Look! It's me!

Giggly-google+1 or summat like that told me I could do all sorts of things now!  Well..... call me an old luddite, but I didn't want to set myself up just like facebook (as I don't do facebook either!), but joy oh joy - for me, although you may be disappointed...... I could attach a pic.  So nowI now have my pic on my blog. 

Is it like me?  Well y.e.e.s, I guess it is, although maybe I'd be unrecognisable in the actual street!

The Story of Beautiful Girl - Rachel Simon

   Beautiful Girl is Lynnie, who turns up with a man and a newborn baby at the home of widowed school teacher Martha.  From that moment all their lives are changed, and in the minutes before the police take Lynnie back to The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, the baby is given into the care of Martha.  This then becomes a story which stretches over 30+ years and is unputdownable.  Lynnie does not speak (speech inpedement or mute?)  The man she came is profoundly deaf and therefore cannot speak, and they have both excaped from The School.....

Incredibly easy to push the problems of those who are not the same as us to the back of your mind.  To give them a label without knowing if that label is correct or not.  Please do, when you get there, read Rachel Simon's notes at the end of the book.  She has a sister affected in this way, and her research is solid.  I can confirm that this was not only an American problem.  For some years after WW2, (from the start of the National Health Service) both my parents worked at a mental hospital.  Una, a good friend of my mother's was incarcerated at 15 because - she came from a good family and had the inconvenience to fall pregnant! She was in her 40's when my mother met her.  My father was an upholsterer - in those days the hospital was run, very much like the one in the book, as a self contained village.  My father's workshop assistant was Walter, shell-shocked from the first World War, who could no longer speak.  I do not recall stories of ill-treatment from that hospital though, quite the opposite, and many years later my husband worked there in the maintenance department for a few years, so I feel that I do know something of this subject.

Back to the book then.  It's a rollercoaster of a read - the main characters are not in touch with each other (to say more will spoil the story), so we see how each life develops without any of them knowing of the others.  I must say that the last few pages moved me to tears - many ends were tied up, and I finished with a feeling of satisfaction of having known Lynnie and the other characters.  This is the first of Rachel Simon's books I have read - but I will look out for others now.

Lytes Cary and Hound's Tongue.....

    Today we were off on a visit to Lytes Cary Manor, a 15th century  manor house in Somerset, originally the home of Henry Lyte, the translator of the Nuewe Herball (New Herbal) - he was a herbalist, and this was translated from the Dutch.  Under a glass cover is a first edition of this book to which he had added ms notes of his own findings..... imagine! a 600 year old book - dedicated to Elizabeth the First - now available to view in the reign of Elizabeth the Second.  Ignoring the Victorian additons, this was a small manor house, and was restored in the early 20th century, when the gardens with a nod to the Arts and Crafts movement were laid out, Henry Lyte's original gardens having been long lost.  Lovely little house in a lovely setting.  Yew hedges in abundance, and the roses just starting to perform around and about.  I spotted a climbing rose with blooms like little pink balls - the petals did not open further - I coveted that, I can tell you!

And in the plant shop I spent too much money...... no, never too much if stuff is coming into my garden.  But why had I never seen or heard of this lovely thing before?  This is Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum Nervosum) and yes, they really are that exquisite blue!

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

 Ellen Foster is 10.  Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is sickly and very early on in this short novel returns from hospital and commits suicide (her father watching the pills go down and telling Ellen her mother will be fine after a rest).  It's clear very early on that Ellen will have to be strong to get through the early part of her life.   Ellen has a black schoolfreind, Scarletta.  She's welcome at that home anytime, but somewhere along the line she's been indoctrinated with wrongful information about "coloureds" and finds the smell of the home and the food, and the drink, hard to cope with, going thirsty rather than drink out of the same bottle Scarletta has drunk from.  She's taken in for a while by one of her school teachers, and then by her grandmother, who detests her with her very being, for the sin of being her father's daughter.  Eventually, she finds herself with a foster mother or "new mama" as she refers to her.  The story jumps back and forwards and I found myself wishing hard that life would eventually treat her well.  I read it in a oner - couldn't put it down - and was delighted by the style of the writing, and by the character of Ellen herself - a little lady who needs to be brave and hard-faced whilst everything in her world is mayhem.  She's a great, great character - and the others we meet in this short book make a great supporting cast.

First published in 1987, this was Gibbons' first book, and what a book.  Told in the first person, and in the present tense, which will not suit everyone, but suited this book fine, this is Ellen' s story of her early life.   There is a feeling of truth being stranger than fiction here, and I could not resist looking up Kaye Gibbons on Wikipedia...... look her up yourself.  She has had one hard life too - mainly because she is bi-polar, and this has obviously effected her life dramatically.  She's got children of her own, but it's obvious that struggling with her own mental illness has been hard.  She's quoted as saying that she finds she writes best when she is on the manic side.  I need to seek out her other books now and see if I like them as well as I do this one.   No idea how this one passed me by, but guess that it was not given much of a chance in the UK and I found it myself, clean and new (and 22 years old!) in a second hand book emporium. So glad.

A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian

  Not quite sure how Michelle Magorian does it, but she touches my heart every time.  I had never heard of this until someone said that they tried to re-read it every year because it was life affirming.  Having read and loved "Goodnight Mr Tom", and some of her others, I took a chance on this one, and loved it.

Rose is 17 and still at school - her sister Diana is 21 and the beauty of  the family.  They don't really like each other very much, and then in 1943 they are sent away to the coast for three months, out of danger, whilst their widowed mother joins an ENSA troupe to entertain UK troups overseas.  Rose discovers several things in those three months - the diary of a lady who lived in the cottage once;  puppy love is not always the way you think; your sister is a nice woman; and you can grow up almost overnight.  If ever there was a book I would have wanted to read at 14/15 - this is it.  But it wasn't written then.  In an easy to read manner, Magorian will introduce Rose to sex, to friendship outside her normal circle and many other things that would stand her in good stead.    It's a lovely story - with a few tears to shed along the way, wonderful descriptions of happenings which seemed to me just exactly right.  A glorious and quick Summer read that I hope will stay with you the way its going to stay with me. 

The Fine Colour of Rust - P A O'Reilly

Loretta. Single mum since the husband walked out some time ago. Left with her two kids and no maintenance. But at least she's got a part time job, and friends, in the rural Australian town of Gunapan. There's Norm, the old guy down the road with a patch of skin cancer on his forehead, and there's Helen, a good friend to drink a glass of wine with when things get bad. Loretta is always campaigning to save the school, and again its under threat of closure. But it's hard to get many people to be enthusiastic, really, especially as there are whispers of a new country spa development just up the road from town, where jobs might be had......

Loretta is a heroine I loved. She's just like a lot of us. She's a bit overweight, she's none too hot in the housekeeping department, she loves her kids (even though she dreams of dumping them and riding off into the sunset on the back of a Harley Davidson), She wishes she could afford new clothes, and her car is falling apart around her as she ferries the kids back and fore to school.

Norm is a good friend, who is covered in the grime of many years of having a scrapyard in his own backyard. Loretta keeps a bar of soap especially for Norm to wash his hands when he pops over for a cup of tea, or supper. When Norm has the patch of skin cancer removed, it's the catalyst for many happenings, and when his son comes home from prison after 14 years inside, things change - but not as you might expect.

The book is set in Australia, but you will recognise the characters from anywhere in the world. It's a lovely read with a couple of laugh out loud moments and I romped through it.
[copy of my Amazon review]

Curry and Chocolate, although not necessarily in that order!

A week in Normandy, around10 miles from a small town called Falaise, the birthplace of William the Conquerer as he is known in the UK!  Those 10 miles led us off the main roads, up country lanes full of wild flowers and birdsong to our destination.  Beds and bathrooms for all,  comfy seating, a huge woodburner for the cooler evenings, and plenty of food, laughter, wine and chocolate (well, not chocolate every night!).

Adam, flushed with success at his first attempt at a roast leg of lamb for 15 persons, with veg!

It's very hard to say whether Peter is disgusted at Margaret's gravy spillage or not.  She is clearly delighted!

So serious - must be putting the world to rights!

And yet more intelligent conversation - probably about the quality of the wine.......

The problem is, life is not all serious discussion, But I never did find out what this particular joke was.....

 and even the camera holder was laughing here (sorry girls!)

And then you have a few glasses of wine, you think its clever to do what kids do, and at our age, frankly, it's not funny!!!



AND NOW...... THE CHOCOLATE TASTING!!!

Bett wondering why there isn't a box each! (Its a tasting, Bett, not a pig-out!)

No, no, that praline had a nasty aftertaste....

But the champagne truffle, well........Mmm mmm!

AND THEN ...... IT WAS CURRY NIGHT - DRESS ACCORDINGLY

Aging Bollywood star Shagmi Patel, Col Mustard (hamming it up) and a great thinker from Bengal

The cross dresser who was no better than he ought to be, and his lovely Memsahib.....

and two other lovely Memsahibs!

Just a tie and a hat, and here comes Pandit Nehru!

Pearl of India, wearing the Pearl of India, in the company of one so young he is obviously a student on leave from Oxford!

Rice for 15 is a big order, Jan!

Chefs of the Taj Mahal restaurant........

Mr Shagmi Patel, his lovely Memsahib Mitoo, and that great thinker again (is that alcohol I see???)

And, in the dying light, the cast of our evening....twice!

Laughing a lot is better than crying.  That was a good evening, and the curries not half bad, either!

Just two of our lovely evenings..... But I just have to mention the stone martins..... Our lightest sleeper, kept awake every night as Mummy stone martin had chosen her bedroom walls to raise a brood behind (actually I think, several Mummy stone martins had broods in there) ... and they are nocturnal.  What a racket!  Never again, as they say.  Look them up on t'internet.