Random Jottings

Autumn Monday - reading, writing and relaxing

Much as I love autumn today was one of those days that do not endear this season to me. I can put up with cold and snow etc but I loathe windy days where your hair is whipped across your eyes and you have to lean forward to walk.  It has been raining quite heavily here in Colchester, all the beautiful gold and crimson leaves are being blown off the trees and are now lying in sodden heaps on the pavement, lovely to look at but treacherous to walk on.  So decided that today was a good time to tuck myself up indoors and do a few domestic bits and pieces and be warm and gemutlich.   This I have done and, as I have to fill in a tax return as I worked for a few months this year, spent an hour getting my figures and things together.  I will be doing this on line and oh my goodness what a hassle registering I want to do this, ringing up the IR Helpline when the system kept crashing, then having to wait for my activation code blah blah blah. Soooooooooooo boring.

It is now the part of the early winter days I love.  It is dark, I have pulled the curtains, the lamps are on, listening to the afternoon concert on Radio 3 and that wonderful feeling of knowing that there is nothing I have to do if I don't want to this evening.  Have my supper all ready to pop into the oven, then I will watch It Takes Two and see Jimi Mistry and Flavia being interviewed by Claudia and the obligatory tears at being voted off the show, then sharpen my wits with University Challenge later (do ANY undergraduates know anything about Shakespeare and poetry I ask myself?) and then settle down at 9pm for the final episode of Spooks to which I have become addicted.  I am linking you to an earlier post on this series in which I poured scorn and vitriol on its awful script etc etc and I still stand by this and the  tight lipped delivery of awful lines, but of course Richard Armitage has been in this for the last few series and that is the reason for my watching.   But I will own up and say I love it now.  Confession is good for the soul...

An interview with PD James in my paper this morning.   Wonderful woman who stands no nonsense and takes no prisoners.  I have just re-read The Private Patient, a copy of which I picked up at a book sale recently (have a sneaky feeling it was probably my copy I donated last year) and, as always when reading this author, felt the usual sense of keen enjoyment which always comes over me when I read her elegant writing and clear and clean style.  Not going to repeat myself so here is the link to my earlier review back in 2008.

Now in her nineties, PD James says that she has probably written her last book as they usually 'take about three years to write and I might not be here then'.  I would adore her to produce just one more Dalgliesh book, from purely selfish reasons, as I cannot bear to let him go but did suspect after the ending of the Private Patient where she finally marries him off, he finds happiness and is contemplating making this his last case, that there would be no more.

Faber are reissuing her earlier books as I mentioned last week and I intend to get hold of them all as I find I read and re-read these books as often as I do DL Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.

A great lady and a great writer.

Quiet Monday

This is going to be a quick post for Monday as I have just been watching Spooks.  As usual, over acted, lots of elliptical comments through tight lips and crap dialogue:

"Not sure I can do this much longer Ruth. Stop one disaster and another comes along"

"It's what we do"

Close up of protagonists looking at each other meaningfully in silence.  Honestly it is so BAD and so CORNY I am surprised the actors can say the lines without corprsing.  Tonight submersibles heading towards the Houses of Parliament were stopped at the very last minute. The question here is Why?  Surely blowing up Parliament would be a good idea.....

Anyway, the reason for watching this bilge which I freely admit I simply loved is that the unutterablygorgeoussexydelicious and eminently fanciable Richard Armitage is in it and I could sit and watch him quite happily reading the telephone book.  He charged around emoting danger and sexiness in equal measure, dressed in black mostly (oh be still  my beating heart...) and has left me with the need to go and lie down in a darkened room with a wet cloth on my head.

But before I do that just a quick catch up. Kathryn telephoned from Sydney this morning, her evening, and we had a great chat. She is doing brilliantly and has just won an award for being the best Business Manager in the whole of New South Wales and she has only been there for three months.  So proud of her. We discussed my visit and have decided that after taking me to the Opera House for my birthday YAY we are then going to go to the Great Barrier Reef for five days and then will come back to Sydney as Kathryn obviously has to go to work, and I will explore Sydney and reacquaint myself with that wonderful city and go on trips and we will be together in the evenings and weekends.  I think I have found a flat to stay in only ten mins from where she lives which is near Bondhi and the train station.  I am so excited I think I may spontaneously combust before I get there.

Am packing at the moment for a week away next week. I am going on a 'holiday' if that is the right way to describe it and doing something totally out of my comfort zone and yes I hate using that phrase, but cannot think of a better one.  I will be taking a complete blog break for that week so there will be seven days of Randomless Jottings so will try and get lots of stuff in before I go.  I am keeping the 'holiday' a secret till I get back and tell you all about it then.

In the meantime, bed calleth, tea calleth and Tess Gerritsen calleth. So off I go and back tomorrow.

PS - am putting a pic of Richard Armitage in the post just in case you have forgotten what he looks like.......

The Convenient Marriage - audio book

I am not normally a lover of audio books, no matter how well they are read, somehow the voices never match up to my ideas of how the characters sound, but on Sunday and Monday, I felt so depressed and fed up and found I was in a weepy state, so I slobbed around all day and decided to make no effort to do ANYTHING at all, and that included reading a book.

So out came this gem - Georgette Heyer's The Convenient Marriage read by, wait for it, wait for it, Richard Armitage.  Yes the unnutterablysexygorgeoussmouldering Richard Armitage for whom I nurture a  deep passion.   He has such a gorgeous, husky speaking voice (looks ok too) and I had heard that he had done a few of these for Naxos so decided to give it a whirl.

The Convenient Marriage is one of Heyer's wittiest and most delightful novels. Set before her Regency period so that the heroes wear plum velvet coats with embroidered waistcoats and cascading frills down their front, shoes with buckles etc. Heroines have plumes in their hair and patches and it is all great fun. Tells the story of Horatia WInwood aged 17 who, on hearing that the Earl of Rule has offered for her elder sister which will save the family fortunes, decides to rescue Elizabeth from this fate (as she loves another) and goes and proposes to the Earl herself.

On paper this is a singularly ill matched couple, but this is a Heyer after all and they fall in love with one another but don't discover this till the final page when we have read through kidnapping, seduction, gambling etc etc and it rattles along at a great pace.  I have read all of Heyer's books so often that I more or less know them off by heart and could recognise which bits had been left out in this abridged edition. However, it has been done very well and I can see that the loss of some of the dialogue and characterisation makes little difference to an audio book, though enhancing the reading experience.

So I sat and listened to the unnutterablysexygorgeoussmouldering Richard Armitage reading and what did I think?   Well, he was excellent.  Accents spot on, the drunken irresponsible Pelham, his brother in law and his friend Pomeroy, the effeminate and spiteful Drelincourt, cousin to Rule, Lord Lethbridge who harbours a long held grudge against Rule and decides to seduce his wife - all great.  My only problem was with his voice for Horatia.  OK, difficult for a man to do a woman's voice I know (and some audio books I have heard when a woman attempts to be gruff and masculine can be embarrassing), and for me this was the weakest spot of the reading.

BUT this is far outweighed by the rest.  Just sit back for a moment, close your eyes, and imagine Richard Armitage reading this with a sensual throb in his voice which has lowered by about two octaves:

"When I married you Horry, there was another woman in my life. She is not there now my darling, and in my heart she never had a place"

"Oh Marcus put me there" Horatia said on a sob

"You are there" he answered and caught her up in his arms and kissed her, not gently at all, but ruthlessly, crushing all the breath out of her body

All together now -  Swooooooooooooooooooooooooon...............