dovegreyreader scribbles

Odd Socks progress

Catching up on the socks.Thanks to some compulsive Saturday night TV viewing and a couple of train journeys I have made some progress with this winter's collection, if a little haphazardly.
I have one of these (Cnyttan Silkwood), you may recall,the wool arrived, I HAD to see how it would knit up,

and one and a half of these (Lucy Neatby Merino)

I need Strictly Come Dancing to return to sort this lot out. My other current TV addiction is Spooks but have you tried to knit while you watch that even give the ease of a 30cm circular needle? The whoosh-whoosh-whoosh camera action makes me feel quite seasick.I expect Offspringette will tell us the offical term for it, and by the way she completed the Loch Lo charity longboard mission with flying colours last Saturday. All this in spite of coming across a real live lonely penguin walking down the middle of the road in Glasgow.These things happen...in Glasgow apparently.

Firing up the Swedish tank

It's that indefinable moment, that extra nip in the air, that sudden feeling of cool damp in the house and the Swedish Tank is fired up and back into action this week for the winter.Instantly the house seems to have its heart back and everyone's fighting for the armchair in the kitchen.
I never wanted an Aga, too much Joanna Trollope and they spelt out an image I didn't think was me,so I wasn't thrilled to inherit one with this house.Cremation became my new trade and heaven knows how much I spent on baking ingredients in search of the perfect cake.Mary Berry didn't seem to have this trouble.
The funniest thing is that sudden whiff of burning.If you can smell this in association with an Aga there's every chance it's Thursday morning and you can smell something you put in there at Wednesday lunchtime.It's almost impossible to smell what is cooking within until it has reached this advanced state of well-done-ness and even then we only usually smell it in the garden.
There's often a heap of blackened cremains outside the back door which even the dogs ignore.
Now of course I'm an Aga-addict, it can do much more than cook, it can iron for starters and of course there's a sure-fire way to know it's up and running.
Here he is again Rocky Five Bellies Fat Boy Slim readying himself for his 12th winter in front of the world's best hot water bottle.

Au Bonheur des Dames by Emile Zola

Alright, I'll own up,I was being a bit pretentious with that heading.Out of educational necessity I read this in English but nevertheless I've emerged feeling quite Parisian and very bedraggled from Emile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise. 
That last sale was a corker. My hat's all askew, I've lost a glove and heaven alone knows what my bustle looks like but I can highly recommend this one.It deserves a place along with the regular classics in any bookshop.
Here's the nineteenth century version of "does my bum look big in this" meets "shop 'til you drop" and it's an absolute joy of a read.
Heave a sigh, Emile Zola, according to Brian Nelson's excellent introduction (I always read these at the end) had apparently decided on a break from pessimism and the stupidity and sadness of life and wanted to express some of the optimism and progress of the times.That's not to say he couldn't resist a good bit of dramatic death in The Ladies' Paradise but it's death from the killing of the spirit rather than a collapsing mine roof.
Octave Mouret, the owner of the store, is certainly a man with vision and power and though he has little trouble conquering just about every other woman in Paris with his magical kingdom
"Mouret's sole passion was the conquest of Woman.He wanted her to be queen in his shop; he had built this temple for her in order to hold her at his mercy"
It is Denise, the lowly shop girl who proves to be his biggest challenge.
Good old Denise for keeping him slathering on a leash, some sort of redemption for womankind in a novel where the rest of them are scheming, spending and shoplifting for La Republique.
I'm an accomplished flaneur but this book drives along at that frenetic shopping pace that leaves you gasping and before you know it you're out of the door at the end of the day with sore feet and laden with enough baggage to need a hansom cab to get you home.Sales tactics have changed little since 1883, just substitute Amazon for Ladies' Paradise and read on
There were countless aspects to the arrival of the department store that I had never really considered not least the fact that, until its inception, the only haven available to women outside the home had been the Church.Nor did you now have to go shopping with a list and the specific purpose of buying something (silly idea) it was fine to browse, browsing was original and caught on fast.The theory behind the department store was that it supplied a desire you didn't know you had until you set foot in the door and Zola's imagery creates a sub-text of desire to beat them all in this book.
This perhaps (or perhaps not) explains the behaviour of a family friend years ago who went out to buy some of these

and came back with one of these.

It's easy to sympathise once you've read The Ladies' Paradise.
 

Long Barn Books & Waverton Good Read News

I always follow The Waverton Good Read online.
Waverton is a remarkably well organised village that reads and each year they declare a winner from a longlist of chosen books.Books can be picked up from the village shop, the hairdressers and are passed around and review forms are completed.They loved JS&MrN in Waverton that's for sure but last year's winner was The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.
Transita books had a runner up last year with Linda Gillard's Emotional Geology and have 4 titles on the long list this year so big congratulations to them.
But my delight is total to see that this year's long list features The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin, the winner of last year's Long Barn Books First Novel Prize, congratulations Helen, very well deserved, big round of applause, take a bow...now get back to your summerhouse and finish the next one!
Excitement mounts as we approach the announcement next week of this year's Long Barn Books winner.Well it does here because I've read the shortlist and also the news that Simon & Schuster have options on publishing the paperback edition of the winner and may also publish the others.
My lips are sealed but oh what a fabulous feast of reading you are all in for.

Blogsustenance

One thing I love as I wander round the blogs is the way people combine so many other interests with reading and a love of books.
I don't provide refreshments here, you'd starve waiting for me to sort out cup cakes, but there's no need because that's Karen's department on her lovely blog north of the border at Cornflower.
Once you've admired the gorgeous flower (borrowed here) and the beautiful colour she uses for her posts, which is a joy to my eyes on a grey morning, you can all sit down and tuck into her latest dish.There's a mouth-watering pizza on the table this morning and I know she won't mind you all dropping round to sample it.

The Book Group Verdict: On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Book Group came to call last week and I'm quite glad I hadn't broken a leg to read On Beauty by Zadie Smith because this intelligent, discerning and lively crowd gave it a very average 5/10 and very little enthusiasm for a book that they all agreed read like a soap.
Unusually for our books it generated little or no discussion and when I pointed out the supposed similarities to Howard's End or the homage to Forster that Zadie Smith had declared there were looks of complete bemusement. Most had read Howard's End no one could make any connections.Teenage dialogue got a favourable mention but not much else stood out.
Dare I say, Emperor's new clothes was whispered. We are a long way from the literary hype down here so they all tend to read without any pre-conceived ideas and I try to.
Ho hum, strike us down.
My turn to choose the next read and I must have changed my mind a million times, you only get this chance once every 6 months or so. Possibles ranged from Murukami to Nothomb and all else inbetween and beyond.Eventually I settled on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Purple Hibiscus for those who haven't read it and Half of a Yellow Sun for those that have.We have a good arrangement with the library and can borrow the books for 8 weeks.
Purple Hibiscus was one of my 5* reads of last year and here's my Amazon review (in the days when I did such things) to prove it

"I picked this book up intending to read a few pages in just to see what I thought and actually hardly put it down again until I had finished it.
It is a meaningful insight into life in Nigeria in unsettled political times with the overarching conflict of the Catholic religion versus indigenous faiths almost subsuming everything else.
Kambili and Jaja's father is a prosperous and generous Catholic businessman respected and revered in the wider community for his support of charities yet behind closed doors he is a despotic, controlling and ultimately extremely violent man.
Helpless and seemingly powerless, the family can do nothing but tolerate Papa's violence which despite it's brutality still does nothing to affect their love for him until finally and very unexpectedly the power does shift.Adichie creates the family who have everything yet have nothing and then contrasts them powerfully with another branch of the family who seemingly have nothing yet have it all and it works.
She delineates fear superbly;the reader really feels and lives what this family are going through.There is a wonderful intermingling of local dialect within the narrative that grounds this book very firmly in Nigeria and much of the beauty and hardship of the country is clearly described in a flowing and atmospheric style.
Despite the stomach-churning physical abuse that almost moves you to tears for many reasons,I found this an ultimately very satisfying read."

I usually avoid books on child abuse, I have to write reports about the real thing too often to want to read about if for pleasure, but this book was a real exception. Let's hope the book group see it that way too.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

Just called in to see Neil Gaiman (well the blog) and I get a whisper of a new book out soon, a collection of short stories from Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu. I expect as usual I'm the last to hear about it.
I'm not a huge lover of fantasy, magic and all things hocus pocus in the literary world but I'm game for reading anything out of my comfort zone and am always prepared to be pleasantly surprised. No surprise then that I bought Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell because it looked, well um, interesting. That black cover and page edges and it was at one stage only about £4.99 on Amazon.
My capitulation is now legendary amongst friends and acquaintances and even lesser known people.It was a time and place thing.
Picture the scene,about 10 days before Christmas 2004, a cold, dark, wet afternoon in the Valley, the woodburner thrumming away nicely and I was sitting thinking how to fill the gap where the cake I should have made in October wasn't.That plus the puddings I should be doing weren't and my secret "don't look in that cupboard" space was empty.
I casually picked up JS&MrN and somehow total immersion happened.Susanna Clarke led me deeper and deeper into this strange hinterland, I quickly entered the zone of addiction and I could not put the book down.I suspect a lot of readers skipped the footnotes, I was tempted but they seemed crucial to the structure of the book to me.Footnotes are usually the reliable evidence to back up what you've just read, in JS&MrN they were the wholly unreliable evidence to drag you even further into this fantasy world.I loved the confused way that I emerged from a long footnote as befuddled as the characters about which world I was in.
I started to panic as I approached the last 50 pages, possibly because I didn't want the book to end but more likely because I'd left myself about 3 days in which to make Christmas happen.
Then I became evangelical about the book but naughtily so.I flatly refused to enter into any debate with people who didn't like it only those who loved it.It's not a book to pull apart and dissect, it's a complete reading experience and it either happens for you or it doesn't.I couldn't be bothered to try and defend what for me had been just one of those manna for the soul reads.
I will read this latest collection of short stories with great interest but I doubt anything will ever come close to that first read of JS&MrN.

The Birthday Trip

Buckets and spades and paintbrushes at the ready for this weekend's up-coming Blogtrip around the West Country, spent the day here...

and then went here...

Shopping with Emile Zola

This is not good and I'm going to be in trouble, but I'm afraid I was gasping for a drag on a nineteenth century novel.There was no kicking the habit, I've stayed off them for months but now I'm inhaling again like a thing possessed. I'm afraid I'll be back up to 200 pages a day again in a flash.
All this modern fiction just doesn't have the same effect.
I've stretched the ban imposed by Miss in the VW class (please don't dob me in) and in fact this one's French so that doesn't count anyway.I have made an effortless, 100+ page, complete and total  immersion start with The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola.
You know that T.I. feeling as you read, the one where you feel completely in tune with the book, you're sitting very comfortably thank you in the world you've just entered, cat can bring in a live mouse...who cares? Large spider crawling up wall...so what? If you are forced to put the book down you just count the minutes until you can pick it up again.Well here's such a one.
The Ladies' Paradise recounts the "spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris".I've read Germinal, gritty but very readable stuff and there you have the sum total of my previous encounters with Zola and his naturalism.
I was born to shop.Department store excursions were the stuff of my childhood, Saturday afternoon trips to Croydon with my mum on the trolley bus from Mitcham (this makes me sound ancient and I suppose I am a bit more so now) and we would walk through Surrey Street market to get to Kennards (now Debenhams) and the donkey rides under the archways.I seem to remember it was like going to a circus, I'm sure there was a zoo and a sort of Tudor arcade
It's all set me off on a bit of a ferreting mission and a few books have come to light to back up this read.
The Bon Marche: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920 by Michael Miller and The Department Store: A Social History by W.Lancaster.
Zola was famed for his meticulous research methods so no surprise that he spent hours each day in the Parisian store The Bon Marche.I don't recall him shopping with me though, but he must have done or perhaps it was CraftyPerson he shadowed?

'Lace is so lovely!' she repeated with her nervous laugh.'Once I'm inside I could buy the whole shop.'
'And this?' Madame de Boves asked her, examining a remnant of guipure.
'That', she replied, 'is for an insertion...There are twenty-six metres.It was only one franc a metre you see!'
'Oh!' said Madame Bourdelais, surprised,'what are you going to do with it, then?'
'I really don't know...But it had such a pretty pattern!'

I'm already enthused by The Ladies Paradise and looking forward to the companion reading trail plus an inevitable on-going Zola-fest, I had quite forgotten how accessible his writing is. I'll pronounce on this little foray very soon, probably from the corner to which I will undoubtedly be sent when found out.

Embarrass Yourself Before They Do Day

OK OK to save the family hacking the blog and doing it for me. It's come around again, the day has dawned, here it is the very same day but 49 years ago.
4 years old is the first birthday that I can remember and I was given the present of my dreams, there you see me holding it, yes that's right a ball. An ordinary ball, that and a necklace of blue and red plastic beads that popped together and I was beside myself with the excitement of it all.
I expect my mum had knitted an outfit for my doll, Brenda, she always did. Brenda's demise was ultimately tragic, her face was rubber and it perished revealing a load of sawdust(how damaging must that have been for my psyche) but she was replaced by Susan (yes really, some of us loved the name!) and Anne.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if whatever had been the latest craze was out there I'd have wanted it, but life wasn't like that in 1957.
It's the ball and the beads I remember, that and feeding the milkman's horse.Life was that simple.

Hurricane Enid hits Ohio

Sorry that was a bit of an alarmist heading but read on...
For quite a while I've had a regular book exchange going with Ohio based blogger Ex Libris.
We've sent each other some of the books we trip over every day and the other is struggling to find.Often it's been about getting our hands on something sooner rather than wait for it to be published on our respective sides of the pond.Often I send lesser know writers like Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor both a bit scarce in the US, in return I've received some lesser known Joyce Carol Oates and quite a few of my beloved Canadian writers.It's been a wonderful treat to receive the packages and a great way to share our love of reading.
We've just had an annual review of who we'd like to read next and we've made a shocking discovery, there is no Enid Blyton in Ohio and Ex Libris has never read any!
None anywhere, not to buy and nothing in the library catalogue to borrow.
Hurricane Enid is about to hit and Ex Libris is in for a treat, she's about to meet The Famous Five, Julian, Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the dog.

Then of course there's Malory Towers and Darrell, Sally and Gwendoline, what larks, I hardly know where to begin.
Poor Ex Libris, she may wish she'd kept very quiet.

Booker-thon 2006 Carry Me Down by M.J.Hyland

Carry Me Down by M.J.Hyland and I'm delighted to report another breathtakingly good Booker shortlist read.I hope they have paper bags standing by as the judges deliberate this year, there's going to be a lot of anguished hyper-ventilating in that room.
Set in Ireland,(but fortunately avoids the dovegreyreader "miserable Irish childhood" tag by a mile) the novel revolves around the life of 12 year old John Egan.
John is one of those children I come across quite frequently,so tall for his age it is almost painful to watch as expectations of those around them far exceed emotional maturity.For some reason everyone wants their children to be tall and are delighted when they are but there can be real downsides to looking 18 when you are only 12.
A version of precocious puberty has catapulted poor John, still a child, into a man's body.Head and shoulders above his peers and desperately lonely he seeks solace and companionship in his treasured Guiness Book of Records believing himself worthy of a place as the world's only human lie detector.
In one respect you have to identify John as a wholly unreliable narrator because he is barely halfway near understanding much of what goes on around him but he has a keen eye for atmosphere and an ear for the unspoken which makes him wholly plausible, you willingly share the half understood with him. Like him you are never quite sure exactly what is going on in his parent's lives.
You just ache for John; humiliation and embarrassment are constantly but a moment away and all the agonies and uncertainties of his life filtered through the optimism of a child and the fears of a boy on the brink of adolescence.Much of it, when you step back and analyse,quite disturbing and mental distress is inevitable, it is little wonder that John reacts as he does.
Particularly good is the portrayal of John's close relationship with his mother, it's on the necessary cusp of change but has overtones of something far more disturbing purely because of John's size and maturity, his parents struggle with it all as much as John does.
M.J.Hyland's delineation is impeccable and page-turningly unputdownable.Salutory thinking about just how much damage can be done to a child by circumstances, even one who is loved as much as John and how much worse it must inevitably be for those who are loved so much less.But, and this is important, not a depressing read.
Carry Me Down soars up into my elite little list of possible winners along with The Secret River by Kate Grenville, but it could all change. I have The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai coming up next and Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn is to get a second chance.

Living the dream

Whilst we're in nautical mode,here's brave and how about this for actually having a dream and then living it? Talk of travel aversion over on Susan's blog reminds me to mention...
Local friends Bridget and Grum have sold some land, thrown in the day jobs (Bridget was a midwife), taken their three sons out of school and taken to the high seas for the next two years for an education in the university of life.
They left Plymouth in August and are currently down around Spain, hoping to make the Carribean by Christmas and then decide whether to do the whole round the world journey.
They've had this venture on the back boiler for ages.I used to play in a little flute quartet with Bridget, she was top line and very good.I was down playing the bottom line where hopefully no one noticed how awful I was and we would hear news of progress on the maritime adventure inbetween an approximate rendition of a soupcon of Vivaldi.
They are accomplished and experienced sailors but somehow we never quite believed they'd get there and actually do it but then, this is Bridget and Grum, of course they would and they have and here's a link to their website and their home for the next two years, Double Waters.
If you've always wanted to do it but never quite managed it here's your chance to follow their journey from the comfort of your land-loving armchair.
I see Bridget is driving that boat just like she used to drive our practice evenings, I wonder if she's taken her flute? I hope she's got enough books to read, imagine if it was me? How on earth would I choose? Would the thing stay afloat?
PS I checked with them before posting this and yes the flute is aboard and website manager George is very excited at the thought of lots of hits so pay them a visit now and keep dropping in, their journey is going to be something else.www.doublewaters.co.uk

A Trip to Plymouth with the Georges

I had many a George Eliot moment through last winter with my first reading of Adam Bede and a wander through many of Eliot's journals and letters.I've been a Middlemarch fan for years so it was good to do some background reading.
On 16th March 1857 George Eliot and George Henry Lewes arrived in Plymouth for an overnight stop before heading off on the Truro coach and a stay on The Isles of Scilly.
Here's what the Georges thought
"We reached Plymouth a little after five, and went to the Globe Hotel, from which the Truro coach starts...we walked to the Hoe and saw the Harbour, the breakwater and Drake's Island.Plymouth is a cheerful, clean place, with the finest site I remember to have seen for a sea-port, except Genoa"
Had Waterstone's been open (closes at 5pm down here) this is what would have been in the 3 for 2's in 1857, the journals give a precise record of their holiday reading, much of it read aloud to each other.
Cranford by Mrs Gaskell
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Mrs Gaskell
Cromwell by Thomas Carlyle
Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Physiology by John William Draper
Plymouth is our nearest city, just 20 miles down the road and perhaps not quite the cheerful, clean place it was in 1857, but still a busy naval base, maritime port and garrison city.As you come down off the moors and approach the city the purity and brilliance of the light on a sunny day leaves you in no doubt that you are nearing the sea.
Here are some of the sights the Georges enjoyed and so did we on the most glorious of September days yesterday, plus we added in a few extras we felt sure the Georges would have appreciated.
Enjoy your trip out around the West Country this week.

Standing on The Hoe and looking out across Plymouth Sound to Drake's Island and Cornwall beyond.Far out on the horizon, visible on a clear day and of course always at night, the Eddystone Lighthouse.

In the distance to the left of Drake's Island the breakwater, started in 1812 this would only just have been completed when the Georges looked out on it.

Smeaton's Tower, the old 1750's Eddystone lighthouse was dismantled and rebuilt on The Hoe in 1882. The Georges would have been able to look out to sea and see this lighthouse in action.Smeaton modelled his design on the principle of an oak tree and its need to bend in the wind.1493 blocks all dovetailed together like the rings of a tree and this tower does bend in the wind, that's how it has survived the force of the south-westerly gales. John Smeaton also invented quick-drying cement which was probably quite useful too.

 

And would a trip to Plymouth be complete without a glimpse of dear old Sir Frankie Drake in his natty doublet and Norah Batty hose taking a break from his game of bowls to check the Armada weren't heading in to spoil the party.

50+ Fitness

So here's that very disturbing Snowbook :-) and what on earth does this man think he is doing? Swimming? In the open sea?
I have quite a few friends, in fact make that loads, who will adore this book and to whom I'm a complete disgrace, in return they are to me a constant source of guilt. There they are 50+ and suddenly taking up marathon running or competitive rowing (that's rowing as in Steve Redgrave, not rowing as in arguing) or training for The Three Peaks Challenge (this is not about beating egg whites for a meringue) or worse, and this is awful, The Ironwoman (and this is not about pressing your clothes).
I know I should be concerned about the nation's fitness, it's doubtless a government target that I've had many an e mail missive about and deleted.I feel I keep reasonably fit at work, a morning of two year old developmental assessments and you certainly work off your breakfast calories.However I must admit nothing counters the effects of gravity so this winter I've reluctantly signed up for a Pilates class.
By all accounts I will be a foot taller by Christmas when I have located and recruited all those forgotten muscles, meanwhile my transverse abdominus would seem to have gone on a very long and lazy holiday and hasn't been seen since."Navel to spine, feel that muscle working", er, well no, not excessively.
Forget cross channel swimming, how can lying on a mat on the floor, breathing in and out and occasionally raising an arm and a leg be so exhausting? After an hour of this strenous lying down I had to go home and award myself a further hour of reclining with a good book.

The Carlyle's

I'm very grateful to Snowbooks for my gratis copy of Virginia Woolf's The London Scene which arrived today and I hope you've claimed yours. I'm relieved I answered the question correctly because even I have trouble remembering which book I've just read.
I'm going to be in terrible trouble with Miss as I sneaked a look at the entry on Carlyle's House at 24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea because I've been there and I wanted to see if I agreed with Virginia Woolf.
Yes I did. The house is now owned by The National Trust and it still creaks with that dark 19th century atmosphere.I fell completely in love with the atmospheric sense of time and place and quite expected Mr or Mrs C to be waiting around the corner, him to moan at me for making a noise, her with scrubbing brush in hand.If you ask nicely one of the curators will don the white gloves and get out the visitor's book and therin lies a who's who of 19th century literary London with of course Virginia Woolf's entry.
If you live in London I'm sure you've visited, if you haven't it's a must and then there's all that shopping along the King's Road afterwards.
But I have also spotted something else very perturbing on the Snowbooks website and once I've recovered my equilibrium I will share it with you all here later today.If you are 50+ stay resolutely seated in your armchair, don't even go and look at this,it is far too disturbing and will upset you:-)

A Plumber of my own

Time to give you *life* and it seems unfair that Gloucestershire should have all the plumbing drama, we had a moment of our own today and you will reel at your good fortune that I am sharing this exciting event with you all.
"The bath water's a funny colour".
Our water is pumped up about 120ft from a bore hole, it is the purest, clearest water you could ever wish for and normally sparkling.
There's a method to achieving DIY results in this house and this is the first step taken about two weeks ago. You already know it means there are dead things in the storage tank in the loft that feeds the hot water supply,admittedly not our drinking supply so this does not engender a sense of urgency in anyone here.
About a week later...
"There are bits of fly floating around in the bath water"
This doesn't move anyone either, what's a bit of dead bluebottle, give us at least a bat wing.
Then you say NO MORE, not another word.

Eventually, and it was this morning, the bookhound leapt into action and made the perilous loft ascent.It involves a precarious ladder over an open staircase.
"Guess what? You were right"
So we proceed to apply the elementary laws of physics and set up the garden hosepipe syphon system to drain down the tank. I was managing the garden end and here's how right I was as we reached the dregs.Probably a well-stewed broth of Devonian insect life.

What is now self-evident is that the shower head, which had slowed down noticeably in recent weeks is probably also blocked with debris of dead fly body parts and we have all doubtless been washing in dilute fly detritus for ages.Ah well rural dwelling in all its glory and with apologies to anyone who has been to stay with us recently.

But never let it be said that DCI Simon Serrailler is the only lovely plumber in the world.

A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr

The fraught rail journey home to Exeter from London, Paddington last Thursday, all complicated by a suicide on the line at Ealing was tempered to some extent by a therapeutic read.
I was sitting surrounded by disgruntled, delayed travellers and constant, half heard apologies over the intermittent loudspeaker system "pl...s ac... ... igies ..lay ..is ser.. to ...mouth".This is usually my favourite part of a day spent in The Big Smoke, a taste of the city, a sniff of some big bookshops and then the journey back to the The Valley.
We made the decision to leave London when we married 30 years ago, the bookhound had been born and raised there and though I'm Devonian by birth I had been raised within spitting distance of London since the age of 4.Slowly but inexorably we have embraced and attuned ourselves to rural dwelling to the point where our idea of a holiday is now a week in a city.
I had taken a supply of reading to cope with varied moods, I always do this and was I ever grateful to have packed A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr.
As I opened the book and started to read, the atmosphere just held my imagination hostage and, apart from a moment of inevitable reflection as the train slowed and crawled over the track at Ealing,that was me sorted for the rest of the 3 hour journey.I often visualise souls on journeys when I hear of or witness a death and this must have been a tragically tortured one.
The story within A Month in the Country is well known to all and sundry I'm sure because I would seem to be one of the few that this book has passed by. Interestingly I'd read Penelope Fitzgerald's introduction elsewhere many a time but never made it as far as the book.
War veteran Tom Birkin reflects, almost 60 years later, on the summer of 1920 he spent uncovering a medieval wall painting on the wall of a village church.He sleeps just below the belfry and spends his days high up on the scaffolding inside the church. Meanwhile outside another war veteran, Moon, is digging in the church grounds for some archaeological remains.
There were real and very obvious analogies for me of Tom reaching to the heavens for the healing he was searching for after the grimness of the war and Moon conversely digging in the opposite direction and so much more.It is a reflection on times and loves lost.
"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever....they've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass" says Carr's narrator towards the end of his account.
Was there ever a more realistic description of grief in so few words?
Penelope Fitzgerald adds her own thoughts
"The death of the spirit is to lose confidence in one's own independence and to do only what we are expected to do. At the same time, it is a mistake to expect anything specific from life, life will not conform"
She was the wisest of women and J.L.Carr most certainly a writer with the "magic touch to re-enter the imagined past".

A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews

There should have been huge mountains to climb to persuade me to even open A Boy of Good Breeding by Canadian writer Miriam Toews, not least the cover.
It bears a passing and blander (which should be good) resemblance to Zadie's latest and I swear that cover is stopping me opening that book.I'm supposed to have read On Beauty by this evening's book group and it hasn't happened and I'll have to own up.I'm hoping to redeem myself as it's my turn to choose the next read and I am going to take them all into new and unexplored book territory, for which they will either love or hate me. Yes, it's Haruki Murakami time, more to follow.
So back to Miriam Toews.I overcame all cover prejudices and jumped right in because I was a huge fan of A Complicated Kindness and its deeply insightful look into life in a modern Mennonite community, it won a clutch of awards, so here surely was her new next novel? Wrong again, here's an old novel by Miriam Toews now being recycled on the back of the success of A Complicated Kindness. Here we have a confirmed case of Picoult-Shriver Syndrome and it annoys me ever so slightly.Just that little feeling that I'd like to have been known, but only very little in the case of Miriam Toews as I enjoy her writing so much.
A Boy of Good Breeding is a "warm, witty and wise story of small town dreams" according to the blurb. To my mind there's not much of a hook there.I'm reading these in a renewed light after Jessica's in depth look at blurbs over on The Book Bar. But it does do exactly what it says on the tin and I was immersed in Algren, Manitoba and Mayor Hosea Funk's attempts to win a visit from the PM of Canada on Canada Day if they can only win the accolade of smallest town. This means a population count of exactly 1500 on census day and poor Hosea spends his life worrying about the inconvenient birth of triplets, deaths, people moving in, moving out.
This book had nothing like the depth of A Complicated Kindness  for me, but that doesn't detract from a very well written and thoroughly enjoyable read to weave in amongst a surfeit of monochrome if you've over-indulged on the melancholy.Very funny in places, almost laugh out loud but not quite, which was handy. I was supposed to be meeting two friends for lunch yesterday and clearly I had either the wrong date, time or venue or all three. Whatever, I sat there like billy no mates and finished this book and in the end I was quite pleased no one turned up.
UPDATE: It transpired that all being women of a certain age two of us had written down different dates and one hadn't heard us make the arrangement at all.

More free books

You can't say I don't give you all the help I possibly can.
Head HERE!
I've entered, hoping I've got it right because I WANT the book, lovely cover but won't be able to read it until Miss says:-)

Asboville-Danny Rhodes

I'm back in the hands of Maia Press again with Danny Rhodes' first novel Asboville due out on October 18th so I went in search of his website and blog and what do I find? Gone Fishing.
He'd given it up as self-gratifying twaddle which made me for one examine my motives and urge him back or I'd have to give up too.Thankfully he has returned so I'm still here.
I for one will be intrigued to see what Danny has to report in the run up to publication and just how it impacts on life in general. Things must change surely? Book launches and signings and all that sort of exciting first novel thing to come.I'm sure men don't think like women on this score but I'd be in the bookshops rearranging the displays to my advantage for a start!
I've just finished Asboville and have to declare it a really promising and well written first novel.Information gleaned from his website suggests Mr Rhodes is a teacher and I reckon I would have been happy to have found him tutoring my offspring. He has an understanding of both the male and the female teenage psyche that jumps off the page.They are complex creatures and his main character JB amongst the most mixed up of the breed on the surface, but like them all his needs are really quite simple beneath the bravado.
When JB is named and shamed and made the subject of an ASBO and then dispatched off to paint beach huts on the South coast you get a very rounded view of a very confused young man. He wants to be back on the London estate with his mates and the only world he has known but actually starts to enjoy the project.JB also starts to witness the effects of anti-social behaviour himself and he starts to learn from it.
OK that's an ideal world but it's one that gives a message that there are ways through it all and we may not have found the best ways yet. There is a particularly good viewpoint from JB's mother speaking in her son's defence; it's one that makes you stop and think.
We've done boys here, they won't mind me saying you have to hold your nerve, especially when they shoot up a foot taller than you, and in these days of relentlessly bad press about the state of the nation's children and everyone feeling entitled to an opinion from Jamie Oliver to the Archbishop, teenagers need all the positive messages we can possibly send them.
Writers like Danny Rhodes are seeing it from all angles and telling a very complete story. Sympathies in this novel are apportioned in every direction, to the children, the police, the residents, the victims, the youth justice workers, everyone is actually trying to do their best given the circumstances they have been given to work with.
There is so much that can be developed from this first novel that I can't wait to read what comes next from Danny Rhodes.

Offspringette on wheels

I wouldn't normally do this and nor has she asked me to but how can I not?
This coming Saturday Offspringette takes to her wheels on her charity longboard mission,that's an extra long skateboard to you and I. Whilst the rest of the Boardfree team cross the Nullarbor Plains in Australia, Offspringette is doing her bit, but having to content herself with Glasgow to Loch Lomond, probably just as tricky though a tad more rainfall.
Absolutely no donations sought as she would seem to be successfully coaxing everyone she meets to part with their last penny, but please just pray for no juggernauts on the trail on September 23rd, it would take more than some resin to repair them all and check out that neat little video link under BFFL Trailer with the sound on.
http://www.boardfreelaura.co.uk

The Less Fattening Evening Class-Woolf for Dummies

Autumn is always a good time to sign up for an evening class, last year I trotted out to Duchy College over at Stoke Climsland for a 12 week course on Bee Keeping. There's always the downside of dragging yourself away from the roaring fire on a winter's evening after a long day at work and there was a further down side to sitting and listening to honey talk for two hours.
After an hour I was drooling (not at the lecturer) and the second hour was torture.
I would shoot home and head for the toaster and the honey and down a plateful of hot buttered toast dripping with the stuff. Things were so desperate I drove home with a flat tyre one night rather than stop and sort it; this is simple on a cold winter's night along a dark single-track country lane, pretend you don't know what that noise is.
However none of this will be a problem because, despite the fact I won't have to leave the comfort of my armchair, I still think this will be a much less-fattening course as I sign up for Woolf for Dummies over on Susan Hill's blog.The most I'm likely to need is a mug of cocoa.
I started something by confessing that I have never truly warmed to Virginia Woolf, she leaves me cold yet others love her.I suspect this is all about discovering her later in life, reading far too much about her life and Bloomsbury and then having to study her at degree level.I know I haven't given her the chance I should have done.
Quite a few fellow renegades have emerged and Susan is going to lead the way.
The first guidance notes and reading are up on her blog and excellent they are too. I'm starting to feel that spark of enthusiasm for a new project which mustn't be confused in my mind with instant Woolf conversion, this is going to take some doing.I am currently busy deleting all previous files on Woolf from my mental RAM and starting anew.

Embarrass a child day

Ah yes here we are September 19th so a day to embarrass a child.I do look forward to these but the joke could be on me and I will have to embarrass myself in a week's time or the family will surely do it for me.
Today it's the youngest, therefore the gamekeeper, who is 21 and I think that means we can really and officially wipe our hands of the lot of them, doesn't it?
Off you all go, out into the big wide world as grown ups, go on, we've done our bit.
Don't tell me this goes on any longer? OH IT DOES!
Anyway here he is 4 years old and the world at his feet even then.

Chronic Biblio-Monochromania

Mention of my penchant for monochrome covers yesterday led me on the trail for some evidence-based research.I've already owned up to being a stalker gathering vicarious pleasures around the bookseller and publisher blogs.I came across this over on The Snowblog this week and I hope they don't mind me commenting on it here,

"Understand that you can sell a book by its cover. The one thing a reader cannot judge a book on at the point of sale is the quality of the writing: they haven't read it yet... Readers have to rely on visual cues to place the book in its genre. ..."

This is exactly what has happened to me with my protracted bout of Chronic Biblio-Monochromania (this may not feature in medical textbooks just yet) and I was beginning to feel a bit of a malingerer, mildly fickle and shallow over it all. Pull yourself together and go and buy a load of books with a brightly coloured covers right now,  but I don' t feel quite so bad now I realise I'm genre reading.

I'm not called dovegreyreader just for the colour I think my hair's about to go,or my peace-loving tendencies it would seem, place a selection of books in front of me and it's a safe bet that I will go for the ones (note the plural, why buy just one?) with the monochrome covers.
When I glanced at my reading table recently there was a complete dearth of colour and for such a textile and wool colour fiend that's quite strange, a total absence of gold foil titles in relief on a bed of rainbow. Frankly it looked melancholy in the extreme and that quite cheered me. These are my absolute favourite reads of the moment. I put it all to the test and kept leaping up to find books I've loved in recent months, some old favourites and plenty waiting to be read.Oodles of monochrome in there.
I think this could be akin to the literary placebo effect, a proportion of a book's work is done with the cover and what it says to me before I even open it.If it's monochrome I believe I will like it. Of course it's ridiculous because I'll look far beyond the cover but I don't seem to be able to stop it happening at point of sale.
I've mentioned these old friends before and the first LP I ever bought, perhaps this is where it all began?

Or perhaps not.The bookhound has his own theory and thinks it goes back even further. We were both Coronation year babies and grew up in the 1950's watching the world in black and white on televisions with tiny screens.Surely the war was fought in monochrome? Reach for the Sky, The Dambusters, there was our world, England in black and white, clearly our brains were conditoned to receive the picture very early on, we've been suffering from Biblio-Monochromania for as long as we can remember.
The bookhound has just designed a gorgeous cover for a book to be published next year on Atlantic Salmon for a very special friend and author of his acquaintance.I'll let you guess his colour range.

The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs

The perfect Sunday book, The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs, abandoned by me last year (and I'm sure it was this book, I remember this cover) and now resurrected by Susan Hill over on her blog with free copies on offer. Having disgraced myself with an incomplete library read and hasty dismissal I felt undeserving of a gift copy and bought one as penance.
So WHY did I give up on this first time round? I've started it again and it is reading gently and clearly and quite beautifully. My new copy has a different, monochrome cover, these never fail to appeal to dovegreyreader sensibilities,has that helped? This is not a book to rush, more one to savour a few pages of before you drop off to sleep or one to pick up if you find yourself awake at 3am.
When I look at the map in the front of the book, our house is almost on it.It's a book with a keen sense of place, our place, there's the River Tamar with the amazing Endsleigh loop in the river (the only river I've seen that actually flows round a very sharp 90 degree corner) and Kit Hill beyond.Here's the view, taken yesterday, that we wake up to every morning when we open the bedroom curtains and there's Kit Hill in the distance.I could (and probably do) spend hours just staring at it.
I must have been on a very distant and different reading planet when I first picked up this book.More about it soon.

Woolly Pullies

I had a good mooch around the old home town this week while the bookhound rushed eagerly into the dentist and I quite got the feel for knitting winter woollies.
A browse in the wool shop was disappointing and I expect the woman in there had good reason to sit lifeless and depressed behind the counter.Call me a fussy and demanding customer; you could have had my money with pleasure but please, I wanted cheery encouragement as I bought my Rowan Big Wool,so that was a no sale.
Years ago I ran a little business called Woolly Pullies. Bookhound to blame again, me feeling that my creative abilities were fading with 3 children under the age of 4 (surely our finest creation?) he came home with a very old and very basic Knitmaster 321 knitting machine and I was instantly smitten.Knitting a jumper in an hour had a real attraction when an hour was the most time I had.
I started to research traditional Fair Isle patterns and proceeded to punch out the cards by hand for the machine to read. I then invented a basic jumper pattern, sourced some wool from Jamieson & Smith in the Shetlands and got cracking on pure wool jumpers for our children.
Of course it was only a matter of nano seconds before I had requests to do them for friends.I wasn't the only one who was polyester/acrylic-averse and so Woolly Pullies was born.
Then things got scary because before I knew it, at £12 a jumper (that was a lot in 1986) I had £400 worth of orders and shops asking me to supply them.I fulfilled that lot and then panicked and stopped. Shame on me but suddenly it had the potential to be huge and I had 3 very small children to look after, we already ran one business of our own and I had no energy to start organising the out-sourcing of the work. What had been fun and pleasure was about to become big business and I wasn't up for the challenge then.
The knitting machine has long gone and I much prefer to hand knit though I do still rather vainly stitch the labels in anything I make, but now I fancy a go at some intentional felting. I've done my share of unintentional felting over the years but I've never seen the point in knitting something twice the size you want and then boiling it to within an inch of its life to shrink it on purpose.
But felting is big and this little book was irresistible despite the doom-laden atmosphere in the shop.

Booksellers blogworld

One of the things I'm loving about blogworld is the insider deal you can get on lives you know little or nothing about but may have always hankered after.Voyeur that I am, the booksellers and the publishers blogs have me fascinated and vicariously enjoying the nuts and bolts of the trade.
Checkout my Bookseller Blogs >>>>>These mostly keep me in hysterics, these people have the acerbic eye to beat them all and an unfailing wit that never misses a trick.They do not do pretentious that's for sure.
Cross the portals of Bookseller Crow dressed as Our Man at Boden (heaven forfend Johnnie ever goes in) and expect a blog mention especially if you are wearing the Stallion Shirt. In fact, please someone go in there in the Stallion Shirt, it would make such good reading.Don't set up a French market ouside Crockatt and Powell without telling them. If you wanted possibly (or possibly not)to glimpse Princess Anne you should have been at Mostly Books (or up the road, royal route uncertain)
Interspersed are the book trade gems and the lesser known reads that the rest of us struggle to find.If they recommend a book you can be sure it's one that is genuinely selling solidly and well in their neck of the woods and you may never read about it in the press.
Publisher's Blogs >>>>> are also featuring and these are fascinating. From the depths of this imperfect world many really daren't let on about anything ever going wrong, the rest own up to their fallibility and share it.The Snowblog is amongst my current favourites here and Scott Pack is doing a great job over at The Friday Project with Me and My Big Mouth, all essential daily reading here.
The world's an imperfect place like that for me too, plenty goes unaccording to plan so I'm right onside with someone else's good, honest, right old lash up of a mess that has them tearing their hair out. Consider the happy dilemma at Snowbooks, what if they sell too many books?
I just warm unconditionally to all these people who share this good life and all its googlies with the rest of us.

Susan Hill's Long Barn First Novel Prize

More excitement than can be good for this "Devon based bookaholic sock knitting quilter who happens to be a community nurse in her spare time" and the culmination in London this week of a recent and very exciting reading project.
I've been a judge!
I was asked some time ago (and took about a nano-second to agree) to read the longlist for Susan Hill's First Novel Prize this year and then join judging deliberations for the short list.This also involved travelling up to London, discussing all the novels with Susan and the other judges and then partaking of an excellent lunch, but needs must, I managed.
It's been great for the Royal Mail but less great for Jim our the postman as the manuscripts arrived and he heaved them to the house and we've had to hand quite a few bacon sandwiches out of the kitchen window to keep him appeased.
Don't ask me how many books I've read over recent weeks.However it may all go some way to explaining why I took a mysterious little diversion off the Booker-thon route mid-course and you kept getting pictures of animals made from vegetables.
The shortlist of five has now been announced on Susan's blog and website and I will add my congratulations to each and every author whose novel I have read and my thanks to them all for giving me so much reading pleasure.Being a person of the "no novel in me" variety I'm impressed with anyone who can put together that many words.You've all written cracking first novels and my special thanks to Susan for asking me in the first place.
I mustn't forget the bookhound who has basically done what he always does. As well as keeping the fridge full and the rest of us fed so that I could read, he has added doing the washing and hanging it out on the line to his portfolio.I do still wash the kitchen floor, only I see the need for that apparently.
It's all been a truly memorable experience and keep an eye on Susan's blog, she has some exciting announcements coming up and part of the first chapter of each of the shortlisted novels to whet your appetite.

Booker-thon home run

So we have the shortlist and I am secretly very relieved, I knew we could trust Hermione, and  I had become increasingly extreme about things I might do if certain books were on it. I'd gone beyond Yorkie bars; a lunge off Beachy Head was starting to feature strongly.I'm quite grateful there was no sign of the top 5 bookie's favourites (do bookies read?)
For me there were several books that said everything the Booker prize may have been in the past (and for which it has been ridiculed) but needn't be now.Without wanting to sound patronizing, it's a golden chance to push a book out there and get people reading something genuinely enjoyable and memorable.
In recovery from Booker fatigue, I'm going to stride on and catch up with the ones I've missed out and re-visit the ones I've already covered especially Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn.Perhaps missed a trick there?
I was loving In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar but so were the library and they wanted it back before I'd finished it so I'll get back to that somehow.
Just to refresh my mind here's what dovegreyreader is on the lookout for

• Will want to read beyond the first 50 pages
• Will constantly look forward to picking up and reading more
• Will be able to read without feeling I am stupid or inadequate for not understanding some elite literary connivance or should that be contrivance? Make it both.I want an inclusive book with the ring of an enjoyable challenge about it.
• Will engage me emotionally whether that be a laugh, a weep, hysterics, memories, reminders, a nice warm feeling, a bit of an uncomfortable feeling and the rest
• Will remember the moment I finished it and felt that little pang of regret that it had to end.
• Can recommend to friends and will then give us plenty to talk about.
  
• Might start me off on a new and exciting reading trail
• Will look at the cover in a year's time and remember what a good book it was
• Having been reminded will pick it up and read it again
• Might find out something about a world I knew nothing about
• Might recognise anew a world I thought I knew everything about

Booker-thon update

Call me inefficient but a day in London to complete on another big reading project (more of that on here soon...very exciting) and I didn't catch the Booker shortlist until late in the day and only then c/o randomjottings mobile phone as we sat imbibing up on the 5th floor in the Waterstone's watering hole in Piccadilly.If I was a drinking woman I'd have swigged a G&T but I'm not and I still had to get back to Devon so I settled for a diet coke (and bought a few books)
I'll reflect on it all and post later but just wanted to send big congratulations to Canongate. To be exact and of the moment I think the current phrase is "I heart Canongate", OK I do. They must be dancing around the board room table with two books on the shortlist, Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Carry Me Down by M.J.Hyland.I've already waxed ecstatic about one and I will be doing a careful read of the other in the next week or so.
I discovered the inside view of Canongate thanks to the offspringette who, as we know, has her finger on the actual buttons and switches of BBC Scotland and alerted me a good while ago to a programme airing North of the border about Jamie Byng and the whole set up at what would seem to be a young, bright and entrepreneurial publishing house. Innovative and forward thinking and a lovely interview with Margaret Atwood who amusingly recounted just how Jamie Byng had persuaded her into her rewrite of the myth of Penelope.Cornering and no escape until you agree would seem to cover it.
I then contacted Canongate for more information about the Myths series and have been collecting and reading them ever since, apparently we can expect No 100 in 2038.That'll be me with the books in the basket on the zimmer then...deo volente.
I am enjoying the series immensely, especially given my woeful lack of knowledge on the entire subject of Myth and one which is now improving no end but possibly with an element of distortion.
Yes I heart Canongate.

Library Book Group:October

Here's a joke, do I have enough to read? Yes I do, so why can't I resist it when Moira, our truly amazing and dedicated librarian, wheels her trolley of delights into our monthly library book group?
We all hover around as if she was dishing out the sweets and I came away with...

Please don't ask me why, when or how I shall read these but as I will be away for the next meeting I do have until November.
I also have to read this for another book group evening on the 21st of this month.This boat has definitely been and gone for me and plenty has taken its place, it is going to have to be beyond excellent for me to finish it.

Sunday Confessions on Friday

Bit of a sinful last week all in all and this week may be worse, I was in London yesterday.
Shakespeare For All Time by The SP and preparation for my annual assault on The Bard and a new play each winter.I have armed myself with the recommended read for those of us brave enough to own up, in present company, that we like but don't love but want to appreciate more.I haven't made my final decision on which play yet, I've done about 20 over the years, this may help me decide.
I'm intrigued by So Many Ways to Begin by Jon Mcgregor and, as this was proving the most elusive of the Booker-thon's to get my hands on without paying any money, I caved in and slipped it into the Amazon order.Also in that parcel Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer, noted by the Offspringette as one that may be of interest to me, the Parisian Left Bank world of the bookshop Shakespeare and Co.Plus The Unburied by Charles Palliser after the fulsome apology over on the Hill blog we must give the man a chance.I never quite made it to The Quincunx.
Missed off the pile because it's upstairs and I'm lazy, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.A graphic novel (cartoons to the rest of us) on growing up in Iran.I think Jonathan from Bookseller Crow recommended this after I mentioned Maus by Art Spiegelman and a huge thank you because I would never have found it and I'm loving it.More on that soon and I've ordered a few more graphic novels, I love the association my brain makes between the comics of my childhood and the seriousness of the content of these modern day versions.
Mr Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei arrived as promised from Susan Hill's very generous "you must read this and to make sure you do I'll send free copies" offer. I have.
Danny Rhodes very kindly sent me a preview copy of Asboville published by Maia Press later this year, watch this space for thoughts on that, Scott Pack rates it highly.
Two republished children's books from new publisher Fidra, Orders to Poach by Olivia Fitzroy and
The Far Island by M.Pardoe.These are my promised manna after this glut of contemporary fiction.
Finally, The Tinker loves Dickens, I don't quite, but we did read The Old Curiosity Shop in serial mode together a while back and we both enjoyed nattering about that so this winter we will be giving Little Dorrit the same treatment.The Tinker does gallop on a bit fast though,always worried that the grim reaper might spoil his fun and he may never know the ending. I'll have to keep up.

The fur edged hood that never was

I started and then stopped a Masters degree in Children's Literature a couple of years ago.
I had high hopes, I was studying by distance learning which I had done for my English Lit degree with little problem for 6 years; 42 essays and 6 exams later I managed a creditable 2:1. I'd almost started to forget I was a nurse in real life and I'd mistakenly thought this course would be no different.
WRONG.
The first module couldn't have been worse, it was obvious it had to be literary theory and the first critic to disentangle, Stanley Fish and his interpretive communities.It was only a matter of time before the impenetrable (to me) Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak appeared on the scene followed by the Russian lad,Vygotsky and I was sunk and bored and also very alone.
I wouldn't want a classroom, I love the solitary and self-taught nature of study and research now I'm older and I can cope without face to face tutorials, but The Open University had provided me with the most incredible online support network of fellow students and a virtual common room in which to chat.This form of discussion was great for me, I was working full time and the house was populated with teenagers so I could dip in at odd (very odd) hours and ten of us became good friends.
Conversely, the University I was doing the MA with provided me with a very far flung distance learning tutor, a reading list of books that were mostly out of print and very expensive to buy, some excruciatingly poor photocopied course materials and very little else and all at 3 times the cost.
I threw in the towel, after scraping the first module and quickly decided the fur edged hood was just an unnecessary vanity.
However I haven't lost my interest in the subject and the one area I was hoping to explore for the dissertation had I ever made it that far, was a combination of both my interests, literature and paediatrics with a particular focus on childcare and childhood illness in literature.
To some extent Lois Keith got there first with Take Up Thy Bed and Walk : Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls. Sounds like a bit of a morbid fascination but it's only when you think about it that you realise how many of those classics contain just that. Jane Eyre, Little Women, What Katy Did, Heidi, The Secret Garden and there must be plenty more.
Mention of Dorita Fairlie Bruce's The Girl's of St Bride's and the crippled Winifred has piqued my interest again.
I'm going to be weaving some children's literature as well as more 19th century novels into my pleasurable reading over the next few months and I know I won't be able to forget this project as I read and of course, I no longer have to be limited by children's literature so perhaps I'll just bless all of you with my thoughts instead. Sorry.
And if you come across any good examples in your reading please let me know.

Mr Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei

Mr Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei had my undivided attention this morning and I have to write about it this minute because it had a very immediate impact.
Perplexed and vexed is me when people invest obscure meaning into a book when I can't see it myself and I could be in great danger of doing just that with Mr Thundermug so please forgive anything that leans towards pretentious claptrap in this post but this book was two for the price of one for me.
A very clever and neatly well written book about far more than monkeys in my eyes and a whole load of cliche-ridden stuff from me won't really do it justice.Read it for yourself and see what you think.
But that won't let you off the hook, here are my thoughts on a book that could be read as a parable for our times.So for me this is about difference and how we as a society deal with it and about how those who are different feel torn between trying to be themselves and being compelled to conform and I see it every working day.
Add in being disempowered and disadvantaged plus homelessness, displacement, authority, being judged, living by the rules, who decides the rules, who says those rules are right? It's all in there, this is life on the streets from a different and very unusual perspective.
Cornelius Medvei has reduced man to his lowest common denominator, his basic primeval state, on the face of it less than human but actually very human, possibly more than human, and then worked from there.
Mr T does his best, puts a roof over his family's head, feeds them, gets angry, is misunderstood, tries to conform but nobody has explained the rules to him so he can't quite get it right.
And he has to deal with bureaucracy, plenty of it and I meet plenty of lovely people with the drawer full of unread but very important mail, all because their inability to read places them outside the system and their shame renders them incapable of letting on.Nobody has explained the rules to them either and life becomes increasingly impossible and they are judged heavily on their failings. Then just as they grasp the rules the goalposts move and hey presto, back to the beginning.
This is a book about misfits and how we judge them and there is so much to dissect in these 105 pages that a reading group would be at it for ever.
You might see it all completely differently and that's the joy of a book, it's all in the context and the life experience you bring to the pages. For me it was a wonder of a read and as it was generously donated to my cause I offered to pass it on but I'm sorry, I can't, I have to keep it. Besides, I've written all over it and I suspect every subsequent read will reveal just a little bit more and I'll write more.
Worry not, Susan Hill has more free copies ready for dispatch, head to her blog now and reserve yours.One day perhaps she'll back a turkey,but not at this rate, the baboon's a winner.
Last word to Carol Ann Duffy, these little ode from The World's Wife was ringing in my head as I read Mr Thundermug

Mrs Darwin

7 April 1852

Went to the Zoo.
I said to Him -
Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you

The peanut-crunching crowds gather again.

I feel an allergic reaction verging on anaphylaxis pending as Sylvia's peanut crunching crowds gather again and we brace ourselves for yet another book on Ted Hughes.
This one, due out later this month, has been much heralded over the years and been a very long time in the writing, Eilat Negev's A Lover of Unreason:The Life of Assia Wevill and doubtless enough emotional ammunition in the story to send poor old Ted's reputation plummetting to even greater depths.
This one about Assia, his second and perhaps slightly lesser known personal disaster who also committed suicide by gassing herself but also took their child Shura with her.
The dilemma is obvious, a bit of me wants to read it and try desperately to comment objectively the other bigger bit of me says don't bother you won't be able to.
I've read so much on the subject, plenty of it pure acidic vitriol and I've emerged from all of that with a very rational and level headed view of Ted Hughes and his life.
Much more importantly and to the point, I've grown to love his poetry and that's all I want and need now.It's not burying my head in the sand or avoidance, it's more a weariness with seeing his life being dissected and examined yet again.Taken out of context just about anything can be made to say what the author wants it to and plenty of juicy column inches about Ted's tyrranical behaviour will follow in the wake of this book, in fact it's already started.
Me? I'm not bothered and here's a poem to prove it. I don't often reproduce a poem here and I don't even particularly adore horses, but needs must and I love this one from The Hawk in the Rain. Incidentally, if you are new to Ted Hughes' adult poetry, I think this is the perfect collection to start with, there are some absolute 5* gems in here.

The Horses

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging -
I turned

Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays -

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

Ted Hughes (The Hawk in the Rain 1957)

A kindred spirit

Far too much nostalgia for one day but I found these in the market today and they are mine. I'm long overdue a dose of my kindred spirit, Anne with an 'e' Shirley and I've been looking for affordable copies of this edition for ages. Some of us don't have the luck of randomjottings who found the lot at a jumble sale for about 50p.

Girls Gone By

I heard Revd.Clarissa Cridland talking on Woman's Hour recently about Girls Gone By Publishing. I had a lovely Dorita Fairlie Bruce flurry about two years ago when I first discovered GGB and bought and more importantly read several.

Written in 1923, The Girls of St Bride's by Dorita Fairlie Bruce was a gloriously politically incorrect book by present day standards which made for a fascinating social insight if you could get yourself beyond the nostalgic wallow of the boarding school on the remote Scottish island reached by steamer.For example there is a "cripple" in a wheelchair who is lonely and isolated within the school and disliked for being selfish by many of the other girls.All this must be read in the context of 1923 to be fully appreciated but it makes these books far more than just a simple journey back in time.
I was that keen I wrote to Eva Lofgren in Stockholm who had written and published her thesis Schoolmates of the Long-Ago:Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce's Boarding School Stories. Getting money to Sweden wasn't easy but we managed it and I bought a copy.There was something about these books that made me want to know and understand more and Eva Lofgren's book is well worth reading.
Chin Up and Chest Out Jemima and You're a Brick Angela both by Mary Cadogan are readily available here and well worth the effort.

Now I've been dragged back in along with the rest of the blogclass and I'm sorely tempted to enrol in The Chalet School as a mature student.
I was a Mallory Towers diehard loyalist in my childhood and nothing could tempt me away from my friends there but I only have to glimpse the Chalet school covers now and I feel as if I'm a lost cause.I am a sucker for anything with a bit of snow and throw in a sleigh and that's me done for, that's why I read books like Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and Dawn Powell's The Bride's House over and over.
But what did I miss with The Chalet School? I can't bear not to know.
And while I'm browsing in Girls Gone By there it is, Malcolm Saville's first in his Lone Pine Series, Mystery at Witchend I loved these and how fascinating it would be to read these as an adult.
Then there are all the Monica Edwards books, Punchbowl Farm.  I'm not a lover of horses but I tried very hard to be on the strength of reading Monica Edwards, I loved those.
This could get very silly and very expensive and I'll need a trunk and a tuck box at least, and probably a lacrosse stick.Then perhaps I'll have a pony.

Loyalty

Thank you for all your kind wishes. Lunch in Topsham on the Exe estuary and a quick flit into Exeter and today I acquired one of these.
This loyalty card is being piloted by Waterstone's in the South West, heaven alone knows why, most of us have to drive miles to get to a store.It also says it can only be used in selected branches, the small print is vast and I don't know which boxes I ticked in the shop because I didn't have my glasses on so had to guess.
I spent £24.99 and notched up 99p's worth of points.At this rate I am going to have to spend £200 to get a free book worth £7.99.That's a lot of loyalty required on my part.
I shouldn't moan, I'll get free copies of the quarterly magazine, special offers including books for £1.99, invites to 10% discount evenings,(too far to drive) double points on books by some of my best-loved authors.(they haven't asked me)The quarterly magazine is useful for knowing what's on the shelves but obviously not for the true worth of a book, it's a sales pitch so every one they feature is of course brilliant.
You'll want to know what I bought, The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs (I think I may have missed a gem here, will try again) A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr (why haven't I read this? Especially with an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald)and The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi (for my armchair trip to Japan, looks intriguing and was awarded Japan's top literary prize)
Anyway I'm making this sacrifice and doing it for the good of the nation so I'll keep you informed, however it may be several months before I get back to Exeter and it may be several years before I achieve anything like the monumental loyalty points I have on my Boot's Advantage Card.
Now they really know how to treat a girl.
In fact it must be said so does the bookhound, I found the string of pearls eventually and absolutely gorgeous they are too. Cultivated fresh water ones and every shade of teal and green that I love, we hope not many molluscs died in the process.

Our September 11th

Gather round because today I'm going to tell you a very true story.It's longer than usual blog posts, so if you have time to read it you might want to make a cup of tea.
8pm January 25th 1975 I trudged onto Royal Ward (men's surgical) at the London Hospital to start a week of night duty.I loathed night duty.My body clock never learnt to deal with it and the first night was always the worst.I was 21 and in the 3rd year of a 4 year combined training and the plan was to emerge as RSCN (Registered Sick Children's Nurse) and  SRN (State Registered Nurse, now simply RN) after my finals the next year, which I did.
To complete the adult part of our nurse training we had been sent on a year's secondment to The London from our beloved alma mater, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and the world of sweet little uncomplaining babies to fend for ourselves amongst big, heavy, hairy, moany grown ups.
This all meant I was living in Whitechapel which in 1975 was very different from Bloomsbury in ways that I won't elaborate on.Coupled with the misery of being the cuckoos in the nursing nest and a recent and very depressing 12 week slog on Gloucester Ward (neurosurgery) all over Christmas and New Year meant it was not a blissfully happy time.
Suitably starched and pristine, the night shift gathered in Sister Royal's office for inspection (hair off collar, shoes polished, no ladders in black tights that sort of thing) and to be given the ward report.The naming of the Sister was a London Hospital tradition; all Sisters baptised in fire and branded across their ample bosoms with the name of the ward they lived and breathed and ruled.Patient allocation commenced.
I was assigned a leading ballet dancer who had been admitted with a drink problem and now had a bad case of the delerium tremens; there were no beds anywhere else in the hospital so he'd been tucked up on Men's Surgical. The word was I would have to keep an eye on him, he'd spent hours standing by the lift doors waiting for the doors/curtains to open so that he could make his entrance.
Next two chaps, one with an abcess on his right buttock, one with an abcess on his left who'd been put into beds next to each other so they could chat.Mistake.They were big mischief and causing the mirth and turmoil you expected on Men's Surgical.
A few more post-op cases and then this.
"Nurse" she said fixing her icy gaze on me "please familiarise yourself with the patient in bed number 4, you will be looking after him all week, he will be having major chest surgery tomorrow and you will need to be competent in the management of chest drains, please revise".
I groaned inwardly.
We hadn't been on the best of terms Sister Royal and I, since I'd caused a minor treatment room explosion alert and brought shame on her very ship-shape ward. It had involved the excitement of the Fire Brigade turning up and official reports and all because I'd put metal instruments in a machine and turned it on and walked off, failing to notice the large sign saying "No metal instruments in here". She had definitely been wreaking her revenge ever since and was now handing me a clutch of very short straw assignments.
Little did she know what a pearl was nestling in there.
First port of call was always the kitchen to see what food the day staff had managed to save you.Night duty seemed to reduce the palate to mere basics and we would happily eat cold roast dinners at 3am.
But oh dear, I was needed, the performance had begun.
Grande jetes down the middle of a men's surgical ward are not to be encouraged; half the patients were splitting their stitches laughing, the rest thought they were hallucinating, one or two definitely thought they had crossed the bar (or should that be barre?) So, having done a neat pas de deux with the ballet dancer steering him towards his bed and some sedation, "come on we're doing Sleeping Beauty tonight", and dealt with ribald remarks from the abcesses, I headed off to see what was in store for me in bed number 4 and there he was, the bookhound, looking just a little nervous.
"I'm really used to babies and nappies but don't worry" I said "I'm just going to look up chest drains now. I think it's only a problem if they block, which they always do, or if I lift the bottles up off the floor air sort of rushes back into your chest".
This didn't go down in quite the amusing way I had thought and I had to go and make him a cup of tea to calm him down.
The surgery went well and the week was spent with him groaning and me crawling round under his bed coaxing those wretched chest drains into action.

"Can I take you out to dinner when all this is over?" this weak little voice said at about 3am one morning when I'd had yet another allelulia moment with the tubing.
Student nurses in the 1970's on £12 a week never refused free meals so I made sure this one lived.Next thing to find out,how big was the boot of his car? My flatmates and I spent our lives moving around London with our belongings in tow, a boyfriend with a Hillman Imp was next to useless.Ford Escort, yes that would do.
The Tinker jokingly said I had to stop taking my work home with me the first time they met, I said it was nurse-patient follow-up and the rest as they say is indeed history.
And here we are, September 11th 2006, 30 years married today.
It's always been our quietly special day until our Silver Wedding anniversary 5 years ago when, everything changed and suddenly our day became 9/11 and we've had to share it with a tragedy.
That of course will never be forgotten, but it's still our special day and while I'm ripping the house apart looking for that elusive pearl something or other I know he's hidden here somewhere, the bookhound has been busy drawing his version of events which sort of match mine.

The Village Show (ctd)

More Village Show pictures and not forgetting the Guest of Honour, Tavistock's famous son, Sir Francis Drake.

Village Show latest

So here he is, The Tinker with the best exhibit in the show!

Village Show Update: The Competition

Well, we've been up to the Village Hall to stage our exhibits and what a buzz; who says life doesn't get exciting in a little Devon village.All the tables set up and covered with white cloths and people busy arranging raspberries and rhubarb, displaying dahlias, pinning up photos, all the children sorting out the miniature gardens and that class I had completely forgotten about, a room in a shoebox.I used to love making those.
Always a good time to chat to people you haven't seen for ages and for me someone always waves across the room and dashes over to remind me I was their health visitor when the baby was born and then proceeds to point out a child now aged about 12. I never forget the names of the children so I was taxed, had to ponder a minute but was right again this morning, and it wasn't an easy name, Alethea. Enough to make me feel ancient though.
Meanwhile here's a hint of the competition from The Tinker, he's far too clever for his own good. It's a tapestry rug but who could bear to tread on this? It hangs on his wall.
A strong contender for  Best in Show surely?
The raffle and presentation of prizes is at 5.30pm and there is a very special local hero doing the honours, this has involved a touch of reincarnation but he will be wearing his doublet and hose I'm sure, more of that later.

A riot of Colourwash

The day has arrived and let battle commence, it's dahlias at dawn, the Village Show.
I'm head to head with The Tinker this year in the handicraft classes, he tells me I don't stand an earthly and looking at his exhibits this year he could be right.Photos from the battle front tomorrow with news of defeats or victories.
This is not my entry for this year but I do love the colours and time for a riotous overdose of it in fact. So here's another small wallhanging made from the Liberty Sample books and rather hastily and regrettably machine quilted. Speedily done and these pieces never have the same special feel of a hand quilted one, but then there was the vexed question of how long my eyes could focus on this at any one time.
I was clearly a bit flush with Liberty fabric as the backing is Tana Lawn.Every quilt or wallhanging is named and has its own label with date completed and my name and address stitched on the reverse as a provenance and perhaps to give some clues in a few centuries time when this turns up on a market stall on Mars.Inspired by a book we quite like here actually.

Outwitting the Fox

I've had several phone calls from the nice people in the office at Slightly Foxed asking why I hadn't renewed my subscription from last year.We had an interesting and friendly conversation.
£32 for four issues is quite a hefty amount to pay up front when you have grossly over-commited on other subscriptions which you definitely think you can't live without.This coupled with a book buying habit based on the argument that I don't smoke 6000 cigarettes a day so look how much money I save.
All of this made me feel terrible because of course you want to try and support new literary ventures and my commitment would clearly help a fraction.
I've been looking carefully at existing magazine subscriptions (the list with links is a scrollstroll down over on the right hand side of the blog) and some I have decided are very definitely for the chop.
First to go The Women's Review of Books, a re-launch of a U.S magazine and far too way off the feminist richter scale for me to appreciate in a balanced way.Take an ordinary book and give it the extreme feminist slant and you inevitably have to give the chaps a going over. Personally I'm getting bored with this approach.
Mslexia may be another casualty, I'm not reading it cover to cover, in fact I'm hardly picking it up.
Addictions are The Literary Review which I do read cover to cover several times over and have taken for about 10 years now. I delve back in it for reviews, I have laboriously tagged the contents on librarything which means I can find reviews on any author easily.
Newbooks is so cheap it's ridiculous not to subscribe and you do get a good reader's eye view of what may be worth reading plus free books.Oh yes, and of course occasionally they publish pieces I write. A belated welcome to anyone who has found their way here from this month's article on blogging.
Not literary but ambrosia for my creative soul is Selvedge magazine, a sumptuously produced and varied look at the world of  fibres and textiles and one that always inspires me with colour.That stays.
So where does this leave Slightly Foxed?
Well they took note of my plea and persuaded my local bookshop to stock it. Wouldn't it be a good idea if the bookshop stocked some of the books discussed? That's a bit advanced for my local.Small steps.The loyalty card suggestion was received with gaze- avoidance and a grunt.
The latest edition has an excellent piece on Guiseppe De Lampedusa's The Leopard written by John De Falbe of John Sandoe Books, who coincidentally has written an excellent editorial in this month's Literary Review on Independent Bookshops.If I don't read The Leopard soon...
There's a piece on the purchase of Edith Wharton's library which I had no idea had at one time been owned by that old diarist and MP Alan Clark.Then there's another piece on old favourite and must be re-visited, Barbara Pym.
Coming up next time I see Anne Boston writing on Giorgio Bassani's In the Garden of the Finzi-Continis which is all the excuse I shall need to buy that one so to be honest Slightly Foxed, you did have me hooked and have very cunningly and painlessly reeled me in.

The Barracks by John McGahern

Another suitably inviting monochrome cover, these are starting to appeal.
I finished The Barracks by John McGahern a while ago and I'm still almost lost for words but not quite.
Elizabeth returns to her home village in rural Ireland, from a succesful but lonely nursing career at The London Hospital in Whitechapel, (coincidence, watch out for more about The London on here any day now) to marry recently widowed policeman John Reegan and become step-mother to his children.Their life together is tough and uncompromising as John struggles with a job he hates and Elizabeth does her utmost to be a mother to the children.
Elizabeth's subsequent illness should turn their world upside down but somehow it doesn't.However beneath the surface McGahern identifies and delineates the turmoil with huge sensitivity,all entwined with beautiful descriptions of the changing seasons as the family slowly move towards tragedy.McGahern's attention to small and often unnoticed details is flawless and enough to make you stop and think and dwell in the atmosphere of this amazing book.
John McGahern died in March this year, so yet another recently deceased Irish author who I have only just discovered. Needless to say I have more of his books lined up.
It was delightful to find this recording and transcript online of a conversation he had with Hermione Lee in 2004 and to hear that beautiful Irish lilt as he reads from his work.

First Booker-thon failure The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth

I'm sorry to announce that I have my first true Booker-thon failure to report and this one's up there amongst the bookie's favourites.If there's time it may end up in my one more chance saloon, but doubtful.
I have presevered to p80 with The Ruby in Her Navel (on the Captain Correlli principle) and am starting to feel this book has no future for me.I'm surprised because I have read and enjoyed plenty of Barry Unsworth in the past.If someone writes to tell me it takes a turn for the better on p81 then woe is me.
I have struggled to latch onto the writing style and something is keeping me at arm's length from the actual text. I keep reading a page and then having to read it again because not a word has sunk in.Not something I ever have a problem with if a book engages me from the off, or even if it is slow to start.
Set in twelfth century Sicily think saracens, crusades, holy wars, internecine strife, monasteries usually enough there to latch onto but I have truly floundered with this one.I also wanted to succeed  because at its heart are the beginnings of religious wars and hatred and I can see why that earns it a place on the longlist.
Then I start to feel miserable with no great book on the go but life's short so reluctantly time to throw in the towel.
I certainly hope others succeed where I have failed.

Booker-thon 2006 The Perfect Man by Naeem Murr

How best to describe the perfect book?
The Perfect Man by Naeem Murr, one of several on the long list that give us well drawn children and here you meet Raj, the child of an Indian mother and an English father.Intially abandoned to English relatives and then dumped on the doorstep of his uncle's mistress, Ruth, in a small American town.Ruth is a writer of romantic novels and always searching to construct the perfect man for her leading ladies.
Raj is quickly befriended by four of the town's children who integrate him rapidly into their world, the adults are much less willing to accept him.
This is much more than a coming of age read, more a microcosm of life in this small town with all its lies,secrets and silence, prejudices and gossip.
Yes,a vast range of characters who have the potential to be slightly confusing but I suspect you are not supposed to worry about that.Towns are busy places and Naeem Murr populates his carefully and well.If I'm in a room full of people I don't know them all with the same amount of detail and Murr ensured that I knew enough about the characters he wanted me to watch.Enough to allow me to also to make wrong assumptions and draw  wrong conclusions much as the townsfolk did.Plenty to reflect on when you've finished the book too, Naemm Murr doesn't give you all the answers.
I can't recommend this one too highly, it reads beautifully and flows to the very last page.Rises,falls, plateaus,offers some respite, rises again, doesn't miss a beat.I'd love to see it make the shortlist but it is almost too good.I feel as if I've enjoyed it too much for it to win and I'm realising that's often the way with these things.
A very strong candidate for my Booker-thon shortlist though and incidentally that cover is perfect too. There is something so beguiling about that little boy doing a somersault, his tee-shirt exposing his ribcage and beneath that his heart and his gaze is fixed, focused and looking directly your way.
I'm not a graphic designer (that's the bookhound's department) but I've spent a long time looking at the covers on these Booker-thon titles and someone,somewhere has got this one very right; this one says everything about the story it contains.

The RIP read

Have just been gathering my thoughts for the 5 books for my RIP read.
Having stretched the limits of the criteria to squeeze in a few that have been waiting patiently for far too long and with some lateral thinking thrown in, here's my selection.

The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (1928)
The Golem, the strange,supernatural force reputed to haunt the ancient Ghetto of Prague.."strange mystical visions,wonderful transformations, lurking terrors and perplexing revelations..."

The Rings of Saturn by W.G.Sebald (2002)
A walking tour through the haunted landscapes of the past, in the company of the exiled and the departed.

Little Face by Sophie Hannah (2006)
Her husband David was supposed to be looking after their two week old daughter.But when Alice Fancourt walks into the nursery, her terrifying ordeal begins, for Alice insists the baby in the cot is a stranger she's never seen before.With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must be either mad or lying, how can Alice make the police believe her before it's too late?
"Chilling thriller...heart thumping suspense...taut psychological thriller...high quality stuff"

The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski (1953)
This ‘slim, brilliant, very scary novel’ (John Sandoe Books) came out in 1953,  it is about a young married woman who lies down on a chaise-longue and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego ninety years before. It impressed PDJames ‘as one of the most skilfully told and terrifying short novels of its decade.’

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
Famously dumped by me, in a hotel room in Barcelona about 5 years ago, (yes I invented Book Crossing) after 50 pages as not worth lugging around Europe in my rucksack a minute longer, predictably then rated by just about anyone I ever ask as the best book they'd ever read.We'll see.

The Day War Broke Out

I'm going to hand over another blog post for today to The Tinker (my Dad) who reminds me this morning that September 3rd 1939 was the day that war broke out.
I've been encouraging him (well, nagging more like) to pleeeease write some of this down for our family history and so we now have a little treasure trove of these.
The Tinker joined the Royal Marines as a Boy Bugler at the age of 14 in May 1939 and within weeks of the outbreak of war he was draughted to the battleship HMS Iron Duke up in Scapa Flo.
In many respects this is a child's eye view of a grown man's war, he noticed the things a 14 year old would, but he was still in the thick of it on active service and so I think he gives it a very special and unique voice.
I've taken Part Two of his story
The Day War Broke Out Part 2
The day that World War II really did break out is vivid in my memory, not because it was a momentous occasion, but because Hitler really did annoy Herbie Tydd and I that day.
It was a Sunday of course and Sundays meant Church Parade.Those who remember the halcyon days before the war know that Church Parade was a spectacle, the parade ground at Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth would be awash with Marines and the band would be there in full ceremonial dress uniform. After Church the public would flock to watch the band put on a bit of a performance.
Herbie and I had been detailed for the band that day, our very first assignment in full dress uniform.I was in the second row of  side drums, but Herbie, the blue eyed boy, was on tenor drums; a special honour as you got to wear the leopard skin, white kid gauntlets and were able to perform all manner of dextrous movements with the drum sticks, you had to be expert to do that.So there we were,14 years old and bursting with pride, Regimental drums, silver bugles, full dress uniform and white helmets, ready to perform before our very first audience.
We were in Church and about half way through the service when on orderly marched down the aisle and whispered to the Padre who then announced "We are now at war with Germany". He then proceeded to tell us that under the circumstances the rest of the parade would be cancelled and that we should make our way quietly back to barracks to await further orders.
So there! We never did get our debut performing in full dress uniform before an adoring public.The disappointment and chagrin was awful and Herbie and I never ever forgave Hitler for that, couldn't he have waited just another couple of hours!
Now I swear this is true, but later that day we had our first wartime directive and it was "to drown all cats". We had 2 in our block and one had just had kittens, they had to be drowned though, orders is orders. I have never understood the thinking behind that, I believe it was the mistaken thought that we were about to be subjected to immediate air raids and therefore didn't want rabid cats everywhere.
I don't know if that was the true reason, the war was very odd at times.