Random Jottings

Thursday Thoughts

Am in a very rambly lazy sort of mood this morning.  Must be something to do with the weather.  It is hot and sticky with a cloudy sky and that goshthereisastormcomingup feeling in the air and when the rain comes, and it will, am sure it will be such a relief. 

My feet also ache.  I have a twenty minute walk to my office from Liverpool Street station in the morning and it is SO tedious.  I have varied the route as much as possible, but no matter what I do, the length of time it takes me to traverse the pavements is just the same so now I nip through the Barbican. Well, perhaps nip is hardly the right word, trudge is more like it.  I have comfortable shoes but have decided that I am going to have to invest in some decent walking shoes or trainers as I am not getting enough support for my poor arches which are gently throbbing as I write.  I obviously need one of these foot massagers....

OK well now you know what this post is going to be like you can make up your minds NOW if you wish to read on.  If not, bye, nice to see you and go and have a cup of coffee or whatever...

Those masochists among you who are still with me, thank you and I will now continue with my ramblings.

The Booker List is out and I have been looking at the authors and titles and can honestly say, hand on heart, that I know nothing about anything of them and not sure I want to either. And yes, I know and please don't leave comments castigating me for my indifference to this annual jamboree, others have already done it, long and often.  It is not as if I have not tried.  Believe me I have.  Last year I actually read two and was so pleased with myself that I thought of having a t-shirt made emblazoned with the immortal words I Have Read Two of the Booker List 2007, but decided against it as I didn't want people stopping me in the street and asking me what I thought of them.  I would have had to have said one was inexpressibly tedious and the other very nice, but surely a Booker book should be more than that?

Somewhere on Random, I shall have to look it out, is a post in which I boast about my having read quite a few of the winners and those nominated throughout the years.  'Quite a few' might be an exaggeration mark you, cannot remember.  (Just found the post and here it is).

I am wondering whether to have my own Booker style list of books I have read this year which have been sadly overlooked, books which will never make these sort of lists so beloved of the literary cognoscenti, I need to think of a name for it.  Suggestions please? 

Lovely lunch with a friend yesterday who pointed out that the Times newspaper is currently giving away a Penguin book with each purchase.  They are the reprints with the iconic covers recently launched to celebrate their birthday (60?) and worth purchasing a copy of the paper just for these alone.  Checked this morning when I got to the station but not interested in the one today but will keep an eye out as long as this promotion lasts.  I gave up on the Times some years ago when it appeared that the editor had nailed his flag to the Blair Project and every utterance given by our then Beloved Leader was trumpeted from the roof tops, more than I could take so I abandoned my daily read.

I have been a devotee of the Daily Mail for years much to the dismay of many of my friends who view it as a right wing fascist rag.  I have pointed out to them that I think the Guardian, which some of them read, is a boring, predictable, lunatic left wing propaganda sheet but I don't begrudge them reading it.  The assumption is that I believe everything I read in the papers.  Well, I don't.  I firmly defend my right to not believe a word the Daily Mail says as well as any other newspaper.  Anyway the reason I am mentioning this is that their current promotion consists of a huge free DVD collection of English Classics.  So far, I have Pride and Prejudice (yes the Colin Firth one), Tom Jones, Bleak House, Far from the Madding Crowd, Rebecca, Wives and Daughters, Vanity Fair, Emma, North and South, Tess of the d'Urbevilles, and coming up soon Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park (this is the one with Billie Piper which I would not pay good money for but will take free).  They have extended the give away for another week and added new ones on as it has been such a galloping success.  I wonder why?  Can it be that people just enjoy watching some quality now and then?

Think this is enough wittering for now.  I may return later but in the meantime, the kettle and the tea bag are uttering their siren song so I am off.

The Book of Love - Redux

Regular readers of Random (gosh there's an unintended piece of alliteration) know that when I take to a book I leave no turn unstoned in letting everyone know about it, giving copies away (author's generosity, not mine I hasten to add) and banging on about how wonderful it is, until people give in and read it just to shut me up. I also go into bookshops and pull the book to the front of the shelves.  I have even urged total strangers to buy the chosen one as well which has resulted in funny looks and customers sidling away from me....

So many of you will remember that last year I read Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower and went on and on and on because I loved it so much.  It ended up being my Book of the Year.  It turned out to be Susan Hill's Book of the Year as well and this was trumpeted out loud on Snowbooks website (my nomination was never mentioned 'sob') but no matter. I knew I had chosen well.

So when The Book of Love was published earlier this year, I was worried I might not like it as well.  Well, of course I did and raved about it here and, in true Random Raving fashion, I am bringing it to your attention again just in case you have missed my post.

Do read - I know you will love it.

Ekaterinburg - Helen Rappaport

The main reason I watched the dire Channel 4 documentary on the Romanovs last week was because I am fascinated by them, have been for years, and also was embarking on a read of this new book by Helen Rappaport.  As you will know, if you have read my post, I thought the programme was awful, tacky and trite and if you want to know more about this tragic family and their final days, then please read this marvellous book and consign Channel 4 to the dustbin.

I have always found history fascinating, it was one of my favourite subjects at school, even though I went to a convent and the nun who was teaching us about Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries was a trifle biased and regarded Anne Boleyn as the devil incarnate.  No matter, it still intrigued me.  Whether it was the Tudors, Stuarts, the Georgians, whatever, I was always wanting to find out more about the personalities involved in the vast tapestry of history that I was trying to get hold of.  History is all about people - the Repeal of the Corn Laws must be one of the most boring things I ever sat through in class, still cannot remember much about it, but what did Robert Peel really think? Did he go home at night and kick the cat?  We know what Queen Victoria thinks about everything because heaven knows she wrote enough diaries and letters, for which thank heaven fasting, and it is not too hard to find out Peel's thoughts either from biographies and diaries. But, I still want to know - did he kick the cat?

My apologies for this witter but the fascinating thing about Nicholas and Alexandra and the Grand Duchesses, and Alexi and Rasputin and all the political manoeuvrings and background, is that they seem to be so essentially ordinary.  Just people with their tempers, and irritations and sorrows like everyone else.  This is what focuses my interest in history.  Normal people caught up in a maelstrom of events. Shortly after his abdication when the family are moved away from the capital, Nicholas goes out and chops logs, he looks after the garden, he is happier and healthier than he has been in ages.  Giving up the burden of being the Tsar came as a relief to him. 

The family lived a simple life within the grandeur of their homes, sleeping on camp beds, cold baths in the morning, no luxury.  However, this self contained, restricted life was both their strength and their weakness.  Alexandra focused in on Alexi and having to watch him suffer unable to help, Nicholas coping with his wife's mental and physical health which was poor, the Grand Duchesses being all in all to each other and providing mutual support to themselves and their parents.  This helped when they were imprisoned as they were such a tight unit, but also made them innocents, not knowing anything at all about real life or understanding of the events surrounding them.

It is hard to imagine how stultifying and boring the restrictive life the Romanovs led in the last few months must have been.  They all lived in five rooms, the windows were painted in so that they could not see out, their walks in the gardens were restricted, the sense of claustrophobia permeates every page and gave me, who hates being shut in, the shivers.  Nicholas and Alexandra seem almost to have accepted their fate, the underlying Russian melancholy and resignation coming to the fore, but what must it have been like for the children and, particularly, the daughters who had all reached and passed puberty and were enclosed in this stifling existence?  The frustration both mental and physical must have been dreadful. It is these family details and fleshing out of their personalities which make this book such a heartbreaking read. 

I will not dwell on details of the execution of the Romanovs, as we all know how shocking it was, but I do urge you to read this wonderful book which gives a real sense of how it must have been in those final months in the House of Special Purpose.  I became totally caught up in their daily lives and almost did not want to read the chapter in which their death was described, almost as if by not reading it, it would not happen.

On the morning of their last day, women were brought in to wash the floors, as they had done on a regular basis.  This was to reassure the family that all was as normal and the daily routine continued.  One of these ladies was Evdokiya Semenova, who was thrilled to have a chance to see the Imperial family to whom she was devoted.  The experience greatly moved her and she left 'with a love of the family so profound she said, that it would not leave her until the day she died.  They were not the divine beings she had always supposed them to be: "they were not gods, they were actually ordinary people like us, simple mortals".

Helen Rappaport has written a warm, loving book, if a historical biography can be so described, about this tragic family and I cannot recommend it too highly.  It moved me to tears.

Picture of the Day

Prague Cathedral

BOOK DRAW -The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Every now and then one comes across a book so beguiling, so delightful and so unexpected that it takes you over and you just want to tell everyone about it and they must read it and it is wonderful and when it happens it is a great feeling, one of such excitement and joy.  I felt this way with the wonderfully named The Guernsey and Literary Potato Peel Society which I read back in May and raved about.  It is being published this week and I urge you all to rush out and get a copy as it is the kind of book that will be put on bookshelves next to Diary of a Provincial Lady, all the Mapp and Lucia books (which I have just discovered o bliss o rapture), it is destined to be a classic IMHO. 

I am linking to my earlier post as a reminder to you all of my earlier ravings and also for another reason

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/05/the-guernsey-li.html

Stephenie at Bloomsbury has kindly sent me three brand new hardback copies as give aways.  I am thrilled to bits with this so please leave your names in the usual place and the draw will take place in about ten days time giving everyone a chance to log on.

As I said before, and I will say again, I love this book.

Mapp and Lucia

I am an opsimath.  An opsimath, according to the Oxford Dictionary is 'a person who begins to learn or study later in life'.

Well, as far as the wonderful Mapp and Lucia books by EF Benson are concerned, I definitely fall into this category and yet I feel rather glad that I have only just discovered them.  Heard about them, saw them on the shelves years ago when I worked in the library system and wondered what they were about, knew there was a TV series but never watched it.  Why?  Answer comes there none.  I can only assume they were lurking in a corner knowing that one day I would find them and appreciate them and now this day has finally arrived.

I was in Waterstones in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago and decided to purchase the omnibus edition of the first three novels, there is a second omnibus but I decided just to buy the one in case I found I did not like them.

Yes ok gales of merriment all round.

I have been punished for this slip as both Waterstones in Colchester (we actually have two), where I made a special trip this morning, did not have them in stock and when I mentioned Mapp and Lucia to the under age, spotty youth on the counter, I received the usual blank look and 'er well I will just go and look on the computer'.  Told him not to bother, I have had enough of computers this week.  So Amazon it is and I will have to twiddle my thumbs and learn to be patient until they arrive.

I am sure there is no need for me to give a detailed review of these books because if you know and love them already, and many of you will, it is all familiar to you.  If you do not know of them, then please take note of this aging opsimath and go out and buy them and prepare for the delight in store.  The portrait of Lucia, snobbish, pretentious, and Queen of Riseholme is irresistible. Her playing of the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata (she cannot manage the others) her enraptured sigh at the end, her use of Italian phrases, her husband is Pepino, her friend George is Georgino, everything is molto bene and friends are caro mio, are simply wonderful.  I once had a friend who used to do this and answered his phone with Pronto!  Perhaps he was a fan and I did not know it...

Miss Mapp, whom we meet in the second book, is even more magnificent than Lucia, if that is possible. She lives in the village of Tilling and she, in her turn, is Queen of all she surveys.  I am looking forward to their meeting up (when I can get my hands on the next omnibus) as I am sure sparks are going to fly.

The third - Lucia goes to London - is quite quite superb.  Lucia hits town and nothing, but nothing stands in her way as she acquires a place in society.  She is quite ruthless in 'getting on' and in the end a society of Luciaphils is founded, whose members are enchanted by her hypocrisy, duplicity and push and shove and all admire her enormously. 

After reading these three, the main thought that crossed my mind was how exhausting it all was.  This constant maneuvering to be first in everything, to have a choice bit of news to pass on before anybody else, the seizing on of every slight deviation and the hours spend pondering on what it all means and to second guess other villagers.  Seems to me that the entire population of RIsehome and Tilling are either hiding behind twitching curtains watching their neighbours, rushing around gossiping and trying to prise secrets out of each other, or trying out outdo everybody else.  As I said, quite exhausting.

I am simply delighted to have discovered these books and spent all of last week counting the hours at work till I could get home and read some more (no point in trying to read on the train, I just fall asleep) and I have loved every single word. My edition has this quote on the front:

Noel Coward said he was ''like a fish on a hook'' when it came to the pair, a sentiment echoed by such luminaries as Cyril Ritchard, Gertrude Lawrence, W. H. Auden and the critic Gilbert Seldes. In the 1950's, several theater and literary lights were listed by a New York bookshop as ''willing to pay anything'' for Lucia books, then out of print.

This comment appears in an article in the New York Times which I stumbled upon and here is a link;

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFDA1F39F93BA25751C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

and I have also found another post over on one of my favourite blogs Cornflower and here is the link. Just take a look at the wonderful pictures used in this post - they are just right for the subject matter:

http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/2007/01/hitum_titum_and.html

I now feel I am in great danger of becoming totally besotted with these books and turning into a crashing bore on the subject of E F Benson, but what joy it has been already to find I know so many people who have loved these books for years and with whom I can exchange comments and laughter.

I may have come late to the party but I am glad I have finally arrived.

Au reservoir....

The Computer Saga

Hardly Galsworthy, but  this saga has been rumbling on for weeks and weeks now and I fully intend to bore you and bring you up to date with the latest. 

I am composing this post on my lovely new Dell laptop, very swish (mine has the green lid - did contemplate pink but thought perhaps that was a bit too girly), very fast and loads more memory.  I have had this laptop now for some two months and only now have I managed to get on line and then not the way I should.  So bear with me gentle reader and I will tell you all.

Having tried various modems to get on line and finding myself chatting to a very helpful young man in Boston (Mass not Lincs) which he assured me would not cost me much as I was on a UK line (HA!), he told me I had been sold the wrong modem.  Back to the shop breathing fire and brimstone and had it replaced.  Loaded it up successfully, drivers done success pat on back hooray hooray.

Well, I rejoiced too soon because up came the dreaded message 'the modem is being blocked'

Back onto AOL help line (never has anything been more inaptly named), spoke to a very polite young man who was obviously based in India, (was very evasive when I tried to find out where he was talking from and how was the weather in Delhi), as I said most helpful and we tried everything and nothing worked.  He then transferred me to another colleague who told me he would send me a router 'and that will solve the problem'.

It will be with me in five working days - two weeks later called them up.  Where was it? Turned out that they had sent it, for some reason which totally escapes me, to my old work address. Why? I shrieked I have never had anything sent there before.  Oh, they said could I go and collect it then?  You can imagine my response. After more shrieking and screaming they promised me they would send me out another one which they did and I came home and it was sitting outside my front door.  So much for secure delivery.  When I opened it up there was a CD, router etc and a little note saying 'You will need your log in ID and password which has been sent to you in a separate letter before you can download this software'. 

I went to bed.

Rang up next day, shrieked again (throat quite sore by now) and he gave me the relevant information. While I was on the phone I made him give me my MAC code as I am thinking of changing my ISP if this does not work.

Back home that evening set it all up and guess what? Yes you are right folks, 'the modem is being blocked'  Back to the help line (heaven knows what my telephone bill is going to be like this quarter), more screaming and shrieking by me who has just about had enough.

And here is the bottom line - AOL and Vista, which is on all new computers, are INCOMPATIBLE.  I was told that they are receiving over 200 calls a day from users who have the same problem as me. 200 - I ask you. 'But don't worry madam I am going to sort this out for you now' - I was then promptly cut off and left with a high pitched whirring sound.  By this time I had lost the will to live and went to bed.

In case you are wondering how I am on line, I discovered more by accident than design that I could get on line if I went through Internet Explorer and by passed my AOL log in completely.  I then did a Google search for AOL, marked it up as a favourite and now I am here.  The problem is still not solved and I have now had enough and am going to get another service provider.  Some kind person left a comment on my blog earlier and suggested I use Eclipse a UK based company and I have checked out their website and had a chat with them and they seem very helpful.  So enough is enough and will sort this out in the next month.

And let me make it clear, nobody but nobody at AOL told me that I could not get on line with a USB modem and that I needed a router. Nobody and I have been on the phone to them dozens of times.

I feel a Grumpy Old Woman of Colchester letter coming on to go with this rant.

It is all too much to bear.

The Messenger of Athens - Anne Zouroudi

The stream of terrific books from Bloomsbury doesn't seem in any danger of drying up and this one floated my way and had me incommunicado for most of last weekend while I became totally immersed in this, the first I gather, of The Mysteries of the Greek Detective.

"When the battered body of a young woman is discovered on a remote Greek island, the local police are quick to dismiss her death as an accident.  Then a stranger arrives, uninvited from Athens, announcing his intention to investigate further..."

The stranger "a fat man" arrives early one morning on the island of Thiminos and visits the police station only to find that the body has already been buried and the case dismissed by the obviously corrupt and venal Chief of Police who challenges his authority to investigate the death of Irini Asimakopoulos. Asked who he is the Fat Man replies "My name is Hermes Diaktoros.  I expect you're surprised at my name: Hermes Messenger.  My father's idea of humour.  He was a classical scholar"

Ignoring all opposition the Fat Man books in at the local hotel and starts asking questions with varying reactions of hostility and fear.  The general consensus is that Irina was an unfaithful wife who had committed suicide and his interference is resented.  One by one he talks to those who knew her: her husband Andreas, her uncle Nickos, the man she became infatuated with and who rejected her, Theo and a picture begins to emerge of a bored, depressed woman desperate to escape from the bleak island:

"from the sea the island showed exactly what it was; rock, one huge rock, so undercut by the salt water of the southern Aegean it seemed to float free.....the cliff faces were sheer, where the slopes were gentler, they were all thin dirt and stone. There was little else: a few black pines rooted into the mountainsides...thorny run down shrubs between the boulders"

As layers of deception, jealousy and spite are uncovered, the Fat Man punishes the transgressors in his own way, dispensing an eye for an eye brand of justice.  The police chief, who pressurises local wives to sleep with him in order to save their families and/or husbands from prison for some slight misdemeanour, ends up on a ferry with one of the cuckolded husbands who exacts a swift revenge on him;  a vicious attack on Irina by a member of the community finds a scorpion reposing in her handbag; the cowardly lover who deserted her is tarred and feathered and dragged through the town for all to see.  On the other hand, those who were kind and those islanders who have suffered are rewarded.  One abandoned wife who, in order to hide her shame, had to pretend to be a widow learns that her husband is finally dead and she is now free to do as she chooses.    Nikos, Irina's uncle who loved her and looked out for her, and who is dying painfully on his own, is taken by the Fat Man to his long estranged sister so he is not alone when the end comes.  Once he is satisfied that the death of Irina has been avenged the Fat Man leaves:

"Approaching the headland at the bay's end, the yacht began a turn to starboard.  The clouds were lifting in the blustery wind and between their cracks a few rays of weak sunshine fell in spotlights on the Aphrodite's decks.  The fat man moved up to the prow and stood, legs braced, hands at his back, like a commander of the fleet judging the sea.  As Lukas watched, the clouds moved back together, the spotlights were extinguished, Aprhorodite slipped round the headland and she, and the fat man, were lost from view"

So who is the Fat Man?  Well, just remember his name ' Hermes Messenger' and the fact that a he was sent by 'a higher authority in Athens' and his method of punishing transgressors and rewarding virtue.

Almost as if the Gods on Olympus had decreed it so.....

Brilliant and I am already looking forward to the next one. 

100 things about me - Gone

I read an article the other day in a daily newspaper about a woman who was horrified to find that details she had posted on Facebook had turned up on a sex site and she had lots of very weird people contacting her.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the 100 Things About Me (who wouldn't enjoy talking about themselves...) I had slight misgivings while putting them together and then this morning I received an email from a fellow blogger who pointed out to me the dangers of all this information on the blog, and said that it would be very easy to track me down and identify me. She cited a friend who had her identity pinched in this way which was used to get a new passport and benefits book.

While not wishing to sound paranoid about all this,  I have therefore decided to take the posts off the site.  I have printed them out and also all your lovely comments and responses which I very much appreciated but the posts themselves have now been deleted.

Shame isn't it that these sorts of precautions have to be taken.  I leave it up to anybody else who has done this exercise to have a think and my thanks, once again, for the warning.

Riddle of the Romanovs

This was the title of a programme on Channel 5 this evening which I have just finished watching.  I am currently reading Helen Rappaport's heartbreaking story about the final days of this family and their dreadful end.  Their deaths have been surrounded by conjecture and theories for 90 years, there must be very few people around who  have not heard of Anna Anderson, claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia.  She insisted she was the surviving daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, an astonishing fiction which she steadfastly maintained to her dying day.  She persuaded people who actually knew the Russian royal family that she was who she claimed to be, she knew secrets, family secrets that nobody else could have known which gave credence to her claim.  I well remember reading all about her as a teenager and finding it all so romantic and interesting and have to confess I was bitterly disappointed to find that her DNA revealed after her death that she was the daughter of a factory worker without a drop of royal blood in her veins.

I have always found the Romanovs fascinating since I first read Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, originally published in the 1960s and have read various biographies about them, read some of the wilder theories about their death and/or escape and also a wonderful selection of letters between Nicholas and his wife which reveal that they loved each other till they died.  I am one third of the way through Helen Rappaport's book and it is clear that, despite all the trappings of royalty and the etiquette and court life surrounding them, they were essentially a family unit happy with ordinary every day family life.

This programme dealt with the recent findings of remains some little way away from the graves uncovered in the 1990's containing the bones of the Tsar and Tsarina and three of their children.  But where were the other two?  Did they escape and what happened to them? 

Well, we had a DNA specialist and a forensic scientist looking at the discovered remnants.  This was programme making of the most portentious kind.  The usual blurred, black and white fake action shots of the Romanovs being shot, close ups of Russian peasant faces distorted with hate, endless questions:  Did they shoot them all?  Did some of them escape?  What happened to them? Will the team be able to put and end to the mystery? blah blah blah repeated ad nauseam.  The fact that the DNA was so small that it might not be possible to identify the bodies was presented as a tragedy of huge proportions and meant to keep the viewer in suspense (it didn't).  We actually had a farcical test of using a replica of the gun which killed the Tsar to shoot at a bodice with precious stones sewn onto it, to see if a bullet would ricochet off thus proving certain of the reports of the murderers that some of the children could have survived as they had sewn jewels into their underclothes.  I thought this was totally unnecessary as I have never come across anybody that seriously denied this was an option. 

Endless questions about the possibility of a Romanov heir and then we learn that the Kremlin had given the scientists top level clearance to view the reports of the killers sealed in Lenin's Secret Archive (cue film of descent into a bunker sealed with doors which would withstand a nuclear attack), close ups of the documents and gasps of awe from the scientist.  If I hadn't wanted to find out what was happening I would have switched off as I was becoming increasingly irritated by the presentation and the droning voice of the commentator.  It was padding pure and simple as really the heart of the programme and the result would have taken up five minutes on a news bulletin but this was an hour long, so we had to wait.....

Then at the end the solution was given and yes, it was proved beyond doubt that these bones were the bones of the missing two children, one a girl and one a boy, so that we knew that here were the last remains of Alexis and one of his sisters.  It was deeply sad and made the way the programme was presented even more tawdry and commercial, but at least we now know that these bones will be interred with their parents and siblings and the family will be together again. Film of the children playing together and on board the imperial yacht and laughing and looking so happy was very moving, here were these innocent children totally unaware of the awful fate awaiting them.

A pretty poor programme but the subject matter transcended the trite presentation. Nobody could fail to be moved when contemplating this tragedy and, once more, I wondered how George V who decided not to give sanctuary to his cousin and his family, lived with his conscience the rest of his life.