The Twelve Days of Christmas or the dangers of online shopping

December 13th

Darling!  What a wonderful and truly unusual present!  Admittedly, the ground’s a bit frozen at the moment for planting pear trees and housing the partridge is a bit of a struggle, as it won’t fit inside the budgie’s cage.  Still, we’ll find a way.

Your True Love xxx

December 14th

Darling!  Two turtle doves!  How sweet – but the budgie’s cage really isn’t that big and I’m not sure they and the partridge get on all that well. The cat’s enjoying having them in the house though.  Er... what exactly am I meant to do with them?  Also, I think you should check your Amazon account as you seem to have repeated the order for the pear tree and the partridge.

Your True Love xx

December 15th

Darling, I really think we need to talk.  Three French hens are a very unusual present, and I suppose the eggs will come in useful – or would do, if the poor creatures weren’t worried by the partridges. There really isn’t room in the flat for them all and the feathers are making me sneeze. The budgie is now deceased.

The window is now beginning to look very crowded with all the pear trees on the balcony outside.

 Please check your Amazon account!

Your True Love x

December 16th

Look, what’s with all the damn birds for Pete’s sake!  I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but the hens, the doves and the bloody partridges are enough to be going on with without four calling birds!  And more hens, doves and partridges.  And another ruddy tree!  Did I ever tell you I wanted to live in an aviary? Or a forest?  The cat’s given up and left home, the kitchen is full of feathers and the furniture is ruined – simply ruined with all the bird poop!  Stop it. Have a word with Amazon, will you?  Something must have gone wrong with your account.

Your True Love

December 17th

Okay, five gold rings are nice.  Thank you for those.  But enough with the birds! I couldn’t believe it when the postman delivered another batch of hens, doves, partridges and calling birds.  The noise is deafening and the neighbours are complaining.  The tree is on the balcony with the others. The balcony can’t take much more. Oh, and check your ruddy Amazon account!

 Your Love.

December 18^th

Are you having a laugh?  Six geese.  Six geese!  I can’t stop them laying eggs and who wants goose eggs?  Don’t you know that geese are lousy mothers?  They just drop their eggs anywhere, so the kitchen is a mass of egg-shells. 

The balcony has now collapsed.

Your former Love.

December 19th

I went to have a bath and what did I find?  Seven swans swimming.  Look, mate, you seem to be intent on driving me to a nervous breakdown, but you might at least let me have a bath in peace.  The bloody swans ate the soap and swallowed the loofah, then hurled all over the bathroom floor – which I can hardly see anymore because of all the feathers and egg-shells – and didn’t you know that swans have lousy tempers.  I know I loved my little budgie and was always fond of birds, but enough is enough. 

I see you’ve thoughtfully included yet another pear tree with your order.  It’s planted in the car-park.  Any more birds and I’ll bury you underneath it.

I can’t believe I was ever your True Love.  I must have been mental.

December 20^th

Arrggh!!!!  More birds and yet another tree!!  And – this is the weirdest thing yet – eight milkmaids, complete with cows, arrived and said you’d sent them.  They’re outside, by the collapsed balcony.  I will not have eight cows in the flat.

December 21^st

Did you think I needed cheering up?  Because you’ve got a funny way of letting me know.  Along with yet more birds, another tree and yet more milkmaids and cows, I’ve had a disco invasion.  Nine ladies – I use the term loosely -  with skyscraper heels and skirts so short you could hardly see them, barged in, turned the ipod to max, hung up a disco ball and danced all night, complaining all the time about the lack of talent. No blokes.  I suppose your next bright idea is to send a load of guys to keep the ladies company.  That’s a joke, by the way.

December 22^nd

OK, enough.  Ten Lords!!! And the usual consignment of birds, trees and milkmaids.

December 23^rd

Pipers??? Who asked for pipers? And where did you get the idea that bagpipes should be played indoors?  All I can really say is that with all the geese squawking and hens clucking and doves everywhere, I can hardly hear the pipers.  You are seriously weird.

December 24^th

Dear Mr Truelove,

Our client, your former fiancée, has contacted us with regard to the harassment caused by your so called “gifts”. When twelve drummers arrived she retired to a Home For The Bewildered and instructed us to send you the keys to the flat. 

Therefore we would take it as a sign of your good intent if you could immediately remove the following items, viz:

twelve partridges, twenty two turtle doves, thirty hens, thirty six calling birds, forty two geese and forty two swans, a total of a hundred and eighty four birds.

We also insist that you persuade the forty maids with their forty cows, the thirty six dancers, the thirty Lords, the twenty two pipers and the twelve drummers to remove themselves to more suitable accommodation forthwith. 

The twelve pear trees need to be uprooted and removed from the car park.

The forty gold rings will be retained against the expenses of renovating the flat.

We wish you the compliments of the season,

Yours,

Ms Carol Christmas (lawyer)

Curtain

So Poirot finally breathed his last in Curtain, an outstanding performance by David Suchet, added and abetted by Hugh Frazer. 

To tell the truth, it’s not my favourite book.  I’ve read it, of course, but it’s painful to see the jaunty, confident Poirot old and ill and – finally – dead.  I hate the hero dying!  I remember how traumatic it was when, at the age of eleven or thereabouts, I first read The Final Problem where Sherlock takes a dive off the Richenbach Falls.  I didn’t know what was coming and I remember my sense of absolute shock, made the more intense by the fact there wasn’t anyone who could understand how upsetting it was.  I mean, when The Final Problem was published, there was an outbreak of shocked grief, but I was about eighty years too late for the funeral.  Ho hum.  Sherlock sprang back from his watery grave but there’s no return for Poirot.

Apart from HP’s departure though, there’s other reasons why Curtain misses the bus.  Agatha Christie wrote it in the Second World War, together with Miss Marple’s final outing, Sleeping Murder, but neither book was published until the 1970’s.  Of the two books, Sleeping Murder, with its genuinely creepy, claustrophobic opening, as Gwenda, the heroine, finds the house she’s brought by chance becomes eerily familiar, is the most successful.  There may be odd anachronisms in the book, but they don’t hit you in the eye as they do in Curtain, where the action staggers uneasily between the late 30’s and the 1970’s.  Apart from anything else, how old is Captain Hastings?  Granted that he was wounded on the Somme in 1916, he must be at least ninety and, even if we turn a blind eye to the question of age, I just can’t see him wanting to poison Allerton, however protective he felt of his daughter, Judith.  It’s just not dans son character, as Poirot said on numerous occasions in other circumstances.  The Hastings we know – decent, impetuous and with a bit of a temper – would have wanted to knock Allerton’s block off, not poison him.   And Poirot as a murderer?  After having been assured, many times, that he “Does not approve of murder” I can’t help feeling that’s not dans son character either. 

I think the truth of the matter is that Agatha Christie was fonder of Miss Marple than Poirot.  In her autobiography she testifies to the importance of two elderly ladies, her Granny and her “Aunty Granny” as she was called in her upbringing.  There’s also a letter she wrote, on finding some carefully stored household goods – linen and pins and so on – saying, “You can see where Miss Marple comes from.” 

Poirot, on the other hand, she often found exasperating.  This feeling is turned to great comic effect when she has her alter-ego, Ariadne Oliver, go off on one about her detective, Sven Hjerson, in the brilliant Mrs McGinty’s Dead.

“How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man?  I must have been mad!  Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland?  Why a vegetarian? Why all these idiotic mannerisms he’s got?  These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life.  And people write and say how fond you must be of him.  Fond of him?  If I ever met that bony, gangling  vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.”

Robin Upward, to whom these remarks are confided, stares at her in reverence.  He suggests that it would be a marvellous idea to have a real Sven Hjerson murdered by Ariadne.  He suggests (watch out for the Curtain reference!) that she could make a Swan Song book of it, to be published after her death, to which Ariadne stoutly replies, “No fear! What about the money?  Any money to be made out of murders, I want now.”

The truth of the matter is that Curtain is a very good idea, but (even the best of writers have weak spots) Agatha Christie wasn’t the right author to make it live.  And I don’t like Poirot dying. Sad times.

    

  

    

 

                    

Apple Chutney

Look, I don’t want to seem obsessed or anything, but I’ve still got apples in mind.  Before I plunge into the fruity part of the blog, though, I had an email from Jane Finnis, part of which read:

I’ve actually managed to add a comment to your blog. The trick seems to be, don’t click on Add a Comment (I mean why would you, it’s only what you want to do!) Instead click on Reply...that is if it’s really succeeded! I can’t quite believe it yet.

The only thing is, I can’t find the comment.  Maybe it’s under the sofa or the cat’s run off with it, but I can’t see it anywhere.  Sad times.  However, I do know what it was about. 

A couple of weeks ago, me, Jane and Rebecca Jenkins gave a talk in the wonderful old Portico Library in Manchester about writing murder mysteries. It was an ace evening, with a terrific audience.  The next day, as Becca and Jane departed, I pressed upon them a pot of my home-made chutney.  Jane thought it was the nicest chutney she’d ever had, and asked me for the recipe.  It comes from an ancient old cook book that belonged to my mother, so here it is. 

3lbs apples, peeled, cored and sliced (Get an apple corer!)

3ils onions (Peel them in a basin of water otherwise  your eyes will sting like blazes)

1lb sultanas or raisins

2 lemons

Fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped

1 and a half lbs of Demerara sugar

1 pint of malt vinegar

A large pan.

Grate the lemon rind and put the grated rind and the juice into the pan together with the other ingredients. 

Bring it to the boil, reduce the heat to very low and let it simmer until its nice and thick.  This will take an hour or so.  You know when its done when you can make a channel across the top of the chutney without it immediately filling with liquid. 

Pot and cover.

This will make about 4lbs of chutney.

I sterilize the jam jars in the microwave, by putting a tidgy bit of water in the jars and giving them about a minute and a half in batches of four jars at a time.  I tighten the lids whilst wearing a rubber glove, which gives a bit more power as you twist the lids on.

The other discovery was that the apple syrup - the result of my unsuccessful attempt to make apple jelly – tastes dropdead gorgeous in an apple suet pudding.    Wow.

Apples....

We’ve got apples.  Oh my days. as the youngest, Jenny, would say, do we have apples.  I suppose, if you plant apple trees, that’s what you can expect.  The thing is, we’ve only got two trees, a Worcester Pearmain and a Granny Smiths, and neither tree is that old, so I wasn’t really ready for the influx of apples the other week.

Even if you were as devoted to apples as Steve Jobs, you’d have a job to munch your way through this much of nature’s bounty.  Indeed, I don’t think it could be done.  So, obviously, I had to make something out of them.  Faced with pounds of the things, I bought an apple peeler, slicer and corer.  I got it from Amazon and it’s the most amazing gadget ever. (For dealing with apples, I mean; if you want to make a quilt or play the violin, it wouldn’t do you much good.)

Put the apple on the prongs on one end, turn the handle, and bingo!  One perfectly peeled apple with no core.  The apple itself is in a sort of spiral which looks really attractive.  Now, what I really wanted to make was apple jam, but, judging from the fact I couldn’t find any recipes, I don’t think apples jam very well.  (It sounds as if they’re failed jazz musicians, but you know what I mean.)

Chutney, yes; we now have pots of it in the cellar. Dried apples; yep.  Apple sauce?  Fine.  That’s in the freezer.  Hunting round the internet I came across something called apple butter, which is a sort of concentrated apple sauce that you can spread on toast;  fine.  Got it.  But apple jam?  No.  However, in an old cook book, I came across apple and rosemary jelly.  Now that sounded really nice, so it was out with the apple slicer and off we went.

You know when things just won’t work?  Why this lovingly slaved over substance wouldn’t turn into jelly, despite being boiled and adding pectin, I just don’t know.  It remained stubbornly as apple syrup.  But, as it turns out, apple syrup is rather nice.  So that’s a good few pots of apple syrup, then.

I was just congratulating myself on having dealt with the Gordon-Smith apple mountain, when I bumped into Jez, the caretaker at the local school.  He was lugging an immense bin bag.  What have you got there? I innocently asked.    Apples, he said.  The kids had sorted through the apple trees on the school grounds and chosen the best.  What was left – about forty pounds of Cox’s Orange Pippins – was going in the bin.

I couldn’t let him do it.  The apples were fine.  Yes, they might not have been supermarket standard, but their failings were definitely skin deep.  So it was out with the trusty slicer and off we went again.

And, d’you know, I’d just finished turning all the poor little reject Coxs into jars of stuff, when my pal, Jane Finnis rang.  She was coming to stay, but they had a bumper harvest of guess what.  And would I like a bag?  I must be mental, but, with the thought of the apple slicer in the cupboard, what could I say? 

Thirty Years!

Thirty years is a long time to be married.  Ask me.  I know.  When we celebrated our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, Jessica declared that steps must be taken for our thirtieth.  Helen demurred.  No one, she said, celebrates their thirtieth.  Forty, yes.  Jessica disagreed.  After all, she said, by the time Mum and Dad get to their fortieth, they’ll be too old to enjoy it.  Yeah, right.  Watch this space, is all I can say!

So The Party was organised.  Jessica took charge and did a brilliant job, booking the hall, sending out the invitations, arranging the buffet, organising the DJ (our old mate, Keith) and his pal, Archie and keeping me and Peter firmly away from any knowledge whatsoever of the party, apart from telling us when we had to turn up.

And it was wonderful.  There were balloons and cakes and dancing and, best of all, lots and lots of friends who turned up for a really brilliant evening.  Elspeth did a fantastic presentation summing up what you can actually achieve in thirty years – watch it here on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyTaQJ2A0lk&feature=youtu.be

The title is "Dolores and Peter - This is your life!" and it was great to see what a warm reaction it got.

It was one of those evenings where you truly felt that it couldn’t have been better.  So, if you were there on Saturday – didn’t we have a good time!  And if you weren’t – well, I wish you’d been there.

Weirdly Great

Writing is a sedentary occupation.  That, in a way, is one of its chief attractions.  So why, when Jessica, my beloved eldest and very sporty daughter said, “Mum!  You need to come running!” I didn’t promptly run in the opposite direction, I don’t know. 

She took me running.

It was awful.

My legs hurt, my knees hurt and I breathed like a leaky bellows.

“It’ll be better next time!” said Jessica brightly. 

OMG, next time????

Now one of my shiny new toys this year was an iphone.  “Perfect!” said Jessica, taking the phone from my nerveless fingers.  “You can download a running app.”

From Couch to 5K.  Okay....

It starts off all right, I suppose, and is full of pleasantly affirmative messages, but to someone who thought that lycra was something that other people wore, it’s all very odd.

“You need,” said Jessica brightly, “a goal,” and promptly signed me and her poor father up for a 5K run.

And so last Sunday I walked, ran and walked some more round Heaton Park.  I’ve got a medal that says I’ve done a 5K and – weirdly – it feels great. 

“Now,” said Jessica, “let’s do a mud run....”

 

Caring about Agatha Christie

There was quite a lot of excitement generated on the internet this week by the news that mystery write Sophie Hannah has been commissioned to  write a new Agatha Christie novel, starring the incomparable Hercule Poirot.  Here’s a link to the story which appeared the Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/whodunnit-new-author-to-bring-agatha-christies-poirot-out-of-retirement-8797050.html

For the Harry Potter lovers amongst us, my friend, John Granger, made some interesting points about this news in his blog,

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/rowling-inc-to-follow-christie-estate-lead-and-commission-harry-potter-fan-fiction-under-its-own-trademark-brand/

All I really hope is that the new novel comes off properly.  There’s a real atmosphere about an Agatha Christie novel, an atmosphere as distinctive as Conan Doyle, Jane Austen or PG Wodehouse.  Like those authors, Agatha Christie’s style is easily parodied but, like those parodies, its very rare indeed that the genuine feel of the original is captured. 

So what’s so special about Agatha Christie?  The puzzles, of course.  First and foremost, the stories are clever.  The plots tie up, the loose ends are neatly knotted and the whole experience of reading the book gives a sense of completeness.  It can be (rather harshly) compared to a crossword puzzle but I think a far better comparison is a really good meal, where all the elements, from the table settings to the food, along with the perfectly picked wine, the right lighting and the warmth of the room, come together with great company to make a memorable, satisfying whole.  Whether that meal is round your own kitchen table with your family or in the Ritz hotel is fairly immaterial; a great meal is a great experience.

Couldn’t an Agatha Christie book be compared to a game of Cluedo? Not really; in Cluedo (Or, if you’re in America, Clue) three cards, the victim, the weapon, the location, are taken at random from the pack and put in a envelope.  It’s genuinely arbitrary.  This is not how AC works, and the reason she doesn’t work like that is her characters and her scene-setting.

Ah yes, her characters and scenes.  It’s a village, right?  And sort of stereotyped.  Well, only to a point.  There’s certainly a village feel to the books, as in it’s a place where people know who their neighbours are, even if the books aren’t set in an actual village.  We know enough about the characters to recognise them, to fill in the details for ourselves from our own experience.  And, when we get to the end and find out the murderer was X, we always feel that we should’ve known it was X all along.  Why? Because X’s character fits that of the murderer.  Right triumphs, evil is defeated, and along with it all, our curiosity has been slated. Our love of order, certainty and rationality is satisfied and, perhaps best of all, she’s never remotely pretentious.

    

What's in a name?

Editing a book, as I have been all week, is one of the really fun bits of writing. Actually making the stuff up is hard, but this part of the process is a lot easier.  It isn’t finished yet but (keep those fingers crossed) the end is in sight.  Editing is where you can add the finishing touches, fill up the pot holes, smooth everything out and make sure that it all hangs together. 

However, the perennial problem of titles is now upon me.  You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after the  effort of writing an entire book, to think of three or, at the most five, words would be easy-peasy.  Yes, but those few words have got to do so much; attract a reader, tell them something about the book and – just as importantly – not mislead them about what sort of book it is.

It’s amazing how hard it can be to come up with the right title.  It has to be pithy, memorable, relevant. A few words – maybe one word - that will jump out at the reader from the bookshop shelf and inspire them to part with hard-earned cash. Geez.

 Names are often a good bet and carry their own baggage of expectation. You don’t pick up Emma, for instance thinking she’s going to turn into Dracula. (Which would be confusing but fun.) Or it may reflect the book’s theme:  Pride and Prejudice or Death on the Nile.

In the heyday of the gothic novel, you could get away with titles such as Geralda, The Demon Nun, which could still be – just about – be used today. Joanna Polenipper, Female Horse Stealer, Foot-Pad, Smuggler, Prison Breaker and Murderer is probably too wordy for modern tastes but you’d be wrong in thinking that Joanna came to a bad end. At the end of the book, “Joanna was transported for her crimes, retrieved her character in Australia, married a rich settler and lived for many years respected and beloved by all who knew her.”

 If you found Joanna’s unexpected embrace of virtue unsettling, you’d probably be better sticking to another novel of the 1830’s, Lovel Castle, where the anxious author told his readers exactly what they were getting:  Lovel Castle, or The Rightful Heir Restored, a Gothic Tale Narrating how a Young Man, the supposed son of a Peasant, by a train of Unparalleled Circumstances, not only discovered who were his Real Parents, but that they came to Untimely Deaths; with his Adventures in the Haunted Apartment, Discovery of the Fatal Closet, and the Appearance of the Ghost of his murdered Father; relating also how the Murderer was brought to Justice, with his Confession and the restoration to the Injured Orphan of his title and estates.

They don’t write them like that any more.

The Cuckoo's Flown

Well, I’ve finished  The Cuckoo’s Calling and so, by now, have a great many other people, judging by the number of reviews on Amazon.  I’m surprised how many reviewers - crime fiction fans by their own account – praise the “unexpected twist” in the ending.  I don’t want to be a big spoil-sport, but the ending is hardly original.  Honestly.  I mean, it actually appears in the jokey lists drawn up in the heyday of Detective (as opposed to Crime) fiction as one of the things Not To Do, along with gems such as “Don’t have your villain one of a pair of identical twins” a nix on secret passages and putting the blame on that tired old stock figure, the sinister Chinaman. 

Another thing that various reviewers have been awed by is the occasional use of Latin and other quotations, pointing this up as evidence of great erudition.  Again, hold on.  Yes, yes,yes,yes, yes, of course JK Rowling is incredibly well read, but it’s also very well known that one of her favourite authors is Dorothy L Sayers and Dorothy L always has quotes in her chapter headings and throughout the books. To keep up with the amount of literature that Lord Peter has at his fingertips would require a medium-sized library.  It’s a hat-tip or homage and good fun. 

What is slightly more problematic for many reviewers is the band language.  It you took out all the F and C words, then it’d slim the book down by about 200 pages or thereabouts, but the characters in the story would undoubtedly talk like that in real life, so I’m not sure what the answer to that one is.   Offensive?  Not after the first few times particularly, as constant repetition dulls the shock value, but it’s a bit tedious to read, like any other frequently repeated word or phrase. 

One reviewer was worried about “Robert Galbraith” and his false biography, as an ex-soldier.  This, they pointed out, was a lie.  Well, so it is, but what surprised me was how many people evidently believed it before the truth came out.  There’s very little military detail in the book and (thank goodness) no graphic horror of mutilation, despite the hero, Comoran, having lost a leg in Afghanistan, or angst about  life under fire, but shedloads about life in the goldfish bowl of celebrity living.  Paparazzi are present like wasps at an August picnic and about as welcome.  Everyone is hounded wherever they go and the idea of privacy for the famous is a joke.  That sounds really unpleasant and very realistic.  All I know about life as a model comes from programmes such as Gok’s Fashion Fix, America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway but the world of fashion portrayed in the book sounds real enough.

There’s plenty of clues there, no we do know who the author is, as who wrote it;  Comoran is a non-magical Hagrid in size, strength and kindness, although he’s a lot sharper.  Familiar phrases, such as tears “leaking” crop up and death threats are sent on writing paper embellished with pictures of cute kittens, as if Dolores Umbridge had retired from the Ministry of Magic and set up a Writing Bureau (Threats R Us, perhaps?)

However, one thing – one massive thing – is missing; and that’s the gigantic, outrageous sense of sheer daftness and fun that pervaded the magical world.  There’s no Arthur Weasley collecting plugs, pink umbrellas, or tents that are bigger on the inside than the outside and furnished like a 1950’s flat with antimacassars and smelling of cats into the bargain.   Pity, really.  Because that sort of unique goofiness that JK Rowling made so believable and genuinely all her own, the thing she can do better than anyone else, probably is the magic that endeared Harry Potter to so many millions of readers. 

The Cuckoo's Called JK Rowling

A little while ago, I was delighted to be asked by the big Harry Potter fan website, Mugglenet Academia, to do a podcast about Harry Potter as detective fiction.  For anyone who, for some inexplicable reason missed it (I know, I know; the car needed washing, the cat needed feeding, the telly needed watching) or who wants to refresh their memories, here’s the link

http://www.mugglenet.com/academia/podcast.shtml

I’ll just go off and entertain myself for an hour while you listen.

OK? Nice to be back.  Anyway, as I was saying, the point I was making, as a massive fan of Agatha Christie et al, (and al’s a really nice guy when you get to know him) that deep beneath the wizarding skin of Mr Potter lies Hercule Poirot.  Think of it as finding your inner moustache.   Or, if you’re feeling inclined to be more a Miss Jane Marple, your inner knitting needles.  (Incidentally, did Miss Marple ever finish anything she knitted?  She always surrounded by balls of wool and, occasionally, when in the heat of explanation, will drop a stitch, but never seems to be able to bring herself to cast off.)

        

Well, now it can be told. And has been, lots.  Last weekend the news broke that in addition to writing The Casual Vacancy JKR has also written The Cuckoo’s Calling, a straightforward detective story. Naturally I nipped onto Amazon straight away and ordered a copy.  It arrived this morning and I can hardly wait to dive in.  It has a satisfying chunky feel and the set-up sounds classic (A troubled model falls to her death.  Her brother has doubts she committed suicide and calls in private investigator Cormoron (what is it with birds, I wonder) Strike...) As everyone knows by now, she wrote it under the pen-name of Robert Galbraith, apparently to see what would happen if she wrote a book with all the bally-hoo associated with writing as JKR.  I could wish she’d chosen a different pen-name; Dolores Gordon-Smith would’ve worked really well as a pen-name, for instance, but the saddest words of tongue and pen are only these, it might have been, so to speak, to add a bit of poetry and culture. 

She might – and did – want to remain anonymous, but I can’t help feeling that somebody somewhere knew Robert Galbraith was a mere figment of the imagination.  It was reviewed in the Daily Mail and The Times and that doesn’t happen by chance.  Mysterious, eh?  The plot thickens...

Mustn't Grumble

I’ve been away from the blog for a couple of  weeks – not from any sense of haughty disdain, but because various mishaps and ailments and what-have-yous have beset me.  First and foremost, was the internet playing up.  It’s amazing, isn’t it?  It’s not so long ago that t’internet, as Peter Kay would say, was a bit of a luxury, an addition, just one of those added bits of technology that made life more interesting - or awkward – for those who hadn’t grown up with it.  Then it became, without a great deal of fuss being made, utterly central to our lives.

What is irritating, of course, is when it is central to work and keeping in touch, to meet those (it’s a bit like meeting someone who won’t have a TV or doesn’t need to drive) who doesn’t use t’internet; for some obscure reason they pride themselves on not using it, as if we’re all bespectacled geeks, enslaved to a screen, whereas they get out and about and do – what?  Run marathons?  Read Tolstoy?  Build scale models of HMS Victory out of matchsticks?  Call me cynical, but I don’t think so...

Then there’s my tooth.  Ouch.  What is it with teeth?  Take your average brachiosaurus, sabre-tooth tiger or luckless cave-man and involve them in a tsunami, volcanic eruption, a meteor strike bigger than Deep Impact or just general, hideous death in a tar pit and their teeth will come up white and shiny and looking like something from a Colgate advert.  Left to their own devices, teeth clearly have the staying power of Jon Bon Jovi on his fifth encore and the metabolic rate of granite.  So why, when housed in a warm, comfortable gum and not called upon to do anything out of the ordinary, such as open metal bottle tops or chew leather – when, in fact. Mr Tooth gets brushed twice a day and even flossed occasionally, does AN Tooth suddenly decide enough’s enough and hand its cards in?

 Take my back tooth, for instance.  Although you can’t take my back tooth because the dentist has done that. There it was, minding its own business, not drawing attention to itself, not making a fuss or interfering with its neighbours, just standing quietly in the rear  – the Tooth version of a bass guitar player in a Seventies rock band, as you might say – when suddenly, without warning, it was chucking its weight about and sending All Dive signals to my central nervous system. 

Just attention seeking, you may think.  No, it’s an abscess, and it didn’t make the heart grow fonder.  How sharper than (the pain from) a serpent’s tooth is the tooth that’s got a ruddy abscess under it, as Shakespeare or someone probably said at some time or other.

There’s just a hole there now.  Memories.  That’s all.  And a pit, hole, void or gap that feels as if someone’s been doing deep-cast mining. 

Still, worse things happen at sea, mustn’t grumble, there’s often a crumpled leaf in a bed of roses, etc., etc., etc.  Which is why I’m not even going to mention how I managed to break my metatarsal bone and end up on crutches.  It was just one of those days, really.    

Verse or Worse

At a recent Brownies meeting (Brownies are junior Girl Guides) where I’m an apprentice leader, we armed the kids with clip-boards and question sheets so they could charge round asking questions of the grown ups in the room.  We steered clear of imponderables such as “What is the meaning of life?” (Besides, anyone who’s familiar with A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy knows it’s 42) and Hard Sums as this was meant to be for fun.

One of the questions was “Recite a poem”.  I must admit I fell back on Baa Baa Black Sheep but it did make me think about poetry, as such.  Now, in the privacy of my own home, I must admit to a bit of poetry.  When all the kids were reposing themselves and it was time to get up, I would, if the mood struck me, weigh in with a bit of Omar Kyhayyam:

Awake, for morning in the bowl of night,

Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,

and Lo! (this is poetry. You can use words like Lo!) the hunter of the East has caught,

the Sultan’s turret in a noose of light.

It made me laugh and sometime made the kids laugh too.  It also led to some very odd looks when one of them would ask, in company, “Mum, what’s that poem you sometimes shout in the morning?” private declamation of verse being thought of as strange.

However, most of the time, I tend to talk in prose.  Unlike, I may say the characters in a Golden Age detective story, written in 1939, that I’ve just read.  The author had gone to Oxford and seemed determined to prove it. None of the characters seem to have a thought that someone else – a poet – hasn’t thought first.  Quotations pepper the text like birdseed and, should you miss them in the text, there’s quotations at the head of every chapter, too.  It’s all a bit much.

Did anyone ever really talk like this?  I like Lord Peter Wimsey but he's is far too addicted to poetry.  If I was Charles Parker, his far too patient side-kick, I’d be tempted to put a green baize cover on the man.  Harriet Vane’s no good; she encourages him and, what’s more, breaks into poetry herself.   However, at least Lord Peter gets on with catching villains There’s also  – to come more or less up to date –  a dickens of a lot of poetry in Star Trek, The Next Generation. The trouble is with excessive verse, it that it can’t half sound patronizing.  Either that, or the writer isn’t convinced of the value of their material and wants to beef it up, to fool the reader into thinking that what they’re reading is Literature.

Agatha Christie very, very occasionally used poetry.   Very, very occasionally, but usually if Poirot is quoting something, such a familiar phrase, he mangles it, so instead of feeling “All at sea” he feels “All at the seaside” which is funny and makes us feel all friendly towards him. It wasn’t that she didn’t know any poems or couldn’t afford a dictionary of quotations. it’s just that, like salt in cooking, she knew enough to use it sparingly.

Good old Agatha Christie.

 

 

 

Sherlock and Robert Goddard at Crimefest

It was Crimefest at Bristol last weekend, an excuse for lots and lots of crime writers and readers to get together with each other.

One star of the show was definitely Robert Goddard, who’s a very funny man and a very polished – but genuine – speaker.  I did like the way he described writing a bit of historical fiction.  In certain types of historical mysteries, the hero or heroine can’t set foot outside the door without describing everything they see in meticulous detail.  So, for example, if they cross a market, there’s jugglers juggling, jesters jesting, bears being baited, dwarves dwarfing, to say nothing of all the stall holders shouting odd phrases in Medieval at each other.  Scatter a few more boils, skin diseases and people with more severed limbs than we’re used to, and you have the average Medieval market.

On the other hand, when the hero or heroine of a book set nowadays crosses a market, it’s just a market.  Now, of course you can go to town on a modern market, with its many-coloured canopies and stall holders bellowing about their amazing products and the smell of bacon frying and sausages sizzling, jostlers jostling and the flocks of hopeful pigeons but, unless there’s a reason to – that is the H or H is actually looking for someone or something – why would you? Sometimes, he said, a market is just a market.

Exactly.

The other star turn was by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss of Dr Who/Sherlock fame and I loved the way they described the genesis of Sherlock.  They’re both dyed in the wool Conan Doyle fans and, in many discussions on many train journeys up and down to Cardiff, Dr Who’ing together, (and yes, the character of The Doctor owes a lot to Sherlock Holmes) decided that their favourite screen incarnation of the Great Detective was Basil Rathbone.  Now, the thing about the Basil Rathbone films was that they weren’t set in Victorian London, with foggy streets and rattling hansoms, but made Holmes and Watson contemporary.

Conan Doyle’s Holmes was edgy, cool, energetic and up to date, a scientist and a man of action.  Also – and this has been sadly overlooked in many recent screen adaptations – great fun to be with.  Why not, they reasoned, bring him slap up to date so as to do real justice to the character?  So they did.

Sterling stuff.

 

Frankie's Letter

Breaking news!  Amazon has dropped the prince of Frankie's Letter to £10.82! That's a real bargain!

What’s in a (detective’s) name?

In Jennings Goes To School by Anthony Buckeridge, Jennings and his friend, Derbyshire, are trying to think of a name for the detective hero of the story they want to write:

 

“First of all,” said Derbyshire, licking his pencil, “we’ve got to think of a name for the detective.”

“It ought to be something out of the ordinary,” said Jennings.

“What about Mr Nehemiah Bultitude? Or Mr Theophilus Goodbody if you like.”

“Oh, don’t be daft,” said Jennings.  “You can’t have detectives called things like that.  Anyone called Theophilus Goodbody would have to be a clergyman; they always are.  And if a chap’s a farmer, his name’s always Hayseed or Barleycorn, or if he’s a schoolmaster he’s Dr Whackem or something like that.  You’ve only got to look in the library and you’ll see all Dicken’s characters have name that suit them, like Pecksniff and Cheeryble and Cruncher and they live at places called Eatanswill.”

“But what I can’t see,” objected Derbyshire, “is how anyone knows what they’re going to be like before they’re born.  According to that, if you’ve got a name like Fuzziwig you could never be as bald as a coot however hard you tried and if your name’s Marlinspike Mainbrace, f’instance, you’ve just got to be a sailor, even if you don’t want to be.”

“Well, what sort of name do you have to be born with so’s you can be a great detective?”

The work of research yielded the information that, unless your surname consisted of a single syllable and your parents had been generous enough to give you a two-syllabled first name, you could never hope to succeed in the world of crime-detection.  Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Nelson Lee, Dixon Hawke, Falcon Swift, Ferrers Locke – all the best detectives were most careful to have the correct number of syllables to their names.

“What about Egbert Snope?” suggested Derbyshire.  “That sticks to the rules all right.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t sound right,” objected Jennings.

 

And there you have it; the name has to sound right and if it has the right number of syllables, that’s an added bonus.  The two boys eventually come up with “Flixton Slick – Super Sleuth” a perfect 1950’s name for the sort of character they create (this is the era of Paul Temple).  Hercule Poriot breaks the rules, but not if he’s called M. Poriot, as he often is.  Jane Marple?  Yep.  Lord Peter Wimsey?  Almost, especially if you think of “Lord” as a first name. Frank and Joe Hardy?  On the money.  Some detectives are individualistic enough to have a two syllabled first name and a single syllabled surname, like Father Brown, Nero Wolfe and Phillip Trent, but Douglas Adam’s Dick Gently and Terry Pratchett’s Sam Vimes stick to the pattern, as does John Rebus.

I first read Jennings Goes To School when I was about eight.  Thinking about Jack Haldean, it’s amazing how some things stay with you....

 

 

 

The Guilty Rasher

As I may have mentioned before, my aged parent (aka Dad) hit 90 last August and, like many another well-stricken in years, is prone to various ailments.  One such occurred on Saturday morning when he couldn’t get out of bed.  No drama, no crisis, he’s had this sort of thing before and needed antibiotics to buck him up again.  But, as it’s Saturday, his “real” doctor wasn’t there, so that meant a phone call to the emergency doctor at GoToDoc.

Fine.  The efficient young lady on the phone took down the detail and said someone would call me back. All I had to do was wait.

Fine.  All that doesn’t take long to write but it was now getting on for midday, I’d been up since about half seven and, what with one thing and another, hadn’t managed to get any breakfast.

Dad was reposing himself, so I decided to Take Steps.  One rummage in the fridge later and I had bacon, eggs and a couple of slices of bread.  Put those together with a frying-pan and breakfast (call it lunch if you’re looking at the clock) was in sight.

I should have remembered about that ruddy smoke alarm.  Dad even has a fridge magnet saying The Smoke Alarm’s Gone Off!  Dinner’s Ready!

It sounded like the day of judgement.

Dad woke up, said “?” and I jabbed a stick at the wretched thing to shut it off.

However, the smoke alarm had set off Dad’s monitoring device, a thing that looks a bit like the Millennium Falcon, which is linked to a warden service and it was making a dickens of a noise. Now how the Millennium Falcon works is that the warden at the other end telephones and checks what the problem is.

At that same moment, as I was all set to reassure the Warden, an extremely brisk woman from GoToDoc rang wanting to know all about Dad’s symptoms. She took me through a catechism of questions including “Has he any weight loss?” which, considering I’d said he was fine yesterday and the symptoms had come on that morning, seemed to require clairvoyance to order to answer properly.  She told me there was no need to worry – I knew that – with that underlying assumption that virtually all medical people seem to have, that, faced with a medical problem, the average member of the public goes off their trolley with anxiety whereas the medical profession cope. There would be, she said, a doctor calling within six hours.  Six hours? So that was Saturday down the pan, then, as I had to hang around to let the doctor in.

I stood by the Millennium Falcon for a bit longer, but no Warden rang, so I went back to my bacon and eggs, thoughtfully opening the back door to let the smoke (there wasn’t much) out.

At this point (I still hadn’t eaten anything) the two firemen in full gear, complete with oxygen tanks, came in the backdoor, calling, “Where’s the fire?”  Two more firemen came in the front door, everyone met in the kitchen and agreed there wasn’t a fire.

Then four policemen arrived and piled in to join the party, telling each other in loud voices that there wasn’t a fire.  Then the ambulance crew piled in, also telling one another there wasn’t a fire.  Apparently when the Millennium Falcon reports the smoke alarm’s gone off and no one answers the telephone (I was on the phone to the brisk woman talking about Dad’s weight loss or lack of it) everyone turns up to see what’s what.  I was half expected Air Sea Rescue to pop in.

I’m all for having men in uniform in the house, but I felt a bit of a pratt about the eggs and bacon.

To add to the fun, Dad’s regular carer and the Warden turned up.  They agreed there wasn’t a fire as well.

I explained about the smoke alarm and the phone call, everyone laughed merrily and departed, apart from the Paramedic from the ambulance.  “I might as well look at your father, as I’m here,” she said and I, thinking wistfully of the eggs and bacon I’d stuffed in the microwave, agreed.

He needs, I said helpfully, antibiotics.

She wasn’t overly thrilled by my offering a comment but, after a litany of questions, agreed that, yes, he did need antibiotics and, as the ambulance was there, they might as well take him up to hospital in it.

I’m not sure if the GoToDoc doctor would have suggested hospital.  I can’t help thinking they would have simply prescribed antibiotics as has happened in the past, but I wasn’t arguing.  That meant, of course, that instead of waiting the six hours for the doctor to call at the house, I now had the prospect of waiting all day in hospital. (Which is what happened.  It was eight hours later before I could go home).

“Do you,” said the paramedic as they piled Dad into the ambulance, want to travel with us?

“I’ll come in my own car,” I said.

After all that performance, there was no way I wasn’t eating those ruddy eggs and bacon.  But next time I’ll open the back door first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mugglenet Academia Reloaded

At half past two on Sunday morning, I wasn’t tucked up in bed, I wasn’t having sweet dreams and I wasn’t in my pyjamas under a cosy duvet.

 

No, I was in the sitting room talking to about 15,000 people.

 

Yeah, okay, they weren’t all in the sitting room. Not only is neither the sofa or the house that big (some people would have to stand in the hall and that’s not very hospitable)  I’d have to shout very loudly if they were, the dogs would probably sulk- the cats certainly would - and the neighbours would be liable to complain.

 

No, what I was up to in the wee small hours was podcasting on http://mugglenetacademia.libsyn.com/ or https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/mugglenet-academia/id523481044

 

The half two in the morning slot isn’t because of any fixed idea that authors and academics are naturally night owls, but simply to fit in with the way American time works in relation to British time.  So yawn and bring it on!

 

As you might have gathered, if you’ve kept up (and, naturally, you have kept up!) with D.Gordon-Smith’s various doings, I’m a real fan of Harry Potter and, much to my delight, this Sunday I was invited back to take part in the show celebrating the first anniversary of the Mugglenet Academia podcast.  There were all sorts of academics and professionals gathered together who had brought their expertise to cast their own particular light on the Harry Potter books, seen through the prism of their own particular subject.  There’s been law, philosophy, political science, folk tale structure and a shedload of other subjects.  Including, of course (this is me!) mystery writing.

 

So pour yourself a nice cup of tea or open a beer or have a glass of wine, go on over to Mugglenet Academia, put your feet up and enjoy some great chat.  What’s more, you can download it to listen to any time you like so you don’t have to wait up till gone two in the morning!

 

Blood From A Stone

I’m delighted to say that my new book, Jack’s seventh adventure, is out! If you look at the Books page on the website, you’ll see it in all its glory, but here’s a picture of the cover anyway.

The core of the mystery concerns a mega-valuable string of sapphires (this is fiction; those sapphires can be as valuable as you like. A merely Quite Expensive string of sapphires isn’t nearly as much fun to write about!) Now it’s taken for granted that the heroes and villains of a mystery have a backstory, but I pondered (as you do) about sapphires, did some reading up and – hey! The sapphires had a backstory too.

 

The best sapphires come from Ceylon or, as it’s now called, Sri Lanka, and granted that sapphires are pretty well indestructible, I thought it would be pretty cool to make them historic gems. The Ancient Romans knew about sapphires, so why not make them Roman? Yes, that had possibilities. When I was thinking about the book, there was a lot in the news about the Anglo-Saxon hoard discovered in Staffordshire, so why not make them part of a Roman hoard? I didn’t want Jack to discover them – that wouldn’t work in the story – so I put the discovery back a couple of centuries and made the sapphires an Eighteenth Century find, which gave me some great background for Breagan Grange, the country house owned by the Leigh family I was busily creating. The word “hoard” wasn't used in Georgian times to describe buried treasure, so I cast around and came up with the name “Breagan Bounty”, which seemed to fit.

 

Naturally when you get a string of sapphires as valuable as those in the Breagan Bounty, someone wants them...

 

 

 

Apparating in Chester Cathedral

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a Consistory Court.  I certainly hadn’t until last Wednesday, when daughter Jenny took me into Chester Cathedral and we saw one. Not any old Consistory Court, you understand, but the oldest surviving in England.  Here’s a photo of it.  It was established in 1541 and nothing seems to have changed much.   The court settles clergy disputes, but no one was disputing, so I was able to ask (without sounding too much like a numpty) “What’s that funny little chair doing, stuck out on the corner?”

The answer is that is wasn’t put there just for a laugh (although it must have made someone smile) but it’s where – get this – the apparitor or apparator.  He’s called the apparator because he serves the summons to witnesses to get them to appear.  Quite why he has to have a comic chair, I’m not sure, but there you go.

However, the word apparator immediately made me think of Harry Potter, of course, where one of the ways the wizards get from point to point is by apperating.

And why was Harry Potter at the forefront of my mind?  Because Elspeth was the student guest in the Harry Potter Podcast last week, talking about Harry Potter and history.  It’s on http://www.mugglenet.com/academia/podcast.shtml

Look, I know I’m Elspeth’s mother and yes, of course I’m biased, but I think she did brilliantly.  Listen for yourself and see what you think, but I was glowing with pride.

What you couldn’t see (as it was an audio and not a visual podcast) was the set-up.  It was tea-time in America which meant it was about one in the morning in Manchester and we had a bit of a problem.

We couldn’t broadcast from the dining room, because that’s got Granddad sleeping in it (long story, but he’s been living with us recently) and Granddad wouldn’t take kindly to his beloved grandchild bellowing about Harry Potter at one in the morning when he’s trying to have a nap.  That meant the adjacent sitting-room was out too and the internet is pants elsewhere downstairs.  So the bedroom was called in as a radio shack, which meant that Elsepth had pride of place and Lucy (who’s the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world: probably) and me tucked in round her, our place being to provide the Radio Star with red wine and scribbled notes and thumbs-up of congratulations.  Proud mum?  You bet.  It rocked!

 

 

 

 

 

 

When there’s crows in the tree, we’ll always have potatoes

It has, as you might have noticed if you’re reading this in dear old Blighty, been blinking cold lately.  Perishing, in fact.  This time last year, this was my island in the sun, this year it’s an Arctic wilderness.  Spring has sprung, but, as you might say, the bearings have gone.  Now, the thing is I, like many other people, have a repertoire of phrases to express the fact it’s cold.

It can be – as above - “perishing” or “parky”.  I also use the occasional homely metaphor, such as “brass monkeys” (as in “it’s brass monkeys out there”) or “It’s as cold as a landlady’s heart”.

This is where my daughter Jennifer finds fault.

“Honestly, Mum,” she said.  “What do you mean?”

“They’re well-known phrases,” I said, defensively.

“No, they’re not,” said the rest of the family, rounding on me.  “For instance,” said Lucy, “what does “brass monkeys” mean?”

I explained.

It’s a little bit rude and made her say, “Well! Really...”

I felt crushed.

“You’re always coming out with stuff like that,” said Elspeth.  “Weird sayings that no one else has ever heard of.”

“There’s a flea in your ear,” put in Jennifer, helpfully.  “That’s one.”

The rest of the family demurred.  That is a well known phrase.

“No it’s not,” argued Jenny.  “You just make them up. Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, for instance, when we’re going to bed. Ne’re cast a clout till May be out. Something’s like a violin with one string.  In and out like a fiddler’s elbow.”

“Up and down like a bride’s nighty,” I murmured, lowering the tone somewhat.

“And that one you say that you shouldn’t.”

“As queer as Dick’s hatband?”

“Mother!”

“But I just mean something’s odd, that’s all.”

“You still shouldn’t say it.  Seriously, you just make them up.  I can do it.  For instance, I could say something like, when there’s crows in the tree, we’ll always have potatoes.

I thought that phrase was so inspired, it went straight into the repertoire.  So now you know.

When there’s crows in the tree, we’ll always have potatoes...

 

 

 

 

Taking the Biscuit!

One of my oldest friends (in every sense of the word as she’s just celebrated her 89^th birthday) is Kath.  We were talking about what kids did in the days before TV.

Well, according to Kath, one of the odder things that kids got up to was to go and look at corpses.

Nowadays, when someone dies, it’s almost de rigueur that the undertaker scoops them up and takes them to a Chapel of Rest, but that wasn’t always the case.

I can remember Grandma laid out in her coffin in the front room (lid off) and the neighbours coming to pay their respects, but although I might very well have seen other people’s deceased relatives, I can’t honestly say I remember it.

Kath, however, led by her pal Aileen, made an absolute hobby of it.

Now, before you think this is too morbid for words, I should explain that although Kath and Aileen were perfectly well fed, this was about 1933 and treats such as sweets and biscuits were rare.  So Kath was a willing listener when Aileen came up with A Plan.

“Have you noticed,” said Aileen, “that when there’s a corpse laid out in the house, everyone who comes to see it gets a biscuit or a piece of cake?  Why don’t we,” continued Aileen, getting down to brass tacks, “go and look at corpses and then we’ll get a biscuit too?”

It was dead easy (if you’ll excuse the expression) to spot the house with a corpse in it because the curtains were drawn at the front of the house.

So those two little girls went round knocking at doors to offer to “say a prayer,” (Kath’s exact words) “over the corpse”, upon which they were ushered into the parlour and, having admired how beatifully laid-out the corpse was, they’d get cracking.

Usually one Hail Mary would do the trick, but sometimes they had to throw in an Our Father as well before the biscuits were produced, while the householder looked on, sometimes moved to tears by this display of infant piety.  There was one occasion, however, where Aileen decided to cut and run when, after a whole decade of the Rosary (!) no biscuits were forthcoming.  “All that praying,” said Aileen in disgust when they were out on the street again, “for nothing!”

It came to an end, however, as all good things do, when the Headmistress of the school, a ferocious nun of the old-fashioned type, wise to any form of rannygazoo, called them into her office.  “I hear,” she said, “that you’ve got a new hobby.”

Kath and Aileen looked at each other for moral support and Kath demurely said, “We’re only saying prayers.”

Even the most clued-up nun couldn’t actually object to that, but she wasn’t fooled.  “In future, I think you should restrict your payers to church.”

So that’s what they did

Pretentious Chocolate

A regular feature in the magazine, Private Eye, is Pseuds Corner, an absolute delight for anyone who enjoys reading pretentious language popped and brought down to earth like a bust balloon.  So that's one pleasure, yes? Call it P1.

Another pleasure is, I'm the first to admit, is eating chocolate.  Call that P2.

What a wonderful moment it is when P1 and P2 is combined.  Here, without a word of exaggeration, is what came wrapped round a posh box of chocs.

"Chocolate making is a science as well as an art.  (Fair enough, but here's where the writer really spits on his hands and gets going.). To be fully appreciated, my chocolates are best eaten in a quiet space with an ambient temperature of 21 degrees C and a glass of still water to cleanse the palate.  Your senses of tastes and smell are particularly attuned at 11 am and 6 pm when the distinctive ingredients I bring together will really work their magic."

Yeah, right.  That sort of thing really defies comment but it’s clearly written by someone who’s incapable of calling a spade anything but a manually operated earth moving device.  Nice chocolates, though.

On another note...(Tra la!) I use Wordpress to host my blog and one of the things it has is a nifty little device that tells you how many people have looked at the blogs.  In February it was – get this – 20,126.

Gosh.  So, if you’re reading this, you are not alone...  Well, you might be.  You might be curled up with your laptop, the cat, pretentious chocolate and a glass of something or a cup of the drink that cheers but not inebriates, as the Victorians (bless them!) used to refer to tea. Or coffee or hot chocolate with marshmallows (In cyberspace no one knows if you’ve got cream). You know what I mean.

Anyway, after having a dekko at the figures, I got my calculator out.  It’s got Donald Duck on the lid and when you lift it up, it plays “It’s A Small World After All.” which means I usually count numbers on my fingers.  However, even if I take my socks off and use my toes, I can’t get up to 20,126 (it’s an evolutionary thing) so I enlisted the help of Donald.  And Donald tells me that 20,126 divided by the 28 days of February is 718.78571 per day.  So if you happen to bump into the unfortunate soul who’s only made it to point 78571, slip them a bar of (pretentious) chocolate, treat them kindly and, with luck and your help, they may become a whole person.

Happy Mothers' Day everyone.  I hope you got some chocolate!

 

 

The refreshment of the spirit.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy Pevensie, after various trying events, such as falling through a magic picture into the Narnian ocean, encountering invisible enemies, sea serpents and being sold (briefly) as a slave ends up in the scary magician’s secret room with a book of spells.  What’s she’s looking for (and eventually finds) is a spell to make the invisible Dufflepuds visible but on the way comes across a spell for The refreshment of the spirit.  

I’ll be honest here; if I was asked what would refresh the spirit, I’d immediately think of a tall glass of something alcoholic with ice cubes in it, the sort of holiday that comes at the end of aeroplane journeys or, if I was being healthy, a bracing walk.  What CS Lewis comes up with is a story, the best story Lucy’s ever read and, while she’s reading it, she gets totally drawn in, so the story become real, and she’s completely refreshed.

I hope we’ve all had that sort of experience and – I’ve got to hand it to Lewis here – that absolutely is the caterpillar’s boots, as Lord Peter Wimsey said. Stories, whether printed or in ebook form, can completely refresh the spirit.  I remember ages ago reading one of those old green-and-white penguin classic crime paperbacks which had a defensive little message on the back.  “Detective stories,” it said (I’m quoting from memory here) “are enjoyed by many of our greatest minds and leading men as a relaxation after the cares and troubles of the day”.  While one part of me is muttering “patronizing gits,” another would like to point out that if you happen to be one our greatest minds and leading men (or women – I’m not fussy!) I have an excellent series of detective stories featuring Jack Haldean available elsewhere on the website or from, as they say, all good bookshops.  And Kindle.

Well, I needed some refreshment of the spirit this week.  As Marvin the paranoid android said, “Life!  Don’t talk to me about life!” and, amongst the various crumpled leaves in my bed of roses, was the fact that about the last four or five books I’d read had been complete pants. So I tried my own spell for The refreshment of the spirit and pitched on Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Witches books, starring Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick.  Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad and Lords and Ladies.  The redoubtable threesome crop up in many other books, of course, but what a sequence!  Do yourself a favour and read them.  I sometimes think it’s a shame that Terry Pratchett’s got such a reputation for being funny.  Yes, of course he’s funny, but he’s so much else as well.  And I love the way he bounces folklore around, like a shuttlecock at a badminton game.  Elves, for instances.  Tolkien was far too reverential about elves and gave Legolas far too much poetry. I prefer Terry Pratchett’s elves:

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

Wow!