Random Jottings

Weekend Round up

This time last week I was involved in the catering for a birthday party for sixty people. A friend and I divided the work between us but it was still all go. I made four quiches (salmon, asparagus and cream cheese, bacon and egg and red pepper, red onion and Red Leicester cheese), a new recipe salad from Mary Berry which involved red Camargue rice, carrots, onions and peppers with a dressing made up of oil, vinegar, limes and honey; two tiramisus and organising the ordering and collection of salmon, ham and two birthday cakes and several dozen rolls.   It was non stop all afternoon and the one thing that I had really forgotten was just how hard it is to cater. The cooking is OK but it is the carrying, the lifting, the charging around etc that wipes you out. Last time I did something like this was nearly thirty years ago when I catered for a living but I was younger and fitter then. So this is my last big event of this type.

Was supposed to go to Orford on Monday to meet up with the family who had a cottage there for the week but my back 'went' on Sunday and I was bent double for a few days with a muscle spasm. I have these regularly if I overdo it and know that after three days or so of rest will clear it up. And so it did and I spent one day lying on the sofa watching England v India in a one day cricket international. We were pathetic as we always are in this format of the game and were thrashed.

Got to Orford on Thursday and greeted by a beaming Florence who ran to greet me when I arrived at the Quay where the family were crabbing. Beatrice was strapped in her buggy where she had to be put as she had been intent on hurling herself in the sea, and shrieked until she was let out and then she came careering across. Good lunch and then in the afternoon I looked after the girls for a couple of hours so that James and Helen could go out for a walk which they had been dying to do but could not manage with small children.   We sat and watched Mary Poppins which Florence is currently obsessed with and I had forgotten what a superb film it is. By the time we go to the Step in Time number with the dancing chimney sweeps both of them were bouncing up and down on the sofa and shrieking with enjoyment. Beatrice decided to do a forward roll on the edge of the sofa and ended up on the floor with a thump. I nearly had heart failure but she just laughed. 

Later on we all went to Orford Castle where it was really windy to fly Florence's kite (we all sang Let's go Fly a Kite from Mary Poppins as we went. You have to ignore what other people think when you are doing this sort of thing with grandchildren).  I kept my eye on Beatrice which involved charging after her when she took off and as the ground around the castle is incredibly hilly with dells and channels to fall in I had to be on the alert at all times. At one stage she was off so quickly I was too late to prevent her going over the edge on one of these dips which was about ten feet deep and she just rolled down it laughing her head off. Her father came charging after me and then we both just looked at her lying there and chuckling. Totally fearless that child.

I babysat in the evening and Florence slept with me which meant I woke up in the middle of the night clinging to the edge of a large double bed while Florence was spread out like a starfish....

On the way home the next day I drove via Snape and stopped off for coffee and a croissant. I do love that place and that part of the coast at Aldburgh and Thorpeness and Orford. There is a wild beauty about it like no other and the sea seems bigger and wider under the sky.

I am back at Snape on Sunday to attend one of their proms. No luck getting tickets for the John WIlson orchestra at the Proms at the Albert Hall this year, so going here instead. Should be great fun and more of that another day.

Have just rounded off the week by watching another of the one day internationals, fell asleep this afternoon while it was on (obviously riveting stuff) and woke up to find that India had trounced us again.

Quelle surprise.

Crime catch up

The title of this post sounds as if I have been on the lam with a black mask on my face and a bag marked Swag on my back, but it is not as exciting as that, it is merely a round up of my reading.

I mentioned earlier this year that I am beginning to wonder if I should rename this blog Random Crime as I have read such a lot in this genre over the summer. I had decided not to go abroad this year, my last trip to Australia with the delays and the nightmare that was Dubai airport was so awful it nearly finished me off, and I laboured under the misapprehension that staying in the UK would mean I would have a relaxed time. Au contraire. I have been so busy my feet hardly seem to have touched the ground. A lot of this is connected with the family move to Ealing, helping out with same, looking after grandchildren in the summer holidays etc etc, this week catering for a friend's birthday lunch, helping at the Felixstowe Book Festival and generally doing my impression, well honed, of a blue arsed fly.

Next year I may take myself off to Siberia. Sure it will be quieter there.

So crime it has been as I love them, I gobble them up and they relax me. Yes even serial killers have their charms when you are tired and you are sitting with your feet up and cuppa at hand.   Here goes:

Bitter Remedy - Conor Fitzgerald. Oddly enough I have started this round up with one of the crime series that are not an easy read. I do not mean that in any critical way, it is just that these require a bit of concentration and usage of the grey cells as they are more cerebral than others. I do not know why this is so, or even if I am the only one who feels this way, but these require more concentration from me.

They are set in Rome and feature Alec Blume, a resident American in the police force having lived their all his life. As per his private life is the usual mess, he is a maverick yadder yadder yadder but he has an interesting personality and I find him intriguing. Not sure I like him much mark you. He is on leave after a minor breakdown, his live in lover has left him as she does not want him to be involved in the upbringing of their child, and he signs himself up for a natural remedy course at a crumbling villa outside Rome. He is willing to try anything but when he gets there finds the course has been cancelled. Taken on a tour of the gardens by the hostess, Silvana and her gardner father, he is given a herb to try which fells him and is rushed off to hospital. There he meets Silvana's fiance who is involved in drug and girl trafficking and is a thoroughly shady piece of work. Instead of being on holiday he finds himself involved in trying to find a missing girl and bodies start piling up. Well written and worth your attention though it might be best to start at the first one in this series if you feel you want to give them a go.

Dark Horizon - Simon Hall. I have been lucky enough to have been sent all the books in this series by the author and enjoy them greatly. A TV reporter and a detective form a partnership in which they help each other with solving murders and providing Dan, the reporter, with the inside edge on the latest crime which keeps his ratings made boss happy.    In this latest a long siege of protesters is outside a huge monolothic shopping and office centre which nobody wants.  I have to say the one weakness in this book is that I am not quite sure why this should be so.   It is called Resurgam and one night during a protest a lorry is driven headlong through the gates by one of the more radical of the group, Esther, and a security guard is killed. Esther flees the scene and off goes the story.   

The story of Dan's personal life runs alongside the narrative and, yes you have guessed it, he cannot commit, his private life is a mess etc etc. At least in this book he sorts himself out.

The Frozen Shroud - Martin Edwards. This is the latest in this series which is set in the Lake District and features a historian turned occasional detective, Daniel Kind. I have read all of these and, once again, can recommend that you try them and read them in order to bring you up to date with the personal life of Daniel which, again, is......no need to go on.

Three bodies have been found - a maidservant at the local hall found bludgeoned to death, her face disfigured and a blanked put over her face which froze in the icy winter, hence the Frozen Shroud. It was assumed that she was murdered by the mistress of the house who had discovered her husband was having an affair with her. She promptly committed suicide and no further investigation took place.   Back to modern day and a sexy attractive Australian woman cutting a swathe through the local men, is also murdered in exactly the same way. Her violent ex lover fleeing the scene was killed in a car crash and once again the assumption was made the killer had been identified and no further investigation takes place. Five years later, yet another body and another fall guy set up to take the blame.

As always, loved it and the relationship between DCI Hannah Scarlett and Daniel is coming along nicely. Already looking forward to  the next one.

The WInter Foundling - Kate Rhodes.   I read the debut novel of this author a couple of years ago and my review is here. Thought it was excellent. Featuring psychologist Alice Quentin who is called upon to help Scotland Yard in certain cases, it was gripping with really good writing and, the word the Guardian hates, a page turner par excellence. Since then she has written two more, both well up to scratch and this latest is well up to scratch too with Alice taking a sabbatical to investigate the treatment of psychopaths in a high security mental prison (well somebody has to do it I suppose) where she meets one of the worst serial killers of the last thirty years. A series of deaths has all his hallmarks all over it and it gradually becomes clear that he has a follower, somebody who must work at the prison. But who?    Great stuff.

I have recently raved about Martin O'Brien and his Jacquot novels and am now re-reading them all over again. I find when I discover a series I enjoy I motor through them at the rate of knots and when I go back to them enjoy them even more and this is what I am now doing.

Right I think I have actually caught up withg my backlog. Praise be.

After Bath - Persuasion

Inspired once more by a trip to Bath I am re-reading Persuasion. I love all of Austen's writing; Sense and Sensibility, the story of the two contrasting sisters, Eleanor and Marianne; Northanger Abbey with a very silly heroine and a sharp amusing poke at Gothic tales; Mansfield Park, at first a difficult read with an irritatingly priggish heroine Fanny, but perhaps in the end, her greatest work and, of course, Pride and Prejudice about which nothing need be said.  I have read all of them many times, too numerous to count, but my favourite of them all is Persuasion.

Persuasion is Jane Austen's last book and it has an autumnal, elegiac, slightly melancholy feel about it.  Anne Elliot is 27 and unmarried and living at home with her vain father Sir Walter Elliot and her proud, snobbish elder sister Elizabeth.  Mary, the middle daughter who is a fussy, hypochondriac suffering from a permanent state of imagined ill usage, is married and away from home.  Anne is totally unappreciated by her family 'it is only Anne' which is a source of sorrow to her great friend Lady Russell who sees Anne's sterling qualities and similarity to her long dead mother.  Lady Russell exerts a strong influence on her and it is she who 'persuaded' Anne to refuse a marriage offer from Frederic Wentworth, then a lowly sailor, who she deemed not good enough for the 19 year old youngest daughter of Sir Walter.

 Sir Walter Elliot is deeply in debt and is forced to retrench and move to Bath, letting out Elliot Hall to an Admiral Coft and his wife who turns out to be sister to the long lost and loved Frederick. 

In Bath Anne finds find her father and sister very pleased with their situation and also boasting that Mr Eliot, their father's heir, is in town and is very anxious to be reunited with the family that he, purportedly, slighted many years ago.  He is charming, elegant, smooth talking and well bred and begins to pay marked attention to Anne.  It seems that he is the perfect match for her and Lady Russell, once more, tries to 'persuade' Anne that this would be a good marriage and would giver her a household of her own.  Anne is not so sure and while visiting an old school friend, living in difficult circumstances in Bath, finds out certain facts that are detrimental to Mr Eliot and show him for what he is, untrustworthy and scheming. 

Frederick is also in Bath and now deemed a much more worthy person than before by her family.  He is now a Captain and rich and can thus be admitted to their social circle.  By the time Anne and Frederick see each other in Bath they have met frequently in the company of others and Anne has had to suffer in silence, noting his apparent love for Louisa Musgrove and thinking that she has lost him for ever.  A surprise engagement announcement that Louisa is marrying another gives Anne hope that perhaps all is not lost. 

Anne has a steadfastness and quiet determination, a quality that Jane must have had in abundance and which she has passed on to all her heroines.  Eleanor in Sense and Sensibility shows this quietness and her adherance to what she knows to be the right behaviour no matter what, in total contrast to her sister Marianne;  Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, despised as she is by all her relatives save Edward, sticks to her principles throughout and is the only protagonist not to be taken in by the Crawfords; Lizzy Bennett, on the surface much wittier and light hearted than other heroines, also has determination and the strength of character to admit she has been blinded by prejudice.  Even Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, who seems to be the silliest of all the Austen heroines, shows remarkable tenaciousness in clinging onto Henry Tilney after she has spotted him and wins him, despite her seeming idiocy.  These girls have all got staying power!

I love the ending of this book and how it comes about.  Each time I reach the last few chapters I am on tenterhooks and want to read on to know what is happening, even thought I have read Persuasion countless times.  Anne is in Bath, in a hotel sitting room with the Musgrove family who have come to town to buy wedding clothes for their two daughters, Louisa and Henrietta. Anne is by the window talking to an old sailor friend of Captain Wentworth, Captain Harville. He is talking to her of the pain a man feels when he says goodbye to his family on setting sail, while wondering if he will ever see them again.   Anne believes that men are capable of 'everything great and good in their married lives'  but then comes the sentence that galvanises Frederick into action 'All the privilege I claim for my own sex..............is that of loving longest when existence or all hope is gone'

Shortly after this Captains Wentworth and Harville depart but before Frederick leaves he gives Anne a letter and places it before her with 'eyes of glowing entreaty'.  She opens it and this is what she finds:

"I can listen no longer in silence .......you pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me that I am not too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight and a half years ago.   Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you....."

You know Charlotte Bronte did not like Austen much and found her passionless. Well, she must be barking that is all I can say after reading the above.

I love love love this book and, for me, Captain Wentworth beats Mr Darcy any day.

Cooking up a storm

Check my cooking post over on http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_and_the_great_colc/2014/08/cooking-up-a-storm.htmlck

Bath 2014 - Jane Austen

 

One cannot come to Bath without thinking of Jane Austen. Two of her novels have Bath as a setting, Northanger Abbey and my favourite of all, Persuasion.  Every time I return from a visit here I have to read the latter again and my copy is now on my bedside table.

 

Here is a post with pictures of locations for these two novels.

 

 

 Anne was too much engaged with Lady Russell to be often walking herself but it so happened that one morning, about a week or ten days after the Croft’s arrival, it suited her best to leave her friend in the lower part of the town; and in walking up Milsom Street she had the good fortune to meet with the Admiral.   (Persuasion)

    

 

Every creature was to be seen in the Pump Room at different periods of the fashionable hours; crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people who nobody cared about and nobody wanted to see. ‘What a delightful place Bath is’ said Mrs Allen ‘and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here’  (Northanger Abbey)

 

 

 

After staying long enough in the Pump Room to discover that the crowd was insupportable and that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which everybody discovers every Sunday throughout the Season, Catherine and Isabella hastened away to the Crescent to breathe the fresh air of better company  (Northanger Abbey)

 

   

Upon Lady Russell’s appearance soon afterwards, the whole party was collected, and all that remained was to marshal themselves and proceed into the concert room (Persuasion)

 

 

 

Soon words enough had passed between Anne and Captain Wentworth to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk where the possibility of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed (Persuasion)

 

I am already looking forward to returning next year.

Visit to Bath

There are some cities I could visit again and again. York is one and Bath is another. Both have had Random visits this year and I am already planning to return in 2015.

I have enough material for a few posts on Bath so will spread them out a bit. First up, I just want to give you all a round up of what we did . We being my sister Judith and I. I drove up to Leicester to where my sister and husband live and then the next day off we went down the Fosse way to Bath. This is a lovely road away from motorways and roaring traffic and the countryside was beautiful.  I do love the English countryside so green and lush and driving along roads where the branches of the trees form an overhead canopy with dappled sunshine filtering through. Magical.   Drove through the Cotswolds which always seems to slumber peacefully as you go along passing villages with wonderful names: Wappenbury, Offchurch, Idlicote, Armscote, Pillerton Hersey, Knockdown and Old Sodbury. 

One village kept recurring, seemed to have moved around a bit like Brigadoon 'Loose Chippings'.   Also another delightful one called 'Hidden Dip'....

OK I am being silly.

So in Bath what did we do? Well, first up we went to the Crescent, No 1 to be precises, which is open as a museum so visitors could see what it was like living in such a beautiful place. Well, it was wonderful but, and it is a big but, after Judith and I had climed down 63 steps to the kitchen and viewed same, and scullery etc and then thought of going back up 63 steps, my thoughts were for those who had to go up and down these flights each day carrying hot water, coals, trays etc. Nightmare.   We were not supposed to take photos but, sneakily, I did get a few and here is the kitchen and the cellar entrance.

Then off to the Assembly Rooms for an exhibition of World War One costumes, including several from Downton Abbey, all of which seemed terribly tiny. Some of these women must be size eight. Most lowering.

Downstairs to the Fashion Museum which was fascinating and there was an area in which you could dress up in Victorian clothes. I tried one one and it was so heavy I could barely lift it up and I have to say that though a picture of me was taken I have deleted it as I looked the size of a house in it and did me no favours at all....

We also visited the Abbey and thought we might have a cuppa in the Pump Rooms but this being a Saturday in August it was heaving so we left it. Took a walk across Pulteney Bridge instead and by this time we had been on our feet for over six hours and were beginning to flag so back to our Bed and B which I will tell you about another time as it deserves more than a line.

I also have a Jane Austen themed post to write as well but that is for another day.

Back soon.

Knife Gun Poison Bomb - Martin O'Brien (Inspector Jacquot)

In an article in the Guardian this week a journalist listed all the cliches that book reviewers use on a regular basis and was pretty sneery about them all.    So, just to warn you, that three of these apparently appalling cliches are going to be used in this review.   The three words I should not use it seems, are:

Gripping. Page turner. Unputdownable. 

Well Guardian readers look away now because I am now going to tell you that Knife Gun Poison Bomb by Martin O'Brien, the latest Inspector Jacquot book is, guess what?  GRIPPING. A PAGE TURNER and UNPUTDOWNABLE.   So there.

Back in 2012 I was sent The Dying Minutes by this author and I opened it up, started to read it and that was that. Read straight through and totally hooked and here is my review here.

Since then I have read all of the Jacquot books and, after reading this latest, am embarking on yet another re-read as I simply love them. Have some on my Kindle so must download some more as I am hooked again.

So what is this about?   It is a multilayered, multi-charactered mystery which, as ever, all interlink and affect the outcome of the mystery/murders in a very clever way. It never seems contrived but arises naturally out of the narrative and story line.

First up, we have a Russian arms dealer who, having betrayed some seriously nasty people, is on the run heading for a new life with a new name and a new destination.  On paper a really horrid bloke but somehow I found myself rooting for him. Don't ask.

Secondly, there is an attacker on the loose. Somebody who can get close to the chosen target and twist a knife into the victim's gut and then slit their throat. Not nice but this killer is on a mission and has a reason for choosing the victims.  Then a wish for penitence sends the murderer to the local Catholic church for confession and forgiveness, terrifying the priest who hears the admission of sin.

And so we come to Daniel Jacquot, lovely gorgeous sexy Daniel with the crooked nose, the beautiful eyes
and dressed in his customary leather jacket and jeans. Oh be still my beating heart. He and Claudine, his lover, are happy and settled and looking forward to the birth of their child, or rather children, as she is expecting twins.  Rather alarmingly she is taken ill and rushed off to hospital and then to a special clinic where, to Daniel's relief, she rests and recovers.    Unfortunately, there is somebody in a bed in a room on the same floor who is recovering from the latest knife attack which he survived.   His bed is being guarded as it is none other than the Russian arms dealer who fell foul of the attacker and his identity has been revealed.

From several interested parties come assassins to finish him off.   One to knife him, one to poison him, one to shoot him and one intent on setting off a bomb and take some other infidels along with him as well.

Thus, the scene is set, for a simply nail biting finish and I really cannot say too much as I do not wish to give any clue to the ending. Suffice it to say, it does NOT end as I thought it would and the author caught me out beautifully and left me reeling.

I wish Martin O'Brien a long and healthy life and many years of happily writing ahead of him. This is Jacquot No 8 and nothing will satisfy me except in ten years time reading No 20.  

A terrific book and I am going to use a word that the Guardian cannot say is a cliche because I have yet to see this in the pages of the Heavies or even the tabloids for that matter. Knife Gun Poison Bomb is a stonkeroonie of a book. Not even sure if I have spelled that correctly but I don't care really.

If you have yet to make the acquaintance of the beguiling Inspector and his background of France and Marseilles and wine and food and sea and smells and ......well, just get on with it and read them.

Magnifique!

I am back from Bath. Lovely time and will spend today catching up before off on grandma duties on Thursday. Loads of pictures taken and will be sorted and up as soon as.

Driving through the English countryside with the sun shining and all green and fresh and through roads covered with arching trees creating a dappled tunnel. Nothing like it.

View from my bedroom window this morning

I am in Leicestershire with my sister and we are driving to Bath today along the Fosse Way. Looking forward to seeing this wonderful city again