In series

The blog tells me that I started re-reading Bryant and May in Full Dark House over breakfast on March 24th. I finished Wild Chamber for the second time on Thursday. I was then very frustrated that Hall of Mirrors, which I haven't yet read for the first time, hadn't arrived, and, indeed, still hasn't, so I've had to interrupt my Bryant and May-fest with some other reading.

Nonetheless, my re-run of fourteen novels and a collection of short stories kept me going for just about a month - so that's an average of two days per book, but skewed somewhat by the fact that I got through five whilst on my six day enforced Easter holiday. The rest of the time I was doing a full time job as well.

I enjoyed re-reading Bryant and May; they are occasionally funny, sometimes sad, and usually ingenious. The plots are occasionally a little outlandish for my tastes, but the characters carry them off. The earlier ones - as the author acknowledges - are more outlandish, and whilst even the later ones are never exactly - well, credible - there's no obvious cheating, just some rather tortuous plotting. It was much better reading them in order, I found, as they do on the whole get steadily better. The first one I ever read was The Victoria Vanishes*, which seemed a little too odd at the time, although all is explained in the end. If I'd started with Seventy-Seven Clocks I might never have picked up another one, which would have been a shame. Also, in reading them for the second time I was able to recognise more of the clues and hints that anchor apparently surreal events in some semblance of reality.

I'm a bit stumped now as to what set to re-read next. I was going to go for Stuart MacBride's Laz McRae series (rather gory on occasion, but also very funny) but they don't seem to come cheap on the second hand market. Others I might investigate are John Harvey's Resnick (I did once have a full set, but didn't keep it) or even Ian Rankin's Rebus, some of which I haven't read for years if not decades.

Further suggestions welcome - especially if they can be picked up cheaply.

*Yes, I know it's first on the shelf; that's because it's smaller than the others and fits in underneath the bracket. It's actually sixth in the series.

Hundred word story

The reason I got to thinking yesterday about things that make me cry, is that I was thinking about a story I wrote quite a few years ago now. It's probably very bad form to be moved to tears by your own fiction, but this did at the time.

It was an exercise I did as part of a creative writing class, in which we had to write a story in 100 words. My favourite fiction is sparse and pared down, so I loved this challenge. The starting point was the need for the rather clipped language, and the character grew out of that. I'd also not long moved to the north, and found that people really are friendlier ...

It doesn't even have a title - that would have used precious words - so here is my 100 word story:

Chatting to people on trains. More Jean’s thing. Knitting. Photos of grandchildren. She had the knack. Talked for both of us.

Woman opposite looks up from puzzle book. Smiles. Must be reasonably presentable. Managed to shave. Last clean shirt.

Scenery changing. Brick to stone. Strange.

Alison at Kings Cross. Sorry Dad. Would if could. Crouch End house tiny. Three kids. Better with Andrew. All that space. Meet new people. Lunch club. Gardening.

They took Poppy though. Silly little dog. Jean’s. But company. Andrew’s wife allergic.

Woman opposite opens handbag. Hands me tissue. There you go love. You’ll be all right.

Lilt and Bitrex

I write this with a glass of Abbeydale Voyager to hand. As my previous ventures into Abbeydale's canned range tasted of grapefruit, and mango, I eagerly sniffed this one on cracking the ring pull. A very familiar scent, clearly recognisable as ...  passionfruit. My goodness, I thought, the next one will be pineapple then.

Then I tasted it. And the taste was ... bitter. Just bitterness; no subtleties, no aromatics. This is a beer that has been carefully crafted from a rotating selection of hops lovingly gathered from around the world, and it tastes like it was knocked up in a chemistry lab, to act as a deterrent to beer drinking.

I like bitter flavours.

This is me drinking tonic water (somehow there was always plenty left over after my mother had put sufficient in her gin) with obvious relish. It was at that very bar (the Carrefour Hotel, St Peter Port, Guernsey) where I learnt how to drink out of a bottle. Possibly on that very occasion.

But there are bitter flavours, and there's bitterness.

What I thought was one of my best ever ripostes, when a colleague asked me 'What's the difference between real ale and craft beer?' and I replied 'About two pounds a pint', I now think might have been wrong.

I now favour the description by a minor character in one of the Bryant and May books (Wild Chamber, p. 212) of his craft beer as being 'like licking piss off a nettle'.

The trouble is, after the 24 cans I've got in the cellar I'll probably have developed a taste for it.

Things that make me cry

Not much makes me cry these days, but if you want to see me struggle to get to the end of  a sentence, ask me to explain the plot of Androcles and the Lion

or, on a less elevated plane, 'Two Little Boys', which is essentially the same story.

Various songs have moved me to tears on one occasion or another, but there is only one which is guaranteed to have me blubbing every time. And it's not a tale of thwarted love, or tragic death.

It's about a bloody pigeon.



It's about hope and faith, lost and restored.

I have versions by June Tabor, The Unthanks (with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band), and Lucy Ward. While Tabor's is the classic, and Ward is actually from Derby, and they're both raw, sparse, unaccompanied versions, I think I actually like the Unthanks' version the best - the brass band accompaniment really works to make it even more poignant.

Supporting local businesses

I've just had an email from CAMRA saying how important it is that I renew my membership, and for once I believe them. It's thirty five days since I was last in the pub. I'm not saying that's a record - it almost certainly isn't, even for me - but right now it feels like a long time. I hope my local survives this. In the meantime, I can't support the brewery that owns 'is closely associated with' it, because they only do cask (I hope they survive too).

I have however been supporting Abbeydale, who supply their wares in ever-so crafty 440 ml cans. Tonight I had Heathen, which tastes of mangoes.

Previously I've been alternating that with Reverie, which is cloudy and tastes of grapefruit.

I have just taken delivery of a consignment of Voyager, which I am hoping will taste of hops, but somehow I doubt it.

Once I've got through two dozen cans of that, I might give Kelham Island a try. Their beers are rather more to my taste, and come in proper bottles (though I can't say I care for the label redesign); their website, however, is being rather uncooperative.

Still, don't let it be said that I'm not doing my bit to support vital local businesses as best I can.

This gardener's world

I have never been so appreciative of my little garden. And I have never given it so much attention, or noticed it so much.

Here are some of the things it is doing for me this week:

The clematis that I bought as a couple of string-like stems in Tescos the year before last is going from strength to strength.

In the orchard, the Victoria plum has blossom on it, and the Cox's Orange Pippin is coming into leaf. They were two for £10 in Tescos and I'm so glad I carried them home along with the shopping and got them planted.

The amazing rosemary bush that came with the house is buzzing with bees.

For years I didn't know what this plant was called. We had a few clumps of it in the garden when I was a child, and I spent many years afterwards trying to describe it to people in the hope of finding out what it was and then getting some. As I now know, it's saxifrage. I bought two white ones and two red ones last year; one of each has thrived and grown, and the other (at the back) hasn't.

I have also just made a foray into online plant purchasing to buy some London Pride - what I now know to be another saxifrage - which is also a childhood favourite. I couldn't find any to buy locally last year so I'd have ended up going mail order anyway. That's going to make a rockery when it arrives.

Finally, this is essentially a massive pot of toadflax, which I have imported from Sussex. I love toadflax, with its tiny snapdragon flowers, and am hoping it will colonise my walls. What is also in this pot now are some wild sweet pea seeds, collected in Newhaven. If any of them take, they have small, very deep pink, flowers and are lovely. I've put some straight in here, chucked some in the flowerbeds, and nurtured some by soaking them and sowing them in pots.

The Dark Tower

I looked out of the window the other night and I could tell there was something wrong, but it took me a while to realise what it was.

The Arts Tower is never dark.

That's it in the middle; the tallest university building in England, and usually a shimmering pillar of light. Even what looks like a single light in the photo is actually a crane in front of it. (Incidentally, I can currently count nine construction cranes from my attic window. Who's going to stay in all those student flats now?)

Almost exactly two years ago, I took a much nicer photo of the Arts Tower, from Weston Park, with Western Bank Library in the foreground.

Plaguelist

As I've been doing to housework to random selections from my meagre CD collection, a playlist for 'the current situation' started forming in my mind. So far there are only three songs (I limited myself only to tracks I actually own) but in the spirit of the Herbies' musical quiz, I thought I'd throw it open to everyone. The only rule is that you have to actually own the record (tape or CD). That'll stop it getting so up to date that I don't recognise anything.

So, so far I have We'll Go No More A-Roving - I was listening to Leonard Cohen's version, but I'm pretty sure I also have it by the Pogues, and The Band's You Ain't Going Nowhere (which I have on vinyl, nah!)

Top of the charts, unless of course you know different, must be Bella Hardy's Emmot's Song, a cheerful little ditty about self-isolation seventeenth century style, which is pretty much the same as now, except you stand to get the black death, and you can't text your boyfriend to cancel your date.

So, throw in your ideas and when we get to ten I'll post a list.

Surviving and thriving

As I noted a fortnight ago (incidentally, the last day I had any contact with an actual flesh and blood human being - thanks hairdresser Andrew!), in many ways I am particularly well-adapted to what we shall euphemistically call 'the current situation.'

I'm really lucky to be able to work at home - and to have a nice home (with garden) - in which to work (and relax). I'm lucky to be really busy with work, and feel that I'm doing something worthwhile. I'm really lucky to be able to get food delivered from Beanies and even beer from Abbeydale.  I don't need to invoke a 'good excuse' to leave the house. I'm happy to stay here, keep my head down, and pretend as far as possible that everything is normal. That's my survival strategy.

If I start to think about the use and abuse of emergency powers, and their long term effects; if I start to think about what will happen to higher education and my job and the students and potential students I work for; if I start to think about what will become of a society where we're now all primed to police one another and see everyone as a potential threat; if I'm confronted with the government rhetoric and statistics that underpins all this, then I will become a panicking, quivering, knuckle-chewing wreck who is no use to anyone.

I have stopped reading any news websites. I never did subscribe to any social media. I still occasionally look at blogs in the hope that they will provide a little light relief, a little glimpse of life beyond the current panic, or of finding positives within it. My blogroll is my reading list, and when a blog quotes government figures (available in so many other places to anyone who wants them) on deaths and infections two days running, sorry, it comes off, no matter how much I might have enjoyed it previously.

I don't subscribe the idea that it's some kind of moral virtue to immerse onself in misery and keep up to the minute with bad news.That might be a coping strategy for some people, and I respect that; but I am not one of them. I am deeply uncomfortable with making a drama out of a crisis. I'd rather just quietly get on with doing something practical, if I can. And luckily I can - at the moment 170 people's futures (and more immediately, their peace of mind) rest on my ability to design and co-ordinate alternatives to their end of year exams and presentations.

So please, fellow bloggers, keep the funny and inspiring, the everyday and the mundane, coming .... And if you must wallow in fear and misery, judgement and drama, then that's your prerogative, but I'm afraid you'll lose this reader.

Numbers game

12 assessments redesigned
11 modules to deliver remotely
3 lb gained
1 old friend contacted

Bag of Tricks

I was so busy not blogging last autumn that I think I overlooked introducing my new feline friend.

This is Bellatrix, and she came from Chesterfield Cats' Protection. I got her in early October and she celebrated her first birthday (more or less accurate to within a month or so) at Hallowe'en.

She's called Bellatrix because ... the first cat I visited was called Annabelle, and then I went to see another one called Callie. Callie had been in a foster home for ages because of the age-old thing of black cats being less popular. At one point I thought I might have them both, and then they would have been called Bellatrix and Callisto (of course). But when I decided just to have the gentle, playful little black one, Bellatrix just fitted her best.

She's very well behaved, very friendly and really no trouble at all. As you can see, she enjoys helping me with work.

Shortly after I got her, I had a cat flap fitted in my new back door (why I needed a new back door is another story, but I was without an opening one for six weeks, occasioning not least a major rearrangement of the furniture in the front room). But then it was winter and cold and dark, and she didn't seem that bothered about going outside, so the cat flap stayed locked. It's only this last couple of weeks, when the weather has been nice and I've been around that she's finally started to go outside.

And it turns out that she's quite a bold and agile little thing. Not only did she get up on the roof of the extension (or offshot, as it's known in these parts) at the level of the upstairs window, she then proceeded to climb in the window, walk down the stairs, and go back out the catflap.

I very much doubt she'll come boating like the irrepressible, irreplaceable, Willow - I have a reciprocal cat care arrangement with my neighbour round the corner. It is, though, rather nice to have a cat back in my life, having been without one for seven years, for the first time ever since the age of ten.

I dare say you'll be seeing more of Bellatrix - although it is hard to get a decent photo of her.

Book binging

I never used to re-read books. My leisure reading of choice is detective novels, so there never seemed any point, once I knwe who done it.

Then I discovered Harry Bingham's Fiona Griffiths books (six so far), and they were so good I just had to re-read them. I think I read the fifth one first, and the first one last, and then went back and read the whole lot again. Originally borrowing them from the library, I loved them so much that I bought copies. Second hand, via Abe Books, they cost three or four pounds each, including postage.

I realised that I could enjoy re-reading. I often forgot who'd done it anyway, but even if not, that just added a new dimension. I found and appreciated so much more richness on a second reading. So I decided to do the same with another of my favourite series, Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway books. After Fiona Griffiths, Ruth Galloway must be one of my favourite heroines, middle aged and overweight, a single parent with a very unrequited love life - and an academic as well! There are twelve of these, so I bought eleven second hand, read through them in order from start to finish, and then forked out a tenner for the twelfth and latest in hardback. Again, it was a brilliant in-depth escape into another world, and reading each book as a chapter of a ten year story gave each one a context that it didn't have on its own.

So I finished The Lantern Men last night and have now (over breakfast) embarked on my most ambitious box set yet - Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. There are fourteen of these, and I have acquired the first twelve for a little over £40 in total. Sad, funny and surreal, but always with a meticulously plotted mystery at their heart, these should make perfect reading for the next few weeks.

Why you need an autistic person at a time like this

1. We won't try to shake hands, hug or kiss you. Ever.
And now you won't do it to us either. There's a silver lining, right there.

2. Self-isolation? Bring it on!
Whilst using the government's language of 'self-isolation' and 'social distancing' makes me really uncomfortable for reasons I don't even begin to understand, actually doing it - well, there's nothing that comes more naturally.

3. We already have a stockpile
Built up over months or years rather than in a locust swarm on Tescos, and carefully curated and rotated. Some of us have probably had ours since the Cold War. So we don't need to panic buy and there's that little bit more for everyone else.

4. That famous lack of empathy?
Means we won't absorb other people's anxieties and panic, so we'll be the ones keeping calm and carrying on (with those all-important routines) whilst still being kind and supportive, because we know that's the right thing to do.

5. We follow the rules just because they're the rules
Yeah, well, maybe that one doesn't apply to me. But a lot of us do. And if we have comorbid OCD, we're already on it with the handwashing, too.

6. We're already geared up for working at home
Computer? Check. Broadband? Check. VPN? Already set up. Just need to rearrange the books for my videoconferencing backdrop.

7. You need someone to draw up tables and spreadsheets
To make contingency plans and do options appraisals and impose order on chaos. We have a lot of practice at this.

8. We are used to not being able to cope with change and uncertainty
Which puts us at a distinct advantage when no one else can cope with it either. Welcome to my world.



Disclaimers: Yes, I know that not all of this applies to all (or possibly any) autistic people. Number 5 doesn't apply to me, for example. Yes, I know it's a serious matter, but I can guarantee that no one will die as a direct result of you laughing a little bit (as long as you do it into a tissue). Yes, I know there are probably much better and funnier versions of this all over the internet, but I am self-isolating from the media so as to avoid being infected with panic and despair (about civil liberties rather than health). Yes, there are probably more examples - can we get it up to ten?

So farewell then ...

Rag Rug Number 1:  November 4th 2006 - March 7th 2020

 Jim was up this weekend - we were meant to be going to the HNBC AGM, but it was cancelled on account of the Plague. No such timidity for the Friends of Naburn - we held our AGM last Wednesday. In my dining room. But more anon on the plucky Friends of Naburn.

Anyway, Jim and I went over to Alvecote to check on Chertsey, with some trepidation, given what the weather has been like. The tippet and one of the topcloths had blown off a bit - the strings had loosened and come adrift in places, but the scaffolding bungees had held, so nothing was lost. The translucent cloths underneath stayed in place, so the only water getting into the hold was via the small holes where the translucents rub on the top plank. Not much damage there then, and in fact we just removed the loose topcloth completely and have left it at that for now.

A slightly nasty surprise awaited in the back cabin however. The bullseye has always been inclined to leak slightly, and although I left an inverted bowl over it, a fair bit of water has clearly still got in, and dripped straight down onto the rag rug which I rather foolishly left on the floor. This, rather in the manner of growing mustard and cress on a damp flannel, had sprouted some very impressive fungus, which unfortunately (perhaps) I was too horrified to photograph. About half the rug was covered in white cotton wool, with some delicate brown fractals sprouting in the middle. My first thought - and I still think this might be the case - was that it looked (and smelt) very much like dry rot. I bundled the rug into a stout plastic sack and with shocking lack of ceremony deposited it in the rubbish skip.

The floor underneath was wet, and a bit slimy, but the fungus didn't seem to have got a hold - there were none of the tell-tale tentacles of dry rot, but maybe it just hadn't quite got round to it (or needed to make the effort) yet. We took up all the floors and brought them back to Sheffield for a good dollop of Five Star, and next time I'm over there I'll do the surrounding woodwork - although that seemed to have stayed dry. In good news, under the floor was completely dry.

So it's a sad farewell to the rug. This was the first rag rug I ever made, and the best.  It was over thirteen years old, and survived being washed, twice (though latterly I stopped bothering). It wasn't just for decoration but did a sterling job over the years of trapping dirt (and fungus). My sister (1969-2012) helped make it. Others have come and gone over the years (including the only other one that was nearly as good, which I gave away as a present) but Chertsey is now rugless. Rag is harder to come by (at reasonable - i.e. practically no - cost) in these post jumble sale days, and anyway, I have a blanket to finish crocheting first.

Glory days of 1973

The joys of pre-EU, pre-EEC, pre-Common Market ...
 

 

 
 Who wouldn't want to go back?

Too high a price

My railwayman friends seem on the whole to like the idea of HS2. Maybe that shouldn't be a surprise; it is a railway, after all.

I don't.

Never have done. I like trains. I like railways. But I don't like destruction and - without wishing to go over them again - I don't buy the arguments. I see commercial interests and their lobbying behind the political support. I see claims about speed swiftly replaced by claims about capacity as soon as it became obvious that no-one was bothered about getting to Birmingham half an hour quicker. I see the diesel engines that haul me into St Pancras which, much as I like them, were supposed to have been redundant decades ago. I wonder how making it easier to go to work in London is going to revive the economies of the North. I look at artists' impressions of futuristic bridges criss-crossing the Trent and Mersey and cannot imagine how the landscape will be changed. I think of the transport infrastructure, the new trains, the electrification, the housing, that those billions could buy.

And today I found out that my favourite London pub has been demolished to make way for the expansion of Euston, where HS2, even if it gets built, might never reach.


The Bree Louise, a slightly grubby pub (with what my friend Mike described as the worst pub gents he'd ever seen) down a slightly seedy side road behind Euston station where you had the choice of more than a dozen real ales, mostly straight from the barrel, and could get a half decent hot meal for six quid, and eat it in peace and quiet.

I'm finding it hard to describe how that makes me feel. Not just the loss of a decent pub, but that somewhere I knew, somewhere that lives in my memory, a solid, 150-year-old building - not to mention the streets around it - is no more.

The way that compensation has been handled for people whose properties along the route have been compulsorily purchased appears to have been scandalous as well.

Random catching up

Obviously I wasn't only working between October and now. It just felt like it.

In October, Baz and Izzi and little Rory came to visit.

A folkie in the making, Herbies?

Back with a (slightly) new look for 2020

Yes indeed, here I am. Thank you to the couple of people who have been in touch recently to ask if I'm ok, and if so, where the hell I am. Yes, I am fine - just had a nasty attack of blog fatigue, compounded by the common seasonal ailment known as Semester 1, which results in severe shortage of time and energy.

But here I am, kicking off an important anniversary year for Chertsey, with a new 2020 masthead drawn from this stunning 1970 photo which Richard Pearson sent me last year.

This is Chertsey somewhere on the Grand Union (but Richard has no recollection of where - an indentification challenge if anyone is up for it!)  en route from Gopsall to Croxley in August 1970, on her last commercial trip.

Despite the drastic fall-off in the last quarter, 2019 still saw the second highest number of posts, as the blog now enters its second decade. In terms of boating, however, the year was an absolute disgrace. How many days' boating did I do in 2019?

Four and a half.

Four and a half days. Alvecote to Braunston. Braunston to Alvecote. Alvecote to the winding hole somewhere short of Glascote, and back.

I think I can say with some certainty - barring utter disasters - that I will improve on that this year. There's just the matter of arranging leave around the August exam board ....

Tenth anniversary

The counter is clearly not going to tick it off before the day's out, but today is the tenth anniversary of my purchase of Chertsey. On one hand it seems extraordinary that ten years could have passed so quickly (but that's what happend when you get old); on the other, so much has happened within that time. For just one example - when I signed the papers for Chertsey I had never set foot in the city that is now my home.

So here's a photo of Chertsey back in 2009, nine days after the purchase was finalised, when we moved her for the first time.

And here's my post from this day ten years ago.

Where did it go?

I was walking down the road earlier today, and it felt chilly. I went out to water my geraniums, and noticed how long the shadows were. And I thought: it's September.

But how can it be? Where was the summer? And I don't just mean that the weather wasn't very nice - I know there were a couple of weeks when it was cool and wet, but I think there were plenty of hot sunny days too. But it still didn't feel like I'd had a summer; a defineable period, the season I so look forward to every year.

And I think I know why that is. It's because I haven't done anything to define the summer. With hardly any boating, no big trips or projects, one day was much like another, and one summer's day much like one at any other time of year (except with better weather). And if you don't do something distinctive, you don't make memories, and if you don't make memories, you don't remember, and if you don't remember, it effectively didn't happen.

A day might seem to drag when you have nothing to do, but it's the action-packed ones that seem longest when you look back on them. There's a lesson there, and I shall try to learn it well and make the most of next summer, and all the summers after.

I did get my dissertation finished though.