Small stuff.

Bought daughter a new bird bath for £19.99 and she found her sister's swan (made when they were at the Steiner school so circa 1991) I bought myself the same bird bath but have't found a centre piece yet so it doesn't look nearly so impressive.

Exciting start to the day: Arrived at the shop to be told I was off to the vet. Well, I've been depressed but wasn't sure I needed to be put down yet. .. ah.. the appointment was not for me . It was for Gizmo the hamster who had developed a nasty wheeze over night. She didn't enjoy the trip, nor the many dogs who were eyeing her up lustfully in the waiting room.

I wondered how the vet would listen to the chest of a hamster. Simple, the patient was squashed gently over the stethoscope, legs wiggling from all corners. She now has a course of antibiotics - if she can be persuaded to drink her water, which she thinks has been poisoned.

I've been reading Magaret Atwood's book 'Negotiating With The Dead' which is a series of pieces about writers and writing delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge in 2000. I wish I had been to hear her deliver them but the published collection is great anyway and I've learned a lot more about her and her writing than I did in Aberdeen. I suppose I'm still glad to have seen her in the flesh but she puts in this quote that she 'pinched from a magazine' and I think it says what I feel. 'Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.'

22nd May. Still here. No Rapture.

Ha! No Rapture. There's a surprise!

Tough on all those who spent money advertsising it though.

Personal wordfest

Wheezing a lot means reading a lot so in the last two weeks I have ploughed through almost a shelf-full of novels reaped from Amazon and the Red Cross shop. I still prefer hardbacks and 1st editions when I can get them cheaply!

Mankell: 'The Troubled Man' which was sad but satisfying. Although they aren't obvious comfort food, being rather sombre in mood, I think his books will be on my re-read list. There are always flashes of dry humour. I've already said a lot about his writing. except perhaps the novels that aren't crime and don't have Wallander, which I also read with rather less pleasure perhaps.

Next, inspired by a crawl through Google for 'cult recovery' sites after a conversation with someone on the perennial 'what makes a group into a cult?' question, I read Alison Lurie's 'Imaginary Friends.' Written in the 70's it often made me laugh as she described a small group of ordinary folk in a dull, ordinary town in the US . Probably unconsciously wanting something outside the confines of small-town mind they crystallised into a cult around a young girl displaying extrasensory powers who is channelling beings from Outer Space. It reminded me of so many people I met in the 80's who were still waiting to be taken away by the Space Brothers, eagerly poring over their latest messages. Nice twist to this story (plot spoiler alert!) One of the two sociologists who infiltrate the group to study them gets entirely taken in by it all and goes off his rocker. Ultimately I found it a bit depressing. Maybe it was too close to the bone for although I promise I never had any belief in the SB's and was fairly cynical about everything else, I too went through a time when I badly needed something outside my own reality and did occasionally chant the Great Invocation from Alica Bailey (which Lurie misquotes for her group to chant as a mantra). It begins 'From the Point of Light, within the mind of God, Let light Stream forth into the minds of men..' two reasons in the opening lines alone for me to give it up later!
.. Probably shan't read it again but I'm glad to have it on the shelf.

Then another Patrick Gale: 'The Cat Sanctuary". Not as memorable as Notes at an Exhibition. but maybe I just wasn't as interested in the story-line. Everything else was as good, language, atmosphere, imagery etc. Maybe his style and characters are too recognisable already. I have ordered another to help me make up my mind.

Then a descent into the charity shop for hardback crime brought a P J Tracey 'Snow Blind' PJT are a mother and daughter crime writing team. Shan't bother with them again. It didn't even last me the evening.

Stuart MacBride's 'Broken Skin' set in sleazy Aberdeen was much much better. Shall look out for him again. Can't think why I haven't come across him and it's a serious oversight as he lives in this area. He's not the usual style of crime writer I favour being more Val McDiarmid than Dorothy Sayers - gritty is the word to describe I suppose, (though it's a cliché now and I hate clichés) Happily he is a whole lot lighter in timbre than VD. He has a very jolly web site and blog: halfheadblogspot.com

Margaret Atwood next obviously: 'I've read several in the past and got her to sign a paperback of 'The Handmaid's Tale' for me. I dislike that book very much, not for the writing obviously because she is GOOD but for the concept of a bleak dystopia in which some women are set aside for breeding purposes. It's one that has stayed with me for it's unpleasantness, so that was my choice to be signed. I also bought an early novel: 'Surfacing' which was equally dark and uncosy in a different way. She always surprises me though and it's a long time since I read any so, on the whole a worthwhile experience. Ahead of the last two crime novels on literary merit, without question!

Next up: Reginald Hill 'The Stranger House' which I found I had read before and forgotten but anyway enjoyed more this time so probably I read it with less attention the first time. It's a bad habit. My dyslexic daughter reads slowly and remembers everything on her first read, whereas I rush through for the main plot or to follow the process of a character or just because I'm unfocused. It's what makes re-reading so pleasurable.

I think I've said lots in the past about my liking for RH so no need for more.

Next: Len Deighton 'Spy Hook.' - a 1st of an early novel found in the Red Cross that I am rather pleased with, not only for the 1st ed. but for he story which I found more engaging than some of his work which takes me into a world I have no imagination for.

Now I'm struggling with Iain Banks 'Transition.' Banks is always a challenge for me, perhaps because I'm a lazy reader. Sometimes he's worth the struggle. I suppose the ones that I get through are his 'Speculative Fiction' which is how Atwood describes her futuristic books, disliking the term Science Fiction for them. Her reasoning being that her novels are projections into a future that might arise from conditions and trends in the present whereas sci-fi isn't.

I've quite enjoyed looking after this elderly but characterful lady. She gets excercise privileges early in the morning before the shop opens but has to be supervised because the local cats are ever hopeful of a good breakfast, or at least some sport. The morning I took this I turned my back for a minute or two (went to get coffee) and got back to a hot cross bun who'd been forced to run for shelter into the sunroom. She gave me a nip later for failing in my bodyguard duties.

In desperate search of some culture.

Despite all odds we (friend, Sanders et moi) made it into Aberdeen to the Aberdeen Wordfest to hear Margaret Atwood speak. Friend has been before and promised us marquees with interesting displays, which I had translated into beer, wine and strawberries, prime Scottish beef burgers, and Happenings - perhaps people reading their poetry aloud, theatre pieces, quartets playing soothing classical wallpaper music, jazz would have been nice too, and above all lots of books to pore over.

Nothing. The only books were those by the authors invited to speak which could be signed after the talks, a good enough idea but the prices - well, Amazon was too competitive. For Sandy I had ordered a ticket to a presentation called 'Car Boot Science' during which half-hour he learned the useful trick of getting a boiled egg into a coke bottle. No suggestions on how to get it out.

It was the last day of the fest but even so we were very underwhelmed by the flat atmosphere that we had travelled 2 hours by (noisy) train to attend. No marquees, only the Uni Halls (nice enough it has to be said, but wet grey granite doesn't cheer, and there is always that feeling of heavy Calvinistic rectitude to architecture this end of the world). Worse still - bad food. Not just fast food and sandwiches, they had tried with two sorts of stew, they just hadn't succeed. it wasn't tasty and gave me indigestion.

Nothing at all for almost-teenagers - not even books! The science thingy was aimed at much younger children. It's lucky Sandy is such an adaptable child and not the fussy easily bored sort. We had to leave him sitting around watching pigeons (later playing balls wih some littl'uns) whilst we went to our talk.

Listening to MA did make the trip worth while, although there again I was irritated by the inept 'interviewer.' MA is a witty woman and would have been better able to talk alone IMO instead of being asked about the feminist movement in the '70's - which questions seemed to bore her as much as they did me. We did hear a little of what it is to be a famous author and what effect growing up in Canada has had on her writing The comparison wth Scotland had t be drawn of course and her avowed liking for Scotland. She said that both countries were good largely (it seems) because Canada, like Scotland, provides so many good ways to kill off ones characters. Lots of opportunity for drowning in rivers, lochs and seas , cliffs to fall off, mountains and forests to get lost amongst with the possibility of dying of exposure. Canada has bears too of course - one up over this little land, although there is talk of bringing back the wolves. 'In East Anglia there is only mud.' She was talking, it turned out, about archetypal, allegorical ways to kill them off rather than the prosaic car accident which can happen anywhere and isn't in itself of much literary merit.

She also said that the writer you talk to today is not the same as the writer who wrote the book you read because she wrote it at least 2 years ago and has moved on. After that, rather confusingly, she also declared the modernist view 'there is no author' is nonsense and that an author's intent is the one that counts, not any interpretation superimposed by the reader.

That's about all I remember just now. Gotta go as usual. G'son gets his mum back today. He was flatteringly sorry to not be staying here and I must say he is a joy to have around.

Later: In retrospect and after a quiet evening to myself I expect the day was made worse by asthma and worry about Sandy being bored. Still, I don't think the Uni had exactly pulled out all the stops. The lacture hall the talk was held in was huge, holds 600 and was packed to the gunwhales. At £6 a ticket for this one talk alone they must have made some sort of a profit. We weren't expecting Hay-on-Wye, just a bit more enthusiasm.

The Planets and regeneration.

The first photo is of a handsome Earth-Moon Orbiter that I bought for the g'son monthly through some enticing magazine. It came in bits over a year, along with glossy pages editions about the gyrations of our neighbours in the cosmos. Xander likes models and is fairly fascinated by Space but it rather stretched his patience. Firstly - once a month wasn't nearly often enough to sustain interest. Then it proved more difficult than we had imagined (it's a working model) but he wanted to do it himself. Finally he took it to school each week for 'Design' lessons during which class they can, if they wish, make models. Now it is mine. An early birthday present. I think he is really glad to be free of the responsibility at last.

Ungratefully I am thinking: "Wonderful. All that brass to clean."

The next two pics are a tribute to dogged survival. My friendly gardener offered a couple of shrubs he'd taken from somewhere else for my almost empty garden. When they arrived one looked quite, quite, dead, and although I could feel the sap still in its skinny branches, in this outpost of suburbia I was ashamed to have it in full view of the neighbours who are all shopping at the Garden Centre for lusty young bedding plants. My ma's fear of what the neighbours think is still lurking in me sadly. I heard her saying: 'They'll think you're mad, keep watering that dead thing. Crazy old woman, that's what they'll think of you.'"

I shut her out, kept watering, kept looking out for little green shoots, was giving up on it when I noticed the shoots are red not green. It's alive!

I've no idea what it is.

Viral Variety and Dating dangerously.

Jack Vettriano: 'The Smooth Operator' is now foremost on my birthday calendar.

And a quote for the month on my 2011 calendar:

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.’

According to Susie Reneau, creator of the calendar, this quotation is from Plato.

(Don’t ever fool yourself we have evolved much as a race. Whatever is worth knowing we knew in the days when the story of Gilgamesh was written, then when the pyramids were built - and we probably knew long before either of those recorded works of humankind. We just keep forgetting.)

Well, if that sounds a bit preachy and new agey and generally not fit for a sunny day when we should be outside, blame it on a low fever simmering in this person.

Finally I spent an hour in the sunshine grabbing some Vit. D. A virus, possibly that which caused an asthmatic friend to take an overnighter in the local hospital, wormed its way into me Thursday and caused me to spend most of yesterday in bed re-reading Dorothy Sayers’ ‘Gaudy Night.’ She really is a joy to read , antiquated n so many ways but the vocabulary is rich beyond the wildest drams of today’s writers who evidently aim for the lowest common denominator. The imagery is colourful and witty, the characters I find three-dimensional and engaging, each recognisable in any context, the quotations and literary references suggest an erudition that totally enthral this intelectualle-manquée (manquée for the worst possible reason - not intelligent enough to BE an intellectual but just intelligent enough to know what she is missing! Like beng an ‘almost good enough’ artist or musician, it’s very saddening.)

Apart from all that it’s a nice change to read a crime novel that doesn’t begin with the very worst sort of sadistic killing the writer can imagine, proceed to detailed autopsies then more horrendous crimes. For 500 pages Sayers spins her crime-hunting protagonist along with anonymous letters and nasty emotionally and psychologically destructive acts, but she doesn’t feel she has to produce a single body.

Until my day of rest I had been rereading my Mankell collection which is by no means complete but I still marvel at how this fictional man Wallander has come to mean so much to me. I think I know him far better than many real-life friends. I know him from his own reveries and nightmares; his fears, self-hatred, anger, mistrust; his search for reasons and the need for coherence, order and justice that drive him to be a policeman. I also know him from his daughter’s perspective as a protective, judgemental, absentee father, rather frightening, never there when she needs him, yet still a source of strength.

Aside from all that, what has been going on? Almost totally disinterested I missed the wedding by sitting behind the counter earning shekels for us. (This town really splashed out. They put a Union Jack on the clock tower!)

G’son was chosen to play in a 7-a-side rugby against a prestigious rubgy-playing school in the Borders. 7-a-side is obviously a much faster sort of match on a full sized pitch and everyone has to run a lot faster. He was nervous about being up to it but scored two tries, thereby winning a medal. Pride all round!

I dragged my ass off the bed last evening to go to a Steiner School fund-raiser ‘Variety Night’ put on in the Town Hall by a friend who was once a professional actor. He probably could have done the whole show himself but was MC and sang four Music Hall songs well known enough to sing along to, at least by all the Brits in the audience. A community poet read his own Belloc-style verses about a boy called Nigel who tested everyone to the limit including the Steiner School (whose claim it is to be able to take and balance any child.) Threatened with losing its reputation the school was relieved to find Nigel was an alien. (As far as is known Steiner said nothing about balancing aliens from other galaxies, although he might have, he said a lot about a lot... ). A colourful extrovert community woman did a palm-reading turn; a very excellent pianist played something exciting and loud on the old upright in the hall; the MC’s 7 year old daughter gave a rendering of ‘My name is Joe’ which was funny and not merely precocious; a couple put on a comic rendering of ‘Baby it’s Cold Outside’ and so on. The Ex and I left at half time, he because he doesn’t often go out in the evenings, me because they only had apple juice and I had my virus to think of.

It was fun though and reminded me how much talent there is in this area and how ready the community folk are to take risks, be impromptu, put something like this on at short notice and risk of making fools of themselves.

Next week is the annual concert by the renowned local choir. Nothing impromptu about that, but we have tickets and will go, viruses permitting.

What else? Well, there’s a worrying customer who comes in mainly to confide in me about her love-life ever since the occasion a year ago when she broke down and wept because the boyfriend didn’t want her any more. She isn’t so very young (50-ish) but looks timelessly young and has a touching, now frightening, naiveté about her. She has hit the dating sites and keeps meeting Poles and Croatians, some of whom are local. She let one drive her off into the woods on a first date. Oh heck! He could have been an axe murderer. Now she tells me, with sweet hopes that I won’t judge her, that she has been Skyping with a Pole who doesn’t have his own camera fixed so she can't see him but he can see her. She offered to take her clothes off for him and naturally the offer was accepted. Oh double heck! I agreed, through gritted teeth that it must have ben an exciting and freeing experience, but had to ask as gently as possible - how does she know he isn’t a) entertaining his friends and b) recording it so she will end up on You tube? She says she has a good instinct for such things and knows he is really very respectful.
Aaaaaaaagh!