More of wot I have read…

The Passage by Justin Cronin

This was a slightly odd book, it spent a long time with some characters developing their relationship, throwing the aside and then moving to a different location and time and doing it all over again. There is a lot about the journey and the consequences of the disaster that has befallen them all, but not so much about what really happened. It is a long book and sometimes it drags a bit, but there are times of high tension and the overall effect is of a world that has fallen low and is struggling as its characters are to find their way in it. The ending was abrupt and unexpected and not entirely satisfying, but then we found out it is part of planned trilogy.



‘Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is.

Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong.

FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is.

THE PASSAGE.

Deep in the jungles of eastern Colombia, Professor Jonas Lear has finally found what he's been searching for - and wishes to God he hadn't. In Memphis, Tennessee, a six-year-old girl called Amy is left at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy and wonders why her mother has abandoned her. In a maximum security jail in Nevada, a convicted murderer called Giles Babcock has the same strange nightmare, over and over again, while he waits for a lethal injection. In a remote community in the California mountains, a young man called Peter waits for his beloved brother to return home, so he can kill him. Bound together in ways they cannot comprehend, for each of them a door is about to open into a future they could not have imagined. And a journey is about to begin. An epic journey that will take them through a world transformed by man's darkest dreams, to the very heart of what it means to be human. And beyond.

THE PASSAGE’

Out in the country…

Sue took her sister away for a weekend break to the Basingstoke Country Hotel, there they took advantage of the spa facilities and took walks out in the countryside to local public houses. The hotel was nice enough for them but was quite busy as it was hosting a chess championship.

I picked them both up and we went out to the nearby pretty village of Old Basing where the ruins of the very grand Basing House are. In its time the very grand building rivalled many of the royal palaces.

The end for the building came after it was the location of a major siege during the Civil War and the Royalist defenders were defeated by Cromwell’s forces and the house pulled to the ground. The large barn on the estate though remains and has some dramatic cannon ball damage on the walls.

The site is open to walk around and the large foundations and fortifications give you feeling for the scale of the place and how important a build it must have been

After a bracing walk around the ruins in the cold wintery day we stopped at the nearby Millstone Pub and took advantage of the local Beer and Bangers event by stopping to refuel and warm up.

More of wot I have seen…

We have caught up with a few films on DVD and at the pictures recently.

Cockneys vs. Zombies… …is probably the most descriptive title since Snakes on a Plane. You get what you expect plus a bit more in this comic horror flick including one of the slowest chase scenes ever.

The Avengers… …is a good continuation of the current comic hero films and brings the various characters together in a fun and enjoyable way. I particularly like the banter between Iron Man and the Hulk, but I was never quite so comfortable with the Thor idea.

Dark Shadows… …is a charming little movie that is supposedly based on an old 60’s TV series which I know nothing about. It has some fun period jokes and I always enjoy the offbeat characters played by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Prometheus… …I was not as sure about this movie as it did not grab me and I found it difficult to find sympathy with the characters or understand quite what was trying to be achieved. The opening scene just plain baffled me as did the ending, which I am not sure was helped with the appearance of the alien beast.

The Host… …is a bonkers horror flick from Korea which has very odd main characters that seem to be odd to an extreme point, the monster though is quite interestingly imagined. Ultimately though the end was quite troubling for me as I was not comfortable with what happened to the young girl hero.

Skyfall… …is a bond movie, but with a difference. As with the other Daniel Craig movies this is a darker and more physical type of movie but in this they have deliberately harked back to an earlier and simpler time. The jokes and observational humour will delight the bond fan and the details and back references add some depth to the otherwise two dimension characters, but there is no doubting this is still a ‘boys-own’ action movie.

Champion Hedge Layer…

Paul won another competition and is the proud winner of South of England section in the 34th National Hedge Laying Championships.

Before we met Paul we knew nothing about the traditional trade. It entails cutting living hedges around fields and bending them over and laying them in such a fashion as they provide a barrier to keep stock secure and allow for the hedge to re-grow back healthily. There are several regional techniques each with their own methods and benefits particular to their location and usage. Paul makes a particular effort to use traditional tools and avoids using chainsaws in favour of axes and billhooks.

So congratulations to Hawkeye the Hedger, 2012 Champion Layer (long straight wood a speciality).

Party Time…

Recently we went to a party at Paul and Lorraine’s that was held for a friend Erica’s birthday. We also celebrated her engagement to Tomas and there was much talk about having the wedding in his home country of Poland. It was also an opportunity to offer Erica support with her ongoing treatment she is having for cancer.

I’ll drink to that…

What was the Crown Pub has been sold and reopened as a Wine Bar & Deli called Bertram Bees. The old establishment closed after disagreements between the owner and the landlord and a lack of investment in the place. It was boarded up and put on the market and as it was in such a bad state some of us feared that it would go the same was as many country pubs and be knocked down and the valuable land be used to put up a block a flats.

But it was bought by a very enterprising and energetic couple who have done a brilliant restoration job on the place and made what I think is a clever marketing strategy of turning it into a wine bar with its own deli counter. This means it should not compete for the same customers as the other more traditional pub across the road, and it takes advantage of the fact that this is quite a wealthy area where customers will go out and buy locally sourced produce even if it means paying a premium.

We have been in several times and there is quite a varied clientele that changes through the day with the mums coming back from taking the kids to the nearby school having their coffee and cake, the lunch time crowd of older couples and business men passing through the village and then the evening crowd enjoying the ambience over a bottle of wine.

The family who have bought it have a connection to the area and are keen to become part of the community by hosting charity car wash, donating to the firework raffle and giving one of the old pub signs to the local history group. He is a builder to and has done a lot of the work on the building and also does work in the village when he is not helping behind the bar or messing about with his two chopper motorbikes.

We hope to book the place for Sue’s 50th birthday next year.

Crop Failure…

It has been another wildly unpredictable and difficult year for the world’s weather with record hot and cold and wet and dry spells that defy expectations. We had been warned early on that we were in for a drought and with a warm spring and hosepipe ban it seemed it would be true, then the rain came, and didn’t stop drenching everything. It turned cold and froze the ground and then rained again. For us personally we escaped any of the disasters that seem to plague so many people and had a relatively mild year, however our allotment has suffered and we have had one of our worst year’s harvest since we have been growing. We got virtually nothing off the land; even reliable crops like the runner beans were poor this year.

We have now put the allotment ‘to bed’ for the year and we only need to prune the fruit bushes and plant our garlic, over-wintering onions and broad beans until we get back to it next year.

It is an interesting thing growing your own food and we a lucky that we do not have to live off what we grow, but the endless cycle of preparing the ground, planting an nurturing the seedlings, battling the pests and picking the bounty is quite a thing to be involved with at such a hands-on level. There are the rewards of a good harvest and of being able to share it with others, but too there is the disappointment and frustration when it doesn’t work, and then we go and do it all over again the next year.

More Cat Flap Fiasco…

After our troubles with uninvited feline guests we installed (eventually) an electronic cat flap that worked off Sooty’s microchip and we thought our problems were solved. But for the last few months one of the solenoids that locked the door against the cat raiders become faulty and eventually it stopped working all together, so we could either lock our cat out with all the others or allow them all free reign of our house. A big fluffy black cat from a few doors down is a particular bully and he also sprays all over the place so we wanted to keep him out. So with the weather getting colder we had to make a decision and we bought a new cat flap, similar to the first but that ran off batteries and which had a slightly simpler way of programming it. The idea was you set it to program and the next cat that came through would be remembered, unfortunately somewhere down the line it seems it might have got programmed for the bully, so we had to reset it and ‘post’ Sooty (very reluctantly) through the hole to ensure that the right cat got programmed. Our cat is not the sharpest tool in the box and it has taken him sometime to get the hang of the new flap, sometimes he just gives up and waits for us to open it for him. Never mind, hopefully that will be it for cat flap issues for a while.

Free Music…

I stumbled across a website for Noisetrade Music that promotes new and upcoming artist be giving their music away free in exchange for an email address that the artists use to send you promotional material. I have found many new and amazing artists on this site and have been bowled over by the quality of music from acts I have never heard of before. It might be worth checking them out if you like to find new sounds and want to support new acts.

More of wot I have heard…

Fake Thackray is an artist who has concentrated in keeping the talent of the late, great Jake Thackray alive with his tribute act. The alternatively wonderfully un-PC comic or heartbreakingly poignant songs song in the particularly recognisable style were all fabulously rendered and linked together with stories and jokes on a very entertaining evening. It prompted me to go and download the complete collection of Jake’s songs soon afterwards.

Scottish Singer Ewan McLennan is an accomplished guitar player with classical roots and a fine finger action that complemented his lilting voice.

Lee Collinson played the guitar wonderfully with a bluegrass style and kept us entertained with his charming wit and generous personality.

Birthday Fish ‘n Chips…

It was Sue’s Mum’s 75th recently and arrangements had been made for a small family gathering at the Littlehampton and East Beach Café for lunch. The place specialises in fish and chips but has a variety of other tasty treats on the menu. It is not just the menu that attracts people to the place, it is the venue and its location sat as it is on the promenade facing out across the sea with picture windows down one side of the structure. I write structure as it is more than just a building; it is a piece of architectural sculpture clad in attractively rusting metal shaped like a weathered piece of driftwood, or a large boulder showing the layers of sediment laid down over millennia.

The building was designed by Thomas Heatherwick who has been propelled into the limelight with his spectacular Olympic Cauldron, and it turns out he was the designer responsible for the spiky UK Pavilion and the new London Bus.

The following day we had another family gathering at Mum’s place for a traditional Sunday lunch that was relaxed and enjoyable.

Best wishes to Barbara.

Blink and miss it…

After the Olympic road cycling race we also had the Tour of Britain cycling event come through the village, travelling in the opposite direction. It attracted a good group of residents to line the main road who were in a party atmosphere. The build up was slow as people reacted to anything that came up the road, the motorcycle escort helped to entertain us reacting with smiles and waves to the cheers as they drove through, and the Police switched on their sirens and lights to the delight of the kids.

The group of cyclists came more quietly into the village until the crowd spotted them and a huge roar of cheering spread along the road accompanying the tightly packed, lycra clad athletes, and in a matter of seconds they were all past us and off up the hill out of the village. In contrast the parade of brightly be-signed support vehicles sporting spare frames and wheels, other outriders, and a special ‘sweep’ van with brooms on it took ages to pass through as they queued up the hill for many minutes after the cyclists had long gone by.

Messing about on the river…

The parents of one of my friends at work has a canal boat moored on the Thames and each year a group of the lads from work get together to cast off to explore one of the tributaries of the river. Naturally there is a vast amount of liquid inside the boat that once filtered through the occupants would mostly end up outside of the craft and there were important discussions prior to departure to ensure the barrels of beer, bottles of wine and varied spirits all found a place in the cramped narrow boat. To line our stomachs we had a full blown cooked breakfast on the gas barbeque, washed down by the first of many cold beverages.

I joined the annual outing for the first time this year as we planned to travel up the Wey Navigation for a few miles stopping at the locks and any public houses that we might encounter on the way. It was gentle progress as we chugged along with the opening and closing of the locks the only real exercise, so this left us plenty of time to drink and chat and observe the rest of the world as the rushed about us like busy worker ants.

Ian had come prepared with the ingredients for a very fine and substantial curry that fed us well that evening as we gathered around the small table struggling to find space on it for the food amongst the bottles of wine and pints of beer. We ate well with plenty of cheese and nibbles, a couple of cakes courtesy of Sue and the morning fry ups to soak up some of the alcohol.

Sleeping arrangements were more problematic as the boat only had berths for four and there were seven of us. Steve had planned ahead and brought a small tent that he pitched up on the towpath, I had a blow up single mattress that just fitted in the aisle but Ian had none of that and had the hard floor to cope with.

We had good weather and the fresh mornings with the mist on the flat calm canal and the gentle murmurings of wildlife rising for the day were peaceful and gentle, just the thing after a day of drinking.

It was a fun couple of days, though I do feel we are getting a little too old for this sort of thing now.