Random Jottings

Odds and Sods

I have just heard that apparently Transita are to republish  A Lovesome Thing by Prue Leith.  I had totally forgotten that she was also a published fiction author as well as writing all her cook books.  Isn't it annoying how these women can whip up a zabaglione with one hand while dashing off a best seller with the other?  Takes me all my time to read the morning paper while boiling an egg.

Having a well known name like Prue Leith in their catalogue can only be a good thing for a niche publisher such as Transita and, hopefully, this will generate a lot of publicity and editorial which, in its turn, give Transita a higher profile.  I have read quite a few of their output over the last year and, while I have not loved every single book I have come across, the percentage of enjoyment has been pretty high. I look forward to hearing more about this.

I have been spending a happy hour this evening, as you do, roaming through Amazon (I have an Amazon gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket) and to my utter delight have come across two books due for publication very soon:

O joy O rapture unforeseen - another Donna Leon.  Readers of this blog may remember that I embarked on a total DonnaBinge last summer when I read all 13 of these wonderful books set in Venice, in one month.  Then of course I was condemned to wailing and gnashing of teeth waiting for the next one and it is nearly here and has been pre-ordered today.

And the next one is:

Yes - No 8 in the No 1 Ladies Detective agency series by the wonderfully prolific Alexander McCall Smith and very glad I am that he turns out so many books one after the other.  I have two of his on my shelves at the moment waiting to be read, 44 Scotland Street, the third in his series set in Edinburgh and originally written for a Scottish newspaper, full of eccentric and off the wall characters, and  The Right Attitude to Rain, one of the Sunday Philosophy Club Series.  All of this author's books are delightful and heart warming.  They are never going to set the world on fire and I know a lot of critics dismiss them as 'nice' and what is wrong with nice I ask myself?

Oh and I have just watched Episode 3 of The Pallisers and Glencora is rounding out nicely and Susan Hampshire is making her very lovable and sympathetic and I still think Alice Vavasour is a very silly young woman.

Oh and my copy of The Good Thief of Amsterdam all nicely signed by the author and beautifully produced with smooth, thick, glossy lovely to the touch paper has arrived from Long Barn Books and I am looking forward to reading that as well.

Oh and I received a simply gorgeous book by Eva Ibbotson A Glove Shop in Vienna and other stories which I have been trying to track down for ages and Alibris had it and will write about that another time.

Oh and at the end of this totally disjointed blog I am now going to have a cup of tea and go to bed. Now which book shall I take with me.....

The Pallisers

Decided after endlessly dithering and wondering what they would be like some 30 years after first broadcast, to purchase The Pallisers.  Waited until they were on DVD of course, the old videos would have taken up about a yard of much needed shelf space.

So, what do I think so far after two episodes watched?  First of all, it is very much studio bound (no location shots here) and some of the background sets in Switzerland are pretty obviously cardboard cut outs and fairly hoot worthy, but the acting is terrific and the characterisation wonderful and the cast liberally strewn with assorted British Thesps all of whom are excellent, so one can ignore the wobbly scenery.  If I remember rightly the BBC version of Mansfield Park back in the 80's was one of the first costume dramas to be shot on location.  I have a copy of it and it is very very good indeed.  Not having interior scenes with sounds of hansom cabs trotting by the window to add verisimilitude is such a relief.

Now the problem with watching this of course is that I can feel the series already twisting its tendrils around me and making me want to pull down the books off the shelf.  At the moment, we are watching the start of the series as in Can you Forgive Her? and I really want to take this volume down and check to see if Alice Vavasour really is as dour as she is being portrayed (my memory is that she is not so sure of herself or so didactic as she appears to be in this series) and is Lady Glencora really so spoiled and thoughtless as Susan Hampshire is making her out to be?  It is very early days yet and as I am a huge admirer of Ms Hampshire I am looking forward to the characters being rounded out.  Episode One made it very clear that Glencora was deeply in love with Burgo before marrying Plantaganet Palliser - more subtly hinted at by the great Anthony Trollope.

I have to say though I am already gripped and feel a Palliserfest coming on and can't wait to see what Phineas Finn is like which is my favourite.  Wonder if the BBC have ever thought of re-doing it?  I could spend many happy hours mentally casting it.  Must be a place in there for Colin Firth, Alan Rickman and Richard Armitage, surely....

O blow it I am going to start Can you Forgive Her tomorrow.  I am reading a Neil Gaiman collection of short stories at the moment which is leaving me stone cold, after a good start followed by a falling off (a sitting ovation and cries of less I fear) and so am now due to a good old bit of VicLit.

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

After reading Enduring Love last month I felt I needed to put a few weeks between me and my next meeting with Ian McEwan.    This book is part of my Personal Challenge which is simmering along nicely and a feeling of quite unwarranted pride came upon me when I realised was actually reading a Booker Prize winner when I embarked on Amsterdam.  Yes, I know it is daft but there you go.

There was a scene in Enduring Love which I had to force myself to read as I just knew something horrible was about to happen.  I could not explain why this feeling of menace crept upon me or how McEwan created it, but it was there and I had exactly the same feeling about two-thirds of the way through Amsterdam, this creeping reluctance to carry on reading.  I did and, once again, finished the book thinking O My Gawd.

The book starts with a funeral.  Molly Lane is being cremated after suffering a cruel debilitating illness during which her husband, George, cut her off from her friends and ex-lovers, three of which were attending at the crematorium.  Clive Linley, a composer in the throes of composing the Millennial Symphony, Vernon Halliday the editor of an up market broadsheet and Julian Garmon, Foreign Secretary, heavily tipped to be the next Prime Minister.

One thing to remember at this stage if you come to the book new and fresh as I did (and only realised with hindsight) is that George, the widower, is an insignificant man jealous of Molly's ex-lovers.  After I had finished reading Amsterdam, it seemed to me that all the unfolding events after Molly's death began and ended with George and for a man dismissed by all, his influence was pervasive.  I cannot really say more about this without giving away the plot and the eventual outcome but will say I was left with mouth open when I read the final page and closed up the book.  I was on the train home last week and was totally oblivious to all the usual disturbances around me as I read the last twenty pages (I had actually run over my lunch break that day as I lost track of time so absorbed was I) so could not express my feelings in any way.

McEwan's writing is so concise and economic.  There is not a dot or comma wasted, every word counts and the narrative is lean and free from any embroidery or fancy flourishes.  On the blurb we have a quote from the Daily Telegraph '....McEwan writes here with unobtrusive panache' which just about sums it up.

Amsterdam is only 178 pages long.  Needs no more.  Stunning.

60 Glorious years - Part Deux

Well, life is now settling down after a very busy week during which I have reached this landmark age, come to terms with it, begun to enjoy the Sod them All attitude that swept upon me Wednesday, and have just had a lovely weekend with a celebration lunch with my family and close friends.  When you get down to it and really think hard, everybody may have lots of acquaintances, work colleagues and neighbours, but real true friends who have seen you through thick and thin, are usually not that numerous and I seem blessed with more than I deserve.  They were with me on Saturday and we settled down to lunch in a private room at a local hotel.  Not the Ritz, not Gordon Ramsay or anything like that, just a friendly, old fashioned hotel where we had a good lunch, good wine and lots of chat, talk and laughter.

I received some lovely gifts this week, flowers, chocolates, perfume, DVD's, books, book tokens, Amazon tokens, Covent Garden Vouchers and other assorted goodies, but without wishing to sound like a sentimental softie (well I am going to so what...) the best present I had was from my two daughters, both of whom gave a speech and toast at the lunch, that reduced me to mush and tears.  Being a parent is a tough enough task and most of the time we stumble along wondering if we are doing ok, so to have my wonderful girls making it clear that they love and appreciate me as a mother and saying this in public, was incredibly touching and reassuring.

So, all in all, a simply wonderful week and enhanced enormously by the endless good wishes I have had emailed to me and posted on my blog from all you other lovely people.  Thank you so much all and please continue visiting.

While writing this I am listening to one of my birthday presents, Verdi - Don Carlos and have just reached the wonderful baritone/tenor duet in Act I between Don Carlos and Rodrigo.  Never fails.

PS - Hope you like the picture of this birthday take which Google threw up - love it...

60 Glorious Years

It is my birthday today and I have now reached pensionable age which I find very difficult to believe as inside I feel about 20.  Sadly, the outside does not look 20....I have had a good day at work with flowers and cards and when I came home found some CDs waiting for me.  Here are some of my birthday flowers:

and here are some more:

I am sitting looking at them as I am writing this and they are filling the room with their fragrance.

I was also very lucky with two complete opera sets from my very good friend, Rosemary, my companion at Follies up in London a week or two ago.  She knows what I like!

First up, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.  I adore this opera and now finally have a complete recording in my possession.  For some reason, this was an unfilled gap in my collection but no more.  Main reason for its purchase is, of course, the utterly sexy and gorgeous Dmitri (sadly I know I am utterly sexy and gorgeous) Hvorostovosky as Onegin and I am looking forward to listening to this. 

I have to say I have a slight bias against dear Dmitri as he won Cardiff Singer of the World some 20 years ago and beat Bryn to the title (the mighty Bryn won the Lieder prize but in my opinion he should have won the whole thing) but I have forgiven him.

And on my right, one of my favourite Verdi operas, Don Carlos.  I know that the Royal Opera House have a new production coming up this summer (and indeed the latest edition of About the House the magazine for Friends of Covent Garden has just arrived and I will be looking at in in a mo) and this is definitely on my must see list.  It is Verdi's grandest of grand operas and many years ago I saw an incredible performance at Covent Garden with Gobbi and Christoff, conducted by Carlo Maria Guilini which still lives in my mind. This brooding Don Carlos, is of course, the Mighty Placido (be still my beating heart) and yes I know the picture is some 30 uears old but gosh he is lovely and even now is as sexy as hell, and oh the VOICE..

You will remember me raving about Die Walkure last year with Placide AND Bryn.  As I sat there listening, I remember thinking that this was just one of those nights that are never forgotten and things don't get much better than this...

All in all, not a bad birthday!! and on Saturday I have a birthday lunch organised by my darling daughters so it is going to be a good week.

As Time Goes By

I have come to the conclusion that I like nice, kind, gentle TV programmes.  I loved the Vicar of Dibley because of its warmth and humanity and love and kindness, and I love As Time Goes By for the same reasons.  The enduring popularity of both these programmes should be sending messages to the TV producers that perhaps viewers don't want endless screens full of sex, violence and swearing.  A programme aired before the last two ever episodes of Dibley, which I blogged about, had its creator, Richard Curtis, saying he was delighted that such a 'sweet' programme had proved so popular.

As Time Goes By has the incomparable Dame Judi Dench and the lugubriously wonderful Geoffrey Palmer giving us all a masterclass in TV acting.  They play off each other beautifully and make it look so natural that after a while you forget who they are, we are watching Jean and Lionel not Judi and Geoffrey.

The story starts with a simple premise:  Jean and Lionel met and fell in love just before Lionel was posted off to the Korean War.  They promised to write but Lionel's letter went astray and they lost touch.  Both married others and 30 years passed until one day fate took a hand.  Jean's secretarial agency provided a temp for Lionel, who was writing a book on his life in Kenya, the temp was not very good, Jean's daughter Judy went along to apologise, was asked out to dinner by Lionel, who came to collect her and Jean realised who he was.

There then followed nine wonderful series as we watched Lionel and Jean find each other again, fall in love, live together, get married and live happily ever after.   We get to know Jean's daughter Judy, twice divorced and unlucky in love, her work mate and, ultimately, an unofficial second daughter Sandy (we never do get to hear anything about Sandy's family - she appears to be an orphan..) who all live in what appears to be a very nice posh house in an upmarket part of London.  We meet Alistair, super cool publisher of Lionel's book, a commitment phobe who Judy finally marries after many ups and downs.  Alistair always greets Lionel with the cry 'Hi Li' and 'you're my main man' and generally irritates him dreadfully (apart from one episode in which Alistair talks about his father, he too seems totally devoid of any family at all.  Must be catching).  He also develops a huge crush on Jean prior to turning to Judy and bombards her with flowers, balloons and presents and finally a gorilla gram.  Under all that dudeness we know that Alistair is a kind, good person really and we all love him.

Lionel has a barking mad father, Rocky, who gets married in his 80s to Madge, played by the late great Joan Sims, and embark on pony trekking in the Andes, white water rafting, visiting Ethiopia and generally behaving in a simply outrageous way that is a sore trial to the conventional Lionel.  Rocky has a house in the country run by another eccentric character, Mrs Bale, the housekeeper (who I know Nan loves over on her blog) who rules them with a rod of iron and charges around the country on a motor bike, goggles and all.  She is addicted to the shipping forecast and is always ready to tell anyone who ask what the weather is like in the Irish Channel.

Whenever I am feeling a bit fed up or depressed, I whip out the first series DVD that comes to hand and will watch two or three episodes.  I know them all backwards now and they never fail to make me feel better.

One of my favourite episodes ends with Lionel, who has just visited  the Imperial War Museum, coming home with a copy of the missing letter he had sent to Jean, which had turned up in the current exhibition.  Jean reads it and with tears in her eyes says 'Oh, you did love me then' to which Lionel replies 'I still do'.  Cue music "You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh"

Cue Elaine reaching for the box of tissues.

Pure magic and oh SO British in the nicest possible way.

Penny Vincenzi

At the start of this year I posted about Maeve Binchy under the heading Warm and Fuzzy and said how much I enjoyed her books and loved reading them when I did not necessarily want a book which would test my somewhat lacking analytical skills and for which I need a pen and a notebook. I just wanted a book to simply read and enjoy. I think Maeve is a wonderfully easy fluid writer and, because of this apparent lack of difficulty in being read and understood, gets dismissed by reviewers.  Another writer who falls into this category of a Good Read and, for that very reason, will never find her books in the Literary Review, is Penny Vincenzi.  I first came across her as a columnist in Good Housekeeping and always used to read what she had to say each month as I found her witty and amusing.  She has four grown up daughters and an incredibly supportive and understanding husband and, as you can  see from this picture, is very very pretty (yes I know I should hate her but I don't).  Just to make her almost impossibly perfect, she writes extremely unputdownable books full of terrific characters, wonderful situations, with romance and misery dolloped out in equal portions.  I have read all her output and always look for each one as it is published with great eagerness.

As I have had and, indeed am still having, a pretty awful time at work at the moment, I found PV was just what I needed this weekend.  I picked up two fat paperbacks of hers in a charity shop last week, one I had read ages ago and the other I had not read at all so I have spent the entire weekend curled up in bed/on sofa/in bath just reading them till my eyes have fallen out of my head (well, not quite just feels like it). Forbidden Places tells the story of three totally different women, Grace, Clarissa and Florence and their lives, loves and marriages during the Second World War.  It is written at a terrific pace and opens with these three friends, now old ladies, meeting up, as they do each year, on midsummer day.  Clarissa and Florence are aware that Grace has always hidden a secret from them and are determined to prise it out of her but she refuses saying she has promised never to tell and she never will.  The book then slips back and you have to read right through to more or less the last page to find out what the secret was.  I had made several guesses along the way, all of them wrong.  Loved it.

Second one, Another Woman tells the story of sweet, lovely, charming delightful Cressida spoiled rotten by her parents who think she is quite quite perfect and who is getting married in the country on a beautiful summer's day.  The household wakes up and she has vanished.  What has happened to her and where has she gone?  As the day unfolds we meet all the different characters in the drama and slowly find out that Cressida was not as sweet as she had seemed and underneath her smiling face lurks a somewhat nasty piece of work....

I first discovered Penny Vicenzi about ten years ago when she wrote a marvellous trilogy all about the Lytton Family set in the world of publishing which I simply adored.  These books are fat, comforting 500+ page books and totally absorbing and addictive.  I think she is an excellent writer but as with Maeve Binchy, Rosamund Pilcher and others writers of eminently popular 'blockbusters' noses are turned up by reviewers.

More fool they - they are missing a treat. 

I knew I was right...I think

Saw  that BBC4 was showing the Ring Cycle starting tonight with Das Rheingold.  Love the way the BBC is so keen to promote classical music and opera on these digital channels, which they say is what they are for, that no mention is made of this broadcast in the Radio Times, no articles, no nothing.  I spotted it by sheer accident.  Was then a tad irritated to find that the sound on the digital channels had disappeared and I could not get it back.  OK on the other channels though so I looked at my hi-tech digibox that cost me all of £35 and thought it needed a bit of fine tuning. After playing with the plugs etc and checking the sockets were all plugged in and all was ok and finding that I was getting nowhere fast, I decided drastic action had to be taken.  I picked up the digibox and gave it an almighty thump while swearing profusely at what a useless bit of junk it was.  It worked.  Back came the sound and I was able to watch the opera.  Not sure that this is probably a wise thing to do very often (bash the box I mean) so may have to get another box just to be on the safe side. It is Die Walkure next week, my favourite out of the four operas.

The post is called I knew I was Right (not buying tickets for the current run) as watching this production again has once more confirmed my low opinion of its fussiness and irritating and unnecessary bits of business and the utter pointlessness of some of the production settings.  Why have Wotan pick up a chess set, walk across the stage with it, singing all the while, sit down on the floor and start a game of chess with his wife Fricka?  I am sure there is some deep symbolic meaning here I am missing (or perhaps not).  I listened to the producer talking about his 'vision' prior to the broadcast and can honestly say I didn't understand half of what he was talking about.

However, the reason I added 'I Think' to the post's title was the fact that I though I have chosen not to purchase tickets for the cycle this autumn,  the one shining factor that nearly persuaded me to part with my cash was, of course, Bryn Terfel.  Magnificent voice, rolling out with ease and authority, every note sung with clarity and emphasis, quite quite wonderful and actually listening to his performance in the opera house as opposed to watching on TV, is a magical experience.  Never mind, I have seen him sing Wotan several times now and, having taped this performance tonight, will be able to listen to him again whenever I want to.

And, no, the picture is NOT the mighty Bryn...

Wharton Watch

I am sure there are plenty of you out there who are reading the Hermione Lee biog of Edith Wharton and, if so, would love to know how you are getting on. I am a mere 150 pages into this mammoth work and I have to admit, I am finding it hard going and am having difficulty coping with the sheer mammoth density of the prose. 

From the book jacket I see that Hermione Lee is the first woman Goldsmiths Professor of English at Oxford University, a Fellow of New College Oxford, the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and we must not forget that last year she was the Chair for the Man Booker Prize.  Therefore it ill behoves me, a mere blogladyte, to offer up any criticism of this formidably intellectual woman.  I have not read any of her previous works and I know several people who loved her biography of Virginia Woolf (including my younger daughter), so it is down to me to get a grip.

I have to admit I was slightly deterred by the first chapter 'Making up' where we read about the young Edith's  'making up (stories) session' where we are told of her 'rapture of finding herself again in her rich world of dreams'.   In the next three paragraphs there are the phrases 'mastubatory and orgasmic', and 'creepily erotic' and 'emission and discharge'.  However,  I have put to one side the creeping sense of boredom that crept over me at this stage, and have soldiered on. Edith is now 'out' and is soon to make the disastrous decision to marry Teddy Wharton and abandon any writing while she becomes the young American matron expected at that time.

So, not all plain sailing and not quite sure how this is going to turn out but I will persist.  Edith Wharton is a hugely brilliant and fascinating woman and if I can just get into this biography, I am sure I am going to enjoy it.

I will report back.

My earlier post regarding my purchase of this book was called Bang goes February.  I think I am going to have to revise the title and call it Bang goes March as well, and possibly, April....

Housework and dangers thereof - Part Trois

Will this saga ever end I ask myself?  You will remember the housework disaster last SATURDAY and the fact that my upstairs neighbour had a flood all over my walls and kitchen floor and you remember that this second disaster also happened on SATURDAY?  The reason I stress this is because today is WEDNESDAY and when I came home tonight after another stressful day at work, I walked into the kitchen and was faced with a Purple Puddle seeping out from under my freezer.

On investigation I discovered that somehow (presumably while my once stark naked neighbour was washing up my floor) he had caught the plug and pulled it a quarter of an inch out of its socket.  So, therefore over the last four days, the freezer has defrosted. (The Purple Puddle was several pounds of blackberries). I opened it up and emptied everything into the bin and took it outside to the wheelies and dumped it.  I then returned, got down on my hands and knees with old towels and bleach and washed up the kitchen floor.  Again.  This is the floor that has now been washed three times in five days.

An icy cool detachment has descended upon me.  I am making a cup of tea and going to bed.  I don't care any more.