Random Jottings

Dropping in

Hi everybody just to let you know that I am alive and plodding on though have been laid low with a bad back in the last week.  Life is just getting a bit tedious and  dreary at the mo and I know we are all in the same boat but now we have this Rule of Six which is just so flattening.

I have a friend staying with me (we have formed a bubble over the last few months) and we had a lovely day in Frinton where the sun shone and we had a lovely cuppa in Fred’s Cafe (I mean how could you not want to eat in a place with such a wonderful name?) and pottered around Connaught Avenue which was lively and cheerful. I have visited several times over the past few months and it was good to see it so happy.

The next day we visited Perrywood at Tiptree, a wonderful garden centre where I have to be restrained from spending vast quantities of money on their superb plants and flower. A new little cafe open, the Greenhouse Cafe, where we had coffee and a scone and the staff were smiling, cheerful and chatty.

Today we went to Aldeburgh. Crowded and unenjoyable. Getting a coffeewas well nigh impossible with queues everywhere, I went into a bookshop (NOT the Aldeburgh bookshop I hasten to add - that was lovely) and a voice shouted out Put your mask on. I was tempted to walk out but instead showed him my exemption badge, Oh alright he said.

My temper was not improved when walking back to get fish and chips I spotted discarded face masks in the gutter. Final straw was the queue outside the wonderful chip shop where we had planned to buy lunch. All standing about ten inches from each other and half of them not wearing a mask.

We drove home.

The next person who challenges me re my non mask wearing before checking my badge is liable to get a very short and to the point answer.

I am in Cambridge this week as it is Beatrice’s 8th birthday which will cheer me up no end. Thank goodness we will only be five in number.....

OK moan over.

And just to mention I am re-reading P D James. Wonderful. Will be writing about here later on this week.

Recently read and awaiting my attention

My sister came round for tea yesterday and pointed out to me that I had not posted for a week and when was I going to write again.  The usual excuse at the moment, total sloth and generally feeling fed up with life and the world. 

Apropos of nothing I sat and watched Andy Murray come back from two sets and a match point down in the first round of the US Open and win a stunning five setter, the first he has played for two years.  An incentive to beat sloth if ever I saw one.

So thanks to Andy here I am.

Still Life - Val McDermid.  I discovered this author about eighteen months ago and wondered why I had not done so before. I hoovered them all up, all the different series and have enjoyed them all in various degrees of pleasure. The Carol/Tony series now seems to have come to a halt and I feel this is probably a good thing as the pair of them were becoming increasingly irritating (to me anyway). My favourite is the Karen Pirie books.

Karen is a feisty Scot in charge of the cold case department who has suffered personal loss and tragedy and has had to come to terms with it.  This title starts with a dead man fished from the sea who was a prim suspect in a ten year old investigation into the disappearance of a civil servant. It was a Pirie case so she is asked to revisit it.  But she is also involved in another when a skeleton is discovered in an old campervan and it is clear the killer is still out there.

Both stories told beautifullly. I love the relationship between Karen and her sidekick, The Mint, so called because like the Murray Mint he cannot be hurried, who is loyal and faithful and a great guy.

Thoroughly enjoyed this but by the end of it I was aware, if I was not already from reading her tweets, that the author does not like the Tories, thinks Boris is useless, the First Minister is wonderful and she supports Scottish Independence.

I have no problems with anybody holding their political views but I do with they were not shoe horned into fiction. The last two DCI Banks books by Peter Robinson were blatantly anti Brexit and it all gets a tad tedious after a while.

Checkmate to Murder - E C R Lorac.  One of my favourite of all the discoveries of the British Library classic crime series.  Last one I read was Crossed Skis a few months ago and now this one dropped through my letterbox.

A foggy night in Hampstead, Lonndon during the blackout. A party is taking place in an artist’s studio, a civil servant, a government scientist playing chess while Bruce Manaton , the artist, paints a portrait. In the kitchen Rosanne, the artist’s sister preparing tea.   The studio is rented from a miser who lives alone in the hosue next door.

The sitting is interrupted by an officious Special Constable how has arrested a young soldier running from the house where the dead body of Mr Foliner, the aforementioned miser, has been discovered.

Ins and outs and the setting of fog bound London in the blackout beautifully portrayed. The BritLib and publish all of this writer’s book as far as I am concerned - and there are a lot....

The Outsider - Linda Castillo. The latest in the Kate Burkholder series set in Amish country. I do like these book.   The Outsider is a police detective fleeing a corrupt regime and she is running for her life.   It turns out that the fugitive, Gina Colorosa, is an old friend of Kate but she fell out with her years ago over her bending of the rules and is not sure she can be trusted.

Well written as always but I did find this particular title not quite up to the standard of the others in this genre. I think that the author thought it might be a good idea to change up the storyline from the usual internal Amish series of murders. After all, if they keep on killing  each other at the rate they are written the entire populace would be wiped out (as Anne Cleves has given as the reason for not writing any more Shetland novels) but I felt it did not quite work.

Last year I read a terrific debut novel by Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange. Her second book is now out, The Lies you Told and it is just as good, if not better than the first one.  I will be reviewing this more fully for Shiny New Books and will link to it when it is up.

Lots of good reads then and awaiting my attention the latest Strictly Foxed editions of two Rosemary Sutcliff titles of which more later, and a book which is sounding promising after the first chapter Queen Victoria and the Romanovs with the subtitle Sixty years of Mutual Distrust....

 

The Finisher - Peter Lovesey

Torpor. What a lovely word. Just saying it makes you feel languid and lazy and idle and can't be bothered.  And that is how I have felt the last week and this afternoon roused myself to start writing about books I have read over the last ten days.  I have read a couple of stinkers, a couple good, and two really excellent ones.

One of the excellent ones and the one I am reviewing today is The Finisher by Peter Lovesey.

Now I posted about Peter a while back on Random, here, after I had come across one of his books,  said blimey I thought he was dead (apologies....) and then discovered that he was in fact alive and kicking and had produced a whole slew of books I had missed entirely. A mistake I was happy to rectify.

Peter very kindly contacted me after my post to reassure me he was alive and well and said that the next Peter Diamond book was nearly finished and here it is.  He has forgiven my mistake re his mortality because I had first read his Sargeant Cribb books back in the sixties and so therefore, naturally, assumed he was no longer with us. I am delighted he is and even more so after reading this one.

A half marathon is taking place in the city of Bath and Diamond and his team are asked to police it and keep an eye on the crowds.  Not something he is particularly keen to do, particularly when he receives a shock when he recognises one of the runners, Tony Pinto, who he had arrested some fifteen years ago. He is now out of jail and taking part in the race.   Pinto had subjected a young woman to a vicious attack and Diamond is not happy when he sees him pestering a young woman runner who is clearly unhappy with his persistent attentions.   He keeps an eye on events and at the end of the race becomes concerned when the woman in question did not appear to have finished the course and has not registered that she has done so. She cannot be traced and two days later there is still no sign of her.

A parrallel story about Spiro, an Albanian illegal immigrant who has made his way to Bath, appears on the face of it to have little to do with the above. He is fleeing from The Finisher a vicious and dangerous traffiker who will have no hesitation in killing him if he catches him.  And it is while watching the half marathon that Spiro sees the man he fears.

OK I am stopping here as I do not wish to give anything away. I merely wish to say that for a large section of this book there is no murder, there is no body. We, the readers, are aware that somebody had met a grisly end but who? I will admit that I guessed but then I have a devious mind and have read too many detective novels.

I love Peter Diamond and his total lack of computer savvy and his grumps and his arguments with the Deputy Chief Constable, Georgina who, like all heirarchy in police detection stories, seems to worry more about appearances and statistics than the actual crime itself.   Peter tests her to the limit and I must admit I feel sorry for her sometimes as he gets away with, dare I say it, murder.

I had a bit of a re-reading binge of the Diamond books after reading this one and thoroughly enjoyed them all over again. And there is one The Tooth Tattoo which features a string quartet where one of its members has mysteriously vanished while on tour.  What I loved about this title was the intricate detail and descriptions pertaining to the Beethoven String quartets. He is my favourite composer but I have yet to tackle these and after reading this book again I ordered a box set of the same. They have arrived and I am looking forward to becoming acquainted with them and will be reading the sections of the Tooth Tattoo which give such wonderful insight and information.

So thank you for that Peter and for another smashing book.

Do keep well.

Do write another one.....

 

Random Video - I talk about Queen Victoria

Miss Mole - E H Young

I am sure those book collectors who love stumbling across a new author and love them for years and feel rather superior because of this, will know the acute irritation one can feel when suddenly that author is “rediscovered” and they become popular again. And yes it is totally petty. Elizabeth von Arnim who I have loved for over forty years was mentioned in an episode of Downton Abbey and, natch, was suddenly all over the place.  The British Library have a wonderful new series Women Writers and one of their title is totally unknown - “Father” by EVA. Bloggers and twitterers getting all excited while I sit here fuming and wanting to yell I have a copy of this book. I had it YEARS ago before you lot even heard of it.

As I said - petty.

Now Miss Mole by E H Young is getting the same treatment and I also read this years ago and found myself among an exclusive group who knew about it and could get all superior and lofty. Ah well....

I went to a book sale here in Colchester way back and came across a little pile of books by E H Young. They were all in the wonderful Virago green cover editions and were being totally ignored in the mad rush to grab the Dan Browns, Danielle Steeles and John Grishams piled up on the trestle tables. This suited me down to the ground as I had spotted these from the far end of the hall as I entered and had made a beeline for them pretty sure nobody else would want them. But you can never tell so I pushed and shoved until I had them safely in my bag. I knew nothing of the author but the fact that they were published by Virago was good enough for me and home they came, and went on my shelves and there they languished.

And then one day surrounded by review and proof copies and unable to choose which one to choose, I decided to read Miss Mole. This happens to me quite often, sometimes a book will just call to me that it is time to be read and when the siren call comes, I don't fight it. And when I had finished it I was annoyed that I had left it so long and denied myself this pleasure. What a simply wonderful book.

Miss Hannah Mole, a farmer's daughter, has for twenty years earned her living as a nursery governess or companion to a succession of difficult old women. She is now forty and has returned to the city of Radstowe where she lived as a child. She faces an uncertain future and has nothing to look forward to but a lonely and poverty stricken old age and at the start of the book is well on the way to losing her latest post. Miss Mole has a sense of the ridiculous and a quick wit which she has to keep well under wraps as employers don't care for this but it breaks out and has lost her countless jobs. "Who would suspect her for a sense of fun and irony, of passionate love for beauty and the power to drag it from its hidden places? Who could imagine that Miss Mole had pictured herself, at different times, as an explorer in strange lands, as a lady wrapped in luxury and delicate garments...?"

Hannah has a rich cousin living in Radstowe who prefers not to acknowledge her as she mistrusts this mischievous streak and is wary of getting involved in case she has to pull her out of a scrape or, worse still, financially support her. On her recommendation Miss Mole becomes housekeeper to a non conformist minister, Reverend Corder, a widower full of pomposity and self satisfaction, whose motherless daughters are sorely in need of care and good food. Also living with the family is the Reverend's nephew, Wilfred, who has no truck with his uncle and goes his own sweet way. He unerringly spots that Miss Mole is concealing her real character and it is with him that sometimes she relaxes and lets her true nature peep through much to his delight. On the odd occasion when she forgets and strikes a note of levity with Reverend Corder she runs perilously close to being asked to leave but manages to keep herself under control, though he views her with a vague mistrust and a feeling that all is not as it should be.

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book. It reminded me very much of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, published by Persephone. Miss Pettigrew is in the same situation as Miss Mole, at the beck and call of anybody who will employ her and she, too, faces a dreary and lonely future. But as with Miss Mole, Miss Pettigrew has an inner strength which comes to her aid and allows her character to blossom. However, unlike Miss Pettigrew, Miss Mole has had a lover in her past and a secret that she conceals knowing that she will be ruined if the truth is revealed and this becomes very likely when another person from her past turns up in Radstowe. I was entranced by Hannah, her wit and humour and above all, her bravery.

So ignore my flouncing about in the sulks. Do buy this simply lovely book, read and enjoy.   Dean Street Press are high on my list of Publishers I Keep an Eye On as they come up with super titles, those you have been wanting to read for ages and those who you did not know you needed to read but now you do.

If that makes sense.

And of course I love that these authors and title are being republished - it is just that I rather liked being superior and knowing about books that nobody else did.....

'sigh'

A few days away

I am currently sitting on my bed in my lovely hotel room with my feet up and drinking tea.  Grandparents 1 and 2 and family all went from a long walk from Iken Church to the Maltings. Glorious day and here are a few photos of our afternoon. Barbecue tonight.

I am already knackered...

Recent reading - mixed bag

What is it that makes a book readable and another one where the writing makes you feel like you are wading through a field full of treacle?  If you have the answer do let me know.

My reading last week consisted, among other murders and mayhem, two historical non fiction books. The first was The Crown in Crisis, countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman.  Oh dear I thought do I really need another book on this but I admit to a fascination with the whole thing so got hold of it and it was very very good.  There were letters and information I had not read before not least this prescient and shrewd reading of Edward and Mrs Simpson by Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambassador to Greece:

"....there is something appealing about him, something charming and good with such good intentions" but he despaired of his companion "Mrs S is essentially the response to his craving for domesticity and it is a serious response. For that reason I think she has come to stay".  He went on "the problem must be hopeless for the characteristic marks of this type of American female are precisely those which must aggravate the situation, perpetual restlessness and a vacuum as complete as that of the prairie or small town from which is originally descends. What can be hoped from mating restlessness with restlessness, vacuum with vacuum?"

It is very difficult when reading through this book not to ponder on the current situation in the Royal Family. Edward and Bertie were close and kept his brother abreast of all relevant court papers and matters of state but this trust did not extend to his dealings with Wallis. "The two brothers who had been close began to drift apart....the situation at Balmoral had been like a nightmare. Bertie felt he had lost a friend and was rapidly losing a brother". Bertie had counselled Edward not to do anything he might regret and this was regarded as a slight to Wallis with whom he was now obsessed.  All very familiar and very sad.

Over the years I have read many books on the Abdication and my sympathies, such as they are for this ghastly pair, are now with Wallis.  Yes, she had an eye to the main chance and wanted to be in society and cut a swathe but she was very clear sighted about it all. She called herself Wallis in Wonderland and was under no illusion that it would come to an end and so she was making the most of it while she could. Unfortunately for her she found that Edward was like a limpet and there was no getting rid of him. Even when she did try to withdraw, mainly I feel because she was terrified of the situation she was in, he threatened to follow her or to kill himself. She was, to put in bluntly, lumbered with him and I feel she should be given her due that she tried to make a life for them both though at times she must have felt as if she was dealing with a sulky child.

The fact that she kept in touch with her ex-husband Ernest Simpson for some time and wrote rather sad letters to him after the Abdication and her marriage speaks volumes.

I was fascinated by this book - obviously well researched and meticulous in detail and well written. I can recommend this as one of the best books about that turbulent time. It ends with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor leaving the country and deals with the events leading up to this. Their life afterwards which seems to aimless and sad is well documented in other books.

The other title I read, or attempted to read, was The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. In the last three years he has produced a book on Queen Victoria and also a biography of Albert - how he can produce these two and this one in such a short space of time makes me wonder just how much research and effort he put into it. One assumes he employed a band of drones to do all the hard work for him.

The books on V and A were clumsily written and very boring and I skipped whole chunks of it as the prose was just, for want of a better word, dead. It was dull and irritating. So why I bought this one I know not except it was about a man I find totally fascinating and one of my favourite authors.  But AN Wilson manages the impossible, he makes a book about Dickens utterly turgid. Here is an example of his matchless prose. Dickens is dying.

"Death has a way of bringing to light hidden things which the dying one wished never to be disclosed. Could it be, as his eyelids flickered and he prepared for the ultimate mystery, that the curtain was not going to come down but up; that the garish lights of the theatre were to be turned up and the actors found unprepared upon the stage?"

Yuk.

So the book goes on. I skipped huge chunks as I became increasingly irritated with this egoistical style in that the author constantly brings himself into the narrative.   The coup de grace comes near the end of the book when AN Wilson likens Dickens Nicholas Nickleby and the awful things that happened in Dotheboys Hall, with his own dreadful schooldays. It seems that the author had a vicious headmaster and equally vicious wife and was beaten with huge enjoyment by the master in question, while the aformentioned master ....let us just say that the phrase which covers this would be "got off on it" if you will forgive the vulgarity. AN Wilson is more precise but I see no reason to inflict this totally unneccessary piece of information on you all.

This book has received excellent reviews so it is clear that I am not worthy and do not appreciate it.  Well, I can live with that. I thought it was dire and I ended up throwing it across the room.  I reached for Pickwick Papers and read a chapter of two to restore my equilibrium.

I have made a note: Elaine do not buy a book by A N Wilson ever again. My fear is he may now turn his eyes onto the Brontes. Just think what he would make of Emily and Heathcliff and Charlotte and her love for her professor. I shudder....

Random Ramble

I am off to see the family today. How nice to be able to say that and know that things are slowly reverting back to normal. I refuse to say “new normal” as it is an expression that drives me potty.

And before I ramble, I may just say that another thing that drives me potty is some of the marketing emails I have been receiving. I have just had one drop in my in box from Marks & Spencer urging me to “shop the staycation edit”

I might just throw up...

OK so what have been doing and the answer is Not a Lot. I make sure, during these times, that I have a structure to my day no matter how relatively uninteresting it may be else I wander around like a tit in a trance. So my routine is to have my morning cuppa, eat a banana or a piece of fruit and then go out for my walk. Now, I loathe exercise in any shape or form. If I was a spy and captured by a foreign power and they wanted to know my secrets, forget pulling my toenails out, just bung me on a treadmill. I would tell all within a minute.

BUT my resolve during lockdown was NOT to regain the weight which I have been working hard at losing.  Our WW meetings were on Zoom as there were no workshops and I made the decision that I was not going to allow this virus to make me fat again and resolved just to maintain weight. And I have. I have made myself walk each day so that it is now an ingrained habit and if I don’t do it I feel vaguely guilty.  I average a mile a day (there was one day when I managed four but that just about finished me off so has not been repeated) and I have managed to keep to this.   On checking my health app since 1 April and taking note of my daily walk it now seems that I have walked over 100 miles since the beginning of lockdown. This stunned me so much I had to have a lie down.

I am wittering so back to the routine.   I get back indoors, have a shower, a drink and then my breakfast.

Then I do chores or anything that needs doing. The other day I was looking at my carpet and thinking Elaine you really need to get the hoover out. So I did.  Cleaned the flat and then I went outside into our flat entry hall and hoovered that as well. We do our own cleaning as the company that did it was dire. I then got the spray polish out and did the windowsills etc. By this stage I was getting a bit fanatical and when I started cleaning the windows called a halt. Enough Elaine.

I have lunch, sometimes a bijou napette, well quite often actually and then full of virtue I decide to do nothing. Wimbers cancelled this year so the BBC have been delving into the archives and have been showing all sorts of fantastic matches over the last thirty years.  It was wonderful to see the Ivanisevic/Rafter mens final again, great to see Andy creaming it, and of course St Rog of Fed was showcased in order to allow Sue Barker to go into full gush and drool mode.

Some of the older matches now seem a tad slow even the fabled Borg McEnroe finals. I watched a bit of one of them but the sight of McEnroe with frizzy hair, headband and permanent scowl was even less endearing than when I first watched and so I switched off.

And the Ladies!! OMG how dire and slow and pat a cake the early ones were. The 1977 final when Virginia Wade beat Betty Stove. Excruciating. Simple shots that todays ladies would sprint for just left, no effort made. No attempt to return difficult serves. It was so boring.  

They showed a few of Steffi Graf and boy she was simply terrific. But on the whole dreary.

And the interesting thing to note was the commentary. In the vintage matches we had Dan Maskell and Mark Cox.  Most of the time we watched in total silence with Dan or Mark interjecting an incisive and to the point comment. Ten years later, still pretty quiet but a bit more chat. Ten years later Henman and McEnroe, but still not too much chat. Then present day and we have Castle, Lloyd, Henman, McEnroe, Boris et all in full twitter non stop drivel mode. It was most marked.

I have done some reading. One excellent history and one biography that enraged me so much with its ponciness, no other word will do,  that I threw it across the room.

More on that later.

Au reservoir

Random Video - I talk about Eva Ibbotson

I am really enjoying doing these videos as it gives me a wonderful chance to talk about anything which is great fun.  I have just recorded one in which I talk about one of my favourite authors, Eva Ibbotson. I hope you enjoy it.

 

As always, I welcome comments and requests for subjects for future chats.

The books I discuss are:

A Company of Swans

Morning Gift

Madensky Square

A Glove Shop in Vienna

Magic Flutes

Countess below Stairs

Enjoy!

 

Recent reading and received

I have been reading in a very desultory fashion the last couple of months. I have found it impossible to settle down and concentrate. Isn’t it odd when you think you are going to have all this time and so we can do some really serious reading and then find you really can’t be bothered?  Annoying as well.

I have been re-reading a lot of crime and lots of romance as well which seems to soothe my soul and relax me.  It has given me some ideas for a future video as I get really cross when romance is dismissed and viewed with contempt as it frequently is.  But that is for another day.

So what have I got on the table at the moment?

I have just finished The Geometry of Holding Hands by Alexander McCall Smith. This is the latest in the series featuring Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher, and I find these books a great joy. I gave up on the rest of the output of this author sometime ago as I found the books were all appearing as an amorphous blob in my mind and the 1st Ladies Detective Agency just turned into a ramble. Nothing wrong with a ramble but you do need a little something to happen now and then. I came across the latest one in the library a few months ago and thought I would give it a whirl but gave up after one chapter.

Now these Dalhousie books also ramble but because Isabel is a philosopher and her musings have a point and they are interesting and amusing.  If you want a fast paced story then these will not be for you but I love them and find them enormously satisfying.  Each volume hinges on a philosophical point and idea. There is also the pleasure of following Isabel’s family life and her growing sons, her younger husband Jamie and their relationship and her niece Cat who, in this book, is clearly heading for disaster.  I have all these on my shelves and all in hardback as I am collecting the lot. This winter it is my plan to start at No 1 and read them all over again.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. I ordered this with a slight feeling of trepidation as I do find this author vaguely irritating but when he is writing about a subject or person I love then I find I cannot resist. However , the same irritations are rearing their head already and I am only two chapters in. I recently read his biography of Albert, Prince Consort so how he has had time to produce this latest tome I really do not know.  One sentence really jarred with me in that particular biography when he referred to Queen Victoria as “drooling over Albert” which I thought was totally unsuitable in a book purporting to be a serious biography.

You may think I am being picky and perhaps I am but I found myself tut tutting at the phrase, referring to Peckham where he had a house for Nelly Ternan as an area that was “fast being swallowed by by jerry built houses” and a row of villas “built on spec”.  Now I am sorry but if you are referring to a Victorian suburb you do not use these terms and I found it jarred. And I find his grammar somewhat lacking. “We know little about Nelly Ternan, she was part of this, obviously she was”. Again I found this jarred.

OK call me a pedant. I don’t mind. I shall carry on reading but but but....

As antidote to this I am very much looking forward to reading Jane Austen by Tom Keymer, subtitled writing, society and politics. It is a neat small sized book from OUP and dropped through my letter box today. I have already turned to the chapter Passion and Persuasion.  Austen’s writing was felt to be lacking in passion, not least by Charlotte Bronte, but oh my goodness, the letter from Captain Wentworth at the end, the pouring forth of his feelings - well, blimey, passion abounding and one of my most favourite pieces of all literature.

I will report back in due course but I have a feeling I am going to enjoy this.

Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson a memoir set in the second World War which has shades of Diary of a Provincial Lady for me, not necessarily because of the setting, but more the style and dry wit of the writing.

”when I asked the local chemist for line and disinfectant, he felt it was only fair to allow the first aid post to claim me......half a dozen VAD’s made a rush at me and treated my small abrasion as though my whole head had blown off”

Published by the wonderful Dean Street Press.

And, finally, The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer another wonderful title from the British Library Classic Crime Series.

Enough to be getting on with methinks.