Death and Life

My mother-in-law on her 88th birthday two years ago

Death is just a part of the cycle of life. But it’s a part that we hide from, push away, avoid like an unfortunate, socially inept relative. In books the baddies die, but never the main characters, at least hardly ever. If they did there wouldn’t be a follow on, we wouldn’t buy the book in the first place. So it’s hard when death becomes part of everyday life for a while.

At the moment my mother-in-law is slowly dying. She’s 89, has been getting frailer for years, but we think this is the final stage. She’s at her home on our farm with a nurse and two of my sisters-in-law taking care of her. My husband and I take turns sitting with her when she’s calm, but can’t really help with the nursing. Our kids are just going on with their usual routine of school and play, even though there is an atmosphere of limbo and holding of breath in our lives.

We wish she could go quickly and have a release from the distress and discomfort that she’s experiencing, but dying happens in its own time; strength of spirit fights frailty of body and the letting go process is hard.

My kids asked questions about death when they were younger. They know our beliefs. But this is the first time it has been so close to them. When my father died it was a distant thing, cut and dried news from the other side of the world. They attended his memorial service but I flew over alone for the funeral. Now they are on the fringe of a gradual, drawn-out dying.

Co-incidentally the story book I’ve been reading to them over the last couple of months Roller Skates (Newbery Library, Puffin) is one of those old-fashioned children’s stories that isn’t afraid to confront death in one of the good characters. We reached one of the later chapters where a little 4 year old girl, befriended by the heroine loses a battle with pneumonia and the doctor she brings to her arrives too late to save her. I’d forgotten about this and it came right in the middle of this week of nursing their old grandmother. We started talking about the old days – this is set in New York in the late nineteenth century, before antibiotics and when poverty meant that young children often did die of diseases that can be cured easily today.

At one point Middle Daughter said she didn’t want to talk about death any more, so we stopped. It made me wonder if we should be talking to them more about what is happening around them, or let them insulate themselves with their regular lives and let it flow over their heads. It’s all part of life and growing up, so I don’t believe we should protect them too much by not telling them anything, but I don’t want to force them to confront more than they can deal with emotionally. I’m a great believer in answering questions when they come up, at whatever age and letting things unfold in their own time, so hopefully we’ll hit the right balance.

Anyway I’m glad it turned out that we were reading Roller Skates just at this time, and have lingered over it longer than usual what with the distraction  of holiday time, and forgetting the book when we went away to the river for our holiday. It turned out to be entirely the right thing to be reading, giving enough room for discussion and putting feelings into words and images.

Looking at the reviews on Amazon, most of the adults had fond memories of it being read to them as children and re-read it regularly, while the kids who reviewed it universally found it boring. So definitely better to read aloud to your kids – mine all enjoyed it.

I don't know how many more days my mother-in-law has left but I hope she finds the right time and slips away peacefully. I hope my children learn and grow from the experience of death happening within the family, rather than removed and sanitized by distance. It is all part of life after all.

25th Jan Edited to add: Juju died peacefully in the night with three of her six children around her. She was compos mentis and full of humour to the end. Go well Juju on your next adventure, with all our love.

Cook Books, Chefs and Fridges

We finally watched Julie and Julia a couple of weeks ago and loved the story of Julia Child. Meryl Streep portrayed all her quirks, warmth and life so fantastically that we were left wanting to know more. I was left with no desire at all to emulate Julie and blog through a seminal cookery book, but the movie did push me to explore some of the long neglected books on my kitchen shelf.

I was given the Constance Spry Cookery Book when, in my early twenties, I asked for a proper cookery book. I’d outgrown Delia’s One is Fun and wanted a point of reference. In the end I dipped into it but rarely, its old-fashioned insistence on doing things properly and cordon bleu methodology sending me thankfully into the arms of Nigel Slater who promised a good meal in 30 minutes.

On Sunday I found myself leafing through its pristine pages, unsplattered by flour and sauce, not so much for the recipes themselves, but reading all the introductions and prefaces. Her voice was so reminiscent of Julia Child’s, that I realised they were probably contemporaries, Constance Spry grappling with the shortages of everything after the Second World War in an England only just letting go of rationing, at the same time as Julia explored the cuisine of a France that seemed far less worried about lavish use of butter, eggs and cream than dreary old post-war England.

Constance was a flower arranger with a renowned school before the war – her knowledge of cooking was limited to the domestic, but after the war she teamed up with Rosemary Hume, who headed the Cordon Bleu cookery school, to write this book and she took on the role of making the recipes and methods accessible to the British domestic cook, just as Julia did for American cooks. Their book is an encyclopedia of the British take on cordon bleu, with over 1000 pages of recipes and advice all aimed at de-mystifying good food after many years of palates dulled by war-time austerity.

One thing that must have lodged in my subconscious was a passage about fridges quoted from a letter from a Frenchwoman to a new chef entering the service of friends of hers:

“A good cook is economical. He goes to endless trouble to turn out his best efforts without wasting a crumb… To make sure of using up everything to good effect it is absolutely essential for him to plan ahead.
As soon as the washing up is done each evening he should run his eye over his provisions. Opening the door of his Frigidaire, he stands in front of it and thinks. He thinks rapidly, but that moment’s reflection is absolutely necessary…. His kitchen companions should be made to understand that he is the absolute master of the Frigidaire, and he must insist that everything in it shall be kept in absolute order. A chef proves his worth by the scrupulous order in which he keeps his refrigerator, for which he is solely responsible…”

Today I opened the fridge and was dismayed at the state of my sole domain. Usually the week’s shopping fills it to capacity: five or six 2 litre bottles of milk cram the top shelf, yoghurt crowds into another, bowls of leftovers tussle with half filled jars of olives for the best place on the shelf. It is only when the next weekly shop looms that the true state of the realm is revealed. Thriftily saved butter papers crammed in corners, out-of date medicines stuffed in the door, build-ups of gunge threatening the condensation drain thing… nothing was actually threatening to walk out by itself, no blue fluffiness breeding new strains of antibiotic, but still way short of the chef’s nirvana pictured above.

So instead of making bread and doing the laundry, as planned in my self-inflicted hour of housework before approaching the computer, I micro-cleaned the fridge, and realized that never in its life had I actually removed the shelves to clean properly, they were still firmly attached with sticky tape, just as when it was delivered.

Slightly horrified by this proof of neglect, I did manage to conjure up some memories of cleaning it in the past, just not in quite such saintly detail as I was now attempting. I wielded the vinegar spray liberally and made sure my husband was aware of these unprecedented goings on, so that my halo could be acknowledged. Not to be outdone, he got out the gaffer tape (duct tape - fixer of all things, from tents to fridges) and stuck together the plastic shelf in the door that is threatening to resign its position as holder of full milk and juice bottles.

So now I have righted my fridge in the eyes of Constance Spry’s French friend, I wonder if I dare approach some of her recipes. Flipping through now I see a recipe for croissants that looks manageable… mmmm… tempting.

The Bookshelf

A funny asymmetrical book shelf, bought in a antique/junk shop long ago, before I had a house, before I’d found my man, before I had children, way back in that misty time when the nesting instinct was starting to take hold, feathers and twigs busily collected, the ingredients of a home put together in a hotch potch, ramshackle way without a recipe.

Once we met, we found we had a love of books in common, a shared history of favourite children’s books to explore: a list that often overlapped, but also brought each of us great new stories to explore. Any second-hand bookshop was a magnet. We’d dive in and head for the children’s section, finding old favourites and starting a collection for children that weren’t yet born. Unthinkable that our future offspring should grow up without the joy of exploring Narnia, Pridian, Green Knowe and Earthsea. We were eager to share the treasures of Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Geoffrey Trease, Cynthia Harnett and so many more.

By the time our first child was born we had assembled a fine library, re-read most of them more than once and filled the book-shelf to capacity and beyond.

My memory of our son’s first introduction to the library we’d so painstakingly assembled for him is set in our rented flat in South London. The bookshelf stood just inside the sitting room door. He was fascinated with it. For weeks his favourite activity was to pull all the books joyously off the lower two shelves and distribute them around the doorway. His first lesson in appreciation of fine literature was to learn how to put the books back on the shelf again.

A toddler view - no wonder the books are irresistible.

We were encouraged that he was an avid listener to stories. The very hungry caterpillar was succeeded by Herb the Vegetarian Dragon as prime favourite by the time he was two. The bookshelf moved house with us and took up a less precarious position out of the firing line by the time our daughter was born. She cut her literary teeth on the well chewed edges of the hungry caterpillar and his ilk, with only the occasional incursion into the gems awaiting her on the Bookshelf.

Yet another move and a third baby saw us in South Africa with the bookshelf. It stayed swathed in packing materials for a year, its books in boxes, while our house was built. Then it took up its rightful position in the centre of our living room to be raided in turn by the Youngest toddler of the family, following her brother’s earlier example of pulling books off shelves.

All this time it was patiently awaiting the time when it could share its stories. It began slowly. Bed-time stories for the oldest child took him to Pridian, battled the Dark with Will Stanton in The Dark is Rising series, while the girls were still listening to fairy stories. He was selective though when choosing books for himself to read from the book shelf. Fantasy worlds and adventures were his preference. All those stories set in historical times so beloved of his mother were overlooked. They waited their turn.


In this last year, the pace has picked up for the book shelf. The same bed-time stories now enthral all three children. Victor Canning’s The Runaways trilogy was so absorbing that evening DVD watching was frequently abandoned, to have a longer reading of the story each night. Some choices are more magnetic than others. Oldest often has his own book in hand, especially if he’s read the story we’re reading before or thinks it’s too young for him, but the good old classics can lure him back into the story fold. A Little Princess, ostensibly being read to the girls, had him asking questions to be brought up to date whenever he’d missed a bit. Heidi had them all glued despite its simplicity. So now I’ve slipped in my own choice, a Geoffrey Trease set in Ancient Greece that I’d tried to interest our son in a while back when he was looking for something new to read, but which he’d never taken to. Two chapters in and he still seems to be listening.

The bookshelf is now regularly despoiled of its contents, no longer the random pulling off the shelves of toddlerdom, but a focussed raid by Youngest and Middle Daughter, competing for the easier books to read to themselves. At the moment they still go by the size of the type, anything too small is rejected as too difficult. Any minute now they’ll discover that they can actually read anything on the shelf to themselves, a world of stories, adventures, poignant tales, humour, history, fantasy and old-fashioned moral tales all theirs to explore at will.

A visiting toddler looks set to repeat the pattern

What are your old childhood favourites? Any other essential reading we should add to the bookshelf?

Be My Guest – A Review

I love cooking for people, having friends round for supper or lunch, Sunday lunches for twelve people or one of our festivals with forty. I’m great at tastes and flavours, feeding everyone well, but presentation is not my forte. A le Creuset casserole is one of my favourite inventions, going straight from the oven on to the table. We always eat at a long table in the kitchen end of our main room, which can be extended with another table, and another when necessary. Candles will be there and usually flowers, paper napkins only if I remember and no elaborate place settings. It’s more family kitchen meal than dinner party, even when I am doing a dinner party. It’s not that I don’t like beautiful styling, it’s just that I’d rather focus on the food and it would drive me crazy doing both.

So when I was asked to review Fay Lewis’ Be My Guest, I was thrilled. A book about entertaining might give me a few tips to smarten up my table. The book duly arrived, a beautiful thick hardback with lots of glossy photography. I settled down for an evening’s read on the sofa. And my Virgoan critical facility started to niggle. At first glance it is all about styling. Various beautiful scenarios have been created, with the help of several stylists and we are invited to recreate them at home… without a stylist. The photos are beautiful but intimidating for a non-style orientated person, with a minimum of practical tips on how to create the effects, leaving me with the feeling that I’d have to go on a major shopping expedition at a hip home store to throw a dinner party ever again.

There are lots of delicious sounding menus proposed for various events: a pool party, a tea party, a cocktail party, a festive celebration and so on. The recipes look good, are well-researched and well photographed, but, here’s my Virgo niggle again, I like recipe books that write about the food with introductions that tell you how it tastes or evoke something of the crunch or gooey ooze… tactile writing. I like to read about what I’m going to cook and I’ve just realized that the words are just as important to me as photos in gauging how a recipe will taste. This is just a personal preference, but I’d like to see more writing in this book!

Having said all that, I think this book could be a great help in planning menus and finding achievable recipes, when you want to put on a special event and have everything just so. Just remember that the effects in the book were most likely achieved by several people working together and if you are cooking and styling it all yourself, it will probably take a couple of days’ solid work to achieve the same.

I’ll probably have another read through, pick out a few recipes to try and carry on throwing my food on the table with a scattering of candles and flowers and then have to use kitchen towel for napkins… but that’s just me!

If you want to have another opinion, Homemade Heaven enjoyed the book much more than I did!

Bedtime stories

I’m really enjoying the age we’re at now. All the children’s books we’ve been hoarding for years, the old favourites from both our childhoods that we assiduously collected in second hand book shops before we left England, now make the perfect bedtime reading for all three kids. We used to have to separate out for story time. Dad would read The Chronicles of Prydian or the Narnia series to our son, while I would read The Tiger who wouldn’t go to Bed to the girls. Now that Youngest is nearly 7 and can concentrate as well as the older ones, we can all read the same books and I look forward to bed time as much as they do. They more often than not decide to forego watching TV after supper, so that they can get into bed earlier and have longer story time.

And the books that started this modern miracle? Victor Canning’s The Runaways trilogy. All of them fell in love with the adventures of Smiler, a fifteen year old wrongly accused of mugging an old lady, who has run away from an approved school until his Dad gets back from sea to clear his name. There is a parallel story of a cheetah escaped from Longleat safari park, who makes a home on the wilds of Salisbury plain. We took a quick diversion after the second Smiler book into Noel Streatfield’s Party Shoes, which has all three of them equally captivated, but once the pageant is successfully staged at bedtime tonight, we will be returning to Smiler to see how he extricates himself from his latest dilemma and whether his father will finally return from sea. After that Ballet Shoes is booked in and our bookshelf is groaning with more of my old favourites which I want to read to them.

I loved all the historical books as a child: Geoffrey Trease, Cynthia Harnett, Barbara Willard, Rosemary Sutcliff but so far our son has avoided them in his voracious excursions into literature. His own choices tend to be fantasy adventure and the bookshops here bulge with endless series of that genre, but very few ‘real-life’ stories seem to have made it onto the modern reading list, except for the eternal Enid Blyton Secret Sevens and Famous Fives. So I am determined to brainwash the kids into some of my old classics while they’re still open to them. I’ve got a feeling though that the books will have to stand on their own merits. Our son usually has his own book on hand as I read and, if the story isn’t gripping enough, manages simultaneously to read to himself as well as keeping an ear open for our story hotting up.

What books are you reading to your children now, or do you remember loving when you were a child? I’d love to compile a list of really well written children’s books that stand the test of time.

Reading South Africa

When I met and married my South African husband, I knew we were going to end up living here. It was part of the deal: he had been living in London for fifteen years and wanted to come home. We made a few visits over here to his family before we tied the knot and I started looking for some South African novelists to read, to help me understand a bit more about this country I would be moving to.

Ask about classic South African novelists and you will inevitably end up with a selection of Nadine Gordimer for gritty, struggle, political angst and then some Dalene Matthee for ‘how it was back then in the early days of rural South Africa’ atmosphere. They are both excellent reads, but I struggled with Nadine Gordimer. Escapist she certainly is not and identifying with her protagonists was a challenge – too much gritty reality and human failings for bedtime reading. Dalene Matthee I enjoyed more, the characters sprang to life for me and gave me a sense of the history of this complex country. But I never found the South African equivalent of the English books that are my best reads: books about people, their stories, well-written but without an external agenda. Not surprisingly really, as the past century of South Africa’s history is cluttered with meaty agendas that affect everyone’s lives whether they are politically engagé or not.

Recently I stumbled upon two South African novels in the library that I really have enjoyed. Not because they avoided difficult issues, they were each set in a period of huge drama and political change when Apartheid was flexing its muscles, but because the story was about the people and their personal growth amid cataclysmic events.


Sweet Smelling Jasmine by Jenny Hobbs tells the story of a pivotal year in the life of a teenage girl, just south of Durban, parallel with her later life as a mother of three grown-up children, whose marriage has dried up, but who is embarking on a blossoming affair with a man from that year of her youth. Throughout the novel his identity is kept in the dark, as her teenage life unfolds towards the cataclysmic event that overshadows the whole story. This is small-town life where the races are not yet kept separate and a feeling of tension weaves throughout, but it is cleverly written from a teenage perspective so that more importance is given to the unattainable perfect dress in the shop window, than to the political machinations of the adults around her, though they filter through to her as viewed by her adult self. I loved this book for its human drama as well as the clear picture it paints of its place and time.


Dance with a Poor Man's Daughter by Pamela Jooste is also set in a time when cataclysmic events were taking place and is narrated by a teenage girl. This time the overhanging threat is the shameful razing of District Six in Cape Town, a government resettlement policy that has left a still open wound in people’s consciousness today, when a whole homogenous community, made-up of Coloureds, Jews, Muslims was evicted and resettled according to its component parts and the apartheid policy. It is recounted by a vivacious teenager, living in a family of strong women, whose men are all no good, according to her grandmother. She tells everything as she sees it, recounting adult conversation verbatim, and paints a vivid picture of the community and people, her family, her gangster cousin and her runaway mother, who returns a political activist to fight for their cause. The story is of resilient women, living their lives as best they can amid the changes that beset them and never losing faith in themselves or life itself.

Thinking about it, the difference between these two and my experience of Gordimer, is that both their protagonists grow through the story and retain hope for the future, despite the events that happen to and around them, whereas my memory of Gordimer’s books is of an atmosphere where despair has taken over and the characters disintegrate around it, perhaps at the end salvaging the barest, bleak bone of hope for a featureless future. This is not to say that you shouldn’t read her books – you should - they are excellent literature. But this is when I have to admit that I haven’t re-read any of her books over the last ten years. They are uncomfortable sofa companions for me and I prefer my realism with a little patina of optimism. A story doesn’t have to be sugar-coated, but, for me, there is enough doom and gloom about without voluntarily pulling more of it from the book-shelf.

Despair very soon sinks you in apathy, which gets you nowhere but sagging deeper into the sofa. To live in South Africa today I need to hang on to my hope, sipping it from small details of individual stories, one person at a time, keeping my optimism firmly rooted in the human will to survive and grow.

Literary Feasts

Yesterday was one of those days when you've run out of steam and wade in slow motion through the hours until you are vaguely surprised to have reached the end of the day without even having washed the dishes from the night before.

I had, in my defense, after a recuperating doze in the sun on the swing bench, reorganised the bookshelf of children's books with the help of Oldest son, so that they are now cunningly arranged in alphabetical order and reassembled from around the house all in the same bookshelf. They are more than just books. They are a treasured nostalgic collection of all my personal childhood favourites, some that have done the rounds of my husband and his siblings, then his nephews and nieces and finally made their way back to us, plus others that we have collected in second hand bookshops when we were in the UK. Really good books don't date, their pages just start falling out.

The flu fortnight has left us all low on energy reserves, but with all that reading aloud on the sofa, I've made the wonderful discovery that all three of the children are now old enough to enjoy some of these jewels of stories. Even though Youngest punctuates the narrative with constant requests for an explanation of a word or a concept, she can happily listen for as long as I will read.

I've now got two books on the go that I'm reading to them. I started off with The Painted Garden by Noel Streatfield. This tells the tale of an ordinary family of three children, the oldest is a talented ballet dancer, the youngest very musical and the middle one nothing in particular. Streatfield is so good at drawing recognizable portraits of children and the dialogue reads well even though the book must be about sixty years old by now. Though the kids often think that grumpy Jane is rather rude, they really enjoy the sympathetic portrait of her, that shows that you can be bad tempered but still lovable!

Then the two children who had recovered from flu went back to school, so I started another book for Middle Daughter, The Chimneys of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston. The others came back from school and started listening to it, so now they are all engrossed in that too.

The Green Knowe books are some of my very favourites from when I was a child. They tell the story of a boy called Tolly, who visits his great-grandmother in the ancient family house. She tells him stories of the children who lived there centuries ago, and eventually he has tantalising glimpses of the children, who play hide and seek around the house and garden with him, and he gets to know them as friends. This second book in the series tells the story of Susan, the blind daughter of the family who lived at the turn of the nineteenth century, and is also part treasure hunt as Tolly tries to find the family jewels that were lost or stolen back in that time, to save his great grandmother from selling a treasured painting of the other sixteenth century children. Youngest is loving the story but is frustrated in trying to understand the crossovers of time and how Tolly can sometimes see and talk to Susan in her time….this is seriously challenging my powers of explanation, I can tell you!

My husband has also read The Sheep Pig by Dick King-Smith and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner to them over the last week and their aunt has been reading Olga da Polga by Michael Bond, so a veritable literary feast has been gorged on, even though they've hardly eaten a bite of real food while they've been sick.

They are all nearly better now, though poor Middle Daughter keeps suffering a blocked Eustachian tube, which sends her into sobs of pain, usually at bed-time, and has our stress levels going through the roof. Luckily it's a public holiday here tomorrow for Freedom Day, so we have another day of rest, before two whole days of school, then the May Day Holiday on Thursday…so Friday has officially been declared a holiday too. Plenty of time to finish our books!

Computers Then and Now

Dick Francis is another one of our authors to turn to for a good escapist read. I've just been re-reading 'Twice Shy', which was first published in 1981. Some of his books don't date that much, the world of horse-racing carrying on pretty much as it always has, but this one has at its centre a betting system on computer tapes. It had me glued in reminiscent wonder, as it mentioned the computer they were to be played on - a Grantley Basic with a 32K hard drive, the Basic language taking up 12K in memory so you were left with 20K to work with. Each character, space or comma that you typed would take up one of those 20,000 slots of memory, so all your programs were on cassettes to be loaded only when needed.

In 1981 I was in my O'level year. The year below me was the first group to be taught on the one computer that the school had just acquired. They learned how to write a basic program and play Space Invaders, by repetitively pressing the space bar to shoot and the arrow keys to manoeuvre. Computers seemed then to be on the periphery of life, I played Space Invaders once or twice myself and went on my way.

Five years later computers had advanced enough to be more useful. At university there was a computer room in our faculty building, where we could sign up for a 'Word Processing' course. Some of the more forward-looking did and were able to present essays and theses beautifully typed. I carried on with my fountain pen, tormenting my professors with essays written in turquoise ink.

I slightly regretted not taking advantage of the computer room when I graduated and tried to earn my living from temping. I started as the lowest of the low: doing data entry - names and addresses punched into the membership list of a big company, whereas if I had mastered Word Processing I could have earned double… but anyway eight months later I drove off to Italy in a Mercedes minibus with the world of computers just an inconvenient blip, no longer necessary to master.

I eventually did get to grips with them. By 1995 PCs were affordable and essential to any business and I started doing our accounts on them and typing letters. They had evolved into glorified typewriters and calculators - e-mail was becoming a normal way of communication. My new husband learned about the innards and started dropping motherboards, megs, gigs and ram into the conversation. Computers had edged into our lives and were now indispensable.

Dick Francis' novel has a second section 14 years on, where the computer betting system again rears its ugly head. He would have boggled back in 1981 if he had seen the extent of the shift in computer usage that would actually have taken place by then. His vision encompassed a few boffins with banks of gleaming equipment in air conditioned rooms, complicated programs still in basic that had to be comprehended to make any use of a computer, cassettes still loading programs onto computers and telexes the height of communication technology.

What would he have said to the internet - in fact what would we have said back then if somebody had told us that we would be sitting at computers for fun, blogging late at night? That Microsoft had made sure that we didn't need to learn Basic to be able to use the computer, that most of our communication would be dependent on a temperamental machine deigning to be cooperative and that international boundaries would shrink to nothing in the face of a virtual world.

So now here I sit in my dressing gown with two screens in front of me, so that I can read something on the internet on one and type on the other, behind me my husband's two monitors, both connected so that we can send each other things, though we mostly Skype them to each other, and I write insignificant musings on retro computer culture shock to share with blog friends on the other side of the world. Who would have thought it back in 1981?

Madame Bovary

Since Charlotte wrote a fine post on Madame Bovary for her blog and all that I could remember from reading it many eons ago, when I was studying languages at university, that I’d thought that Emma Bovary was pretty silly, I thought I’d better give the book another go. As a French literary classic there must be more to write about it that that its heroine is silly, perhaps I misjudged her, from the vantage point of insensitive youth?

So I ransacked my book shelves, looking for the stash of French Lit, grown dusty and musty from being carted around in boxes for twenty years, but still never ditched because after all I spent three years learning all this stuff and maybe I’ll need it one day...and finallly I ran Madame Bovary to ground, a plain olive green cover with reams of learned introduction and of course in its original French. If I ever had a translation copy, it hasn’t stayed with me, so nothing for it but to unearth my equally dusty and musty French and dig in.

Well a third of the way through and I’m finding it heavy going, not so much the language, I can skim over any unfamiliar words and get the sense out of the whole, but more because my opinion of Emma is unchanged – she is unutterably silly. I think this is the main point of the novel though.

Flaubert was making a foray into writing about real people in mundane real lives, departing from the tradition he grew up with, of a period of high gothic romance, where the heroines invariably needed rescuing from remote towers, skies glowered, heroes dashed about on chargers and no-one ever thought about what to cook for lunch.

Emma is a languishing middle class girl with her head stuffed full of romantic ideals, who cannot recognise the real everyday love her rather dull husband has for her and lusts after thunderbolts and swooning fits and a luxurious lifestyle. Sometimes she casts herself in the role of saintly wife and mother and renounces her romantic admirer, other times she goes into a nervous decline. She takes up expensive hobbies then casts them aside unfinished. There is a terrible scene, where she visits her new baby who is boarded out at the wet nurse’s house, in a scene of complete squalor and Emma sees nothing amiss, but walks home on the arm of her admirer in a mist of romantic delusion.

This all very interesting social commentary and good for me to be exercising my brain, but I’m finding it an excellent soporific. Two or three pages of an evening and I’m asleep on the sofa. It doesn’t look like Emma is going to get any more sensible or think of anyone but herself, so I’ll just have to be patient with her and thank her for making sure I go to bed at a good early hour every day. Maybe I’d be more tolerant of Emma if I was reading an English translation. Ploughing through numerous paragraphs recounting her attacks of the vapours in literary French does rather alienate my sympathy, but I suspect I’d be in danger of telling her to pull herself together and stop dramatising herself even in English..I must have a prosaic soul!

I took a break to read an unknown treasure from our shelves – I've no idea how it got there - Exodus by Julie Bertagna. It was a fine antidote to Emma, keeping me up way past my bedtime engrossed in its far too possible vision of the future. It won a Whitbread Childrens Book award and is very strong stuff – see my review over here.

A new blog baby in the family

Bloggorrhea is taking hold of me. Not content with regaling you all with family chronicles and recipes, I am now starting a book blog, called Great Books Reviewed to review all my favourite books. This to be a semi-commercial venture...semi in that I’m going to review personal favourite books old and new, not the latest best-sellers unless they come my way and I like them (though I may not be able to resist the last Harry Potter if I get my hands on it), commercial because I’m putting on affiliate links to Amazon and Adsense ads, in the hope of earning a trickle of income, if anyone feels like buying from Amazon through my blog (that means I will be strong-arming my family into pushing all their Amazon purchases through my site!)

There has been lots of discussion about advertising on blogs. Does the commercialism of a blog detract from the pure, high-minded essence of blog–writing? Do we become slaves to key-words, fiendishly pursuing the big bucks, with great flashing banners all over the blog, so the content gets lost? (I had a look at one Mom website yesterday and would have been forgiven for thinking I’d got lost and gone to a yoghurt site, blinded by flashing-heart pink and white images!).

I hope to be able to keep my integrity among the temptations of commercialism (apart from reviewing Harry Potter that is, and I do have a sneaking fondness for those books, especially the first couple) and I think all us mums at home with kids should be making a few cents from our blogs if we can, even if it is only enough to pay for nappies or a bar of chocolate. Why not?! So far my Adsense on this blog has made about 2 dollars in six months so the whole internet advertising business is a mystery to me, but it’s worth a try.

I was wondering what to do about my old favourites that are no longer available on Amazon. I still want to review them, but don’t want to frustrate anyone by raving about a book that is out of print. My husband the Net Wizard came up with a solution: I can put an abe.com search bar on the blog, as well as an Amazon search bar. abe.com is an amazing site that collects together all second-hand, out of print, first editions, rare books, as well as new books from thousands of book stores, so you can find pretty much anything in the whole wide world there.

Far more of a concern to me is whether I can actually write good enough reviews to convey the essence of the book. I think this is an art that requires practice, so I’ll have to practise on my new blog. I am going to build it slowly, as I feel my way. Any constructive comments would be welcome and any suggestions of more books to read and review. I will also start building a blog roll of book blogs, so tell me if there are some you enjoy that I should include. I enjoyed reading everyone’s book memes recently – there are so many books out there and so little time to read them all!

If you'd like to visit Great Books Reviewed click on this link - see you there!

Couch Potatoes

I spent the entire afternoon on the sofa, reading my favourite children's books. Decadence indeed, except that an eight year old with flu needed distraction from his aches and pains, watching TV didn't appeal, as his head was aching(when they're sick is the only time they get to watch in the afternoon, unless there's an international sporting event, so usually they leap at the chance) . My son is at all times an avid story fiend, so I got out a couple of my old favourite books - The Children of Green Knowe by L.M.Boston and The Armourer's House by Rosemary Sutcliff, forgot about anything else that needed doing and we sat engrossed in the stories for ages. It was so great to have a good reason to stop being busy and spend time just sitting with him, usually it's just one chapter before I have to go and do some work or washing or cooking or one off the girls needs something and half my attention is already elsewhere, but today I was enjoying the book so much, he practically had to beg me to stop when he'd had enough!

The girls had gone with their aunt to visit my other sister in law who is sick with pneumonia in hospital - we're a sick family at the moment - so a couple of hours went by peacefully and when they returned my six year old for the first time got engaged in a non picture story - the Green Knowe one. It's a major leap forward if I can read the same story to both of them, though it leaves youngest out of the loop, as she wriggles and squiggles on my lap, blocking my view of the book. This must be truly the only down-side of having more than two children, they all want to be right next to you to feel part of the story. Lacking any triangularity, with the best will in the world, I have only two sides to snuggle up to, which leaves my lap, thus my view of the book obscured by a mass of untidy curls. I'll have to check in with Chris to find out how she deals with the problem!

Anyway my son is definitely feeling more himself tonight, but I won't be sending him to school tomorrow, his temperature still isn't down to normal, and besides, I want to get on with our book!

Book Meme from the Escapist Reader

Here it is finally, the book meme that I invited a tag for from Planet Nomad. I’ve made up my mind, but mostly couldn’t just keep down to one book per category, so was greedy and settled for more.

1.One book that changed your life
This one was a hard one. I couldn’t remember any seminal moments related to books when I was young, though I was always reading and usually immersed in whatever fictional world and character I was visiting. In the end I settled for Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, because though it didn’t really change my life, it helped me along the path I was starting to tread. An account by a hypnotherapist, who treating patients by past life regression, found that they could reach in-between-life memories of soul life – fascinating and thought provoking.

2.One book that you’ve read more than once
I re-read all books that I enjoy and favourites over and over again for years, which does make libraries frustrating, if you find a book you enjoy it’s hard giving it back to them. Most recently I loved The Time Traveller’s Wife and managed to read it twice before having to give it back to the friend who lent it. I loved the complexities of the plot and the way it explored the nitty gritty implications of unexpected time travel in today’s society, making it seem like a real medical possibility. All the Georgette Heyers (though not her whodunnits) are our stand-by for stressful times, particularly A Civil Contract, The Grand Sophy, Venetia all with brilliant dialogue, lively wit and clear-sighted strong heroines, as well as accurate historical detail.

3.One book that you would want on a desert island
I like the idea of the Complete Works of Shakespeare too, as I still don’t know all the plays and could have a fine time spotting quotes, but I think I would end up settling for a survival guide that tells you how to make a tent out of coconut shells, fish with palm leaves and light a fire with a conch shell.

4.One book that made you laugh
Astrerix and Obelix books still amuse me and now my son howls over them too. I love the names - Fulliautomatix, Getafix, Cacofonix and the whole gamut of crazy Romans – Raucus Hallellujachorus, Obsequus, Dubius Status et al.

5.One book that made you cry
The Heaven Tree trilogy by Edith Pargeter. Beautifully written series about a brilliant wood carver, in medieval England – the moral dilemmas caused by love, loyalty and honour. Does it have to be just one? I also wanted to put in Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico – again an exquisitely crafted story, exploring the light and dark sides of human nature and how interwoven they are, in an engaging story about a young woman and her relationship with a puppet show that brings love into her life.

6. One book that you wish had been written
I love reading about everyday life long ago, the details, what did they eat how did they cook it, did they have toilet paper and what did they do about their periods. So it would be The Five Year Diary of a Girl in Ancient Rome or Greece.

7.One book that you wish had never been written
Beware the Story Book Wolves. When my son was three I got this for him, thinking a light-hearted story in which the story book wolves were made to look silly and ran off with their tails between their legs, might help him deal with his fear of wolves...WRONG! ever since he has had nightmares about one particular illustration of these cartoon wolves with bared teeth in a dark black page. I have since read that it is bad psychology to try to diminish or belittle the objects of fear, but I didn’t know that then. We gave away the book but that image is still in his head and still bothers him.

8.The book that you are currently reading
I have a couple on the go. One Georgette Heyer - Friday's Child for relaxation and enjoyment and winding down at bedtime. One library book – I go with the children to the library every few weeks and while they are rifling the children’s section I whizz round, grab anything remotely attractive from the shelves, in a random ‘what will the universe be telling me next’ way, then I see what I’ve got when I get home. Only occasionally is it unreadable, sometimes it does resonate with a message from on high and sometimes it doesn’t. The current one is seeds of doubt by James Ryan. The first part set in Ireland and exploring how imposed silence over a traumatic event of childhood, makes it impossible to escape and move on from it even forty years on..I’m not sure where it is going with the next bit which seems completely unrelated, but we’ll see. Probably not one I’ll read again but interesting enough.

9.One book that you have been meaning to read
I’m always meaning to read the classics from A-Z, but don’t currently have any spare intellectual capacity. Though when I occasionally get down a black-spined Penguin classic from the shelf I am usually surprised to find how readable it is – perhaps the black spines are too intimidating, or maybe it is a reluctance left over from ‘Literature’ at school.

10. Books that you don’t enjoy
Anything badly written. The Celestine Prophecy was so hyped by our friends, wonderful, life-changing message, but it was so badly written and irritating that I couldn’t get beyond the first chapter, life-changing message or not. The Da Vinci Code was a bit better – I made it to the end, but the plot was so thin and contrived and the ‘revelations’ I’d read already, twenty years ago in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail..... but it was quite nice to read them all again. And Mills and Boon – I’d need to be on a desert island without even the survival manual to read before I’d be tempted to enter their pages again (OK, I confess, it was when we were doing O’levels, as a relaxing alternative to revising, that I last lapsed into one!)

11. Book that you remember as a real page turner
Recently I read The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davies. Her whodunnit series set in Ancient Rome, with a private eye type hero, took a bit of getting used to (I couldn’t get my head around the modern style and language combined with ancient setting) but now I love them and the characters are great – all tongue in cheek but properly fleshed out, plus it is a long series with constant development of the relationship of the main characters, so if you start in the middle as we did you have to go back and find out how they met. This was the first book, so I did..

12. Non-fiction books that you have enjoyed
Food books. Especially Nigella Lawson How to Eat and Feast – all her books combine good, approachable food and entertaining writing, knowledgeable but friendly, you could have her round for dinner without being intimidated, sure she’d muck in and help.

13. Children’s books your family has loved
Inevitable the Narnia series. I found them too scary aged seven and gobbled them all up in three days when I was given them for Christmas aged eleven. My son though has been having them read to him since he was three and loves them, the girls are only just getting into them a bit now, having seen the movie (scary bits fast forwarded past). The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper is another brilliant children’s set. The Light and the Dark are at work here too, the children helping the Light win through. Magic in everyday England.

Who hasn’t been tagged for this yet? Meredith? Jenny? Nicolle? Your turn if you’d like to.

Books

In my latest exploration around the web, I've just discovered a tantalising site. Called Book Mooch it is a book swap site. You can sign up, post a list of books you are happy to give away. People email you to request one, you mail it and get a credit, so you can ask for something you want from someone else. Brilliant idea! It's tantalising, because there is no listing for South Africa, so no-one to swap with, sob, but I thought I'd put up a link to it for those of you in France and in the States, in case you hadn't come across it. I will comfort myself with the thought that my sister-in-law buys plenty of books and often gives them to be before she's even read them herself, so with such generosity in the family I'm not too deprived of reading matter!

I've been feeling inspired by reading Planet Nomad's post, the Omnivorous Reader, with her response to the latest book meme. Then I found another different one going around on Charlotte's Web, also inspiring.

I blithely thought I'd have a go too. Now I have books bouncing around in my head, asking to get a mention. I'm too full of indecision to finish it, nominate the finalists in the listings and post. I have also discovered something about myself in the process - I couldn't think of any impressively highbrow books that are genuine favourites. Judging by the books that have jostled their way onto the draft version, my main motivation for reading is light entertainment and escapism. So I'm confessing to that in advance and plan on posting my list soon as long as you promise not to be shocked and horrified.

smoothies

Wrote an article today on making summer smoothies - a way of using up ripe fruit, when there is an overabundance of it. Waste not all this nature's bounty. To my shame, when I return to the kitchen, I have to eat my words - the previously perfect mango has disintegrated into a pool of pulp in the fruit bowl - too past it even for processing into a smoothie. I'll still post the article though - what is life if not full of aspirations that one cannot always stick to!

Talking of aspirations - I'm reading 44 Scotland St by Alexander McCall Smith - enjoying it, it's full of well painted characters, pithily brought to life. One of them is the archtypal pushy mother with a "gifted" 5 year old, poor thing, who can speak Italian and play the saxophone, he gets into trouble for writing graffiti in the kindergarten toilets, in Italian, so couldn't blame anyone else. So far one is smiling along with the author. It only jarred on me when he mentions that the boy is down to go to the Rudolf Steiner School where the Guardian is read out in assembly every morning...!

Now my experience of Steiner or Waldorf schools, my seven year old is at one, is that that sort of intellectual elitist pushiness is completely the opposite of their philosophy, where children develop at an age appropriate pace and enjoy learning because of it...maybe the author got muddled with Montessori (now I'm the ignorant one, I don't have any personal experience of Montessori) or just picked an alternative education system without knowing so much about it......still a good book though.