Mrs Mac suggests - What to read in DECEMBER

A book you would give to your younger self is the subject I've chosen this month.

Well! there are loads of books I would give to my younger self so what to choose!  It's December, so I guess lots of you are thinking about Christmas presents.  And, I hear you say, how young a younger self does she mean?  As young as you like, but not one you actually did read back then.  After all, the younger you will know about it, won't they?!

 I'm going to send my younger self a wonderful Young Adult book that I just loved

                                    Meg Rosoff - The Way I Live Now

A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night - Harry Nilsson

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We've had a makeover in our living room, which meant furniture was removed, stuff was stored in the dining room, and decisions were made about what to keep, what to sell, what to send to the charity shop.  The vinyl is up a a shelf in the dining room. Will we replace them with CDs?  Get them re-recorded onto CD?  Will we just download the stuff we like?  Later, later for that decision.

Now to put the CDs in their new home...... and a real chance to have a listening session and see what the classics of the collection will be.  And the first one is:

I have just replayed A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night - Harry Nilsson which I have loved from the first time I heard it. Arrangements of mostly old standards (It had to be you; What'll I do; As time goes by), it reminds me of a good time in my life (not that it hasn't been mostly good!) and I am never getting rid of this one!

Every track is linked by an intro that "mentions" one of the other classics on the album, although not necessarily the next one you will hear.  A couple of little jokes in the words of songs, too;  it's just glorious.  Are you an old sentimentalist?  Very young with no experience of the standards of the 1930s?  Someone like me who just loves a song with wonderful words?  If you don't have this album, give yourself a treat.  Available for not much money, and I can almost guarantee you will play it many times and find yourself falling in love with the late, great Nilsson.

Christmas decorating - early thoughts!

Just a little idea for Christmas..... I don't mention that word until November each year, even though cards are in the shops in September (when I may not even have had my holiday!!!).  This is the mirror in my dining room..... and the branch was one that fell off my cherry tree in the garden.  If you are going to do this you need to check that your own mirror is nice and secure.

Tie string in three places and attach to mirror with drawing pins (press pins).  Get the level and the look of it right.

Choose your decoration colour (this time it was red, silver and plain glass), and make sure the step ladder you use is steady, and off you go.  I hung all this stuff either with thin silver string, or with the cord that came with the ornament - most of the hearts are cloth, and came from a string of them which I took apart to use them singly on here.

This is something that requires little money (you all have a box of ornaments somewhere, yes?) and only your time.  This was the first time I had done this, but it's been up there a while now...... (the ornaments come off after Christmas, of course!!).  But if, like me, you are a lazy old bat, just dust it with a feather duster and move on to the next idea.  I had miniature eggs hanging on it at Easter.

Keep it up as long as you like, and eventually you may get fed up with it.  At that point, take it down and use the wood for kindling if you have a woodburner or open fire, and if not, cut it into a few even pieces and put it in a corner of the garden, where beetles and such will find it and use it.

Mrs Mac Suggests: What to read in November

The Clocks are back, the nights are longer, and perhaps it's time to look for something different to read.  My suggestion this month is for something written from a child's point of view.  There are lots of them, some much better than others, but if this kind of book is new to you, perhaps it's time to read a new genre.

A famous book in that genre is  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and if you have not yet read this gem, please seek it out and give yourself a treat.

For me, a recently read book comes to mind, that I really enjoyed.  It was

Waltzing Through Flaws by Paula Sharp

      

A Fifty-year Silence by Miranda Richmond Mouillot

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Miranda Richmond's maternal grandparents were Jews, who by some miracle escaped internment and death in WW2.  She was Romanian, he stateless (although eventually with French nationality) and they met and married, spend short periods together, and finally after only around five years and the purchase of an old house, Anna left Armand, taking their only child,  and they never spoke again. 

Anna, her grandmother, left Europe, and settled in America where she became a psychciatrist; whilst  Armand had been amongst other things in his long career, a translator during the Nurenberg trials.  Two very different people, two very different personalities.  Anna, an open and caring woman who wanted the best for her granddaughter, and Armand, a closed book, who was very bitter about life and who referred to his (ex?)wife as "that witch", amongst other insults, all the while showing love to his granddaughter so long as his wife was not mentioned.  So with the Atlantic between them, they never met and never talked again and somehow, Miranda Richmond had to find out why this happened.

I thought it was going to be rather dry when I started to read, but it wasn't long before I was engaged in this odd, mysterious family history.  The author will tell you everything she found.  Both grandparents would not tell her anything about why they couldn't stay together, and that mystery is solved only by the author towards the end of the book.  Fortunately, her grandmother kept a great many papers which helped, but I must say Miranda Richmond was tenacious.  It took ten years, and a lot of research - and here's the book!

If you are interested in Jewish history and/or WW2,  this has a very different slant from records of Holocaust survivors and their testimonies.  Nevertheless, it is a record of a time and place that those born without memories of war and the horrors that man can inflict on his fellow man may find intriguing and fascinating.  Certainly the author was intrigued enough to continue digging and I thank her for that - for this rather sad, but understandable and ultimately redeeming story is another part of the jigsaw of WW2, as well as a little piece of her own family history.

Prayers for Sale - Sandra Dallas

Hennie Comfort, 86 in the 1930s, widowed twice, mother of a long dead child, and knowing that her daughter may well be right when she says that she can't continue to live up there in the mountains, in the little mining town of High Swan, but must come down and live with her in Iowa.  Maybe she will, but only for the winters, for her plan is to return each Summer until she can't do that any more.

She has a nice house, much larger than the one room cabins that most miners and their families have, she has some good friends, and she has many tales to tell.  These she relates to her new friend Nit Spindle, only 17, with a husband and a stillborn child buried already.  Nit has a lot to learn about life up there in the thin air on the mountains, and Hennie will pass on all she knows.  Nit can't stitch well, either, but she'll get better at it, and when the quilting circle meets up at Hennie's, that's a good way to get the quilters to befriend Nit.

Thoughout this book, there will be chances for Hennie to tell yet another tale about the community, and gradually we will feel we know everyone so much better.

A smile here and there, a tear too, but most of all a tale well told - a story of love, hate, and quilts.  Just what Dallas does best, really.  I really like her books, but they don't have much of a following in the UK - even though I am ever ready to encourage people to read them!  Maybe a viewer or two of this particular post will think again, and get hold of one of hers....... and become a fan like me.

Bed and Breakfast tales - 7

River Cottage fans sometimes stay here....... and two of our guests this year arrived using public transport only.  Fine as it stands, but we reckoned that a taxi one way would be around £30.  So we told them we would drive them there.  Two friends, one Danish, one Swedish who had met in a kitchen many years ago.  Loved each others company, and that was fun for us too!

Anyway, we piled them in the car and off we went, delivering them to the River Cottage carpark.  They got out of the car, and the Swede promptly burst into tears.  What on earth?

Nothing wrong at all, she just said "My tummy is all wobbly!, I have waited for this moment for years!".