Enid Blyton, a split lip, and the Reformation
When I was five years old and waiting at the bus stop after school, a bigger boy called Simon (names have not been changed to protect the innocent as he was proper guilty)… Continue reading
Author Archive
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View (of the weeds) over the top of my book.
Firstly, in my defence, I can’t mow my lawn as it’s about half an acre and has relief-map worthy pot holes, bits where old troughs have been dug out, fallen trees, the lot.… Continue reading
A Bucket of One’s Own
One of my favourite books (essay really, but who cares) is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It’s a nice blueprint for people who want a quiet life of reading, writing, wandering… Continue reading
There’s no better way to say ‘screw you, political turmoil’ than by making a fairy garden…
…and I’m sure Sarah Waters agrees. I am currently reading The Night Watch. It’s been on my shelf for a while, my emergency un-read Waters to be opened in a time of need.… Continue reading
A short review for a short book
Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates is a book so clearly full of influences, and yet as it is based on plagiarism, it’s gone all the way back round to being original. I… Continue reading
Meadowland and Brambly Mice
Meadowland taught me the meadow ants can live up to TWENTY YEARS. That’s longer than a lot of things. You could have three Great Danes in that time, if you found yourself… Continue reading
Behold! A rushed post.
So, why post at all? Because otherwise, like going to the gym and keeping up my vehicle’s main-dealer service record, blogging will become something I used to do regularly, got out of the… Continue reading
Reading round up – including confessions of a horrible snob (me)
I have just read two books which, to paraphrase something I read on Twitter said by some author I can’t remember, involved a people ‘running up and down ladders inside themselves’. This is… Continue reading
Cheeky Opticians and Marmite Books
I had a bit of birthday money, and before my job properly ends, I decided to buy a couple of new books to do my bit for the publishing industry. And this week… Continue reading
“One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather.”
(The above quote is from Agnes Grey, and true for me if February were ‘March’, and pleasant weather were ‘at least it wasn’t not snowing for ten minutes’.) I never thought I’d see the word… Continue reading