Random Jottings

Saturday

Had to have another day off from the computer as my eyes were causing me great discomfort again this week after two days in the office. This is forming a pattern every time I go to work, so I got onto Business Services which grand title covers an office which deals with unscrewing light bulbs I gather.  First, I rang and told them of the problem, then I sent an email, then I was given a Log number, then somebody rang me and said I had to complete a Health and Safety Work Station Assessment, told them I had done this the first week I started else I would not have been allowed across the threshold, then A Man came up with an hand held instrument that he waved at the offending lights above my desk and it beeped and he told me that the lights were already 'functioning below capacity and were dim'.  I begged to differ and he went away and up came Two Men who consulted with me, I took off my glasses and said take a look at my eyes which made me look like a marmoset, they went Ah and went away and then half an hour later I had a phone call to say they would be dimming the lights. I had assumed that somebody would come with a ladder and take out something or other but no it was all done by computer and the lights were lowered.

Not sure if it will make any difference.  Dry, itchy and painful again when I left the office, 24 hours later they are OK. Anyway we shall see next week if it happens again.

Went into town this morning to have the old grey roots done etc and did my usual pop into my favourite second hand book sho which just happens to be two doors down from the salon and look what I found!  A lovely edition of this book by EF Benson with a Miss Mapp short story which I have not read contained therein.  Great cover too.

So glad the eyes are holding up so I can start this and the rest of the To Be Read pile which has grown by three deliveries this morning.

 

Treats galore

I always like to have something to look forward to.  Doesn't have to be a huge thing though an exotic cruise or being whisked off to Paris by a gorgeous man would be nice (Oh yeh?? fat chance...), but just something.  So working on this premise I have been lining stuff up for me to savour and enjoy in the months to come.

In a few weeks time I am visiting friends and staying in London and we are going to see Billy Eliot.  I saw this musical a few years ago, persuaded to go when I really had no interest in it at all.  Boy, was I glad that I went.  Simply stunning and one of the best musicals I have seen in years so when another friend wanted somebody to go with, this time I said Yes Please.

Also in February, I am going to see Just a Song at Twilight by Noel Coward at our local theatre in Colcheter, the Mercury.  This theatre has had its ups and downs and over the years I have been living here I have seen some good, bad, indifferent and dazzlingly good performances and at the moment it is going through a really good spell.  It is one of the top local reps in the country and this year a lot of interesting events and plays.  This particular Coward play, which I have never seen, is only on for a week and the main part is taken by Peter Egan, who is always good value so looking forward to that.

Then the piece de resistance for February:  The Flying Dutchman at the Royal Opera House with the wonderful Bryn Terfel.  I have seen him sing this before at the Welsh National Opera but in a production of unremitting awfulness so am hoping this will be better. It is being sung straight through without an interval as Wagner wanted, so have splashed out on a ruinuously expensive seat so I can be comfortable and have good sight lines of the stage.  Helen and son in law James are also attending that night though as they are young and supple and with better eyesight they are sitting in seats aloft of mine, but we will be meeting up prior for a bijou snackette to build up stamina for the evening. 

Then in March I am being taken by my elder daughter to the Donmar to see Madame de Sade with the incomparable Dame Judi Dench.  Kathryn booked these tickets last year well in advance for my birthday present so I feel very blessed in having such wonderful daughters who know what to get their ma.

Then in May, Kathryn and I are taking a long weekend and going to visit Istanbul, one of those cities on my list of places to see and that I am very much looking forward to.  I also feel blessed in having a daughter who likes to go away with her ma, we used to have a beach holiday together every year but have decided that seven days and nights together is perhaps a little too long and irritation starts to set in.  Kathryn is as independent and determined as I and knows what she wants to do or not do, so we have decided that long weekends exploring a city is a really good idea. Four days is the just the right amount of time to be together.  I love my children dearly and I know they love their mum, but they are grown up now and always best to know one's limits.   Last year we went to Barcelona and had a great time, before that Prague and this year off to Turkey.  I do the booking of the flights and source the hotel, Kathryn plans the trip and what we are going to see, she is a brilliant map reader and it is great every day to get up and be told of the plan for the day which I have not had to organise.

Then today I took out a second mortgage and bought two tickets for a Saturday in June, and they are going fast, to see the new production of Oliver at Drury lane with Rowan Atkinson as Fagin.  Had rave reviews and one of my all time favourite musicals which I first saw on the stage back in the 60's with the original sets by Sean Kenny, the like of which we had never seen before at that time. Moving and swirling around the stage and I well remember Oliver running for his life and being chased while the sets of the streets of London swung around him.  Quite breathtaking.

The Mercury also has some pretty good stuff later on in the year and I have just received all the gubbins from the Globe and am organising a party to visit there in the summer so it is all go. Bear in mind also that Bryn in a revival of Tosca is coming up later on in the year and lots on the horizon. 

This is why I commute and work so that I can afford these treats enjoy myself while I can.  Once I become a retired old lady it will be sitting in front of the TV with bedsocks on, teeth in the glass and staying at home.

Actually, I don't think that is going to happen....at least I am going to make sure it is a long way off.

Small is Beautiful

I have posted on Random on many occasions about my love of opera, choral singing, going to the Proms, listening and seeing Wagner and how I love huge orchestras playing their socks off and how much I enjoy a big sound.  When I go to a concert I like to get my money's worth, all the players sawing away like mad on the strings, brass blowing, drums drumming, great stuff.  As I am very fond of Berlioz, this more or less comes with the territory, Wagner operas, though they have quiet passages of exquisite music, have more grand and stirring music than any other composer I know.  Ok Beethoven is different altogether and will never be compared to anybody else as I think, for me anyway, he is the supreme composer.

However, over the last year or so, in between all this opera going and listening to choral music and attending proms, I have found that I am turning to quieter, smaller, music.  I think this has a lot to do with my acquiring an iPod which has revolutionised my travel and commute time.  No longer need I listen to the inanities of Oh I am on the Train, or Where are you? I am in the second carriage down...oooh I can see you...I am waving blah blah blah.  I can now plug in my litte blue slender slim line elegant little piece of modern design (thank you Apple) and shut all this out.

And yes, I listen to a lot of my beloved Beethoven on the commute in and Mozart and Schubert and I also have downloaded some opera and choral pieces and yet, I am finding increasingly over the last few months that I am turning to chamber music.  This is where an iPod comes into its own.  With decent ear phones, I abandoned those given with the iPod as they do not block out sound enough and are   pretty poor quality, and bought a more expensive pair which fit very closely into ones ears and it is a revelation.  Listening to a Schubert octet or the Trout quintet you can hear each note on each instrument as clear as a bell and appreciate all the subtleties and nuances that have hitherto passed me by.  And also, what I have noticed but never did before, what wonderful tunes are weaving in and out and as each instrument is so exposed, you have to be a master of your violin or 'cello or piano, nobody to hide behind, no huge orchestra to lose yourself in.  I am really loving this discovery.

I now have a new iPod with more space and have been busy downloading extra music over the last month and have three new CDs which are proving to be gems.  First up is a recording of Brahms String Quartet No 2 and a piano quintet, a Christmas present from my son in law and this takes some listening to as I have always found Brahms a composer who has to be really concentrated on as I, personally, find him difficult to grasp.  So to have this available to listen to every day on one of my train journeys is brilliant and I am able to concentrate. Taking me a while to get hold of this one, but will get there.

Then I decided it was time I got to know the Beethoven String quartets and have started with Nos 4 and 5 and as Beethoven is THE composer as far as I am concerned, these are proving to be totally wonderful and the more I listen the more there is to discover in them.

However, my find of the last few months, a CD I picked up in Cambridge and have not stopped listening to since, is Schubert for Two.  This CD has arrangements of Schubert's Sonatas, German dances, Landlers and the Ave Maria, for violin and guitar.  Sounds weird but I tell you it is sheer magic and ravishing to listen to.  I do not know the guitarist at all, Goran Sollscher but he plays with such beauty and delicacy, but I certainly knew of the violinist, Gil Shaham.  Several years ago when my daughter and her boyfriend (now her husband) were at Harvard, I visited and for my birthday which fell during my stay, they took me to Symphony Hall in Boston to hear Andre Previn conduct the Boston SO in a Vaughan Williams symphony and in the first half, Gil Shaham played the Sibelius violin concerto.  I like my violinists to have a big, full bodied sound, and sometimes this can come with a lack of sweetness of tone, but not in this case and I remember that evening with great fondness.  Now on this CD I listen to him again and I am just blown away by his playing.

It is odd is it not that it has taken modern technology to show to me just how wonderful this style of music can be. I have also started listening to more early music and am even finding myself with a growing affection for Bach which I never thought I would live to say, but once again, it is easier to listen to the contrapuntal melodies and intricacies of Johann Sebastian on my little iPod.  There is hope for me yet.

Mark you, I still think that I will never ever learn to love a Bach cantata.  Musical mogadon as far as I am concerned and No you need not write and tell me I Am a Philistine.  Others have already done so.

But just think of all the wonderful music I have yet to discover.  This is why loving books and music is such a wonder and a joy.  One will never get to the end of it, there is always something new and maravellous to discover.

What larks!

The House at Midnight - Lucie Whitehouse

Well, I have finally broken my duck and have abandoned my re-read pile and opened up this first novel by Lucie Whitehouse, sent to me by those lovely generous people at Bloomsbury.  A good sit down curl up cup of tea get involved read.

The narrator, Jo, is part of a close knit group who met at University and have remained friends ever since.  One member of this group, Lucas, inherits Stoneborough Manor after his uncle's death, his own father being dead and being brought up by this particular relative, and he decides to give up his law practice, move there and use it as a place where he and the circle can spend regular time together. However, the house has a haunted, dark feeling to it which only Jo seems to sense.   A cache of old films taken at the same house some thirty years earlier fascinate Lucas as the group seems to be disturbingly similar to their own, even reflecting the tensions and strains which are escalated by the stifling heat of a hot summer.

Friendships and relationships are tense and broken over the months with Jo, who is the closest friend Lucas possesses, finding herself drawn to the one outsider, Greg, who joins the group as the boyfriend of another, Rachel.  

If I say this book has an old fashioned feel about it, I mean it in the sense that it is the kind of book that I used to read in the 80s and 90s, a Penny VIncenzi, Rosamunde Pilcher type of story, with all the characters existing in a relatively closed time frame and world.  The Group seems to hark back to the days of the 60s and 70s where communes and hippies let it all hang out, the drug taking in The House at Midnight is that of those long hot summer days, sharing a spliff and generally getting drunk and sleeping with whoever seems handy.  I was not sure what to make of this story when I started it and it took me a little while to become absorbed as nearly all of the protagonists were people I would not want to cross the road to meet, with the exception of Jo who, as the story progresses, begins to realise that this closed world mirrored her lack of progression in her career, is too stifling and has to end.  She breaks free with Greg and then the entire edifice crumbles, the rot sets in, and nasty things start crawling out of the woodshed.

This is a gothicky read, lots of dark secrets in the past affecting the present with revelations aplenty before the ending, and over it all looms the mencing house which seems to have a life and presence all of its own.  Shades of Manderley here I feel.

As I said, a little time for me to get into this but once I did, I read it straight through and thoroughly enjoyed it.  A great read.

Sunday Sunday

Last week I turned on the radiator in my bedroom and there was a fizzy noise, a smell of burning and a loud bang, and all the lights on it went dead. I don't have central heating as I have a small flat and I prefer to be able to control the heating when I want.  Unhitched this rad off the wall, slung it in back of car and along with loads of other junk visited the Tip and dumped it.

Now I don't like sleeping in a warm room, but there are limits and as the temperatrue at night has been below freezing here, and as I do not have double glazing (am in the throes of getting that organised at the moment but will save this sexy topic for another day), the condensation is awful and the bedroom just a tad chilly.  So off to big local DIY store and come out with a little convector heater which will do me nicely for the time being.  Pretty cheap too.

After fighting my way through the cardboard and polystyrene I pull out the heater, with difficulty, as it is wedged solid.  In the end turn the box upside down and shake it out.  Not really to be recommended but short of breaking every nail I possess, only feasible method.  I then pull out the Instruction Manual and the first thing I read I have to do is 'Remove the unit from its packaging and check it is in good condition'.  As I have had to remove the unit from its packaging in order to open this manual which tells me to remove the unit from its packaging.................. well, cannot help but feel this particular instruction is redundant.

No matter.  Then comes the next piece of wisdom 'this heater is hot when in use'. Er, yes.  'The surfaces of this heater are hot when in use'.  'Extreme caution is necessary when the heater is being used'.   I am now getting pretty scared.  Perhaps I should not have this dangerous bit of equipment in the flat.   There are 15, yes 15 more warnings listed. I am beginning to feel this is worse than having the bubonic plague.

I decide to be really reckless and attach the feet onto the heater. Well, I have to as I have been told 'in no circumstances should this heater be attached to the wall'.  The thought had never crossed my mind. Honest.

So I read the Feet Assembly Instructions  (I kid you not) and note that I have to 'align the two holes on the feet with the pre-drilled holes on the unit (fig 1 and 2) and secure in place with the fixing screws provided (fig 3). Only one slight problem, there are FOUR pre-drilled holes on each end of the unit, not two. Shrug shoulders and manage after a lot of cursing and swearing to get them aligned and screw them in and feel very pleased with my total brilliance.  Still cannot work out what the other holes are for.

Then I go to chuck the packaging away despite being told I should keep it for 'out of season storage purpose'.  I have no room - to the Tip it must go.   While lifting up the packaging a little plastic bag falls out the bottom with a note in it, Instruction Manual Amendment. Oh my god what have I done wrong I think.  Open it up and inside find another four screws and the following note, personally addressed to me:

"Dear Customer

Please note that there has been a change to the product manual for your convector heater. Instead of 2 screws per foot as stated in the manual, each foot has 4 holes and requires 4 screws. You have therefore been supplied with 4 screws per foot and not 2 screws as stated in the manual. A total of 8 screws are included in the box instead of 4.

4 screws are located at the top of the box and (my italics) 4 screws are located at the bottom of the box'  WHY? why not put them at the top where I would see them 'after removing the unit from its packaging to check blah blah blah.

You could not make it up.

Oh, and in order for the heater to work, I have to 'push the plug in the socket and switch on'.

I am losing the will to live..............

 

Dear Diary

Don't know what is the matter with me at the moment, but I am having one of those reading patches where I cannot fancy anything off my To Be Read pile which is soon to be renamed my MTBRP (my massive to be read pile).  I think it must be the cold or something but all I want to do is curl up with a book or books I have read several or hundreds of times and be familiar and cosy.  This has happened to me before and all one can do is give into it and then the interest in something new and unknown will return.

        

So I have been immersing myself in Donna Leon and Guido Brunetti (who I fancy like mad) and Venice and loving it and as a break, having read three in a row, am now re-reading Mr Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange.  I came across this when wandering around in Borders in Chicago of all places and     have the American paperback version which, like all US paperbacks is beautifully produced and opens   nice and easily with no cracking of the spine, and finding I am enjoying it all over again.  I have now read all of Amanda's Diaries Of and have liked them all despite the fact that I do have doubts about Jane sequels, prequels etc but it is just so interesting to have a view point of the male protagonist in her books. 

The most recent one is that of Colonel Brandon.  Much as I like Sense and Sensibility, I have to admit that I do not think Colonel B exactly leaps off the page as a dashing hero and the fact that Marianne derides him for wearing flannel waistcoats, does not exactly enhance his appeal.  Of course, we are all spoiled now as we have seen The Wonder that is Alan Rickman portray him in the gloriously delicious film, and really, after that how can one but love him?  I think what really appeals about Brandon is the obvious kindness and goodness of the man and you cannot argue with that.

Colonel Brandon's diary tells us of his youth, his blighted love and his care for the disgraced Eliza and her child and his contempt and hatred for Willoughby, who he has to watch win the heart of the woman he loves and keep silent all the while.  I have read many of the add on Jane books with varying degrees of interest and pleasure, but do like Amanda's very much and am now looking forward to the diary of Guy Tilney from Northanger Abbey.  I have to be honest and say that I cannot really see how this is going to be madly interesting as, charming though he is, Guy Tilney does not strike me as being of particular intelligence or wit (I mean he falls in love with Catherine Morland     who, let's face it, is not exactly Mastermind material) but I am looking forward to its publication.

With the exception of my first purchase, I have all these books in hardback as I love the covers and think they are really classy.  I shall have to track down the hardback version of Mr D as I would love to have a matching set and, you will note, Mr Darcy only has half a head on this paperback.  In the UK, we usually end up with headless women...

Well, back to Pemberly and the sofa.

No post today...

... as I am resting my eyes after having to come home early from the office.  Had a recurrance of painful, sore and dry eyes which got quite bad before the holiday.  Back 24 hours at my desk and I am walking around looking totally bug eyed at the moment and it is all quite sore.  Have to get the Health and Safety Mafia out tomorrow I fear and dim the lights.  Might also take in sunglasses.  If nothing else, I hope it might give me an air of mystery and allure.

Therefore, getting off the laptop screen as soon as possible, but I thought you might be interested to take a gander at the link below.  Fame at last!   Thanks to Mark at the Book Depository for interviewing me.  I am honoured.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/viewblogarticle.php?id=2271

I was about to finish off with  'I'm ready for my close up Mr de Mille' but having just looked at myself in the mirror, I think perhaps this is a singularly inappropriate comment .....

Working Wednesday

Well back today after nearly three weeks of sloth and idleness and lying in bed until I feel like getting up and reading and writing and watching Tv and DVDs and, sadly, eating - a lot.  As you may remember I joined Weightwatchers before Christmas, started going to exercise classes and promptly started putting on weight which made me so cross I stopped.  Well, after seeing the scales yesterday I simply have to lose a stone or two and that is that so the time for making excuses has come to an end and today I started on my own.  I have plenty of books and advice and magazines etc handy and really, what it boils down to in the end is to eat less and not stuff my face, and take a bit more exercise.  OK I loathe exercise but when I am at home at the weekends I am going to have to force myself to go out walking and just get on with it.  So, wish me luck.

Not posting much today as I am feeling tired after the shock of the commuting ritual which fades from  the mind when one is at home.  Have a brand new ipod nano to listen to but am not very happy with it.  My old one, well relatively speaking, it is three years old but in Apple Land that is positively  ancient, is an 8gb red one and I love it dearly but it is nearly full.  I tried an original iPod last year but found it too heavy to carry around and then sent it back as it kept crackling when I was using the menus and with the earphones in this gets a bit distracting.  So stayed with Red the Faithful, but was seduced to the Blue side by the new 16gb nanopod just on the market,  so that arrived and after wrestling with transferring and updating iTunes and swearing mightily all the while, I managed to get it all loaded up.  Lo and behold exactly the same thing is happening, crackling noises when I manipulate the menu. Imagine radio static in your ears and you will have some idea of what it is like.  So back it is going and I will ask Amazon to replace it for me.  I know this is not right as the Red One is so smooth and no noise at all.  Mind you, I did buy this in the Apple store in Chicago so perhaps Amazon have got a dud pile, I don't know.

Ah well

So tea now and early to bed.  Have started re-reading all the Donna Leon books set in Venice. Why? I have a to be read pile three feet high...

Cover Girls (and men)

I have just finished reading, well perhaps looking would be a better word as the text is very limited, at a book, The Art of Romance - cover designs for Mills and Boon and Harlequin since the publishing company was founded.  Looking at the different covers has been fascinating.  I knew that Mills & Boon were earlier publishers of Wodehouse and Jack London, but now discover that they also published E F Benson as well!

     

Anyway, I have put together a collage of some of the covers for your delectation and delight.  Just look at the Bride of the Rif cover with a Valentino, Desert Song type sheikh complete with robes etc and then the one underneath, in the 2000s and see the difference.  This sheik looks like he has a multiplex in Dubai and would not know what a camel or a desert looked like.

I know which one I would prefer to be swept off my feet by....

Paying Guests - E F Benson

So many similarities and hints among the characters in this book to make me check when Mapp and Lucia was published and noted that it was five years later and it is clear that EF Benson recycled from this novel.

Set in a superior guest house, the Wentworth in Bolton spa, full of paying guests come to sample the waters.  Mr Kemp, a hypochondriac with a downtrodden daughter Florence, Alice Howard who   extemporises on the piano, Mrs Bliss who is a great believer in mind over matter and a long term resident, Colonel Chase (ex-Indian army, retired).

Colonel Chase is addicted to his walking and cycling and keeping fit, is a horror at bridge, but feels he  can tell everyone else how to play, and lets out shouts of Qui Hi at regular intervals (sound famililar anybody?).

Alice Howard had been an extremely pretty girl 'by some backhand stroke of fate she had never married and now at the age of forty relinquished no atom of her girlishness.  She hardly ever walked, but tripped, she warbled little snatches of song when she thought that anybody might be within hearing in order to refresh them with her maidenly brightness and sat on the hearth rug in front of the fire even though there was a far more comfortable seat nearby'.

When Alice is asked to appear at a charity concert with her 'extemporisng'  her response is 'How you all work me!' (sound familiar anybody?) she immediately starts practising in secret so everyone will be amazed at her skill on the pianoforte (sound familiar anybody?)      Miss Howard also plays very slowly and with great feeling, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling totally rapt 'she knew that Mrs Oxney would probably come in and find her quite lost in her music, sitting there with her dreamy eyes and a smile hovering over her mouth'.  She also paints, endlessly and badly and, though she does not realise it, attracts Florence, Mr Kemp's daughter who falls passionately in love with her (shades of Quaint Irene here though it is Florence in the breeches and boots in this case).

The whole book is a delight from start to finish.  As in Riseholme and Tilling, all the characters are totally self centred, deluded and 'free from any vestige of self criticism'.  In the introduction to Paying Guests we are told that 'it is the main task in life of a Benson character to take the mote out of his brother's eye while polishing the beam in his own.  In order to create the impression that they are better, grander, richer and generqlly more admirable than is actually the case, they lie at all times and in all places'.

This is a totally delicious book and as I discovered the Mapp and Lucia books in 2008, and EF Benson, finding this on a shelf in my local second hand book shop was a discovery of the most serendipitous kind.  Sitting next to it was another, Mrs Ames, and from a quick glance at the blurb I see that 'Mrs Ames is the queen of Riseborough Society' so back to a place familiar to me.

Hunting out EF Benson is proving quite fruitful as there seem to be plenty around to acquire and I fear my shelves are soon going to have to be thinned out again to make room for newcomers, but quite frankly, I hate getting rid of books and this is going to be a nightmare.  I think I have to get another bookcase and that is all there is to it. 

Now if I get rid of my CDs in the corner, I can get something smaller to store these in, then I can put a book case in there.  Also, if I shift my DVDs around a bit and relocate I might be able to fit a book case in there.  Then there is the bedroom and of course the bathroom and the kitchen and then...well, that is it really.

Can I please please please win the lottery so that I can buy a house and bang two rooms together and make myself a library?  Either that or a nice rich man come along and sweep me off my feet?  Yes, I would make that sacrifice in order to get a library.  Ain't gonna happen though is it?

'sigh'....