Random Jottings

Random thoughts on Technology

Yes it is wonderful when it works but when it doesn't then it is a pain.

I purchased this super duper uber cool phone last week, have already burbled about it so will not repeat myself, but as I mentioned the picture messaging wouldn't work because the settings from Samsung were not available and so I went back in on Friday to have them loaded.  Well nothing worked, I was in there  for an hour (took over the chair in the corner and had brought a book, naturally), lads at the shop doing their best to sort it out.  So here is the conversation which ensued at the end of the hour:

Tech guy (TG):  I can't set it up it appears there is an internal server error which will need to be sorted out

Me: OK that's fine. So how can you do that?

TG: Well we will have to send it away

Me: Oh, well how long will that take

TC: One to four weeks....

Up to this moment I had been sweet and charming and understanding to the nth degree but I then got all flinty and said so how do I manage for a phone?  Oh we will lend you one.  What another Samsung wave? Oh no just an ordinary one. But I am paying a contract of £25 a month so why should I have an ordinary crappy one?   In fact, why don't you give me a new Samsung and leave it at that.

TG: Oh we can't do that I'm afraid

Me: Why not?

TG: Well we only replace phones if they are brought back within seven days

At this point the mantle of Lady Bracknell fell upon me again and I rose to my feet (tried to do it in a  dignified manner but my knees had locked sitting down so long and had to haul myself up by end of counter, so not quite as dignified as I would have liked...) and told him in no uncertain terms that I HAD returned it within seven days, in fact it was three, when it didn't work and that it was he who had told me to come back in a week's time and therefore this seven day business was totally negated and I would like a new phone please.

TG thought for at least 30 seconds and then decided he would like to grow up to marry and propogate and immediately agreed and said Yes madam you are right and I will give you a new phone.

Had to go back in next day with the whole kit and caboodle to swap over and then they asked if I had brought my contract with me and when I said no, just the phone, they went err and um and aah and said we really need that in order to swap the phone over and I told them NO YOU DON'T and they looked at me and said OK I was probably right and perhaps they could manage without.

So I got my new phone and then I asked them to set up my email account and a few other things that they had done for me the other week and lo and behold, huge difficulty in getting my account set up and I was there for another hour and TG said I had given him the wrong email address, I was .com and not .co.uk as I had said and that was the problem.  I then told him I had been .co.uk for at least five years and he looked puzzled but said that the phone would only accept .com.  By this stage I was rapidly losing the will to live and so he set it up and I can pick up my emails easily on this so I did and then had the ineffable pleasure of showing him my .co.uk emails and he looked puzzled and said well he didn't know what was going on. I told TG that as it was an American company they probably only had settings for .com but my emails would default to the uk address it appeared and he seemed happy to accept that.

And here I am at home with a phone which now works beautifully - I made sure it was tested well and truly before I left the store.  Despite the above, I do think the staff did the best they could and they tolerated me beautifully. I have promised them that they will be put on my Christmas Card list and will bring them in some mince pies nearer the time and all was happy and gay when I left......but drained my dears, drained.

I was going to tell you also about losing my internet connection last night as well and how I restored it with the help of a flattened paper clip but I think you have probably had enough for one day.

Off to bed now. It's all too much to bear.....

Catch up on two

Such a lot of reviews awaiting my attention and I seem to be finding my time so constrained at the moment with so much to do, being a grandmother is a fearful and a wonderful thing but all encompassing and tiring, so I am glad to be having a quiet few days to catch up on daily routines and sundries.  My apologies that my posting is not as regular as it normally is, I know I have readers who log on daily to see what I am up to. I also have to respond toi the many lovely comments left on my Post of a few weeks ago about blogging, stats etc and I am very keen to do this.  Perhaps this weekend.

Anyway, have been having a crimefest as you know, but before I embarked on this mad binge read, I read two really interesting books.  First up, The Bed I made by Lucie Whitehouse.  This is the second novel by this author, I reviewed her first, The House at Midnight last year, here.  I enjoyed that one, with slight reservations, but had none with this title which was written with more flow and ease, at least that is how it struck me.

Kate meets Richard, a powerful, fascinating sensual man. They embark on an affair and as the weeks and months go by she wonders why he will not commit to her and then discovers that he is married and has lied to her all throughout their relationship.  She flees to an old coastguard's cottage on the Isle of wight and seeks refuge in this place where she came for childhood holidays and where she feels safe and is comforted.  However, when she arrives it is winter and all is bleak and quiet, unlike her summer memories and shortly after she arrives a local woman goes missing in her boat and there are rumours of suicide.

Kate gradually becomes drawn into the community and begins to tentatively forge friendships and is slowly groping her way back  to normality when she starts receiving calls and emails from Richard who is determined to track her down.  There is a dark and vicious side to him which she discovered too late in the relationship and to her dismay she realises that he is relentless in his pursuit and nothing will stand in his way.

The Bed I Made has a slow start and then gradually builds up the tension and, as the narrative unfolds, we learn more about Richard and begin to feel Kate's fears and terror.  A real page turner and I found I was unable to put it down as events build up to a tense and exciting denouement.  

Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley.  My thanks for this fascinating book go to Louise at Chatto and Windus who, knowing I am an opera lover, thought I might be intrigued by the premise of this title.  What  happens after the death of Madame Butterfly and what happens to Lieutenant Pinkerton and their son who he takes back to America with his new wife?   Pleased to find out that Pinkerton is not quite such an out and out bounder and cad as he is in the Puccini opera, not that that is saying much.

The little half Japanese child becomes Joey and, on the surface, turns into an all American boy but he never really feels at home in the US, feeling the tug of his ancestry and the memories of his mother.  The Pinkertons are successful and comfortably off and Joey has all he could need, but then the recession comes and the family find themselves on the breadline. Life gets worse when Pinkerton joins a protest march to Washington and is accidentally killed when the national guard are sent out by the President to get rid of the protesters.  

"Once they had been hailed as heroes. Now they saw from the newspapers that the President had given them new labels 'Hoover's calling us bums, pacifists, radicals. He's locked the White House gates. Some of the guys have moved into downtown blocks about to be demolished......Nancy read aloud the scrappy pages that arrived from Washington. Later in bed, Joey studied the scrawl, read and reread the words and began to think about his father in a new way"

Joey is a solitary boy and a solitary young man who retains an aloofness from his classmates and friends and this stands him in good stead after Pearl Harbour, when a neighbour informs on him and he finds himself herded into a camp as an a alien, despite the fact the has lived in American all his life and is a US citizen.  He is bitter and angry and more so when he finds that though he is still regarded as an such, the army are happy to negotiate the release of able bodied young men from the internment camps if they will agree to fight for them in the army.

I am always wary of saying a book was a simply terrific read as it seems a vague generalisation, but Butterfly's Shadow is and I found myself totally engrossed in this story which has such depth and power.  Lee Langley has taken  a daring and imaginative leap by using the death of Madame Butterfly as the starting point of this story and there are surprises aplenty awaiting the reader.   Did Madame Butterfly commit suicide? What happened to her and her faithful servant and companion, Suzuki left behind?   As Joey gradually learns more of the events of his childhood he decides to return to Japan to see if he can feel at home there and, perhaps, to seek his mother.

But before he arrives in Nagasaki with the hope that at last he can find an answer to all his many questions, the Enola Gay takes off with its deadly cargo and life is never the same again....

Much more to this marvellous book than I can convey, do read. You won't regret it and Lee Langley now goes on my list of further reading.   I am so lucky on Random to have books sent to me like this. I wouldn't have picked this up or read it if it had not been sent to me and I am perennially grateful to all those publishers who give me books to review, my reading life is so much the richer for their generosity.

I am quietly compiling my list of Books of the Year 2010 and this is going on my list which is growing very quickly indeed as I have had a bumper year so far and we are only at the end of July!

A New Omnibus of Crime

I seem to have spent most of the summer, so far at least, reading crime and detective fiction of various shades of intensity. This was not planned, it just seems to have fallen that way, and I am having a thoroughly good time.   I was in Waterstone's yesterday and picked up their Quarterly (new format, don't like it or the texture of the paper), and found that they, too, are featuring crime writing which made for an interesting read and gave me some names to check out.

A couple of months ago, Oxford University Press sent me A New Omnibus of Crime which is being published in paperback next week.  Back in 1929 Dorothy L Sayers, the creator of the divine Lord Peter Wimsey, published her landmark anthology The Omnibus of Crime, and the editors of this anthology, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert, decided it was time to produce a new edition representing the genre since then.  I was very pleased to have this drop though my letterbox (and not through the kitchen window as seems to be the current practice from the GPO), and checked the list of authors featured with interest.  They include Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, Ross Macdonald, Dashiel Hammett, Sue Grafton, Patricia Highsmith, Ian McCall Smith and Sayers amongst others.

I will be perfectly honest here and own up to the fact that I am not a particular fan of the American school of thriller writing.  I find it all a bit hard nosed for me and cannot empathise with the characters. That sounds a daft thing to say as I have no problem with this when I read a Ngaio Marsh or a Ruth Rendell and there are pretty unsympathetic characters in books by these authors, particularly Rendell who can make you feel nauseous at times, so it is not as if I know or have met people like this, but on the whole I find the USA scene a bit bewildering though I am trying more American authors as I don't wish to miss out on a brilliant story teller just because of my narrow mindedness.   I have been a life long fan of Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct novels, so I am not a lost cause,  and was delighted to find a short story from him in this anthology - and a damn good one too.

But on the whole, it is the British authors I gravitated to first when flicking through the New Omnibus of Crime and I was not disappointed.  First up, The Man who Knew How by Dorothy L Sayers.  Her character, a man called Pender, while riding in a train car, falls into conversation with a complete stranger seated across from him who is reading a detective story and they fall into conversation about murder:

"Oh come" said Pender"You can't expect committing a murder and getting away with it is as simple as shelling peas"

"Ah!" said the other man "You think that do you?"

The other man then goes on to tell him of a perfect method of murdering somebody while in their bath with an untraceable poison "It is odd how often one seems to read of people being found dead in their baths. It must be a very common accident. Quite temptingly so...."

The man leaves the train leaving Pender disturbed and worried but he shrugs off  his concerns and decides to forget about him, until the next day when he sees a headline in the local paper "Wealthy Manufacturer dies in Bath. Wife's tragic Discovery"

OK I am going to stop there. This ten page story, written in 1932, is a simply perfect example of Dorothy L Sayer's craft and had me pinned to the sofa while I read it and left me longing for more.  Quite quite brilliant, most of the action taking place inside the mind of Pender as he stumbles across more deaths which happen when the deceased is in the bath and he becomes increasingly obsessed and panic stricken and determines to do something about it.  We are at one with his fears and outlook and it is this which works the Sayers magic.

This New Omnibus of Crime is excellent.  I have merely given you a taster of its content but it is packed with treasures and much though I would like to review each story, I had better not or else this post will be the longest ever, and I would rather you went and purchased a copy and discovered its gems for yourself.

I cannot go though without mentioning three others:

Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation - John Mortimer. Have not read any of these books and this made me laugh and want to discover more.

Great Aunt Ellie's Fly Papers - P D James. O joy! An Adam Dalgliesh story, full of grace and delight as is always with this superb writer.

Loopy - Ruth Rendell.  If ever I happen to bump into this author, I think I will probably turn and run. She is the mistress of psychological oddities and insight and this story is, well, mmmm.  The editor says that "Rendell writes from the point of view of a mother's boy who discovers a wild way to get relief from the unwelcome challenge of leading an adult life. The result may make your skin crawl".   He was right, it did.

As I have said before I cannot keep all review copies sent to me, I just don't have the space, but this one is staying. Brilliant.

Peaceful Sunday

Placido Domingo means Peaceful Sunday and I nearly put that in the title line but then thought you would be expecting my thoughts on this wonderful man when, in fact, this is a bijou ramblette to tell you I am having precisely that, a peaceful sunday and will be listening to the Prom later on and chilling.

Just popped in to say hello to you all really and to say that I am working my way through the entire Stephanie Plum oeuvre by Janet Evanovitch who I discovered a week or two ago when those nice kind people who are publishers sent me a copy of her latest, Sizzling Sixteen.   Once I got into the style and its laid back narrative, I loved it and as there are 20 of these, plus others I decided to get stuck in. Am doing well and will write about them later on in the week, but for the moment just to say that they have had me falling about laughing and I simply LOVE them.

Off to Cambridge tomorrow and London on Tuesday but will try and blog when I get back.

Promise.

Samsung Wave - I love you

I have a new phone and I am totally in love with it. OK I exaggerate a trifle but it is super uber-cool and is exerting a dreadful fascination over me.

I have had my current phone for three years and used Pay as you Go.  My daughters complained it was never on and I told them that if they wished to speak to me during the day they had my work number, in the evening they had my home number and when I was on the train it was never on because I did not wish to add to the stream of moronic conversations going on around me and all I wanted to do on the commute was plug in my iPod and go to sleep. But if I travelled or was meeting people then having a mobile in the car or the handbag was good, I felt safer knowing it was there, but I never used it as a conversational tool.  

It has changed now.  I am finding with all the running around I am doing, the drives up to London, the calling and texting to Australia, replying to parents of grandchild who call regularly to make sure I have not dropped her down the toilet, that I was topping up my credit at an alarming rate, so it made economic sense to get a contract phone.  OK, if I am really honest I wanted a new flashy show off one with all the bits and pieces etc but where to start?  First of all, I went into the Car Phone Warehouse where I spoke to a 12 year old who obviously viewed me as a member of Noah's Ark and whose reaction when I told him my current phone was three years old was along the lines of 'Wow, that's like, ancient'.  he didn't quite call me Dude but I could see the word hovering. One look at my face dissuaded him.

Went home armed with enough leaflets about Android, Wifi, Touch, MMS, Apps (short for applications so I am told, what we old fashioned users would call Downloads but admit doesn't sound so snappy) to sink a battleship and after reading and comparing tariffs and generally having a nervous breakdown I hurled them all into the bin.   Left it for a week or two and then went out and got same leaflets and read them all over again and decided on the Samsung Wave.  My daughter and son in law have an iPhone, way out of my league really and far too expensive, plus I don't like Apple's ethos and hard sell, and it looked far too complicated. 

So the Samsung Wave it is and I have spent the last few days coming to grips with it.  It has all the usual attributes as well as an excellent camera which takes pin point sharp pics, wifi, email, diary, calendar, blah blah blah.  (The pic on left is an illustration of all the stuff that is available, does not show up on the screen unless you want it to). Also has Twitter (and yes I now Tweet regularly which stuns even me) and when I managed to send a Tweet using the phone my children and I went into a collective faint, and then a repeat faint when I used Facebook as well.  I tested You Tube and within 30 secs had Placido Domingo singing Nessun Dorma which threw me completely and then I downloaded a Soduko App and felt really pleased with myself. There are quite a few gizmos I will not be using, the Jukebox not for me and defo not the TV which seems to specialise in 'erotic tv' ie - porn and which I can live without.

Has not taken me as long to adapt to this as I thought it would but I have been nipping in and out of the T-Mobile store in Colchester for geek help and they have been really great there, explaining everything to me when I got my knickers into the proverbial.  One thing I cannot do at the moment is send Picture Messages and when Chris, who is now my new best friend, tried to load it he couldn't do it either which made me feel better so he contacted Samsung etc and it seems that the settings for this aspect of the phone have not been downloaded onto the handsets because they are 'too new'. Hello? Wouldn't you think that before the phone went on the market this would be done?  so I have to wait for a week or two until T-mobile has these mythical settings and then I will go in and they will sort it out. 

I was really cross about this - I WANTED TO SEND A PICTURE - and I could feel a Grumpy old Woman of Colchester mood coming upon me and a Hissy Fit looming, but then common sense took over. Hey Elaine, will you die of a broken heart or will your life turn into a barren wilderness if this facility is denied you for a bit? Will the world come to an end?  The answer of course is no, so I wiped what my daughters call The Look off my face (I knew it was there as all the guys in the shop had locked themselves in the staff room) and told them, no worries I would come back later on in the week and see what is what.

So apart from that irritant, the phone is great, I am really pleased with it and because I have 600 minutes of chat, which even I cannot use up in one month, and 500 texts it would make sense to use this phone most of the time in future and cut my land line usage back though I would never be without it. I also have a free 'booster' whatever that is, thrown in for Australia so all in all I now feel I am au fait with the  Android system, the touch screen and am at one with the cutting edge of technology.

On one of my visits into T-mobile there was a lady there, about my age, wanting a new phone but saying she was worried about the touch screen and whether she could manage it so with the air of a seasoned user (ie - four days) I whipped out my phone, gave her a demo and said Go on get one you will be fine.

I tell you there is no stopping me now.

To Infinity and Beyond............

The Woodcutter - Reginald Hill

Books are piling up and I have several to review and if I am not careful I am going to fall behind and end up tearing my hair out with frustration and guilt.  I have said before that if publishers are good enough to contact me and then send me books, the least I can do is to have a look at them, read them and write about them.  Not always possible but I do hate the thought that books are sent out to somebody who then totally ignores them.  My catholic conscience troubling me again.

I am also a member of the Amazon Vine programme which sends me a newsletter once a month listing a whole range of books, talking books, computer program etc for me choose from, read or test and review.  Some of the choices are pretty weird and I wonder what they are doing on the list, but there are also books that I might read but not necessarily so (I feel a song coming up...) and as they are sent to me by Amazon and not the publisher/author somehow I feel the shackles are loosed and if I think it is crap then I say so. Believe me some of them are.

BUT lots of goodies come my way and last month I was offered The Woodcutter by Reginald HIll.  Not a Dalziel and Pascoe book which I was quite grateful for as much though I love them, I felt the last one was a slight disappointment, and am beginning to wonder if there is any mileage left in this pairing.  Dalziel has gone from being a repugnant, fat and rude character to one who is now more vulnerable and not on a par any more with Pascoe following his recent brush with death, and the dynamics have changed.  So perhaps the author is having a think about this and in the interim wrote this stand alone book which I have to say is  a simply stonking read.

Wolf Hadda is the son of a woodcutter living in Cumbria and working on a large estate. He marries the estate owner's daughter, in the teeth of opposition from his own father, as well as that of his bride.  Wolf has returned to claim her as his own after he has made his way in the world, become a millionaire business man and has proved his worth.  All is well with him and his family  until one day it all falls apart when he is woken in the morning by a thunderous knocking at his door and the police raid his house, his files and his computer and arrest him for a heinous crime.   He is thrown into prison whilst protesting his innocence, abandoned by his family and friends.  And there he stays for seven years in silence, withdrawn into himself, until a young idealistic prison psychiatrist, Alva Ozigbo persuades him to talk to her and, under her guidance, obtains his parole and Wolf returns to his old family home in Cumbria left to him by his now deceased father.

It was at this stage when Wolf starts to seek out his detractors and so called friends and starts to plot and plan revenge, that I suddenly realized this was the Count of Monte Cristo.  Not sure if this was a  deliberate ploy by the author, or whether I am reading too much into it, but for the Chateau d'if, think of Wolf's prison; the count had to use cunning and patience to escape as did Wolf which we find out later on in the narrative; once out his Machiavellian efforts to track down those who betrayed him, including his wife who divorced him and then married his friend and lawyer, and to punish them in a way that uniquely suited their behavior and the slow destruction of all involved, is similar to those meted out by the Count and once I realised this I found I was enjoying the book more and more.

I discovered Reginald HIll's books a few years ago, rather late into the Dalziel and Pascoe oeuvre, the first one read by me being Death's Jest Book, which blew me away with, not only its plotting and narrative, but also its use of the English language, so beautiful and intricate that I found it necessary to have a copy of the Oxford dictionary next to me to check out some of the words used by the author.  I then read the rest of the books in this series, finding some of the earlier ones a tad disappointing, but noted that as he wrote more and more about this twosome, the better they got.    I gather there are also novels about a character called Joe Sixsmith and I intend to have a crack at these as well - one day when I have time....

I think The Woodcutter is far and away the best he has written so far, in my opinion anyway.  There are leads and clues leading to Wolf's character laid out at the very start of the book so be warned, best to read these pages carefully.  I had to nip back to them later on in the book when connections began to click in my mind and when we slowly beging to realis who was really behind Wolf's incarcaration in prison for a crime he did not commit, and that there were bigger forces at work than originally thought.

An intricate, well plotted story that will lead you all the way up the garden path and then down again - it certainly fooled me and as more and more layers were uncovered towards the end of the book, I realized that I hadn't had a clue what was going on and was left gasping at the final solution and the ultimate twist at the end.

This is not the first time this author has done this to me and daresay it won't be the last. 

 Brilliant.

The Good Granny Guide - Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall

I said yesterday I would review the Good Granny Guide  so here goes.  Sent to me in an eclectic mix of books by Short Books which also included a book all about the friendship between a man and an orang utang, so I think eclectic is the right word to use.

As I have recently become a grandmother (I may not have mentioned this...) I asked for a copy of this  title and it is simply wonderful.  Witty and wise and full of commonsense and good advice this will be staying on my bookshelves.  I appreciate this is a niche market so all of you who are not grannies can skip this post if you so wish.   Jane F-W is a grandmother of five and so has hands on experience and has also gathered first hand tips from other grandparents and their families in different situations.

When I became a mother I was all at sea, totally panic stricken at the thought that I was responsible for this scrap of humanity. Doesn't matter if you are a scientist, a genius, a tea lady, a hairdresser or a barrister (I nearly put down a nun, but then I thought you would have serious problems in that case), old or young, the arrival of a new baby reduces us all to gibbering panic stricken idiots and this is where grandmothers come in.  Please don't think I am ignoring grandfathers at this stage, it is just that I usually find most first time mothers want their mum around, I was no different.  I so remember her being there, making me cups of tea, cooking me meals, reassuring me that yes, Kathryn was breathing when she was asleep etc etc etc. Just knowing she was there made me feel better so when my utterly gorgeous sublimely beautiful granddaughter, Florence was born, and I received the call for Help, off I went.  For three days I made the parents stay upstairs holed up in their bedroom, got up in the night when the baby was crying and would not feed, reassured them when they were both in tears, cooked and cleaned and lost count of the number of times I belted up and down the stairs.  At the end of three days when things were settling down and the baby was flourishing I went home, with aching calf muscles and totally exhausted and took to my bed for 24 hours.  I was thus refreshed and reinvigorated and ready for the fray again.

There are certain unwritten rules which apply to grandparents and if you are wise and savvy you pick them up without having to have them pointed out to you.  When I read this book, I laughed and nodded as it all hit home.  The first two below are mine own, the third cited in the book often, is one I really also agree with.

Do not give advice during the pregnancy. Listen, nod and agree. When daughter and son in law reveal plan for their ordered life and how they are going to manage with the baby and work from home, nod again - sagely this time and utter words along the lines of 'great, marvellous, you seem to have it all sorted'.  And then go away and quietly contemplate in corner as you think they won't know what is going to hit them.   

When the baby arrives agree that he/she is the most beautiful baby in the world. And I tell you, every grandmother knows this immediately. It is a fact, rock bottom solid and nobody can tell you otherwise.

Do not attempt to impose your old baby routines on the new arrival or tell parents of same. Long time has passed since you were a mother and the whole outlook on parenting has changed.  Pursed lips and 'well, you were dry at 18 months' or 'you were on solids at four months' are comments which will not be well received.   Quite often parents will ask you for your opinion and what you think and when this has happened to me I always preface my response with, 'well it was a long time ago don't forget but I did this....' and then leave it.  

 "A child's grandparents are not just two spare sets of parents; understudies waiting in the wings for their big moment when the parents slip on a banana skin.  Good grandparents may be prepared to do everything a parent does and more but they should never forget that the children are not their own"

I am a naturally authorititive bossy person and love to organise events and people, and there have been times in the last few months when I have wanted to put my oar in and say something about the way of dealing with certain matters with the baby, but I have not said a word, unless asked.  Those out there who know me well will appreciate that this requires an effort of monumental proportions, but I am finding it easier as each week goes by to relax back as it is clear to me that their parents are doing a good job, settling into parenthood beautifully and simply adore their child.   I know they will ask me if they need advice or help so I keep quiet. 

Not only is this book full of comments and information from other grandparents, it is also packed full of useful information on games, entertaining the children, taking them out and about and written in such a wonderful style.   It is clear to me that Jane F-W is a super granny and I bet is adored by her grandchildren and her own children as well.

Difficult to put into words what I felt when Florence was first put into my arms.   The love that swept over me knocked me sideways and each time I see her I become more and more besotted with this child who beams and smiles and looks genuinely happy to see me when I arrive. The smile that lights up her face when she realises this gurning woman in front of her is, yes grandma again, fills me with joy. Yesterday she fell asleep in my arms and before I popped her down for her nap I just sat and held her close and found tears of happiness trickling down my face.   I loved being a mother and now I love being a grandmother.

It is clear that the author of this book feels the same way and that is why I found it such a delightful and helpful read. 

My thanks.

Tuesday Thoughts

I am off to London today and promise faithfully will be reviewing, if not this evening, then tomorrow morning.  I do feel guilty when I don't write about all the lovely books I have just read but just soo busy at the moment and still recovering, in a good way, from the glorious musical weekend we have just had - Mahler, Wagner and Verdi.

One book I am going to write about soon is The Good Granny Guide by Jane Furnley-Whittingstall which I read with huge enjoyment a couple of weeks ago. Not only is it witty and funny but packed full of sensible advice for Grannies (and Grandpas) anywhere.   As I am now a besotted and doting grandmother, will be cuddling Florence in a few hours, this book has already been read from cover to cover and is....but I will stop there and write later.

Apropos of nothing, I heard and saw a postman half an hour ago so opened my front door in my lobby to see if anything there as they quite often just leave books etc outside my door but no, nada.  Just popped in the kitchen a few minutes ago and lo and behold there were two parcels on my draining board! My window which was open a few inches had been pulled wide and he dumped them inside. Now I know that the local post office have delivered endless parcels of books over the last few years and know me and my location well, but I was rather taken aback to find these perched on top of the dishes.

"The post office is a wonderful establishment!  The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing....so seldom any negligence or blunder appears. So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong - and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost!"    Emma - Jane Austen

I bet the residents of Highbury never had their post shoved through their kitchen windows....

Daniel Radcliffe to star in The Woman in Black - Telegraph

Radcliffe, who described his new job as ''thrilling'', will play Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer who is ordered to travel to a remote corner of the UK and sort out a recently deceased client's papers.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

This looks interesting - book scared me witless so not sure I will actually go and see this but sure it will be a huge success. How can it be otherwise?

The Proms have started - hooray!

Am sitting her cogitating on the glories of the Proms - Mahler on Friday, Wagner on Saturday and tonight listening to Verdi.  I have written about the opening of this year's season and, in particular, Der Meistersinger which I attended last night, over on Random Arts so do nip over and have a look.

Back to book reviewing tomorrow.