Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri

Posted on 17 January 2015 by Katrina

I picked up Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri from the library thinking that it was another Inspector Montalbano book and I was quite disappointed when I got home and realised that it isn’t. It is set in Sicily but it’s Sicily 1880. A strange young man called Fofo arrives in Vigata and the townsfolk are concerned when they find out that he is the son of a local peasant who had been murdered years before.

Fofo sets up as a pharmacist and becomes quite popular as he’s a useful member of their society, but the place is run along feudal lines really with the local member of the so-called nobility Don Filippo, a philandering marquis at the top of the pile. There are a fair few murders, but along the way there are also a lot of people jumping into bed with folks that they really shouldn’t be there with. It seems that Sicily of 1880 was a free and easy place.

I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as the Inspector Montalbano books.

Apparently the author got the idea for writing the book from the old British film Kind Hearts and Coronets, it’s one of my favourite films an old one from 1949 and I think you can watch it free online.

Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo

Posted on 15 January 2015 by Katrina

I swithered with the idea of NOT signing up for the Goodreads Challenge this year, the last two years I signed up to read 100 books and in 2014 I just managed it, but it did mean that I was concentrating on quick reads towards the end of the year, just to get that 100 under my belt. Anyway, I decided to sign up for 75 this year as I do like being able to see at a glance what I’ve read on Goodreads and this should mean that I’ll have more time for classics which tend to be fairly hefty.

So to Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo, this book was published in 2010 and is obviously aimed at children but I bought it for the Michael Foreman illustrations, I don’t think I had ever read anything by Morpurgo before.

This is a very quick read, the story is told by a young boy who was born in 1943, one of six children with no father figure around. His mother isn’t able to cope with his bad behaviour which gets worse and worse as he gets older. The upshot is that as a teenager he ends up being sent to a borstal for a year, borstals are now called young offenders institutions.

There are horses at the borstal and he eventually gets a job looking after them and that’s the beginning of a big change in his life. He is trusted to befriend a nervous horse, a Suffolk Punch (like small versions of Clydesdales) called Dombey and the relationship which he builds up with him and the respect which he gets from Mr Alfie, the head of the stables, lead to good behaviour and getting released early from the borstal.

It’s a tale which shows that young people who have lost their way in life can get back on track again if just a few adults like teachers are willing to give them another chance.

There are a few pages and photographs at the end of the story which tell about the history of borstals and horses in the military and also the Suffolk Punch horses which came so close to dying out completely, in fact at the time of publication there were only 410 of them and they are on the critical list of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Morpurgo is obviously very fond of animals and horses in particular and he and his wife have set up a charity called Farms for City Children. You can also take a look at the Suffolk Punch Trust if you’re interested. You can see images of Suffolk Punch horses here.

You can see some Michael Foreman illustrations here some of them are from the book.

Dunfermline Abbey, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 15 January 2015 by Katrina

Dunfermline Abbey is just a few steps away from Dunfermline Palace and by the time we started to go around it was quite dark inside, not so much because of the time but it was the grey dreich weather which was the culprit. The abbey is very old, both the abbey and the palace were probably built around about the same time.

We had the place entirely to ourselves and I must say that I enjoyed looking around it, I don’t always like these massive old religious structures as they often have a quite menacing atmosphere to me, but this one isn’t used for religious services and I didn’t feel any ‘fear of God’ vibes about it!

I particularly like the chevron design pillars, they remind me of the ones at Durham Cathedral, another religious place with a good feeling about it, despite it still being used for worship.

I just love the colours in the stained glass windows, but I have no idea what they depict, I must take a closer look next time I go.

Below is a photo of Dunfermline Abbey Church which is still in use and is where Robert the Bruce and others are buried. It isn’t really very old (1821) and it has been built on to the old abbey, probably covering old foundations, but at the moment it is only open for church services so I’ll have to wait until the tourist season starts up again before I can go in and take some photos.

You can see more images of the abbey here.

Dunfermline Palace, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 12 January 2015 by Katrina

We visited Dunfermline Palace the other day. You know what it’s like, you go and visit far-flung places of interest and never get around to visiting those ones more or less on your doorstep. We were given membership of Historic Scotland by our sons for Christmas so we took the first opportunity to use it after New Year.

The palace is right next to Dunfermline Abbey but I’ll blog about that another day. Both buildings date back to around about 1070. At this time I believe that Dunfermline was the capital of Scotland, it hasn’t always been Edinburgh.

As you can see it’s really just a ruin, but for those of us with an imagination it’s still well worth a visit.

I did see a comment online that it wasn’t very interesting, but I think that was harsh. I enjoyed looking around it even although it was a dreich winter’s day and it was sleeting off and on.

There are bits and pieces of ancient stonework on display which has obviously been found around the site, as well as information boards explaining exactly who lived and died there.

Charles I was born in the palace and Robert the Bruce is buried in the nearby abbey church but I won’t be able to blog about that until it is opened again during the week. During the winter the abbey church is only open for church services.

The first line of the poem Sir Patrick Spens refers to Dunfermline as the capital. You can read it here.

Mapp and Lucia 2014

Posted on 11 January 2015 by Katrina

It seems like a long time ago now but what did you think of the new version of Mapp and Lucia which was on the BBC at Christmas? I was sort of half dreading watching it as I’m a big fan of E.F. Benson’s books and I adored the Channel 4 series of Mapp and Lucia which starred Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales as well as lots of other great actors. In the end of course I did watch the new version, to be honest there wasn’t much on TV over the holidays anyway, it was even worse than usual I think.

There were only three parts in the series and I can see that there is loads of scope for more parts to come, I suppose they were waiting to see how popular it would be. It was definitely entertaining but I couldn’t stop myself from comparing everything with the earlier series.

I suppose you could say that the Geraldine McEwan version was just a wee bit over the top, but I think that that is exactly how Mapp and Lucia should be played. The costumes in the new version weren’t as sumptuous as those of the Channel 4 series, those ones were a real treat for the eyes and the detail was wonderful, not only with the clothes but the handbags, hats and jewellery too, especially Lucia’s. Georgie in the new series is just not dapper enough, nor finicky and camp enough. ‘Quaint’ Irene has been turned into a make-up wearing masculine woman whereas she should be a tomboy of a girl who has somehow got stuck at the schoolgirl crush stage of life which some females seem to have experienced.

You can read about the making of the recent series here.

There’s a snippet from the McEwan series below and you can see some complete episodes on You Tube if you’re interested.

The Man Next Door by Mignon G. Eberhart

Posted on 11 January 2015 by Katrina

The Man Next Door by Mignon G. Eberhart was first published in 1944 and is set in Washington and as you would expect of a book set then its subject involves World War 2.

Steve Blake’s older brother was kiiled at Pearl Harbour and as Steve has always been patriotic that just made him all the more determined to join up and do his bit, but it wasn’t to be. Steve is too useful elsewhere, he had been a brilliant lawyer and dabbled in politics but latterly he had become the executive president of an airline manufacturing company, a very important job in wartime.

He is living with his widowed sister-in-law at the moment and her younger sister Angela is throwing herself at Steve but his secretary Maida is also in love with him, he’s a popular guy, except with the chap next door, Walsh Rantoul who keeps picking fights with Steve.

This book involves enemy agents and I suppose it was a bit like those posters Walls Have Ears during the war. It shows how people could get caught up in nefarious activities, dangerous to their country. It was a good read.

America during World War 2 is something which I’m not too familiar with. I was a bit perplexed when Maida looked up at the sky and thought ‘No air raids yet.’ But the US was never in any danger of being bombed, apart from far flung Hawaii. There were no German aircraft carriers and the Japanese would have had to have sailed around Cape Horn to get to Washington DC, but it must have been something which people still worried about – being bombed.

Swan Song by John Galsworthy

Posted on 9 January 2015 by Katrina

In Swan Song which seems to be the last book in the Forsyte Saga (although a few more books were written which feature some Forsytes I think) it’s 1926, a time of political upheaval, the miners are on strike and there is of course THE General Strike.

I suppose The General Strike was a battle between the upper classes and the working classes. Jon Forsyte, the man who broke Fleur’s heart is now married and has returned from America, he’s helping to keep the trains running. Fleur isn’t at all bothered that they are both now married and of course as she says herself, she must get what she wants. Soames is worried about her as he knows that she is just like him.

So the country is in a mess and those men who survived the trenches are now being treated like scum by the bosses. Michael Mont, Fleur’s husband, is still a Member of Parliament, and he is now trying to gather a group of influential men together to help to improve living conditions in the slums of London, where if you bang a nail into the wall, things crawl out.

Meanwhile Soames is thinking about the future, and how long he might have to live. The Forsytes are a long-lived lot but he feels the need to track down his ancestors, just as many people do nowadays. He has always been intrigued by the fact that his family had come from poor yeoman stock who within a few generations had amassed fortunes in business after moving to London.

These books were so popular in their day because they feature everything that we’re familiar with – families and the odd dodgy relative that most of us have if we dig deep enough, a political background which doesn’t really ever change – we’re always in a mess, a glimpse into the lives of the wealthy – and they often aren’t any happier than the rest of us, and other people’s immorality! I was sad to get to the end of it.

If you want to read the books you can do so online here.

A Winter Walk in Fife, Scotland

Posted on 9 January 2015 by Katrina

I think we’ve just had the mildest Christmas and New Year which I can ever remember with temperatures around about 10 Celsius but in between those days we had some really cold and frosty ones. In fact the temperature has been going up and down like the proverbial tart’s knickers!

These photos were taken when we went out for a walk to blow off the festive cobwebs during that limbo between the two celebrations. We gave up trying to walk on the pavements which were like skating rinks. Luckily we can opt to dodge the pavements altogether and walk on the adjacent woodland and scrubland. The two photos above were taken from exactly the same spot, just pointing in different directions, very grey looking in one direction but the sun is shining on the trees in the other direction, highlighting the red of the dogwoods.

Below you can see that there is a culvert gushing rainwater into the burn, the previous few days had been very wet and warm, the water must be draining off the surrounding land. It wasn’t at all frosty close to the burn.

Well the walk helped us to feel better after the Christmas overeating, I’d far rather have a good walk than go for a jog. In fact that would kill me!

Christmas Books

Posted on 8 January 2015 by Katrina

Above is a photo of the books which I bought over the weeks before Christmas – and said to Jack, just wrap those up for me! After so many years it isn’t crucial to get a sumptuous present and I’m in the happy position of not really needing or wanting anything expensive.

You’ll have noticed that my cache of books leans heavily towards children’s publications, that was just luck or serendipity, not something which I set out to do.

1. Crime Out Of Mind by Delano Ames. He was a 2014 discovery for me and I’ve read a few of his books, I’ve enjoyed them all and this is another Dagobert and Jane book, his married sleuths, so I have high hopes of it. It was published in 1956.

2. Sir Gibbie by George MacDonald. First published in 1879 this is a children’s book by a Scottish writer who used to be very popular but is now hardly read.

3. Love by Elizabeth von Arnim, published in 1925. I already have a copy of this but I had to buy this one when I saw it in its green binding, I have most of her other books in this guise and my other copy of Love is a modern paperback.

4. Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office by Hugh Lofting, first published in 1924. This is another children’s author which I missed completely as a youngster. There are a lot of books in the series and the Doctor Dolittle film was based on them.

5. Whizz for Atomms by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, published in 1956. I bought this because of the Ronald Searle cartoons, it’s a similar idea to the St Trinian’s books, it looks like a good laugh.

6. In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor, published in 1961. I have read a fair few of her books and enjoyed them.

7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, this is an omnibus of the three stories which Fleming wrote in 1964 – 1965, but this book was published in 1971. I’ve already blogged about this one.

8. Not a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Michael Foreman, published in 2010. I’ve not read anything by Morpurgo yet (I think) and it’s about time I did but to be honest I would have bought this book just for the illustrations because I’m a Foreman fan.

9. Last but definitely not least is Edmund Dulac’s Picture Book for the French Red Cross, published in 1915. As it says on the front cover, all profits on sale given to the Croix Rouge Francaise, Comite de Londres. Obviously to help with the First World War casualties. I was lucky to get this one at St Andrews for a reasonable price, there are people online asking silly money for it. Some of the stories are old faithfulls like Cinderella but there are a lot which I hadn’t heard of before. The illustrations are lovely and if you are interested you can download it free from Project Gutenberg here.

Kirkcaldy’s Promenade Opening Stroll

Posted on 7 January 2015 by Katrina

The promenade/esplanade at Kirkcaldy has been shut to the public for over a year whilst refurbishment was in progress and a few weeks ago they had a ‘promenade stroll’ to officially re-open it. The photo above is of the west end of the prom, where there is a gathering of strollers who were being led by a pipe band.

Various groups of people were taking part in the festivities, including kayakers, rowers and someone zipping around on a jet-ski. There had been reports that there would be a group of wild swimmers but that turned out not to be true which is just as well as they would have got hypothermia in no time flat. I did see one chap struggling to get into a wet suit but I never did see him reach the water! The wee baton twirlers weren’t there either, it was just too cold and wet for them I think.

As you can see, there’s now a smart new sea wall and hundreds of tons of rocks have been dumped on the beach beneath the wall in an effort to break the wild seas up and protect the wall. It’s a process which has been very successful in villages a bit further along the coastline.

And above is a photo of the small pipe band which proceeded from the west to the east of the promenade for the opening. The work was started when we were still living in Kirkcaldy and as the prom walk was one of our regular exercise routes we were sad not to be able to go along it for so long but Jack photographed the work in progress and you can see some of them here.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Monthly Archives: January 2015