What a great find I had in a second-hand bookshop recently.
I always keep a look out for books by people I know and Adele Geras is someone I feel I know even though we've never met.It's a name that jumps right off the shelf and I have plenty of Adele's children's books still to find.
So Yesterday A Teenage Memoir by Adele Geras and published in 1992 was mine and it was only when I left the shop I had a better look...alright I found my glasses and could see properly... and realised that this is an autobiography of Adele's life growing up in the 1960's.
Then I took it along to my NHS acupuncture appointment.
I've been on the waiting list for over a year (yes, we have to wait along with everyone else) and my qi are plaited apparently but after a lifetime in the clinical-medical world I have a great deal of faith in many alternative therapies.In fact ever since I very reluctantly and cynically showed up as a guinea pig 
for homeopathic enzyme potentiated desensitization for hay fever, which one of our GP's was trialling about twelve years ago.It worked like magic and I've hardly had hay fever to this day.
So as I sat hedgehogged and prickly and with my qi unravelling, as well as those very odd aching nerve-twitching sensations that the needles give you, I read a few pages of my friend Adele's book to take my mind off my friend Susan's.
The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill strangely ALWAYS comes to mind halfway through these sessions, funny that.
Now we've never met but I feel I know Adele so well through e mails and comments here that I think I'd know her anywhere. Her writing voice and mannerisms 
are so distinctive and as I read I knew this was probably like talking to her.
Yesterday begins with her childhood and there are some priceless Adele moments.
"I was the kind of child who, when asked to perform by indulgent relatives, would open my mouth to sing and not close it until some food came along to distract me"
Then onto life at St Hilda's College, Oxford and Adele quickly embraced the social scene with plenty of climbing in over walls and gates after hours all detailed with her customary warm, self-effacing humorous voice and she adds in a little sense of mystery.
All her friends are introduced by their first names only but Adele tells me there are a few well-known people in the mix hmmm... Michael? Wendy? We can but guess.
There is more strutting of the boards than the library floor and so Adele's studies suffer for her art as she embraces the Oxford stage scene with what I think I now recognise as her customary enthusiasm for life.As well as a big heart she had a big voice by all accounts and knew how to use it to full effect.
Eventually Adele meets Norm and well, that's it. Michael, Tim, Richard, Iwan, Vince et al are history as love blossoms in Nuffield College and we must send congratulations as Adele and Norm have just celebrated their Ruby Wedding anniversary.
This is an absolute treasure of a book and I reached page thirty-five before it was time to have my qi jiggled and my needles removed and I'd hardly noticed a thing. I suppose you are meant to sit in these sessions and meditate to help the whole thing along but I'm afraid I was quietly shaking with laughter and trying not to dislodge anything vital.
For anyone who reads Adele's books this one is a treasure, dash off and find your copy now.
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