31 stranger

Social media, nothing stranger.
Possible apocalyptic nuclear wipe out just around the corner.
Let's all post pictures of pumpkins.

page 31 word 31 stranger
Tender is the Night
F.Scott Fitzgerald.

And all of his stories have that tender spot, that bruising at the centre, a kind of despair, barely discernible amongst the flapping and drinking and craziness of obscene wealth and lives idling in some glamourous lay-by in the South of France or Long Island. 

This has been a challenging project but having to overcome the sometimes tedium and often having to search for even a few words has been good training for NaNoWriMo which starts tomorrow. I will be doing it and I'm going to try my hardest to be doing it every single day. I won't be trying to reach the word target of 50,000 but hopefully I'll be able to match my last year's total of 16,000. It all depends on how the story unfolds.

30 lane

There was a lane at the back of our old house in Queens Road. It ran up from Auntie Anne's in Baldwin Road, up past our houses, then round to the right and out into Queens Road further up. We used to call it The Alley. Right outside our house was a bomb shelter, a square, red brick building - but as I think about it now, it wasn't under ground so what use would it have been? There was a small bit of open ground next to it, where my dad used to keep his old car and where all the neighbours used to contribute regularly to bonfires. That's where I found the letter.


page 31 word 30 lane
The Wishing Chair Again 
Enid Blyton  - 

And appropriately, to echo this childhood memory, here is one of my beloved childhood books by my most beloved author Enid Blyton. Quite a few years ago some idiot educationalists decided that Blyton was a terrible influence on us and banned her books from public libraries and not because of the Golly. No. Because those of us who read and loved and lived and breathed  the Famous Five were exposed to dangerous upper class values which might have given us poor working class children the impression that the majority of other kids had parents who owned small islands off the coast of Cornwall, went to boarding school and loved it, had boats and endless holidays and adventures and drank only ginger beer and ate only thick ham sandwiches  and chunks of home made fruit cake cut by plump and kindly farmers wives, and had ice cream all the time, except Timmy the dog because it was a waste of time giving an ice to Timmy as he just gulped it all down in one and went off camping in caves where they made wonderful beds out of armfulls of fragrant springy heather and feasted off tinned sardines and tinned peaches and ....it is Enid Blyton I have to thank for my lifelong love of books and what they can be to us. Hurrah!

29 talk

Less is always much much more.




page 31 word 29 talk

The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro

Stunningly written and hauntingly sad story which I read just after one of his other books, Never Let Me Go. I love being melancholy in a too sad to cry sort of way. But I have yet to finish The Unconsoled as I ran out of courage. I will return. The Remains of the Day was also adapted into a superb film, which again involved Emma Thompson, this time acting opposite Anthony Hopkins. This film is second on my list of those that made me weep, the first on the list also involves Anthony Hopkins but that's another story.

28 clothes

I still have those flared pants, the jersey ones
two pairs, flowery, brown and blue.
I still squeeze into them now and again
Just for old times sake.


Heartfelt thanks to my sister in law Jackie Perry for everything.


page 31 word 28 clothes 
The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
I love me some bizarre and this book is still crazy after all these years and so influential for me still because it never fails to remind me that the rules don't have to be followed. For some reason it has also  always reminded me of you James Spader, perhaps I read it around the time I saw Sex, Lies and Videotape and the two have got melded together in the big memory pot.  We're both older now and we both have less hair. You still do that funny sideways kink with your mouth, you are still beautiful.

27 Kent

Oast houses
Apple orchards and a paper mill
Cherry trees laden with fruit and birds
White weather boarded cottages
Peonies and hollyhocks
A pint of Shepherd Neame
Southend at night
The forts and the Isle of Grain
Wild cliff tops and pebbly beaches
Hag stones and sea glass
The train to school, the lifting bridge
Bluebell woods and dockyards
I am a Maid of Kent.

page 31 word 27 Kent
The Noel Coward Diaries
edited by Graham Pyne  and Sheridan Morley

'something eggy on a tray' 
Again I thank my mother for one of the best reads I'll ever have and keep having.

26 cheap

Love costs nothing, but it doesn't come cheap.

page 31 word 26 cheap

Venice 
Jan Morris

I imagine it would be filed under Travel Guide but really this is a love letter to the most hauntingly beautiful   city in the world. I fell hopelessly in love with Venice one early evening about 15 years ago, as the No 1 vaporetto from the bus station turned into the Canale Grande. This book brings me back to those first heady days of our love affair.  

25 needed

pale golden space
a window open to endless blue
curtains lilting
incense and beads
somewhere a bird is singing


page 31 word 25 needed
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold

The only book that has ever made sense  to me  of the concept of heaven.

24 social

The two cats buss each other on the nose, tails flicking upwards saying hello.


page 31 word 24 social
Sense and Sensibility
The One and Only Jane Austen

There can be some post modern critiques of this with some post modern whinging about how Marianne is disposed of to some old ( 40 year old) man in 'punishment' for her earlier selfish recklessness but as I can never separate the book from the film I have to ask myself who wouldn't want to be disposed of to Alan Rickman? Can a film adaptation ever be better than the book it is based on? Can Austen ever be bettered? I have to admit that if it wasn't Austen blasphemy to say so, Emma Thompson's script almost improves on the original story.* This adaptation, and the BBC Firth in a Wet Shirt P & P  are so perfect in every way that they demonstrate what can be done with excellent writing, excellent actors and an excellent director -  and there is absolutely no need and no excuse to resort to the sort of inaccurate and heretical  trash of a dogs dinner that was the Kiera Knightley version of P&P. 
*In the JA museum in Bath ( how she would have hated that!) there is an autographed copy of Emma's Oscar acceptance speech - perfect, priceless and beyond wonderful. 

23 she's

She's waiting at the bus stop on a Sunday morning.
She's going to have lunch with her boyfriend.
She's just been speaking to her ex on the phone.
He wanted her to come over, to talk.
She's explained that she can't and why.
He tells her she is letting him down
He radiates disappointment.
She offers to cancel the lunch date.
He shrugs the offer off.
She doesn't insist
He doesn't insist.
Pride.
Fear of the known.
Loving too much and too well.
They give it up.

page 31 word 23 she's
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James

Don't ask me when or how my love affair with Henry James started. He isn't an easy companion goodness knows. His writing is often impenetrable. His best works have no comfortable resolution. It took me five attempts to read The Golden Bowl ( now my favourite). I still don't really understand the end of Portrait or The Wings of the Dove but that's ok, I am a bit thick and Henry rocks. 

22 custom

It is our custom to sit together each morning.
Practice makes perfect company.

page 31 word 22 custom
Nellie, letters from Africa
Elspeth Huxley

Remember I was talking about those few accounts of women's lives that I would read and re-read? I don't know how many times I've returned with love to this wonderful recounting of the liife of Elspeth Huxley's extraordinary mother and her life in Kenya. And when I think I just can't do something, or I can't go on or can't face something and it's because I'm too old, I recall Nellie. Her life, all of it, has been such an inspiration to me because however tough things can be in this world today, she and women like her had it much tougher, yet never lost that enthusiasm for a new challenge, a new adventure.

21 next

In my next life
A delphinium
Gracing a herbaceous border
Tall and swaying blue
Bending to the wind
Scattering my flowers
Returning to earth
Being reborn


page 31 word 21 next
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
Alexander McCall Smith

One of those strange and rare occasions when I had perhaps a little more money than sense and judged a couple of books by their riotous funky covers and bought them both. Thankfully I loved the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency  and was never more happy to be seduced. Interesting Inspector Frost link too.

20 door

opening the door
breathing october
warm liquid sun
soft downy air
the smell of green
threads of wood smoke

page 31 word 20 door

Italian Neighbours
Tim Parks
You know those terrible books written by expats who claim to buy tuscan mansions and restore them with only a months wages in the bank and no money coming in for the forseeable future? And how they patronise and condescend to the 'locals' who are so quaint and full of colour and goodness quite a struggle because they don't speak our language? And those terrible boring blogs written by expats who think they are being so funny and original when we've already heard it a thousand times before and here we go with the condescension  and eh allora???
This book isn't that. This is how it is. Coffin furniture, the terrible (and so funny) joke about the 3 men in a train, poisoning dogs that bark in the night, how to bribe.  This is the real thing. 

19 other

other stuff

page 31 word 19 other

The Devil's Candy

Julie Salamon

Behind the scenes of the making of the film of the Tom Wolfe ( hello again) novel Bonfire of the Vanities and quite simply one of the best books about film making ( and the vanity!) ever. 

18 sustained

twenty three years of love sustained
with only small fractures
at the beginning and at the end
little crackly snappings
that would have split and shattered
or closed and healed
or neither
and in the middle of it all
that gaping cavernous hole that he made
and not by himself
that they both fell into
and stayed there struggling
for air for light for warmth for comfort
too proud to turn to each other

page 31 word 18
Alive 
Piers Paul Read
Moving and ultimately inspiring account of how a group of young men survived a horrific plane crash high, high up in the Andes. The miracle of their survival, rescue and return to this world long after they were given up for dead really does transcend all the laws of probability and it seems to me that it touches on something other, some greatness beyond, greater than us.

17 I

Extract from my journal, working with Old Friend From Far Away by Natalie Goldberg .

A time I washed the dishes

One time? One particular time? There was a Christmas. In Essex. Before Mum moved into the bungalow. I liked that house but no-one else did. Anyway there was a meal, it was probably Boxing Day and must have been evening because I remember the blackness at the window over the sink. No curtains or possibly they weren't closed which is more likely - I think they were those white open weave ones with the orange abstract shapes cut by horizontal and vertical black lines. I loved those curtains and I think Mum did give them to me in the end.
I was sulking. Why? Perhaps because I had been told to do the washing up. I was so lazy then. I hated any kind of housework and more than that, I hated being told to do it. It's not as if I was a teenager either, I must have been 22 or 23 for goodness sake! I did those dishes with very bad grace, as I did anything I didn't want to do - why are we so selfish when we are young, does selflessness really have to be a lesson learned?
My aunt had provided some small delicate glass dishes for the dessert, perhaps the dessert too. As I washed these dishes, they kept breaking apart in my hands. At first I didn't care. I was glad. It suited my sulk every time one broke; it felt like revenge. But after a while my aunt came into the kitchen and I had to explain what was happening. I know she was very fond of those bowls but even so she told me not to worry. And then of course I felt guilty, And when it happened again, I felt mortified. I think that washing the bowls in hot water and then rinsing them under cooler water weakened them - the glass was so fine and fragile. At least I learned how to treat delicate glassware. And the guilt just got sewn into the growing  patchwork guilt quilt that I carried with me everywhere and which would become bigger and more multicoloured as the years passed.


page 31 word 17  I
The Beckoning Silence
Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson is one of my favourite mountain climbing writers and one of my favourite writers in any genre. Go read any of his books, it doesn't matter if you hate mountains ( so does he sometimes) and if you don't get why people do it ( neither does he sometimes). This book explores fear, the fragility of the relationship between mind and body and circumnavigates the globe before culminating in a  hair raising climb up the deadly north face of the Eiger. A literary adrenalin rush sustained over nearly 300 pages. 
There is a guilt trip here too  concerning myself and Joe, but that's another story. 

16 which

Which foot hit the floor first when you got out of bed this morning? *

What if your life and death depended on that awareness? 

They do, wake up. 

page 31 word 16 which

All He Ever Wanted

Anita Shreve

Shreve writes thoughtful quiet dramas that centre on events and feelings which I think we can all probably recognise and relate to. Another book that in different circumstances I would never have read, enjoyable at the time but not memorable.

*Thanks to Kaspalita for his Eastern Therapeutic Writing Course and the David K Reynolds quote which was the inspiration here. 

15 going

The secret life of cats

Where is he going,
his tail erect and full of purpose?
Places to be,
things to see,
under the shade of a tree
he'll be,
in a garden where I cannot go,
small secret paths
that I will never know.


page 31 word 15 going
Iris and Ruby
Rosie Thomas

A book that, turn another corner I would never have read, which tells of a troubled girl running away from home to her Gran's - in Cairo. It's simply a lovely read, full of colour and light and hope.

14 scabbard

Scaften threw the chalice to the rushes, scattering the dogs, the dregs of the wine arcing and spattering, ominously redolent of blood.

"By the sun, I will stand afraid of no woman", he snarled, the low pitch of his voice turning the defiant words into a threat.

Mardwn sheathed his sword, his eyes never leaving the younger man.

"You would do well to reconsider, my lord". He spoke softly and without emotion, but Scaften was already turning his back, gathering and marshalling his men with the sweep of his cloak, the stench of war already in their nostrils, the taste of death blossoming blackly on their tongues.

This courage, this bloodlust they display now, let us see it come the day of battle, Mardwn thought bitterly as the belligerent men swaggered from The Great Hall. He remained on the loggia, staring out over the wild country that swept below the city walls and thought of Gajha, the woman at the centre of Scaften's malice, the woman Mardwn had known, down through all the long seasons of sun and snow, life and death. He thought of her strong weathered body, unbowed by war, unbroken by child bearing and hardened by suffering and endurance. He thought of her bow reach, her agility even now, all that she could outwit and outrun. He thought of her hair, a river of molten lead chased through with silver. He thought of her eyes and without knowing touched his sword's scabbard, for he knew all that was hidden in their dark shadowing depths.

No mother was she, this woman warrior, untouched and unsoftened by the natural love that the life maker and giver feels towards other living things. She knew no caprices, no fleeting affections, where she loved, she loved deeply. But Mardwn knew also the Gajha who had soft, vulnerable places beneath the carapace, the irrational attachments to certain of her beasts, the helpless passion for some young warrior or other that would overtake her and storm and rage within her, tearing at her until it was assuaged and spent.

Aye, mused Mardwn, if he but knew, he could defeat you by your own desires my lady, easier than any battle he might ride into against you, for there he like as not will lose, driven by powerlust and defeated in turn by his own impetuous desires.

As the pallid spectre of a ghostly dawn crept out from the shelter of night, Mardwn looked away into the west, toward the sea and an unknowable, unseeable future.

page 31 word 14 scabbard

The Crossing

Cormac McCarthy

I love this book but I can't it's a beautiful or uplifting read - it's harsh, uncompromising, brutal. But the writing is heaven......if you only ever read one Cormac McCarthy make it Blood Meridian, apocalyptic is all the words I have. And in true CC style, the word scabbard was a bit of stretch, but I did have this bit of an attempt at fantasy hanging around for just such an occasion. 

13 air

biting at sea air
blustery kisses
salt on my tongue

page 31 word 13 air
The Silent Cry 
Kenzuburo Oe

Minimal, distressing, incisive, Oe's writing isn't easy to read and once read isn't easy to forget. This  family drama moves forward in the shadow of inevitable tragedy and yet Oe still manages to weave a small,wry comic thread through his narrative. Oe won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994, with The Silent Cry being singled out by the committee...'his poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament'.

12 laws

We don't have a lot of routines and regulations in this house, but certain things although unspoken, are understood. Between us has stood a house rule that has become law - no more pets. Too much responsibility and we are growing older - I cannot risk having a beloved pet outlive either of us. We have both been happy, relieved even, to come to this decision.

But then along came Milli. 

page 31 word 12 laws
The Sisters
Saga of the Mitford Family
Mary S Lovell

The Mitfords are the perfect example of eccentric upper class Brits, there's a sister for every occasion, from marrying into the Stately Homes of England to falling in love with Hitler. The real thing, the down and dirty Downton.