More of wot I have read…

Miss Garnet’s Angel by Sally Vickers

We have been picking up strange books at the local fairs and charity shops as they are so cheep and this book was one of those for me. I had a faint recollection about hearing of it before on the radio where they discussed its themes. The story of Tobias and the Angel Rafael stuck in my mind. It is definitely an odd little book that seems to wander aimlessly around at times, where the main character seems to be equally befuddled about what is going on too. Nevertheless it has many good points too and could be worth your time if you don’t mind something more esoteric than athletic.


‘When a friend dies, Julia Garnet goes to stay in Venice where a lifetime of caution is challenged. She encounters the paintings in the local church which tell the story of Tobias and the Angel. The ancient tale of Tobias, who travels to Media unaware he is accompanied by the Archangel Raphael, unfolds alongside Julia Garnet's contemporary journey. As she unravels the story's history, Julia's own life is thrown into question – for, like the shifting sea-light of Venice, nothing here is quite as it seems.’


Have the men had enough by Margaret Forster

When I had finished the Angel book I was hunting around for something else to read and so I picked my wife’s ‘second’ book. It was most definitely not some I would have chosen had there been any alternatives and it was a very different book to what I am used to. Concentrating on the difficulties of dealing with an elderly relative decent into senility it is an emotionally tough book that seems to be either written as a text for home-carers or for the more masochistic reader. Not something I would recommend unless you are particularly interested in the subject matter.


‘What do men run away from? Not war, not physical hardship, but the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. That's women's work. This is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman’

Trip to France…

We have just returned from a lovely trip to the Aveyron region of France with my Aunt and Uncle for a week. We stayed at a family run hotel that specialises in local cuisine and is situated on the river at the base of premonitory on which sits the wonderful town of Najac with it’s fortress dominating the view and the area around.

We travelled by budget airline to the quiet airport of Rodez (not a town high on our recommendations to visit), which has one flight a day, one gate, one conveyer system and several staff who seem to have many jobs, changing hats when they walk through a door.

This area is known for its rugged scenery of many valleys and gorges and of the Bastide towns. Rouergue Bastides were fortified towns built on a square often with a covered market in the middle surrounded be arcades and having straight roads leading off that could be easily defended in times of crisis. And this region of France seems to have had more than its share of crises with the English / French conflicts and the various wars of religion. It seems that there are more fortified towns, defensible chateaus and castles here than I have seen any where else in the country.

We travelled around a lot, perhaps too much, and visited many places of historical significance or architectural beauty, stopping several times on route to take in the views or to watch the wildlife. Some of the places we stopped at included:

• We went the Chateau Du Bosc where Toulouse-Lautrec spent many years with his family, where he tragically broke his legs and where he practiced his drawing. We were guided around the eccentric house be equally eccentric women and saw some of Henri’s early works including sketches he drew on the plaster walls. On a separate trip we also visited where he was born at Hotel Bosc in Albi.
• The Beaulieu Abbey suffered during the religious wars but it was been restored as a gallery where the impressively large and bare space sets of the artwork very well.
• The little town of Varen was intriguing as it could be missed when driving along the main road, and yet it had a wonderful unspoilt few streets of mediaeval houses.
• Precarious Penne was remarkable for displaying the lengths people would go to when building a castle, picking the highest and most inaccessible point to locate it.
• Beautiful Belcastle had been restored be an architect and had been modified somewhat to include modern spaces within the structure that could be rented out. It sat above one of the most picturesque villages in the region. It perhaps looked a too perfect and romantic village to be real and lacked some sense of life.
• Saint Antonin Noble Var was an interesting town that showed all the signs of being a busy place, but the old town had lovely quiet spaces where you could get a sense of what it would have looked like long ago. It also had a small steep street called rue Bombecul, or the street that makes you stick your backside out!
• Sauveterre De Rouergue was another beautiful but somewhat deserted town.
• Villefranche-de-Rouergue an the other hand is a big and bustling town/city, especially on market day when you get a sense of how these Bastides would have looked in thier heyday.
• The towering Saint Cecile Basilica was the highlight of Albi, another large town/city. Looking like a huge brick Air-craft carrier in the middle of town this building was built to impress and awe the populace, and seeing in all its majestic glory during a moving Sunday service it still makes a big impression these days. What was also fascinating was demonstrations of mediaeval workmanship in front of it as re-enactors made rope, scaffolding, hew logs, and scaled the walls to show the trades used in the buildings construction.
  

As is our want we over indulged, on the scenery, history, food and wine. We were almost glad to get back home for a rest.

If I were a carpenter…

Those of you who know me well will understand why DIY is not my thing. For someone who likes to think of himself as a creative person with a gentle and fine touch, writing stories and painting pictures, I am usually totally inept with larger tools like a hammer and a saw. So it is with a certain amount of self pride that I managed to put up a couple of shelves, build a unit to support the TV, and fashion some skirting board out of scraps of wood found in the shed without too much collateral damage (some saw marks on the patio table, slightly rustic finish to the woodwork, and some filler in the larger gaps).

To Hull and back…

Jamie made an unexpected visit to home for a couple of days and we caught up and fed him up before I somehow found myself driving him back to his new digs in Hull midweek, where I picked a few things that wouldn’t fit into his new room and brought them back, 11 hours later, to clutter up his room at home. The long drive did give us some quality time to talk about this and that. We had planned to visit him the following weekend but I wasn’t too busy at work and could take time off and now we have our weekend free to do a few chores and to follow the Westcott historical weekend tour around some local attractions.

More of wot I have read…

Timeline by Michael Crichton

I found this book quite a page turned and I think it was mainly due to the author’s ability to write fast paced action sequences. The detail and research that went into the story was obvious, though it did occasionally trip him up. There were definitely some ‘written for the movies’ type of setup noticeable in some scenes, but nevertheless I found the book a good read.


‘In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site.

Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival–six hundred years ago…’


Apparently there was also a movie made of the book, but it bombed and disappeared into obscurity.

Poor harvest…

The dark and damp English summer has prevented many of our crops from growing well. We know we would have some problems because we were late in getting some in the ground, but the adverse weather has just compounded the problem. We had to pick all of the tomatoes green and immature as they had started to get blight from the high humidity, so Sue spent a long time turning them into chutney. We have dug up all of our potatoes now and the small haul was further lessened by slug damage. Being out in the countryside brings new problems to gardening and although it is wonderful to see deer wandering around it is necessary to fence of the allotment to prevent them from eating everything you have grown. Nevertheless the conditions have meant that we didn’t have to spend much time watering and allowed us to do other things in the evenings and weekends. We have supplemented our harvest with foraged food for free and have managed to collect plenty of blackberries, some plums, a load of apples and even one mushroom (several others we picked up were discarded as being potentially dangerous).

Dupuytren’s Contracture…

Bent fingers are the noticeable effect of Dupuytren’s Contracture (so named after a French physician) which is sometimes referred to as the Viking disease. Several months ago I noticed a lump had appeared on the palm of my left hand. There was no pain other than a slight sensitivity when it was put under pressure. I tried not to think about it too much and hoped it would go away over time, but it didn’t, so when I had a check-up at my local doctor I asked him what it was. Apparently it is a rather common affliction, especially with people of northern European or Viking decent or with people who suffer from epilepsy, liver disease, diabetes and alcoholism and can be inherited. I had never heard of it before and didn’t know anyone in my family to suffer from it and I was pretty sure I didn’t suffer from any of the other diseases, so the doctor ran some additional blood tests and referred me to a specialist. The bloods came back fine showing I was otherwise healthy and the specialist was rather dismissive of the condition. He explained that what I saw was early signs and that it would be likely to progress slowly such that my little finger would become more bent as the growth in palm started to develop and limit the extension of the tendons. He said that they do not recommend and action until the fingers are bent to at least 30 degrees as the only relief was to break down the growth with surgery that runs the risk of damaging the tendons and nerves and doesn’t actually prevent it from reoccurring. It would seem that medical science is not totally sure what causes it and doesn’t have a cure. It least, for the moment, it is only in my left hand and is not causing my any real problem. I should get around to having those guitar lessons soon before it’s too late – I bought a guitar over a year ago and still haven’t done anything with it.