Random Jottings

Sunday Ramblings

Gosh it is cold here today.  I have icicles hanging from the windows, outside rather than in, I hasten to clarify though with the windows in my block of flats this is open to discussion.

I have decided that 2009 has to be the Year of the New Windows.  I have been mopping up pools of condensation since I moved in nearly 9 years ago now,  and it is getting worse and worse and the windows are beginning to fall apart.  Of course, I have to have the right windows so that the 'ambience' of  the block is maintained, though what ambience my dwelling place contains, I have yet to discover.

Of course, I have to contact the management company who manage the block, though managing is rather a misnomer, and when I received a letter from them on Friday telling me that the upkeep of the windows is my responsibility, since all lessees apparantly 'own' them and that they are only responsible for the decoration (it also transpires that if I replace the windows which will have at least a ten year guarantee, I still have to pay for the outside redecoration of same even if they don't need it and also have to underwrite those windows who have not been replaced and do need it...yes try and work that one out), and the realisation that the front door to the block was sticking again despite it being mended on Christmas Eve, I sat down and bashed out an acerbic rant and emailed it off straight away.  Ten minutes later the phone rang and there on the other end was the recipient who thought it was probably a good idea to have a chat......

So we did for over an hour and really, it just proves once again how vital is straightforward dealing, and not relying on emails and letters.  Got more sorted out in that hour than in the entire nine years of letter writing that has been going on since I moved in.  The fact that the man I spoke to actually sounded sympathetic and understanding and seemed to have a grasp of his job, also helped.  So all was sweetiness and light and he has now agreed to get the doors on the flats replaced, and I have told  him there is money in the contingency fund for this and the tenants should not have to pay, which seemed to be acceptable and, to cut a very long and boring ramble short, I now have A Man coming round tomorrow to measure up my windows etc and I am then just going to get on with it.  All the window providing companies are offering huge reductions at the moment for obvious reasons so am looking forward to plying The Man with tea and biscuits and negotiating and see how far I can beat him down.  This is going to be essential as I have six windows to replace, one of which is a huge bay window so it ain't gonna be cheap folks.

Enough.

I have been re-reading over the lasts couple of days because, as explained in my previous post, I just cannot seem to get my head round anything new at the moment though I have started a new fun, gothicky book called The House at Midnight by Lucy Whitehouse in which 'charged menace gives way to murder, attempted suicide and blackmail" and which Bloomsbury sent me the other week, leads me to believe I am going to enjoy this and I am several chapters in already.  However, as it is Sunday afternoon, dark and chilly, the light is on, it is lovely and warm in here, despite the windows and I have a new CD of Beethoven string quartets on the CD player and I am re-reading a Donna Leon set in my most favourite place, Venice.  The House at Midnight will wait another day.

So I feel contented despite the fact that I have also discovered a damp patch in the corner of my living room which keeps reappearing and have had to arrange with the Manager to have the damp proof course checked as well...

2009 off to a rousing start I feel.

Jane of Lantern Hill

You all know the feeling.  You have a pile of books waiting to be read.  New shiny books sent by the publishers who are just waiting for you to read and let them know what you think; they all look fascinating and yet, there is not a single one you fancy reading today.  Tomorrow perhaps, next week, whenever, but not today.

I have read two books in the last couple of days I want to post about but I can't be bothered. Don't misunderstand me, I loved them both but  I feel a sense of total sloth descend upon me and I am getting very irritated and keep telling myself to Get a Grip.  But I can't.  So the only thing to do when in this sort of mood is to pull down an old and well loved book and read that.   So this afternoon found me curled up on the sofa re-reading Jane of Lantern Hill by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  This is one of her  stand alone books, no Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon, but Jane who lives with her mother and her domineering grandmother at No 60 Gay Street.  "Gay Street, so Jane always thought, did not live up to its name.  It was, she felt certain, the most melancholy street in Toronto..."

Jane thinks her father is dead, but in fact he is alive and kicking and writes to say he wants to get to know his daughter and she is to spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island.  Reluctantly she goes and immediately feels a kinship with her father and a love for the Island, where she had been born and where she had spent the first two years of her life.   During the summer with her father, where he purchases a house on Lantern Hlll and where Jane for the first time in her life has the freedom to flourish and be herself, she matures and grows up so that she is able to cope with her grandmother back in the city who soon realises her domination over her granddaughter is over.

Of course, we know deep down that Jane's parents love each other and have been kept apart by the horrid grandma, who is a jealous and posessive mother who did not wish her daughter to marry a penniless writer, and we also know that it will all end happily.  It does and this is never in any doubt, but while we are waiting for the inevitable final reunion, we spend our summers with Jane on Prince Edward Island and see it through her eyes and fall in love with it:

"There were silver and lilac sand dunes between them and the sea, extending into a bar across the harbour where great splendid, blue and white waves were racing to the long sun washed shore.  Across the channel a white lighthouse stood against the sky and on the other side of the harbour were the shadowy crests of purple hills that dreamed with their arms around each other. And over it all the indefinable charm of a Prince Edward Island landscape"

Reading this again was the perfect way to get me back into a reading mood and tomorrow I will pull a new book out of the pile or one of those on my Victorian challenge and dive in and start off my read for 2009.  But for today, meeting this old friend was just right.

Incidentally, my copy of this book was one of those unexpected finds.  Many years ago I was in Brixton High Street and there was one of these cut price bookshops that move in for a short lease and then move out again.  I wandered in and to my total astonishment and delight discovered not only this story by the wonderful LMM, but also The Blue Castle, The Tangled Web and Magic for Marigold.  I had never heard of any of these so you can imagine how thrilled I was to stumble across them.  The publisher is Angus and Robertson who, from a quick check on Google, appears to be an Australian publisher, which makes it all the more curious how they came to end up where they did.  Just how did they get there? 

Don't care really - just happy to have them...

Happy New Year

My good friend Rosemary came round this morning and we settled down to watch the New Year's Day concert from Vienna and while we were drinking our coffee and eating our Stollen, she remarked how much she enjoyed this annual event and that 'it has become a tradition'.  I then realised that, yes, it had and one I really love.   Both of us have our families dropping in and out over the holiday period and we both relish this quiet two hours just listening to the glorious music and marvelling at the beautfy of the Musikverien. 

This year the concert was conducted with a great sense of fun by Daniel Barenboim, who I still think of as a prodigy and the youthful husband of the late great Jacqueline du Pre.  Of course, he is now nearly 70 which is a sobering thought, white haired and going bald.  His musicianship is a marvel and the Vienna Philharmonic played for him with a huge sweep and lush sound, and both of us commented on parts of the woodwind in the various pieces played that we had not noticed before.

This is what is so wonderful about music - you never ever come to the end of it.

As soon as the concert was over, I logged onto the website and registered in the draw for the concert in 2010.  Have not been lucky yet, but you never know...

Happy New Year to everyone who calls in at Random, has a read, leaves a comment or not whatever the case may be.  I appreciate you all and look forward to hearing from you in 2009.