More This and That

'There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again'.
Marcel Proust

My friend Sue sent me this quote. She also said it might make her want to read A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. The quote I appreciate very much, it’s utterly simple and deeply true. But read Remembrance of Things Past? Seven volumes of a total of 3,031 pages, containing more than 1,267,069 words, and more than 2,000 characters — it's a daunting read; not surprisingly, it is one of the longest novels of all time. Proust is also one of the greatest novelists of all time and this novel is his magnum opus, but starting to read it now? ‘Had we but world enough and time’ (Andrew Marvell’s ‘To his coy Mistress’) comes to mind. So Proust will remain unread by me. I had an idea after reading the quote : why not call the novels ‘Nostalgia’ for short? I thought that was rather clever of me but I don’t suppose many others do. Perhaps it’s someone else’s idea and  I just read it somewhere and I’m not really clever?

I helped bury a good friend of ours last Monday by attending his funeral, a man who’s son said of him in his eulogy :”my dad was an intellectual, to the point of possibly being a snob about it.” I like that. I like unashamed elitism, provided you keep it in the family, as it were.

Millie is becoming an ever greater worry. She tumbled down part of the stairs again. The vet said to make her stay downstairs, but how? My friend said to put a suitcase on the bottom step. Millie follows me around wherever I go in the house. She is on steroids now but really, she suffers from old age for which there is no cure. She has gone deaf too. When a vet says ‘it’s a question of quality of life now’ you know what o’clock it is. The other day we went on to the castle bailey where a lot of tourists were admiring the ruins. As she is wont to do, she went to every group for a bit of attention and to say hello and most people cuddled and stroked her. She obviously got confused by the assorted legs and hands, so she just lay down for a bit. I was down the hill by the five bar gate back into the field by now, waiting for her. I called and whistled and created quite a kerfuffle myself but she couldn’t hear me and, in the end, several people led her down the hill towards me. Clambering back up to meet them halfway I hurt my sore knee all over again; I am still limping.

Going to the gym with my sore knee is a bit of a problem too. I can’t put weight on it which means the treadmill and similar machines are out. But the rower and standbikes are fine. As are machines which I hope will reduce my flabby batwing upper arms a bit. I hate showing bare arms, I suppose anybody over fifty does. On the whole, I have quite taken to gym workouts, and Dan, my Fitness Instructor, who has measured my progress, is pleased with me. I have the suspicion that FIs are conditioned to praise all of their guinea pigs, how else are you going to go on jumping through the hoops? We all need to be praised. I genuinely like the gym because the exercise makes me feel good but I still have to force myself to go sometimes. Contrary creatures, we humans.

Old gardener comes two mornings a week at the moment. Because of the long winter and late start of the gardening year everything was delayed; with warmer days having arrived there was a sudden explosion of growth and, almost overnight, bare branches, dead plant stems and bare patches turned green, with weeds mostly. Gardener rests more often than he used to do but he still works very hard for a man of his age. I don’t mind a bit, it gives me a chance to chat. He and his missus seem to be happy in the new house, she even buys plants for the small garden, which is unheard of. They’ll have been married for fifty years in July. Gardener is already grumbling that they’ll be spending money on a tea party for the family and that he will be spending yet more when he takes her out for a celebratory meal. Like many of his background he grumbles about spending money on non-essentials when secretly he is proud that he has it to spend. Or so I read him, anyway.

Back to . . . .

. . . . . . a bit of this and a bit of that.

Still spending hours reading rather than writing or doing anything else creative. Still obsessed with the news, both here and across the world. How very foolish of me to search for items on Brexit, the humanitarian catastrophes currently unfolding in the Yemen and Somalia and Myanmar’s Buddhists' genocide of the Rohingya people in Asia. Who knew Buddhists are no less cruel than adherents of any other faiths can be, given half a chance and a great enough measure of hatred of ‘the other’? And then there’s the good old USofA and that magnificent example of how a democracy works.

So why do I feel this obsession? You tell me, I have no idea. As if life weren’t miserable enough already.

Book reading is different though, I am sticking with delightfully lightweight fare. I have just finished a tale by Amor Towles, a writer new to the bookshelves. 'A Gentleman in Moscow’ covers 32 years in the life of a Russian aristocrat who has been sentenced to house arrest in a small attic in a luxury hotel in Moscow. Should he risk leaving the hotel he’d be shot. In spite of these 32 years coinciding with the most harrowing period in Russia’s recent history the story is uplifting: how to make the most of a bum deal. I enjoyed it greatly. Grand literature in the Russian classic tradition it is not but tragedy is not what I’m after.

For much of the week I am ok but weekends are hard. There’s the poetry group, the German Conversation group, there’s a bit of shopping, a chat with a friendly soul while out with Millie, tradespeople and repairmen, hedge cutters, old gardener and Kelly the cleaner, the pleasure of a meal at the pub when family old and new come for a visit, or with other pensioners for the ‘seniors’ deal’. Only Kelly and old gardener come regularly once a week and I now spend quite a bit of time chatting with them rather than letting them get on with their jobs.

I remember the time after my Dad’s death when my own Mum must have been very lonely.  She used to ring me at least once a week, usually on Sunday morning. I remember feeling impatient with her, she’d ramble on and on about nothing much. Often she’d say “If only you had stayed in Germany”. Poor Mum. Even though I flew across and stayed with her every few months, particularly during her last couple of years - leaving Beloved, my relatively new husband,  alone - she had few friends and was unable to adjust to life on her own. Poor Mum indeed. I hope I will do better.

For quite some time I have been fretting over renewing my passport. I am still a German national and will forever be one. Now, after Brexit, I am even less inclined to apply for British citizenship. On the whole, people reassure me that after all these years living here, working here, paying my taxes and having British husbands throughout (one at a time) I will not be summarily deported. But if I were I’d simply sell up and move back to Germany, although I’d prefer not to. My life has been here for so long now I’d probably find settling in Germany difficult. So, I needed to renew my passport which cannot be done by post. After Beloved’s death and completion of the necessary paperwork following on, I finally had the space and time to go to Cardiff (or Liverpool) and apply with the Honorary German Consul in either of these cities. A train journey would get me there. That is until my leg and hip turned on me. I was in perfect agony for more than two weeks and the thought of travelling by train became a nightmare. In stepped my son. “Mum, I have a few days off in October, would you like me to come over and do whatever needs doing?”  Would I? Would I? He took me to Cardiff by car and we even had enough time to spend hours in my favourite department store where we had lunch, afternoon tea and a leisurely stroll around the ladies’ clothing floor. I came away with a very smart and rather expensive jumper. It’s so long since I bought myself anything at all in the clothing line that buying this jumper (sweater?) felt like a real treat. I  really am most grateful for my son’s kind deed. And what’s more, I should have a passport within six weeks, one of those European Union passports with fingerprints and eye recognition. As soon as I have sorted myself out I shall probably do some travelling again.

I have had no further news from my daughter other than a pleasant note in reply to my email, but I am still hopeful; she’s been on holiday and may be short of time. It would be nice to be on good terms with both my children. However, as I said in the previous post, I will expect nothing and appreciate everything.

As I sit here writing, Ophelia is roaring around the house. It’s a storm now, not a hurricane, but it is quite frightening enough. My main concern is about the beech tree holding on to it’s roots. Millie and I ventured out this afternoon but not for long and no further than the field. And keeping well away from trees. The forecast is for gusts of 80 - 90 mph to continue into the night. As I am (I didn’t say WE, there’s progress!) quite a way inland from the West Wales coast perhaps the strength of the wind will be less by and by. Should I go to bed or stay up? What do people in the hurricane prone regions do? I still have electricity.

I have enjoyed writing this post; I know it’s pretty anodyne and waffly, but yes, I enjoyed it. Perhaps blogging will become a pleasure again.

A Mixed Bag of Inconsequentials

It’s really hard to come up with a worthwhile blog post when your mind is preoccupied. I may also be suffering from writer’s block, all my writing, even my diary, remains ignored for the most part. But I love reading. I can’t get enough of that; books have always been my bolt hole, from a very early age I felt the need to escape into someone else’s life when I didn’t like my own very much. I’ve just finished two books, Emma Healey’s 'Elizabeth Is Missing', a story about an old lady’s Alzheimer’s-coloured obsession with her friend’s whereabouts and buried secrets of her own past, and Kate Atkinson’s ‘A God In Ruins’ about a bomber pilot in WWII, a kind of second half to her ‘Life After Life’. Neither book is light escapism, but well written and easy to read in spite of the subject matter.

The weather has been filthy, there’s been little gardening; the picture of Paul and Beloved having a tea break was taken on an exceptional day.  I am very glad we have stopped opening for the public. The tallest and most impressive flowers are the white umbels of the pernicious ground elder, an absolutely destructive thug whose roots get into anything and are very hard to eradicate. The bane of my life, second only to the dreaded dandelion.

Millie has recovered from her crise de nerfs; luckily we have had no further violent thunderstorms round here, although other parts of the country have been  inundated. We were invited to a birthday lunch at a very grand and very rich house, not by the owners, who were not in residence, but by their dog and house sitter, our good friend Jay, who is neither grand nor rich.

The dogs in question are pugs. a small black one and a beige-brown one, a little larger. (The picture is from the net pets-for-homes.co.uk). They were in a spacious enclosure behind a wire fence. Apparently the owners are terrified that they could escape and get run over. They are never allowed to leave the premises.

Surely pugs are among the ugliest dogs ever? I am sorry if you are the proud owner of one, I mean no offence, although, no doubt, you are offended now. When I went up to the two of them to do my usual silly impression of a dog-besotted idiot they barked at me. Well, barking is exaggerated. They wheezed and snuffled at me in a hostile manner. The small one was pathetic: every two wheezes and he had to take a laboured breath before he could squeeze the next wheezy bark out. He had no tail at all, not even a stub end. His rear end was smooth, he’d been docked until there was not even a smidgeon of tail left. Poor little blighter, no wonder he was in a bad temper. The other one was older and seemed resigned.

How can it be good for a dog to be bred until he has a completely flat face and no nose to breathe through? Give me a Millie, with a great big wet hooter and a solid tail to wag any day, even if she’s the result of an unfortunate liaison between a collie and a lab.

We took her to the pub where she found shelter from the storm after she escaped and were told that she rushed in like a bat out of hell and shook herself all over the guests sitting at the tables. Well done Millie, they’ll not forget you in a hurry.

Millie’s been to the dog groomer. I swear that girl moults more than other dogs. She hates it when I leave her there and if I should stop and chat to Tina, the groomer, and Millie is already in her pre-wash and brush up cage, she growls and whines and weeps bitter tears. ‘Mummy, how could you’, she says. Two hours later when I pick her up, she pulls like a train to get out and away. Dogs just don’t appreciate a pampering session. Not like me, I went to Helen’s for a delicious facial and I didn’t growl or whine once! Instead, I purred.

Beloved hasn’t got any worse, in fact, he’s perked up a bit. I treated him to a couple of theatre visits: the RSC’s almost all black ‘Hamlet' with the rising star Paapa Essiedu in the title role and the Globe’s 'The Merchant Of Venice' with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. Both productions were excellent. “The seats are too hard”, Beloved said of Hamlet (his bottom is skin and bones now) and when asked about The Merchant he flatly stated that he didn’t like it. My friend Sue, who had asked, was rather taken aback. “What don’t you like, the play or the production?” "I simply don’t like plays whose entire action revolves around prejudice”, he said. Okay, Hm? Are there any plays that don’t have some form of prejudice? In fact, isn’t human frailty the whole point of Shakespeare? I agree to some extent, though, The Merchant is tragically nasty throughout.

Anyway, I have booked tickets for three more productions; I shall be going by myself.

Blogallimaufrey

Following news sources online is a mug’s game. There are too many sites which concentrate disproportionately on hyped and blown up bad news. Headlines scream at you, deliberately phrased in such a way that you are drawn in against your better judgement. Result: depression and feeling down-hearted. Yes, bad stuff happens all the time, but concentrating on it to the exclusion of good stuff doesn’t make it better.

Living in a phoney bubble of privilege and positivity is plain stupid, we must face reality. After all, we are part of the human race, living at this time,  constantly confronted with the awfulness of traumatic events. 

Desperate refugees pressed up against barbed wire, children with huge hungry eyes, mass shootings, politicians in the UK all but shredding each other over the EU referendum; and then there’s the surreal and well nigh unbelievable spectacle of Donald Trump. 

But there was better news too more recently:

What, really?

Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall? I can’t have been the only one whose face cracked into a huge sneery grin when the news came through. Finally, something to make me giggle. I loved the pictures of the happy couple, (particularly the close-ups), arm in arm, Jerry in flat shoes, so as not to tower over her shortish groom who's 84, and looks every day of it. 

And so Rupert plays his part. Shifting

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

However, it doesn’t do to make fun of Murdoch. At 84 his money bags can still cause our craven government to kowtow and let him have all the best programmes on the BBC for a song. Even for the man who can, and has, bought himself everything his mean and desiccated heart desires, the other man’s grass is always greener.

Not that you could mistake him for a sheep; a wolf in sheep’s clothing, more like.

Paul knocked on the back door today. The celandines are out in the hedges.Yes, it’s that time of year, March, the most exciting and provocative month in the garden, full of promise, with blizzards one minute and sun as warm as in May the next, with thunder and lightning, frivolous snow flurries, fierce storms pelting you with sleet and hail and soft breezes to make you throw off your hat and gloves. Yellow-gold March, with daffodil, coltsfoot, aconite, buttercup, dandelion and marsh marigold all vying for the attention of the earliest insects.  

Pills, Potions And Piety

The Guardian

The remnants of Gonzalo landed on these shores last night and today. It had long blown out its destructive fury across the other side of the world and the gales and rain storms it brought our way were unpleasant but not deadly, although a woman was killed when a tree fell on her.

Sitting in the conservatory this morning,  looking out at the high winds playing with trees and shrubs and listening to small twigs, beech mast and leaves cluttering on the glass roof, I felt snug and warm and safe. Breakfast over, but the day not fully begun I was counting out pills and capsules - all supplementary vitamins, minerals, fish oils, plant sterols, glucosamine and chondroitin, etc. etc. for the next twenty days, thinking how soon daylight will end at four pm again and I will once again struggle to cope with SAD.

It’s my name day today, Oct 21. I don’t celebrate it as I would in Germany, in fact, I usually forget it. Ursula was adopted as a Christian saint and a great embroidery of innocence, piety and sacrifice was stitched around her in a long, involved and frequently changing legend, (depending on who is telling the story).

A more interesting story can be read in a 6000 year old script, 'Old Europe Script’,  symbols invented by ancestors of the Celts,  seen by some as the earliest proto-language. which refers to the ‘Bear Goddess’ : The Bear Goddess and the Bird Goddess are the Bear Goddess indeed. It could mean that the bear goddess and bird goddess merged into a single goddess.  Some archaeologists have claimed that the bear is the oldest European deity. I like this historically equally unproven story better than the legend of the holy maiden who was martyred for her piety.

Looking into the Perpetual Almanack for inspiration I found this short entry for Oct 22:

**By Tradition, the anniversary of Creation:

“In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. Which beginning of time, according to our Chronology, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October, in the year 4004 before Christ.”

James Ussher  -  The Annals of the World 1658**


I thought that William Blake’s work “Europe a Prophecy"
The Ancient of Days, copy K from the Fitzwilliam Museum, would be a fitting end to Ussher’s pronouncement and to this rather cobbled together blog post.

It’s been one of those days.

Blogallimaufrey - A Weekend in August

Sometimes, I just potter. Days without plan, without purpose,

days when I can land on any activity I fancy, at any time, suit me well.

They don’t come around very often but this weekend was a real treat.

Digging around in the ‘spare’ freezer I came upon two bags of last year’s plums.

This year’s crop is all but ready to pick, so what to do with them?

Why, make a few pots of jam, of course.

o-o-o-o

And then there’s the garden, an hour here and there is always a pleasure. It’s neither hot nor cold, fairly dry, perfect weather for some pruning, chopping back and even a touch of weeding. The clumps of daisies, faded now and wilting, have gone, weeds have been pulled from cracks in the paths and a few shrubs have been thinned and pruned. The currently freshly filled compost heap is gigantic; it’s needs turning and shovelling into the one next door, which is still filled with ripe and ready compost. That’ll be a job for Paul when he next comes.

But there’s been a lot of standing and staring in admiration as well. The flame bush is out, the shrub border which has lost all its flowers is looking very interesting and the flower border proudly presents an attractive display of late summer flowers.

Yes,  for once  I am pleased.

Just look at clematis ‘Abundance’, climbing high up into the plum tree.  It’s name is a fitting one.  In one season, after being cut right down to the ground the preceding autumn, it climbs and rambles and spreads itself without thought for any other plant in its path; even a tree doesn’t stand a chance. Up and over it goes. The flowers last for weeks, right until the early frosts. Anyone who has a tree that looks better dressed up could do worse than try ‘Abundance’. It’s fully hardy too.

Not a bad show for late summer.

Yes, I am quite pleased, for once. 

I complain too much about weeds and mess and disorder,

I should take a step back and look at the overall picture more often,

forget about weeds.

o-o-o-o

A neighbour came to collect Millie for an hour’s walk this afternoon.

Splendid!

That meant that we could take our time over Sunday lunch

and enjoy the best part of a bottle of Merlot with our meal.

But I didn’t want Millie to feel abandoned by her mum so I gave her a very thorough brushing in the garden when she came home. That is a big pile of dead fur. During her last illness, which was most probably due to a deep seated infection caused by mites getting into the skin and erupting into small, bloody, craters all over her nose, she was on steroids and antibiotics and parasite repellent for her coat, all of which came with nasty side effects, making her feel a bit sorry for herself. The medication didn’t improve the condition of her coat either. But she’s getting better and the thoughtful expression on her face is mainly due to the close attention she is giving to a large treat in her mouth, which takes some serious chewing.

o-o-o-o

The rest of the time I have been reading. A never ending yarn of 832 pages, ‘The Luminaries’ by Eleanor Catton, a hugely entertaining novel about the New Zealand goldrush of the 1860s. It’s a fascinating story of hardship and skullduggery,  a consummate literary page turner, intricately crafted and beautifully written. But it definitely requires staying power. I have reached page six hundred and fifteen.  An awful lot of words.

Blogallimaufrey

I just walked past a mirror and saw my dad reflected in it.

Now my dad was not an ugly man as looks go; tall, broad, grey haired, with deep grooves running from crooked nose to the corners of his mouth and a naughty twinkle in his eye, when he wasn’t frowning or being choleric. I was always aware of his distinctive face, without ever studying him too closely. His doctor once said that he had the head of a ‘Caesar’. To me, of course, he was just dad. Annoyingly himself. Always.

And now I am him. Oh dear. Not bad for a man but for a woman, not so good.

o-o-o-o

I have been a tardy blogger for weeks. Not that I’ve lost interest, it’s just life being contrary. I may have two gardeners, but one of them, Paul, is one of those people who only need to look at a tool, or swat a wasp, for it to jump up and bite them somewhere painful. Since I’ve employed him he has had blood poisoning from a rose thorn, a swollen arm and near collapse from a poisonous spider bite, something totally unheard of in this region, and now he has cut half his finger off with an electric saw. And lately it’s done nothing but rain on old Gardener’s day, giving him a perfect excuse not to turn up.

o-o-o-o

Then there’s Millie. You’d think an old girl like her would stay away from confrontations. Not Millie. Good-natured and sweet though she is, she is curious and forever sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted. Last thing at night she strolls down to the paddock to see who else is around. Whoever it was she met gave her a thoroughly bloody nose, deep gashes over both eyes, and a small round hole in the side of her face. The first night it didn’t look so bad, but by morning the wounds had became infected and inflamed. She developed large, angry red blisters in her armpits and groin and both ears are lined with pebble-like lesions along the edges. It’s impossible to say who attacked her, fox, badger, a cat, but she certainly didn’t come away victorious. A course of antibiotics was prescribed and then treatment with steroids, to reduce the inflammation. We are back and forth to the Vet’s.

 o-o-o-o

But May has had good aspects too. Social life is picking up. It’s never right though, is it? When people invite us I complain that I’d much rather stay at home, and when they don’t, I complain even more.  Shades of my dad? Theatre outings are high on the list of diversions. Three so far this month; Simon Russell Beale as the National Theatre’s King Lear; then Henry IV, Part I, (Part II still to come), and Roaring Girl at the Swan in Stratford.  There is much to be said for going to see familiar plays; you know them well enough to concentrate on an actor's interpretation of his role and the differences between productions, rather than straining to listen to every word.  But I’d never even heard of ‘Roaring Girl’ before. This Dekker and Middleton comedy written in 1611 is the story of Moll Cutpurse, a cross-dressing protofeminist 300 years ahead of her time. Updating the play to the Victorian 1890s didn’t altogether work; the verbal filth, smells and sounds of Jacobean London which permeate the original play didn’t match my idea of prim and proper Victoria’s city. No ‘ruffianly swaggering and lewd company' in her time. If you believe it.

Just one more play to go before the end of the month.  I’ll try and turn up here a bit more often than once a week too.

The Good - The Bad - The Indifferent

Sky over Valley’s End.

It’s been a messy kind of day.

First Beloved came back from giving Millie her short morning run covered in mud. He'd slipped and fallen. “I just lay there for a bit”, he said. Well you would, wouldn’t you. Mud is soft and comfortable, and it wasn’t raining for a change. He was fine, a bit shaken, but no breakages.

In spite of the almost springlike scenes outside I dawdled and dithered. Why can you never trust anyone to do as they say they will? Kelly was due to get back to cleaning after the kids’ half term; I was also hoping that Gardener would turn up. Neither even phoned. Being put out I threw a tantrum and cooked vegetable stew, leaving cleaning and gardening for another day. Everything left in the fridge went into the big stewpot. 

Rule Britannia

After lunch it was my turn to take Millie out. On the whole, Valley’s End is a neat and tidy place. I have often shown pictures of pretty, flower-decked cottages and small terraces. Today, feeling cross, I decided to take one of the grotty fronts. That flag has been blowing in the wind for several years, never managing to hide the broken window pane.

Warning: When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

How do you like my purple  boots? I bought them in December but haven’t worn them much; it’s been too wet and I didn’t want to spoil them. There’s logic. Winter boots to keep the rain off your feet too delicate to be worn. I wonder if they glow in the dark? 

Friko’s cauliflower gratin

Selfies are all the rage, I’m told. So I thought I’d try one. One? More like half a dozen. In all of them my face looks like a cauliflower, deep cracks, fat cheeks and lumps. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Or my dad. On my dad the crags looked manly and distinguished. In the end I gave up on the close-ups, and took the ipad to my bedroom mirror.  The lighting’s kind and I’m standing several feet away.  

It’s getting dark outside now and I feel guilty for having wasted a good day’s outdoor work. I’m hoping that adding insult to injury and watching both ’Tatort’ and ‘Inspector George Gently' tonight will make me feel so bad that I’ll never do it again.

Fat chance.

Blogallimaufrey

A respite from the rain for most of the day, there was even enough sun to bathe the castle in a warm afternoon glow. Millie and I went out twice, morning and afternoon.  We met Robin up on the castle bailey throwing a ball for Horace, the shaggy whippet who looks as if he’s wearing an Afghan coat. Millie was not amused. She likes Robin well enough and makes a fuss of him, but every time Horace raced past her she growled. Old dog ladies are like that, they feel the need to put these whippersnappers in their place. Robin and I just stood there, mesmerised by the unnatural feeling of sun on our necks. Two adults standing on top of a flat, low hill, watching a pair of mad dogs and stretching out their arm to their full extent, grinning like idiots.

Magnus Manske - Wikimedia Commons

Back home I took a closer look at the garden. There are signs of life everywhere, buds and tiny shoots are appearing and the Daphne Odora Aurea-Marginata - the gold-edged fragrant Daphne - is about to burst into life. It was getting too dusky for a photo, so I filched this one from Wikimedia Commons, but mine is exactly the same. I shall take the camera round the garden at the very next opportunity and see what there is.

With all this rain I’ve spent many hours reading. Good stuff and not so good stuff. One book I can recommend whole-heartedly is Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Flight Behaviour’.  I could barely put it down.  The main character, Dellarobia Turnbow is beautifully observed, and her development from drudge to a woman with renewed hope is described with sympathy and understanding. Even her rather dreadful family on the rundown farm in the Appalachians is ultimately accorded compassion. But the main theme of the book is climate change. If there is anyone who still doesn’t get it - and I know, there are many - you might do worse than read this novel. But if this should prove too arduous a task, look at the myriad of blogposts from all corners of our planet telling us about the weird weather patterns we are all experiencing.

Flight Behaviour was published in 2012 and is Kingsolver’s seventh novel; it is a New York Times Bestseller, and was declared "Best book of the year" by the Washington Post and USA Today.

Finally, a bit of advice. Yesterday was Saint Apollonia’s day.This aged Christian matron having had her teeth pulled out before her martyrdom, is invoked against toothache. If she can’t help, “take a nail and make the gum bleed with it, then drive it into an oak." The very stout William Neal, who was mad with toothache and ready to shoot himself, was thereby cured.

So says John Aubrey in his Miscellanies of 1695. At least he doesn’t advise us to drive the nail into the gum.

Where was I . . . . .

Anyone for Hopscotch?

Make sure you don’t step on the cracks.

The crops are in, the hay is in, the fields round about look

smooth and neat and tidy, ready for winter sowing.

o-o-o-

Apparently Egypt is a very cheap holiday destination at the moment. I wonder why? 

I had my face scraped and plastered and de-fuzzed this morning and the delightful beautician lady was all in a flutter. “We’re off on holiday”, she said, - dramatic pause - “to Egypt.” As I was recumbent on her treatment couch, my jaw didn’t have far to drop.

“Bryn decided he needed a holiday, right now, somewhere warm and cheap; I haven’t slept ever since he told me.” Helen giggled manically. “A lot of my clients have just come back from Egypt - is the Knighton estate agent getting commission ? - and they’re all saying how wonderful it is at the moment. We’re going nowhere near Cairo, of course. The tourist industry is desperate to get going again and hotels can’t do enough to attract guests.”  Yes, they are taking the kids.

Happy holidays, Helen; tell me about it when you get back. 

o-o-o

Next stop back in England, (Knighton is over the border in Wales) to the little town down the road and the hairdresser’s salon. Once I’ve decided that refurbishment of the outer Friko can no longer be avoided I cram it all into the same day.  I used to have a massage as well, but the resulting palpitations put an end to that. Justine was waiting for me. “You’ve got an IPad”, she trilled after I’d sat down and dug it out of my bag. I usually read while I’m at the hairdresser’s but today we discovered our mutual fascination with all things Apple. Once that subject was exhausted, we talked about dogs; we both love them and like all dog lovers we competed madly and trumped each other’s stories about the intelligence and all-round superiority of “dogs we have owned".  (I know that cat lovers are no different).

o-o-o

And finally:

At the risk of my US readers hating me for ever: hasn’t Downton Abbey gone stupid? or rather, how stupid do the programme makers think we are? Every new strand of story line is hinted at, set up and executed with all the grace and subtlety of a duck dancing Swan Lake.

A Dish Of Blogallimaufry

Gardener and I may be falling out. Since he had his heart attack there is much less of him to go round, he has cut back on the number of gardens he works, as well as the hours he puts in in each individual garden;  all very understandably; now there are just three of us, another woman and me, and an old gentleman’s manor gardens. Recently the old chap has taken over most of gardener’s time to the detriment of the other two gardens. As a member of the class of centuries-established landed gentry, ordering the peasants about comes naturally to old Mr. Beesley, and gardener being a horny-handed-son-of-the-soil, having worked on the land all his life, always for the gentry and aristocracy, equally naturally defers to that class without question. Mr. Beesley even pays him less than I do, gives him neither tea nor tea breaks and certainly never ever treats him as an equal, but as a member of the Jilly-come-lately class I just haven’t the same clout, kindness and friendliness notwithstanding.

Rather darkly, -  under my breath and not so that gardener's deaf old ears could catch it  -  I’ve been muttering about organ grinders and monkeys and looked for the ring through gardener’s nose every time he complains about the old gentleman’s demands but I’m probably fighting a losing battle. These are old-fashioned people, steeped in the tradition of master and servant, and modern attitudes have not reached them.

I am looking for gardener’s replacement, just in case.

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So, I’ve been slogging away at it on my own when it wasn’t raining.  Consequently, I’ve been collapsing on the sofa at night, or even during the afternoon;  with feet up and a comfy cushion under my back I’ve taken to reading on my ipad. It’s made a huge difference; I’ve recently noticed that my eyes tend to blur after a bit and the small print in books is getting hard to read with ease. Ipads and Kindles are the perfect reading medium for tired eyes but there is some getting used to them to do. I’m the sort of person who likes the smell of books; I also sneak a look at the final paragraph while half-way through and, even worse, I read with a pencil in my hand, marking and annotating as I go along. An electronic reader is therefore like a straitjacket, flicking from page to page without detour; yes, I can electronically highlight,  but where’s the fun in that? Real bookmarks sticking out from between the pages let me get back to the paragraph or sentence which caught my imagination so much more easily.

Another thing is that I find I can only read thrillers or soppy novels on an electronic reader. Non-fiction, literature, poetry, need paper pages for turning and returning to. I am thoroughly ashamed of some of the books I’ve downloaded and the worst of it is that all books appear on both Beloved’s and my electronic devices (I use the same email address) and when he shows interest in what has appeared on his home page I warn him under no circumstances to open certain titles.

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We had Sunday lunch at The Sun Inn, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was on the menu. Home-cooked beef would have been tastier - although I don’t know how to cook Yorkshires - but it’s nice to go to the pub, chat with other guests and not lift a finger myself.