did you ever kiss a frog?

I Love my Garden but. . .

 

 

I sit, clutching my insulated mug of coffee, staring around the wilderness romping out of control. Our fleeting spring having succumbed to wintry winds again, I shiver despite the jacket.I designed a wild garden, I like a wild garden. Wild life would thrive under my lazy gardening stewardship. Such ‘good’ intentions made over ten years ago as I had contemplated the building site I had inherited. Ten years at this end of life can be the same as twenty at the middle of life’s span.

I have struggled to keep even a steadying hand on the frolicking life outside the windows., but largely succeeded. I enjoyed the effort at the start, was proud of turning the rubble strewn disaster into a sunny/shady ecological place. A garden which suited wheel chairs, canes, failing eyesight and faltering steps yet ticked eco-friendly boxes. All my work payed off, as did the extra ‘ I can’t manage’ work my friends put in for me. I had a run of health problems which put me a little behind, but every spring I made up for neglect in the autumn/winter. Still a wild garden.

Last year I had heart failure and ventured forth maybe a couple of times to rest exhausted on a bench. Nothing was weeded, pruned, tidied; nothing new planted, no cuttings taken. Woodwork was not painted, nor drains/gutters cleared. Nothing was done. It didn’t matter about no watering as it didn't stop raining for 7 months anyway.

Of course there are many plants that thrive in gloomy rain swept gardens and others who still put a decent show despite lack of sun. Plants that do not need ordering, that thrive on neglect. They romp away with abandon, usually where not wanted.Some forms of wildlife love the rain - they tend to be of the slug/snail variety.

 The last time I had gardened had been April 2012. A year later I have ventured out armed with broom and spade. When I had first created the garden a neighbour let me have all his leaves, from a well established garden, 40+ sackfuls each year, because I had none. Trees take time to grow. Last year my trees obviously had come of age and this year the untidy remnants of those leaves made every path and dank corner a slimy hazard. First task in restoring order, get those leaves on the soil where at least they would be of benefit.

 Then I could contemplate the rest. So many tasks needed. Pruning, weeding, replanting, the list grew day by day. Even if my health had recovered which it hasn’t, even if I was ten years younger which I never will be, it is obvious to me the clear up won’t be achieved this year. So what is the absolute necessity? I wonder as I sit clutching my coffee.

Fortunately I had foreseen that sometime in the future I would have to have an easier garden, so much is in place,(no bedding all is shrubs and trees, the vegetable patch reduced in favour of fruit) but I was brought down a little sooner than I had hoped. Ah well thats life for you - loves the unexpected.

I wanted ‘wild’, I have ‘wilderness’, why complain? Paths must be kept weed free for older feet. Bushes and trees kept away from faces, but really what excuse to moan about ‘wild flowers’ in beds not planted with veg yet, they are pretty and the early bees, themselves trying for recovery after last years rainfall, are appreciating them. The snails? well birds need to feed.

 I have turned away at least half a dozen men who wish to ‘clean’ my drive with their high powered water toys - I tell them the ‘weeds’ in the paviours are my wildflower meadow, I tell them their hoses may well wash away dirt but will also wash away tiny life forms between the cracks. I fear my reputation is destroyed - ‘that mental case at the end of the road’ is how they mutter I guess.

I have cleared the garden seats, have views of greenness and splashes of colour. While I sit with coffee I realise some new plant has taken up residence here, the new fragrance is wonderful, I wonder where/how it arrived here. Welcome it. Haven’t a clue what it’s name is but who really cares with a scent like that.

Because I am under orders to exercise gently, as much as possible and my garden is far more interesting than the empty streets I will continue to titivate through the year. Maybe I will find more squatters, maybe I will oust them or welcome them. Maybe the garden will stop its excitement and calm down. Maybe I will just sit, read and enjoy the birdsong in the wilderness and think about ‘wild’ for next year.

I love my garden but. . .

Z is for every book is worth a star

A short post to end this crazy month with. I have in the past few years joined a couple of reading groups down here in reality. I have also joined Goodreads up here on cyberspace. One of the things that are required is a mark of approval. Some sign of opinion of the worth of the book just read. In the book groups we mark out of ten, and it is understood that it is only our opinion of the book. On cyberspace the star system seems to have lost its way.

 

Even in the groups, down here, I have noticed that many times only a gut opinion is offered. ‘I didn’t like it’ with no attempt to say why not. I find this distressing and strange. One should be able to work out what you dislike if you have read the book. Give a reason. Maybe I go too far in my attempt to be fair; if I don’t particularly like a book I will say so but I try and work out if it is a good book for its type. Cosy mystery? does it deliver cosy mystery? Chick lit (what a dreadful name) does it do what it says on the tin? If they do then they should not be marked down to zero just on a gut dislike. Well in my opinion they shouldn’t. Every book I have ever read deserves some mark. Maybe I have been lucky.

 

This problem becomes worse when up here in cyberspace. Here everything is universal,not local. Everything up here remains as long as radioactive decay, maybe longer:) Up here the star system appears to be all over the place. Many authors lament anything less than 5 stars. 5 stars would mean perfection and while I appreciate that is a wonderful thing to be told that your book is perfection, however it is just not possible to write a book that is perfection for every reader.Giving 5stars for a book that has room for improvement begins to make a nonsense of the star system.  

On Goodreads, 3 stars means the book was enjoyed. 3 stars does not mean the book is being trashed, does not mean your life as a an author has slid down the side of a pit. It means someone enjoyed the book. What a wonderful thought, someone enjoyed your imaginary world.

 

I have given 5 stars for a few - they have mostly been books that have travelled through many decades with me and are still great reads after the 2,3,4th readings. I mostly give 3 and 4 stars.

 

I have given a 2 star for books I really didn’t like at all, because, unless it is impossibly bad, there is always something I can enjoy in a book.

I began entering all the books I could remember reading before I realised the importance too many of the star system. I am now in the process of adding the stars, it may take some time but one thing I am sure of when I have finished there will be no zeros. There is always something worth a star in every book.

Y is for teenagers

Just recently since being up here on cyberspace I have dipped a toe into a genre that had me baffled at first YA - first of all what did it mean - it was explained to this old lady young adult - I scowled at the term young adult. Even more of a scowl when I discovered the huge age span included. I came around to the concept eventually - muttering under my breath that YA meant teenagers and teenagers were not adults. Well not until they are old enough for someone to shove a gun in their hands and send them of to war anyway!

I dabbled - I tentatively began to read a few, I began with the dystopian ones because despite being told that was what my books were it seemed dystopian had been taken over by YA writers - teenagers reading such 1984? Well of course not but they do like their angst ridden worlds. I sort of enjoyed them and yes the ‘sort of’ is an old lady not wishing to cave in too quickly from her former stance:)

I Began with Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed progressing to The Last Survivors by Susan Pfeffer then slowly into Hunger Games (everyone telling me I must) As I got to know other Indie authors online I sneaked looks at their offerings. Not many, I confess, as I already have a TBR pile that could stretch around the world and days certainly do shrink when one ages - it’s true you young things:) I found yes I quite like them.

One of my mutters used to be ,we were not pandered to like that when we were young - oh really? I have to constantly write memos to self, warning against remarks such as that! Of course we were; the books just weren’t called YA. For this challenge I have been revisiting those books from long ago. As I have said, many times before, I don't own books I possess them which is why I can wander to the shelves and revisit books I read 60 years ago. My ‘YA’ books were different, mine were adventures of a different ilk but they were the ones that I used to redefine myself. To place myself in society, very much as ‘YA’ does today.

The books I came to in my teenage years or earlier, because I got there quite early in my reading life, were full of adventure, very little dystopian. The ones that had been hanging about from my parents childhood were of course written from the perspective of the Empire Builders we considered ourselves to be, over here on this island in the ocean. The ones written for us postwar children were written from the point of view of the ‘winners’. We didn't need dystopian we were surrounded by graveyards, bombed out ruins and newsreel pictures of Belsen. Our YA stories appeared to be written to inspire and lead us forth to single handily repair the world.

Our young heroes were either full of the John Bull spirit and if they were orphans as so many of the children then were, they were inspired orphans, not insecure ones. Ann Franks diary was well read and loved among the young, that was fact, The Silver Sword was fiction based on fact, of a group of children fleeing the Nazis, travelling from Poland to Switzerland, living off their wits and making good. The King of Kilba, displayed two intrepid young men, seemingly doomed to spend their lives in a dull office job, who seized the day and set of to find ‘adventure’, which they did, and upheld their countries fighting spirit and values in true hero fashion. Or they were in throes of young love- Lorna Hill at the Saddler's Wells ballet school. Where innocent young girls wended their way through the uncertainty of finding the one true soul mate.

Stories for children are written to display their world to a certain extent. It is of little use this old lady asking which world was a better showcase of reality. Which world was a better one to have on a bookshelf. Zombies vampires and werewolves or concentration camps and ruined cities - our dystopia's were actuality, todays are more general but real nonetheless.

Because these YA books are written for that anxious, fearful time between childhood and the rest of your life. It matters not whether my time 60+ years ago or the teenagers of today. It is a wonderful terrible time to live through. Our worries back then were, how safe could the powers that be keep us? (they had failed miserably just before) How could we trust the future when clouded by the Cold War? modern technology, could that be trusted?, the atomic bomb was something that could not be forgotten. Then of course how could we reconcile our plain awkward selves to the femme fatales we wished to be. Would we ever be loved, married, happy. The dislocation of family life and security goes on, caused by the war in my youth; if the youth who read YA now live in a settled world it is caused by divorce and job insecurity.

It is a time when trust in the adults ruling their world becomes thin, they look around and feel fear. Children of any age are not so concerned with the world events more with the insecurity the world around them offers. The lack of control they have,over their emotions, their lives.The seeming lack of understanding those in charge seem to have.

Young adults, teenagers, whatever they are called inhabit a marshland of uncertainties and they need/desire heroes of their age who can take on the angst and win through, they need/desire gentle sweetness in first relationships and young love.Not so different from my youth 60+ years ago.

X is for Xavier is one of many

When I was travelling around Australia many decades ago I acquired a book which completely wrapped me up and kept me all through its 850,000 words! The most amazing book, not really suited for putting in one’s backpack at 1,463 pages but well worth the read Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert.

 

I mention this book today because this  is a blog about the unpronounceable names in my life.  Xavier I have, after nearly 40yrs, learnt how to pronounce. I have a problem with names at the best of times. I can and do read whole books once, twice or many more times - enjoy them - keep them - re-read - recommend them and yet still struggle to remember the names of the characters. In reality I am notorious for not remembering names. It is not, as many suggest, that I am not interested in the people, I am but some part of my dyspraxic brain has a real problem with names. Couple this with a difficulty pronouncing a great many words that do not give most people any problem. A slightly dyslexic way of reading, the putting together of letters and sounds, of remembering new words (doesn’t help with pronunciation:(

Xavier meant no sense to my brain for years. It wasn’t even a new word, there are the odd Xavier's around in literature and certainly at the convent I must have bumped into the saint. But to recommend the book meant I had to try to get my wayward brain around this rock.

So while I was contemplating this the other day I realised that my love of reading had led me to many unpronounceable names - unpronounceable to me, leaving me silent when trying to tell folks about them. If I cannot make sense of English names how could I cope with those from different cultures. Even those dreadfully difficult Russian names which I have been looking at for what seems like forever. I have already commented on how much I enjoy these books from other worlds.

 

Today, in a toast to my being able to pronounce Xavier at last, I present a few of my unpronounceable but imminently readable authors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edwidge Danticat

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Kenzaburo Oe

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Haruki Murakami

Khaled Hosseini

 

Arundati Roy

Mordecai Richler

Kazuo Ishigure

Mineko Iwasaki

Sybil Kathigasu

Oonya Kempadoo

Now all of you laughing at my uselessness with letter combinations - I forgive you. I know most of you out there can make a fair stab at all these and make sense of them. I wish you well. I do care, but not so much, I enjoy reading them all and there are many, many more. I can recommend them by writing their names down - ah for the skill of writing.I can make do. I read silently to myself I do not need to be able to pronounce, I follow every twist and turn. I follow the characters without knowing how to sound their names(don’t ask me how because I know not)

 

Anyway, if I’m allowed enough decades I will pronounce them all as well as I now can Xavier:)

W is for the nation's cannon fodder

I am a war child, I grew up in a country almost brought to it’s knees by five years of war, part of a continent that had been brought to it’s knees. Grew up with the bomb sites all around. Gaps in the neighbours families, orphans at school. I grew up with memories of war. My grandmothers, living with us, re-lived constantly the first great slaughter which had devastated a whole generation.

 

No sooner had we celebrated the end of war we were up to our eyes in the ‘Cold War’.  Europe, next door to the ‘enemy’ for year after year. With the threat of nuclear war a real fear for all. I knew war. Our films after the war were all about our brave heroes who had sacrificed themselves for us and that is of course right and proper. But society was tired of war and the books that poured out, after both the world wars, although they were ‘war’ books are better described as ‘anti-war’ books.

 

 

I had had an inkling that war was not a pleasant state for ordinary folk with The Silver Sword which was probably the earliest account of ‘modern warfare’ (it was modern for me:) It was a story for children and so I was spared the true horrors but I raced into my teenage years and my reading expanded.

 

 

 

There were many that came within my radar as I reached my teens, written by other nations as well as my own. The first two shockers , those which really slapped the terrible realities of war around my face were All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque; a savage description of the first world war, written from the point of view of a German soldier. A German! Hadn’t they always been the enemy. This soldier was everyman, our neighbour, friend, colleague. An ordinary young man. As Shylock put it - ‘if you cut me do I not bleed?’ or words to that effect. The loss of hope and dreams of this young man under the horrors of trench warfare, the detachment from his former life, and the death of all his school friends as they fought shoulder to shoulder, can stand for any nation's cannon fodder.

 

The second shocker was Stalingrad, an account of one of the most cruel battles of the second world war. The siege and battle for control of Stalingrad lasted 5 months 1 week and 5 days and an estimated 2 million deaths. The suffering and insane bravery of those Russians was tear-streamingly powerful. Russians, were they the enemy or the victims? Very confusing.

 

 

Ordinary people. It is good to discover as early as possible that war, enemy, victim and victor are all words that suit the powers that be; to discover that ordinary, man next door, father, brother, son, death and disfigurement, is the reality.

 

 

I have already spoken of The Cruel Sea by Montserrat, which, although there was very little fighting, showed clearly the effects of prolonged stress of war   on the ordinary people of this world.

 

 

 

In my early teens I was introduced to Ann Frank and her diary. I was still trying to come to grips with that particular form bestiality and reading her words, living her life in my mind, left me with a hole in the very soul of me, not easily repaired.

 

 

We were right in the middle of an uneasy standoff with Russia, nuclear missiles poised at each other and propaganda films misinforming us as to how to behave in the case of attack. Distressingly aware of the proximity of these missile it was a scenario which quietly haunted our childhoods.  Neville Shute's On The Beach was a quiet dignified read, the characters in Australia waiting for their final extinction, from the radiation killing the world, presented a tender but sombre and chilling read.

 

 

 

It is difficult to continue to hold the people of a nation as enemies when books such as these and Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago are read. His book charts the forced labour camps of Russia from1918 -56, so long? I was amazed, as so many were when this book was released, also at the author’s assertion that these camps were Lenin’s aberration, Stalin merely continued them.

 

 

Until these books had come into my life I had never truly given war much attention. War in all it’s glory was part of our History lessons. Lessons which had inspired patriotic pride in Britain's Empire (fast vanishing as I grew up!)The innocent ladies and children in the Indian massacre were the victims ( they were) but never a word had been said about our treatment of the continent we had vanquished. History lessons were like that back then, any country with a history as old as ours will have thousands of battles and hundreds of wars. The never ending character of mankind.

 

I had left the nationalistic Empire building propaganda far behind - where it belonged. I think possibly the last great ‘war’ book I read, before I gave up reading them, was Catch 22. A novel written by an American survivor ofthe 2nd of those world wars,  Catch 22 brought a wicked satirical sense of humour to the eternal nonsense of the bureaucracy of war. The sheer insanity of it all. Becoming a teenagers cult book especially in America during the Vietnam War.

 

Then the country was at war with Ireland - oh they are called the 'troubles' by the mealy mouthed, but bombs? assination? battles raging in the streets? no sorry it's not a trouble, it's a war.  When citizens are blown to peices for no reason except they have the wrong nationality - it's a war.

 

Many books I read and enjoy still have warfare within the story but they are not specifically war books. I don’t choose to read war books now, except for research, there is no pleasure in it. I know war for what it is. I know it for the ruthless cruel killer of ordinary people. I know it for the lies and propaganda it spews out. I hear the polished lies of politicians, the over the top rhetoric of those who wish to wage these destructive forces. I hear the slaughter of innocents.  I have not seen anything to change my veiws in the intervening 50 years . No, I don’t choose to read war books anymore

 

 

V is for Velvet and Silk

 As a young girl I fell in love with velvet and silk. They were the rich fabrics of fairy tales and the mysterious world which existed somewhere far far away from austerity Britain. We hung old velvet curtains at the doors of the draughty Victorian houses we lived in, and my grandmothers wore softly draping silk blouses. I craved clothes made of these. Not to be, although when I read years later how Scarlett had made a new outfit from Tara’s curtains I cheered. I believe I even dreamed in velvet and silk:)

I contented myself as soon as I could handle a needle with the decorative arts instead. Embroidery, Drawn Thread work and cut work. I never took to knitting when a child although, of course, I was taught, I think all girls were back then. No, I liked the pictures and built up richness of decoration.

I always enjoyed embroidery and used to sew my pretty flowers all the time. However even as a small girl I grew frustrated that pretty flowers seemed to be the all, in the design world:) As I grew and could look for myself, buy for myself, I discovered books of design, books on other crafts, books of inspiration. I was in clover.

  So, as I began collecting these so very early in life there exists among my many books dwells a substantial craft section. Books are amazing wells of information, from them , I do believe, it is possible to learn everything.

 
In the swinging sixties I turned my needle to decorating my trousers, tops, jackets etc with psychedelic  flowers, butterflies and birds in a riot of swirling colours. I smocked my tops and sleeves. I dyed feathers and added them to my hats.  The 60s were a good time for OTT decoration:)

 Over the years I have taught myself how to crochet and then later how free form that crochet into patternless enjoyment, how to produce stained glass. I mastered the skill of wet felting and when later my wrists gave way(you need strong wrists for this skill believe me) needle felting, and what a wonderful way to relieve one’s feelings when wielding a sharp needle that appears to be a yard long (I exaggerate), and some fleece.

 Books have let me learn how to produce art,porcelain and rag dolls, children’s toys and early years rag books. Patchwork in all it’s forms and styles and now my favourite form of it Crazy Patchwork have enabled me to keep warm in abandoned riotous colour. I have been able to indulge in mosaics and stencils indoors and out, even indulge in the uselessness of stone painting and rock art! It was fun and there is still a huge chunk propping up a door somewhere. Decoupage did for a while earn me some money, creating dolls from Hessian some more but the most was, over 30 years after the dreams, from hand embroidered clothes created from - silk.

 

My interest in herbs led me to teach myself about dyeing fabric and fleece with these natural ingredients and the beauty of the books is one gets to learn what other cultures use, how they go about it all.

 

All through the years and through every country of my wanders I have been armed with needle, thread, crochet hooks and the rest of the paraphernalia; it is as well really that I have never been concerned with the trappings of make up and fashion as my luggage was filled with these and books!

 

Over the years I have desired to master different crafts and went searching for the knowledge between books and also later as the world changed - workshops - a workshop meant something completely different when I was a child. Two of the latest has been tapestry and when I talk of tapestry I am talking about the original, the woven picture, not the cross stitch impostor, and bobbin lace making. Fulfilling the last of my ambitions. Unfortunately as hands and eyes age so many of these skills are having to be laid aside, with much unladylike language:)

U is for Unabridged

Many many ears ago while still a teenager - believe me that is many years ago:)I read The Cruel Sea which went straight to my top list and has remained there over the decades. It was one of those moments. A ‘War’ book people say but really more of an anti war book, if a genre is needed. However I never read it as either. This was one of the early books I read which dealt with people and the effect events have on them. I really enjoy books such as those.

 

The Cruel Sea takes a bunch of mismatched men, called up for active duty - not professional sailors, drops them on a convey ship and sends them off to sea, to war. We have clerks, journalists, bankers, just everyday folk. Learning to run a ship, to work with each other, to forget class and preconceived ideas, and hardest of all to conquer fear and anxiety. They have to leave their homes their families friends and forge a new life on a ship. They have to learn to face the sea. The sea is the greatest danger, the elements across the Atlantic, or through to Russia, the constant threat of U-boats pale into insignifcance beside the elements.

The book is about this process. The war is the background event which shapes them. It is not about the war. Oh sailors and civilians die, it is a given. Again it is the effect on personalities and how they cope or don’t. There is one harrowing scene when war takes a grandstand position, it is three quarters of the way through the book and lasts for one or maybe two chapters.

 

I was excited when the film came out - I learnt, that early, not to trust the ‘film of the book’. They made the whole film about that one incident. Well, film is visual no medium for thought process or inner dialogue I understood that. Years later audio books arrived in our house. My sister’s sight was such that she could no longer read. Back then they were very expensive books to buy so we investigated the abridged editions.

 

No. No. No.They were travesties of the original. I tried - yes you guessed it The Cruel Sea, again all focus on that incident. Where the slow unfurling of courage, the slow disintegration of a soul, where the step by step forging of friendships love and comradeship? Where the heart and soul of the book? Gone. Trashed. No excuse, not a visual media.

 

Life may be short, time may appear scarce, attention spans they tell us are becoming shorter, these are not good enough reasons to trash an authors work so.I have a dislike of abridged books which, I realise, borders on the ‘old lady grumps’ variety but at the risk of offending all who enjoy them I have to say I consider the abridging of good books a heinous act of vandalism.

 

U is for Unabridged.

T is for the Talking Beasties

 

The hold that fantasy has on my heart and I suspect most readers can be found in the attraction and interest in other animals - Facebook pages abound with photos of animals which have been captioned - cutting our milk teeth on fairy tales when first learning the magic of stories, we have them in the very fibre of us.

 

Myths, legends folk tales all abound in talking animals - why? Children’s books are more understandable - I think. Various theories have been put forward over time, from mankind’s innate loneliness to a way to make a point about humanity. Talking animals are used variously as metaphor such as is the case with Animal Farm, to show human traits in a more amusing/ acceptable form such as in Wind in the Willows

 

We have animals in their natural form except that they talk as in Watership Down.  Animals used to symbolise something abstract such as the serpent in the Bible. Some combine human characteristics such as the Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood. They are used extensively in sci-fi and fantasy such as The Chronicles of Narnia. As lessons of human follies such as stupidity, greed etc from way back when, such as Aesop’s Fables.

 

These talking animals can be found in ancient cultures from across the globe such as Greeks, Romans, African, Chinese, Aztec,Japanese and Celtic among others.

   

 

Children’s books are those first stepping stones to the classics, the entry to the romances, to the references. My whole childhood, as many a child’s, was filled with fantasy - witches, fairies malevolent spirits and talking animals. Indeed in the collections of so called Fairy Tales there are far more talking animals than there are faeries.   What is our passion for these creatures? Do we only consider them a way to view ourselves with no confrontation? But animals in their natural form are not so like us even if we try to make them so. If we need a way to laugh at our stupidities, shudder at evil or cheer on bravery do we really need animals to do so? Are we so lonely (7 billion and counting) that we feel the need to communicate with animals, imbue them with our feelings? Not a lot of sense there, especially as we spend a great deal of our time killing and eating them.  

I loved them as a child, indeed I still enjoy reading many of them. I don’t blink an eye if an animal begins to chat away between the pages, I have been known to write about them myself. I have always been passionate about wildlife and animals but,although I wasn’t one to dress up the kittens and put them in the dolls pram, and I never expected animals to converse with me in my own language, I had no problem with them in the tales of my life.

 

 

Of those I can clearly remember from so long ago, I have to include, Orlando the marmalade cat - not just a smooth talker but a cat who took his family out on outings, to the zoo or maybe the circus - I liked that cat so much - As you can see he was a handsome cat. He ruled his master’s house with a flick of his tail.  

I learnt about pre-historic animals through Monsters in Wonderland - they talked even then!

 

There was of course Aesop and his fables. They were read to me first of all I can just recall that - but as soon as I could I purloined the ancient book for my own shelves. The adults in my life no doubt were trying to convey good behaviour and a set of morality. Children however don't really need preaching to and fortunately mine never preached - the moral of each story is very clear and as one wanders through life very relevant even at my tender age I had come across dog in the manger-ish behaviour.

 

Children’s literature abounded with animal tales and I remember Wind in the Willows also stole it way to my room to be read - and returned? Maybe not. I grew very possessive over books. Toad I didn't find very entertaining - he was a braggart and a bully, stupid to-boot - I was old enough to distrust those such as he, but Badger and Mole and lovely Ratty I would revel in their lives on the river and in the wild wood.My favourite book The Jungle Books are full of talking animals and I desired so much to be able to talk to a panther! Nestle up to a wolf and chat about the day with it. Of course with no thought of fleas and parasitic life forms nestling there also:)

 

It must have been about that time I first met Doctor Doolittle, he who could talk to the animals. Dr D, as I always called him, stirred in me some very ungentle feelings of envy, so I am not sure that book was that much of a pleasure for me as some of the others.

 

There were the animal narrators such as Joe of Beautiful Joe fame, and I am Cat animals writing their own autobiographies - telling us humans of our iniquities and our good points. How cool is that?  

Too many to mention them all - but all of you will have your favourites and are there any of you who can turn your backs on the talking beasties?

S is for food

Sweet, sour, savoury, spicy, seasoned,social, succulent, sizzling and so the list goes on.

 

 

One of the many delights in my life has been food.It was not that I liked everything the first time it was served up to me, what child does, but I learnt over the decades to enjoy most food that I tried. I have favourites such as roast lamb, oranges, brassicas, milk etc hang overs from childhood. Along the way I have discovered many more.

 

 

Back when I was a child, olive oil came in tiny bottles from the pharmacist, used for such as pouring in sore ears! Garlic was extremely suspect and only fit for vampires. Coffee was not nice and the country still had ration books. British cooking suffered a serious setback pre- during and post the second world war, except in the hands of knowing housewives and very posh restaurants. My mother was one of those housewives. I was brought up by someone who could cook well and was willing to try the new. How lucky was I?

 

It has it’s drawbacks of course, I find it very difficult not to be a trifle pedantic when eating out, a little unhappy when served up re-heated microwaved meals.And very unhappy at having to eat ‘canteen’ type meals, cooked early, en-mass and kept warm - uggh. Don’t even start me on ready made meals:)

 

We have excellent food in this country, our fresh ingredients as good as anyone’s, better than many. A long history of invention and excellence. What we have lost is some of the knowledge to cook them, it is beginning to come back, but somewhere during the violent upheavals the British lost their way

 

So when did I begin buying cook / food books for myself? My mother had a fair few which I would read when frowning my way through early cooking sessions. A round about my late teens I found I wanted something ‘modern’ ‘up to date’ more ‘cutting edge’ what teenager doesn’t. I joined a monthly cookery book club. The first couple of books I bought? Traditional British recipes through history. Cutting edge. Modern yeah!

 

The British have been for ever copying/begging/ borrowing and stealing foods and flavours as well as language. They stopped for a while and then began a hideously ill matched love affair with rubbish, however the nation is back on track now as more people travel overseas and enjoy the local cuisines, as chefs get slots on T.V. as shops accommodate our migrant populations and as many are returning to old ways of farming.

 

Then I went travelling and my taste buds went into over drive. I have never enquired too closely about the food I was eating as I wandered through cultures so different from mine but I suspect I ate and enjoyed much that is vaguely taboo!I came home with whole new taste. And of course the food books in the countries I travelled through were irresistible sensations.

 

Seasoning, after good raw food, is often the difference between mediocre and sensational. Seasoning often in the form of small leaves, roots, buds and seeds. Such small inconsequential looking stuff. But oh the magic in the small. One of my early purchases told how to grow them and other uses, dishes they could be used for.

 

I discovered more spices and many interesting ways of using them on my travels.I have my favourites, middle eastern food is so mouthwateringly delicious I could overdose on it. Eastern European cultures can deliver food that is amazing. Chinese of course although not of the take away variety. Then there are individual dishes from all around like the Navajo fried bread, basmatti rice, Kangaroo, Greek herbed roast lamb, Portuguese fish dishes, Morton Bay Bugs. There is the goats cheese, heavy dark bread and apricot preserve of the Balkans, the Chai of the Hindu Kush, Louisiana shrimp, and oh the list is endless.

  Seasoning is I suppose the key to all this, the type of herb/spice, cooking fat etc then the wonderful combinations of tastes, chocolate with chilli (you laugh now but back when I discovered the combination it wasn’t actually well known) the day I discovered Vanilla was an enhancer of other flavours as well as a flavour for ice-cream was a revelation.

 

My cook book collection now takes up shelves and shelves. Recipe books I rarely follow ,they are read with excitement for the ideas and inspirations, I cannot resist fiddling with a recipe.

 

 

Apart from these I wanted to know about food, benefits, history, dangers, sociality. One of the reasons I studied nutrition at University. The original ‘miles’ a food stuff travelled. I discovered the barbarity of food security and the obscenity of price wars over this most basic of stuff. I read about the chemistry of food as it changed from raw to cooked to rotten. I find every aspect of this wonderful sustenance fascinating.

 

But it is probably time to stop buying so many books eh?

 

R is for I dont do romance

I have no romance in my soul, at least not what goes by that name these day.I am the one who, when being serenaded on the Adriatic Sea, by a handsome young man with cheekbones to ‘die for’ as they say, who was comparing my eyes to limpid pools in Serbo Croat, laughed and said he was being ridiculous - I had no tact at all back when I was young. He tried very hard to bring my mind around to romance but I have to say I was more interested in the sights and sounds of the Dalmatian coast. I have always distrusted effusive compliments!

 

For a while many decades ago my sister was a fan of the Mills and Boon books (pre erotic days!) and I tried a couple of those, but put them aside, I also dipped a toe in Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cookson and left them both in a hurry, the first for the sickliness of the froth and the second for the unremitting gloom.

 

 

The nearest I get to ‘romance’ is Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. I have a lot of these and still dip into them when I need an old friend to keep me company. I have posted before on my take on romance so will not repeat.Suffice to say if I am to enjoy a ‘romantic’ tale it must have wit and intelligence behind it.

 

Every now and then I try one, and find the more recent, since sexual liberation, have too much sex and very little love. I’ll tell you now my imagination can conjure up better sex than any writer can, more romantic/sexier/raunchier sex. The inadequate words merely detract.

 

 

What I do enjoy is a love story. I believe in ‘love’ in a way I find impossible to believe in ‘romance’ Love in all it’s guises, between adults, child and parent, Friends etc, love in all its shades, passionate, selfish and selfless, destructive etc. I will take ‘love’ stories with or without a hopeful ending and even on occasion with a happy ending. Anna Karena, A Town like Alice, some of Anita Shreeve’s and Ann Tyler's. Many, many other ‘genres’ contain wonderful love stories within their pages, once not expected by their themes and titles, such as War and Peace.

 

I do not look for love stories, I look for good stories and a strong realistic love theme adds another layer. I’m too old now to drop my cynicism, or change my ways, I am just not created that way.As it is about 50% of the market I can only accept I am out of step,the world twirls around on romance, is that why divorce rates are so high? Me? I will stick to grand sweeping romances from olden times.

 

Maybe for a couple of years in my early teens I had romantic notions about various young men around, but I wasn’t convinced. My first taste I suspect were within the pages of Lorna Hill ballet books, but I found the intrusion of love interfered dreadfully with the story. I still do, I don't watch romantic films, so if some other film suddenly introduces a love scene I’m there with the groans and comments of ‘gerra off’. I did read Anna Seton and Norah Lofts for a while. Then Daphne du Murier who was more to my taste as happy endings weren’t a given. That classic stand by for romantic teenage girls, Wurthering Height, I detested. Heathcliff was a bully plain and simple. It was the first time I came across this ‘love’ of a bad man, I still do not understand the ‘bit of rough’ attitude. I did enjoy Jane Eyre though.

 

But no, I don't do romance, I am not romantic.

 

Q is for qualifications

I finished my travels and wandered home to begin caring for ageing parents,I had tried my hand at self employment and had given up as the 80s recession crashed down on us, there wasn’t so much call for luxury silk clothes when money was tight. I got myself a proper job and tried to become a typical woman of my time. It wasn’t enough. I missed the fresh newness of every day I had wandered, missed the anticipation of learning something every day. I was hurtling toward what others called middle age (as I was determined to live until I was 120 I considered middle age to be 60+:).

 

Then one day I had what can only be called a menopausal hiccough. I applied to go to University.  Did I need qualifications at this point in my life?  No, but I found I wanted them. What to do.  A science degree of course! This, from a person who had been refused permission to sit the 11+ on the grounds I was so stupid it wouldwaste everyone's time, from the one who had not only been asked to leave the Latin class,the French class and eventually the Maths class. Who in her entire school career had never looked at more science than the amoeba, the construction of the flower and dissection of the sheep's eye.   Nothing like making gaining a few qualifications difficult for myself. Maybe I was as mad as friends accused:)

 

They wouldn’t have me I thought, but they did. My two employers at the time, had written references and I guess they had written glowing reports because not only was I accepted but accepted without an interview. I was in. I was terrified.

 

The first lecture I attended was calculus, what was that? What was anything mathematical or scientific - for instance was what was a Bunsen burner? Help.

 

Help came with an outside tutor for basic maths and a host of books. I had a grant and because I was working part time and lived at home I decided my grant was my book money. What riches, badly needed, academic books are not cheap.

 

I taught myself basic maths and science from school books. Which enabled me to follow the lectures, just about. I had taught myself basic computing skills just before I had applied,enough that I could take more advanced ones and not struggle. For the next seven years I read almost nothing but academic books. I ‘listened to novels on the way to and from University a round trip of four hours but any spare time was reading and writing for those exams.

 

Despite a youth of hating school and education I found I loved University. I had found a new way of travelling, a new way of discovery. Rapidly the bookcases began overflowing as the basic maths (I didn’t have to do much more) and science gave way to world hunger, food science, technology, to anthropology, psychical and social. To evolution and genetics (the human genome was in its infancy and the world was buzzing)I wrapped my head around psychological theory and nutrition, food aid and early barter systems And as a side dish learnt about photography from dark room onward. And fell for glorious black and white prints, me who had loved colour all my life.

 

I discovered I could debate, could discuss and analyse. I couldn't write though; my grammar, spelling and punctuation was as wild and undisciplined as ever and my ‘friend from forever’ had to step in to rescue my sentences from their verb-lessness. It was to be another 15 years before I discovered I had dyspraxia and possible a mild case of dyslexia.Once I had a fax machine and friend at other end to red pencil me, I was set.

 

It must be remembered, or realised, for those to young to remember the dark ages, personal computers were still a rarity, not everyone had one, whizzing messages around cyberspace was not an every minute occurrence. Nowadays I can send my writing to ‘friend from forever’ and she can email it back already corrected. Magic.

 

 

Half way through I decided with just a little more effort I could get a high enough degree to carry on and do a Masters; that would show everyone I wasn’t stupid. No, it wasn’t about revenge, it had been more that. I had always wanted to be clever enough to go but had believed my teachers, 20 years of wandering the world had shown me another side of myself. I now believed I could do it. I did. A BSc Hons and then on to a Masters. I was one year into a PhD when my mother’s health crashed into 24/7 care needs and I was, with her, housebound. Never a Dr but what a fantastic time I had had learning about the new world of my middle years. I have not lost the academic habit and keep up with the new developments in each subject I studied. So my youthful readings which had set me off on my travels,combined with the travels and my years at university sparked enough to let me indulge my old age in writing.

 

Books, books I still cannot resist them, and as the world spins ever faster I find more and more I wish to possess. Hopeless case moi:)

P is for 'I maybe some time'

When I was still at primary we all had to do a project. Nowadays children are always creating projects and lovely creations they are as well . With the aid of computers and software they sing and dance in glorious colour. Back then a project was a strange sounding beast. It had to be explained to us. It was to be a scrap book - there was no other way of doing it.What we needed to acquire was a scrap book, and as many cuttings from newspapers and magazines as we could gather some reading of encyclopedias and an essay or smaller pieces of our own work to explain the grand What was this unusual thing we had to do - it was the The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctica Expedition of 1956 -58. The only original pieces would be ours as there was a very limited variety of magazines back then and most of our parents took the same newspapers.

Antarctica. The first I had heard of it and the beginning of a lifetime love affair. I had a small advantage in that not only my parents could help but so too could my grandmothers living with us and fully conversant with the ‘Heroic age of Antarctica’. Through them I learnt of such as Scott and Shackleton. Through them I discovered the North Pole and the North West Passage and such greats as Ross, Parry and Franklin.

 

 

 

 

I was pointed to the right direction to discover the long, long history of exploration in these frozen wastes. Polar regions, even the name had a ring to it. Captain Cook had insisted Australia wasn't all the Southern continent, there had to be more. He got to within 150 miles of the land mass - in those tiny wooden boats! How the search for the North West Passage had been going on since the 1400’s and only proved in 1909 - how the seeking after the North Pole had been going on even longer.

 

A whole new world of intrepid explorers, crazy foolhardy dreamers, opened up before me and has never left. Madmen shipping off to uncharted waters, tempestuous seas and killing cold to follow a dream, to win fame and recognition, to prove themselves to - Why do explorers explore? There are a thousand reasons.

 

Project beside,a life long love affair aside, I was also to refine and deepen my own moral compass with the stories of these men. My family had already sound principles but what child believes their parents, its our heroes we look up to and these men were mine. Not just the Polar ones, although they started it, but all explorers all the madmen. I know because I bought, borrowed the books.  Insatiable appetite:)

 

 

I started with the home grown variety of course but in all nationalities you will find similar traits in their explorers. The fact that you or you and your companions throw yourselves onto the mercy of ‘whatever’, means self sufficiency of the highest degree and, if with others, self sufficiency and comradeship. To dare all, means more often than not hard grind, exhausting toil, back breaking ‘get up and just do it’ mentality. It means facing incredible danger with fortitude and it sometimes means self sacrifice for the good of a friend or company. It requires good leadership and loyalty and an ability to subjugate your own need for the needs of others. It requires a certain amount of carelessness (what is the utter stupidity of doing all this if not a carelessness of ones own life?) and extreme care and planning.

 

 

 

I already knew of Hillary from Mount Everest fame He was already a hero in my land. Now with my Grannies help I found Scott of the Antarctic, the ‘failed’ hero of the race to the South Pole, except of course he wasn’t a failure. He was a hero. (In my land you don't have to have won to be a hero) Many a myth was to grow up around him, before decades later the wreckers tried to chop him down, as wreckers always will. He, and the men who perished with him were heroes in the British sense that they died with dignity, with courage, having given the endeavour their all. Step up Shackleton also, he who risked his life to keep a promise and save his men. My childhood was littered with men such as these from the war, just finished, and from the generation before, my Grannies fallen men.

 

The Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration called so because it was recognised that the ill equipped expeditions (before modern communication/travel/supplies etc were available) became expeditions of endurance; testing physical and emotional fortitude to the limits and beyond. It is truly amazing to what heights of endeavour a human can climb in extremities. However not just for these undoubted merits, but for the fact that the men who sailed were not rough uneducated men, they were poets, writers, painters, intellectuals, photographers, scientists of some merit in their own fields and every nation they hailed from held them up as national heroes.

 

During this age most of the coastline had been discovered and mapped, a great deal of the interior was explored, and the geographical and magnetic poles had been reached. Alongside these achievements much important scientific discoveries and data had been collected. Not bad for a bunch of madmen:)

 

 

When I took off on my travels I took with me Scott and Shackleton's legacy, also a couple of my many books on Antarctica. I had armed myself, I hoped, with the qualities they had laid down. Oh I didn’t, like them, conquer new worlds but I was on my own more than I was with others and self sufficiency and getting on with life were necessities if I wasn’t to race home, tail between legs. When I was scared, and I was many a time, I kept my fears inward and worked through it, conquered it, or not! Sometimes when ill, alone and for the moment with nowhere to lay my head I knew to push beyond what I thought was possible. My heroes walked every inch of my travels with me. And when at last 30 years later I had a chance to go to Antarctica I did, and paid them homage where they had walked, suffered and won.

 

On 17th March 1912 , worried that he ,with his failing health, was holding up his companions and endangering their lives, Captain Oates, according to Scott's diary said

 

‘I am just going outside and I maybe some time.’ and walked out into a blizzard.

O is for foreign climes

I had just finished The Tiger’s Wife, set in the former Yugoslavia, for a reading group and decided I would write a blog on the overseas authors I have read/enjoyed/ been influenced by over a life time. Well actually I thought there wouldn’t be a lifetime because my head was full of The Tiger's wife and just recently had re-read A Thousand Splendid Suns, Afghanistan, for another group and had a mind set that was saying foreign (foreign to someone from the UK) writers were a new aspect in my life. What rubbish one’s brains can produce, because of course I have been exposed to them all my life.

 

I am not sure how early on the myths and legends of the Norsemen was first introduced to me, but located as I am in the British Isles I have shared from way back in the writing of the Scandinavians and the Northern Europeans. Translations all, so maybe filtered through a British lens. Of course this always a danger with translations and one which cannot be avoided.The Norse myths, the fairy stories of Grimes and Hans Anderson. The fables of Aesop and Fontaine. A shared childhood. There is a sense of familiarity when I read modern Scandinavian authors.

 

Through school more flooded in. I thrilled to Alexandra Dumas, Victor Hugo,Boris Pasternak wept over Anne Frank and as I grew older became pretentious over Thomas Mann, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus,Ibsen and Herman Hesse. Delved into the dark Russians with Dostoevsky and Chekhov. I moved forward to go backwards to Plato, Homer and Ovid. I did not really equate these with ‘foreignness’ as such. The culture was too similar; the great wars and revolutions they charted were ours as well. And even the ancient Greeks and Romans were part, indeed the beginning of European culture. This is not to lump all these greats into a homogeneous whole, there are differences, even within a country, but the feeling of exotic was never present.

 

It was these early books of overseas,  of lands beyond England's shore that set me off on my travels and when, 20 years later, I returned home it was to the newer authors/books I turned too, to satisfy my consuming interest in the world:)

 

No, when I first thought of overseas writers I was leaning toward the - to me - exotic lands beyond Europe where culture is so different. Maybe not the history, as the British have got around and interfered in many lands.

 

I went looking for the ‘few’ books I thought I had read and still possessed and found a multitude. Stopping myself from settling down there and then to re-read recognised friends I have endeavoured to sort them into continents and countries. Not because all of a certain country write in the same manner, we all know that to be a nonsense, separated into piles merely to facilitate an overall feeling of difference.

 

I discovered Indian authors first, my interest in the country goes way back to Kim. There is much debate as to whether English speaking Indian authors are true representatives of the varied cultures, style and history. Whether writing in the language of the former oppressors should bring any merit.? This is a debate I leave to the various factions of the sub continent. The India these authors brings me is a slow, as in a mighty river, and richly cultured one. An excitement buzzes just below the surface. Many find them difficult to read because of the multitude of layers, large casts and minutia of everyday life, I find them endlessly fascinating. The geological area is on a grand scale and the history and religious life ancient and tumultuous.

 

In Africa also there is an often brutal history of colonialism and degradation, not just causing a loss of identity. Who drew those maps? Made up these borders?  creating the tensions now, if not the colonial masters.  Africa suffered from multiple interlopers. African author's, while still approaching the realism of this past on their present, have a different blood soaked soul. Identity loss I believe greater than in India, the fragmentation between so many masters, and the length of the brutality of apartheid, the tearing apart of a continent by wars and insurrections has led to a more fragile life.   However we do the continent a disservice if we do not also see that Africa is home not just to the terrible but to the splendid beauty of land, myth and legend  and parts of it is full of hope,a land of ready smiles and laughter even in adversity.

Another continent which has impinged on my life is that of South America. What a diverse land. What an ancient history, of past glories and subjugation. Although better known for magic realism there is more; a long line of literary work stretching back, covering the ideals of creating unification, of struggles against oppression and revolution. South American authors as one would expect fill their works with vibrancy and a rich linguistic style fed by their history and religions, their myths and legends. Exciting works to relish.

 

 

Another land I have gravitated towards is Japan, so much smaller in size to the Continental lands mentioned before, but with a history so unlike the others, and a literary heritage of two millennium. I came late to this country but have so enjoyed the trip. Again this another history, long and proud and then devastated by the atomic bomb and the disgrace of defeat. This is a country that more than most has managed to reinvent itself. One of the most overcrowded places on earth, steeped in traditions yet in the forfront of modernity, one needs to be sure footed to live there. The modern psychological aspects of urban disfunctionality and angst, in the increasingly complicated world, modern Japan has to contend with also rings strong bells in any overcrowded world.

 

There is not room here for the authors and books I have enjoyed, another time, another blog. All these nations with their own histories and problems yet all together in this present. Some take time, indeed they should be given it. Authors pour their lives into their creation, their lives are made up of their histories, their country histories. If we read their words through translators or through second languages matters not we must try and understand. If we do, we can enter worlds of richness and find new ways to view the world.

N is for P birds of time

When preparing for this challenge I went searching through the old, dusty books of my past and fell into a trip of nostalgia which I haven’t indulged in for many a year. So many books brought back reminders of incidents and times mostly with good memories. It was fun, thinking back.

 

While I sat up there with all those childhood books I was surprised to see just how much influence the ‘P’ birds have had on my reading life; beginning with the Baby Puffin, then the Puffin proper, going on to Pelican and Penguin.

 

Puffin

Puffin started life 4 years after its parent Penguin back in 1939 - the original idea was to produce a series of non fiction picture books for children . They were our first encyclopedias.

Books such as Animals of the Countryside, A Book of Ships, The Battle of Britain, Waterways of the World. They showed us the world and snippets of history in a more exciting way than the Edwardian tombs our family had inherited.

Many of these books were published a few years before I was born so there dozens of them were in my home by the time I was crawling around and looking at picture books. That series were all paper, with a mixture of black and white illustrations with some garish colour.

 

The war time editions came out during severe paper rationing, so we must be ever grateful for those who considered suitable reading matter for small children was a necessity.Before the event there were no inexpensive books suitable for children. These books were my beginning into reading

 

Many showed foreign lands and cultures and thus my dreams of travel began early. I would have listened in as older siblings had the books read to them, I would have learnt the words as we snuggled around just as children will do today.

 

The first editor Eleanor Graham created a list of 12 new titles a year and these were a mixture of fiction and non fiction. The first fiction was Worzal Gummidge in 1941 - for those who don’t know him, Worzel is a scarecrow come to life. She also brought out The Family at One End Street which was, supposedly, the first time a storybook dealing not with middle class children, or farmers children, but a working class family, was published. ‘One End Street,’ was a brilliant book which I remember clearly even all these decades later.One of my early sci-fi reads was published under the Puffin sign.

  The list of books encompassed children’s stories and into, what is called today, YA many of them still grace my books shelves. Translated books - nature books, fictional adventures, factual, they were all there entertaining me.

 

 

 Pelican

The Pelican books were brought out to inform rather than to entertain and the family began buying these as well

 



Penguin began to claim my allegiance as I grew older but the Puffin books were the first to pull me in. Penguin the parent company ruled the shelves for years, beginning in 1936. The remit to provide good quality cheap paperback books for the mass market. Everyone thought it would fail but within a year a million books had been published. The mass market it seems were ready for good quality books:) they were colour coded for years - two bands of colour top and bottom with white in the middle section.

 

Orange/white  = general fiction

Green/white =  crime fiction

Cerise/white =  travel/adventure

Dark blue/white =  biography

Yellow/white  = miscellaneous

Red/white  = drama

Purple/white =  essays

grey/white  = world affairs.

 

Penguin

 

Over the years they began other collections such as classic and then Morden classic, and of course they did resort later to putting pictures on the covers but I do have a soft spot for those original covers.

 

About a year ago when I was endeavouring to re-arrange my overcrowded bookshelves I collected all the Penguin books together and was amazed at how many were there - from the very beginning (my father was certainly up for cheap good books,) his diary, before he was married, bemoans the fact that he spends too much money on books and maybe should try and break the habit 

 

Well book worms everywhere, how easy would he find that? - not:( I never stood a chance really with my addiction:)

 

 

M is for What is realism in fiction anyway?

Many of you will know I am not a great fan of labels and am genre blind for the most part(for goodness sake I don’t even know what genre my series is and I’m editing the 4th this month:( I never discovered there was such a genre as Magic Realism until six months ago - come on give me some slack I’m an old woman - not so nimble keeping up with the times.

 

 I discovered I had been reading it for ever. If we discount fairy tales and myths which I don’t think we can, however, if we discount them then probably Don Quixote was the first and read way back in my school days decades ago. Who would ever had thought that marvellous classic had a label such as Magic Realism - well of course I don't believe it did back then. It was in the 50s that someone first mentioned it as belonging to the genre.

 

 

 

Although I seem to read a great many of the genre, according to the various lists around, I am confused with this label. There is a great deal written about it, explanations of what it means, what novels belong. It is not unanimous, disputes and splinters abounding. Even perusing the endless lists do not help much. The latest list I read was on Goodreads, and it is being stripped as quickly as it is being written. And newcomer as I am even I could see that Hunger Games and the Twilight series did not belong on the list nor did Seabolds Lucky although I think probably her The Lovely Bones did. They stripped away the Harry Potter books also. The fact that these were all put on the list in the first place rather suggests folk are not clear what the genre is.

 

 

The trouble with labelling books, placing them within genres is this problem of peoples perceptions. If a ghost is allowed, as in The Lovely Bones then why not all ghosts. If it is, something magical interlocked with realism then why is a ghost allowed - ghosts are normally considered magic - rather they are classed as paranormal, supernatural, so what then changes them so that become Magic Realism. Why do we find Toni Morrison’s Beloved firmly on all the lists, and on some lists, Audry Niefnegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry; both books are about ghosts.

 

 

The purists will not allow The Time Travellers Wife to be Magic Realism because it is about a genetic mutation therefore a reality possibility! As this genetic mutation allows time travel it should be I suppose science fiction but I have never seen it claimed as such

 

The Cure for Death by Lightening has no magic in its gritty realism it employs instead ‘trickster’ who is of course a mythological creature. If he is allowed as magic then those frolicking gods on mount Olympus should be allowed into the genre - I have just finished The Iliad and thats is a tale where the ordinary mixes, with no questions asked, with the gods.

 

We have our fictional roots deep in mythology and fairy tale, are they to be included - Angela Carters Bloody Chamber has been found on the lists, to my mind this was fairy tale - when does fairy tale and/or myth become Magic Realism? When does ghost or fantasy?

 

The Life of Pi is classed as Magic Realism by some not others, Chocolat by some not others. There is Kafka by the Shore with its talking cats, some agree some say it must be fairy tale. There does seem to be more division on this genre than on others.

 

Then I found that Kafka's Metamorphosis which is a mainstay on many lists is dismissed as surrealism. I had always thought and read it as as an intriguing wonderful book, if very dark. There is confusion everywhere and I begin to give up once again on genre.There is no sense to be made. Gunter Gras’s The Tin Soldier is Magic Realism as is The Book Thief;I have no problem with either book, I have enjoyed them both but why isn’t Gulliver’s Travels and Alice in Wonderland also on the lists. The one is called political satire, the other a fairy tale. Or is it because Magic Realisim is always spoken of as a 20th century genre, in which case they cannot claim Don Quioxte

 

The Goodreads list is being heavily pruned removing the books with vampires, sci-fi, fantasy, dystopian within their pages. Many argue that Magic Realism is just another version of fantasy - another sub genre - there is no end for these divisions. Are the books which make the lists being labelled Magic Realism because of the way they are written, does one have to be a ‘serious’ writer to be accepted. If so, where Gulliver’s Travels. Does it rely on imaginative imagery, and lyrical language, if so, then it wanders into what is called ‘Literature’.

 

And indeed what is ‘realisim’ in fiction anyway. So few books portray a realism which I would recognise but that has never deterred me reading a good story. Every time we pick up a book of fiction we suspend our logic, our belief in the world. If the book is good we will swim quite happily in someone else's imagination.

 

I do not approve of genre’s and their tight restrictive rules. The more we divide and confine works of creativity the more we stifle creativity. Authors begin to write to a formula, forget to explore and experiment. Language as well as our imaginative world become the poorer for it. I have found someone else who does not take kindly to this restrive genre making. Ted Gioia has given it another name, another genre, Conceptual Fiction, but at least his genre expands to include all manner of authors, all manner of books. He cuts across the genres and sub genres of old and welcomes all within his walls. His welcome goes far back to Swift and Moore back further to myth and fairy tale.

 

‘Tinkering with conceptions of reality and delight in the fanciful. . . Are as old as storytelling itself’ Ted Gioia

L is for Sci-fi

When did mankind turn their eyes upwards and begin to spin tales about life in the universe. When did our fascination for the universe begin. Way, way back, probably before the Neolithic times. It was inevitable that humanity would gaze up at the enormity of the skies (particularly the night sky) and feel dwarfed and insignificant. Lonely maybe. The sense of alone'ness and abandoment has always seemed to haunt mankind. 

 

Loneliness has always had a shadow up there among the stars, way back, from the seemingly empty visible skies  and, even now when we know how many trillions of planetary bodies there are, the spaces in between those vast, almost unimaginably vast, distances between stops. Leave the protection of your space ship and drift away - it is considered the loneliest of deaths - aimlessly drifting through the eons.

 

Space travel eh! I was a teenager when the Russians launched their sputnik, and then their rocket and I fell for Yuri Gagarin.  I was a woman grown at the time of the moon landing. Exciting times - a time for bated breath. Would our dreams of finding life out there in those impossibly empty spaces, in the loneliness of space, come true. Would we find out if we were truly alone here in the Universe. Yup, we are still by ourselves.

 

When did I turn my attention to the genre - well, long before I knew it was a genre. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote exciting tales. Even Patrick Moore’s Mission to Mars was as far as I was concerned another teenage novel of adventure. My father knew better and was already well into this newish genre. There was a ready library waiting for me when I thought they might be fun to read.

I read all of his and bought many of my own. Issac Asimov, Damon Knight, moving onto Robert Heinlein, Author C Clarke, A.E van Vogt. I mustn’t forget Ursula Le Guin and Frank Herbert. It was a golden age indeed for science fiction.These were rockets and space ships, martians and moon walks because that is what I thought Sci-fi was. Over the years I wandered away from them. Hard rocket type science was not for me, I thought, as the excitement of the space race palled. I had left the genre behind.

 

 

Well I hadn't of course I just didn't think genre, never have.  What I had not realised, until recently, was the variety of sci fi sub genres there are. I have been reading them all my life - again only thinking they were good books. Dystopian appear to be my favourite beginning, of course, with Brave New World - which I had access to as soon as I could read. My father’s copy I have found was a special printing issued during WW11 for the forces. I bought my own copy years later! 1984 of course.

 

And post apocalyptic worlds, lovely.

 

Neville Shute’s On the Beach did not register in my mind as a part of Science Fiction - the nuclear threat was our real nightmare for years - the story seemed like a real possibility - nothing new - nuclear contamination wasn’t a future development it was here. My over riding memory of that book was indeed loneliness. Those last few people in Australia awaiting death, that was a loneliness that far exceeded drifting away from a space ship, to me anyway.

 

 

There have been many over the years, from the ancient world to today and on the way I have read among others, Margaret Atwood,J.G. Ballard,John Wyndham,John Christopher, as well as Shute and Orwell. Nowadays these worlds seem to have gravitated down to YA, I thought it a shame that youngsters had these fears, but thinking back I was a YA when I began reading these books, of course I wasn’t labelled as such back then.

 

The stars are still a lonely place but authors have populated it in our minds with divers species, races, wars and treaties. Post Apocalyptic and Dystopian worlds are even lonelier

 

 

 

 

K is for oddities and titbits

How many of us readers/writers enjoy wandering through a dictionary or thesaurus, or a book facts, lists and fantasia. Enjoy wandering from the point, down divers paths, when looking a particular fact up? I think I am not alone in this? Are we naturally nosey or just curious? Do we seek out knowledge of all kinds because we read/write and have trained ourselves or do we read/write because we were born this way?

 

I know my delight in oddities and titbits began very early, looking through books of facts, words, curiosities, could keep me occupied for forever. My first were of course the old old books from my grandparents 1800’s days. The world barely changed back then so it was safe to hang on to encyclopedias and the like through the generations.Nowadays, with the global knowledge base expanding like the Big Bang, one needs to be nimble footed to keep up:)

 

When I began to control my own money, was permitted to wander in to London’s West End on my own - to spend heavenly days in the bookshops there, I found there were endless volumes, slim or mighty, of facts. The best were those which served no practical purpose but were just the best.One of the first I grabbed with glee was

 

The Ladies Oracle by Cornelius Agrippa

Founded on an entire new plan which never fails to reply

to any question asked

being an infallible prophet of the male sex

 

Well I ask you how could a girl resist?Another was

T he Victorian Book of Dreams 

including signs auguries, divination by cards and prognostics from the physiognomy and moles,&c.&c. 

 

I have never in my life believed in the symbolism of dream.

 

Then there was

 

 Love Courtship & Marriage

 

being an Invaluable and Instructive Guide for the Romantically inclined - a book of Phrenology, Physiology and Physiognomy is included to throw ‘ much light, and have such an important bearing upon love, courtship and marriage, as to render their teachings of the highest importance in these matters.

 

I also found that other nations had their own proverbs which also came in their own slim volumes like Russian and Japanese - people would question why I would want these but some of you will understand that desire to know.

 

When I was young and travelled around Britain visiting friends by train I was constantly amazed at the folk I met. There they would sit , not the obvious oddballs, ordinary same as ourselves type folk, nothing to advertise their craziness. Then strike a conversation and you discover a person with a mission. Be it to collect every number of a certain class of train, or to finish building a scaled model of Buckingham Palace from used matchsticks. Maybe they were aficionado's of an obscure old English dance or a fund of memorised Shakespearean plays. Hours of travel, meeting glorious eccentrics. Is it just the British or do you all have these wonderful people sitting quietly on your train seats, waiting at your bus stops - I think you do, look at Ann Tyler’s books.

 

 

So when the run of single subject paperbacks appeared in my life I was among old friends. The biography of the  Cod, was the first I bought (that wasn't to do with anything I was studying) If you ponder this, why would I want to know the story of Cod, of the trade in long distance Ice, or indeed the discovery of Longitude? Who knows? but I did and many others also, and I discovered more worlds to sit and marvel at than can be found within the pages of fiction. Marvellous, idiotic, riveting, magical worlds.

 

 

Then there are the ‘where did that saying come from’ books I have a lot of them now - I know you can look them up on the web but they are much more fun between the covers of a book. The downside of all this curiosity is that there is a billion more useless (to me:) facts out there awaiting my attention but not a billion more days for me to discover them,nor I confess if there were would there be a billion fresh eager brain cells to nestle them in.

 

 

 

PS: in our house we have at least six Dictionaries and three thesaurus

 

Two years ago I was tempted by a bargain offer of the boxed set of The Shorter English Dictionary - worth £350 at the time - offer £20 well I would have been a fool not too - wouldn’t I? This year another offer a small edition - leather bound ( I can not resist leather bound) of the Oxford Dictionary and matching thesaurus. My excuse - well the big ones need a table to be opened onto, so I needed a more compact next to me edition! And all the others I have? Well even Dictionaries get out of date, will I have time to check entries to see if they are new? Of course not. I’m unsavable I’m afraid.

 

J is for exotic lands

 

My computer is sick, sick, sick and trying to get pictures up here in cyberspace is proving difficult, sorry!

 

When I was young, oh so very young, I began to dream of travelling the amazing world I was reading about, in all those books I wrapped myself in. I didn’t dream of travelling my own country until I was an adult;no the books I read were full of exotic animals, exploration and adventure in far flung places. I was a last child of Empire - a dying Empire it is true and most of it was thankfully gone by the time I was old enough to roam. The books though, the books came to me via my grandparents truly children of Empire and my parents gracing the fading days.

 

Ancestors of mine had travelled to these places had been part of the history. Young boys and girls - the boys especially wriggled in impatience to be able to go and do their ‘bit’. Not realising how terrible war and conquest is. So these books were set in the jungles of the world, on the coral islands of the seas and high in the mountain reaches and across far flung veldt's. I loved them. Not the war bits,never really been into battle scenes, no, what I enjoyed was the adventure of strange lands, peoples and landscape. Britain at the time, after years of war and rationing, was a drear place for a girl who yearned for colour and excitement.

 

There were the classics such as Robinson Crusoe and the copies such as Coral Island and Jungle Jim - even Billy Bunter ventured away from his school of privilege to try his luck among the ‘cannibals’. We had on our bookshelves at home large ‘annuals’ and I mean large, a good 18 ‘ high and 2-3 inches thick, not like the annuals of my youth - these harked back to my grannies and grand uncles days. Among the school stories, there were adventures in the South Seas and in the jungles of the Far East, enough to thrill and tempt an imaginative young child.

 

 

 

The first I probably heard of these exotic climes was in The Just So Stories. Rudyard Kipling a master of the English language, whether penning nonsense reasons for things, romantic adventures or barrack room ballads. These stories were followed very swiftly with the Jungle Books. Love those stories from way back then to now.

 

A small lost child, kindly wolves, a panther, monkeys and Sher Khan what wasn’t to draw one in. Not the Walt Disney version (catchy tunes but oh the travesty of the tales:( I still like my stories to have grit in them. The mysterious jungle with its wonderful creatures,the strange sounds in the night, vines or snakes hanging down ready to get you. I’m not sure how often I have read the stories in my life. Away from the story of Mowgli I think my favourite must have been Riki tikki tavi. A mongoose for goodness sake - what was a mongoose? I was determined to go to India and find out.

 

Kipling then offered me Kim, now in the real world but in a setting just as magical. Child surviving best he can, a deep bond between child and old wise man strange customs, colourful noisy life and great wisdom. The first readings, of course, I was interested only in this play between Anglo/Irish orphan boy and Tibetan wise man - of the terrible feelings of loss and love. Subsequent readings when old enough to understand, brings that grand epic of clashing nations. Britain versus Russia fought out in the icy mountains of Central Asia. Set between the 2nd and 3rd Afghan wars and oh, when will politicians ever learn from history. There was spying long before the days of Bond, secret messages and the ‘fate of nations rest in your hands’ events.

 

Kipling, although still a controversial figure especial in India, loved the country he spent so many years living in. Of course he wrote from an Imperial perspective to an extent, but his stories show his love of all the richness of the country and inspired, in one small girl at least, a longing so great to witness this richness for herself. Well maybe I didn’t talk with the wolves and tigers but I didn’t rest until I travelled the land.

 

Many of these adventure books played out their tales on islands, shipwrecks, isolated communities, head hunters and pirates. Hot, incredibly hot sandy beaches, children today travel to hot beaches as a matter of course, back then when chilblains were the norm, when every winter, pipes froze solid and coal fires were never enough; when we choked in our smogs, descriptions of these sun drenched places warmed cockles. Never mind one might end up in a pot being dinner, or that pirates would force you into the sea via a bouncing plank - where did they get planks from? The whole point was that even moi - because of course I would put myself into the tales - would prove to be ever resourceful and courageous.

 

Of the isolated islands genre I do believe R.M Ballantyne’s Coral Island was the one. A trio of young boys marooned on a coral island, having to learn how to feed house and cloth themselves, having adventures and battles with warring tribes, tussles with marauding pirates and forging friendships over different cultures.Fantastic. British winters vanished and my dreams and ambitions grew.

 

As a child I lived in the dreams and as an adult I lived the dreams.

I is for incorrect

No pictures today just a gentle rant on a form of censorship of which I on the whole disapprove off. That is, changing so called incorrect texts to suit the present moment.

 

It is not new and I am sure opinionated people have been tampering with texts ever since texts began - maybe even those ancient clay tablets - I wouldn’t be surprised. History is ripe for tampering. Those with power or, those who  seek power, will seek to change the past to make their present more to their liking. This ia a given, I accept it happens, I also accept that we ourselves are continually tweaking our pasts , making sense/reinventing/ embroidering ever so slightly or more. I accept it, it is not to say I like it.

 

However I think it is at heart wrong to change a written text without a by your leave. Books are written in an historical time. They reflect the social mores of that time. Presenting a window through which we can view the culture and language of that time, giving us the reader a feeling of the past and changes through intervening years.

 

Fiddling to change history. Fiddling to change 'incorrect' language. Both wrong.

 

Recent turmoils seem to be because of inappropriate non PC words. Non PC 'now' - not 'then'. 'They offend, they are dangerous they must be eliminated.’ Words are only dangerous if used in a dangerous manner, they are words, collections of letters. The danger is in the minds of those who misuse them. Changing an offensively insulting word to another more ‘harmless’ word will never work - the harmless word then becomes the offence, the insult, and so it has to be changed again. It is not the word at fault but the society which uses it as insult. The society which seeks to make citizens non citizens, who wish to keep the powerless powerless. Change society and words no longer harm.

 

If the concern over children reading books such as Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird or  even Noddy, is that they will be corrupted into bad ways then  the adult, who at the end of the day is responsible for the morality of the child, should read the books with them. A good chance to explain the bad and demonstrate the changes. A good chance to explore history and words with them. Expand their experience and knowledge.

 

When I was young I read all of the above books, I also read many 'colonial' books, Britian still involved with her Empire, believe me Britian has a 'past' as murkey as any nation's.  An all time favourite author was/is Kipling. I read with realish books such as Jungle Jim and Saunders of the River I also grew up on a musical diet of plantation songs played by my father on the piano and sung with great gusto by moi. I did not grow up a racist, I did not grow up thinking it was my god given right to push others around, to enslave them or treat anyone as a second class citizen. Why would I - from a book?  What the books did was to ignite a burning sense of injustice towards slavery and discrimination. 

To Kill a Mockingbird is never a raciest book, it is a hymn to decency and fairness, inspiring readers to see wrongs and burn to try and right them as Atticus tried, the opposite to racist.   Huck himself brought up in a society that was raciest discovers the wrong in the society, the humanity in Jim. On a different track, I did not as a child assume that a wooden boy and a dwarf were homosexual because they slept in the same bed! - small children don't actually think like that (unless the adult world around corrupts) I didn't assume, while I read the Famous Five, that the whole of life was made up of the middle classes and cucumber sandwiches or that little girls were to be put down - it was just after the war and women were well aware they were good for anything -hadn't we kept those whole home fires burning while the men were away.

 I grew up as the world rapidly changed, as human rights were won one by one around the globe. There is still a long way to go but life is changing, society is changing - ‘life,society’- not by changing history but by learning from history; not by banning books, changing insults. Remove the historical texts there is no bad to hold up to show the good.

I have most likely offended many but I hope there are many who agree. Changing a book written about its own time, in its own time is a craziness, a PC world truly 'gone mad'. Leave history alone and concentrate on the now and the future. Look back at those times as history, passed, gone, do not try and rewrite those times. We need to know what they were like, children need to know what those times were like.  

 

 

 

H is for the Hindu Kush

 

Imagine being high in the Hindu Kush, bedding down at night on the side of the mountain track in a sleeping bag, under the bone shattering cold of high mountain nights, under frosty stars so close they could be touched. Breakfast? Just a mug of hot sweet chi.

 

This was where I followed the trials and loves contained within the pages of War and Peace, 'tis a long book (the 7th longest, they say, written in our characters) Huddled around the furnace of a Chi house at the foot of the Barmian Buddhas (before they were blown up) down in the lush valleys and on the stony slopes.

 

Sleeping rough and breathing in sparkling air and passing the time of day with the inhabitants of another world and culture.

 

The war of Tolstoy's story wasn't set in those lands I travelled through in the early 70s, but they were foreign enough, exotic and cold enough, for the experience to colour the great sweep of Russian life.

 

Some books I remember because of where I am as well as for what lay between the pages. I read Micheners Caravans just before we crossed over the Afghan borders, borrowed from a travelling companion and so apt, colouring all I saw as we wandered through a country I fell in love with - back before the Russians or ‘western powers’.

 

What other books do I recall? Many - here are a few.

 

In complete contrast I spent early sunny mornings in a small bed,in a sun room overlooking the ocean in Sydney, following Lawrence’s adventures in the Middle East. The story of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom blew me away and I resented the clock each morning telling me it was time to work. The sun slowly heating my room to Arabian heat. The experience was made more intense with the fact that one half of my employers was from that area, thick with a similar accent, his voice would enhance the book, as I staggered forth to brew his dark bitter coffee.Still, the aroma of that coffee will bring the book back.

 

 

The first Georgette Heyer I read - Arabella - was in Cardiff, South Wales. I took it as a book for reading while we visited an elderly aunt. She lived alone then, her father having died a couple of years previously. She ordered her life by strict Edwardian rules and her house never had a thing out of place, unlike our untidy den of contentment. I decided that at 13, and reading my first grown up romance(therefore being an adult,almost:) it was time I became a ‘nice helpful child’. It wasn’t that I was horrible, well no more than any other child of that age, but with crippling shyness I rarely put myself forward.

 

That visit I jumped to my feet and offered to do the washing up for her.Oh dear, you would have thought I had offered to kill her dratted poodle. Of course she worried I would chip ancient china had inherited from her mother, but back then I only knew my offer of help was not greeted with the delight I had expected. The whole exercise was fraught, according to her disaprovement I washed up all wrong, the amount of soap, the heat of the water, the order of doings. She was there, carping and criticising and I vowed never to help her again. Mum and Dad complimented me quietly but it wasn’t them I had hoped to impress. I sulked for the rest of the stay, finding solace in Arabella. My aunt and I did grow to like each other eventually, although I knew she was watching my every move around her china and Arabella is still one of favourite Heyer’s.

 

I hated birthday parties as a child, I still do actually. The rule was, one invited everyone in the class to your party and then you had to go to all theirs. They were not my friends, I had none in the school, I was not theirs, but that was the rule. Mum suffering from a greater shyness than myself insisted Dad came home to run them. He was a brilliant party organiser and could keep control of children very well. I pouted, sulked and argued my way through every one held in my honour and perfected every trick in the book to avoid going to others.

 

When I was trawling through my books for this challenge I came across two very slender books The Weasel Family and Otto the Otter,a birthday present one year when I was about 7, and memories of those hideous parties flooded back. I had hidden on the arm of the sofa behind a curtain and was quietly reading all about Otto and his adventures, when I was discovered. Mum was angry that I had chosen to abandon my guests for a book. And hauled me out to do the proper hostess bit. I had managed to read most of the adventure by then but had not quite reached the en;, she wouldn’t let me finish! Was I fed up. I did however, get sour satisfaction in joining my guests to find them all distressed at the sight of a headless, gutless bird on the door mat to the garden; the cat bless her, had left me a good birthday present.

 

When on on an Internet site for reuniting friends I was approached by a couple who wanted to know if I was the one who lived in such and such house? I was, I affirmed, wondering who they were - names rang no bells. They remembered the parties,they had apparently been really good, they said, they couldn’t remember me though!

 

I was the one behind the curtain!