Random Jottings

Coming up

Coming our way in the autumn season on the Beeb, the Cranford Chronicles, a new adaptation of Mrs Gaskell's marvellous book, the very first Gaskell I read and instantly loved.  The BBC has an excellent record of literary dramatisations so I am looking forward to this one, particularly as it has a superb cast including Sir Michael Gambon and Dame Judi Dench.  It is being filmed on location in Lacock, a village I visited a couple of years ago and which devotees of Pride and Prejudice will recognise instantly.  Who could forget the moment when Mr Darcy, AKA Colin Firth, looked down disdainfully from horseback on his meeting with Mr Wickham?

   

I could watch Dame Judi in anything.  I think she is absolutely superb.  One of my favourite all time TV programmes was As Time Goes By when she was partnered quite wonderfully by the lugubrious Geoffrey Palmer.  I have all of them on DVD and whenever I am feeling a bit down, I watch an episode or two.  I have blogged about this series before so will not burble on all over again.

Another treat in store is a film of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  This is being directed by Anthony Minghella, the Oscar winning director of The English Patient.  Apparently this feature length film is due to be shown on the Beeb at Christmas followed by thirteen hour long episodes in  2008 so look out for books on The Making of The No 1 Detectives Agency and supermarkets stocking up with Redbush Tea and new editions of all the paperback emblazoned with those well known words 'Now a major TV drama'. 

According to Minghella ' The big issue - no pun intended - was to find somebody of traditional build who has that generosity of spirit to match the girth'  .  I have to be  honest and say that I have never heard of Jill Scott who he has cast in the role but as she is a rhythm and blues singer which is not really my thing, it is hardly surprising.  Apparently, she is a lady of 'traditional build' and has 'the soul, the look and enormous charisma'.

The ubiquitous Andrew Davies seems to have a multiplicity of adaptations in the pipeline.  After his stunning P&P and Bleak House, he is now turning his attention in 2009 to a new Middlemarch.  The 1994 BBC dramatisation of George Eliot's greatest novel was the first costume drama to be produced by the BBC for some considerable time as the then Director General of the BBC (think it was Marmaduke Hussey) said that viewers were no longer interested in this sort of programme.  How wrong he was.  Middlemarch was a smash hit and the classics were then well and truly plundered by eager programme makers out for ratings.  Andrew Davies seems to have a monopoly on adaptations and I, for one, am certainly not complaining.  It is no coincidence that the only decent Jane Austen in the recent Austen Season on ITV was the one produced by him, Northanger Abbey.  The others were simply dire. 

He is also in pre-production on EM Forster's A Room with a View (will have to be pretty good to better the wonderful film with Denholm Eliot, Maggie Smith and Daniel Day Lewis), a new Sense and Sensibility (look out Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant, not forgetting of course the gorgeous Alan Rickman), Brideshead Revisited (I gather that ghastly teddy bear is still going to feature prominently though apparently there has been arguments about it) and then to my delight I discover that he is currently filming The Diary of a Nobody, one of my favourite books which I rank alongside Three Men in a Boat as one of the funniest books I have ever read.

So a lot of good stuff coming up which will keep me pinned to my sofa during those cold winter nights when the best thing to do is draw the curtains and curl up with the remote and a cup of hot chocolate.

Bliss.

Photo of the Day

Don't ask me why I took this - I don't know.  I just liked it!  Astor Street, Chicago.  You can just see me reflected in the middle which adds a certain versimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.....

The Melendys

Many years ago when I was around 11 years old and used to haunt the library so often that Miss Collins, the librarian, let me have two books out on each ticket otherwise 'I will never see the back of you', I discovered the stories about the Melendy Family by Elizabeth Enright.  I was recently over on Deluzy checking out her blog and spotted that she was reading them.  She later informed me that she read them regularly and loved them very much.  To find another person who knows and enjoys the same books as oneself is one of the joys of blogdom.

I recently bought the four books in this series as I discovered they were in print.  Pretty naff covers and I feared the worst but looking inside, I was delighted to see that the illustrations are the originals and looking at these brought back waves of nostalgia for the days I curled up in an armchair reading abut this American family who seems so glamorous and vivid to this fifties school girl.

There are five members of the family - Father, who is a widower, and who writes and travels; Mona the eldest daughter, a budding actress dreaming of fame and fortune, Rush the eldest son, a music lover; Randy his sister who loves to dance and paint and Oliver who seems to enjoy insect life and eating.  They live in an apartment in New York with their housekeeper cum family treasure, Cuffy, who has been with the family all their lives.

It is odd how a childhood book can shape our ideas of a place and make you long to go there.  The description of New York gave me such a yearning to see this city (which I did in due course) and the visit to the Met Opera House by Rush also made me want to visit - which I did.  I well remember reading the Ship of Adventure by Enid Blyton around htis time which was set on a ship cruising around the Greek Islands and fired me with a passion to visit them and many years later, as I was sitting on the beach at Paxos I remembered this and sent up a big thank you to Enid.

Anyway, back to the Melendys.  As they are tired of doing nothing on a Saturday but being short of money, they decide to pool their allowances and each take a turn at having a memorable Saturday afternoon of their own, hence the title of the first book, The  Saturdays.

They all choose their own particular outing but the one that stuck in my mind for over forrty years, and this will come as no surprise to you at all, is the trip Rush took to the Met to see Siegfried.

'Siegfried wasn't exactly the way Rush expected him to be. He sang wonderfully but he looked just like a good natured cook making a cake"  Heroic looking as well as sounding Siegfrieds have always been in short supply it seems.

'The second act as even better than the first.  The dragon came clanking out of the grotto, eyes gleaming with electric light bulbs and smoke issues from its nostril, singing all the while in a musical bass voice. Rush who was interested in all mechanical devices looked at Fafner through the field glasses.  Each time it sang the dragon's jaws opened and shut like a crocodile snapping flies and during a quiet moment a business liked voice deep inside its stomach was heard to say "OK Bill hold it".    Yep, I have heard similar too.

In the final act 'Siegfried penetrated the fiery cirlce and awakened Brunnhilde, who as clad in glittering mail and proved to be the general shape and size of a caterpiller tractor.  It was funny how you could forget it when she began to sing"  I know this feeling well.  Rita Hunter at the ENO, she of blessed memory, was exactly this size and shape but oh what a glorious voice.

The Melendys move out to the countryside, sounds to me like Connecticut, but I could be wrong.  My US geography is very hazy.  The next three books The Four Storey Mistake, Then there were Five and Spiderweb for Two document the next few years as they grow up and adopt a new brother, Mark.  These stories were such a large part of my childhood and it has given me enormous pleasure to discover them again.

This is why I am always delighted when I come across a publisher such as Fidra Books and Girls Gone By who publish all these wonderful children's stories that I remember taking off the shelves in my little old fashioned junior library where I seemed to spend most of my time.Long may they flourish.

Tennis Balls and Boiled Eggs

Well, if I was not a nervous wreck by this morning, then I am now.  I am exhausted, my throat is sore, I have lost my voice and I keep repeating over and over again Come on Tim.  Why?  Well, it is THAT time of year again, the time when we Brits don our optimistic smiles, our Union Jacks, silly hats and turn into a nation of nutters for two weeks.  Yes it is Wimbledon fortnight which I adore and have done since I first watched Margaret Court beat Maria Bueno in the ladies final on the Centre Court back in 1960 (I think).  I had slept out all night and was so totally exhausted the next day that by the time the match started, I could barely keep my eyes open.  In the 60s and 70s I went to Wimbledon every year and saw all the great names play:  Laver, Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Newcombe, Roche, Emerson, Stolle, Connors and then later Borg, McEnroe - fantastic.  To be on the Centre Court at the end of a lovely summer's day watching a men's or a mixed doubles being played was, without doubt, one of the most English and lovely of all pleasures you can ever experience.  Now I watch in comfort from my sofa where my shrieking antics are thankfully private.

Tonight Tim Henman and Carlos Moyet played an absolute blinder of a match, simply stunning tennis, terrific rallies and edge of the seat moments.  It still had not finished at 9.15pm and in the end they had to come off as it was getting dark and there was no guarantee that they could finish it.  It was a fabulous way to finish off the first day and I feel as if I have watched a final already.

I was going to write all sorts of things today about books I have read etc but am so shattered by it all, the above will have to suffice. Except, Boiled Eggs.  Nan asked me how did we eat the eggs in my egg cups shown earlier and when she asked this question, it suddenly struck me that every time I have been in the USA, I have never had a boiled egg.  Scrambled, fried sunny side up or over easy, omelette yes but never a boiled egg.

Jan Jones left instructions on how to cook them and said that an egg must be accompanied by slices of toast or bread and butter which are known over here as 'soldiers'.  They are nursery food and I have lost count of the times my children, when small, had this for their tea.  As I have another egg cup to display and as I was having a boiled egg for my breakfast this morning I took a picture and here it is Nan especially for you

This egg was slightly over done so I put a dollop of butter on the top to melt in.  There are two schools of thought about taking off the top off the egg.  Some people like to bash them with their spoon and then peel the shell away.  As the egg is hot, this can be a bit dangerous.  I am of the other school which thinks the best way is just to take a knife and slice it off and then eat the top bit with your spoon (you can just see the empty shell off the top of this egg lurking in the background).  Then if the egg is nice and runny, you dip your soldiers in and they come out nice and eggy and yummy.

This is a 1930s egg cup - another 10p buy and I think it is beautiful.

I am now off to bed.  I am physically and emotionally exhausted after watching Our Tim.  I really wish he would just win his matches in three straight sets and not put us through this, but he never has and it is a bit late in the day for him to start now.

It's all too much to bear....

Saturday Crock

Ok thought you might like an egg cup or two for a change. Another buy, really expensive one this time, at a jumble sale - 50p each.  Gosh I spent £1 - I must have been feeling in a really extravagant mood that day

Good End to the Week

Monday arrived with a banging on the door by the postman and a pile of books and now the same thing has happened today, Saturday.  On Monday Snowbooks sent me a stack of books and now another publisher Accent Press have sent me some of theirs to look at and review.

As you know, I am still slightly overwhelmed (no, totally actually) that nice kind publishers will email me and ask if they can send me some books to review and it feels like Christmas to me to have parcels arriving.  I don't like Christmas very much at Christmas time, but for the rest of the year, well that's different.

I have to be honest and say that I had never heard of Accent Press until I received an email from their founder, Hazel Cushion, with this offer of books so I immediately logged on to their website and had a look.  Hazel started this publishing house in 2003 and here is how she describes herself on the blog attached to the site:

"I'm the mother of triplets, manage my own publishing company, Accent Press and live in a lovely old school, at the top of a valley, in Wales. Previously I've been a jeweller, worked on cruise ships, in the Duty Free industry and run an organic wine business. I've lived in the US, Indonesia, Middle East and France. I guess it was time to settle down! Life is busier than ever running our own company but it's also enormous fun - I finally seem to have grown up and found out what I want to be......"

Not sure how old Hazel is and would not dream of asking, but this all fits in with my previous blog when I was lauding us older women (Hazel's triplets are ten I gather so she is considerably more youthful than me and perhaps does not fall into this category) but she certainly sounds as if she is a fully paid up member of the Grown up Women who are not Afraid to have a Bash at Anything Association.  I am looking forward to reading some of these books and writing about them, but I have books coming out of my ears at the moment, and not sure when I will make inroads on these new arrivals.

This is why I am posting about Accent Press now. I am an inveterate reader of other blogs and have noted that several fellow bloggers are planning Summer Reads of have a book plan for the summer.  I am not so organised and on looking at the heap I have to work through realise that a plan just ain't gonna work, but I did want to have a theme for summer blogging.  It came to me last week, when I realised that I have quite a number of books on my shelves and in my reading heap from small publishing houses such as Long Barn Books, Snowbooks, Fidra Press etc and I decided that a good summer plan would be to write about small publishing houses (actually I prefer to call them Independent publishing houses).  Without wishing to sound like an advert for Tesco ('Every Little Helps' is a slogan that drives me mad when you are standing in a mile long queue at the checkout),  if I blog about a publishing house and this encourages just one person to log on, buy a book and then write about it themselves, well it is worth doing.  We all know that recommendation and word of mouth is a great marketing tool and, regardless of the recent discussion on this blog and others about the status of bloggers, publishers are keen to seek us out so we must be doing something right.

So, thanks to Hazel for sending me these books and please do check out the website.  I have noticed that Accent Books are based in Wales.  Fidra Books is in Scotland.  Long Barn Books is just one of those based in England.  Now, is there anybody out there in Ireland who wants to send me some books? 

Bring them on.

Whopping Great Pile - Minus One

As I am at home this week and in relaxing mode, I am spending my time playing Yahtzee on the computer (fun and totally addictive) lying on the sofa asleep and reading the odd book or two or three.  I am feeling very relaxed and laid back so picked up one of the books from what I shall now refer to as Whopping Great Pile (WGP) which lovely Em at Snowbooks sent me.

The one I decided to read is Plotting for Beginners.  I was sifting through them all, opened this one up and within a couple of pages had started to grin so then settled back on sofa and more or less stayed there for two hours while I read the book straight through.  The only time I moved was to put the kettle on and make a cup of tea.

This book has two authors, Sue Hepworth and Jane Linfoot about whom I know nothing but who I will now keep an eye out for.  This book is simply, great fun.  Sally Howe is seeing her husband Gus off at the airport.  He is going away for a year to live in the Rockies in the wild and do a 'Thoreau'.  Sally sees this as a trial separation and thinks her husband wants to get away from her and so resolves to spend her husband and child free year finishing writing her novel and becoming a famous writer.

She is assailed on all sides by local lotharios who think that because she is on her own she needs comforting - in other words, she must be desperate for sex.  Sally fights them off though she is seriously tempted by Ian, tall, handsome and immaculately dressed though she is slightly put off by the fact he owns his own Vidal Sassoon hair dryer and keeps checking himself in the mirror.  However, when she hears that Gus has been entertaining Emily, a friend of her son, in his cabin in the rockies she is not a happy bunny.  Even when she is reassured that Emily is only interviewing him for her PhD on 'The Male Menopause in post modern literature and contemporary popular culture' she decides Gus is having an affair and decides that what is sauce for the goose.....

What I enjoyed about Plotting for Beginners is that Sally is in her 50s, is going through the menopause, has a great sense of humour and has aspirations and dreams.  When I am sitting writing this blog I, like Sally, sometimes think 'Oh wouldn't it be great if I could write and get a novel published' and feel like firing off articles to all and sundry. Of course, I don't.  I enjoy what I write and when I write it but know full well my limitations.  Sometimes I wish I didn't.  Sally just decides to get on with it.

A few months back I wrote and blogged about Uphill all the Way by Sue Moorcroft, one of Transita's books, in which a 50 something heroine called Judith, had to deal with the death of her lover, the loss of her income and her life in Malta, and buckled down and got it sorted out. On the surface of it Judith and Sally have different lives but they are sisters under the skin.   I have come to the conclusion that us women of a certain age are a pretty good, interesting bunch of women who are not to be underestimated.  We are capable of great things and are now at the stage of our lives when we are not too bothered about what people think about us and know what we can do.  Sally is great fun, determined and feisty (I really loathe using that word, makes me cringe but I cannot think of an alternative at the moment) and willing to take life full on.

Loved reading this, fitted my mood beautifully and I will be absent from blogging for a day or so as this Old Age Pensioner is off to London tomorrow for a day or so of fun.  Speak to you all soon.

Margery Allingham

As readers of this blog probably realise by now, I love detective stories.  I have read the entire output of Agatha Christie and know the identify of each murderer in every one (that piece of useless knowledge has not exactly helped me in my path through life); loved the Ngaio Marsh stories which I read and re-read for the sheer delight of her slightly theatrical prose and her gorgeous detective Roderick Alleyn (see earlier blog on same here) and last year, thanks to a fellow on line reader discovered, very belatedly the Peter Wimsey stories of D L Sayers.  I have read all of those and am now falling back on those 'completed' by Jill Paton Walsh, one of which is lurking in my To Be Read basket as I am keeping in reserve as long as possible.  Probably one week I should think....

Another fellow blogger recommended the Lydford mysteries by Andrew Taylor.  These are set in the 1950's and the atmosphere of that time, the silence on Sundays when all the shops were shut and the streets are empty, the stultifying boredom of living in a narrow minded gossipy town and the covering up of anything scandalous because of 'what would the neighbours say' beautifully described.  I am now coming to the end of these as well.

Donna Leon I have also raved about and the fact that I read all her output in one month, so I am now condemned to waiting each year for her next to come out, and I read the three Simon Serrailer novels by Susan Hill in one weekend and am now biting my nails while waiting for fourth to be published.  I have read all of Ruth Rendell, also those written under the name of Barbara Vine and am becoming increasingly desperate for the Next Discovery.

Well before total meltdown took place, I remembered Margery Allingham who I have never read and who was recommended to me by a visitor on this blog (come out come out whoever you are and be thanked) and turned to my shelves as I remembered picking up two brand new Pengion reprints in a book sale a year ago.  Yep, there they were and I have now read them. 

The first one, Policemen at the Funeral was set in Cambridge, so once again knowing the places and locations mentioned in the story really does help to set the scene, and the murders all happen in an old Victorian house ruled with a rod of iron by a matriarch surrounded by her weak and insignificant children and family.  Perfect setting for crime and pure 1930s. I met Albert Campion, who is of aristocratic birth,and his manservant Lugg, a retired burglar and now the obligatory sidekick that every detective seems to need.  Campion has the entree with Scotland Yard and is great friends with Inspector Stanislaus Oates and solves crime for 'fun'.  The parallels with Lord Peter Wimsey and his man Bunter are inescapable.

The second is Tiger in the Smoke.  As I knew nothing about these stories or the order in which they were written, I found that this one was set in post-war London with Campion now older and married and with a son.  Some twenty odd years have passed since Policeman at the Funeral and the style seems to me to be totally different from the earlier novel.  London is shrouded in thick, heavy dirty fog, a vicious criminal has broken out of prison and is on the run.  He has murdered at least four people in his hunt for a mysterious letter which will give him the location of a treasure hidden in the war.  His name is Havoc - presumably Margery Allingham was fond of Shakespeare ('cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war') when thinking of his name and in many respects, he reminded me of Pinky in Brighton Rock.  The whole book has a dark feeling about it, if it was filmed I feel it would be in black and white, a film noir, and have somebody like Humphrey Bogart in a trench coat wandering around in the fog and making Cheyney like comments out of the corner of his mouth.

I was not totally sure I liked this book very much and yet, by the end, it had gripped me.  Havoc is an evil, charismatic, merciless man but Allingham very cleverly gets us on his side, not quite in my case though it was a close run thing.  She reveals his tragic character in a marvelous scene between him and Canon Avril in a church in a square in London where the hopelessness of his life is made clear:

"Suppose you uncovered the treasure worth a king's ransom" said Avril.    Do you think that you would become somebody else?  Do you think that this weary child who is with you when you are alone would not go with you then?  What could you buy for him to make him happy?".......   At this the boy wept in his weary rage and his tears fell on Avril.  The old man felt the agony of them and was helpless.

The contrast between these two stories, written so far apart, is striking.  I shall now have to go back to the beginning and read them in order and see how they develop.  As there appear to be around 25+ to read, this will keep me going for a while.  I am not totally sure that I have really liked these two very much, but I was unable to put them down once I started so they have obviously got something.  Not sure what, but it will be interesting and intriguing to find out.

I have located a website all about  Margery Allingham which has reminded me that she lived locally, actually on Mersea Island at one stage which is about half an hour's drive for me, and also lived at Tolleshunt D'Arcy.  I am sure I knew this at some stage, but had slipped to the back of my mind so knowing that some of her stories have Essex and Suffolk settings is going to make reading of them even more fascinating.  Ruth Rendell lives in Polstead and in her novel A Dark Adapted Eye, written as Barbara Vine, she makes mention of popping into Colchester, getting off the train at Marks Tey and other places that I know well.  Why this should make the book more interesting, I don't know, but it does!

SO nice to find an author and have the comforting thought that you have all these books ahead of you before you run out and have to go on the eternal quest for somebody else.  Of course, there is always another discovery just around the corner but I think these will keep me going for some time.

Monday Crock

10p purchase at jumble sale about twenty years ago - very 1930's. Love its shape

Good start to the week

What better way to start the week than to be woken up by a bang on the door and there is the postman with a parcel of books?  OK, yes, I agree that being brought tea in bed by George Clooney is much better but we are in the real world here....sadly.

 

Em from Snowbooks has sent me a whopping great pile of books, some 13 in all, and I am thrilled to bits to have all these to look at, read and write about over the coming weeks.  Heaven knows how long it will take me to get through this lot, but that sort of problem I can happily live with. I already have three books purchased from them on my shelves and particularly like the format of these as shown below.  The Forster one was one of those that arrived today - don't they look elegant?

The Crafter's Companion is just pure pleasure to look at filled with glorious pictures of wonderful crafty things to make which make even me want to whip out the sewing box and get going.  It seems to me that my life has been so busy that things such as knitting, embroidery and crochet have taken a back seat and this is really a shame.  I do have a pattern somewhere for a sweater which I have been meaning to do for the last two winters.  It is a really straightforward one, no fancy bits, as I need something to revive my knitting skills and just turning these pages has made me decide to hunt it out.  After all, I pride myself on knitting an Aran cardigan for my husband many years ago.  It took me three months of solid work and was so incredibly complicated that every time he wore it I looked and was totally overcome by my achievement.  If I can do that, knit one purl one should not be beyond my capabilities.  I need something calming in my life at the moment.  I am up in London later on in the week and may just wander into John Lewis and look at their wool department.

Oh Em what have you started?