The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old by Hendrik Groen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
John Boyne reviewed Hendrik’s diary as ‘beyond comedy’- very true. This spot on portrayal of a care home and it’s residents is funny and sad, but pragmatic too, putting the issue of loss of independence into perspective. Stereotypical elderly folk, on a par with Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan’ and an authoritarian Care Home manager. Brilliant!
View all my reviews
The South Downs National Park is top of my list. What’s your favourite park? Drop a picture into the comments box. I’d love to see parks from across the world.
‘It’s the friends we meet along the way that help us appreciate the journey’
Photograph by Emily Dudley.
‘Don’t know why
There’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather…’
Song by Etta James.
Moody weather at Sheffield Park Gardens yesterday (Sunday).
Yanni
“For me, a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, barefoot on a beach and I’m happy.”
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
– H.Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You
Which is why I travel at any opportunity. I don’t want to regret not seeing somewhere 🧭.?
Spent my lunch hour hanging out at Lewes Castle a couple of weeks ago on a beautiful late spring/ early summer day.
Lewes castle is one of the oldest castles in England. It was built soon after the Normans conquered England in 1066. It is very unusual in having two mottes (mounds).
Beautiful view and a fabulous place to eat my sandwich!
A Shot in the Dark by Lynne Truss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Blooming loved this.
1950’s Brighton- built on a reputation derived from Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. It had me turning straight to the internet to see whether the last Brighton Laughing Policeman was really put to the flame on the instructions of a police inspector and whether phrenology is really a thing.
Cosy crime and Englishness at it’s best with a whole cast of brilliant stereotypical characters.
View all my reviews
The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fleur Daxeny crashes funerals to find wealthy men is remarkable.
I’m thinking of a career change…
This was fun!
View all my reviews
‘At the start of the Georgian period, parks and gardens had formal layouts with well-defined axes and avenues.’
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/georgians/landscape/
We stumbled across this re-created Georgian style garden in Bath. I loved the structured formal layout with it’s defined paths and box hedged features.
Cast Iron by Peter May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A bit complicated. Followed the crime ok and a very clever plot. However had a real job working out the characters and Enzo’s relation to everyone.
View all my reviews
The eighties was the aids hysteria decade- ‘dirty gays mentality’, born from past prejudices and ignorance.
It’s a sin deals with this and more. Heart warming and heart breaking. Young men dying supported by loving, devastated friends and families. Young men dying alone in hospital wards alone, shunned by all, or not wanting loved ones to know what they have- ashamed.
It’s a Sin, like John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies, will never leave me. Incredibly moving, the cast did it proud.
The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
‘Charming… Champions the power of literature’ Sunday Times. (The front cover review). And it does celebrate literature.
Guylain reads excerpts of pages of books that escape pulping at the factory where he works, which he reads aloud on the train on the morning commute and then leaves the pages tucked down his seat for whoever might want to read them.
I loved everything about this book: the imagery: ‘Resignedly, he quit the warmth of the train… Outside the rain was pelting down…’ p. 9.
The sub-plot of the work accident severed legs mashed up in a book run: ‘… this inconsequential book… made with this unique paper pulp… The old fellow had found his legs’ p.57.
The security guard who spoke in verse and the literate toilet attendant: ‘When you’re a public lavatory attendant… you’re not expected to… sit there tapping away on… your laptop… You’re only good for wiping from morning to evening…’ p.133.
I also loved the crazy Care Home book group and the moving love story.
A book hasn’t stayed with me for a while. This one will.
View all my reviews
Sitting here tonight waiting for England to play in the 2020 Euros I revisited this post from the 2018 World Cup. ‘Come on England- another step closer to bringing it home’ ⚽️
As the 2018 World Cup draws to a close I wanted to add a thought on football anthems and their role in major football tournaments. There have been a fair few of these over the years, most immediately forgotten once the sporting moment has past. However two have stuck in the country’s hearts, one even more so as the 2018 World Cup has shown.
So, the first is the repetitive ‘Vindaloo’ by British band Fat Les, released as a single in 1998 and recorded for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The majority of the song consists of the phrase “nah nah nah” and the word “vindaloo” repeated over and over occasionally interspersed with other lines such as “And we all like vindaloo” and “We’re England; we’re gonna score one more than you”.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindaloo_(song)>
The other is “Three Lions” a song released in 1996 as a single by English band The Lightning Seeds to mark the England football team’s hosting of that year’s European Championships…written by the Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie, with comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner…providing the lyrics.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Lions
This is another song with simple and very repetitive lyrics and this seems to be one of the secrets of the staying power of a football anthem. Three Lions contributed to the nations feel- good feeling as hope slowly started to build that we might actually get somewhere this World Cup and we very nearly did! This song, more so than Vindaloo, which is catchy in its own right, sums up nationalism- ‘its coming home’ and although it didn’t this time, hope slowly started to rise that it might.
Ultimately that was what this world cup was all about for us British people- national identity, national pride and national cohesion.
Gone to the beach. Back never. 🌊
