Random Jottings

To Love and be Wise - Josephine Tey

Odd how sometimes you pick up a book by an author you used to like and then off you go and find another and then you stumble across some more.  This is what has happened with me and Josephine Tey.  I remember reading some of her books as a teenager, not all of them, not by a long shot but I do remember The  Franchise  Affair which I posted about earlier this year, and Brat Farrar (a copy of which I found this morning) and over the weekend while I was in Leicestershire I read To Love and Be Wise (I have the Singing Sands waiting for me also).  So a Tey-fest at the moment.

Inspector Alan Grant is dining with an actress friend and as he arrives at a party to collect her, he bumps into a young American in the hallway. He is blonde, handsome and fascinating "...that boy was making an impression on me in thirty sconds flat and at a range of twenty yards and I'm considered practically incombustible..."  This is the opinion of Grant's friend, Marta  when she is introduced to the American, who is a photographer and claims acquantaince with the hostess of the party, Lavinia Fitch an author, and is invited to stay in the cocuntry as her guest.  Here, Leslie Searle, fascinates and charms all who he comes into contact with.

Walter, a broadcaster and author, his fiance Liz, Lavinia and the entire household - Leslie gives little away of himself and yet everyone with whom he comes into contact falls under his spell.  However, he also has an unsettling effect on those he charms and makes them feel uncertain just why he makes   them feel happy and more witty and amusing in his company than in any other.  Walter watches him one night playing off two residents, London artists living in the country, against one another "He buried his face in his beer mug and enjoyed the faces of his friends.  It was only afterwards, rolling it over in his mind to savour it, that a vague discomfort pricked him.  The fun had been so bland, so lighly handled, that its essential quality, its ruthlessness, had not been apparent"

Later, as they are walking away from the pub Searle points out to him that Liz, his fiance "....likes lights, golden like that in the daylight.  Before the dark turns them white"  For the first time, Walter considers Searle in relation to Liz and is not sure he likes what he sees "He took it for granted that he knew everything about Liz.  But he had not known a simple little fact like her pleasure in lights in the daytime.  But Searle the newcomer had learned that and, what was more remembered it.  A faint ripple stirred the flat waters of Walter's self satisfaction"

So, all is not as it seems and Leslie Searle seems to take a perverse pleasure in shooting little darts and puncturing happiness and serenity.  But why?  and then he disappears one dark night after an   argument with Walter and Inspector Alan Grant is called in to take charge of a possible case of murder.

The further Grant investigates, the more he feels that Searle is not dead and that he is being led up the garden path and when he looks into his American background as a photographer he stumbles across one tiny fact that leads him to solve the mystery of Mr Searle's behaviour.

Josephine Tey delights in imbuing the reader with a vague sense of uneasiness and a feeling that there is something right in front of us leading the reader to the solution.  I remember this feeling when reading Brat Farrar as a teenager and finding it infuriating and tantalising and this story had the same effect on me and, because I remembered the twists and turns in Brat Farrar which had so fascinated me, I suddenly knew the answer to the mystery in To Love and be Wise. It just popped up in my head and I was delighted to find I was correct.  It is a solution that can leave the reader feeling slightly skewed and some might say it is unfair and slightly unbelievable, but the atmosphere of artificiality and unreality surrounding Leslie Searle is beautifully created, right from his appearance on the very first page.  I have an old Pan edition, love the cover, and the tag line on this edition is 'Will keep you up all night to finish it' ..BBC.

Well, not quite all night but I did stay up fairly late proppping up my eyelids until I did and I am now halfway through The Singing Sands which I think is going to do the same.

I do love these old fashioned early 20th century crime novels.  No computers, no DNA, no mad chases in screaming squad cars with cries of Go Go Go Go Go!! just good solid old time honest to goodness police work with coppers and Inspectors of a kind who now no longer exist.  If they ever did of course.

Am thoroughly enjoying my rediscovery of Josephine Tey even if they are hard to track down and are out of print.  Worth keeping an eye out for.

Return of the Native

 

I am back. Have had a good weekend up in Quorn in Leicestershire and stayed with my sister, Judith and bro in law, Wes.  Helped out at a Spring Fair in the Village Hall on the Sunday and guess which stall I was in charge of?  No prizes for the correct answer.

Will write futher tomorrow, at moment tired and grubby after drive home and also have a bit of an aching back as an inescapable part of these events is the humping and carrying of boxes and books and helping shift tables and chairs etc.  So a loll in the bath coming up, relaxed evening and back in full swing on Tuesday after going to hairdresser in the morning to have roots done, ends trimmed and then possibly a visit to the Castle Bookshop next door (possibly.. who am I kidding?)

Oh and I only came back with three books - all of them wonderful old cookery books (well, old as in 1960s and 1970s of which more later) - so feel very proud of myself and my self control.

Au reservoir

Blog break

Am off to Leicestershire to visit my sister and bro in law for weekend with a boot piled high with the results of a massive clear out in Schloss Simpson-Long as there is a Spring Fair (trust they do not spell it Fayre which I loathe) and I am helping out and taking stuff along.  Sorted out loads of books and am terribly proud of myself as only five have gone back on the shelves after second thoughts.

So back on Monday and I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Recently Received by Random

I tell you, I am a lucky woman.  Every time I answer the door to the postman, or return after shopping or whatever, I am constantly finding treasures being handed over to me.  I have been writing Random now for nearly three years and the first time I was asked by a publisher if I would like a book to review, I had to lie down in a darkened room for an hour to recover.  Well, I don't do that now but my joy and delight has not diminished one iota since the early days and I am still humbled that my reviews of books are deemed important or interesting enough to have all these wonderful books sent to me.

And, no, this is not a cue for all of you to leave me comments along the lines of 'Oh Elaine you are too modest' blah blah blah (though if you want to I won't complain...) but just to drive home the point that I am a lucky woman.

OK so what have I received this week?  An eclectic mix (I have a regular reader who loves that word so I sling it in every now and then - yes you know who you are!) of good reading to come:

First up, the latest in the Greek Wars Trilogy by Adele Geras, Dido.  I have read Ithaka and Troy with huge pleasure and am sure this one is going to be just as excellent.  I love the covers.  All of Adele's books I have read so far have totally beguiled me, her 'junior' and her 'senior' writing is equally readable and well written and I have no doubts that this latest is going to be the same.

Does anybody remember Classic Comics?  I do.  It was these that started me off on reading all sorts of classic books - I remember the Pit and the Pendulum, Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre and others and particularly The War of the Worlds which I was delighted to see in this collection.  Will be writing about these later on next week.

 

Then this pile:  A goodly mixture I think you will agree and after my read last month of Mr Perrin  and  Mr Traill by Hugh Walpole sent to me by Capuchin Classics, I am pretty sure that I am going to find a gem or two in this month's collection.  The A A Milne looks very tempting and that will go to the top of the heap I feel.

 

Then HarperCollins sent me The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg, a thriller set in Scandinavia which looks very promising.  Two intriguing books published by Anansi Press, a Canadian based house who originally published The Outlander by Gil Adamson which I so enjoyed last month, The Cello Suites which has as its tag line "J S Bach, Pablo Casals and the search for A Baroque Masterpiece" and Jim Harrison, Returning to earth about which I know nothing but am looking forward to finding out.

Wonderful lovely Bloomsbury who are so generous sent me The Spy Game by Georgina Harding, a proof copy of Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (I fell big time for this author's Peony in Love) and lo and behold, as if they knew I was now retired and would be trying to be very thrifty in coming weeks and months, a cook book The Thrifty Cookbook by Kate Colquhoun which is going to come in very handy.

Bubble and squeak anyone?

The Man in the Queue - Josephine Tey

When I attended a book fair in Cambridge a few weeks ago, I came away with three out out of print paperbacks of books by Josephine Tey, the Man in the Queue, To Love and be Wise and the Singing Sands.  I used to read Josephine Tey years ago and recently revisited The Franchise Affair which I enjoyed all over again - as I had not read it for ages it was almost like discovering it for the first time.

I have read one or two Inspector Grant mysteries by this author, Daughter of Time particularly sticks in my mind as this is a simply amazing novel, when Inspector Grant is in hospital and to while away the time he ponders on the mystery of the Death of the Princes in the Tower, treats it as a current murder and comes up with his solution.  I have always felt that poor old Richard III was a bit misrepresented, after all the play was written for a Tudor monarch so old Dickie had to be evil, and the way Laurence Olivier played him fixed his persona in our minds for ever more.

However, The Man in the Queue is the first one in which we meet our hero.  As with all Golden Age detectives he has to be elegant and unlike a policeman, as far removed from the clod hopping, mackintoshed idee fixe that the great British public had at the time.  Not quite Lord Peter here, but definitely veering towards Inspector Abbott from the Miss Silver mysteries and Alleyn in the Ngaio Marsh stories:

"...the last thing he looked like was a police officer.  He was of medium height and slight in build and he was - now, if I say dapper you will immediately think of something like a tailor's dummy, something perfected out of all individuality and Grant is most certainly not that.  Superintendent Barker had for years striven to emulate his subordinate's chic..."

The book begins with the discovery of a body in a queue for theatre tickets.  There has been quite a crowd all jammed together and nobody notices that the man with the hat pulled over his eyes has a dagger in his back until the crowd moves forward and he falls to the ground.  Nobody has seen anything, nobody knows who he is and there is nothing on his person to identify him so Inspector Grant has a tough problem to solve.

After a slow start I began to be drawn in to the story though I found the style a little wordy and it took me a while to click into it, once I did I was OK.  There is a middle section where Grant tracks his chief suspect down to a small village in Scotland and a chase across the heather and a loch ensues, all very Buchan and Thirty Nine Steps and equally atmospheric and though Grant gets his man he wonders if he has the right man.  I began to suspect what had possibly happened by various clues gently dropped by the author and rightly guessed that a certain person was involved, but it turned out to be peripheral and I certainly did not see the final twist coming.

So looking forward to reading the others but, and this is a big but, I found some of the language disconcerting.  I have mentioned this in my reviews of Buchan and I know that it is something that I should not fret about as I have to remember when the books were written, and the mores prevailing at that time.  One gets used to the derogatory way Jews are described in Agatha Christie and D L Sayers, and slighting references to them in Tey, but what is distressing to modern readers is the fact that this was deemed perfectly acceptable at the time.  I am not a member of the rabidly Politically Correct brigade but it is difficult sometimes.  In Agatha Christie, all maids and servants are adenoidal and moronic, in Ngaio Marsh all caretakers, stage door keepers or the like are cockneys of the 'Cor 'swelp me guv your'e a gent' variety and the detectives sidekicks are salt of the earth characters.  I can accept these but in this book, Grant works out that this crime was probably that of a foreigner, a 'Dago' who will hide in London like the rats all Dagoes are.  For most of the book, until this person is named, the suspect is referred to as The Dago, which really sticks in the craw and I found was threatening to mar my pleasure in the writing. 

The Oxford dictionary says that a dago is "a Spanish, Portuguese or Italian speaking person" but then adds the caveat "can be used as informal or offensive".

Well it certainly is in this book, so I am going to have to get used to it if I am to read the others and I want to, so I will have to abandon my 21st Century outlook for the duration of my reading.

Other than that, of course, great book.  I have fond memories of Brat Farrar as well and remember loving that as a teenager so will be seeking out a copy of that one too, and will have to suspend my censorious attitude for the time being.

Spot the cat..

 

This is Spot. I do not have a real live cat any more and this was presented to me by my daughter Kathryn on Mother's Day.  It is a door stop.  I have a bedroom door that will not stay open and each time I go through to my room the door whispers to a sneaky close behind me. As I live in a bijou flattette I have most of my doors open all the time so the light shines through and this constant sneaky door closing drove me demented.  Well, perhaps I exaggerate, not demented, but irritated..

So when Spot was produced I was simply delighted and here he sits keeping this door open and I can tell you now if ever a wooden door could exude annoyance my one does.

tee hee

The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim

I am obviously on a von Arnim roll at the moment as just before my wonderful purchase over the weekend, I spotted that at long last this simply gorgeous film is out on DVD.  What took so long?  I originally saw this some ten years or more ago and adored it so much I bought the video.  This has been watched so often the tape resembles a lace doily and the tracking is appalling and sound dreadful, but I was reluctant to part with it until I could get hold of another copy.

It arrived this morning and I am just delighted with it.  This was the first Elizabeth von Arnim I read.  I had been browsing in Waterstones and spotted the Virago edition, yes the green one, and pulled it down, took it home read it in two hours and was back in the shop later on that day to purchase the others that were in stock (if I remember rightly Mr Skeffington and Love and a couple of others) and here is a link to my original post.  The story of four dissatisfied women who rent a castle for a month never fails to uplift and the first morning when Mrs Wilkins opens her eyes, sees the sun streaming across her bed and pulls the shutters wide and looks out, oh my goodness what a magical moment.

"She jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters. "Oh!" cried Mrs Wilkins.

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet.  The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light.  Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair"

See what I mean?

The cast is wonderful:  Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, Josie Lawrence, Polly Walker and the male   roles are taken well by Alfred Molina, Jim Broadbent and the simply unbeatable Michael Kitchen.  The story line has been altered, but very slightly only and does no harm, merely pairing off a female character with a male protagonist and it works.  My Virago edition has Josie Lawrence on the cover and delightful thought she is, I really dislike film tie in editions and kept an eye out for the original Virago edition of 1986 and eventually after a few years of keeping aforementioned eye out managed to get hold of one and here it is.  This cover is 'Promenade on the Banks of the Amsted' so not exactly Italianate but I just love it, so elegant, so typical of these wonderful Green covers.

"Colour, fragrance, light, sea; instead of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the wet omnibuses, and the fish department at Shoolbread's and the Tube to Hampstead, and dinner, and tomorrow the same and the day after the same and always the same..........."

If ever you feel this way, and let's face it, who hasn't, then this book and DVD is for you.

Desirable Residences - E F Benson

After my discovery of EF Benson last year with the simply gloriously wonderful Mapp and Lucia books, regular visitors here will know I am off on one of my trawls through this author's work and reading and collecting his  books with little restraint at all.  After the Tilling delights I read in quick succession, Mrs Ames and Paying Guests and then Michael (not to forget of course the Tom Holt Mapp and Lucia books and the wonderful Major Benjy by Guy Fraser Sampson).  I have lined up and ready to go Daisy's Aunt, Juggernaut, An Autumn Sowing and The Blotting Book so plenty there to keep me going.

I have just finished reading Desirable Residences and other stories, a pristine copy of which I stumbled across in one of my regular haunts in Colchester, the Castle Book Shop (It has now moved and is nowhere near Colchester Castle but is, in fact, next door to my hairdresser but somehow the Hairdresser Bookshop lacks a little je ne sai qua one feels) where I regularly pop in and check the shelves, somtimes I come out with nothing, sometimes I strike lucky. This is the joy of second hand bookshops you never know what you are going to find, unlike the big modern emporiums which you know will have exactly the same stock as all the others.

This collection of short stories is a really mixed bag. I gather the editor, Jack Adrian, tracked them down by trawling through old fiction magazines in 'that most civilized of repositories, the Bodleian Library'.   They have been grouped under the headings of The Diversions of Amy Bondham, Crank Stories, Society Stories, Cruel Stories, Odd Stories, Dodo Stories and Spook Stories and range from the amusing to peculiar to, and this has to be said, pretty poor.  EF Benson seems to have been able in his writing to cover the most tremendous range and ground (Michael a superb serious book, Mapp and Lucia brilliantly cutting and amusing) and these stories reflect his diversity.  The Diversions of Amy Bondham are four slight tales of a social climbing woman in London, very Lucia like (one wonders who came first and whether this was a try out), who addresses her husband as Christophero Mio and has all the ruthless characteristics of the doyenne of Tilling when the bit is between her teeth.  She comes up against another formidable hostess who is determined to do her down but, as with poor Elizabeth Mapp,  is doomed to failure.

I won't give you a breakdown of each story, that would be tedious and take too long, but there are recognisable characters and characteristics from the Tilling setting which are delightful to spot and pick out, but whether these stories are funny, odd or downright odd, E F Benson is merciless in his unerring spotting of the weaknesses and eccentricities of society.  However, there is also a poignancy as well as even the most social climbing of women who we are first invited to slightly despise, end up engaging our sympathy as the author leads us to see how ultimately shallow their lives are and that they are doomed to permanent disappointment.

Though I enjoyed nearly all of these stories, I read a couple each night before going to sleep, one particularly captured my attention.  It comes under the group heading Cruel Stories and is called The Puce Silk.  Aunt Cathie comes to stay with her niece, who she brought up when her parents died and who she loves dearly. The niece  has made an excellent marriage and is now a countess. She has a large party to stay and  is reluctant to have her aunt there with her smart friends (the niece's name, by the way, is also Lucia) but her husband tells her that her reasons for not wanting her there are '...not quite worthy of you".   Aunt Cathie comes, meets the house party, and feels she is a success and is enjoying herself thoroughly though we know that Lucia is not. She attempts to stop Aunt Cathie wearing her best puce silk dress, aware that it is vulgar and not fashionable, but her Aunt wears it anyway and is under the illusion that she is liked and that Lucia's friends are welcoming her.  We, the reader, know otherwise and also know that she will be disillusioned in the love of her niece and the true feelings of the house guests.  She overhears a conversation:

"Lucia is furious.  She told me she had tried to be diplomatic about the puce silk and thought she had succeeded.  She thought of telling the footman to spill something on it so that it could not appear again.  How heavenly that people should have aunts like that"   "Yes heavenly" said Henry "but it is important that other people should have them and not oneself"

More is said and Aunt Cathie leaves the room and goes to her bedroom to think.  "What was to be done? One thing she knew, it was impossible, she could not meet Lucia and her guests again".  She packs and leaves while everyone is out and then leaves a note for Lucia:

"My dearest Lucia

I think I made a mistake in coming to see you when you had such a big party with you. I am not accustomed to it and I feel a little strange. They thought me a little strange too and so you must forgive my rudeness because I have gone home since I do not feel I could do any better if I stopped. Dear Lucia, it was such a pleasure to see you in your beautiful home with all your guests.  Pray forgive me darling and make some excuse for me, you are so clever.

Your most affectionate aunt Cathie"

This is a Cruel Story but who do you think is being cruel here?  True is is that Lucia's caressing ways have been exposed as sham and Aunt Cathie has been cruelly treated, but my goodness me what a gem of a note this is.  Very subtle, letting her know that she, Aunt Cathie is aware of her and her guests true feelings, and that last line 'make some excuse for me you are so clever'  a real twist of the knife. This little note, on the surface very sweet and understanding, is written to quite deliberately wound and hurt.   We are told that the 'note had been hard to write', hard because of wounded feelings and being upset, or hard because Aunt Cathie wanted to get her message across? 'You are so clever'.  We are left to make up our own minds.

Brilliant and worth the entire book alone.

Trip to London - Disappointment and Delight

OK so I finish commuting on Friday and what do I do on  Saturday?  Get on a train to London.  Deja vu but with a difference as this was a visit of pleasure as I was meeting my daughter Kathryn. Got to station and of course, as is every weekend, engineering work taking place so got on a coach which bowled along to Billericay and then train to Liverpool Street.

Now the main reason for this visit was to see a play Madame de Sade.  Reviews have not been brilliant, very wordy I gathered and a bit boring, but it starred the incomparable Dame Judi Dench and Kathryn had bought these tickets over a year ago and we were both looking forward to it.  Then, disaster. As she was heading south from Leeds and I was heading into London I opened my paper and there it was:  "Dame Judi Dench has had a fall and will not be appearing in the West End for a week on doctor's orders".  Talk about the Law of Sod.  Texted daughter who was incandescent and said only the fact she was in a public train carriage stopped her from swearing.  We met up at the hotel (great deal, Club Room £115 for two breakfast included) and had a confab.  We both agreed that the play itself was not what we had come to see but The Dame so we abandoned the theatre, it was a matinee performance we had tickets for, and Kathryn asked if we could just be tourists and go for a long walk, starting in Trafalgar Square.  It was a simply glorious day so off we went. From Trafalgar Square walked down Northumberland Avenue towards the river. Crossed over by the new pedestrian bridge, there are two either side of the train bearing bridge which gave rise to an interesting shot.

   

Then onto the South Bank which was simply heaving.  It was like the passagiata in a Spanish town in the evening where everyone just walks around, stopping to talk to friends, having a drink etc and it was fascinating people watching.  Lunch of warm goat's cheese and bacon salad, and again just looking at the parade and listening to the different languages being spoken and trying to guess where everyone came from by looking at clothes and style and demeanour.  Hate to say it but the Brits were the worse dressed there...

   

Then back along to the London Eye, thought of going on it for a nano second and then saw the queues. This has been one of the successes of the Millenium celebrations.  In fact, the only one that was not a disaster and the views from the pods as you slowly go around are stunning, I went up in it a few years ago.

 

 

 

At the foot of the Eye are the Millenium Gardens and this was full of street performers and all bustle and great fun.

I simply love being by the river in London and the views of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament as the sun went down were quite beautiful.  Pity about the occupants but then you can't have everything.

   

A lovely day and though disappointed about Dame Judi (get well soon) both Kathryn and I agreed that we had really enjoyed ourselves and it was great just to wander and chat and talk and laugh. And then came to icing on the cake. 

There are bookstalls on the South Bank and as they hove into view Kathryn grabbed my arm 'Oh no mum, remember you are now a retired lady and you told me you were going to cut back on books'.  'Quite right' I replied.  Quick glance at the tables of books and decided I could live without them but then spotted a small selection of battered second hand books. 'Got to look at these' and off I went. 

 

And there it was.  A book I have been looking for for seven years, a book which would complete my collection by ths particular author, a book that I have tracked down on the internet retailing at over £150, a book that Virago were going to reprint and then pulled at the last minute and would not tell me why  - In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim. I looked, and looked and looked again as I could not believe my eyes.  Opened it up with trembling hand - what would be the price? £4.50 was pencilled inside.  It is now mine and I spent the rest of the day in a state of total delight that I had stumbled across this. I was just turning away when I spotted this stall and I would have missed it.

Now if Dame Judi had not sprained her ankle and had to be out of the show, we would not have walked along the South Bank and this book would still be sitting there waiting to be discovered. So perhaps I should say Thank you.

Serendipity of the highest order.  Wonderful.

Friday Night and the lights are low...

Isn't that the line in a song...??

OK well I am home after my final day at my current workplace (I do not name names as word of honour has been given that I never slag off a place I have worked at in my blog).  Of course, if you catch me in the pub or the wine bar then that might be a different story. (Only joking - promise).  My just today ex-boss told me he checked out my blog before he hired me to make sure that I had not slagged off any of my other employers (he also was joking - I hope...).

Anyway, it was a good day today. Lunch with some of my colleagues sitting out on the roof garden with the sun shining, but a chilly wind and good chat and talk was had. Then tidying up, clearing out emails, deleting personal folders (hope I managed to get rid of the porn ok) and left hand over notes and felt very virtuous.  Feeling super cool about going and then lo and behold a crowd gathered. No it was not the loaves and the fishes being distributed to the multitude but the gathering of my work mates who presented me with a card full of lovely messages that caused the stiff upper lip to quiver a tad and some vouchers from John Lewis which made the stiff upper lip quiver some more - into a beam. 

A great ending to my contract and unexpected which makes it even nicer.

And so, the adventure begins. The adventure of perhpas not getting another job and being a, gasp, SENIOR CITIZEN.  If a job comes up, then I will probably have a crack at it and am not ruling it out totally, but at the moment I intend to take some relaxing time and enjoy the thought that I have nothing to do.  Of course, I should not tempt fate by saying I am rather looking forward to it 'cos then the phone will ring on Monday and my agency will send me off for an interview or something so think I will just keep quiet and lurk.

Journey home last night was another nail in the commuting coffin as far as I was concerned. Got on the inter-city (have to tell you now that the wankers are always on the Inter city trains, the hoi poilli who behave much better are on the stopping slow trains) and this woman got on yakking on her pink mobile. I mean a pink mobile. Come on.  Top of her voice in one of these affected drawls that you know are put on, trying to sound like she comes from Sloane Street when she probably hails from Southend (on the right line let's face it), and oh my dear, we had been filimng all day, hours of footage and then basically, yes basically, they have to edit it down to ten minutes and like, oh my god, it is doing my head in and then tomorrow we have to had a meeting to discuss the concept (as one of my work mates said this morning, surely you need to have a concept before  you start filimg. She is right). After five minutes of listening to this total crap I could feel my temper rising so before I cracked and found that I was spending my retirement in Holloway Prison for GBH, I moved.

Then this morning waiting to get some cash out of the hole in the wall and when it was my turn moved forward and this girl just jumped in front of me and totally igrnoed the fact that she had just leapt up the queue by about ten places. 'Excuse me' says I in Lady Bracknell mode 'are you aware that there is a queue?' and in total Am I Bovvered mode she turned round and told me to 'F**k off'. At that stage I knew the decision to sling in the commuting towel was the correct one. I just stood and looked at this spotty, plain, aggressive teenager and felt total despair creep over me. What on earth had caused her to be like this? 

Well, I don't know and I am not going to lose any sleep over that one.

So here I am and when I came home found three loveloy books from Capuchin Press awaiting me and yesterday a cookery book from Bloomsbury and who knows what the morrow may bring?  I would like to say thank you to all the lovely Random Visitors who left kind, encourging and supportive comments on my earlier post about my thoughts on my future.  Great to know so many of you care and take the trouble to write. 

It makes me go all warm and fuzzy...bless you all.