Monthly Archives: August 2011

The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

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School for Love cover

This book was first published in 1929 and it’s another Inspector Alan Grant mystery. I read Tey’s Daughter of Time recently and I thought that it was really good but I liked this one even more. It just absolutely hit the right spot for me at the moment. It’s also far better than The Franchise Affair which always seems to be the one which people are recommended to read.

It’s set in London to begin with and a man has been knifed in the back whilst he was standing in a theatre queue. There’s such a crush that he is dead for some time before he falls down as the crowd had kept his body upright. Nobody else in the queue had noticed anything unusual and the body has nothing on it which would help to identify it.

Bit by bit Inspector Grant uncovers his identity and the action switches to the Highlands of Scotland and a man-hunt which is every bit as good as any written by John Buchan.

This kept me guessing all the way to the end and I can’t say that about all mysteries. So if you enjoy vintage crime books you should definitely give this one a go.

The only other thing that I have to say is that the word Dago is used prolifically throughout The Man in the Queue – describing a man of dark Mediterranean appearance. In 1929 this was regarded as normal I suppose but its definitely un-PC now. Mind you I did read somewhere that Spanish/Italian people didn’t regard the word Dago as derogatory as it’s a corruption of the name Diego and so as far as they are concerned it’s just the same as being called Jimmy. I don’t know if that’s true or not though.

Josephine Tey was of course a Scottish writer and not English as I read recently on another blog. She was born in Inverness and taught in various schools in Scotland and England but moved back to the Highlands to look after her father and continued to write there.

More garden

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This was my garden just a couple of days ago. I took the photo from just underneath my metal arch, you can just see the edges of it at the top. This is the main sitting area of the garden and I got the so-called summer-house from B&Q back in the time when we used to get some really hot days and it was handy for me to sit in it when I needed some cooler shade to read in. At the moment it has become a wee bit of a dumping ground for things which have been emptied out of the attics and haven’t been recycled or otherwise found a new home yet.

rowan berries 1
They always say that you should plant trees for your grandchildren, meaning that they are slow growing so you probably won’t live long enough to be able to appreciate them, but the trees which I have planted all seem to grow like Topsy. They’ve shaded out the greenhouse which is behind these trees and since taking this photo I’ve been busy with the loppers and a saw. I couldn’t even see the top of the silver birch tree which was only about three feet tall when I planted it 10 years ago. I’ve cut back all of the branches and my husband hacked the top of it out, a good eight feet of it I think. When I move to another garden, remind me never to plant any trees because as they grow stronger – you (me) grow weaker!

summer house

The blackbirds have been enjoying the rowan berries and when they’ve stripped them all off I’m going to give the tree a good haircut as it’s spreading far too wide and high and casting an awful lot of shade.

rowan berries

The grass is now covered with lopped tree branches and my brown garden recycling bin is full so we’ll be making yet another trip to the town recycling centre. One good thing about this area is that all garden waste is composted by the council instead of it just going to landfill.

I’ll take some more garden photos when it has all been tidied and cut back, no doubt it’ll look drastic, but it has to be done!

Theodora by Stella Duffy

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Theodora cover

A big thank-you to the people at Virago as I’ve been lucky enough to be sent a review copy of Theodora by Stella Duffy so it’s going to be jumping the queue and I’ll be getting stuck into it soon. I just have to finish reading The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey first as I prefer to concentrate on one book at a time and I’m not far from the end.

I hadn’t heard of Theodora before so the first thing I did when I opened the jiffy bag this morning was to pull out my Chambers Biographical Dictionary. The entry for Theodora is:

Theodora (c.500-548) Byzantine empress, wife of Justinian I and the daughter of a circus bear-tamer. An actress and noted beauty, she married Justinian in 525. As his most trusted counsellor she wielded enormous influence in the work of government, and saved the throne by her courage at the crisis of the Nika riots (532). She lavished her bounty on the poor, especially the unfortunate of her own sex.

The Virago cover says: Theodora Actress. Empress. Whore.

It all sounds fascinating!

Bakewell, Derbyshire and Bakewell Pudding

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Weir with geese

Bakewell is another place which we visited on our recent trip to Derbyshire. The river Wye runs through the middle of it and as you can see from the above photo it’s full of geese, ducks and swans. I love towns with rivers, in fact I think it’s the thing that I find most important about a place, I suppose I like them because all old towns were built on rivers and I prefer old places.

Bakewell is very close to Chatsworth, we’d seen it recently on TV and as we’re partial to Bakewell Tart – the Mr Kipling kind, we thought we’d like to try out the original Bakewell Pudding. The problem is there are three shops in Bakewell proclaiming themselves to be the only one selling the original Bakewell pudding, which one should we choose?

We plumped (and that is a significant word) for the ones which looked nicest because it seems that about half of the shops in Bakewell are selling the puddings but most of them look very amateurish and frankly not very appetising. So we bought two slices which were enormous but being greedy we decided to buy a Bakewell tart too. This was the only shop selling tarts, the difference being that the tarts have icing on top. Most Scots have a very sweet tooth (it’s something to do with our cold northern climate I think) and I could quite happily eat a bowl of icing on its own so the tart was just too tempting.

Bakewell Tart

We ate the slices first. I have to say that I wasn’t all that struck on the flavour of it. It certainly didn’t taste of almonds which is the most obvious flavour of the Mr Kipling Bakewells. Another bite was required though to try to work out what the flavour was – then another and another and before I knew what was happening I had scoffed the whole thing, still none the wiser as to what it really tasted of. It was very slightly fudge-ish or maybe butterscotch-ish. What was worse was that I thought to myself that it was so heavy it felt like it must have been about 1,000 calories of glook.

All that I can definitely say about the taste is that it was over-egged and I really hate puddings and cakes which taste eggy. So why did I eat it? Who knows? – not me anyway, but if I ever find myself in Bakewell again I’ll be giving the puddings a wide swerve. As we bought a tart too we ended up eating it over the next few days and I must say that it tasted a bit better, due mainly to the icing on top I’m sure. It would have been better with custard!

We’ve had so many meals out over the holidays what with celebrating family birthdays and being away, also it was our 35th wedding anniversary earlier in the month and we just had to have a meal out then too and as a friend said to me – the main reason for eating out is to have the lovely puddings. The result is that I’ve put on an amazing three inches around my waist which I only discovered when I tried to put on my favourite skirt. It’s down to two inches now but I bet it takes ages to shift those two extra inches. Such is life!

The Provincial Lady Goes Further by E.M. Delafield

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I bought this 1942 edition of the book in the Callander bookshop which according to Carolyn is called King’s Bookshop. We didn’t manage to get back over that way during the summer holidays which are now at an end. How can six weeks flash past so quickly?

Anyway, this one is also written in diary form and I always find books like that very quick reads. As the title says it’s more or less the further adventures of the provincial lady but now she has some money due to the success of her previous publication. As often happens, instead of the money being used to solve the family money problems and placate the bank manager, it’s used to rent and furnish a flat in London. The bank manager is not amused but Robert, her husband is so laid back about everything and he seems to be quite confident that his wife will be able to keep earning more money through her writing. The PL thinks that Robert isn’t really interested in anything – she could be right about that.

Both children are packed off to boarding school leaving the Provincial Lady free to gallivant around London and meet up with her friends there. Pamela Pringle is very ‘fast’ and is on her fourth surname since the PL first met her as a young woman. Pamela is well on her way to her third divorce and is using our PL as her alibi whilst pursuing and being pursued by hordes of young men. All very daring for 1932, which is when this book was first published!

The Provincial Lady is still having problems finding servants for her house as it’s situated in the country and servants don’t want to live out in the Sticks. It’s a look into a time when you went to Boots the Chemist to change your library books, never went out without a hat and had your shoes re-covered to match your evening dress.

She’s still getting herself into plenty of amusing scrapes and the usual sort of trouble with the children when they’re not at school.

I’m looking forward to reading more books by E.M. Delafield as they’re a good laugh, and as I’m getting to the stage where I’m sometimes wary of switching on the news because it seems that there is no good news nowadays, and a good laugh is often sorely needed!

Seals and Swans in the Firth of Forth and River Leven.

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For the past few days it has been absolutely chucking it down over the whole of Scotland and Glasgow has had the most amount of rainfall there since records began – and if you know Glasgow at all you’ll realise how bad it has been! Lots of flooding all over the country but we’re fine here. I just wish someone up there would turn off the taps! To cheer myself up I’ve been having a look at some photos which I took a couple of weeks ago in the time of blue skies. This one is of the old bridge at Dumbarton on the River Leven and there is a swan with cygnets just going under the bridge. These swans went at quite a lick and I had to run to get this photo, not something I do often, I’m more a dignified walk sort of a person. The River Leven often has well over 100 swans floating around this area but most of them seemed to be elsewhere.

Swans in River Leven, Dumbarton

The Leven is just a wee river which flows into the River Clyde at Dumbarton Rock which you can see in this photo, but it’s still very dangerous and it seems that just about every summer some lads drown in it. They just want to have a lark but don’t realise how cold it is and it’s full of weeds which can fankle (entangle) you too.

Dumbarton Rock

I took this photo last week from the Fife coastal path at Kirkcaldy, just beyond Seafield Tower, walking towards Kinghorn. The rocks there are favourites with the seals and they were making themselves heard that day. Unearthly noises come from them at times, well they would be unearthly I suppose as they’re in the sea, but you know what I mean, positively eerie sounds.

Seals 3

I can quite see how the ancient sailors used to think that the seals were mermaids singing, especially when they hadn’t seen women for years!

Seals 1

I suppose it helped if they were in the water too rather than basking and looking enormously fat. It’s possible that some of these seals were about to give birth, maybe that’s what all the racket was about.

Seals 4

I can hardly believe that we had such lovely weather just last week. We seemed to be in a pattern of one lovely day followed by a wet one for a while but now it looks and feels like November and the schools are going back next week. That could be the cue for the sun to be splitting the pavements and a return of summer. Well maybe.

Riots in England

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I did predict rioting this summer in a previous post but I must admit that I didn’t think they would take the form that they have. I thought it would be like the riots in the early 1980s which were the result of the policies of that ghastly disgrace of a woman who went by the name of Margaret Thatcher.

Mind you I think that if you look back to those days when she was going about telling us all that there was no such thing as society then it’s quite clear that yet again we can lay the blame at her door. I’m making absolutely no excuse for the thugs and thieves who have been causing mayhem on the streets of various cities in England over the past few nights but a culture of greed and corruption has been nurtured over the past 30 years or so especially in the ‘institutions’ of banks, Parliament and the metropolitan police and youngsters can see that those who already have – get even more.

When we have people like David Cameron as our Prime Minister and Boris Johnson as the Mayor of London, and we all know how badly they behaved when they were young, then it’s difficult to listen to them condemning the behaviour of thugs when they themselves were thugs as youngsters. The only differences between Cameron et al is the fact that they were from wealthy families and when as members of the Bullingdon Club they trashed The Ritz and thieved from Fortnums, their parents were able to pay for the damage and for some reason wealthy people get off with it. They aren’t seen as thugs but just young men up to ‘high jinks’.

Almost the very first thing which Thatcher did when she got into power was to strengthen the police force and pay them more money. It quickly became clear that this was so that she would have them completely on her side when she came to tackle the miners and close all of the mines down. So when David Cameron announced that he was cutting the police force I was absolutely gobsmacked. He might call himself ‘son of Maggie’ but he didn’t learn much from her. It’s obvious that the police decided that they weren’t going to do much to stop the trouble on the streets. Why would they when they don’t feel that their jobs are safe? It was in their best interest to step back and look overwhelmed, in the hope that there would be an outcry about the lack of policing and Cameron would have to do yet another U turn and cancel the cuts to the police force.

There hasn’t been any trouble in Scotland and that’s probably because they don’t want to be seen as following in the footsteps of anyone in England. The same thing happened when English football so-called supporters were famous for being hooligans. There was never any trouble in Scotland because the Scottish football supporters liked to see themselves as being above all that nonsense – and they were. But the authorities in some countries have been advising people not to travel to the UK which is very annoying especially as the Edinburgh Festival has just begun.

It has been great to see the communities in England rallying round and clearing up and we should never forget that there are far more decent people than there are mindless morons around.

Haworth Church, Yorkshire

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Church 3

I couldn’t go to Haworth and not take some photos of the church which is more or less right next to the parsonage. The Brontes were actually buried inside the church, I suppose that’s one of the ‘perks’ of having the minister as your father! As the church isn’t usually open it means that most visitors to Haworth don’t actually get to see the Bronte stones, presumably there are inscriptions.

Church 1

Ever since I read years ago that Patrick Bronte didn’t take his meals with his family I’ve had a real dislike for the man and when I went on the tour of the house a couple of years ago the guide’s talk made me dislike Pa Bronte even more.

I suppose we can expect Victorian men to be selfish as a matter of course but I think he must have been worse than most and I think when his poor wife died, probably of cervical cancer and after being worn out by him and constant pregnancies, it must have been quite a relief for the poor woman in the end. It wasn’t long before Patrick Bronte started proposing marriage to other women, luckily none of them were daft enough to accept him.

Church 2

According to the guide he also had a habit of leaning out of the parsonage windows and taking pot shots at the church tower with a gun! It’s certainly pock-marked with what looks like bullet damage, I think he must have had more than a few screws loose.

The Duke’s Daughter by Angela Thirkell

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After watching all the horrible things which have been happening in the news from all corners of the world, I was in dire need of some light-hearted reading to take my mind off it all. This book fitted the bill perfectly and although I sometimes had a bit of difficulty keeping all the characters straight in my mind, especially when people who featured in earlier books are mentioned, I still found it really enjoyable.

This book was first published in 1951 and the upper class inhabitants of the county of Barsetshire are still grumbling about Them – by which is meant the Labour government of the day which seemed to be spending all of its time thinking up ways to tax the supposedly wealthier members of the poulation. Death Duties are a big worry to those who have money and the rest of them would no doubt like to have the luxury of having so much money that they had to worry about how much was going to be paid over to the government on their death!

As ever Angela Thirkell has purloined bits from various classic authors, most notably Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen and set it in her own time.

In this one there are quite a few characters being paired up at the end, to everybody’s satisfaction, and some of the more ghastly characters are nicely snubbed. I’m reading these books as I find them so not always in the correct order which is a wee bit annoying but I intend to read them again when I get the full set. No doubt the news won’t be any better then, whenever that may be.

I found this book in an antique centre, very reasonably priced and it’s a first edition, not that I’m ever bothered with that, but it does have the original dust jacket, a bit tatty, but it has comments on the back from luminaries of the time, a couple of them I haven’t heard of but here are a few of the comments.

‘Grace, wit, equanimity and engaging narrative power… if the social historian of the future does not refer to this writer’s novels, he will not know his business.’ – Elizabeth Bowen.

‘Mrs Thirkell possesses to a high degree the gift of making characters spring to life. She is often both witty and shrewd… she has a most observant, and often an attractively wicked, eye.’- C.P. Snow

I’ll just add – Angela Thirkell is well worth reading!