SandDune's Retirement Reads 2022 - February

Welcome to my second thread of 2022 and to my eleventh year doing the 75 Book Challenge. I'm a 60 year old accountant and, after spending most of my career in the City of London, I was until recently the Finance Manager of a local charity which provides support to children and adults with learning disabilities. But at the beginning of 2021 I retired and my husband (aka Mr SandDune) also started working part-time. We live about thirty miles north of London although retirement may take us elsewhere in the U.K. Our 21 year old son Jacob is now at the University of Lancaster in the North of England studying History. There's also our 9 year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Daisy, who tends to feature prominently in my threads.

I'm originally from Wales rather than England, so I do have an interest in all things Welsh (although I can't speak the language - at least only a few words) and I tend to get huffy if people call me English rather than Welsh! I am doing an introductory Welsh class this year though. I read mainly literary fiction, classics, science-fiction and fantasy, but I have been trying (and enjoying) some crime fiction. As far as non-fiction goes I’m interested in a number of topics in particular books about the environment and nature.

In the last couple of years I have read many more lighter and feel-good books. (I wonder why that could be - looking at you COVID! ) The number of books I'm reading is also down, although that's more to do with no longer listening to audio books during my commute).

All my family are avid readers. Jacob has inherited a love of reading science-fiction and fantasy from me and a love of reading history from Mr SandDune so our books are frequently shared. I read hardbacks, paperbacks, on kindle and listen to audio books particularly when driving or walking the dog.

Apart from reading I love travelling, eating out, and going to the theatre, when that's actually possible of course. As a lot of those activities haven’t been too feasible recently, I’ve been getting more involved with craft activities, in particular crochet and embroidery. As well as Welsh I'm learning French, and I enjoy messing about with my family history. I'm also getting more and more concerned about environmental issues and I have been quite involved in campaigning on climate change.

In 2022 I am going to start my threads with some pictures of places that have been important in my life. Thank you Paul Cranswick for the idea for this.

In 1998 I spent five months in Bermuda, as a replacement for the finance manager of our office there who was on maternity leave. I've copied this from a book of photographs that I bought when I was there. I lived somewhere in the row of houses that runs along the top of the golf club. Can't pinpoint exactly which one.



I was a regular churchgoer at the time, and the church I attended was Church of Scotland. Apparently, this is the oldest Presbyterian Church in the Americas, built in 1719.

Books Read in 2022:

1. The High House Jessie Greengrass ****1/2
2. Carrie's War Nina Bawden ****
3. A Bear Called Paddington Michael Bond *****
4. The Muse Jessie Burton ***
5. Just William Richmal Compton *****
6. Agent Running in the Field John Le Carre ****
7. The Island of Missing Trees Elif Shafak ****1/2
8. The Unholy Land Lavie Tidhar ****
9. Topo, Uccello, Serpente, Lupo ****
10. Snap Belinda Bauer ***1/2
11. The Doctor will See You Now Amir Khan ***
12. Letters From America: Travels in the USA and Canada Rupert Brooke **

Favourites from 2021

Favourite Books:

Five star reads:
Piranesi Susanna Clarke
The Magician’s Nephew C.S. Lewis
Hamnet Maggie O’Farrell
Wilding: the Return of Nature to a British Farm Isabella Tree
Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope

Four and a half star reads:
The Mermaid of Black Conch Monique Roffey ****1/2
Night Waking Sarah Moss ****1/2
Komarr Lois McMaster Bujold ****1/2

Favourite Films:

The Power of the Dog
Grand Budapest Hotel
Dune
News of the World
Passing

Favourite TV:

Shtisel
Gomorrah
Landscapers
Call my Agent
Spiral

Plans for 2022:

I belong to a RL book club which has been going for 21 years and that meets monthly except for January & August. Our choices so far are as follows:

February: Agent Running in the Field John Le Carre
March: Letters From America Rupert Brooke
April:
May:
June:
July: Small Pleasures Claire Chambers
September:
October:
November:
December:

We are also reading the Costa Novel shortlist over the next couple of months:

The High House Jessie Greengrass
The Island of Missing Trees Elif Shafak
The Fortune Men Nadifa Mohamed
Unsettled Ground Claire Fuller

I have also recently joined another book club with the U3A which also meets monthly. I've only attended one meeting so far, so I'm still testing the waters with this one. Books are as follows:

January: The Muse Jessie Burton
February: Snap Belinda Bauer
March:
April:
May:
June:
July:
August:
September:
October:
November:
December:

Plans for 2022 (continued)

I hope to participate in the Asian book challenge for 2022, hopefully reading books that are in the house already:

January - Turkey
February - Israeli & Palestinian Authors
March - The Arab World
April - Iran
May - The Stans - There are 7 states all in the same region all ending in "Stan"
June - India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
July - China
August - Japan
September - Korea
October - Indo-China
November - The Malay Archipelago - Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia
December - The Asian Diaspora - Ethnic Asian writers from elsewhere

I also hope to participate in the British Author Challenge:

January: Children's Classics
February: Mary Renault & Timothy Mo
March: The Interwar Period (11 November 1918-1 September 1939)
April: Kamila Shamsie & Clive Barker
May: Comic Books/Graphic Novels & Audiobooks
June: Jackie Kay & E. F. Benson
July: The Georgian Era (1714-1837)
August: Espionage
September: Retellings, Continuations, and Non-Series Prequels & Sequels
October: Aminatta Forna & Lawrence Durrell
November: Arthurian Legend
December: Books about books

>1 SandDune: nice aerial photo. I take it that was full of fabulous, being in Bermuda?
I hear it can be very cool there, as it is quite far north of the Caribbean.

Your reading plan looks very organized! Unlike mine, which is all spur of the moment.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Rhian!

>1 SandDune: I assume you welcome us to your second thread? ;-)
Five months working in Bermuda sounds wonderful, did you go alone?

Happy new thread!

I loved your review of The Island of Missing Trees from your other thread. Of all the books I read for Turkey month, I liked this one the most.

New-thread orisons, Rhian. I enjoyed the St. Hilarion photos last thread, and >1 SandDune: is beautiful as well!

Hi Rhian my dear, happy new thread and i love the thread topper photos dear friend.

>7 SandyAMcPherson: it is quite far north of the Caribbean To be honest, the week I arrived in Bermuda I was so cold! I remember it was a very cold winter in the U.K. that year - our pond had been frozen for several weeks which doesn't often happen. So I was looking forward to some warmth. But when I got there it was about 13°C and damp which isn't that cold in the grand scheme of things, but there was no central heating and only a tiny electric fan heater. I went to bed wearing socks and my dressing gown and would have put a woolly hat on if I had had one.

>8 quondame: Thank you!

>9 FAMeulstee: I did go alone although Mr SandDune came out to visit for a couple of weeks in the middle. We had a week in Bermuda and a week in Virginia.

>10 AnneDC: ai started My Name is Red but did not get on with it.

>11 richardderus: Thanks Richard. Bermuda is beautiful, but surprisingly crowded (at least surprising to me). I enjoyed my time there, but I wouldn't have wanted to live there long term. Not enough proper countryside and too many golf courses.

>12 johnsimpson: Welcome John!

Happy New Thread, Rhian!

>1 SandDune: Bermuda looks like a striking place to have been. I have never been to the Caribbean.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Rhian!

I enjoyed your comments about The Island of Missing Trees and Cyprus. I'm sure you've heard me saying that my husband is a refugee from the 1974 war. I think I crossed the checkpoint twice - once when I had friends visiting from the US (at the time, crossing was forbidden to Cypriots). We went to Kyrenia. Another time when Cypriots were allowed to cross we tried to find the home where Stelios lived. We couldn't, but weren't entirely sure where we were going, and we had been told in any case that the house was no longer there. We did continue on to Kyrenia, but it was a depressing trip for Stelios. He has some land in Lania, and we have been thinking about building and retiring there at some point.

>15 PaulCranswick: Aah but Bermuda doesn’t count as the Caribbean Paul - it’s in the North Atlantic. It’s 900 miles from Bermuda to the nearest Caribbean island. It’s nearest land mass is North Carolina which is about 650 miles away.

>16 figsfromthistle: Welcome!

>17 AMQS: I can imagine that it was a depressing trip for Stelios, especially if his house was no longer there. Lanka looks a pretty place to settle: in the hills but not too far from the bright lights of Limassol.

Happy New Thread, Rhian!

Well Bermuda is definitely hotter than here now, and we aren't suffering the weather of our Canadian and US friends. Did you enjoy your time there Rhian?

Happy new one!

>19 alcottacre: Thanks Stasia! Hope you are on the mend now.

>20 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline. I did enjoy my time as it was so interesting to live somewhere new even if it wasn’t for long. And Bermuda is pretty but I couldn’t live there permanently. The first thing I thought in my drive from the airport was ‘where is the countryside?’. It seemed very green but everywhere seems to be in somebody’s garden (or golf course). I found it quite claustrophobic in that respect. And as a holiday destination it doesn’t hold up to a lot of places in the Mediterranean, in my opinion. Because virtually all the hotels are half-board and are out of town, there’s not the evening vibe in the main town of Hamilton that you get in Mediterranean resorts. I remember sitting in a cafe on the waterfront of Hamilton as a quarter to five in the afternoon as it was preparing to close. I remember thinking that it wouldn’t be like that in Greece! But all the tourists go back to their out of town hotels in the evening! I am writing of course from the perspective of someone’s who’s never booked an all inclusive holiday in her life, but it seemed strange to me. Of course if may have changed, I’m twenty years out of date!

>21 drneutron: Welcome Jim!

I started One Night, Markovitch by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and have pearl-ruled it at page 90. Actually it was quite a struggle to get to page 90! I don't like the style of the book, which repeats everyone's name in full several times a paragraph. I don't like the characters: one of whom is apparently irresistible to women because of his impressive moustache and one of whom is so forgettable as to not be noticeable at all. I don't like the constant fetishisation of women's bodies - I don't think I'm particularly prudish but it just goes on and on and it's boring. And having just read The Island of Missing Trees, a book which deals with the repercussions of conflict in a nuanced, sensitive and above all reconciliatory way, I think the supposedly humorous references to how many Arabs someone has shot is crass and offensive.

An example of the prose:

But then something strange happened: the more he conjured up Rachel’s plump breasts, the more they looked to him like Sonya’s breasts. And even though Rachel’s breasts were more beautiful than Sonya’s—plump and sweet and very, very firm—the image of Sonya’s breasts made him so happy that he didn’t want to drive them away. So it happened that he described Rachel’s breast to the deputy commander of the Irgun while he was seeing Sonya’s breasts in his mind’s eye, until he was suddenly seized by the fear that he might get confused and begin describing Sonya’s breasts to his friend, not Rachel’s, and that was something he did not want to do.

It goes on like that for page after page ...

>23 SandDune: That's pretty awful, Rhian. I can't blame you for abandoning it!

>24 lauralkeet: I don't like abandoning books, especially those which have had a decent review in some circles. But I couldn't cope with this one.

>23 SandDune: I think the supposedly humorous references to how many Arabs someone has shot is crass and offensive

Me! Me! I'm offended.

>26 richardderus: I think books can be successfully written from virtually any point of view, and successful books can be written about unlikeable people. But making the book light hearted at the same time is a hard act to pull off.

>27 SandDune: I'm really not sure one could make that trope successfully funny outside a very limited cultural landscape. I am decidedly outside that.

>29 SandDune: I'm really not sure one could make that trope successfully funny I’m not either!

>23 SandDune: Thanks for taking one for the team Rhian. Sounds rightly pearl ruled.

I find high body count in books, especially YA ones, really distasteful. It's a particular nastiness when racial divides are invoked and in and of itself justifies terminating the book with extreme prejudice.

>30 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks.

>31 quondame: I couldn't say it high in body counts to be honest. In what I read there was only one person killed on the page, as it were. It was more the throw away attitude that I didn't like given the subject matter.

I've visited Bermuda once and I had exactly the same reaction, not so much built "up" but just . . . full. There were no large parks or places to walk. Roads were claustrophobic. And we were there in March -- mostly warm enough but not all of the five days we were there . . . Went with small child, luckily the pool at the place (a fairly humble 'cottage' style motel w/kitchens) was heated. Had a little tiny beach with a looooong stairway. But we were trapped there unless we took a taxi or bus, say, to the market or wherever.

I recognize Bermuda isn't in the Caribbean (thanks for that reminder, Rhian), but the Caribbean islands aren't much better. We've taken a few small-ship Caribbean cruises, stopping at a number of ports. We love being on the ship, soaking up the sun and snorkeling. But the islands themselves don't do much for us for all the reasons mentioned here. We've also stayed at a resort which was nice but felt like living in a bubble. The world immediately outside the resort tended to be either poverty-stricken, hyper-commercial, or both.

>33 sibylline: I remember the weather in March (that was about when Mr SandDune came to visit) as being pleasant but certainly not warm enough for swimming, at least in the sea. When he came out we walked the Railway Trail which is a trail of about 20 miles going from one end of the island to the other, but having done that, we really felt that we'd done all the walking that Bermuda had to offer.

>34 lauralkeet: The world immediately outside the resort tended to be either poverty-stricken, hyper-commercial, or both There certainly was poverty on Bermuda, as everywhere, but you didn't see the dire poverty that you might see on poorer islands. And I certainly didn't feel particularly worried about going out and about by myself. There was no particular reason that I could see why the hotels were all-inclusive (or at least half-board) - it just seemed to be the way tourism had developed. As I said, I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who never books all-inclusive or half-board. For me a major part of the holiday is trying out different restaurants, do no matter how good the hotel food, I just wouldn't want to eat there all the time. And I like the atmosphere of places where you can wander about in the evening.

>18 SandDune: I haven't ever visited Lania, but you're right - it's close to both Limassol and Nicosia, and an easy trip to numerous beaches. From what I can tell, Lania is the Cypriot version of our Santa Fe - free spirited and artsy.

>23 SandDune: Ugh. That was a good call to abandon that one. I've always hated letting books go, but find it easier and easier as I get older.

>35 SandDune: I also really enjoy restaurants and wandering about while on holiday Rhian. The resorts can become a bit claustrophobic.

>23 SandDune: Your comments make me nervous, Rhian, as I have one of hers lined up for this month but thankfully not that one!

Have a lovely weekend.

>23 SandDune: OMGosh ~ that's just simply the worst writing (and I've had an eyeful marking undergrad essays...). However did that book find a publisher? (Don't answer that, it begs a smartass retort!)

Happy new one, Rhian!

>39 SandyAMcPherson: I admit that I'm not likely to try it no matter what, but is breast-conjuring A Thing?

Have a splendid Sunday, Rhian, free of further stylistic longueurs.

> 23 Good Grief!!!!

>39 SandyAMcPherson: And seriously, that is a good question, HOW?
Is it self-published, perhaps? Or maybe it is for the boob-obsessed? Niche market, you know?

8. Unholy Land Lavie Tidhar ****



Lior Tirosh is returning to his Jewish homeland for the first time in many years to visit his sick father. But it is not the state of Israel to which he returns, but to a land-locked African country bordering Uganda and Lake Victoria. For in this alternative version of the world at the beginning of the twentieth century a piece of land in central Africa was given by the British to be a Jewish homeland. Initially British Judaea, it has been the independent country of Palestina for many years. But this is not a normal homecoming. Why are Tirosh's memories of his life outside Palestina, as a moderately successful writer of detective fiction living in Berlin, starting to fade. And why does an old school friend end up dead within an hour of tracking Tirosh to his hotel in Ararat City? And just how many people are trailing Tirosh's movements?

I loved the way that this novel mixed the true and the fake and the might-have beens. The idea of Palestina itself is not so far-fetched: Joseph Chamberlain the British Chancellor actually offered land for this purpose in 1902. But it can be a puzzle sorting out the truthful the make-believe:

'There's good coffee grown in Palestina, the climate is ideal, and it was Baron Rothschild's initiative that financed the first plantations back in the 1920s. It was the English Baron of that name, not the French one who invested his efforts futilely in Ottoman Palestine. This one, Lionel Rothschild, was a keen zoologist. The Rothschild Zoo in Ararat City, as well, of course, as the Rothschild Game Reserve, are named in his honour, as is our local species of giraffe, the five-horned Giraffa camelopardis rothschildi, or the Rothschild giraffe. He once rode a carriage pulled by six zebras to Buckingham Palace, both to prove their suitability for being tamed and to publicise the efforts of the settlers in the newly formed British Jude. He is buried near Lake Nakuru, close to his beloved giraffes.'

So which of that is true and which false?

But there are problems in fictitious Palestina. The displaced Nandi people, who were there before the settlers, want their country back. And as the novel develops, it is clear that the world is much more complicated than it first appears...

This is the first Lavie Tidhar novel that I've read and it won't be the last. Recommended.

Not so nice news this morning - Mr SandDune tested positive for COVID. Unfortunately Jacob’s girlfriend came around yesterday afternoon so I hope she hasn’t caught it. I’ve done a lateral flow test this morning and it came up negative. He has to do twice weekly routine lateral flow tests for school and yesterday morning’s was negative but he started feeling woozy last night and did another test this morning.

In better news we gave Jacob’s girl friend her highland cow for her birthday and she loved it.

>44 SandDune: I'm sorry to hear Mr SandDune's ill. I hope you manage to avoid getting infected (and Jacob's girlfriend, as well) and that he gets a mild go.

>36 AMQS: I'm not sure if we've been to Lanka or not. Possibly we've been through it in the way to the Troodos but I don't specifically remember.

>37 lauralkeet: We've finally booked our holiday in France over the summer and one of the things that I'm really looking forward to is being able to eat out more. Last year in Scotland we did eat out a little bit, but nothing like as much as we would have done normally, and I felt nervous about eating inside. But in the southern half of France it should be possible to find plenty of outdoor restaurants and cafes and to eat out lots.

>38 PaulCranswick: >39 SandyAMcPherson: >40 Crazymamie: >41 richardderus: >42 sibylline: Apparently One Night, Markovitch was very successful in her native Israel. I wonder if it's lost something in translation (although that wouldn't remove the number of references to female body parts, of course) and it's not all as bad as the section I quoted, of course. Maybe I'm missing something!

>45 PawsforThought: Thank you Paws. At the moment he doesn't seem too bad. He has to self-isolate for 10 days, or he can get out early after 5 days if he has 2 negative lateral flow tests 24 hours apart. I am allowed to go out at the moment as I have been double vaccinated and boosted but they advise doing a lateral flow test every day which I shall do.

I'm sorry to hear MrSandDune has the virus. Let's hope he recovers quickly and the rest of you remain free of it. I'm glad Jacob's girlfriend loved the cow!

>46 SandDune: We're inching towards booking a holiday in France this summer, in our "usual" place at our friends' B&B near Narbonne. Will you be visiting a single location or traveling around a bit?

I look forward to hearing more about your holiday, Rhian. I'm not yet ready to invest a lot of time in planning anything complicated, but I have suggested we consider a nice long weekend in London sometime this year, which was met with great enthusiasm by himself. So we'll see. Otherwise, we have a few things planned stateside.

I'm sorry about Mr. SandDune's positive test. I am planning for my big release from quarantine tomorrow, which will have been 10 days :)

>47 lauralkeet: Jacob’s girlfriend absolutely adored the cow. I thought she was going to cry. I’m so glad I made it for her!

>47 lauralkeet: >48 katiekrug: We are have booked one week in Poitou-Charente, not far from Angoulême, and another week in Tarn-et-Garonne, near the Gorges D’Aveyron. Too fairly different areas as regards scenery. I haven’t been to France since 2011 and I’m very much looking forward to it.

>48 katiekrug: France is straightforward from here and means we can avoid any nasty airports as well! And booking a self-catering cottage (although I’m intending to eat out most nights) means that the door is open for Caroline to come if her work situation allows.

9. Topo, Uccello, Serpente, Lupo David Almond Dave McKean



Harry, Sue and Ben live in a world where the gods have become fat and lazy and there are still many places that are just empty and many things that still need to be created. Rather than finishing the job, the gods spend their time drinking tea and eating sandwiches and sleeping. Then Ben, the youngest of the children, discovers that it is possible to create things themselves. The creation of the mouse, the bird and the snake proceed without problems, but what will happen when they try to create a wolf?

This children's picture book reminds me of all the reasons why I would have liked to do an M.A. in Children's Literature, not just for the books aimed at older children but to look at picture books in a more academic way . The illustrations here are lovely and emphasise the contrast between the colourful world of the humans:



and the grey mist-like abode of the gods in the clouds:



And there are so many questions that are raised by a short and seemingly simple book aimed at younger children.

This is actually the Italian version of the book, which I bought in Rome some years ago. It's just about my level of Italian - I don't understand every single word but I do understand most of it, so with a dictionary I can get though it pretty well.

>50 SandDune: The man-boobs on that tubby god...!

Kidlit is super-duper-ultramatic important to understand at the core level, so I can absolutely see the interest in making it a PhD dissertation. It's a great way to learn a language, reading picture books and watching TV in that language. News broadcasts are terrifically helpful, since we're all pretty much getting similar international news plus a bonus dose of local-interest exposure.

ETA my sympathy to Mr SandDune!

>49 SandDune: that sounds lovely, Rhian. The last time we visited France, we met a couple from Yorkshire who now live in Poitou-Charente. They were fairly recent transplants so they had a lot of stories about acclimating to life in France. But it also sounds like a very nice part of the country.

>44 SandDune: Sorry to hear about Mr Sandune. Hoping he recovers speedily.

Well there would be cause for separation if she hadn't loved that cow Rhian :-) .

>44 SandDune: I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope it is the mildest of cases.

>49 SandDune: Good news about the cow's reception. So even though she has the cow, no one's having a cow. Does that expression translate from the US to the UK?

>50 SandDune: Happily Mouse Bird Snake Wolf is available at one of my libraries.

>44 SandDune: Sorry Mr SandDune tested positive, Rhian. I hope it is a mild case.
So glad Jacob's girlfriend was happy with the highland cow :-)

>50 SandDune: I love the b&w images!

Here's to a mild and quick case in the household. Do you all have to isolate now? Or just keep testing and isolate if you are unwell? Our whole household will have to stay put until 4 days of all negative tests. (These things are new to us now that Omicron is in the country and moving about!)

>51 richardderus: I find Twitter in another language is great. It's a nice short dose of another language and is never going to take too long to decipher, especially, as you say, if it's news and you know the gist already.

>52 lauralkeet: It's such a long time since I've been to France. We wanted to go last year, but of course that didn't happen ...

>53 Caroline_McElwee: I think she was always going to love the cow (as long as it turned out O.K. that is). She has a bit of a thing about highland cows.

>54 quondame: even though she has the cow, no ones having a cow No, sorry, that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever!

>55 FAMeulstee: >56 LovingLit: He doesn't seem too bad so far. He has to self-isolate for a minimum of 5 days and then he can get out if he has two successive negative lateral flow tests 24 hours apart. If he still tests positive he has to remain for the full 10 days. I am allowed out (as I have been double vaccinated and boosted) but the guidance is to take lateral flow tests every day, which I am doing. If I wasn't fully vaccinated I would have to isolate too.

>44 SandDune: Oh dear! I hope he has a very mild case, and you manage to miss catching it.

>54 quondame: >57 SandDune: Having a cow means being upset with the connotation of over dramatizing.

>43 SandDune: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Rhian.

>44 SandDune: Sorry to hear that Mr SandDune has tested positive for COVID. Here's hopin that the rest of you do not come down with it!

Please wish MrSandDune all the very best on his way to a speedy and full recovery, Rhian. He must get well soon as I haven't forgotten my promise to treat him to a day out at the family's executive box at Elland Road when I return to the UK.

Kyran and Yasmyne have both separately gotten the virus over the last few weeks but both of them recovered quickly.

To complicate matters Kyran has himself a girlfriend who happens to be called and annoyingly adding to the confusion as Yasmine!

All caught up with you, Rhian. Sorry to hear that MrSandDunehas tested positive - hoping he recovers quickly. That cow that you made for J's girlfriend is delightful.

>8 quondame: Excellent review - adding my thumb to that if you posted it. I'm also adding it to The List.

>58 ArlieS: >59 quondame: >61 PaulCranswick: >62 Crazymamie: Mr SandDune seems better today that yesterday. He spent the morning marking, says he is getting bored and has joined his online 'History of Hollywood' film course this evening. He's still coughing a fair bit and is tired but nothing too bad.

>59 quondame: Have not come across that expression before at all.

>61 PaulCranswick: a day out at the family's executive box at Elland RoadHe'd very much appreciate that Paul!

>61 PaulCranswick:annoyingly adding to the confusion as Yasmine Two of my nephews married women called Anna, which can be confusing at times.

>61 PaulCranswick: >63 SandDune: Both of my grandfathers, my father and my brother were William. I only dated a Bill briefly. My mother was Jean and so was my younger brother's first (of three) wives. Every third girl in my elementary school was some variation of Susan and one of the same brother's girl friends.

I have been battling with my two language classes for the last couple of days.

In French we have been doing fairly complex examples of how to use pronouns - such as how to turn a sentence such as ‘we didn’t give the present to our parents in the restaurant’ to ‘we didn’t give it to them there’. First I was fairly confident that I’d mastered the basics. First time I tried my homework I got 0/10. So I read it all again, looked at the book, looked at YouTube videos on the topic, and then did the homework again and got 3/10. I don’t think pronouns and me are a natural fit.

And then this morning I had Welsh. Sometimes I feel Welsh grammar likes to be overly complicated. We were learning that numbers one to four have feminine forms (fine we’ve done that before - I can cope with that). And if you’re counting feminine nouns then some of the following nouns mutate (i.e the first letter changes) after certain of the numbers. But not all the numbers -only some of them. But this doesn’t happen with masculine nouns. Oh, except apparently it does if you are counting two things. I mean why? I know you aren’t really supposed to ask ‘why’ with grammar - just go with the flow - but still …

>64 quondame: At my school there was a huge number of Siâns, and our dog was called Siân too. And a lot of Catherines as well although there were a couple of Susans as well. There was another Rhian and I think two Rhiannons in my year as well.

>64 quondame: This reminds me of upper secondary school where my class of 24 people, where 4 were Maria, 3 Caroline, 3 Anna and 3 had my name (and one had a very similar name with just one letter different). More than half the class! All the name sharers got nicknames and no one went just by their regular name.

Hi Rhian! Loved the pictures in the Italian children’s book.

Best wishes to your husband.

So you are doing two languages at the same time. French pronouns are a struggle, what with all those ne’s and all to put in their right places. But you do twitter in French?

>67 PawsforThought: I think we had a couple of Caroline's as well.

>68 EllaTim: So you are doing two languages at the same time Yes, as I'm officially classified as 'extremely vulnerable' to COVID I've had to shield for various times over the course of the pandemic, and it's been a useful (and enjoyable) activity. I say 'officially' as my consultant is a little doubtful whether I do fall into the category of 'severely' vulnerable, but anyway I've had to be careful. So I'm doing French at B1 level and also doing Welsh at introductory level. I have studied Welsh before at school, but that was a very long time ago, and they taught very formal Welsh then whereas now they teach more colloquial spoken Welsh. And for some reason they taught North Wales Welsh as the standard version at school, whereas we lived about as far south in Wales as is possible. These days learners can choose the appropriate dialect.

As far as Italian is concerned I'm not actually learning that at the moment, and I'm not actually sure what my level is. Possibly about B1 as well. At one stage my Italian was pretty good (which means I do pick up on more complicated constructions) but it has deteriorated over the years. I can usually get the gist of a newspaper article (as long as it's on a topic that I know something about).

>68 EllaTim: you do twitter in French I read Tweets in French and Italian (when I'm feeling virtuous). Welsh Twitter is too advanced!

>67 PawsforThought: >68 EllaTim: I was the only Caroline at Secondary School, but there were two others in junior, and I had an Irish pen friend who was a Caroline. I am one of four of another friend's Carolines (I'm Caroline Books, there is China, Cousin and Squash), and I seem to collect Annas (Polish, Norwegian, London)!

>61 PaulCranswick: >63 SandDune: >64 quondame: >67 PawsforThought: >70 Caroline_McElwee: Wow! I've met - or even encountered in literature - maybe half a dozen people with the same first name as me over the course of my lifetime, and less than half of those had it in the same from.

Amusingly, one of those cases (same name, different form) was the VP of engineering at a company where I worked as an engineer. I got a steady trickle of misdirected messages with information well over my pay grade. And she didn't even have a similar last name.

Added bonus, particularly as a woman in engineering - approximately no one can guess my gender from my name, which may well have served to get me called in for more job interviews than I otherwise would have been.

I'm sorry to hear that MrSandDune has Covid and join everybody else in hoping it's a mild case and that he gets over it quickly. AND that you keep coming up negative, too.

>66 SandDune: >67 PawsforThought: The other multiple/class names in my generation were Debbie and Sherry. Donald and Mark seem to have been popular for boys.

>67 PawsforThought: With Maria and Anna taken and a class size of 24 I'm pretty sure there's one high frequency name that pops into my forebrain.

>65 SandDune: In this week's French homework (which consisted in sorting out the right word order for sentences which contained zillions of pronouns) I got 2/10.I did it again and still got 2/10. Sigh!

10. Snap Belinda Bauer ***1/2



On a hot summer day in 1998 Eileen Bright leaves her three children in her broken-down car on the hard shoulder of the M5 while she goes to phone for break-down assistance, 11 year old Jack nominally in charge. Two years after that their father went out to get milk and never returned, unable to cope with the death of his wife, and so Jack, now 14, is still in charge.

Heavily pregnant Catherine While is alone in bed when she hears a noise downstairs. Investigating, she reassures herself that any burglar must have fled, but returns to bed to find a note pinned to her bedside table by a large knife: 'I could have killed you' it says.

Meanwhile D.C.I. John Marvel is on his first day in the Somerset Police Force, after a forced transfer from the Met, and is disgusted to find that the most interesting crimes that the locality has to offer ate the so-called 'Goldilocks' burglaries, a string of unsolved crimes distinguished by the burglar sleeping in the beds and eating the (healthy) food of the absent householders.

These three strands weave together to form a page-turning crime novel that is a little different from the norm and which was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2018.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this novel. It's a real page-turner, and the impact that the mother's murder and the father's abandonment of them has on the Bright children is very well done. Jack is a great character and there are some great minor ones too, such as Smooth Louis Bridge, one-time burglar turned full-time fence:

A few minutes after they hadn't answered the door, the little window over their heads had rattled and scraped and then somehow opened - and to their utter astonishment - a young man with no eyebrows had slithered through the crack. He'd stopped when he'd found himself face to face with the three frightened children looking up at him, and hung there, folded in the middle and with his legs still outside the house.
'Ahoy there' he'd saluted and they'd all giggled.
Within minutes of dropping hands-first into the front room Louis Bridge had bypassed the meter and got the lights back on. Then he'd left and come back with cheeseburgers.
While they had filled their bellies to drum skins, Smooth Louis had searched the house with a burgler's eye and found an envelope with three hundred pounds in it in the toe of a tennis shoe in their father's wardrobe, and a folder containing household bills and bank statements. He'd spent an hour running through what needed to be paid every month, and made a list for Jack.
'We've taken care of the electric,' he'd said, as if Jack had somehow been involved in that cleverness. 'You think you can handle the rest?'

But it's a complete mystery to me why this should have been long-listed for the Booker. I've no objection to crime novels being listed for the Booker in principle, just mystified why this one should be. It's an enjoyable page turner with a plot that doesn't stand up to too much scrutiny and which maybe has a rather less formulaic approach than many. But it's not Booker prize material.

>70 Caroline_McElwee: >71 ArlieS: >73 quondame: I had a few more unusual names amongst my cousins: there was an Eifion and an Eirwen. And my mother's middle name is Alvina, which my grandmother apparently found in a book she'd read, but my mother never knew which one.

>71 ArlieS: no one can guess my gender from my name i have had that as well. I've been to several conferences where my name badge said Mr .... and had to be changed.

>72 karenmarie: Mr SandDune seems to be on the mend. He's been doing lots of marking and getting bored, so he can't feel too ill. He was much worse when he had flu a couple of years ago.

>75 SandDune: Your latest is still streets better than my latest. Good gravy.

>75 SandDune: My local library supposedly has that one except that it has been overdue since last September. I want to read it since it is on the Booker long list, but I am not working up that great of an excitement about it given your comments.

Have a wonderful weekend!

>77 richardderus: It was a decent read, if you didn’t think too hard about the plot. But then again, I think you could say that about a lot of crime books. It just wasn’t anything special.

>78 alcottacre: I’d probably quite happily read something else by Belinda Bauer again. I read her Exit last year and enjoyed that as well. It just doesn’t seem prize-winning material to me.

Well, Mr SandDune is (still) testing positive for COVID, although the lines are getting fainter and fainter. And I am still testing negative. He’s feeling fine now apart from a bit of a residual cough and some tiredness.

We’ve divided up the house which means of course that I’m doing all the cooking as he is banned from the kitchen. I think it’s safe to say that I’m getting tired of it. I made tavas for our evening meal (beef with potatoes, onion and tomatoes). It’s about the easiest thing I know but one and a half hours into its cooking time it suddenly occurred to me that it was supposed to have some water in it. The meal was surprisingly edible, but I have a very burnt casserole dish!

>80 SandDune: Heh. Oops.

Thank goodness for the healing powers of The Universal Solvent™ plus Time.

Glad Mr Sand dune is feeling on the road to recovery.

I loved One Night Markovich - but I remember very little about it, and I certainly wouldn't disagree that the quote you provided is odd. It would be a dull world if we all liked the same books, right?

>43 SandDune: I've added this one to the wishlist. I wondered if you'd read The Yiddish Policemen's Union which takes a similar idea (but set in Alaska).

>80 SandDune: Is this the first I've heard of tavas or did I ask about them before? Some Cypriot food related memories are stirring among the tattered remnants of my past LT recollections.

>63 SandDune: According to my cookery book it is Cypriot. You take 1kg cubed beef, 1kg potatoes, 500g sliced onions, 1 tin tomatoes, 1 tbsp oregano, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and mix it all together in a casserole dish with a large glug of oil. And then you cook it with a lid on for 2hrs at 200°C without stirring. And of course there should be 300ml water as well. It all tends to fall apart but it tastes nice.

>84 SandDune: Thanks!

>85 quondame: Should have said that you slice the potatoes thickly too! But it is really very easy. Hence my annoyance at not reading the recipe properly.

I'm getting seriously fed-up with all this Covid business. Mr SandDune is still testing positive so hasn't been able to come out of quarantine. So we have divided the house up between us and both wear masks if we have to go through a disputed area. And being as the kitchen is my domain (well it has to be really) it means that I have to do all the cooking, all the making tea and coffee and providing of snacks, all the unloading and loading of dishwashers, all the feeding of Daisy, all the washing etc, etc, etc. And I have to do all Daisy's walks. I mean I usually do most of it as I am retired and he is not, but I never do all of it and I'd quite like it to stop!

You might be able to tell from this moan that MrSandDune is actually feeling pretty fine now, so I am not worried about him any more! He says he'd be quite happy to go to work, if he wasn't quarantining and if he had school this week, which he hasn't!

>87 SandDune: It is such a massive load of no-fun to be the healthy one, isn't it. And at the same time, what a relief to be the healthy one, not infected with this crummy virus.

Adulthood...the time without clarity.

>87 SandDune: - That is very frustrating, Rhian. I was a bit relieved that Wayne tested positive (bad wife!) when I did so we didn't have to negotiate separate areas and all that. Is there a limit to how long he has to quarantine even with positive tests? Here, it is 10 days. Wayne got a negative test so was clear before me. On day 8 I was still positive, but allowed out on day 11 regardless of a test result.

>88 richardderus: Yes exactly.

>89 katiekrug: It’s 10 days which means he will be allowed out at the end of tomorrow. But we were supposed to have gone to see Jacob this weekend, and as I have read that about 13% of people continue to be infectious after 10 day I’m not sure that spending 5 hours together in a small metal box is really what I want to do!

>90 SandDune: It’s been a bit of a frustrating day today. One week ago I put in a repeat prescription request for my steroid inhaler. It’s done online and sent automatically to the pharmacy who then text me when it’s ready. For repeat prescriptions you’re supposed to allow 48 hours but it’s usually much quicker. Well no text had come through so yesterday I phoned up Tesco Pharmacy to see if they had the prescription. Oh yes they said, it’s all ready, so this afternoon I popped to the supermarket to collect it. Oh no they said then, we’ve never heard of that prescription. So I phoned up the surgery and apparently it was a problem at their end. So why did Tesco say the prescription was ready if they’ve never had it? It can’t be someone else with the same name - I don’t believe there is anyone with the same name, at least if you Google my name you only get me! So the surgery (which is on the other side of town) said for me to go there and they would get a paper prescription signed immediately and I could collect it. Any journey to the other side of town is time consuming at the moment because of roadworks but anyway I collected it and took it to the pharmacy next to the surgery, who were out of stock of the medication. So then I had to take my prescription into the town centre to Boots to get it filled there, and of course they couldn’t do it straight away so I had to hang around … So what I had planned to take about 20 minutes ended up taking about 2 two and a half hours.

The reason I was so keen to get my prescription today rather than just wait for tomorrow is that we are battening down the hatches for Storm Eunice. Winds of up to 70 mph are forecast which is almost unheard of where we live. It’s forecast to be even worse where my Mum lives, with a storm surge up the Bristol Channel, but although she lives very close to the sea she should be just a little bit too high up to be affected.

>91 SandDune: gazooks! I hope no one has any storm-caused issues, Rhian.

>91 SandDune: It's good at least that people are well notified and there is general preparation for Eunice. I saw that johnsimpson was getting ready as well.

Sorry about the medical woes, Rhian, but a bit more concerned about the storm. I hope you, your family, and your mum all manage okay through it all.

>92 richardderus: >93 quondame: >94 lauralkeet: It's all supposed to kick off about 6am tomorrow morning with the highest winds just before lunch. We're not really used to it being very windy where we live.

Stay safe, Rhian. Hani said that the winds in the North with the earlier storm were something to behold. The one coming your way will get far more coverage of course since it will impact the South and Johnson's discredited administration thinks the country ends somewhere in the Home Counties.

>96 PaulCranswick: Yes, we had the storm on Thursday as well which was about 41mph. So unusually stormy for here, but I don’t remember anything much worse than that where we live now. So expected 72mph is something! To be fair, its not the Home Counties that are expected to be hit worst, but north Devon & Cornwall & South Wales. And they are worried about flooding along the Bristol Channel & the Severn if there is a storm surge

>97 SandDune: Yikes isn't that striking close to your mum? Is there anybody close to her can make sure she is ok?

I couldn't resist a dig at the hateful Mr. Johnson, but in all seriousness I hope everyone stays safe.

>98 PaulCranswick: There is a warden at her complex so there is someone. Although she is very near the sea it’s not an area that is prone to flooding. And there are no nearby large trees to fall on anything. (Actually there are very few trees at all in my home town, didn’t realise how few until I left.) I suppose the biggest problem would be a power cut. But it is an area that does get very windy (hence the lack of trees) so she didn’t sound too bothered when I spoke to her today!

And now they’ve just issue a red warning for us as well between 10am and 3pm. Wonderful!

ETA They’re just reported on the radio from the town where my Mum lives. It sounds very windy and the waves are crashing onto the road, which doesn’t often happen these days.

Yes, red warning in London now too Rhian. Went to the gate a bit ago, blowy, but I've known worse, though at the minute it sounds like it has got up a bit.

>99 SandDune:, >100 SandDune: & >101 Caroline_McElwee:

Stay safe my friends. Hani wants to drive down to Kyran in London and I have tried to persuade her to stay where she is.

>103 SandDune: The scene a couple of minutes walk from where my Mum lives - I got this from the BBC website. Apparently the highest wind speed there so far this morning has been 87mph

>103 SandDune: Wow, that is some photo!

>103 SandDune: Looks spectaculair.
I just saw that at the Isle of Wright the record of 1987 was broken: 122 mph (196 km/u).
The storm will come our way too.

Stay safe!

Photos of Porthcawl are all over the US news this morning as well, Rhian. Thinking of you and yours.

>103 SandDune: Wow!
Hope you and the family are OK. We have dug out the candles and matches 'just in case'.

Hope you survive unscathed, Rhian!

I did enjoy some of Big Jet TV on YouTube this morning - a guy in a field by Heathrow, commenting on the planes attempting to land...

>101 Caroline_McElwee: At the moment I would say that it's as windy as I can remember it being here, if not more so. I can't compare it to the Great Storm of 1987 as I slept through that (or at least I woke up, though 'it sounds a bit windy out there' and went back to sleep.

>102 PaulCranswick: Hani wants to drive down to Kyran in London I hope you managed to persuade her against that Paul?

>104 PaulCranswick: >105 FAMeulstee: >106 lauralkeet: Wow! We're famous worldwide! The waves breaking over Porthcawl pier seems to be the BBC's go-to shot to illustrate stormy weather. Actually, photographers love it as it's a fairly predictable shot to get. If it's stormy and the wind is blowing from the south-west (which it usually does) and there's a high tide (which obviously happens twice a day) then the waves will break over the pier. The pier protrudes quite a bit beyond the natural coastline into deepish water (when the tide's in that is), and when the waves roll up the Bristol Channel straight from the Atlantic and hit the solid wall of the pier the only way they can go is up.

At the moment they are repairing the pier. It had its scaffolding ripped off once in a storm a couple of month's ago. I wonder if it's going to survive today?

>107 charl08: We have dug out the candles and matches I didn't think of that. Last time we tried to use our matches they were a bit damp as they'd been in the garage...

>108 katiekrug: As a nervous flyer I think Big Jet TV is the last thing I'll be watching!

>109 SandDune: I was living in an attic at the top of a hill in '87, my chimney pot was blown out of the chimney and bounced for half an hour from one side of the roof to the other, before crashing to the ground. My landlord's 200 year old tree was pulled up and lay the length of the garden.

>110 Caroline_McElwee: We had two trees outside our house uprooted. And travel the next day was absolute chaos I remember.

>110 Caroline_McElwee: & >111 SandDune: I have memories of that one too of struggling back home on the train and almost being unable to stand on the short walk from train to waiting car.

My lunatic wife is safely in London I just heard. I can go to sleep now without too much need to worry.

>103 SandDune: Wow, that's dramatic.

>112 PaulCranswick: I'm glad Hani's safely harbored.

>91 SandDune: I'm glad you got the prescription eventually, and (from what I gather from later posts) the storm didn't do anything too bad to you or your mum.

>103 SandDune: Wow! What power!

Have a safe weekend.

Well, we are all fine after the big storm. Nothing damaged around our house, although Caroline's house had its fence blown down. There are a few trees down around the town and a tree fell on the electrical cables for the railway and brought them down and caused a fire in the process, so the trains still aren't running. And the picture I posted up above made the front page of The Guardian, so my home town is famous!

Mr SandDune has now had two negative tests in a row so is well and truly clear of the COVID, so we went out to celebrate. We just had a potter about Maldon, which is (almost) on the coast.



I should have taken my binoculars and bird book as there were lots of birds poking about on the mudflats as the tide was out.

It has one of those bookshops that are tiny but have lots of books that you want to read, so I did some shopping:

The Man who Saw Everything Deborah Levy
Wivenhoe Samuel Fisher
The Goshawk T.H. White

In other booky news, I just bought tickets to see Abdulrazak Gurnah and Rose Tremain at the Cambridge Literary Festival in April.

>116 SandDune: Escape... glad to hear Mr SD clear of Covid Rhian. Looks like a nice day out, and good haul.

More winds predicted here any time, but more in the 50s than 70+. Not going out all the same.

those photos are amazing.

Glad to hear Mr. SD is out and around again.

>116 SandDune: Covid freedom news delights transAtlantically...a day out is a delicious thing...I've never heard of Wivenhoe and now must know all...I think that's all for today, hoping you're able to relax and enjoy freely the delights of this approaching week.

>117 Caroline_McElwee: >118 magicians_nephew: Well we have winds again now but not so strong as Friday. But I have just seen on Facebook that a large tree has been brought down on a main road into town, so strong enough.

>119 richardderus: I'd never heard of Wivenhoe before either. The blurb says 'Wivenhoe is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.' Sounds just my cup of tea! And it had a very nice cover.

>120 SandDune: I ordered a tree-book of it so I could look at it.

Not trying to catch up, Rhian, but I did want to thank you for your recommendation of None So Blind by Alis Hawkins. I finished it today and thoroughly enjoyed it.

>103 SandDune: That's an impressive shot, Rhian. I can see why it made the papers.

Nice to see that you and Mr SandDune were out and about celebrating Covid freedom.

>121 richardderus: Hope it’s good Richard. Wivenhoe is a town on the coast just over an hour away but I’ve never actually been there.

>122 alcottacre: Glad you enjoyed it. I thought the second book In Two Minds was equally good.

>123 Familyhistorian: It had been so boring during Mr SandDune’s isolation, it was really nice to get out and about.

Not a great start to the morning this morning. While I was in the shower the smoke alarm started giving off its ‘battery needs changing’ beep. Ten seconds after hearing that I heard crashing noises from downstairs as Daisy attempted to propel herself through the cat flap. (I know we don’t have a cat any more but we still have the cat flap). Of course, she doesn’t fit, but I think she has vague memories of puppyhood when she would fit through, and clearly thought it was worth a try to escape the coming apocalypse of high pitched beeps, which is what Daisy fears most in all the world. When I let her out she went to hide under a bush in the garden, and wouldn’t come in for some time even after our next door neighbour had sorted it (I can’t reach). I couldn’t even tempt her with biscuits, despite her being one of the greediest dogs ever. Now after two hours she has only just about settled down!

I think a target for my reading in March will be Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia’s remaking of the West by Luke Harding. He is a journalist who writes for the Guardian and who has written several books about Russia. He was expelled from Russia in 2011 and is in Kiev at the moment. I have felt for some time that I really ought to read one of his books - our sons were friends at school (and are still friends) and Mr SandDune taught both his children -but I have never got around to it. I know him well enough to say hello to and exchange pleasantries in the supermarket, no more, but he’s someone we know ‘about’ via Jacob. Given the situation in Ukraine it seems very timely.

Oh, poor Daisy!

Shadow State sounds interesting. I'll have to see if it's available here. I found The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen a fascinating - and chilling - book.

Wordle 252 2/6
🟩🟩🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Very, very, lucky first word!

That's impressive!!

Poor Daisy. I assume she's okay by now. It's so difficult to deal with a dog's fears. They don't respond to the same sort of assurances as humans do.

>127 katiekrug: I should think it would be.

>129 lauralkeet: It’s very unusual - more normally I get it in 4 or 5 tries But I do consistently get the answer even if I’m not that quick.

>128 SandDune: That is a terrific day-straightener-outer, Rhian. Pity that poor Daisy cant have one of those.

Enjoy the Harding book. It is a very, very timely topic.

We had a pleasant day today. Our local paper has just started a series of articles suggesting days out without a car from our home town and the first suggestion was to take the train to Cambridge North and walk from there to Cambridge station, following the River Cam initially and then going through the historic centre, a distance of about five and a half miles in total. We go to Cambridge quite frequently (it’s where we do our bigger items of shopping) but we’d never walked along that part of the river, so thought we’d try it. Daisy was unimpressed by the train (too much beeping when the doors opened and too much noise generally) but she got over that as soon as we got out and so we had a lovely walk into the centre of Cambridge with some open spaces for her to run around in.

We had lunch in The Eagle pub: that’s where Watson & Crick announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. We were struggling to find somewhere to eat inside with Daisy, and were just heading to the market to get a snack to eat outside when we walked past the pub. Aha, we thought, they’ll probably let her in there, and they did, so we were able to have a proper meal (which was what we really wanted) and Daisy had some of my sausages as a treat. It was very nice to just nosey about Cambridge in a relaxing way without being weighed down with bags of shopping. Heffers (which is one of the two big Cambridge bookshops) also lets dogs in, so we were able to have a wander about there as well. I bought The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani and The Worm Forgives the Plough by John Stewart Collis

Incidentally, the article was written by the wife of the aforementioned Luke Harding, Phoebe Taplin. When Jacob was a teenager we seemed to be forever giving him and their son lifts to parties, and I had got to the stage where I was starting to think surely it was their turn now to give their son and Jacob a lift. But then I realised that they didn’t actually have a car, so they couldn’t, hence the emphasis now on ‘car-free’ days out.

Sounds like a lovely outing, Rhian.

>131 richardderus: It is a very, very timely topic. Exactly - that’s what made me think about it.

>133 MickyFine: We had a very nice day. And it wasn’t muddy! We live in a very muddy part of the world (clay soil) and walks in the countryside have just been so muddy all winter.

>132 SandDune: Sounds lovely Rhian. Yup, I'm with Daisy, train travel can be pretty noisy. And a small book haul at the end.

>135 Caroline_McElwee: She’s been on a train a few times before, but not for so long and not for a couple of years. And we usually get out at the first stop. But she was better coming back - probably tired.

12. Letters From America Rupert Brooke *1/2



In 1913 Rupert Brooke, the famous poet of the First World War, undertook a year long journey around the U.S.A. and Canada. These letters, which he wrote for publication in the Westminster Gazette, form a record of his trip. In them he describes the scenes which he encounters as well the people he meets. And for a twenty-first century reader it is the latter that is the problem, for Brooke can't describe anyone without falling back on hackneyed stereotypes, whether of nationality, class or race. I'm a great believer that you should read books in the context of the times in which they are read, but once you have taken the stereotypes away from this book there really isn't much left.

An example:

Both on this trip, and between Quebec and Montreal, we touched at many little French villages, by day and by night. Their habitants, the French-Canadian peasants, are a jolly sight. They are like children in their noisy content. They are poor and happy, Roman Catholics; they laugh a great deal; and they continually sing. They do not progress at all. As a counter to these admirable people we had on our boat a great many priests. They diffused an atmosphere of black, of unpleasant melancholy. Their faces had that curiously unwashed look, and were for the most part of a mean and very untrustworthy expression. Their eyes were small, shifty, and cruel, and would not meet the gaze…. The choice between our own age and mediaeval times is a very hard one.

This was chosen for my next RL book group meeting - I am somewhat mystified as to why. I am also somewhat mystified why anyone decided to republish these letters. I can't imagine them being of interest to anyone other than a Rupert Brooke completist. As for me, the book has greatly reduced my opinion of Rupert Brooke.

11. The Doctor Will See You Now: The Highs and Lows of Life as an NHS GP Amir Khan ***



Dr Amir Khan is a G.P. in a poor area of Bradford, West Yorkshire as well as being a regular on Breakfast TV. To be honest, I've never seen him on the television (not a Breakfast TV watcher) but I follow him on Twitter (although that's as much for his comments about feeding birds and animal welfare as anything medical). This book very much does what the title suggests - a series of anecdotes (some humorous , some sad) about his life as a GP, up to and including the impact of the pandemic. It didn't really tell me very much that I didn't know already, although it did remind me to be more appreciative of my own G.P.

A pleasant enough book, but nothing to get too excited about.

>137 SandDune: Ew.

>132 SandDune: A lovely outing! I can't wrap my colonial brain around places accepting pets. A few bookstores here have cats, but none I'm aware of would accept dogs inside. And there's no chance a food-serving place would be allowed by law to accept any animal! (Apart from a dead one on a plate.)

>139 richardderus: I can't wrap my colonial brain around places accepting pets. It’s very common here for bookshops to let dogs in. Waterstones (which is by far the largest chain) do so consistently, and most independent bookshops do as well. And a lot of pubs let dogs in as well, and it’s not unknown to find cafés that are dog-friendly too. For places that we go regularly I usually have a list in my head of where will and where won’t accept Daisy, but of course we don’t usually take her to Cambridge.

In Italy, you couldn't take your dog into (most) grocery stores. Otherwise they were welcome wherever you were shopping or eating.

And of course here, you'll find cats everywhere - stores of all descriptions including grocery stores, restaurants and cafes, government offices, hospitals ...

You can take your dog into restaurants, and probably most stores? I don't really know. But there are sometimes street dogs in stores and restaurants too.

What a lovely day out. It sounds perfect. And hooray for pet-friendly establishments. That's far too rare here, usually the best you can do is sit outside at a sidewalk cafe.

Here's Daisy being a very good girl in Heffers:



On this part of the river there are loads of canal boats and college boat houses on the other side of the river:



Coming in to the older part of Cambridge:



Looking back along the river to one of the punting stations:

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!



(Or in English Happy Saint David's Day)

>143 SandDune: Sigh. Such a pretty part of Cambridge.

>143 SandDune: Oh, it's Oxford I associate with colleges and punting and Cambridge with colleges and horse racing. Just the influence of Sayers and Dick, but I don't recall canals as part of Cambridge or punting on rivers or canals. There's always more to learn!

Um...so yeah, happy whozits day.

>143 SandDune: Pretty! Oh, the river's nice too, of course.

>145 lauralkeet: I suppose the river is prettiest around the Backs (where you can see the backs of the colleges) but we didn’t go that way.

>146 quondame: It’s actually the river Cam rather than a canal, and there is a lot of punting on it, just not so much on that part. Most punting is around the Backs or upstream to Grantchester (which is where we usually go). On a nice summer’s day the place is packed with punts. Oxford has more smaller tributaries that can be punted on, whereas Cambridge just has the river Cam, but I think it is actually more popular at Cambridge as you can go through the historic centre.

>146 quondame: I don’t know about Cambridge being associated with horse racing. I have to say that the thought has never occurred to me - in all the numerous times I have been to Cambridge I have never seen any references to racing whatsoever. I suppose Newmarket isn’t too far away but I’d never associated the two towns in my mind at all. They seem to have completely different foci.

>147 richardderus: St David’s Day is a very important Welsh cultural event (glares hard at Richard)!

I hope you celebrated Saint David's day properly. Incidentally are there any particular ways to celebrate other than waving leeks and daffodils?!

>148 SandDune: Is it! Goodness me. Leeks feature heavily in the proceedings? I know nothing about the topic, clearly. There's a cathedral in his honor in South Wales, right?

>148 SandDune: >149 PaulCranswick: It’s a big day for cultural activities. When I was at school all the girls dressed up in their Welsh costumes (there isn’t really a Welsh costume for boys - sorry) and there were concerts and similar activities in the morning, and then we all got the afternoon off. The only leek eating that tended to happen was that in primary school boys tended to dare each other to eat their leeks raw (if they had one). Girls tended to wear daffodils (although no hard and fast rule) as they are prettier and less smelly (daffodils, that is)!

At the moment there is a push to make St David’s Day a proper bank holiday, but it has been consistently blocked by the government in Westminster.

>150 richardderus: There is a cathedral - in the tiny city of St David’s. We’ve been there twice in the last few years. Here it is (two pictures on different days obviously):





It was originally built down in a hollow so it couldn’t be seen from the sea by marauding Vikings, as it’s been a holy site for a very long time!

>151 SandDune: I'm totally astounded that the Vikings had such a down on poor ol' Wales? What did y'all say to them?

I haven't been to Cambridge in donkeys years as they used to say so it was lovely to see your photos - brought back many happy memories

Loving the photos of your outings!

Glad you made it through the quarantining.

Lovely photos.

>152 richardderus: I think we ran away most of the time! But there are lots of place names around the coast of Wales that could have been plucked straight from Sweden (Skokholm, Skomer, Sker, Tusker) and many of the so-called English versions of Welsh coastal towns actually derive from Old Norse.

>153 magicians_nephew: >154 sibylline: >155 avatiakh: Glad everyone enjoyed the photos!

I had to take Daisy to the vets today, to get her 6 monthly check-up which she needs with the combination of medicines she is on. The vets have just started allowing owners back in the practice, but they currently meet people in their car park when they are ready to see them, to prevent the waiting room becoming crowded. Daisy hates the vets, and she didn’t like the look of it when we drew up, but she clearly didn’t associate the same issues with the car park (we usually park on the road). So when a nice lady came out to see her, Daisy was very happy to make friends as she obviously did not understand that this was the vet. She didn’t really cotton on until we were in the actual surgery that we had sneaked her in without her realising.

>157 SandDune: Clever. Since many dogs like meeting new people perhaps encountering in parking lots and getting into the office is best done in that order. Of course after the first visit our dogs have always assumed a car ride leads to a vet visit. Except for Gertie when I put on my SCA garb. Then she knew that walks and food foraging was expected.

>158 quondame: Daisy goes in the car quite a lot, and it's usually somewhere nice so she's happy to do so, but she recognises the outside of the vets!

>157 SandDune: Heh...poor Daisy.

>156 SandDune: I guess it was all that Welsh gold, huh?

Wishing you a lovely weekend, Rhian.

Hi Rhian!

I'm glad you've got past MrSandDune's Covid and all the storms. Lovely photos of your outings, too.

>160 richardderus: >161 PaulCranswick: >162 karenmarie: We've been away for last couple of days, so I've been a little slow replying. Please follow me over to my new thread for more nice photos.