amused by all this ‘going up’ and ‘going down’ and ‘sent down’ university lingo, but I’ve also enjoyed being a bystander to Jenkins’ life, and those invisible power struggles in a room full of people. The verbal slings and arrows now observed by a mature Nicholas Jenkins, but largely unnoticed or interpreted differently by his younger self. All those competing personalities vying for attention and the little glimpses of reality...why has 'Quiggins' hirsute leg' stuck in my mind....I've no idea.

And then some really sensitive observations of friendships and how they end..

'One of these parting of the ways that happen through life.'

'Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.'

Maybe it was this that made me sit down and write (with pen and ink and paper) a long letter to a 'friend' of many years ago whose Christmas letter seemed replete with anxiety about a terrible year past and uncertainty about what the future may hold. Ours a friendship that saw us through some interesting years in our young lives but suddenly the ties felt tenuous and I didn't want to let them unravel. Whether she will feel the same who can know. I said please don't feel obliged to reply, and if she doesn't we'll just stick to Christmas cards and carry on regardless. 

And then there are the vagaries of public school life for boys in that immediate period after the First World War.

What had gone before seemed to take the shape of the 'unsayable' in A Question of Upbringing, mentioned at a slant, but I sensed it somehow, especially in that scene in the school chapel, and felt it even more keenly when they sang a verse from one of my favourite hymns...

As o'er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away. 

Whilst all eyes are on the return of Le Bas mine were casting a much wider net, for the place and the atmosphere, to the gentle tones of  The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended with a descant provided by a group of boys sitting behind.

I was there.

Just thinking about the number who had died in the Great War, the heroic mantle bestowed on the dead, and quite how that legacy of sorrow impacted on the life of the school and those that would have to follow them, led me to another book on my shelves. Public Schools and the Great War - The Generation Lost by Anthony Seldon and David Walsh offers fascinating insights into an aspect of the war that has been the subject of much debate...

'The Great War is deeply imprinted on the sense of history and identity of every public school, its inescapable presence felt in the many familiar places which commemorate it - memorial chapels and halls, plaques, photographs and statues...'

and this...

'The public schools have not emerged well in the representations of the Great War, the predominant impression being one of callous staff officers who operated a long way behind the lines, and bumbling junior officers.'

Now I think about it, this has almost become the received opinion and this book works hard to reappraise these perceptions, exploring the 'codes of service, courage and loyalty, meriting our respect rather than our derision.' There are a few telling and relevant observations which I connected to A Question of Upbringing, especially this...

'Several headmasters and housemasters were broken by the losses of so many of their young men,'

And that had me wondering about Le Bas, the draconian housemaster...

'He merely seemed to Stringham and myself a dangerous lunatic, to be humoured and out-witted...'

We know little about Le Bas's history but...well maybe I'm investing too much in it. we'll see.

Anthony Seldon and David Walsh go on to explore the impressions of the officers in the Great War shaped by media productions such as Oh! What a Lovely War and the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth, outlining the various portrayals of men 'lacking brains, leadership or courage'.  They step in with a timely comparison to Journey's End, the play by  R.C.Sherriff written in 1927.

And perhaps this, another observation, holds true for Jenkins' school...

Exhausted and traumatised by over four years of war, the schools returned to a curriculum and way of life that was reassuringly familiar.

And of course Antony Powell is writing in the 1950s, well-removed from those early days, but, broader perspectives aside, I surprised myself (based on previous attempts) and enjoyed honing in on this world through the eyes of a single narrator in A Question of Upbringing. I feel myself well-launched onto the eleven remaining and am really looking forward to Book Two A Buyer's Market.

If anyone else is reading along with A Dance to the Music of Time 2020 please do share your thoughts, and even if you are not reading along but have read this far (thank you) all comments are most welcome. 

 

 

Bridge is Fifty Years Old...

Forget that it is forty-five years ago this weekend since I met Bookhound...no, the really important anniversary of the weekend is this...

It was fifty years ago today, January 26th 1970, that Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel hit the record shops.

I bought my copy for 25/- from my Mum’s Trafford’s catalogue and paid it back at 2/6d a week from my wages as a Saturday girl in Woolworth’s on Wallington High Street. I still have the LP (of course I do, this is me)

...though I doubt much sound comes out of it these days because I played it into oblivion, but no matter because I’m probably still word perfect on every song and Bookhound and I have now decided we really should treat ourselves to a record deck and play some of these LPs again.

‘El Condor Pasa’ .. of course I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail, who wouldn’t..

‘The Boxer,’ the poor boy whose story’s seldom told.

Who can forget ‘ So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ ...so long who? We’d never heard of him, and what’s all this harmonising ‘til dawn. Architects may indeed come and go but Frank has stayed lodged in my consciousness forever thanks to that song.

‘Cecilia’ and my mum frowning ever so slightly at the rather risqué lyrics.

I’d get in from school, my mum would be there, we’d have a cup of tea and sit on the settee together, put the LP on the radiogram and have a listen.

And that beautiful ‘Song for the Asking’ and the wistful moment when it ended and I would turn the record over and start it all again.

Nor will I ever forget spending an entire DAY dialling (on an old telephone with the circular number dial) the Albert Hall in London to get tickets for the Simon & Garfunkel concert there in a April that year. My friend June and I had seats in the choir, overlooking the stage and Art Garfunkel sang the most perfect version of Bridge Over Troubled Water that I would ever here.

How sad that it all ended in jealousy and acrimony, and mostly over that very song. I choose to ignore that bit though, Bridge Over Troubled Water mains one of the theme tunes to my life. Another one would of course by Blue by Joni.

Anyone else have a Bridge memory...

 

Full Tilt ~ Dervla Murphy

You could be forgiven for thinking I’ve just been sat here staring out at the rain and gloomy grey skies all winter, but no, indeed very much no.... I’ve been cycling from Dublin to India with Dervla Murphy, and I didn't even know I wanted to go. Admittedly Dervla’s been doing all the pedalling but I’ve been cheering her on from the safety of my armchair. Truth be told, though I've stopped short of donning the padded shorts, I have fallen back on memories of my hundred miles along the Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand back in 2016.

Full Tilt - Ireland to India with a Bicycle was a chance encounter. Eland travel books are not such an easy find in the bookshops down here, (though Exeter Waterstones are increasing their stock) so when I came across this one and saw the cover I was intrigued. It reminded me of the Kayaker’s pictures taken in the NW of India. 

Both images lure me in. I want to travel that road.

I didn’t know much about Dervla Murphy but there seem to be so few journey books like this by women in the past that I decided it was worth pumping up the tyres and setting off. Dervla set off in January 1963, in the midst of Britain’s coldest winter in recent times. It snowed on Boxing Day and we didn’t emerge the other end until a March thaw as I recall. I was nine and heaven knows how we kept the house and us warm. Arriving at school with frozen feet in wellies and knee high socks comes to mind as well as ice inside the windows and the purchase of an extra blanket (very jazzy Aztec)  each for my brother and I which I still have and use.

I'm sure you will have your own memories too...

But how unusual was it for a woman to embark on a journey like this in the 1960s; cycling alone across Europe before heading out across Persia (as it was then, now Iran) Afghanistan and onward to Delhi. And what a character and wonderful travelling companion Dervla turned out to be. Born in 1931 and raised in Lismore in Ireland, Dervla was given a bicycle and an atlas for her tenth birthday. She left school at the age of fourteen to care for her mother (this seems to be a recurring theme for so many women of this era I’ve read about lately) but she would regularly manage cycling trips around the U.K. and Europe. When both her parents died Dervla found herself a free agent and set off on this the first of many journeys around the world.

Self-effacing and modest, resilient and resourceful, courageous and long-suffering, I quickly grew to like Dervla. I’d say the perfect travelling companion but I’d probably have got on her nerves because show me a hill and a bike and I immediately require a battery, and I suspect Dervla much prefers her own company anyway. A woman uniquely aware of her own limitations but prepared to push them to the limits and able to cope with extremes... unlike me who’d be asking ‘Are we there yet?’ And needing another ‘rest’ under the guise of ‘admiring the view.’

I was reminded slightly of A Time of Gifts and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s walk through countries in the 1930s, now much-changed by war and circumstances. Persia and Afghanistan, the places and the people, viewed through Dervla’s eyes in the 1960s came to life in the most extraordinary way. Dervla has that happy knack of countering anything that could be seen as a criticism, or even remotely judgemental, by layering it with gratitude and understanding. The smelliest, filthiest people (and there were a lot of unwashed of long-standing) are the kindest and most welcoming, though tactics various for declining food were a must.

It was as I settled into the journey, the places and the people, and thanks to Dervla’s beautifully descriptive writing that I realised it was segueing with another image in my mind. On my last trip to New Zealand I had timed my return flights to come back into daylight; this having made the night flight into darkness mistake once before. As the plane flew towards the Caspian Sea I had the most breathtaking view of this vast and desolate territory

I hadn’t quite realised how that landscape had seared indelibly into my imagination until I started to read Dervla’s account. Her descriptions brought my mental image into being...

'...This stretch is just about the most beautiful part of the Hindu Kush I have seen. The glory of those mountains makes one feel that it must all be a dream. Every peak and slope and outcrop is different in shape, texture and colour, the rock and shale and clay shaded purple, rose, green, ochre, black, pale grey, dark grey, brown, navy and off-white...'

What a palette, what a place.

About half way through Full Tilt I realised my need was great for an old atlas, and by some miracle Bookhound found an old Bartholomew tome dated 1922 on his shelves. The maps are sheer, old-fashioned perfection...

Tiny print, and I need a magnifying glass, but it made a huge difference as I started to follow the trail across great salt deserts and mountain passes, whilst giving myself a much-needed geography lesson at the same time. I now have the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayas perfectly aligned in my head. 

I’m all about the Hindu Kush now and my next journey has set off with Eric Newby and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. For some reason I (and it would seem others) have always had this down as a serious book, one of those venerable reads that will 'do me good.' It's certainly doing me good but mainly because I am laughing so much, I had no idea Eric Newby was so funny. I will follow this with Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road. There is something about these travellers, setting out in the days before the internet and mobile phones and GPS,  that I am finding very engaging. Proper job explorers these. 

 

So that's me and my travels from the armchair...

I'd love to know if you have read any of these, Dervla, Eric or Colin, and who else you might add to the pre-cheating days of travel writing. People who had to use a map, write letters, send telegrams and generally think on their feet rather than send a text message.

And then there was the winter of '63... were your feet cold in wellies too...