Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way

was this year's winner of the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year.

Previous winners include: Living with Crazy Buttocks, Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, How to Avoid Huge Ships, and Highlights in the History of Concrete.

The prize was established in 1978 and the innaugural winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.  More recently, a book called Cheese Problems Solved made the 2007 shortlist but lost out to eventual winner If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.

Duck!

The New York Times book review podcast from a few weeks ago featured a book called Moby Duck. Or, to use its correct name: Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. 

I think we can all agree that the full title, which is too long for even Amazon.com to handle, is a bit of a mouthful.  The short version, on the other hand, is one of my favourite ever book titles. 

Author Donovan Hohn is quick to point out that "it wasn't just ducks."  There were green frogs, blue turtles and red beavers too.  The  toys were in transit between China, where they were manufactured, to the US to be sold when the container ship they were on ran into a storm.  The crate they were in fell overboard and broke open, essentially turning the North Pacific ocean into a giant bath tub.

Eleven years and 7000 nautical miles later, one of the ducks turned up, sitting on top of a pile of seaweed in Maine.  Word spread among the international beachcombing community, after Eben Punderson (inspired by some ocenographers who, several years earlier had tracked the drift patterns of a container-load of Nike sneakers* which had met a similar watery fate) placed a classified ad in a local paper looking for people who had found them.  Dozens of people replied, and ever since then the ducks, and the turtles, and the beavers and frogs have been showing up all over the place.

Hohn is a high school English teacher by trade and first heard of the ducks when one of his students wrote about them for a homework assignment; he was so captured by the story, and curious about the people interested in them, that he left behind his job and his pregant wife, and set off to join the search and find out more.  His book (reviewed here) sounds fascinating; there's this Harper's article as well, which gives a taster. 

(As an aside, and because Google insists on correcting search terms, I am now desperate to see Moby Dick: The Opera .)

*insert "S.O.S - save our soles" related joke here.

World Book Day

Was yesterday, and in a lovely moment of serendipity I finally managed to catch an episode of My Life in Books last night .  For weeks now, Anne Robinson has been interviewing celebrities about their favourite books, and for the exact same number of weeks (spooky!) I've been forgetting to watch her do it. 

Each week she asks two celebrities (Sarah Millican and Larry Lamb in this case) to talk about five books which are important to them for one reason or another. There is some sort of  category system in place but having missed most of the programs and only having seen bits of some others I'm not entirely sure what this involves.  Based on what I've seen the first book they pick is a  childhood read, the next three broadly cover the teenage years / university / adulthood in that order, but not necessarily one of each, and then finally they choose a 'guilty pleasure'.  Dan Snow, who I saw on the iPlayer, picked Love In The Time Of Cholera as his guilty pleasure which makes me think Dan Snow and I have very different definitions of the  concept 'guilt'.  At the end the celebrities pick one of the five as their absolute favourite (a-la Desert Island Discs) and then finally they are asked to contemplate what their choices say about them.

I've been trying to work out what my answers would be.  First thoughts:

Childhood Read: So, so many to choose from. As a kid I harboured ambitions to be either a detective or a spy when I grew up (these vocations were more or less interchangeable in my mind, which seems a little odd in hindsight given they're essentially on opposite sides of the law).  So if I was actually invited on to the program I'd almost definitely pick a book called The Spy and The Mission of Staggering Importance; a little known story about a bumbling, inept spy.  Mainly because it's out of print now, and when I tried to track down a copy recently the only one I could find was on eBay and cost about sixty pounds.  I'm  assuming that if I was to appear on the program someone in the BBC production department might have to fork out for one.  

Back in the real world, my answer to this question would probably have to be a series: Trixie Beldon, possibly, or maybe Nancy Drew. Perhaps even the Mallory Towers books by Enid Blyton.  Anything with a tomboy-ish, independent female as one of the main characters, and preferably one who did some detective work on the side. These books weren't necessarily the best written, or the most influential or the ones which touched my heart the most, but I consumed books in ridiculously huge quantities all the way through my childhood, so books which there were more than one of held a certain appeal.

The Next Three:   Here's where it gets tricky. As a teenager I still loved reading but I didn't particularly enjoy English lessons; mainly because by the time we'd spent wringing every last piece of analysis out of a text I was sick to the back teeth of it. The exception was To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read at school when I was about 14 and which I still adore. Just yesterday someone on Facebook posed the question "who is your hero?" and I didn't even have to think twice - mine is definitely Atticus Finch.  I have always had a low tolerance for injustice and value compassion over just about anything else;  it's only just occurred to me  that this book is almost definitely one of the reasons why.
The next book on my list is Memoirs of a Geisha, because it's one which truly astonished me.  Twice.  When I started to read it I knew next to nothing about Japanese culture or the Geisha world, and could barely believe what I was reading.  Not because it seemed unrealistic, simply because it was so far removed from my own experience and knowledge of the world.  I was, as mentioned, astonished.  Once I'd finished it, I turned to the acknowledgements and discovered  the main character was completely fictional. This was my second moment of astonishment, and that second moment is the reason this book makes my list.  I should point out, for those who haven't read it, that it's written by a Western man (his name  all over the cover), so the fact that he isn't really a Geisha is hardly the sort of realisation which requires an enormous cognitive leap.  Even so, it was a cognitive leap I found incredibly hard to make.  (It also reminds me  of the horses on stage in Warhorse (have you still not seen Warhorse yet? Go and see Warhorse) and how it was still a bit hard to believe they weren't real horses even though the puppeteers who operate them were right there on the stage.)    This book makes the list because it made me properly, properly appreciate one of the fundamental things I admire in writers; their ability to conjure up believable people and places with nothing but words.  I always knew they did this, but this was the first book which really made me understand it's what writers do.
 
The last book in this section feels like I'm cheating a bit because it's also one Larry Lamb chose and I'm not sure I would have remembered to consider it if he hadn't.  So I'm glad he did.  Although I've always had a strong sense of right and wrong, and a propensity to get a bit cross when people cross that line, the goalposts have changed somewhat over the years. When I was younger, it was simple.  Taking drugs and committing crimes was wrong.  Lying and stealing and cheating was wrong.  Now, of course, I know it's a little more complicated than that, and A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is a book which makes me remember just how complicated.  It's also a book which reminds me how much I've changed over the years.  It's a memoir, of sorts;  James Frey is someone who, once upon a time, I would have been very cross with indeed.  He's an alcoholic drug addict, who commits crimes and is horrible to people and if you listen to what Oprah Winfrey has to say about him you'll probably want to add 'cheater' and 'liar' to that list as well.  (For what it's worth, I don't think you should pay too much heed to what Oprah Winfrey has to say about him.)  This account of his battle with addiction, his journey through rehab and his attempts at rehabilitation is graphic and uncomfortable in parts, but also incredibly moving.   Whether you view it as a memoir or a work of fiction (and debate has been raging ever since it was published), it's a powerful piece of storytelling, and one which completely altered the way I think.  Atticus Finch might have taught me the importance of compassion, but James Frey is someone who challenged me to practice it.

Guilty Pleasure:  The book I read for pure enjoyment, and which I have returned to time and again over the years, is Gone With the Wind. I'm not madly in love with the characters and it doesn't say enormous things, but it was the first big, sprawling epic I properly got my teeth into, and I've read it so often now that I can slip into the story almost effortlessly.  It's a pure comfort read; going back to Tara is like visiting old friends.

You're not *really* going to make me pick just one of these books as a favourite, are you? If I was really pushed (and it would have to be quite a shove) I'd probably say To Kill a Mockingbird because it does a little bit of what each of the other ones does.   As for what my choices say about me?  Mainly, I think, that books are part of my identity.  Maybe even the most important part.They've helped to shape the way I think, and how I feel and who I've become. Although I would like to  make it clear, at this point, that I am not actually a spy.  (As far as you know.)

So now you've see my list, it's your turn.  Which books would make yours?  The rules are simple: one childhood favourite, one guilty pleasure, and three which come in between.

Things that might have been....

This will be brief because I've got an early start tomorrow, but did you know:

1. Danny DeVito's role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit nearly went to Harrison Ford.

2. In the scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts goes to the bathroom to floss her teeth, she was originally supposed to be going to the bathroom to take drugs.  Disney execs decided, quite sensibly, that dental hygenie was a better fit for the studio's family-friendly image than shooting up.

3. There was a third thing.  There was definitely a third thing. I'll update when I remember what it was.

As you may have guessed, I am still reading Disney War.  It's still ace.

**UPDATE**
The third thing: Disneyland Paris was nearly Disneyland Barcelona.

I am not Lynne Truss, but someone should sort this out

I am being driven crazy by apostrophes at the moment.  Not all apostrophes, just these ones:

Same book.  Same title.  Different apostrophe placement.  Why?? WHY?? WHY??????

Initially I was under the impression that these were the paperback and hardback covers, which would have been even weirder, but as it turns out they're the UK (on the left) and the US (on the right) versions.  Different publishers. Same question though - why the difference in where the apostrophes appear?  How many hornets are there supposed to be?

I am not the only one to have noticed .  No one seems to have any answers though, which is what is driving me crazy.   It's not as if hornets are like fish and sheep - one fish, many fish, one sheep, many sheep, one hornet, many hornet.....nope.  It just doesn't sound right. 

So the apostrophe placement is technically correct in both cases, but definitely changes the meaning.  Which raises more questions.  Which one is correct?  And was the other one just a (monumental) mistake?  I doubt it.  More likely, there were many meetings about the apostrophe. I am imagining lengthy discussions about numbers of hornets, their capacity for loneliness and how many of them it takes to build a nest.  Perhaps the American hornets are just super-efficient.  (The Green Hornet - he was American, wasn't he?  I forget what his super-powers were, but I bet he was pretty good at building things.)

 I haven't read enough of the book to find out the significance of the title, but I've read the first two books and know enough about Salander, aka 'The Girl Who', to guess that in this installment she's probably up to a bit more than just irritating some flying stinging creatures. Or creature.  I don't think she'll find herself fighting against the Green Hornet, either, so my money is on the nest being a metaphorical, not a literal one.  Maybe the number of hornets isn't all that important.

Then again, I've just remembered, ages ago someone told me something slightly spoiler-ish about the title which, if it's true, suggests otherwise (sort of).  I don't know. Maybe I should just finish reading the book and find out. 

This all reminds me of my favourite misplaced  apostrophe, which I saw in a newsagent's window in Clapham, on a poster advertising a room for rent.  After the price per week, it said Bill's included.  To this day, I wonder whether Bill ever knew he was part of the deal.

A literary love story (with added mermaids)

There's nothing better than  a  gorgeous blog post like this one to cheer up a grim and grey Monday morning.  It's sort of about Donna Tartt's The Secret History but is mainly about so much more than that.  It's very romantic.  The blog post, I mean; not The Secret History.

The Secret History is still a good read though. Set in an exclusive college, it starts with the death of a character.  The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half explores the consequences.

Which reminds me: I've just finished Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray, which is also a good read.  It's set in an exclusive boys' boarding school, and starts with the death of a character. The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half...... yep, you've got it.  As a narrative structure, it clearly works.

Skippy Dies is great; it's quite dark but very funny in places, and you can almost smell the adolescent boys as they fly off the page.  Here are some of them (Ruprecht Van Doren included) talking about mermaids:

'Regarding the whole mermaids issue, being amphibious would certainly make it easier to have sex with them,' Mario says.
'Mermaids don't have beavers, you clown. Even if they were amphibious you couldn't have sex with them,' snaps Dennis.
'What's the point of mermaids if you can't have sex with them?'
'Well, I suppose the key thing to remember is that mermaids are imaginary,' Ruprecht notes.  'Although interestingly, some marine biologists speculate that the legend may have arisen from large aquatic mammals of the sirenian class like dugongs and manatees, which have fish-like bodies but human-like breasts, and nurse their pups on the water's surface.'
'Von Blowjob, find a dictionary and look up "interesting".'
'What I don't understand,' Geoff says, 'is why did the first fish, like the one who started land animals, suddenly decide one day to just leave the sea?  Like, to leave everything he knew, to go flopping around on a land where no one had even evolved yet for him to talk to?' He shakes his head.  'He was a brave fish, definitely, and we owe him a lot for starting life on land and everything? But I think he must have been very depressed.'

It's only words.....

And to quote The Bee Gees/Boyzone (delete as applicable, depending on your age),  they are all I have. About 18,000 of them, to be exact, which means I still have to find another 32,000 before the end of November. 

I've also beeen loaned an excellent book of unusual words, which I've been dipping into and which is full of all sorts of interesting bits.  For instance:

When you're looking at a map or navigtional chart and see little pointy marks indicating dangerous rocks, those are called vigias.  The marks, I mean, not the rocks.  Those are just called rocks.   It comes from the Latin vigilia which means "keeping watch" and is where we get words like vigil, vigilance, vigilante etc. (Which reminds me, I haven't been to see what the Vigilant Citizen has been up to lately. I need to rectify this.)*

A mangonel (say it out loud; if there is any word that rolls off the tounge quite as nicely as this one does, I'd be surprised) is a contraption involving pullys and wheels and designed to throw large items - boulders, javelins, etc - during battles.

Pilgarlic is an old-fashioned word for being bald; it literally comes from the phrase "peeled garlic". 

*I have just checked; there is an advertisment on his website which says:

TOP SECRET - How to make electricity at home.  Discover what the electricity company has been hiding! 

I'm glad he's been using his time wisely.

Boats, Butlers and Old Beans

It's his birthday today, so what better excuse for some Wodehouse?

Most people, when they think of P G Wodhouse (Plum to his friends) immediately conjure up an image of Jeeves and Wooster, or perhaps the Beans and Eggs of the Drones Club.  But there is so much more to him than that:

Bream Mortimer was tall and thin. He had small, bright eyes and a sharply curving nose. He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do. It gave strangers a momentary shock of surprise when they saw Bream Mortimer in restaurants eating roast beef. They had the feeling that he would have preferred sun-flower seeds.

Staterooms on ocean liners are curious things. When you see them on the chart in the passenger-office, with the gentlemanly clerk drawing rings round them in pencil, they seem so vast that you get the impression that, after stowing away all your trunks, you will have room left over to do a bit of entertaining—possibly an informal dance or something. When you go on board you find that the place has shrunk to the dimensions of an undersized cupboard in which it would be impossible to swing a cat. And then, about the second day out, it suddenly expands again. For one reason or another the necessity for swinging cats does not arise and you find yourself quite comfortable.

Of all the leisured pursuits, there are few less attractive to the thinking man than sitting in a dark cupboard waiting for a house-party to go to bed: and Sam, who had established himself in the one behind the piano at a quarter to eight, soon began to feel as if he had been there for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in which he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so long ago that it was shadowy and unreal to him. The ordeal of spending the evening in this retreat had not appeared formidable when he had contemplated it that afternoon in the lane: but, now that he was actually undergoing it, it was extraordinary how many disadvantages it had.  Cupboards, as a class, are badly ventilated, and this one seemed to contain no air at all: and the warmth of the night, combined with the cupboard's natural stuffiness, had soon begun to reduce Sam to a condition of pulp. He seemed to himself to be sagging like an ice-cream in front of a fire. The darkness, too, weighed upon him. He was abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of harboring mice. Not once nor twice but many hundred times he wished that the ingenious Webster had thought of something simpler.


The offices of the old-established firm of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby are in Ridgeway's Inn, not far from Fleet Street. If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway's Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer's respectability.


The brass plate, let into the woodwork of this door, is misleading. Reading it, you get the impression that on the other side quite a covey of lawyers await your arrival. The name of the firm leads you to suppose that there will be barely standing-room in the office. You picture Thorpe jostling you aside as he makes for Prescott to discuss with him the latest case of demurrer, and Winslow and Appleby treading on your toes, deep in conversation on replevin. But these legal firms dwindle. The years go by and take their toll, snatching away here a Prescott, there an Appleby, till before you know where you are, you are down to your last lawyer. The only surviving member of the firm of Marlowe, Thorpe—what I said before—was, at the time with which this story deals, Sir Mallaby Marlowe, son of the original founder of the firm and father of the celebrated black-faced comedian, Samuel of that ilk; and the outer office, where callers were received and parked till Sir Mallaby could find time for them, was occupied by a single clerk.

The above all comes from The Girl on the Boat (or Three Men and a Maid, if you're an American) which was my first, and still is my favourite, Wodehouse novel.  It's utterly glorious - silly, convoluted, and a huge amount of fun. And not a butler, or an egg, in sight.  

The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 15

The end is near; there are only two tales left to tell.  I feel quite emotional. 

The Canon's Yeoman's Tale: Two quick things about the Canon's Yeoman before we start.  First, he is unfashionably late to the party, only managing to join them all just outside Canterbury.  Second, and this is more relevant, he really, really, really, really, really doesn't like alchemists very much. In fact he spends most of his alloted tale-telling time prattling on about what a waste of time alchemy is, and how all alchemists smell like goats, and so on.  If he was around now I would imagine him to be exactly the kind of person who would rant quite a lot about the stupidity of homeopathy and Gillian McKeith.

His story, when he finally gets to it, is very short and is about a nasty cannon who tricks a priest into paying top dollar (£40, which got you a lot more in those days) for a secret formula to turn other metals into silver.  The secret formula doesn't work.  The priest is stupid, the cannon is evil, alchemy is RUBBISH.  Don't feel too sorry for the priest though; he was shagging his landlady.

The Manciple's Tale:   It's supposed to be the Cook's turn next but he is so drunk he falls off his horse and the Manciple steps in. There's probably a stepping up to the mantle-slash-manciple joke in there somewhere, but I don't have time to construct it.  (If you want to, feel free.  Think of this as the IKEA flat-pack version of humour.)

I think it's quite fitting that this, the final story, is about a gallant knight, because there have been a few of those along the way.  Remember January? And Walter?  This one is called Phoebus.  (Bonus quiz question: do you know who used to ride a bicycle called Mr Phoebus?  Answers on a postcard please, or in the comments if you prefer.  The prize, if I ever get around to making one, will be a knitted squid.)

Phoebus ( knight, not bicycle) was your basic Mr Dreamy: handsome and acomplished and musical and noble and all the rest.  Apparently he was so good at archery he once killed a giant serpent with the brilliantly imaginative name of Python; although Python was asleep at the time which makes story less impressive if you ask me.  No one ever asks me though, so well done Phoebus.

Phoebus had a pet crow, but here's the interesting bit: the crow was snow white.  ("WHAT??? Crows aren't WHITE! Does this Chaucer chap know NOTHING?!" I hear the more bird-savvy among you cry.  Patience, grasshoppers.  All will be explained.) 

Phoebus also has a beautiful wife. Like just about every other  beautiful wife in these stories, this one does the dirty with someone else.  It happens every time Phoebus goes away, which is quite regularly by the sounds of things.  The guy is a bit of a dud by all accounts, and the beautiful wife is silly enough to conduct her affair in their own home, right under the beak of the snow white crow. 

Eventually the crow, who like many people can't stand the sight of preening, soppy couples, tells Phoebus what has been going on.  (I forgot to mention, the crow can talk. Sing, also. You may have spotted this is not normal behaviour for a crow, but this too will be dealt with later.)

Phoebus is outraged. And as it turns out, he has a fatal flaw. (Come on, we all have one.  Mine is a tendency to procrastinate, although it hasn't proved fatal, yet.  Must get around to sorting out some life insurance in case it does, though. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow.) The fatal flaw Phoebus carries around with him is a jealous streak a mile-wide.  When he hears his wife has been cheating, he kills her, then smashes up some musical instruments in a fit of what would have been rock-star-inspired anger if rock stars had been invented yet.

So now he's angry about being cuckolded AND about having a dead wife and no musical instruments, and blames the bird (rather unfairly, if you think about it) for all of this. The RSPB may have had something to say about this, but they were invented even later than rock-stars so weren't around to help.

Free from fear of prosecution or judgement by a national charity, Phoebus pulls out all of the crow's white feathers (which is why crows are black now, DUH!) and then, using some magical powers we haven't even been told about yet, takes away the crow's powers of speech and music.  Which left the crow, of course, with no noise left to make but the dull, crow-like sound we all know and love today.

And that's the last tale.  The Cook doesn't sober up enough to tell his, and the Parson, who is the only one left, refuses to play the game.  He does preach at them for a while, but then Chaucer realises they've arrived in Canterbury and slips off to pray.  So we never do get to find out who told the best tale, or whether the Summoner and the Pardoner ever resolved their differences, or which of the party, if any, the Wife of Bath managed to get off with.  (I say "if any", but, well.... the odds are pretty good, don't you think?)

There will be one final Canterbury post, and then we're done with Mr Chaucer. It has been fun.  But not as fun as this picture of a crow:

Er, sorry, Amazon........

I am stunned.  Speechless.  My gaster has been well and truly flabbered. 

Not because some guy in California has managed to destroy 12 acres of woodlands by being really bad at golf*.  Or because I've just heard that one of the founding members of ELO has died after being crushed by a bale of hay.  Those are both stories that sparked my attention today, but the thing which caught me completely off guard recently is this:

My downstairs neighbour, who is a little odd to say the least, recently offered to give me some books he had finished reading. He spends a lot of time hanging around the bus-stop near our flats, and if he's there when I'm waiting for my bus my usual tactic is to say a polite hello and then to bury my head in whatever book I'm currently reading.  So when he offered me his off-casts I naturally assumed that he had noticed me doing this, realised I like to read and concluded that I might be someone who would appreciate them.

But then, last night, he delivered the books.  Just as I had settled down in front of some rubbish telly there came  a knock on my door, and when I opened it, there he was, wild eyes and all, clutching a plastic bag in his hand.  I could see the bag contained book shaped objects, and the book-ness of them was confirmed when he grunted something which sounded a bit like "here are those books" as he thrust it at me.  I said thank you, he asked for a couple of teabags which I gave him (it seemed like a fair swap) and he went back downstairs. 

Then I opened the bag, and the first thing I saw was this:

Regular and long-suffering readers of this blog will understand why my jaw instantly found itself in the vicinity of the floor.  Perhaps some of them, if they have been blessed with an extraordinarily large amount of empathy, will even be feeling the same sense of astonishment that I experienced.

For those of you who are more recent visitors (hello! Do pop in from time to time, won't you?) I should explain: this is a book I ordered from Amazon several months ago and then had an agonising and painful wait for, and then had an even more painful and more agonising conversation with Amazon's customer service department when I thought it hadn't arrived. They eventually sent me another copy, but not until I had fired off several strongly worded emails.  And also moaned quite a lot about it all here.

Just a coincidence, you may wonder? Well, yes, I suppose there's a chance that the crazy man who lives downstairs from me happened to fall in love with little known French author Jules Renard around the same time as I did, and also ordered his impossible-to-find journal over the internet.  Perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to judge.

 But then I dug further into the bag.  The next book was another title I had ordered through Amazon but had never (I thought) arrived.  Hmmmm.  The third, a book which I won in a prize draw several months ago but had never (I thought).....well, you get the idea. Three of the books he was giving me were MY OWN BOOKS. 

The other two were books about Jesus. Seriously. I have no idea where he got those ones from, but I'm pretty sure he didn't read them.   Or maybe he did, and that's why he decided to give mine back.

He's not exactly the sharpest tool in the playground, and I suppose he might genuinely have made a mistake (I mean three mistakes) by taking my post.  Or, and this is quite possible, he just doesn't understand it's not appropriate to steal someone's possessions and then return them by pretending to be doing a good turn.  I don't know.  It's all very unsettling.

My main problem is deciding what to do the next time I see him.  I don't particularly want to confront him, but at the same time it would be quite nice not to have to wait for six months to read any books I order from Amazon in the future.   I do have a copy of The Book Thief in my flat which I could give to him by way of return ("hey, thanks for those books - here's one I've finished with!!")  but I'm not sure he'd get the sarcasm.

Isn't Wodehouse glorious?

I know I'm not saying anything new. There's a quote from Stephen Fry on the back of the volume I'm currently dipping into : "You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour" he says.  And who am I to argue with a national treasure?  These are some random bits:

Barmy went to the door and opened it sharply.  There came the unmistakable sound of a barmaid falling down the stairs

I suppose, all in all, Freddie Widgeon has been in love at first sight with possibly twenty-seven girls in the course of his career: but hitherto everything had been what you might call plain sailing.  I mean, he would flutter around for a few days and then the girl, incensed by some floater on his part or possibly merely unable to stand the sight of him any longer, would throw him out on his left ear, and that would be that.  Everything pleasant and agreeable and orderly, as you might say.

It was a lovely summer morning with all the fixings, such as blue skies, silver wavelets, birds, bees, gentle breezes and what not.


A child who, on her own showing, plugged pigs with arrows and set fire to dormitories was not a child he was frightfully keen on having roaming about the countryside at a time when he was supposed to be more or less in charge of her.


He had a broken heart and blisters on both heels.

The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 14

I'll let you into a secret - I have no clue what this next tale is all about. And I'm summing it up from memory and I'm in a bit of a hurry because it's Friday night and I do have a life, occasionally, and tonight is one of those occasions. As always (although I have forgotten to mention it recently), and probably more importantly than normal today, don't rely on me for any proper facts and analysis.  That's what Peter Ackroyd is for.

The Second Nun's Tale:   Cecelia, when she is not busy breaking the hearts and shaking the confidence of Messers A. Garfunkel and P. Simon, is busy being a virgin.  She marries Valerian which makes it a bit tricky maintain her virginity, and even though she wears an ugly old shirt of hair under her wedding dress, she's a bit worried that this won't be enough to discourage him.  So she makes up a story.

I have an angel watching over me she tells him.  If you lay so much as a finger on me, he will kill you. But go ahead and love and respect me if you like - he won't have a problem with that.  But  no touching.

Valerian, understandably, wants to see the angel before he believes her.  He's convinced that she's actually in love with another man, which she isn't, she's just, well... a bit weird, if I'm honest.

Anyway, Cecelia agrees, but says first he must be baptised, and she gives him instructions to visit some old guy living in a cave.  He does what he is told and finds the old cave-dweller (whose name is Urban; am I the only one who finds this super ironic?) and gets baptised, and sees the angel, so I gues Cecelia wasn't making it up after all.

Valerian comes back and tells his brother what happened and his brother sees the light too, and Valerian takes him off to be baptised by Urban.  Basically what happens for the rest of the story is lots of people become converted to religion and then get themselves murdered.  In that order.

The two brothers became preachers, and got quite well known. They also got beheaded.  Maximus, one of the officers responsible, felt so bad about this he also turned religious, and went around converting people in their place.  When Almachius, who was the guy in charge, found out about this he ordered Maximus to be killed as well.  Which he was, but I forget how.

Almachius decides the best thing to do would be to banish Cecelia to some far-flung corner of the earth, employing that principle of justice favoured by five year olds everywhere: "well, she started it".  But by now the court officers have all turned to religion too and they refuse to take her away.  Finally he manages to convince them to at least set up a meeting with Cecelia, during which he demands she renounce her faith.  She won't, of course, and says all sorts of things to goad him about how stupid and powerless he is.  To be fair, she has a point.

He condems her to death, and tells his men he wants her to be "cleansed by fire." He must have found some new men from somewhere, because these ones are  prepared to follow his instructions to the letter (heathens!): they put her in a bath and try to set fire to her.  She won't burn, so they try and cut her head off, but that doesn't work either.

There's some sort of convenient plot point (sorry, I mean long-standing rule of the kingdom) which says that it's illegal to try and chop someone's head off more than three times, so the soldiers leave Cecelia with her neck all mangled, and blood spurting everywhere. Eventually after three days she dies, but not before she converts lots more people and asks for her house to be turned into a church.

Shark! Shark!

There aren't any in the running for Australia's Top New Species (have you voted yet? Have you? Have you?), but there's a fish which looks a bit like one. 

In other shark-related news, I've just finished reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall.  Last night, over dinner with a couple of friends, I failed miserably to describe this book; the best I could come up with was that it's the paperback equivalent of the film Inception.  Which only helps if you've seen Inception, and even then doesn't help very much because The Raw Shark Texts is nothing like Inception, really, except that the plot is completely bonkers. Clever, and creative, and very unique, but still bonkers.  I loved it.

It starts with a man waking up with no memory of who or where he is; not exactly an original premise, maybe, but  that opening is the only unoriginal thing about the book.  I'm willing to bet that the story which unfolds will be unlike anything else you've ever read.

The writing itself is also very enjoyable.  How's this for a character description:

Maybe there should be types of gardener who visit bookish old men to trim and prune and generally tidy them up occasionally, because the real and actual XXX was as overgrown and tangled as an abandoned allotment. His thick salt-and-pepper hair had grown beyond Einstein-esque into a sort of mad rogue plume. A pen between his teeth, two tucked between his ears and several others tucked and knotted and sticking out of his wild hair, made his head look like one of those deceptively fluffy cacti. Blue, black, red and green biro writing covered the backs of his hands, creeper-vined its way up around wrists and forearms, and towards his rolled-up shirtsleeves, which themselves hadn't entirely been spared.  Scrumpled chunks of paper and collected pages bulged from the pockets of his black schoolboy trousers and patchy threadbare dressing gown.  He was smallish and probably somewhere in his late sixties.  The harsh light from the single bulb didn't make it down through his hair canopy too well and the effect was like looking at a man who was peering out at you from the depths of a wardrobe.

(XXX does have a name but I don't want to use it here in case that spoils your enjoyment of the book. You'll understand how this might happen if you read it.  I'm probably being unnecessarily careful about this, but there we have it.)

Parts of the novel are beautifully tender; dialogue between two of the characters captures the awkwardness of fledgling romance (those very earliest moments when you've both realised you really quite like each other but don't have a clue what to do about it) absolutely perfectly.  Equally enchanting is the relationship between Eric, as he eventually discovers he is called, and love-of-his-life Clio.
 
It's funny, too.  Eric has a cat called Ian:

"He's a bit of an areshole," I said, thinking about it.
Scout nodded, smiling at this as she poured herself a cup of tea.
"Well, that's what you want in a cat."
I considered and nodded.  "Yeah, actually it is."

I finished late last night and after I had thought for a while about how clever and creative it was, it occured to me that it is just as well I'm not the kind of person to let my admiration for such brilliance become swamped by feelings of inadequacy before spiraling downwards into a seething pit of bitter resentment.

Then I read the author bio and discovered Steven Hall is two years younger than me.

The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 12

It's been two weeks since the last installment.  TWO WHOLE WEEKS!  How on earth have you been coping? 

The Prioress's Tale: A little Christian boy, who lives near a Jewish ghetto and likes to sing,  learns a new song all about the Virgin Mary.  It's a catchy tune, and he likes it so much he can't stop singing it, especially when he's walking to school every morning.  Which turns out to be a bit of an issue, because his route to school takes him right through the middle of the Jewish ghetto.  The Jews don't like his singing much; they slit his throat and he dies.  A slightly drastic measure, perhaps, but then maybe it was just a really, really annoying song.

When he doesn't come home from school that day,  the boy's Mum goes off in search of him and eventually comes across the body, which has been thrown into a pit.  She is about to carry her dead son home when, miracle of  miracles, he rises up and starts to sing.  She is overjoyed; but then he dies again.  She's less overjoyed about this.

The body is taken to a church where, more miracle of more miracles, the boy rises up and starts to sing again.  The startled priest asks the boy how he can sing with a great big chunk cut out of his neck (ignoring the small matter of him also being DEAD), and the little boy explains:   The Virgin Mary, who he met at heaven's gates, placed a seed on his tounge and while it's there he will be able to sing about her.

The priest, clearly not a fan of the little boy's singing either, removes the seed. They bury the little boy and every one is very sad but also they are all in awe of the Virgin Mary.

Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas: Next, the Host asks Chaucer himself (who is also travelling with the party; have I mentioned this?) to tell a story.  He obliges, and starts to tell a hillarious rhyming poem about a knight called Sir Thopas.  By hilliarious, I mean it is so bad it is good.  A summary won't do justice so let me share with you a few lines straight from the horse's mouth. (There is no speaking horse in the story.  It is just an expression.)

Thopas has just been for a long ride through the woods:

Thopas himself was exhausted
He god down from his quadruped
And lay stretched on the ground.
The horse was free at one bound
It wriggled its arse
And chewed on the grass.
Fodder was solace

After a rest, he keeps riding.  After all, he's a man on a mission:

Then up on to his steed
He jumped, in need
Of action with a fairy queen
He rode along each hill and dale
Looking for that certain female.
Then quite by chance he found
A secret spot of magic ground,
The kingdom of the fairies.
In truth it was a little scary
And wild. And deslolate.

A few things happen to Thopas (he runs into problems with a giant called Oliphiant, for a start) but we don't find out how the story ends, or if he ever gets lucky with the fairy queen, because the Host gets so sick of Chaucer's terrible rhymes that he asks him to tell a story in prose instead.

Chaucer says he'll tell a story about a patient and prudent wife but the Host is having none of this either; he says they don't exist, and then launches into a rant about how horrible his own wife is.  Clearly the Host is having a few marital problems, which might explain why he was so keen to join the party on their journey in the first place.  Anyway, Chaucer is off the hook, and it's the Monk's turn next.

The Monk's Tale:   The Monk isn't the cheeriest fellow.  Instead of telling a story, he rattles off a list of people who have had great misfortune strike them from nowhere.  It's a long list, including: Lucifer (fell from heaven to hell), Adam (we all know the apple story, surely?), Sampson (fine until his super-strength hair was all cut off), Hercules (poisonous shirt given to him by his lover), Nebuchadnezzar (turned into an ox), his son Belshazzar (couldn't manage to avoid being killed, even though the writing was on the wall), Queen Cenobia (captured by a Roman Emperor), and.....well, you get the idea.  There are a load more of them, but it's all a bit depressing really.  And, as the knight says, people can only bear so much tragedy.

The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 11

Prince was wrong. Stupid Prince.  I must admit, I am not entirely surprised.

The Shipman's Tale:  You know that magic trick / con act where the guy puts a rubber ball under one of three cups and then moves them all around, and you have to guess which cup the ball is under?  This story is a bit like that.  Keep an eye on the 100 Francs.

A rich-ish merchant called Paul, and his beautiful wife are friends with a monk.  Paul and the monk are very close; more like brothers than friends.  At least that's what Paul thinks.

The monk comes to stay with them for a few days, and while he's visiting he tells Paul's wife he's madly in love with her, and that Paul really isn't that much of a mate.  She, by way of response, moans about the fact that her husband is unkind and tight with money.  Poor old Paul.  She needs (needs!) 100 Francs to pay for some new dresses she's already ordered, and asks the monk to give it to her.  He says of course he will, being a fool who has fallen in love, and she offers to do anything he wants to repay him. The implication is that she'll sleep with him which, if you take into account inflation and ignore the fact that Paul knows nothing about the arrangement, makes this exactly like that film Indecent Proposal, where someone offers that guy a million dollars to sleep with his wife.

The monk rather cleverly asks Paul if he can borrow 100 Francs, which Paul lends him quite happily because (in his head, anyway) they are such great mates, and that's what you do for your friends.   Paul goes off on a business trip, which is convenient, and the monk gives the 100 Francs to Paul's wife, and then  jumps into bed with her.  Afterwards he goes home to Paris, no doubt feeling a little smug about the free sex he's just had.

Paul's trip takes him to Paris, so he goes to visit the monk, and gently reminds him about the 100 Francs.  The cheeky Monk tells him he's already paid back the money; he left it with Paul's wife.

Paul goes home and has an amorous night with his wife, then tells her off for not telling him the monk has given her back the 100 Francs.  She says he did give her some money but she thought it was a gift, and that she's already spent it, and then offers her husband more sex to distract him.  It seeems to work.

Watch your step

I'm reading, and enjoying enormously, 44 Scotland Street.  This interchange between Bertie, a highly intelligent, Italian speaking, saxophone playing five year old and his  mother Irene had me laughing out loud on the tube earlier, much to the amusement of the man sitting next to me.

"Do come along, Bertie," said Irene.  "Mummy has not got all day.  And why are you walking in that silly way?"

"Cracks," said Bertie.  If I step on the cracks, then they'll get me.  È vero."

"What nonsense!" she said.  "Non è vero! And who are they anyway? the CIA?"

"Bears..." Bertie began, and then stopped.  "The CIA? Do they get you too?"

"Of course they don't," said Irene.  "Nobody gets you."

They walked on in silence.  Then Bertie said "Who are the CIA? Where do they live?"

"The CIA are American spies," said Irene.  "They watch people, I suppose."

"Are they watching us?"

"Of course not. And they don't mind if you step on the cracks.  Plenty of people step on the cracks and get away with it."

Bertie thought for a moment.  "Some people get away with it? And other people? What happens to them?"

"Nothing," said Irene.  "Nothing happens to anybody if they step on the cracks.  Look, I'm stepping on the cracks, and nothing is happening to me.  Look.  Another crack, right in the middle, and nothing....."

She did not complete her sentence.  Her heel, caught in a rather larger than usual crack, became stuck and she fell forwards, landing heavily on the pavement.  Her foot, wrenched out of its shoe, twisted sharply and she felt a sudden pain in her ankle.

Bertie stood quite still.  Then he looked up at the sky and waited for a moment.  If there was to be further retribution, perhaps it would be from that quarter. But nothing came, and he felt safe enough to bend down and take his mother's hand.

"I've twisted my ankle," said Irene, miserably.  "It's very sore." 

"Poor Irene," said Bertie softly.  "I told you, didn't I?"

Irene rose to her feet tentatively.  The twisted ankle was painful, but not too painful to walk upon, and they could continue their journey, although more slowly than before.

"It's very important that you don't think that was anything but an accident" she said firmly, a few minutes later.  "That's all it was.  I don't want you developing magical ideas.  Belief in fairies and all the rest."

"Fairies?" asked Bertie.  "Are there any fairies?"

They were now at the end of London Street.  The nursery was not too far away.

"There are no fairies," said Irene.

Bertie looked doubtful.  "I'm not so sure," he said.

I'm looking to be whisked off to Paris. Any takers?

Yesterday I caught, quite by chance, a brilliant program on Radio 4 about Les Bouquinistes; the booksellers who work along the Seine. 



I only had half an ear on the radio when it came on (which was less messy than it sounds),  but within five minutes of it starting, I had dropped everything else I was doing, and was glued to the radio.  Within ten minutes of it finishing I was Googling cheap Eurostar trips to Paris.

I have just listened the whole thing all over again (thank you, BBC iPlayer), and have found out so many fascinating things, I hardly know where to begin.  I'm certainly not going to fit them all into one blog post.

To start with, I have fallen head over heels with one man featured in the program, who loves books more than anything else in the world.  He has also been unlucky in love, which is why I have a soft spot for him.  He told the interviewer within two minutes of meeting her  that he's reading a Patricia Highsmith novel because he has just had his heart broken.  (I am definitely going to try this cure the next time it happens to me.)  "I can't hold onto a woman, but I can hold onto my books" he says.  He has already stolen a little piece of my heart,  and I haven't even met him yet.

You have probably seen the bouquinistes if you've ever been to Paris; they each have four green boxes, and as long as three of them contain books they are allowed to sell whatever they like (neon green Eifel towers, mainly) out of the fourth one.  They are a diverse bunch; some are ex-lawyers, others were teachers, one used to be a fireman.  One has always been a bouqiniste and started because his friend's mother was one; he used to carry books around for her in his toy cart. Some sell books on the internet, while others complain about the problems of modern technology.  In winter, says one guy, they are lucky to sell five books in a week.  Before computers, it was more like thirty.

The one thing they all have in common is that they love books, and love to read.  One woman tells the story of how she was so engrossed in whatever she was reading one day that she completely failed to notice Woody Allen rifling through the books on her stall, and later was equally oblivious when ex-president Francois Mitterand turned up next door.   You get the feeling that this is not unusual behaviour. 

Then there's a pair of sisters who, when they are not selling books, are writing them;   detective novels, written under the pen name Claude Izner.  Their protagonist is Victor Legris, and when he's not busy figuring out out who done it, he also sells books on the Seine. Well, they do say you should write what you know.  The first in the series is, hopefully, winging its way to me from Amazon as we speak.
So far, I've barely scratched the surface.   I haven't even told you about the history of the bouquinistes; how they singlehandedly saved the French punk rock movement, their role in the French Revolution, or the 19th Century book collector who left instructions in his will providing them with a massive banquet;  his way of saying thank you for the hours he had enjoyed browsing their books in the Parisian sunshine.  Then of course there's the modern collector who claims he can find the books he bought from them in his collection simply because of the way they smell.  I blame him entirely for the fact that I spent a good twenty minutes sniffing my bookshelves last night.   Not for the first time, it struck me as lucky that I live alone.

It really is a wonderful  program.   I'm not normally this militant, but seriously;  go and have a listen , and make sure you do it before next Tuesday, which is when it's available until  I think.  It's only going to take you half an hour, and I promise, it's absolutely worth it.

Vernon God Little

I've finished reading Vernon God Little.  I loved it, for lots of reasons. Mainly because the writing just sizzles:

Just let me say, in case you think that I'm secretly in love with Ella, that I've known her since I was eight.  Every boy in town knew Ella since they were eight, and none of them are secretly in love with her.  Her equipment ain't arrived.   You guess it maybe ain't coming either.  Like her equipment got delivered to Dolly Parton or something.  Ella's just skinny, with some freckles, and this big ole head of tangly blond hair that's always blown to hell, like a Barbie doll your dog's been chewing on for a month.  

Set in a small Texan town during the immediate aftermath of a school shooting spree, it was never going to be a 'nice' book.  Throwing in a foul-mouthed, vitriolic teenage boy as the first person narrator doesn't exactly help, especially when he's the best friend of the killer.  A killer, incidentally, called Jesus. You can see why some Americans got a bit cross.

After Jesus turns the gun on himself, the town is looking for someone to blame, and Vernon's their man.  The satire is savage; this small town and its residents are portrayed at their very worst, with the people Vernon should be able to trust -  his mother, his doctor, his lawyer - proving the most deeply flawed.  Although the characters are larger than life and deliberately designed that way, they still somehow manage to remain utterly believable.

Vernon's voice might be jarring at times; sharp and spiky, and full of loathing.  But it lacks spite, and occasionally something else glimmers through the coat of destain and anger which means you can't help but like him.   The way this is done is beautifully subtle; the odd mixed-up word or throw-away comment is enough to make us remember that this hard talking, sarcastic trouble-maker is really just a naive teenage boy who loves his Mum.

It's a cracking read.  Not nice, but laugh out loud funny at times, and heartbreakingly real, in a completely unreal kind of way.

The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 9

After yet another heady excursion into the world of sport, I think it's time for me to return to more familiar ground. Like 14th Century Middle England, for instance.

 If you've always been mildly curious about what's in the Canterbury Tales, this is the place for you. If you're doing some exams which require you to actually know some things about the Canterbury Tales, you may want to try this excellent re-telling by Peter Ackroyd instead.

The Franklin's Tale: The Franklin sounds like my kind of guy.  He's a big red-wine drinker, for a start.  His tale is about a couple called Arveragus (male) and Dorigen (female; those names make it hard to tell, yes?)

They live together in Brittany, but then Arveragus has to sail away to Britain for a couple of years (we don't really find out why) so theirs becomes a long distance relationship.  Poor old Dorigen is pretty miserable, stuck at home by herself, so her friends all rally around, and try to keep her spirits up. It's good to have mates you can count on.

They all go to a party one night, and at the same party is Aurelius.  Handsome, young, strong, virtuous, all-round-good-guy.  (If you know a bit about how stories work, you might already be thinking  that this guy has trouble written all over him.   You'd be right; but let's not spoil it for everyone else.)  Aurelius and Dorigen start chatting.

Finally, Aurelius the wonder-kid makes a confession: he's seen Dorigen around the place and has been secretly and madly in love with her for a while.  She says she will have an affair with him if he can remove all of the rocks from Brittany's coast.  Don't get her wrong, Dorigen isn't a slag or anything, she really is still madly in love with her husband.  But she has already been worrying about those rocks, and is convinced his boat is going to get smashed on them one day, so it's sort of a win-win situation.  Plus, she doesn't really think Aurelius will be able to do it.

Aurelius, though, is a guy not be under-estimated, and he prays to the gods for some help. Then he goes to bed in misery convinced that he will die if the gods don't step in and sort those rocks out for him.  He might be young and handsome and clever and all those things, but tell you what, he isn't half a drama queen as well.  Meanwhile, Arveragus returns.

Aurelius has an older brother who is starting to get a bit worried about him moping around in bed, and steps in to help.  He decides that a spot of magic is what is needed, so drags Aurelius to Orleans, and they track down a magician.  One of the brother's old uni mates, I think.  They ask him for a quote, and like all good tradesmen he thinks for a while, says "ooh, that could be a bit tricky" and then charges them an extortionate rate which they have no choice but to accept.  They agree to pay half up front, and the rest later.

The magician does his stuff  (the Franklin takes great pains, at this stage, to remind us that magic is evil, and we shouldn't be trying this at home) and it works; the rocks all disappear.  Aurelius goes to tell Dorigen, but also says he'll let her decide whether she wants to keep her end of the bargain.

She is a little shocked, to put in mildly, and after worrying for quite a long time, she confesses everything to her husband. Risky move, some might say; others would argue that there's not point having a relationship if you can't be completely honest with each other.  I'm not Jeremy Kyle, so I'm going to refrain from judgement.   She really does spend a very long time worrying first; mainly to give Chaucer a chance to throw in a whole lot of clever classical references.
Arveragus is surprisingly cool about the whole thing, although he's pretty upset, as anyone would be I suppose, about the idea of his wife getting off with someone else.  But because he's such a decent guy, he tells her that he thinks she should keep her word, and send her off to see Aurelius.

Aurelius is initially delighted but quickly decides that he can't possibly make Dorigen go through with it, because her husband sounds like such a decent chap.  So he absolves her from their agreement. Aurelius, as it turns out,  is a pretty decent chap too.

Even though things didn't quite work out as planned for Aurelius, he still needs to pay the magician the rest of his fee.  When he tells the magician what happened, and how he didn't have a wild affair with Dorigen after all, the magician decides that Aurelius seems like such a nice guy, that it would be a shame to rip him off.   Being a pretty decent chap as well, he absolves him of the remaining debt.

So in the end, everyone gets a happy ending. Because they are thoroughly decent chaps who do the right thing, and that's exactly what people who do the right thing deserve.

I knew I liked the Franklin.  He is definitely my kind of guy.

Present Perfect

Some people are easy to buy presents for. Others are downright impossible.  My Dad falls firmly into the second category, making occasions like Fathers' Day (tomorrow, by the way, in case you've forgotten) a bit tricky. 

Because we live on opposite sides of the world, gifts which can't be posted relatively easily or cheaply are out, as are ones which might get broken in transit or anything which doesn't comply with the uber-strict Australian quarantine regulations.  Nearly all of his favourite foods fall into the latter category, annoyingly; customs officials don't look too kindly upon kippers. Or pork pies.

Then there are some things which *could* be posted but are still problematic. My Dad, doesn't, for instance, wear ties. I hadn't really noticed this until it came up in conversation one Christmas, just as I was about to hand over his carefully chosen and  rather beautifully (if I do say so myself) wrapped present: a tie.   He already has more golf-balls than you can poke a 5-iron at. Ditto golf gloves, umbrellas, tees, and related accessories.  He doesn't do novelty socks (or novelty anything else, actually), gadgets  just pass him by, and he's never been a particular fan of tinkering about with the sorts of things that might require him to own a set of tools.  My Dad has never, to my knowledge, even set foot in a shed, let alone pottered about in one.

It all makes shopping for him  a bit of nightmare really.  Which is why, when this book popped up on my radar this morning courtesy of Me and My Big Mouth*, I nearly squealed with excitement.

  This is the product description from Amazon:

"What I Love About Cricket" is the story of a summer when a 'master' cricket obsessive teaches his novice 'pupil' the wisdom of the game. Sandy Balfour is cast as the supposed master and his sixteen-year-old daughter's new boyfriend - the skateboarding boy wonder - is the reluctant pupil. This beginner's guide to the infuriatingly perverse game of cricket is a love letter addressed both to those who utterly fail to understand it and to those who need reminding why they fell in love in the first place. What unfolds is wonderfully observed, very funny and as much about fathers and daughters, love and life, as it is about cricket

He is going to love it.

My childhood summers were stuffed full of cricket;  if it wasn't on the telly,  it was being played in the back garden or at the beach, or in the local park; anywhere there was a spare bit of space and a rubbish bin to use as a wicket.   Greg and Ian Chappell,  Dennis Lilly, and Rod Marsh were plastered over my brother's bedroom walls and the sports pages of the daily newspaper; heralded as gods in baggy green caps. Debates about such controversial matters as underarm bowling and whether one day matches should be played at night raged  for weeks.

Despite this constant exposure, when comes to cricket I don't, as you may have spotted before, know much.  But I do know that I definitely fall into the category of "those who utterly fail to understand it".  

Other sports are fine.  I can get excited about most of them if I try hard enough; give me a reason, any reason, to root for one team over the other, and I'll be right there with  everyone else, shouting at the umpire, watching the scoreboard with one hand over my eyes, and feeling my heart soar with hope one minute, then come crashing back down the next.  Cricket is the exception. I just can't get  it, no matter who is playing and how much I care, or should care, about either of the teams. It all seems so pointless. And time-consuming.

I know there are people, because I've met them, who argue that it's about the long game rather than what's going on mintue by minute, and that the mind-numbingly slow pace doesn't necessarily detract from the excitement or tension.  Fair enough. I appreciate that it's a sport with an incredible history and which is full of grand traditions.  I know that cricket matches can sometimes test the players' behaviour and sportsmanship as much as their sporting prowess, and that occasionally the game will provide an opportunity for a player to do something quite remarkably noble.  I get all that.  I still just don't get cricket.

My Dad, who doesn't so much gets cricket as positively devour it,  knows this, and stopped trying to convert me years ago, but his attempts to have become one of those ongoing jokes which tend to run on and on and on in families, until no one even really remembers how they started in the first place. He's coming to visit next week, and for the first time in years, I can't wait to give him his Fathers' Day present.  I might even have to have a sneaky read of it first.


*Scott Pack's blog; the same  Scott Pack who runs the Firestation Bookswap in Windsor.  Two quick things about Bookswap, which I went to again this month: First, it was just as good as last time I went, which you can find out all about here if you are so inclined. Second, if you live in London and think Windsor is too hard to get to on a school night, there's a bookswap in London on August 5th.** 

**You're wrong, by the way; it's really pretty easy to get there. About an hour on the train, tops. Windsor is a lot closer than you might think.