Hand on the rhythm, feel the rhythm of the rhyme; Hand on your life, feel the rhythm of time

What's with all the posts in February?  Am I living a permanent state of sofa sloth hangover, or am I just forcing myself to write, even when I'd really much rather just sit and collapse? Bit from column A, bit from column B.

It's been an absolutely brilliant day today.  We had our opening ceremony at school, which meant that the absolutely wonderful Michael Rosen came to visit us, to run some workshops/performance poetry and to open the school and to autograph a billion books, including one for the children, and of course I got a picture.

 

 

I love him a bit.  Well, a lot actually.  He made a great point about Local Authorities being allowed to open schools themselves, rather than having sodding free schools popping up all over the place, and I was tempted to start applauding; I probably should have done, at least one other person would have joined in.  Our local MP was there, she planted a tree in the middle of the playground (nice of her) and we all got absolutely soaked and freezing.  Fortunately, this was just at the end of the day, so we ran the children round to the classroom and sent them home.

 

I haven't been through my pictures yet, but I will do a big collage of the best 9 or so, and pop them up at some point.  You can see in the picture above the Butterfly dress in the wild, it was very much admired, as was my hair by one of my fellow school governors, which made me blush - I don't do compliments very well - and caused a little Year One brat to ask if he was my new boyfriend.  Er.  NO.

 

Some other pictures of the dress.

 

Hello Banned Butterfly cardigan, you really fit well where you touch, and touch wherever you fit.

I really like this picture.  My husband is getting better at photographs, and it helps that I got him to stand on the sofa and photograph me from above rather than below, where all the chins can be seen.

 

I are serious SENCo teacher in my butterfly dress.  I are not 7.

I think it turned out rather well.  I'm going to make at least two more - one with the flamingo border print fabric, one with the amazing floral fabric of joy.  I'm going to have to wait until the kitchen is done so I can cut out without lying on the floor.  I made a rather sexy and low-cut Coco with a BDSM zip up the back the other day, cutting it out on the carpet and not making the greatest job of it.  It is, however, really comfy to wear and looks great.  Photos soon.

 

Anyway. I've got the latest Agents of Shield episode to watch and a whole bunch of X-Files to fall asleep into my knitting in front of, so until next time.  Which might even be tomorrow.

 



 

Sewing as a force for good

I do love it when the things I like doing can be used for good things.  I've run races for Cancer Research and I was going to do the Royal Parks Half Marathon, but I'm not going to be able to do that this year - a combination of having hurt my back slightly and not being in the right frame of mind.  Who knew that disliking running would make it so much harder to keep going?

Back to the nice things.  Karen from Did You Make That? has set up a new fund-raising thing, called the Made Up Initiative where you give money to the National Literacy Trust via Just Giving, and then pledge to sew something by the 10th of September.  I'm not going to go on about how important reading is to me; I've been a keen reader since I was 5, I'm a primary school teacher and a SENCO, I've got two daughters who regularly fall asleep in their books and who have been members of the library since they were 3 weeks old, and I work hard to ensure that all the children I come into contact with have frequent access to high quality literature, so it's a cause close to my heart.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew though; I've pledge to make two Skater Dresses, one of each of the girls, and a Lady Skater Dress for me.  I've got to print out the grown up pattern, which might be a bit of a problem as our printer is a bit iffy at the best of times.  I'm sure it will all be fine, I've made three of the children's dresses before and they took about an afternoon, and I've got three mornings free next week while the girls are at tennis, so I'll keep you posted.  Bet you can't wait.

As far as the running goes, I'm going to restart the Couch to 5K programme in a few weeks, and start doing pilates again to strengthen my back and core muscles a bit.  I used to enjoy running, and I do quite like exercise, but I've really not been into into it since Easter, and I've been a very reluctant runner since then.  Hurting my ankle put me in a terrible frame of mind about it, and it's a real relief to have the pressure taken off by deciding not to do the Half.  Next year.
  

I have many leather bound books!

Yet another internet challenge, this time to do with reading.

Can you read that?  If not, and you're interested, and why wouldn't you be, go and have a look over here at the original list.  I'm using it as a prompt to read with a bit more focus, rather than just "this one is next".  At the moment, I'm mostly reading books by women - I say " mostly", it's the 15th of January for goodness sake and I've only read 3 books so far this year.  I don't think any of them come under any of the categories, not even "books I own, but have never read".  

There's absolutely nothing stopping me only reading women writers this year, except the strong desire to re-read the Mapp and Lucia books, and remind myself that they were far from a camp romp - let's do the thirties!  And overact our little socks off!  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

So far this year, I've (re)read Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym, Yes Please by Amy Poehler, A Fair Barbarian by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and I'm currently reading Every Eye by Isobel English.  They are all as different from each other as they can possibly be, and are confusing the algorithms on GoodReads no end.  I think I'll read either an Iris Murdoch next, or reread The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - it's been years since I read any Bronte novels, and I did love them dearly. 

I love making plans in January, then looking at them again in July and laughing at myself.

Teaching: the only profession where you steal from home to bring into work

I do like a bit of Ros Asquith in the morning.

The SENCO course started just before half term.  For those unfamiliar with the EDBIZ and its myriad of abbreviations and acronyms, a SENCO is a Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator, which is the person who is responsible for getting statements of needs (they're not called that any more, but everyone still calls them "statements"), which is the piece of paper stating that there will be funding to help children who need extra help; it's a fairly oblique process, and requires a lot of thought and writing and justifying where you're spending money, and seems to be allocated on a fairly arbitrary basis.  Anyway.

The course is good, and very interesting, but, as I found today, lacks the practical element.  When a child is running, screaming and crying wordlessly around the Nursery, what do you do?  There's no associated reference paper for that, and in the end, we just called Mum.  We'll muddle on through, as you always do in teaching.

I have to do a 4500 word project too on an aspect of SEN, where you can show how you have swooped in and saved the day.  I have something in mind, to do with fine motor skills and the lack thereof in Year One - as you can see, riveting stuff for the uninitiated.  I'm very upset that the course, which is run by the Institute of Education, is in smelly old Greenford, rather than lovely, lovely Bloomsbury, but I'm sure I'll get over it.  I'm going there on Friday for a 9 o'clock meeting; first time travelling in rush hour for years and years, and that will almost certainly make me grateful for the E1 that goes from outside my front door all the way to the Teachers' Centre.

I am sure you will all be fascinated by my progress.  If you're really lucky, I'll post a link to my essay, so you can have all the fun of academic research, and none of the bother of doing any.

An inspiration to us all

I am a Sewcialist, which means that I like to sew and tweet and blog about it.  I am also a Socialist, but that's another story.  This month, on the Sewcialist blog, we are thinking about people who inspire us to sew more, better, faster and using different fabrics.

So here are my inspirations. All photos are shamelessly TAKEN from their websites; bad writers borrow, good writers steal.

First up, Ysolda Teague.  I was a knitter before I sewed anything.  So my favourite designer is a knitwear designer, and so there.  My blog, my rules.  I've actually met her three times, twice at Loop in Islington, once with Lucy who pushed a lot of women out of the way because they were annoying her. Gosh, I love Loop.  I haven't been for ages, how depressing.  It's such a LONG way from Ealing though, and I'm so lazy.

Look.  Look at this beautiful shawl. So gorgeous.

This is on my list for this Year of Projects.  So gorgeous.  Look at the detail at the neckline.  

Ysolda has a whole heap of ebooks and real books for sale.  You can buy them on her website, and while they aren't for absolute beginners, they are perfectly knittable.  

Another knitter; Kate Davies.  Kate was an academic for years, but sadly suffered a very stupidly early stroke a few years back, and hasn't been able to work in the same way since.  Happily for her and us, she had a parallel career in knitwear design, and that is now what she does.  I've been reading her blog for years and years, and love her work dearly.  

Isn't this beautiful?  Kate's blog can be found here.

Roisin who blogs here is a maker and a doer, and a very creative one at that.  She loves a mad print, and has really inspired me to just go for it; I shamelessly, shamelessly copy her style where I can.  Shame I can't wear mad prints to work; the paint and the glue and the children mean I really don't want to ruin my precious handmades.  

Recent inspirations: 

See what I mean?  Such a creepily weird stalker.

Another designer - Tilly Walnes.  I missed the Great British Sewing Bee last year, what with going to Cape Town twice in a month, but I'm making up for lost time by stalking her shamelessly and making thousands and thousands of Coco tops.  I met her too, but was too shy/felt it would be too fangirl to take a photo, but she took one of me!  In my Coco!  SCREAM.  Anyway, you can find Tilly's blog here.  

Look how titchy she is; part of her skill is being able to make something that suits a teeny weeny little thing like her and a much more solid person like me.  

Finally.  She's not a sew-ist.  She's not a knitter.  She's a BAD COOK and a very funny lady indeed.  Esther Walker writes about her adventures in cooking here, and is always worth a read.  She inspires me to cook more, even if I don't.  She also inspires me to write about things in a hopefully amusing way.

So there you go.  Who inspires you?

The Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too

Books this year so far, reviewed.

A Fairly Honourable Defeat; Iris Murdoch - horrible, destructive people; brilliant writing

Tempting Fate; Jane Green - not great

The Goldfinch; Donna Tartt - really brilliant, if a bit flawed towards the end

Mrs Tim Flies Home; DE Stevenson - fun, a bit dated, quick to read

Sara Gay, Model Girl; Janey Scott - very dated, very fun, very bad

Various Pets Alive and Dead; Marina Lewycka - love, love, love her

The Prisoner of Heaven; Carlos Ruiz Zafón - really should go back and read the others now, and then this one again

The Bones under the Beach Hut; Simon Brett - another fun book

7 books in nearly 10 weeks.  If I want to get to 52 by the end of the year, I need to get a move on and read more very, very short books.  Quantity, not quality.

March Madness - 8/31

Something Something Tuesday

Lots happening here.  It's half term, so we've been swimming, to Kew Gardens, into central London, had haircuts, been to the library, and we're all exhausted.  Generally, the girls have been really great; even Hattie, who is being mostly quite challenging.  Running away in the Natural History Museum was a delightful moment; as was being told that actually what she liked best about today was playing at home with her toys.  Dinosaurs, apparently, are "YUK".  My angel, ladies and gentlemen.

We chose a huge selection of books at the library today.  Lucy chose Princess Poppy and the Fair Day Ball, Penny the Pony Fairy and Sky the Blue Fairy.  There are approximately 1 billion Rainbow Magic Fairy stories and THEY ARE ALL THE SAME.  Hattie chose a First Picture Book of Playground Games, which is an odd choice.  I have Bones under the Beach Hut, Happy Kids (a self help book), Instructions for a Heatwave; The Prisoner of Heaven and Various Pets Alive & Dead.  Three of these are 2 week loan books, which seems rash.

I'm attempting to read 52 books in 2014; so far I have managed 4 and a half.  Admittedly, one of these was The Goldfinch, which is seriously long and seriously dense, but it still doesn't seem that impressive.   The current book is the fabulously titled "Sara Gay - Model Girl", a book from the 60s about training as a model, and I love it.  It is silly, frothy and very much of its time; it feels like a very innocent book - a sort of Malory Towers for slightly older girls.  I'll have finished it tonight.

SPOILER: The Goldfinch was really very good indeed, even though the ending was confused; poor Theo seemed so out of it and disconnected from reality by then, no wonder it felt a bit of a blur.  I can only hope that he gets his life back on track - I know he's not real, but he's real to me, and after all we'd been through together, I only want the best for him.

A slightly longer review than I normally bother with; but no more incisive for it.

A picture from half term:

Kew Gardens, admiring the orchids.

Five things on a Tuesday

1. I have decided to take part in a "sew-along".  Which is apparently a real thing, who knew?  It is to make a peplum top, which is either going to look sensational or dreadful.  We will see.  Details can be seen here.  I will be using a stretchy knitted fabric, which I haven't used before and will need a different needle for sewing machine for; the whole thing is filling me with trepidation.

2. This morning was remarkably stress-free, considering that I was on my own, and had to get two girls to school and Nursery.  I managed to get home and it was only 10am, so I had a cup of tea and a biscuit to celebrate, and suddenly it was 11.  I don't know where the time went.

3. Lots of cooking from scratch this year so far.  We've had cottage pie from leftover New Year's Day beef, lasagna, chicken and mushroom pie, macaroni cheese; all sorts.  Rather too many white sauces though, so perhaps a bit of a diet for next week.  The macaroni cheese was for the girls - of course it was rejected by Hattie.

4. Hattie.  Hattie is so clingy at the moment.  She doesn't want to go to sleep, she wants to sit on my lap all the time, she wants me to cuddle her all the time, and she doesn't want me to leave her alone in her bed.  I refuse to go down the "sit with her until she falls asleep" road, mainly because she needs to learn to settle herself and go to sleep; but when she is sobbing because there is no one to look after her, I feel terribly guilty and like the worst sort of mother.  Of course, the little ratbag stops sobbing after approximately two minutes and then sings a "I not tired, I not going to sleep" song.

5. A new thing: re-reading Iris Murdoch.  I read a lot of Iris Murdoch as a twenty-something, and while I knew that they were/are excellent, a lot of the charm and wit passed me by; so now I'm re-reading them all as a proper adult with a family.  I've started with "A Fairly Honourable Defeat", and am going to work my way through them across the next couple of months.  AFHD has a character in that is eerily similar to Benedict Cumberpatch's Sherlock, so that's nice casting.  Highly recommended, if you like books about frighteningly horrible people. 

New Year's Resolutions

I don't think I made any New Year's resolutions last year, and I'm not entirely sure I want to this year either. January is such a delightful time to start something new - not drinking, running outside, exercise generally, eating less; even thought it's technically the beginning of the year, everyone knows that life begins in September with the new school year.

So I won't be making any resolutions per se, but will be applying this "philosophy" to myself.  For those who can't be bothered to follow links, basically, setting goals is unrealistic, and leads to heartache and pain.  Far rather work on the process that leads to the goal - so if you want to lose weight, you need to eat less and move more.  Your process then is to move more and to watch the calories, and the result will be that you will lose weight without trying.

Apparently.  I'm a bit skeptical, but as my mind is as open as the Nursery doors, I am prepared to give it a try.  So with that in mind, and with this in mind as well, this is roughly what I want to do this year.

1. Move - I run around all day, I am on my feet a lot, but it's not enough.  I have to do that Shred again, and I have to move enough to get out of breath every day.

2. Make - I know I do a lot of creative things.  I love it.  So why not do more of it?

3. Tidy - I've sorted out a lot of stuff recently, binned some, sent a lot to charity shops, but there's always more cluttering up our home and lives.

4. Groom - I have a lot of make-up, lots of nice clothes, some gorgeous shoes, some lovely jewellery. So no more slobbing around in the GirlGuiding hoodie.  Exceptions to the rule - when hungover.  Or tired.  Or in a mood.

5. Reflect - the children are growing up, and I don't want to miss this.  I want to allow more time without screens and things in the way, just to enjoy being around them.  Then, when they're in bed, write it all down, so I can look back at it later, and they can cringe over their super-embarrassing share-ent.

I don't believe in radical life changes; they don't work in the long-term, but this seems, well, do-able.  Let's see.

Read it 2013

It's unlikely that I'll read anything else this year. Maybe an Agatha Christie or two, or perhaps I'll start "The Goldfinch". Anyway, here is the list of all the books I've read this year, with illuminating short reviews.

The Wild Places, Robert MacFarlane – gorgeous in every way
Bones are Forever, Kathy Reichs - rubbish
Tea Classified, Jane Pettigrew & Bruce Richardson - not very well written and too long
Falling Angels, Tracey Chevalier - too long
The Cleaner of Chatres, Salley Vickers – a bit soppy
The Testament of Mary, Colm Toibin – thought-provoking
The Labours of Hercules, Agatha Christie – proper Christmas reading
Tigers in Red Weather, Lisa Klaussmann – not sure what it wants to be
Wildwood, Roger Deakin – devastating and illuminating
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeannette Winterson – devastating, poor woman
Where D'You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple – loses its way towards the end
Mountains of the Mind, Robert MacFarlane – gorgeous, I love him
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn – gripping, but not good
Sense and Sensibility, Joanna Trolloppe – bad in every way
The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry – very Irish
The Book of Summer, Emliya Hall – not very good
The Patchwork Marriage, Jane Green – predictable
Casting Off, Elizabeth Jane Howard – super
Confusion, Elizabeth Jane Howard – super
Marking Time, Elizabeth Jane Howard – super
The Bad Cook, Esther Walker – supper
Lifesaving for Beginners, Ciara Geraghty – poor
The Sorrows of an American, Siri Hustvedt – desperate
Sparkling Cyanide, Agatha Christie – strangely comforting
Frost at Morning, Richmal Crompton – can’t remember (damns with faint praise)
The Novel in the Viola, Natasha Solomons – poor
The Morville Hours, Katherine Swift – incredibly reassuring
No One Has Sex on a Tuesday, Tracy Bloom – how did this get published?The Light Years, Elizabeth Jane Howard – super (I love her)

The Private Patient, PD James – satisfyingly horrible
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, Dervla Murphy – brilliant
Starlight, Stella Gibbons – not as funny as CCF, but good
The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy – can’t believe I’ve not read it before

American Gods, Neil Gaiman – funny and horrible
The Newlyweds, Nell Freudenberger – good, but a bit depressing
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson – pretentious
Vacant Possession, Hilary Mantel – desolate
The Gardens of Good Hope, Marian Cran – very much of its time
Dodger, Terry Pratchett – easy to read and funny
Hedge Britannia, Hugh Barker – leafy
Ines of My Soul, Isabel Allende – conquistador-y
Middlemarch, George Eliot – well worth an occasional re-read
The Rose Labyrinth, Titania Hardie – very bad indeed
Otter Country, Miriam Darlington - glorious
Raising Girls, Steve Biddulph - disappointing
In One Person, John Irving – riveting
Dead Heading, Catherine Aird – funny and satisfyingly gory

48 books. Not bad at all.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

is the Ealing 135 Christmas Fair.  I think I am as prepared as I'll ever be.  I can't find my nice wooden pegs; so will have to improvise hanging tee-shirts from the clothes airer.

My new hair is a bit too straight - I like it, and shiny and new is better than bushy and scruffy, but it is too straight, and I can never be bothered to straighten it, so I suppose it is a temporary problem.

I finished The Testament of Mary last night; a disturbing read, with lots to think about.  I think I'll have to re-read it soon.  I recommend it to any one interested in Christianity, atheism, how to start a religion, religion generally, or who has a particular interest in reading about details of crucifixion.  I don't care what the Roman did for us; what they did to us and to each other was utterly barbaric.  Do look the book up, it is jolly good.  You can buy it from here or here (probably).  I recommend Bookseller Crow on the Hill, by the way.  Via the magic of the internet, I can buy from a lovely independent supplier.  Hurrah for the internet.

I've put a round up of all the photos of the baby gros here; it's on Facebook, I don't know if you need an account to see it or not.  What I need is a website.  New Year's Resolution #1.

Randomly on Thursday

Reading: The Testament of Mary by Colm Tobin.  It's very good.

Knitting: Not at all, just more and more sewing.  I'm going to make a cream snood-y type thing for the winter.

Watching: Ancient episodes of the Simpsons.  Nice, thoughtless rubbish.

Eating: Handfuls of Smarties as a reward for all the sewing.

Plotting: Things to do after Saturday, 1:30.  First on the list is to be a bit more interesting and to stop losing readers at such a horrible rate. 

Please come to the Fair!

OMG etc

Gosh.  This blog has had 7001 page views, and as I don't track my own page views, they are not all me pressing refresh like a demented chimpanzee.  How amazing.  I know that my deathless prose doesn't reach 7000 people, but I'm so glad that people are reading this; I know it's a bit dull, and a bit domestic, but I do try to make it fun.  I was actually discussing Writing for Pleasure with a colleague tonight, and this is what the blog is for, and why I do it, and I'm glad that my pleasure is read by other people.  So, thank you.

Harriet the conceptual artist put the ladybird magnets in the baking cupboard.  They were carefully placed and looked for all the world as if they had crawled in all by themselves.

In other news, I am heavily publicising Julia's Bespoke Babies, spamming all my friends on facebook, and joining a crafty mums site called "Crafty Bums", so I'm hoping to sell a few that way.  I've still got a lot of stock hanging around from the Ealing 135 Christmas Fair, and I've had a couple of commissions since then.

The bicycle was a commission, the shamrocks were for a friend's daughter's first birthday.

I've added a "What I am reading" bar to the blog, so now, as long as I keep on writing with monotonous regularity, I should have a record of the books I've read this year.  The one I'm reading at the moment, "Ines of my soul", by Isabel Allende, is alright.  Not bad, but a bit too apologist for the conquistadors for my taste, and very graphic in its descriptions of unpleasant tortures, burnings and other ways of dispatching other people.  It gets 3 severed heads out of 5.

A very Barbara Pym-ish weekend

Barbara Pym, for those who do not know, was one of the best writers of the previous century - a chronicler of small things; the vicarage tea party, the jumble sale, the gentlewoman's companion, village life, which is all lovely and feminine on the surface, but actually full of the loneliness of unrequited love and a deep ironic comedy.  Get me.

Anyway, this weekend we went to many, many local events - a child's 4th birthday (at the Wacky Warehouse, as far from BP as from the moon), a children's playday in Walpole Park and a Reskilling Day run by the local green nuts, the Ealing Transition people.  This was the high point of my day - I learned how to keep chickens and a pig.  Apparently, if you are a vicar and have a massive vicarage behind the church with a field for a garden, you can have a pig in suburban London.  The pig was nice and clean and very grunty, and Hattie was utterly entranced (moo! moo! oh oink! oink!, then later, mo' oink! mo' oink!).  I don't think that the ancestral home has space for either a pig or hens, but I can dream.

In the evening, to round off the whole suburban dream, I went to a recital at the church, featuring the undiscovered talents of members of the congregation.  Some talents should have remained undiscovered, but the majority were great, and of course, Maxine, Lucy's godmother, is a professional flautist and rose above all the others.  I did feel as though I should have been hand embroidering new orphreys on the chasubles instead of knitting a hat for myself and stuffing up the pattern because I had to keep stopping to clap.

I do recommend Barbara Pym though if you haven't read anything by her.

Sea Room

 dovegreyreader is a bad, bad lady.  She is currently reading a whole load of nature books, and makes them sound like the most wonderful things ever committed to print, and as I am the most easily influenced person in West Ealing, I have put most of them and more on my amazon wishlist.  The first one I bought was this, Adam Nicolson's Sea Room, about his love affair the islands he owns (!) in the Hebrides, near Lewis.

Part history, part biography, part geological survey, the book is amazing.  I finished it a few days ago, and I love it. I'm ashamed that I'd never heard of Adam Nicholson before, which considering that he is the grandson of Vita Sackville-West is a bit shocking.  His father was very rude about the D of E in a dispatch, and now I know more about him, his name is cropping up every where.

Such a wonderful book, and I look forward to reading some more of his things, and to having a bash at the rest of the books on the list.

Middlemarch and all that

I have shamelessly taken this picture from dovegreyreader's blog, as it perfectly illustrates the book I have been reading.  She is holding a "read along", reading Middlemarch in instalments, which meant that I romped through Miss Brooke at a speed of knots, and now have to wait until February to read Part Two. 

It's been interesting to re-read George Eliot.  Being a literary sort, I chose Science A-Levels, and had to self-teach myself critical reading.  In my wasted youth, I read all the CLASSICS (Middlemarch, Dickens, Trollope etc) and didn't particularly gain much from them, although many I enjoyed greatly and have gone on to re-read and re-read, especially Jane Austen and Trollope.  Middlemarch has not been one I've re-visited, and I can't really think why.  I watched the television adaptation relatively recently, with the lovely Rufus Sewell in his prime (he's gone to seed now, of course) and the utterly entrancing Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea Brooke.  Perhaps that's why? 

For whatever reason, Middlemarch is on my list.  I loved reading it as an adult.  A proper adult, I mean, with a job and a mortgage and two children and an account with John Lewis.  Miss Brooke is far more pious and difficult than I remember her being, Cecila is a sweetie, Sir James is very proper and manly, and Casaubon is made out of beige.  What a wonderful character he is.  A key to all mythologies, honestly.  And silly Dorothea for being taken in by him - I suppose he would seem like some form of hero to an eighteen year old longing to be taken seriously by someone and, feeling herself to be far cleverer than the people around her, longing to have someone to whom she could admire intellectually.  Unfortunately, she doesn't realise; the first rule of being cleverer than everyone else is to pretend not to be cleverer than everyone else. 

George Eliot's writing is needle sharp - it's as if she has specially sharpened her pen and is creating perfect little pen and ink drawings of her characters.  She is also funny - I don't remember laughing during the television adaptation, except at Mr Brooke, so it must be the strong author's voice, so disliked by Linda Grant.  I follow her on Twitter, I don't have a personal connection to her. 

The thing I love most about reading the book with a group, especially via dove grey reader, is that she is able to make connections to things I had vaguely noticed and mentally filed under interesting.  A S Byatt's writing about GE is the example I'm thinking about at the moment; here is a vast chunk I have copied and pasted.

'I taught it with a passion because it I perceived it was about the growth, use and inevitable failure and frustration of all human energy - a lesson one is not interested in at eleven, or eighteen, but at twenty-six with two small children, it seems crucial. George Eliot's people were appallingly ambitious and greedy - not always for political, or even exclusively sexual power...they were ambitious to use their minds to the full. to discover something, to live on a scale where their life felt valuable from moment to moment...'


I can't say anything more about it.  That's it really.

Book 7 - Ticky by Stella Gibbons

Book 7
Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden
Oh I loved this book! Stella Gibbons is delightfully funny and has such a light touch when she writes. It's not as good as Cold Comfort Farm, but has many of the same elements - a world within the world that has its own rules and traditions. It is a charming story about a regiment in Hyde Park that is run by a meglomaniac general and looked after by a tribe of servants who live near to the main camp. They have a Charter which gives them ownership of a Pleasure ground, and the General decides that he needs to expand his rifle range into this area. The servants are furious and decide to fight back. Ticky, the title character, is an officer in the regiment, and a friend to the servants, and he encourages the rebellion.

It's a very easy read again - most of the books I'm reading at the moment can be characterised by their simplicity - and a very quick one. I do love Stella Gibbons, and am looking forward to her books being reprinted later this year.

Book 6

Book 6
Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden
Another author who has fallen out of fashion, and again, I can see why. It's really quite sentimental stuff, a bit "Duty first Drusilla darling" po-face, but enjoyable enough in a "it's 4 in the morning, I need something that isn't too complicated" way.

The subject matter, a man who is in love in with his uncle's ex-wife, is very modern, and it's interesting - the woman sends her three children to live with their grandmother, and David lives there too, and is friends with the children as quasi contemporaries, not realising that if he marries their mother, he'll become their step-father. All fraught with passion and misunderstanding and sensitivity.

Book 5 - Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

Book 5
Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden
Another super fast read. I think it took me an evening to finish. It's the story of a girl who is marrying a man she doesn't really love because the man she does really love is, frankly, useless and doesn't tell her he loves her until too.late. Oh noes.

Nothing really happens during the entire novel, but it is beautifully writeen.

Book 4 - A Partisan's Daughter

Book 4
Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden
Another terrible photograph; what is it with me and photos? I think not using the itoy would be a start.

Anyway, this was another very fast read; not particularly enjoyable as it was difficult to sympathise with either of the characters, especially the man. It's the story of an unappreciated man who feels that his life is slipping away, who meets an Eastern European girl, who has left Tito's Yugoslavia. She tells him stories of her life and they fall in love. It has a sad ending, which is probably more realistic, although it is a shame, and you are never entirely sure whether she's been telling the truth.