I’m thrilled to be granny of another wee girl, baby Imogen, a sister for Isobel. This time around we were able to go to Edinburgh to see her in the hospital. Isobel was a pandemic baby so we didn’t get to see her for a month. Isobel is very happy to have a baby sister, just what she wanted.
The Book of Beginnings by Sally Page was just published last year and it’s a Sunday Times best seller, I tend not to read many best sellers, I read about this one on a blog recently though and decided to get it from the library. I’m really glad that I did as it ended up being an uplifting read.
Jo had recently been dumped by James, her boyfriend of six years. It’s only then that she realises that nobody else liked him, but she had been besotted with James and had neglected old friends to be with him and his even more obnoxious cronies. What is worse is that Jo had been desperate to start a family and now she feels time running out for her, she’s in her late 30s and James had been several years younger than her. As they had worked at the same company it seemed a good idea to leave that job, and Jo travels to London to help out at her uncle’s stationery shop while he is in hospital. It’s a place that she has fond memories of as she used to help her uncle there during school holidays.
The work, stationery bits and pieces, and the customers she meets in the shop begin to have a healing effect on Jo, especially two of them who become close friends, despite them being quite a bit older. One of them Jo has recognised from the TV news, Ruth is a runaway vicar – what is she running from? Malcolm is over 70, but is still haunted by a decision he had made in the past. He also has an interest in Highgate Cemetery which is nearby, and his project draws the three of them into close companionship which begins to heal them all.
I really enjoyed this one.
It was my friend Cecilia who sent me a You Tube link to Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy’s hilarious but oh so true to life desciption of a ceilidh, or Scottish country dance.
The comments are amusing too as so many people have had exactly that experience. I know I have! Thanks Cecilia.
The Tenement by the Scottish author Iain Crichton Smith was published in 1985. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed by it as there aren’t really any likeable characters, until almost right at the end. The tenement of the title is past its best, it’s over 100 years old and hasn’t been well maintained over the years. There are six flats within the building and over the years there has been quite a lot of coming and going and nowadays the inhabitants don’t mix with each other much. The setting is a small coastal town in Scotland.
Mrs Miller has lived there the longest, she had been widowed early in her married life and she’s now 80 and drinks a lot. Mr Porter’s wife dies and it’s only then that he realises how unhappy he had made her by the decisions he had taken over the years, he only appreciates her after her death.
Mr Cameron beats his wife up every weekend, and nobody does anything about it.
I found this book to be quite a miserable read, which might be entirely my fault as somehow I was expecting something completely different. I think the only other books with the setting of a tenement building is the funny and heart-warming ‘McFlannels’ series by Helen W. Pryde. I got the impression that Crichton Smith didn’t think much of the type of people who lived in tenements. According to Wiki elderly women and alienated individuals were common themes in his writing. He was however predominantly a poet.
Depite being born in Glasgow his widowed mother moved to the Isle of Lewis when he was only two years old. I was amazed to read that Crichton Smith had become an English teacher and taught in Dumbarton around the time that I was at school there. I can only presume that he taught in the local boarding school for boys.
Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin was first published in 1959 but has just been reprinted by Faber. It’s subtitled Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday.
Meg is the youngest by far of three sisters, but it seems that she is the one who has to come to the rescue of her sisters who are feckless and disorganised (Isabel) and highly strung (Mildred).
Isabel has rented a caravan in an English coastal resort, but she sends Meg a telegram which says that Mildred needs help, please come.
Meg’s newish boyfriend isn’t keen for her to go as he feels that she’s always having to sort out her sisters’ problems, which she is. But Meg can’t ignore the call for help and when she gets to the holiday resort – Southcliffe – she is amazed to discover that Mildred has rented the very cottage which she had spent her honeymoon in years earlier, when Meg was just a little girl of six. In fact ‘Uncle Paul’ as Meg had called her brother-in-law had been arrested for the murder of his previous wife while they were at that cottage.
This was a really enjoyable read which had for me a couple of surprising twists at the end.
It’s a bit late on on Burns Night, but better late than never. Below is a photo of a facsimile of a drawing of Robert Burns by Archibald Skirving. I was born a Skirving and there aren’t that many of us about, so although I have never bothered to look up my family tree I just assume that any other Skirvings are related to me ‘through a drainpipe’ as they say in the north of England. As it happens Archibald looked very like one of my uncles, but I don’t think Archibald had any children himself. Anyway, I think his drawing of Burns is really good.
I managed to buy this from eBay in the form of a nice booklet.
We were given a couple of jigsaw puzzles at Christmas. This one was particularly for Jack as it’s of Boghead in Dumbarton, and a house builder bought the ground years ago, so this was a real nostalgia trip as Jack has supported Dumbarton FC since he was a lad, it’s a tough life!
As ever, about ten minutes into the jigsaw I wondered if it was a wise thing to do so soon after another puzzle!
It was a strange one as we had presumed that the sky and pitch would be the really difficult bits, but it turned out that it was all the supporters that we puzzled over the most. Anyway, it was very satisfying when we each took a corner of the last piece and slid it into place – and we didn’t even have to have a frantic last minute search of the carpet for a missing piece.
Over the years so many old football grounds have been bought up by house builders, it looks like this puzzle company is making a good business from the nostalgia of the older fans. Even I used to go to the matches as a youngster as there wasn’t much else to do on a Saturday unless you took the train to Glasgow to do some shopping. My pal and I used to ask a couple of likely looking men if they would lift us over the turnstile, and they always obliged. You couldn’t do that nowadays with the modern turnstiles. Yes it was aptly named as it was indeed a very boggy pitch. I remember during the 1970s when there was basically a paddling pool stretching across the whole of the middle of the pitch and the players just played through it.
Pretty Young Rebel The Life of Flora MacDonald by Flora Fraser was published by Bloomsbury recently, I borrowed it from the library. I hadn’t read anything by Flora Fraser before but apparently she is an award winning biographer, and I can see why.
About half of this book is set in the Highlands/Islands of Scotland and I must say that considering everyone knows that ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ did escape to safety the author manages to convey an atmosphere of tension, fear and danger. I don’t think I had realised before that it was Flora MacDonald’s step-father who had volunteered her for the job of helping the prince to escape. A job that no doubt none of the men wanted to do because if caught they would definitely have been executed.
I was impressed by the behaviour of the prince, he seems to have been brave and stoical, despite the hellish weather conditions that had to be endured during his long and hazardous journey before his escape.
I must admit though that it was the second half of the book which I was most interested in reading because it was only a few years ago that I realised that Flora MacDonald had emigrated to North Carolina – but had gone back home again after a few years.
Sadly Flora hadn’t chosen wisely when it came to getting married, her husband Allan was a complete liability, not that she ever seems to have complained about him. In theory he was a good bet, he was well educated and certainly had good prospects, but his business plans always failed. He ran through all of Flora’s money and ended up being heavily in debt to many people. With so many people in the Highlands and Islands emigrating to America Flora and Allan decided to join them. Again Allan wasn’t wise in his business dealings, but what was worse was that the fighting between Crown and ‘rebels’ wasn’t long in arriving at their door and Allan had plumped to support King George. He went around gathering support on that side from other Highland emigrants and when a lot of the men ended up being killed both Allan and Flora were very unpopular with the widows and families.
After that ‘the rebels’ started attacking their farm and stealing anything they fancied including all the farm tools and household goods. It was time to go home to Scotland, which they did, with almost nothing to their name, and having to rely on the charity of old friends. Still, Flora seems not to have been bitter about things, but maybe she just kept her thoughts to herself!
Anyway, this was a great read by an author who has in the past won prizes for her biographies.
I got notification from my local library that six books which I had reserved were waiting for me to pick them up. Of course I didn’t expect them all to arrive at the same time, and honestly at least half of them meant nothing to me, they must have been late night blog recommendations!
I remembered that two of them were for the 1937 Club which is in April.
The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov (1937)
The Years by Virginia Woolf (1937)
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (I’ve been swithering about reading this one for a while)
The Book of Beginnings by Sally Page (a Sunday Times bestseller – not my normal fare)
Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin (vintage crime)
Three Women and a Boat by Anne Youngson ( a BBC Radio 2 book club pick)
I’ve already finished reading The Book of Beginnings, which features a stationery shop. I’m sure that was what attracted me to it, and I really enjoyed it. Have you read any of these books?
I have to admit that I was surprised when I saw the author K.M. Peyton’s obituary in The Guardian this morning, mainly because I had just assumed that she had died years ago, she was 94 years old. I loved her Flambards books and the 1979 TV series which was based on them. I must admit that I hadn’t realised that she wrote a lot more books than those ones over the years. I don’t recall seeing any others on my trawls around second-hand bookshops.
To another subject – last week.
I suppose it had to happen, but after managing to dodge COVID for four years it caught up with us last week, after what had been the quietest week we had had for about a month. We only went to the library and the supermarket, both of which were really quite empty. Anyway, we survived and after three really horrible days of constant headache, coughing and exhaustion the symptoms eased off and we’re just about back to normal now.
The variant that we got obviously managed to dodge the vaccination as Jack had only got his booster last month, I wasn’t eligible, but he was just as ill as I was. I’ve been told that it is people who had managed to stay COVID free who are getting it now, apparently it was inevitable. It wasn’t a great start to the new year but I suppose it could have been worse! In one way it’s really good as with the imminent arrival of our second grandchild at least it menas that we don’t have to worry about passing it on to the new baby when it arrives as we should be immune for a while now.