Duff House, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 10 September 2024 by Katrina

We’ve been doing a lot of travelling around over the summer, and I haven’t blogged about most of our visits to places. It was back in July that we travelled up to the north-east of Scotland to Aberdeenshire for a few days and one of the places we went to was Duff House, doesn’t it look fab?! You can read about it here.

Over the years it has been used as a private home, a hotel, sanatorium and prisoner-of- war camp. It was designed by William Adam, father of Robert. As often happens, the owner William Duff and the architect fell out and the house was never completed to the original plans. The house was built between 1735 and 1740.

Apparently I took 44 photos of the inside of the house, I’ll just inflict a few of them on you. Below is the library which might have looked entirely different in its heyday as the owners of the house decided that they didn’t want to live there, they had a better house! They gave the house away but sold most of the contents, so it has been furnished from elsewhere.

The dining room.

The house is now in the care of Historic Scotland and is part of the National Galleries of Scotland so it has a great collection of art. It’s well worth going to see even although it is fairly far flung from most people in the UK.

The architect William Adam lived in Kirkcaldy, just a stone’s throw from where we used to live, but someone in ‘authority’ at the council way back decreed that the Adam house should be demolished – and so it was – there is now just a boulder where the house was with a sign on it saying Gladney House was here! This is how it looked.

Storm by Kevin Crossley-Holland a Carnegie Medal winner

Posted on 7 September 2024 by Katrina

Storm by Kevin Crossley-Holland won the Carnegie Medal in 1985. I have a bit of an ongoing personal project going, to read as many of these medal winners as I can. This one has been utilised as a Reading Ladder book, presumably some sort of educational tool. This has whittled the pages down to just 46 and as it’s heavily illustrated it’s a very quick read indeed, and unlike any of the other Carnegie Medal winners that I’ve previously read.

Annie is a young girl who lives with her parents in a remote country area, her much older sister Willa is married and living in a town three bus journeys away, but she is going to be having a baby soon, and her husband who works away from home isn’t able to get home in time for the birth. It’s almost Christmas and Willa makes the journey to her parents’ house.Despite the age difference the sisters get on well, and Willa is able to tell Annie the details of a local ghost story about a man who had been murdered by highwaymen near the ford – hundreds of years ago.

Three days later a terrific storm arrives, and it looks like Willa’s baby is determined to arrive too, but the phone lines are down so they can’t get through to the hospital.

Annie is sent out into the storm to fetch the local doctor, she’s frightened of meeting the ghost, but a horseman picks her up and takes her to the doctor’s house, and all is well.

I think that this book has been somewhat shortened, edited to fit the Reading Ladder. It’s a well written story, and I like the illustrations which are by Alan Marks, but I’m not sure about pushing ghost stories onto children, so I find it to be a strange choice for the Carnegie Medal. I hope their teachers tell them that ghosts aren’t real!

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor

Posted on 5 September 2024 by Katrina

Roll of Thunder, Here My Cry and Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor were published in 1976 and 1981 in the USA. I read editions from the Puffin Plus series. Thanks Jennifer for these ones, I hadn’t even heard of the author before.

The first one begins in 1933 in America’s deep south. Mississippi. It’s a tough time for farmers but particularly for black farmers, but the Logan family are a bit better off than most of their neighbours who are only sharecroppers. The Logans actually own their land, but the wealthy white landowner who owns the land adjoining theirs is determined to get their land for himself.

Cassie Logan is the only girl in her family, she has three brothers and lives with her parents and her grandmother. Her father is having to work away from home for most of the time though, so that he can earn money on the railroad, that money pays the annual tax which is due on his land.

Life is difficult for the children too, just getting to school in the morning is a nightmare as they have to walk on what is often a muddy track, having to try to dodge the white children’s bus as the driver is determined to splash them with mud while the white children cheer. Life for the black people is just one humiliation after another, but it’s the night riders (Ku Klux Klan) who terrify the black people. Just a rumour of ‘disrespect’ from a black person could end up with them being lynched or burnt out. Cassie has a lot to learn, and none of it makes sense. This one won the Newbery Medal.

Let the Circle be Unbroken is set two years later. Things are even worse for the black people now, the Depression is biting deeper and the ‘solutions’ put forward by the government are only making things worse, especially for sharecroppers. Granger, the main white landowner is conning the Logan family out of money which was due to them from the government and Cassie’s mother has lost her teaching job.

Mr Morrison has become part of the Logan household, he’s over seven feet tall and Cassie’s father won’t worry so much about his family while he is away on the railroad work. But it’s young T.J. Avery who gets into big trouble. He’s a young black neighbour and is rather full of himself. When a couple of white lads befriend him you just know it’s going to end in tears.

Stacey Logan, the eldest son decides that he is going to leave and find work elsewhere, but he just runs off and they hear nothing from him, everyone fears the worst.

These are both really good reads, if somewhat depressing, as in some ways things don’t seem to be getting a lot better for the black people in the deep south of the US.

Niebert Windmill, Netherlands

Posted on 4 September 2024 by Katrina

The Niebert Windmill is still used for grinding flour, and you can watch it being ground, then buy some of it for your baking.

This is a very tall windmill, I think there are six staircases inside it and we went up them all. In the Netherlands most stairs resemble ladders, they are incredibly steep, even within private homes, often it feels safer to go down them backwards as then you can hold on to the step as well as the handrail.

The windmill is part working mill and part museum. You can watch flour being ground in some Scottish mills too, but ours are run by water power so don’t feature sails.

It was incredibly windy up there and although I’m not usually bothered by heights, this was scary as the fence is very small and it felt too easy to get blown over it. I didn’t stay there long! Somehow in the photo it doesn’t look at all high but six ‘ladders’ can’t lie! The flag is the Groningen state flag.

Crathie Kirk, Ballater, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 2 September 2024 by Katrina

We visited Crathie Kirk in Ballater for the first time when we visited Aberdeenshire a few weeks ago. I had of course seen it often on TV as it’s the nearest church to Balmoral, but somehow its surroundings didn’t look like I had imagined them to be. Unfortunately by the time we got there the kirk was closed.

There’s something more than a wee bit Scandinavian about the design of this wee church I think. Scottish churches aren’t known for having porches at all, but it’s an attractive design, and as the area is well known for rough weather it’s a handy place to shake off the rain or snow.

I didn’t tarry long at the back of the church as a large barking mad dog ran out of the undergrowth heading straight for me. No doubt he thought he was defending his territory, I quickly snapped the photo below and departed!

It’s a short walk over a bridge spanning the River Dee below, which leads to the gates of Balmoral.

As you can see we had really great weather while we were away.

People were just coming out of the gates when we got there, it was closing for the day. Maybe next time we’ll go to Balmoral first and have a walk around the grounds.

The gates have GR and MR on them for King George V and Queen Mary.

20 Books of Summer 2024

Posted on 1 September 2024 by Katrina

I completed 20 Books of Summer, in fact I probably read getting on for 30 books in that time, but a few of them were for young adults so they were fairly quick reads. Only about half of the books that I read were on my original list. With requested books coming from the library I had to concentrate on those ones. I had an unusual fail when I got to about half way through Maugham’s Cakes and Ale as the chapters went back to the beginning and there was no sign of the last half of the book – so annoying! My copy of the book is about 50 years old, it’s not the first time that I’ve had a problem like that. One of my old books has two halves of entirely different books in it. I thought it would be easy to get another copy of Cakes and Ale from the library, and it should have been but so far it hasn’t arrived.

So these are the books that I read and managed to review:

1. The Wrench by Primo Levi (for The Classics Club)

2. The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory

3. Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

4. Post After Post-Mortem by E.C.R. Lorac

5. The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean

6. Gideon Ahoy by William Mayne

7. Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud

8. Dissolution by C.J. Sansom

9. The Secrets of Blythswood Square by Sara Sheridan

10. Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean

11. Mayland Hall by Doreen Wallace

12. The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon

13. The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden

14. Making It Up by Penelope Lively

15. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

16. Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

17. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

18. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

19. The Hemlock Cure by Joanne Burn

20. The Fall of Kelvin Walker by Alasdair Gray

Looking back it seems like a lot longer than three months since I read some of them. Five were by authors that I hadn’t read before: William Mayne, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Doreen Wallace, Esther Freud and Yasunari Kawabata. I would probably read more books by all of those ones. The only author that I will probably avoid in the future is Philippa Gregory as her grip on known historical facts is poor, possibly deliberately so. When an author writes about Mary, Queen of Scots having black hair you have to wonder about them and all the other details within the books.

Anyway, June was a very wet month this year and July and August weren’t an awful lot better, I’m glad that I had plenty of books to keep me busy.

Thank you Cathy @ She Reads Novels for hosting this again.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders – 20 Books of Summer

Posted on 30 August 2024 by Katrina

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders is a continuation of E. Nesbit’s book Five Children and It. This book was first published in 2014.

It begins with a prologue set in London in 1905. Cyril, Anthea, Jane, Robert and the Lamb had found the Psammead, a sand fairy, a desert god from the times before the ancient Egyptians. He’s a cantankerous brown furry grump with a small stout body, eyes on stalks and long arms and legs, he usually lives in hot sand and any hint of dampness near him causes him terrible pain. He had been sleeping for years but the children decide to wake him up, the Psammead has the power to grant wishes. They ask him to take them to the future, somwehere quite near, and they end up in 1930, in the home of their old friend the Professor where they see some photos of themselves as they will be as adults, but they aren’t all in the photos, it’s a bit of a puzzle. Of course the older children are just the correct age to be involved in the First World War, and the Psammead whisks some of them to the Western Front.

I’m usually not all that mad keen on continuations written by a different author, but I think this idea really works, inevitably it is a bit sad, but realistic.

At one point (chapter 10) the children and the Psammead go to see the play Peter Pan. The Psammead is thrilled by it, especially when the audience is asked to clap if they believe in fairies. I was almost as thrilled as the Psammead. J.M. Barrie is a much underrated author nowadays.

You can read Linda Buckley-Archer’s review of the book in The Guardian here.

Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs

Posted on 29 August 2024 by Katrina

Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs (of The Snowman fame) was published in 1998, it’s the biography of his parents’ lives and relationship and it’s a delight. At just 102 pages of mainly illustrations I read through it very quickly and then turned back to the beginning again to savour his charming and so detailed illustrations.

Ethel was working in service for two snooty looking women when she fell for Ernest who often waved to her as he cycled past her employers’ home. Ernest is a milkman and the two of them decide to get married and buy a home of their own. The illustrations show them looking around the empty house as Ethel wonders if they can afford it, and bit by bit you can see them gathering furniture and ‘stuff’ to make their quite large nest. Sadly after Ethel has a tough time giving birth to Raymond they are told to have no more children. Ernest says, but we wanted a proper family! It wasn’t to be.

Apart from all the landmarks in a couple’s life such as Ethel being thrilled to have a gas copper for washing the clothes in, there are also all the stand out moments such as the BBC announcing that we were at war in 1939. Then all the preparations involved in that, the gas mask, building an Anderson shelter in the garden, a Morrison’s shelter in the living-room, making blackout shutters and Raymond being evacuated to safety. Just as well as their home is badly damaged in a bomb blast.

This book starts in 1930 and ends in 1971 as Ethel and Ernest both die in that year. Obviously Raymond’s life appears in the book too. It’s a real love letter to both of his parents in their memory. They come across as being a lovely couple, so human and quite different from each other in outlook, with Ethel beinng a bit of a snob, as befits an ex ‘ladies maid’. Ernest is all for the working man.

I’m just amazed that in 1930 a milkman could afford to buy a large terraced Edwardian house with living-room, dining-room, four bedrooms, scullery, kitchen AND bathroom. They lived in that house all their 41 years together. Apparently this book has been made into an animated film, that seems so fitting.

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Posted on 27 August 2024 by Katrina

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson is the second novel by the author and it was published in 1997. I must admit that it’s a while since I read this one, I’ve put off reviewing it as although I like her writing I find it very difficult to write about. I now realise of course that I should have done it while it was clearer in my mind. As often happens in Atkinson’s books the action slips between different times, so this is a bit of a conglomeration of historical fiction, mystery, time travel and also has a 1960s setting in the village of Lythe which is very ancient.

Isobel is the narrator, she’s 16 and has a brother Charles. They have been abandoned by both their parents. Their mother apparently ran off with her boyfriend and their father couldn’t cope and left them, supposedly looking for their mother, but when he comes back seven years later he has brought a new wife with him.

It was their mother’s sister who looked after them, she had given up her home and moved in with them, and was a bit surplus to requirements when an actual step-mother arrived. Their grandmother is also part of the household. From time to time Isobel slips back to the Lythe of Shakespeare’s time.

The book is ful of Scottishisms, you would never know that Atkinson wasn’t born and brought up in Scotland. I believe she went to Edinburgh to study when she was 18 – and stayed, but according to an interview which appeared in the Guardian she regards herself as Yorkshire through and through!

Now 72, and having lived in Scotland for many years, she’s clear that this vision of Englishness – still cleaved to by nationalist politicians – is very much a south-of-the-border issue. Her own identity, she insists, lies in neither country: “I’m not English. I’m from Yorkshire. It’s different.” She left after she wrote Behind the Scenes at the Museum, “but when I die, open me up and Yorkshire will be carved on my heart”.

You can read the full interview with Alex Clark here.

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar – 20 Books of Summer

Posted on 26 August 2024 by Katrina

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar was first published in 2018 and I think I’ve had it since then, waiting to be read, it’s one of my 20 Books of Summer. I must admit that I did have a few qualms at times about this book but I ended up really enjoying it. The qualms were because I’m one of those people that prefers to have the bedroom action in books staying in the bedroom with the reader staying on the other side of the door.

The book is set in 1785/86 and Jonah Hancock is a merchant and ship owner, he’s waiting for word of one of his ships to reach him, it’s always a fraught time as so many ships are wrecked and never heard of again. This time his ship has not arrived but its captain Tysoe Jones has, telling Jonah that he has sold his ship so that he could buy a ‘mermaid’. Jonah is dumbfounded but Tysoe explains that the oddity will make him a fortune as people will pay good money to see a mermaid. In truth it’s a dried up and ugly impish thing, but Tysoe is correct and people come from far and wide to see it.

Jonah Hancock had led a quiet and blameless life for almost twenty years since his wife’s death in childbirth along with his baby son, but he is now catapulted into high society, a place of sex, sin and debauchery. Very young women are exploited by older women, who sell their bodies to wealthy men but the girls get nothing except clothes, board and lodging.

So bawds and bawdy houses feature in this book, some quirky but believable characters, and some problems which are still with us nowadays. The exploitation of young women, by other women as well as men. This was a good read though.

Pining for the West

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Author Archives: Katrina