Football!

In between other things Youngest’s room has been redecorated, refurnished and cleaned several times. She arrived home on Saturday in time for supper with Doctor Who. On Sunday we treated the man of the house to breakfast in bed, some bottles of posh beer and some boy’s DVDs. He then, of course, watched the football…

If you have missed Lynne Truss on the Today programme on Radio 4 you have missed a treat whether you care for the football or not. I’d give you a link to listen but they don’t seem to think anyone would wish to hear it again! However you can read her thoughts here.
In other news: the GCSEs are over and the planning of the prom ensemble begins in earnest.

Packing

This week we’ve been madly planning the church fete and panicking about the appalling weather forecast. By Thursday lunchtime it seemed obvious we must put up tents, if only so we could set up during the day: no good the sun coming out for the evening if we weren’t ready to go. The clouds looked billowy and grey periodically on Friday, but in fact I now have a ridiculous T-shirt tan that will take weeks of sunshine to loose. I’m not complaining you understand: the glorious weather brought out the village and its surrounds en masse and we had a great evening (well, I expect we did. I don’t know how much we made yet, was busy running my allotted stall and hoping the llama had turned up, but you know what I mean.) The llama was much admired ‘though I never met the kind owner with whom I now have an e-mail relationship. Must thank him! Packing up this morning everyone was congratulating one another on a great evening.



Also this morning I have packed Youngest off on her French Exchange. She suddenly got tearful and has been worriting. I suspect she isn’t sure she can keep up good or even merely tidy behaviour for a whole week. But I’m looking forward to hearing she’s having a lovely time and managed not to be sick on the journey. The photos are the two sides of a tea cosy which I have sent to the French mummy. (Her daughter bought her a teapot when she visited us.) I am very pleased with the ‘ensemble unique’ of it all!

A Good Read

Have just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: I couldn’t put it down. And yes, there was lots of revolting violence. 

I always have a book on the go. I love a well plotted thriller. I’ve read everything I could find by P .D. James and have to wait for her next. I’m now onto the other things Henning Mankell has written because I’ve read all the Kurt Wallanders. There was a time when I read everything by James Clavell, Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Alistair MacLean, Wilbur Smith, Len Deighton…. They’re not all strictly crime writers, more adventure storytellers, but they have their share of graphic description of appalling human behaviour.
What I’m getting at, perhaps too heavy handedly, is that crime fiction is full of nasty crime. The first in the Millennium Trilogy is brilliantly plotted, full of interesting characters and largely well translated (I had issues with some odd sentences that didn’t sound quite right).
I love a mystery to solve, but I prefer to read about them: I don’t want to see the bloodbaths and brutality. My imagination is sufficient illustration. So I haven’t watched Luther, or Waking the Dead, Trial and Retribution, Silent Witness and Wire in the Blood which have exercised other people so much, and I doubt I'll go to see the Dragon Tattoo film. It’s not that I’m not prepared to see any violence, or a horrific crime scene, but I like something with an engaging narrative, the possibility that I could solve the clues and that isn’t relentlessly grim. I watched early Waking and Witness episodes and found them unlikely frankly. And I loved Bond and Bourne at the cinema! They were exciting films, although in these more graphic days some of the scenes were very hard to look at – I’d have been behind the sofa at home.
Will need to find out what next is in store for Lisbeth Salander, ‘though I suspect it won’t be any less horrible.