Random Jottings

Weekend Ramblings

Slowly getting back into the swing of things both on and off blog now, though a visit to Colchester town centre yesterday to go to bank and carry out a few errands, left me feeling exhausted but no need to repeat that rather depressing experience for a while yet.   Have been generally catching up on reading and posting and have two or three reviews which I will settle down and write tomorrow ready for the coming week.

In the meantime this will just be one of those Random Rambles when I note down things of interest - well to me, anyway, and hope they will be for you as well.

Whenever I drive to Cambridge I park my car in one of their excellent Park and Ride Schemes and the one I use is called Trumpington.  UK readers of a certain age will understand why each time I park I mutter under my breath Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub.  For others, I need to explain. These were the names of the fire brigade at Trumpton (geddit?), which was a simply delightful children's programme of the sixties and seventies.  My two used to love sitting down and watching these little wooden figures dealing with the fire call out and the rest of general village life.  The other part of this trilogy was Camberwick Green and Chigley and, thanks to some pushing by the Trumpton creator, who is now 90, the BBC has digitally remastered all 39 episodes of this trilogy and they are to be released on DVD.  In its usual careless way of mislaying programmes that the BBC don't care about but we do, the master copies could not be found, but Mr Murray persuaded them to have another look and lo and behold they were found in a vault. Odd that....

I am about to nip over to Amazon and check these out as I simply cannot wait to show these to Florence and see what she makes of them.

Another little tit bit of news which has delighted me is that a film is being made of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie and shooting starts in March.  This is a simply gorgeous book which I reviewed here when it was first published.  Sadly, the author died before its publication and never saw it in printed form though she knew that it was being published.  It is a one off and a simply marvellous one off at that.  If you have not read it may I urge you to do so. Kate Winslet will play writer Juliet Ashton who penned columns for a magazine during Word War II.  After the war she is contacted by Channel Islander Dawsey Adams and, as their correspondence continues, the story unfolds of how a book society was established on Nazi-occupied Guernsey to fool curlew patrols. It is being directed by Ken Branagh and this is a film that I am really looking forward to seeing and only hope that it does the author justice.

It is now Saturday evening and it is dark outside and I love the feeling of the curtains drawn against the cold and all cosy indoors.  I am just embarking on my re-read of Great Expectations and, while I loved the recent TV version, am looking forward to acquainting myself one more with, not only the characters we saw on the BBC, but seeing more of Biddy and the Aged P.

So supper calleth and later on two more episodes of Borgen, the political drama  on BBC4 which is a channel that proves you don't need to dumb down and can show interesting, well made and adult programmes that don't cater to the masses.  BBC has, naturally, cut its budget.....

What larks!

A lifetime Burning - Linda Gillard

You will remember last year I reviewed The House of Silence by Linda Gillard who, fed up with being told it was not 'marketable', took to the e-book route and sold thousands. She also guested on Random telling us how she did it here.  If you missed this fascinating post first time around, please do check it out and all the comments as well which are quite an eye opener.

Well, never content to sit back Linda is now motoring ahead with more.   Her second book, A Lifetime Burning' is now available for your Kindle and, having read all of this author's books, I have to say that I think this is her best.  It was her second book and I felt a huge leap forward from her first, Emotional Geology, and on checking my archives this is how I reviewed it back in 2007 (PLEASE NOTE SPOLIER ALERT)

"I have just finished reading A Lifetime Burning and am still trying to come to terms with it.  My first thoughts are is that it is a huge leap forward in terms of writing and flow of language from her first Transita novel Emotional Geology.  I wonder if that book was used as a practice run, one that Linda Gillard had had gestating for a long time and was just eager to get published and out of her system?  This latest book is much more mature and so much better written.  It is almost as if Emotional Geology had given her confidence in her abilities and enabled her to write such a good second novel.

BUT, and there is a but in all this - I found the subject matter disturbing.  There is no attempt to gloss over the incestuous love between Flora and Rory and portray it as making them happy in any way, indeed it is made clear that this love brings nothing but sorrow. A reader coming to this book with no knowledge of its subject matter could read for quite a while before it is clear where the story is leading.  Once you reach the point of realisation it will not matter, you will read on as by then Flora and Rory have a hold on the reader and you will want to find out what happens to them both".

Well, I see no reason to change my opinion in the intervening years. I think this was a very brave book to write and taking quite a chance as a second novel.  I know that publishers don't like books that they cannot categorise or which fit neatly into a box which they can tick, and Linda has yet to produce anything that can be dealt with in this way.  Rather each book is a surprise, a 'wonder what we are going to get this time' kind of a read.  She keeps her readers on their toes and though publishers may not like it very much, we do.

Delighted this is now available as an ebook and that the pleasure of reading this is just one click away.  I am full of admiration for Linda taking charge of her books and publishing in this way and wish her luck, not that I think for one moment she needs it.

One last thing, if you should purchase and read any of Linda's books on Amazon and have enjoyed it, but don't feel like writing a review, please do click on 'Like' which is next to the book's title.   Apparently this is noted by Amazon and makes a difference.

So off you go - get clicking. At 88p this has to be the bargain of the century.....

Diving Belles - Lucy Wood

As many of you probably know, I am not a lover of short stories.  I prefer to get my teeth into a tale, to get to know the characters, the settings etc and most short stories don't have time to do this (unless you read some of Trollope's all of which are practically a novella) and I am left feeling a bit short changed. I am told by those in the know that the art of writing a short story is only granted to a few, that it is harder to write than a novel and the craftsmanship involved is difficult. Well, yes I agree and some time ago I wrote about short stories for another blog and surprised myself at just how many I had read, but and it is a big but, I really hate stories that are described as 'exquisite', 'enchanting' 'a beautiful vignette', 'haunting' and worst of all 'eclectic'.  This is a word I like to use myself but have cut back on its use on Random as it generally appears nowadays in mags such as Ideal Home and House and Garden to discuss somebody's style (quirky and vintage are another two bugbears but will save those for a Rant Day) and is now in danger of over use.

However, it is very very difficult not to use 'quirky or 'eclectic' when reading Diving Belles by Lucy Wood.  Of course I could say weird and odd and off the wall and also a bit creepy to describe this collection which Bloomsbury very kindly sent to me.  And in case you are wondering why I am reading short stories if I dislike them so much, is because I simply could not read a full length book while my head was feeling as if it was stuffed with cotton wool as it has been for the last ten days.  I do hope that this does not give the impression that I am treating this collection with less attention than it deserves, not so, but it just happened to fit in with my attention span.  I have dipped in an out of these stories from Lucy Wood - this is a debut book I gather and the author certainly has a vivid imagination.    The title story, Diving Belles sets the tone. 'Straying husbands lured into the sea can be fetched back, for a fee'.   Ivy's husband strayed many years ago and now she has discovered that a local firm will drop you in a diving belle down into the sea to find missing husbands.   So she decided to try it.

"Salt and spray leapt up to meet the bell as it slapped into the sea. Cold dark water surged upwards and Iris lifted her feet, waiting for the air pressure in the bell to level off the water underneath her footwear"

Close your eyes and picture an old fashioned diving belle, the kind one would find in a Jules Verne or HG Wells story and you will find yourself feeling rather creepy at the thought of Iris descending into the murky depths of the ocean straining her eyes thought the portholes in the hope of seeing her long gone husband.  Imagine the cold and the dark and the smells and sounds of the sea all around her. Scary.

"Then he was there. He broke away from the group and drifted through the wreck like a pale shaft of light......no one had told her that he would be young. At no point had she thought he would be like this, unchanged since they'd gone to sleep that night all those years before....he swam closer and she leaned back on the bench and held her breath suddenly not wanting him to see her"

And of course, this is the sad part - he had remained young and beautiful and she had aged "She felt tired and uncomfortable...she wanted tea and a hot water bottle"

A melancholy little story and and laden with atmosphere. This sets the tone for the rest of the collection, all of the stories slightly off the wall and, yes, quirky.   I cannot say that I loved them, not sure that the reader is supposed to, and they left me feeling a bit shivery and I made sure the curtains were drawn and nobody could get in, but their oddness and freshness certainly are the products of an author with a perceptive eye.

Do read them and if you do, let me know what you think.  I loathe cliches but can only find one way of describing my reading of Diving Belles, I was out of my 'comfort zone' and that is not a bad thing.

Thus endeth my first book review of 2012.

Random Monday - on the mend

Once again I have to say thank you for all the comments left on the blog, emails sent off blog and via Twitter and Facebook, all wishing me well and offering me advice and medicine and cures and general good wishes.  You are ALL wonderful and I may sound gushing but I don't care.

I am now feeling much better, a tad wobbly still, but better and oh the relief that the aching bones, chattering teeth and soaring temperature have gone.  Next year I simply must have a flu jab and not shy away from it as I have hitherto having had a bad experience years ago.  This is the third year running I have been pinned to my bed in this way and it is plain daft to suffer when it can be avoided.

I am hoping in the next day or so to get a book review up which would be good. Let's face it, this is a book blog and not a Medical Bulletin and it will be good to get back to it.  When you are ill in bed it always seems as if one should be able to read but of course the reality is different and it is only in the last few days I have picked up a book or two.

Those of you who check the side bars will have noticed in the last month or two I have been reading the Harry Bosch books of Michael Connelly.  After I motored through the Jack Reacher books of Lee Childs (all of which I have now read, enjoyed but cannot remember a single word of any of them) I asked for recommendations from Random Readers and Connelly was one high on the list of recommendations.  I found a few of his in a charity shop and bought for the princely sum of 50p and started.  Not sure about a couple of them but persevered and then found I was really enjoying them. Read out of order, naturally, I never do anything in the right way so characters kept popping in and popping out, but it didn't upset me too much and then I got hooked.  Have downloaded a few on my Kindle (when you are in the middle of a binge read and you have to had the next book NOW, the Kindle is a godsend) and am now slowing down else I will run out again.   One which really gripped me was entitled The Poet, all about a serial killer (I tell you they have been following me around all 2011), it was a stand alone book not a Harry one and it was brilliant. Cliff hanging ending and I gather Connelly was begged to do the sequel - well, he did and this time Harry featured.  I wasn't sure about that at first but it was well done and pretty gripping.

So another maverick, divorced, miserable detective to add to the Pantheon of Same and still have a few to go.  I put them to one side last week though as I found one nightmarish night, when I had a raging temperature, the serial killer got into my head and I could not wake up out of the awful dream I was having and when I did it was with pounding heart and drenched in sweat.  Decided Harry had to go on holiday for a week or two....

And then with perfect timing a little package dropped through my letter box from Jennie at Slightly Foxed and inside was Look Back with Love by Dodie Smith, in those simply delightful SF editions. Navy blue, gold stamping on cover, complete with the the Fox on the front, a silky book marker and just the right size to slip into a handbag or, as in my case, perfect for a sick lady to read in bed.  I am half way through this wonderful memoir and will be reviewing later in the week.

I have also received a whole slick of Adrian Mole books in new editions from Penguin - do you know it is 30 years since he first appeared? - scary thought, so a lot of lovely things from lovely kind publishers.

Also first candidate for Book of the Year 2012 - The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak a stonking historical novel set in the Russian Court of the young Catherine the Great.  Great stuff.

Anyway, having written this and also having tidied up my flat which was A Tip I am now totally shattered and will return to sofa with cup of tea and remote control as I think I want to watch last night's Sherlock again.  Quite brilliant but a few things I am confused about so need to check them out. If I am still confused I may well blog about it as I know full well that there will be a genius reader out there who will be able to supply me with the answers.

So back soon and my thanks to you all, once again.

Shaky Random

Just dropping in for a short visit.  I now think I had the flu as the shivers and shakes and raging temperature and pounding head and aching limbs were not just a cold. Three nightmare nights when I had the most horrid dreams and knew I was asleep and that I would wake soon but didn't, left me totally shattered.  I woke up yesterday feeling that the fever had broken and oh the relief so got up to make a cup of tea and immediately ended up on my backside on the floor as my legs were like jelly.

I am currently doing a simply stunning imitation of a tiny, shrunken, old lady with a palsied hand and as I am 5' 9" in my stockinged feet and not exactly skinny, this takes some doing I can tell you, but I am managing it.   I tend to clutch at furniture as I stagger around and much though I want to eat I find I am living off cups of tea, boiled eggs with soldiers, digestive biscuits and the odd banana.  I have taken a chicken out of the freezer for tomorrow and luckily I made soup last week and have hauled that out as well.

Will be back again soon, but mind still like cotton wool and have not read anything at all for review in the last week, it has been Heyer and Christie and comfort reads.

Thank you SO much for all your comments and emails I have received from all round the world.  You are all so kind and sweet and I do appreciate every single one

Au reservoir

Miserable Random

Actually make that whiny moany as well as miserable. I have the mother of a cold which has laid me low and forced me to cancel a trip to London today when I was going to give my daughter and s-in-law a break so they could go out for a meal.   Apologised profusely and then had email from same daughter saying she was stricken with sinusitis and feeling rough so obviously something is doing the rounds at the moment.

Awake nearly all night with hacking cough, so made cup of tea and read and finally keeled over at 6am.  I do wonder how I would cope if I was seriously ill as I really really cannot stand being ill and get really pathetic with it all.  Anyway, just to l et you know that I may be absent until end of the week as I have a mind like cotton wool at mo.

It is also blowing a gale at the moment and what leaves are left on the trees are being whisked around in whirlwinds so I am probably in the best place.   My next visit to Oz, which will be next winter, I am seriously considering making a two month trip to get away from this dreary weather.

Ok back soon

Dickens, Dickens, Dickens

I write this on 3 January 2012 and have already read a comment or two in the papers that we may have had too much Dickens and that we will be Dickensed out by the end of the year.  We have already had the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations which I loved though it seems to have divided opinion, an excellent programme presented by Sue Perkins on the way Dickens treated his wife Catherine Hogarth, and the other night somebody called Iannucci who I am told is a wit and a comedian fronting a prog on BBC2.   I watched and was forced to switch off after 20 minutes for the usual reasons - it was an excellent radio talk and I spent most of it watching with my eyes shut in order to avoid the endless shots of running water, clouds, ruined churches and endless shots of people walking around with carrier bags. I presume the latter was to emphasise Dicken's 'teeming' London.   Next week we have the Mystery of Edwin Drood about which I know very little so am looking forward to that.  Mark you, as I have already seen the trailer about 12 times I am beginning to wonder if I need to watch.

Well I am going to be doing my bit about Dickens this month before everyone feels they have had to much of The Inimitable.  A guest post will be up in a week or so by a distinguished author and I am delighted to say that OUP have promised me a Dickens books (of which more later) as a prize in a draw. They have also promised to send it anywhere in the world which means anybody can join in regardless of where they live, be it Bognor Regis or Ulan Bator. 

I love Charles Dickens and have done since I first read David Copperfield, a junior version which finishes with his meeting up with Aunt Betsy, when I was about eleven.   I did not find out that it was much longer than that until a year or two later and was thrilled to bits. I found parts of the adult book uninteresting but do remember Uriah Heep very well (who doesn't?) and the ghastly Mr Micawber who I always found acutely annoying even at that tender age.  I read Great Expectations when I was about 13 and loved the first part of the book, but not so keen on the later stages when Pip went to London and became obnoxious.

The BBC in those long ago days always had a Classic Serial at 5.30 pm on a Sunday afternoon. I remember watching Oliver Twist. It had 13 half hour episodes and I never missed one. I have fond memories of watching these as a child. Is there anybody out there who remembers Patrick Troughton, the first Dr Who, as Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop?  Wonderful stuff.   These adaptations were put out at this time as they expected the family and, particularly children, to watch them.  Can't see the Beeb doing that now somehow.

I have most of Dicken's books on my shelves and over the next 12 months am going to have a try at re-reading some of my favourites.   I might try Great Expectations as I feel a renewed interest after last week and see what I think about it again. Must be over thirty years since I last looked at and that is far too long.

I will also be rewatching some of the DVDs which I have on my shelves.  I have one of Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations with Ion Grufydd as Pip, two versions of Bleak House and a rather sweet edition of David Copperfield with a pre-Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, playing the young David.

Are any of you out there planning on any reads, re-read, or book group readings of Dickens? Do let me know.   I would also love to know your own personal Dickens favourite.  David Copperfield and Bleak House are neck and neck as far as I am concerned each one taking it in turns to draw ahead and then fall back as I have a rethink.   Both wonderful works.

We have a big year this year in the UK - not only all the Dickens celebrations, but the Queen's Jubilee which I am looking forward to with all its pageantry and fun, and the Olympics, which I am not.

But that is a rant for another day........

2012 on Random - here we go!

One of my lovely readers has left me a comment saying she loves my blog and my book reviews but also 'I love your humorous vignettes of everyday occurrences.'  I think this is a very polite and kind way of saying she enjoys my rants as I think vignette is too nice a word to describe me when I get going, but I thank you!  I promise that there will be many such in the year ahead.

I shall be reviewing some books as well...

Well, may as well start the year as I mean to go with on with a vignette of my New Year's Eve.  I am a miserable old bag when it comes to Christmas, New Year and all the enforced jollity attached to it all. Oh I had a lovely Christmas Day with my family and feel blessed that I have this privilege when there are so many lonely people in the world, but the fuss and sheer hard work attached to it all, the pushing and shoving in the shopping centres (did most of my shopping on line this year) and the mad panic that we might run out of milk, drink, cream, mince pies etc when most shops are open on Boxing Day and we only have to last 24 hours before the Londis on the corner has its shutters up, drives me mad.  It seems a collective panic takes over.  I used to be just the same so not taking the moral high ground here but my Epiphany came one Christmas when I went to the supermarket with my daughters for the Christmas Shop. My husband, as usual, abnegated all responsibility for Christmas so it fell to me.   It was so horrendously crowded that the check out queues were running down the aisles so it was impossible to get at anything. In the end I parked Kathryn and Helen in a queue with the empty trolley while I slithered in an out of the crowds, crawled between legs and climbed over shoulders to get what I wanted, hurled it into the trolley and then went back for more.  By the time I had done this we were heading for the top of the queue. Even so it was a slow process and I remember glancing to my left and seeing a lady standing reading Teach Yourself Russian and could only imagine that she would be fluent by the time she got out of the store.

Then and there I decided this was not for me and I planned accordingly in the years that followed.  Now that I live on my own, no decorations go up and I don't have a Christmas tree.  I put the Christmas cards out which I receive and have a little wooden crib to remind me the proper reason for all this brouhaha, a potted plant festive style and that is that.

So in keeping with this Scrooge like tendency I stay in on New Year's Eve.  Now please don't think that this attitude has crept up on me with age, oh no, I have always been like this and now that I can do as I please, well I do.  The feeling that as it is 31 December 'We WILL go out and enjoy ourselves' is all too much to bear and so I stayed indoors and after all the rich food of the previous few days, cooked myself egg and chips with a cup of tea. I also rented two highly intellectual films, Aliens and Cowboys and Battle LA and settled down with the remote control and feet up.  Aliens and Cowboys did what it said on the tin and I must say was huge fun and I really enjoyed it.  Daniel Craig was James Bond with a US accent and a black hat and the curmudgeonly Colonel of the town was played by curmudgeonly Harrison Ford in a performance that I can only imagine he phoned in.

Battle LA - world being invaded by nasty aliens with nasty space machines and again fun.  It was all a bit gung ho and I thought it might end up going wildly over the top but it didn't.  OK it was full of cliches, the grizzled old Sergeant being put under the command of a young out of training school lieutenant who you just know is going to cock it up and redeem himself by a hero's death etc etc but done with enormous panache and the pace and excitement never let up and I found myself really enjoying it.

So my New Year's eve meant I had good food, enjoyable films, I was in the warm and didn't have to worry about how I was going to get home and I watched Big Ben strike the hour and then the fantastic firework display by the London Eye.   Quite spectacular.  Off to bed a happy bunny.

However, I am now sitting here with tickle in the throat, sore hot eyes and a general feeling of malaise so perhaps this is the Gods way of getting back at me for being such a pain.

Happy New Year everyone and my thanks for all your support, visits, comments and kind words in 2011. Long may they continue.