Holiday Miscellany

Yes, this is the staggeringly photogenic village we stayed in for a week. Stunning, old-world charm, all that Guide Verte palaver. And, much to my surprise, at no point did we stumble across a Boden photo-shoot complete with toothily beaming blondes in casual slouchy moleskin trousers and jaunty Fair-Isle tanktop playing boules with toothless old men ("Amelia: My favourite colour is : The colour of my boyfriend's wallet!").
HOWEVER there are several drawbacks to the exquisite charms of a mediaeval village that the cautious traveller should know about. Firstly, I defy you to try manoeuvring any vehicle larger than a skateboard through those picturesque arches. I spent many a happy hour leaning out of the passenger side of our hired Renault Sardine-Tin tucking the wing-mirror in and yelling "You're fine... you're fine... seriously, you've got at least two inches here...". And this is a left-hand drive hire-car, so I'm feeling strangely empowered by sitting on the side I always think of (at home) as The Seat Of Power, and getting all bossy as a result. At one point as we went the giddyingly "wrong" way round a roundabout (yes, of course it was the right way for France, it just felt wrong) I said "Mind the kerb!" once too often, prompting Mr F to say (for the first time ever) "Oh please just leave me alone" in a tone of utter exhaustion.
Another drawback was the fact that, while it did indeed boast (yes, boast) two boulangeries, a butcher and a general store, all of these were MASSIVELY overpriced, because they were well aware that any and all visitors to their bijou hamlet were going to be not only well-heeled but also unable to get anywhere else in a hurry. We cheated our way round it by heading for the gigantic LeClerc supermarket every morning to stock up on reasonably priced loo-roll etc (I swear, around £1.25 in the supermarket, somewhere around £4 for four rolls of basic in the shop. For that price I'd want it hand-hemmed in lace by Belgian nuns).
I should point out we did, in fact, have a lovely time. Apart from the two days where it rained nearly horizontally, forcing us indoors off the sunny grapevine-bedecked terrace and into the tiny sitting-room, where the only TV channels were English (which in itself tells you a lot about the main holiday lets they do), and found ourselves watching "The Hairy Bikers Do Wales" or something similar. But apart from those two days of strangely deja-vu British-style cottage holiday-ness, it was fantastic. Our main concern (apart from the extraordinary muscularity of the Euro; HOW MUCH?????) was how to get through a bottle of Calvados in a week so as not to leave any behind or to make the concierge think we were alcoholics by leaving an empty bottle (we snuck it out and hid it in a bin).

Turn on, tune in, get tetchy

Technology is very unforgiving to the sizeable proportion of the population who can't afford to upgrade to a widescreen TV, or HD TV, or Blu-Ray, etc etc etc. I was watching something or other last night and realised, at a vital point in the plot where a RELEVANT PIECE OF INFORMATION was shown, I could only see the middle section because the picture was cut off at the sides. I got unreasonably grumpy about this, and actually found myself making "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" noises out loud - along the lines of "Well! They'd better not think I'm going to rush out and buy some vastly expensive piece of widescreen kit just because they're bullying me into it, oh no."... more or less what I was saying 15-20 years ago (my memory is hazy) about upgrading from vinyl/cassette to CD. However. It does have some diverting side-effects, such as the fact that the onscreen guide can't fit long programme titles side by side, so overlaps them. Curious hybrids we have sadly been unable to to watch include:

Real Housewives Of The Bill
Britain's Sexiest Newsnight
The X-Files: I Want To Meet The Fockers
Three Men And a Little Taxi Driver
I Know What You Did In Bruges
Slap Her, She's Being John Malkovitch
The Lion, The Witch, And Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Shrek (an all-star cast in that one!)

And, doubtless, many many more. (late addition: here are some of them)
Sleeping With Dirt
Churchill's Antiques Roadshow
Unseen Russia For God's Sake
Masterchef The Hairy Gary Rhodes
Holy Warriors: Richard The Disappearing
Oblivion: The Ten Biggest Hits Of The 90s
Liar Liar The Bachelor
I Now Pronounce You Chuck And The Breakfast Club

Unfortunately since the remote (or, as we and many millions of others call it, "the doofer") has pretty much ceased to work, we may be forced into buying a giant flat slab of LCD and hang it on the wall as if it's some kind of artwork. Sigh.

Dummies' Guide to the Booker longlist

(with grateful thanks to Mr Fishwife for his contributions)
So many books, so little time. I present here the easy crib notes for the vast quantity of (some of them also vast) books on this year's Booker longlist. Yes, I know it's the Man Booker really, but I hate calling it that, and I have actually been asked twice "Is there a Woman Booker prize too?". So don't bother reading them: amaze your friends and astound your colleagues with these nuggets of information*.

A S Byatt "The Children's Book" : Not many people know that A S Byatt was approached to continue Enid Blyton's much-loved Noddy series. This book is about Noddy and his desperate but hilarious attempts to find Big Ears's lost teaspoon! (warning: contains scenes of incest and sniper action).

J M Coetzee "Summertime": Reproduces faithfully the first school essay J M Coetzee (or "Johnny" as he was then) wrote about wot he done in the school holidays. Apparently his father's sandcastle-building skills weren't up to much, but the ice creams were delicious. He got an A-.

Adam Foulds "The Quickening Maze": Honestly, the faster you try to get out, the more lost you get. Just keep turning left.

Sarah Hall "How To Paint a Dead Man": It's a doddle. They don't fidget like live models do. Just make sure you keep the windows open and the central heating off.

Samantha Harvey "The Wilderness": Could really do with a pergola and some radical pruning to those brambles, otherwise fine. Maybe a water feature?

James Lever "Me Cheeta": Yu lose tu me at cards. I taik yur money.

Hilary Mantel "Wolf Hall": Hotly tipped to be this year's winner. The prequel to her spellbinding "Who Let The Wolves Out?"

Simon Mawer "The Glass Room": Lovely to look at, nice to hold, but if you break it, we say "sold"!

Ed O'Loughlin "Not Untrue And Not Unkind": true, and kind.

James Scudamore "Heliopolis": The renaming of Sun City has almost doubled its tourist income!

Colm Toibin "Brooklyn": Not a lot of people know that Brooklyn is a bit like Hoxton. Bit of a schlep on the Metro though. If I were you I'd stay in the Village.

William Trevor "Love And Summer": See above, for Coetzee. Billy Trevor was a little older, though, and as a result this touchingly ill-written account of wot he done on his summer holidays with next door's Dutch au pair contained language the teacher felt it better not to read aloud. He got a D.

Sarah Waters "The Little Stranger": "Darling? Darling? I thought all Saffy's party guests had gone home? Hmm? ...No, he says he's waiting for his mummy. Well we must have invited him, he's got a party bag and everything..."

*Disclaimer: some of the information contained in this post may be (wildly) inaccurate and is not for quotation or press distribution until a finished copy is issued.

Nuptials, saucy Restoration poetry, and the return of Gertie Blood.

So, sunny summer weddings. Are they great or what? Particularly when the bride (let us call her Steak, for she is a vegetarian) concludes her touching speech of love to her new husband with the words ".. and I can't wait to start my life with you and start having lots of pasty little ginger freaks." The groom (let us call him Kidney), a more or less dead ringer for Frankie Boyle (or either of the Proclaimers), did a "fair comment" kind of shrug. Could any love be greater? Not a dry eye in the Gladstone Library of the Liberal Club. My only quibble was with the three flights of giant stairs one had to navigate in either direction to have a cigarette - surely if I provided proof I voted Lib Dem I'd be allowed to light up under the vast oil painting of Winston "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" Churchill? Sadly (and, in fact, legally) no. Not even in the vast Edwardian grandeur of the Smoking Room.

How stately and gorgeous is that? Less so when you've been up and down it 100000 times because the lift is full of band equipment...

Highlights of the day (for me) included some random tourists approaching the bride on the lawn outside and asking if she'd take a picture, er, of them. "I'm a little busy right now", she said, as if the long sparkly white dress hadn't given it away. And the bride's sister-in-law saying "Yes, the hen weekend in Newcastle was great, except that Sir Bobby Davro had just died so all the football fans were in mourning"*.

My part in this excellent day was the reading of "The Good Morrow" by John Donne. Complicated not at all by my fear that I would blush in an unseemly way on reading the line "Suck'd we on country pleasures childishly?" - yes, I know, I know, we're all grownups, but frankly John Donne meant it to be a tad racy (as any student of Shakespeare kno, reference to "country pleasures" and "country matters" are generally intended to be a euphemism). Luckily I was so enthralled by the sheer loveliness of my own voice in the scholarly setting of the Gladstone Library that I failed to even clear my throat. Although I took the precaution of looking at Steak throughout (smiling radiantly yet tearfully like a proper bride), rather than Kidney, who would have gurned at me.

HOWEVER. All weddings have that moment where you bump into someone and realise you knew them years ago; in my case, while sneaking into an empty sideroom (trying to find a balcony rather than brave the stairs for the billionth time), who should I see gazing down at me from the wall but the lovely Lady Colin Campbell (aka Gertie Blood). She's been gracing my sidebar (as have Steak & Kidney) for over a year now, and I've got used to dropping into the National Gallery to say hello every now and then - but there she was.

Surely that has to be an excellent omen of something.

* Note for non-football fans - Sir Bobby Robson = recently deceased giant of British football, latterly much-loved manager of Newcastle United. Bobby Davro = mediocre TV impressionist. Non-deceased, non-giant, non-much-loved.

Targeted by psychopaths

I may have mentioned before how much I love the Internet. Maybe several times, who knows? There's a wonderful birthdayish feel about ordering things, paying for them, forgetting about them, and then a week or two later getting lots of presents in the post. However. I seem to have become the target, recently, for any and every pointless "homeware" catalogue the postie can shove through our letterbox. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my address has been pimped out by somebody I actually subscribe to (Lakeland, I still love you!! Call me!!), so can only assume it was a one-night-stand (i.e. something I bought for Christmas from some company I'll never use again) who has stitched me up like this. I religiously tick every box that says "I do NOT wish to be contacted with exciting offers by your carefully-chosen partner companies thank you very much, now or ever", but there's obviously some loophole even the pathologically cautious like me have missed.
My most recent unsolicited arrival was the catalogue for Really Linda Barker, which seems to specialise in cast-iron rabbits and "wall art". As I flicked idly through it I realised that far from being an advertisement for Ms Barker's range of metalwork chinoiserie (well, it's all made in China), it's actually one gigantic cry for help. In her own words : "Looking back through my previous collections, I've noticed I have a growing obsession with hooks, and for some reason, chickens". Which, to the trained eye, says "STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN". It's a short and fatally easy step from an obsession with hooks and chickens to ending up like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, experimenting with livestock and wearing a waistcoat of badly-cured human skin. And why restrict this worry to the otherwise wholesome-looking Linda Barker? God knows what festers in the mind of Johnnie Boden. Why does he so keenly want to share his views on feather-stitch and patent leather with you? WHY????? Is he making himself a girl-suit like Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs???
Best not to ask really.

"Oh look, there's a daisy-chain of human hands in the rigging!"

Dies Irae

I have no intention of moaning about the weather; I think it's a regrettable part of the British psyche that we are inclined to moan about whatever weather we have and yearn for what we don't. Rain is rubbish, and I think I speak for everyone when I say this (apart from ducks and gardeners - and in the latter case, hurrah! Enjoy your garden! And the fact that there hasn't yet been a hosepipe ban! In the former case, migrate already!).
I will, however, just offer you an instance under which rain and/or typically British low summer temperatures might be preferable.
Imagine you are on a journey; it is a short journey (average under one and a half hours). Between two major English cities - let's say London and Oxford. On a coach company who will remain nameless, but let's call them BUM RUBBISH CRAP BUM BUM POO Limited.
Many different choices would have been made in my life had I been in possession of all the facts before making a decision.
For example, had I been in possession of the fact (as the coach company were) that a large part of the M40 was closed off due to a lorry bursting into flames.

(Not actually this lorry. Looks dramatic though, doesn't it? It had bloody better, is all I can say.)

Or the fact that this meant that ALL traffic between the two hypothetical cities was diverted down what amounts to, frankly, a cart-track (or, as it is officially known, the A40). A very scenic and pretty road, but there's a reason it isn't the main artery between the two cities.
Or that, due to the day in question being Oxford University Open Day, every form of transport between EVERYWHERE IN BRITAIN and Oxford would be heaving with excitable teenagers absolutely bursting to get to Oxford and do their big Mary Tyler Moore twirl in the street, throw hat in the air, yes YES I'm going to take this city and make it my own... Oh you know.
In a nutshell, I ended up jammed up against a coach window while Saffy or Ottoline or Tash or whatever (pick one) spent the journey shrieking on her mobile phone, No but she's like sooo not like capable of y'know like expanding on the question, I mean I like said to her but like did Darcy and Elizabeth like DO IT and she just went like quiet and she like just can't think outside the like text as the coach crawls (or, at times, just sits) down a succession of very pretty country lanes, somewhere in the middle of a huge trail of traffic doing the same thing.
FOR FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.
I checked - at one point we took an hour to go 4 miles. I was on the verge of getting off, walking a couple of miles up the queue, and seeing if there was another coach further up. As the engine idled, so did the aircon. Saffy/Ottoline/Tash started to do that aggrieved heavy sigh thing which teenagers the world over don't seem to realise doesn't actually make things happen any faster.
Oh all right, I'll cut a long story short. We finally got to London, by which time I had the desire to kiss the tarmac, smoke five cigarettes at once, and hurl forcibly into the nearest bin the Iris Murdoch I had read twice on the journey.

On the plus side, my increasingly unhinged and rambling texts had alerted Mr Fishwife to my impending meltdown, so he had the wine ready.
I won't complain again. This is beautiful weather. Not for travellers in coaches who might have taken the train home had they been apprised of the true nature of things by the BUM RUBBISH CRAP BUM BUM POO Ltd coach company, but you know. Mustn't grumble.

It's all terminology, innit.

I may already have shocked and horrified thousands (or, let's be realistic, mildly amused tens) by quoting Mr Fishwife : "I don't see the point of fiction, myself." I should point out here that, in his defence, Mr Fishwife is an intelligent, articulate, well-read person. It's just that his idea of a good read tends to be the breeze-block-sized tome entitled Stalingrad, The Somme, or Hitler: The Dancing Years (... Obviously I made the last one up - far too frivolous). "Why would I want to read books about a bunch of people having nervous breakdowns in Islington?" was his initial defence; fair enough, I thought, me neither, although to consider this tiny tiny microcosm of the genre as representative of the whole of Fiction is to consider Betty Blue representative of all subtitled movies. The point of these books is not the plot development (surely everyone knows the name of Hitler's hairdresser by now?) but the nerdily desperate hope that this particular historian may have new material. No twists, no turns, no denouement.

HOWEVER.

Over the weekend, I enjoyably worked through not one but three works of fiction*. None of them, I might add, set in Islington. Every now and then I would look up at the television and it took me a while to notice that he was watching the same rugby match for the third time. "Haven't England already played Argentina?" I said. "Oh all right, all right," he replied defensively "You know how you like to reread a book for the style and the language? Same thing." My conclusion is that there is a frustrated literary stylist in all of us. In some people it only reveals itself as a love of the finer points of a rugby match.

* The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - excellent, very creepy in a postwar Daphne du Maurier kind of way, and unusually not a Sapphic interlude in sight.
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler - I do like her. And found myself distressingly identifying with the slightly tetchy 60-year-old male main character.
Turbulence by Giles Foden - Actually still only halfway through this one so will have to reserve judgement until I've finished. Beats Ladysmith into a cocked hat though. Up there with The Last King Of Scotland so far.

Oops

For some reason that last post came up as 23rd May. No idea why. Sorry.

More Guilty Pleasures

As promised! : Guilty Pleasures 2 - Son of Guilty Pleasures.

This one is a lot more difficult as, with film and TV, one man's guilty pleasure is another man's CULT VIEWING. These are the ones I genuinely feel slightly guilty about.

Film :

Ratatouille. God I love the rat. My secret kitchen alter ego.

Murder On The Orient Express. I spend far too much time perfecting my Wendy Hiller impersonation : "You will have the goodness to bring me.. the poached.. sole. With one small new.. poTAto. And a grrrreeen salad." And Sean Connery saying to Poirot "Can you give me your word - as a foreigner..." And, most importantly, the fact that even though Poirot works out who dunnit, he lets them off because JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED. I always get a lump in my throat at the end where they're all drinking champagne. "Her name was, I believe, a Miss FrrreeBody."

The Amazing Mr Blunden. Made in 1972 by the same crew and producers as The Railway Children, and with an amazingly similar look and feel: strangely 20-something girls playing 13-year-olds in Edwardian pinafores and tam-o-shanters. Great plot though - all about ghosts, redemption, etc... makes me cry every time. A great Bank Holiday film. Also stars Diana Dors as a gin-soaked old hag with a very stupid, very pretty, blonde daughter - slightly poignant as 20 years earlier she might have played the part herself.

TV:

Oh this is a hard one to admit to, but luckily there's just the one - My Super Sweet 16. I am so embarrassed by this that I may as well have a bag on my head as I type. I usually hate reality TV of all kinds, as while I thrive on schadenfreude I hate the fact that everybody looks a fool, a pompous twit or a bully, regardless of their intentions. I have friends who are TV editors, and I am starting to think they're probably possessed of some kind of evil genius; editing is key to how someone looks on TV. That and appropriate soundtrack (amazing what the Benny Hill theme can do to, say, a dignified solicitor or adoring parent).

The fundamental point of this programme is to show, in all its blingy horror and grotesque excess, the lengths the VERY RICH will go to to ensure that their (for the most part) unprepossessingly spoilt offspring have the best 16th birthday party of all their peers. Action is invariably as follows: scene in a vastly overpriced dress boutique (it's always a boutique, never just a shop) where daughter screams at her friends for wanting to wear the same dress. Instance of daughter shrieking "I HATE YOUUUUU" at whoever happens to be handy (parent, BFF, boyfriend). Plan for party to be Moulin Rouge themed, only to remember that cow Kelly had the same thing for hers. Sulk. New theme for party (LA Gangsta!!! Great, we can all dress in as little as possible and dance in a way that our parents will disapprove of!!!) proposed. Invitations ostentatiously only given to less pretty girls and every boy in school. Guest list lost by bouncers. Tantrum. Tantrum. High spirits, saucy dancing, embarrassingly obviously hired cast members from Hollyoaks to boost popularity rating. Boyfriend misbehaves. Tears in ladies' loo. Then the high point of the evening - DADDY'S BOUGHT ME A PORSCHE!!!!!!! Credits roll.

I'm so humiliated by admitting this that I need to lie down. Off to watch series 4 of "The Wire" now to remind myself that I do have taste really...

Guilty Pleasures (not technically a meme)

Lovely Foxy emailed me a link to a Guardian article about how top chefs secretly love crisps/salad cream etc. Actually quite fun (and secretly reassuring) to read, although I say Spot The Pseud. I don't think homemade blueberry pancakes count as guilty - doesn't a REAL guilty pleasure have to have a brand name in front of it? So as a tribute (mostly to Angela Hartnett - I think I love her) I am giving you a selection of guilty pleasures. Not really guilty pleasures, because obviously I'm too embarrassed to admit to them (lard! Marion Zimmer Bradley! "Clouds Across The Moon" by The Rah Band! Aaaaaaarghh!!!) but the socially acceptable ones...

Food : BabyBel cheese. Walker's Prawn Cocktail crisps. Fanta. Findus Crispy Pancakes. Hellmann's Mayonnaise. HP Sauce. Lemon barley water. That horrible (yet compulsive) tinned chicken supreme you can get from M&S. The chunky peanut butter KitKat. Cheap shish kebab in limp pitta with hummus and extra pickled chillies, hold the salad. Bearing in mind that I'm on a very low carb diet, most of these are things I have feverish withdrawal dreams about (as are pasta, roasties and toast).

Books : How dangerous is it when you work in a bookshop to admit that while you do mostly read interesting and worthwhile literature, sometimes you crave the book equivalent of a bag of crisps? To which end:

"Gone With the Wind" - a pot-boiler, true, but the absolute queen of pot-boilers. It has transcended its pot-boilerdom in the same way that Bizet's "Carmen" has.

-anything by Jilly Cooper - to be read behind the adult equivalent of a bikeshed, chewing your hand so you don't shriek out loud with delighted schadenfreude as she blithely describes inner-city comp school children as "black and terribly sweet really", and play Spot The Hero (he's inevitably the one with a dog - also English, posh, charmingly slobbish) Or Villain (foreign, greasy, cruel to animals, into kinky sex).

And. With a deep breath, I will admit that I am currently sniggering in secret over "Fools Rush In" by Anthea Turner. It was notorious in my W*terstone's days as the book that sold about 47 copies nationwide (well, in W*terstone's, anyway), never even made it into paperback, and ended up mostly pulped. It is, nonetheless, an object of awful majesty. It cost me 1p plus p+p on Amazon. Not only is it a testament to the most hilariously twee, self-congratulatory personality I've ever come across, but it is also ghostwritten - and even that didn't stop it being compellingly terrible. Only a genuine fool would ask a very very bad chick-lit writer to ghost her autobiography. Some choice phrases: "My little hand strayed to the chocolate box" (she's in her 30s at this point), "My eyes filled with tears as I watched him drive away in his Jaguar" (good to know that as your One True Love drives out of your life you can appreciate a fine automobile) , "The gentle British holidaymakers (this is in Magaluf! - ed.) were devastated by the news of Princess Diana's death. I gave them what comfort I could." She also has a disturbing tendency to refer to her more successful sexual encounters with the phrase "It was good to be in experienced hands". I am torn between recommending it (seriously, it's a whole Fray Bentos steak 'n' kidney pie of awfulness) and really not wanting to give it any more press than this. Examine your consciences. 1p on Amazon. I will say no more.

Music/TV/Film: - I think I'll do that next time. I'm exhausted by the literary equivalent of a binge on salad cream and tinned pineapple rings.