tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43714280814708746112024-02-20T02:15:54.054-08:00CedilloidHanging on by my fingertips
~ Just like a CedillaWhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-5745592599732875482016-06-05T11:30:00.006-07:002016-06-14T11:47:51.689-07:00Annals of Queen Lignacia, The Merciful<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:31 pm</i></span><br>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> My Tube of </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Camponotus Ligniperdus</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> of Queen + 6–10 workers arrived today and it has been entertainment from the start. First of all, the Queen is very beautiful, with a goldey shining abdomen, laden with eggs I should say. A lot of interest and activity.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> However once opened, I noticed that a worker was tugging very firmly on the cotton wool bung and I felt myself in a dilemma. Antkit's Ytong Glass nests aren't ready yet, so I also ordered a little 14 x 7 x 6 cm Arena to keep them in to await the new "Coming in April" nests.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> But that one's not here yet, and I wanted a bigger box for now!</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> Fortunately my carer had picked me up a plastic box in Amwell's Aquatics with a double-hinged lid, so I have put the tube in that. I also put in a piece of rotten wood I brought from India, which has been used by ants in the past as there are tunnels in it. A few days ago I boiled it for half an hour, and scooped out some of the sand from a tunnel which previous ants had used.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> One of the workers was "lame" as he only had one antenna, but he had a key "rôle" in the exploration of the new halfway house*. He (she) went to the entrance to "sniff the air" (as it were). The the results were reported (via antenna touching) to the rest of the young colony, and after that another worker was sent out for a recce.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> Much exploring of the bug box which is now fully mapped out I reckon.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> The Queen started to venture out, but later she returned to drink from the cotton wool bung.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> Now the full colony has returned to the test tube which is their first home.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #495d60; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">*</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Oh that governments could do the same with their disabled citizens!"</span></div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-81811770456460199802016-05-26T07:23:00.002-07:002016-05-26T07:23:28.556-07:00Nor Joy Nor Sorrow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If Joy has got no limits<br />
Then Sorrow knows no bounds<br />
When Joy and Pain are interlinked<br />
And all my letters fully inked<br />
And knotted cords are all unkinked<br />
My sorrows can't be drowned.</div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-58602952178178786832014-07-18T08:06:00.000-07:002014-07-18T08:06:15.424-07:00Not an Easy Ride (or an Easy Read!) for me!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13447149-resist" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Resist (Breathe, #2)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1361287610m/13447149.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13447149-resist">Resist</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4864330.Sarah_Crossan">Sarah Crossan</a><br /><br />My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/999852842">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /><br /> At the end of Sarah Crossan's first novel in this duo I was left breathless, excited and looking forward to finding out how the tale concluded. The destruction of the 'The Grove' — another domed area where trees were now flourishing, and people were at last living away from the tyrannous Air Tax — had left me feeling shattered and sad. I was looking forward with great expectation, to reading about the Resistance as it built slowly and steadily. <br /> <br />
<br />
I was also gripped by the fact that the novel read from first person perspectives. But unfortunately those perspectives which held me in the first novel had begun to lose their grip: Bea, Jude, Quinn, Ronan, Alina — oh dear, the trouble was there were too many ‘I’-s, and I ended up becoming thoroughly confused. I thought that by this volume I would have settled down as to which ‘I’ was which, but sadly no. The ‘I’-s were too much of a muchness whereas interesting characters such as Maude, Jazz and Vanya and even the thug Maks did not get the chance to tell their own story.<br />
<br />
<br />Added to the profusion of ‘I’-s, we have the position of all the various masks and air tanks in the story. All characters need them, even if some have been trained to breathe thinner air, but if this is the situation you’ve set up, you do need to remember which air cylinder is where, and how much oxygen is left in each. It can be done, but it makes hard work for the author and even harder work for the reader to remember where all these devices are, and how much oxygen —full half or empty— each one has.<br />
<br />
<br /> A fragile setup was created with the set-up in the first volume and it takes a lot of skill and finessing to hold this together, and hopefully strengthen it more. I was prepared to stick with it, looking forward to seeing it all gelling together, but the addition of the ticking time bomb towards the end added to the already hackneyed flavour of the narrative. Yet it was anything but exciting. And the solar respirator stinking? Dear, they stunk from the very beginning, and that would have been a good time to bring in a device to deal with it.<br />
<br />
<br />In a word, the story didn’t work out well for this reader although I held out high hopes for it. The concept of the clunky solar respirators ease the problem a little. Still, the inquiring mind is bound to wonder how these contraptions work. They couldn't possibly of course, yet the tale might have been redeemed a bit if the author had at least gone through the motions of an explanation! <br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2114597-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a><br /></div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-33228511871334367152014-05-24T01:10:00.000-07:002014-05-24T01:16:41.310-07:00 The Perfect City. Where I Melted.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 10); line-height: 115%; widows: 2; orphans: 2; }P.western { font-family: serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: "SimSun"; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-size: 12pt; }</style>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I went to see a
separate drama <br />I went to see another show <br />The drama lost its
otherness and <br />It was at that point I began to know <br />That 'I'
and 'you' aren't different — No Way! <br />There is no line 'twixt
'you' and 'me' <br />If 'I' and 'you' have meaning — Do we? <br />It's
not for you or me to say.
</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">So it was for me, as
these lines circled round that I had trouble focusing on the
difference between a watcher and watched as the debut performance of
'The Perfect City' unfolded <i>before</i> me in the Friends Meeting
House in Cambridge. Although truly speaking they came in from the
<i>side</i>, gesticulating in conversation one with another, singing
and bewailing about what might happen next in they were found to be
holding an illegal Meeting. From all sides they came, backward and
forward and round about ↻. I was greeted by the beautiful face of
Timothy Benjamin, a Peter Pan of an actor. Together with Jamie Noar,
who plays William Penn singing their heartfelt dreams of the inner
spirit reflected in the beauty of this seeming external world in
front of us. Their dreams resonated with my own youthful aspirations,
their love was my love and when Máirín Miller came on, the dewy
moisture in her eyes caused mine to well up too and holding back the
tears wasn't an easy matter.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The actors sang
in stereo, the actors' voices were quadraphonic, playing and dancing
behind you, in front of you, sitting beside you and falling on the
ground at your feet. And in true Greek tragedic manner, the beatings,
whippings and hanging of Quakers were performed off-stage, in this
case in the room adjoining the main Meeting Hall upstairs. Vocal
indeed were the sounds of the wailings and sufferings, and many a
head was turned.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> When I slept that
night, the story and lyrics were floating in my dreams and as this
week progresses the story is seldom far from my mind and it has
roosted to take up place in my heart. </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<a href="http://www.theperfectcity.co.uk/">See The Perfect City</a> </div>
</div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-72308276157640702012014-01-07T23:45:00.000-08:002014-01-07T23:45:01.857-08:00Heaven's Shadow left me in the Doldrums<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9435667-heaven-s-shadow" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Heaven's Shadow (Heaven's Shadow, #1)" border="0" src="https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1300923937m/9435667.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9435667-heaven-s-shadow">Heaven's Shadow</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/93204.David_S_Goyer">David S. Goyer</a><br /><br />My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/816515190">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /><br />It makes a wonderful and frightening tale to think that if aliens wanted to attack and cripple us it wouldn't be that hard: all you'd have to do was put a few rocks 50 km or so on a trajectory for our major cities, then sit back and watch the fun begin. The idea certainly has a lot going for it. That's a pretty 'primitive' way of achieving your goal, but at least it should work. Still when you think about it these aliens can't be expected to possess this aim of : "If it moves, shoot it! If it's stationary, keep it in your sights!" Extraterrestrial life would surely have far more subtle ways of going about this. Still, even this chucking missiles idea does have a lot going for it, and it can make an engrossing read, especially if their real intentions are far more subtle, and far more disturbing than a gang warfare in space. <br /><br /> And yet engrossment was the last thing I found with this book. In fact I struggled like anything to get through it. To start with, the cast of characters is huge. Most of them are quite unmemorable in fact, and I found I had to keep referring to the <em>dramatis personae</em> to remind myself who was who. Already I was sighing and giving it the nick name of <em>Heaven’s Flaming Shadow</em> before picking it up and wading through another chunk. I really struggled with it and had to push myself to finish it because the sight of it lying around was just too irritating.<br /><br />As I said, a wonderful idea but such a shame it was executed this way. It muddled and it lumbered, and really I felt this collaboration just wasn't really thought out. For one example, take Harley, the ex-astronaut. Around page 45 we learn that Harley uses a wheelchair, which is fine. But the Wheelchair is an important prop in a story, and the reader, who can only work on words - not visuals- does need the occasional reminder of this important logistic. Yet we're not reminded about this until we're into the final 100 pages, and the last lap is in sight. Add to this the fact that the book could do with a good proofread - I kept on having to decode ‛wed’ as ‛we'd’ and ‛shed’ as ‛she'd’ - and I found I had a cluttered tale that I'm now really glad to see the back of. <br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></span><br /></div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-11093352202459006482013-12-12T04:42:00.003-08:002013-12-12T04:42:33.244-08:00Anushti<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY0N4mV2LnJc9xYtON5OORhFfuXFN6zFAbGFLdYO52d3zcPq3GBhaA3LftzB06aXJFqdarXzomlW10fqWqU9-ELKh_1VYkKWi6hYd4F_4LKI6WblQ1BMg7uyTRzN04FHgSZVGf25eylzno/s1600/Anushti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY0N4mV2LnJc9xYtON5OORhFfuXFN6zFAbGFLdYO52d3zcPq3GBhaA3LftzB06aXJFqdarXzomlW10fqWqU9-ELKh_1VYkKWi6hYd4F_4LKI6WblQ1BMg7uyTRzN04FHgSZVGf25eylzno/s320/Anushti.jpg" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anushti ~ A Hard Working Girl</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Two days ago I had no
idea who or what Anushti was. Yesterday I knew. And tomorrow, and in
the coming days I'll continue to remember her, just when others in
the village are starting to forget her. I can't remember anything
about her because I never knew or saw anything of her apart from her
playing over my wall; so what I have to remember is just little
scraps of other people's memories. And what people remember is this.
<br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Anushti was a very
independent and rather clever little miss. As soon as she'd grasped
the essentials of things like walking and speaking simple words, she
had set her eye to watching Mum and copying simple tasks. Anushti
noticed that Water was about the first and foremost necessity of
family life. After watching her Mum and other elders trooping daily
to the village tank and filling their pitchers, she must have started
calculating in her small, exquisite mind, that there was some way she
could help. Her tiny, practical life must have realised that it would
be a very long time indeed before she could carry a water pot as
heavy as Mum's, yet the other end of "Can't" is "Can"
and Anushti's business-like way of going about things made her
realise that she could help by carrying her own load. She called for
a small water pot and as soon as it came to her hand she began to
queue when the water was switched on. The grown-up women, immediately
charmed by the independence of the little mite, allowed her straight
to the front. So in no time at all, the lass was back home, tidying
and folding up her clothes. Tidiness was Anushti, and a bright and
industrious future awaited her.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> This was her problem
: the little girl became so independent and capable that parents,
aunties and uncles left her to what she enjoyed, and was so very good
at. Warnings not to go near the underground water tank may not have
been given. It's not my place to inquire. Perhaps a day came when it
was raining, or perhaps for some other reason the mind of Anushti had
decided not to go all the way to the village pump. Perhaps she
thought she could figure out a way of getting water from the family
underground tank. In any case, she had tried something, which caused
her to fall in. With full confidence in her capabilities, aunties had
been indoors, watching a soap-opera on the telly.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Anushti was about
three years old. She was drowned yesterday, buried at noon today, and
all I hear from my veranda now is the occasional stifled sob.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Good-bye, little
girl.
</span></div>
</div>
andavanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00528595439544598749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-51045171439044473442013-09-18T04:50:00.000-07:002013-09-18T04:50:18.622-07:00Moving in Frozen Frames<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18139798-such-fine-boys" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Such Fine Boys" border="0" src="http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1372583513m/18139798.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18139798-such-fine-boys">Such Fine Boys</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5647097.Les_Brookes">Les Brookes</a><br /><br />My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/720026082">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /><br />I felt myself pulled into this story right away. So many of the scenes and situations resonated with similar events which had occurred in my own life. It was, for me, a painting which moved when looked at closely, or it or at least it appeared to. Or was what I saw just the flicker of shadow seen from the corner of my eye? Stretched on the frame of the 1960’s, the canvas so tight you can see the strands and colours of daylight peeping through the pin-prick holes, the author has then painted a broad wash of faun across the hempen fibres and without letting it dry out fully he’s gone on to apply a broad coat of the ’seventies with its yellows and golden browns. On top of all this, Brookes has laid the pattern of the ’eighties with its greedy shades of green, profit and spite.<br /><br /> Because he hasn’t let the colours completely dry, the chemistry of the picture is still active, or so it seems, because it’s one of those pictures where you stare fascinated at one corner of colour and activity and see the Pub, the Black Horse, with its northern <em>bon homie</em> and mateyness. Billy the cheerful young barman is one of the main attractions with his banter and his nimble pulling of pints and halves, his smile and his sexy bum. Move your eye to another area of the painting, and the colours look twisted and Gothic; what started as a skilled attempt at the pointy noses and ears of hobgoblins has melted and run into a sickly dark smudge. That’s Arthur.<br /><br /> Billy and Matt strike up a relationship, which seems to work, in different ways depending on whose point of view you’re considering. Matt comes over to me as pushy and selfish, verging at times into the mind-set of a spoilt brat, with poorly educated Billy tagging along behind as the sexy victim. It was at the beginning of Part Two, seen through Billy’s eyes, that I shouted with joy, realising that I was being given a dose of the Rashomon effect. This had become my favourite literary form when I first viewed it in the TV Series <em>Talking to a Stranger</em>, way back in 1966. Sad it is that this form has suffered so much neglect. So my spirits rose as further I realised, leafing my way through the pages of Part Two that I now found myself drawing parallels with the classic tale <em>A Case of Knives</em> by Candia McWilliam, fine mistress and purveyor of matters literary that she is.<br /><br /><em>A Case of Knives</em>, however, is a Rashomon work which winds you up in an ever-tightening spring, whereas <em>Such Fine Boys</em> coils you up in Part One and Part Two before releasing its tension and letting its latent energy bleed and wash back into the picture. It’s as if the artist had decided that something wasn’t quite right with the painting yet, so he’d sprayed it with a fine mist to encourage the hues to blend some more. Part Three tells the tale from another point of view, from someone we hardly know. Another of Matt’s pick-ups, he’s lucky that he’s even had the mention of a name. He ends up feeling used, feeling that Matt is a complete shit in his handling of matters of the heart, and here I have to agree with Clint (that’s his name!). If the tale is seen as driven by narrative, then it slowly starts to run out of steam in this section, and if judged on those criteria the story would deflate.<br /><br /> Yet for me, it was deeper than that. Even though the story had almost petered to a complete halt (and I must confess I was hoping that things were going to tighten up from now on), the book was seen in yet a different light by Part Four. From an individual's perspective, we had moved to becoming the all-seeing eye. If the novel has been freshly sprayed with water mist in Part Three to slow the drying, in Part Four, in sunny Greece, we see the entire painting put out to dry and harden, to freeze the frames and the cameos of the characters. We can see that Billy really is beautiful and despite his promiscuous actions he’s little more than an innocent boy at heart who didn’t, and shouldn’t grow up to be a man. The canvas is hardening nicely now. The murky smudge in the corner is all that remains of Arthur, the wet character of Matt is starting to gain grain and substance as he leaves his brattish traits in the past. As it dries to a hard nail-tapping finish, the author has frozen time. Nothing can happen now, and we are glad, knowing what the end would be, were the story to continue to run.<br /><br /> I found the synopsis disappointing: it told me too much of what I'd rather have found out for myself yet left unsaid the factors which would entice me into a book which turned out to be a fascinating and unusual experience. It would be great if the author had another story in him, waiting to break out. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a><br /></div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-790009082405928332013-04-30T22:48:00.000-07:002013-04-30T22:48:43.366-07:00Some Are Different. Some Are More Different than Others.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13609875-steve-jobs" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different" border="0" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1334931538m/13609875.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13609875-steve-jobs">Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/121951.Karen_Blumenthal">Karen Blumenthal</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/604187519">4 of 5 stars</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">These days if someone told you to “Think Different” you'd probably get no raised eyebrows, but if you'd said the same thing ten or twelve years ago you'd have raised quite a flock, and probably gained a few admonishments as well. It was bad grammar in those days because you were supposed to think different-<i>ly</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet this article isn't about grammar books or anything like that : It's the advertising slogan launched by a computer company called Apple. And it was in Autumn 1997. The educationalists threw up their hands at the incorrectness of it all, never once pausing to take a closer look at how cute and clever the phrase was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I didn’t know this, and now I know it I’m really glad I do, along with all the other factoids about Steve Jobs and his Apple Company. I have never owned any Apple product, and after reading this book I think I’m less inclined to go in for one than I was before starting it. Chiefly because almost every one of his products had some glaring fault, each of which happened to work against me — and my disability — in a direct way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For some reason Mr Jobs hated the CD drawer on computers, so he removed it, to outcries from Apple owners. The same had happened earlier with the floppy disc drive (at that time users were heavily dependent on them). Then later on he then decided that he didn’t like cursor keys (arrow keys) on Apple keyboards. They are the keys which enable you to nudge your cursor up or down the lines, or left and right within the line so you can position it exactly where you want. They were removed without so much as a ‘by your leave’ with even greater outcries from faithful users, all on Mr Jobs’s whim. So far all the things he detested have been things which make my life far easier.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So why did a man’s products, which went so much against the grain against much of what customers wanted become the owner of one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with a customer loyalty base which verged and often over-tipped into the devotional?* And why did I find the Steve Jobs story so riveting, to the extent that I completely lost track of time? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As the tale moved on, my own and Jobs's visions drifted further and further apart. Jobs envisaged phones and electronic gadgets becoming intimately interwoven into our personal lives until their presence separate from the body-mind complex lost all distinction. The final step was his conviction that Apple gadgets should be built with no on/off switch. As the gadgets should be woven into the warp and woof of our life pattern, so too should their 'consciousness' never fall deeper than slumber. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Steve Jobs developed symptoms of pancreatic cancer which he initially tried to bully away in typical autocratic style, (initially with a shot of pethidine in the bum). At one point he'd lie about his condition by informing share holders that it had been cured, a story which aficionados and the markets must have swallowed whole. Certainly the lie prevented Apple stock from taking a nose-dive. The tiny Islets of Langerhans are, however, immune to bluster, genius and deception. Despite the best which modern medicine can do, carcinogenic spores infiltrated every cell of this phenomenal, maddening and brilliant billionaire. In the final weeks of his life, Steve receives a visit from his old friend and colleague Bill Gates and the two spend 3 hours reminiscing on old times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Towards the end Mr Steve debated, deep within the labyrinth of his madcap genius mind, whether God existed or not, deciding that the odds must be 50:50. On balance though he thought it was more likely that it was like an on/off switch and that at the end we simply winked out of existence just as we’d once winked in. Maybe that’s why I never wanted an off-on switch on any of my devices, he chortled, and I had a little laugh too, even if it wasn’t for quite the same reason.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I found this a rivetting read, without being sure why.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">*Because Windows' operating system is so awful?
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></span>
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WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-77518919061310741352012-12-18T20:23:00.000-08:002012-12-18T20:23:23.905-08:00Yes I Was Haunted<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12194022-the-last-talk-with-lola-faye" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Last Talk with Lola Faye" border="0" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1354583313m/12194022.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12194022-the-last-talk-with-lola-faye">The Last Talk with Lola Faye</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13746.Thomas_H_Cook">Thomas H. Cook</a><br /><br />My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/475851592">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /><br />Yes I was Haunted ~ The Last Talk with Lola Faye<br /><br />Just when I was congratulating myself that I no longer had anything to do with Kindle's Daily Deal I took a wee peek and saw that today's offering was the usual waffle-and-maple-syrup fare. Nice when you bite into it, but then you read the label more closely and see that it's only 10% real maple-syrup and the waffle mix had far too much bicarb in and you swear you're never going to eat one of <em>those</em> again.<br /> What I didn't suspect was that the label to this packet had a little Alice Door in it. The book didn't interest me really. I could easily prove it by downloading the free sample just to prove how right I was. The sample arrived, remarkably quickly too considering it was Kindle PaperWhite with its 'free 3G' which is so grotty it's almost a Con.<br /><br /><strong>The Haunting</strong> ~<br />Hauntings are sneaky, let's not mince our words about this. They target the unwary. They're worse than that little old aunty who's no trouble to anyone, and whom you'd hardly know was there - at least that's the line she feeds you when she's touting for somewhere to stay.<br /> The second line such aunties feed you is that they don't eat enough to keep a little bird alive. It's true, unfortunately. They don't. They Nibble. They nibble at the the tastiest bit of pie which you were saving for later; they pull off knobs of cottage loaves and start into fresh blocks of cheese. They eat so many corners off rectangular food items you're left with little but curves and sculpted sweeps. You never really see them at it, until you could swear you're going to the shops far more often than you used to, and your weekly total food bill has crept way above inflation.<br /><br /><strong>Double Disguise</strong><br />Imagine that you'd dressed for an evening out at The Theatre. You're going to see Tennessee Williams' <em>A Streetcar Named Desire</em> and it's going to be your fourth time. You've selected your fondest, wistfullest, yeah bestest outfit in your wardrobe as you've heard it said that the new actress playing Blanche Dubois is Something Else. That's why you've gone to so much trouble trouble dressing.<br /> When you get to the Stage you find you're right. Spot on..<br /> Except that in this tale, Blanche isn't quite Blanche, is she? This lady who's described as drab, humdrum, shabby, a mere redneck girl, seems to have got a remarkably pointed mind, even if she gets it from the boring show Dragnet, or the magazine article she half read while waiting to see the doctor.<br /> If Lola Faye backwater education makes her perception little more than a rusty blade, it's evident to me at least that one one of those hicks sure got the knack of brewing poky cider vinegar to use in knife sharpening. When Lola Faye's blade is dipped in this acerbic brew, the knife becomes insidious. Yet she always remains the shabby, dowdy stacker girl who just asks a question or two. To clear things up, considering it's going to be their Last Talk.<br /><br /><strong>Columbo Niggles</strong><br />Before I knew it, I found that Lola Faye was creeping under my skin. Like chiggers*, it was hell to live with, but Heaven when I scratched it. And I did plenty of that. Lola Faye made her shabby entrance into my slumber, dropped a few words and made to leave. "Come Back!" I called. "Read on then!" came the rejoinder. Which was exactly what I did. At 4.10 am, with my cup of hot Darjeeling and my cooling fan, I read on, sipping until daybreak when I heard a voice through the window telling me my hot water was ready and it was time to bathe.<br /> My day's schedule was full and there'd be no time for Lola Faye today. Except after bathing and being swadled, there seemed little harm in slipping out a hand to peek at the Kindle. Especially when it tells you you've got 10 minutes remaining until you reach the end of the chapter, when she jacks out that there's 'just one more thing.'<br /><br />*Chiggers don't really get under your skin. They just itch, making sure it's you who does the scratching. As well as the blame for the ensuing sepsis.<br /><br /><strong>Home Sick</strong><br />Dammit, I'm going to miss her, the shabby backwoods girl who educates herself from magazines and TV shows. Never has a humdrum character with such an exotic name made so much impression on me; without revealing too much of her own story, Lola Faye manages to expose ever increasing piles of evidence against the protagonist Luke. Luke whom we're supposed to sympathise with. Our taste buds somehow grow against him and we warm to Lola, even as we also admit that we don't know why.<br /> It all seems so complete, so done-and-dusted, until we're almost convinced we had a peek of Lieutenant Colombo's tatty overcoat under that frumpy dress of hers.<br /><br /><strong>Epilogue</strong><br />This little review was written using the Android App called "NoteStacks" I'd been trying to use it for months now and felt perplexed because I didn't really understand it. I only had that unshakeable "This-Is-Good" feeling. By the time I'd reached the 'use or chuck it' stage I wrote to its developer in frustration. He replied very quickly with a few hints which got me up-and-running straight away. After I'd written 100 lines on This Is Yet Another App I thought "Time to do Something Proper with it". <br /> Yes, it passes muster. The Android App, and The Book too.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a><br /></div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-54477872563461137672012-11-17T10:34:00.000-08:002012-11-17T10:34:59.297-08:00Liked by Many — Adored by Me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6388283-people-like-us" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="People Like Us" border="0" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347399401m/6388283.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6388283-people-like-us">People Like Us</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4893569.Doug_Cooper_Spencer">Doug Cooper-Spencer</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/457865011">5 of 5 stars</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Life is nothing if not full of extremes, and at the beginning of the scale, what can beat the painful smelly business of being born? An early memory for me is white-coated men carrying tinkly trays of little bottles. Motley smells would waft along with them as they marched past. Some of those phials contained ether, and if I leaned towards them, provided the corridor draught was in my favour I’d feel my soul ascending on its path to Cloud Nine, all sweet and echoey, even if it wasn’t long before another man, this time carrying badly-stoppered phials of human waste pulled me back down to the scatole-laden vapours with a snap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet no lasting enjoyment is ever truly known by ups or downs. Let’s wind the clocking forward to a time when the aromas carry a far more gentle hue, softly tinted with ochre browns and chestnut golds. Autumn is the time which greets my eyes and ears these days. The earlier tantrums are mostly over and the other kids have stopped laughing at my toilet jokes. The tang of hormones, love and crushes is making its entrance and I mopily empathise with Jane Eyre or Richardson’s girl-servant Pamela. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I mooch about in bookshops, touching and sniffing the books I can reach, and yearning for the ones I can’t. And there’s always that smell, of brown and gold and August, or the fusty waft of churches. Village bookshops were the first to arrive, then David’s in Cambridge for second-hand volumes, or even the palatial Heffers. They say it was all started by a Reverend with a loan of just fifty quid. They also say Bowes and Bowes is far better!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then bones and muscles grew older as the books gained years and weight and before too long the reading habit declined with the burgeoning weight of paper books, only to rise again in 2010 with the birth of the Kindle — that magic grey ingot which sucked any number of books out of the ether and placed them on a screen for me to read. They whispered in feather-like and whether they were a Mills & Boone Romance or the Complete Shakespeare, they all weighed exactly the same. They all weighed nothing, that Magic Number which is both the marvel of mathematicians and refuge of the mystics. Kindles don’t really have a smell but if you were to dip a joss stick in water and light it while it’s wet, the smouldering sandal-and-cow-dung powder would give you a pleasing aroma not far off from the old leather-bound tomes, or at least they’d give an idea of what a Kindle would smell like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Samples are downloaded. I take a look the publisher to see if a table of contents has been included, or whether any images are recalled. Canongate is good — but do watch out for the odd wasp in the ointment there; Icon Books — not bad; Bloomsbury — pretty safe as long as it’s not Harry Potter or other kids’ stuff—Mr Creecher was painful; Faber — not bad at all, and they’ve got a nice thick medical tap root in their soul. Gollancz: Even though they’ve lost that plain yellow dust jacket, I’m pretty much a fan, even if the new stuff does get pretty scary. If there’s no publisher, then I’m very wary indeed. Why ever not? If they’re that good, you’d’ve thought they’d’ve been picked up by now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This was the factor which initially prevented me from purchasing This Place of Men by Doug Cooper Spencer. I felt its price was steep. Yet never have I been so pre-judgmental, never so cautious in making my purchase, and never have I been as delighted as when on that unforgettable morning I pressed the download button for this book and began to read it. I didn’t warm to it gradually, I didn’t find my protective shell of withering ice gradually softening ….what happened wasn’t even some mid-point between these extremes. For me, it was... Well let’s say that were this book a pavement and I was taking a stroll on its cover, a crack opened between the flagstones and I suddenly fell right down into the gap. I was Alice in Fiction Land, except that the roles were reversed. It was all so very real for me. The lovely Terrell with his good wife Karen and her spiteful sister Tess, their huggable kids Kenya and Abassi. Karen with her Director of Studies and the beautiful troubled student Luther — all were people I felt as if I knew. Even though they all bore their own weight, I continued to feel, on my second visit, welcome to be the invisible budgie perching on their fictional shoulders, even if the problems they were undergoing were private, painful and nothing to do with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s a world of heart-break and pain. Terrell is a thoroughly good man and an excellent Dad to his children Kenya and Abassi and his wife Karen is caring and full of love too. Yet all this is spoiled by their church’s attitude to homosexuality. Somewhere in the murky past, the community church has worked its malice by splitting up the love between Terrell and his teenage chum Otis. Lovers in their mid- to late-teens with Terrell just six months younger, the Community Church hierarchy waits for Otis to reach the age of majority before pouncing on Otis who is taken to court where he serves a prison sentence for having an inappropriate relationship with a minor. Terrell is deeply programmed into changing his sexual orientation, and introduced to Karen, who’s to become his wife. I dropped into the world of the character and the Kindle disappeared, as did the mundane domestic chores I needed to attend to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In an agonising sequence which sees Terrell chucked out by his wife (I know what that’s like!) he ends up renting a room in a poorer part of town, among the down-and-outs, hustlers and drug pushers. Bleak indeed compared to the plush home which he and Karen had built up over the years, with the cream filling of the children holding the sponge cake of the marriage together. Gone are the Sunday roasts with Terrell carving at the family table, gone the land line telephone and gone the car. In comes the draughty room with its bed-bugs and and their acrid whiff, the flickering shadeless light and the moody money-meter, economy buns, tinned baked beans and just-pour-hot-water snacks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Memories of hardship always bring their smells back to me: Damp bedding, stale cigarettes and rotting tomatoes when the Soho veg market sweeps up its peelings at the close of the day, sparring with the thrill of the monthly cruise where the under-whiff of males in rut contrasts sharply with the sudden ammonia tang of the unzipped fly. The following day Terrell rises to survey the street from his window. Opposite doors are opening in other houses as commuters prepare to go to work, most by ’bus or tram and a few by car. Others like Terrell don’t go anywhere. He doesn’t have a job now. His three weeks of 50% compassionate retainers have now expired and he doesn’t have a job any more. Winkling a hermit crab out of its very own shell will have that effect. With no job and no respect any more his home diet is now one of scorn and ridicule, his new digs are unhappy and ill-fitting. The door opens opposite and an old lady lets out a middle-aged man and waves him good-bye. She doesn’t shut the door behind him but scans the street with her ancient X-Ray eyes. The street and its doors having passed her scrutiny she levels her gaze up a plane and inspects the windows. A friendly wave is made to Terrell who cautiously returns it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What a nosey old so-and-so I think to myself, wondering what business it is of hers logging everybody in and out as they come and go about their own affairs, never thinking that in this new arena of loneliness there have to be events apart from the interminable telly, the arranged fortnight of being allowed to take your own kids and the occasional street prowl when hunting for a mate for a few moments of ersatz affection and mutual sperm release. Returning home with cold bones and a starved heart, Terrell is seduced near his own front door by an aroma of something cooking. It sure smells good. A car comes home and parks and another wave is given to Terrell. Introductions take a little loner than usual. The smell of cooking increases as the door opens. It’s the nosey old biddy again, who is making something and seeing the two men in conversation she invites them up. Just stew and dumplings with a bit of leftover veg, she says, but she’s made a bit too much and would he like to join them? Who feels the cut of a sharp pang of guilt at writing off the lady opposite as a ‘nosey old biddy?’? It certainly isn’t Terrell who hasn’t got that kind of blood in his veins, so it must be he reader and the reader is me, I only am the one who needs to learn to tread far more carefully through the story, even if the author writes it and the reader gives it life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">15/11/12 Many days now have passed since I first read this tale. At some point I dipped in again to note the beginning. As the story unfolded I noticed little details, marvelling at how I’d missed them the first time. Before I knew, again I’d reached the end. I saw details I’d never noticed before, felt sad yet also there was hope. Before I knew it I had reached the end again. Now the final volume waits for me. I think I’ll begin it when I’m settled back into my nest in India, stretching in the warmer mists, a bag full of electronics and reading material at my side. I think it could be rather painful, yet pain is something which I’ve come to know, is not a thing to be avoided or welcomed. It has to be taken as it is. If any weight can be lightened by helping to carry Terrel’s burden I, the humble reader, will gladly take my share.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></span>
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WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-12256713502684872202012-10-07T06:24:00.000-07:002012-10-07T06:24:08.372-07:00The Vanishing Girl<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve seen it happen so many times, it
shouldn’t surprise me, disturb me or affect me in any way, and yet
it always does. I’m thinking of the vanishing Indian girls I have
met over time. Here in the West we see see them growing up in the
usual way. The fits, the starts, the moods, the dresses, the parties.
They stamp their feet and scream “I hate you” before storming up
to their rooms. You know it’s all fine when that happens. At least
that’s what I’m told that happens, in a circuitous kind of way,
over here in the land of the setting sun..</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphennerMi4a6XMGEojt4TxNLSgEAQqqyhzrJxNBkj28PfMyO-X-rax1MU3hYsLqjkZ50Y7Y4hMdNzxoEQCyhwD8hwWGxXLEnQPF7mSjIENsCuvrTRHKdHJZauc9asR-Fve-5ZTKeory8N4q/s1600/Tamil+Nadhsswaram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphennerMi4a6XMGEojt4TxNLSgEAQqqyhzrJxNBkj28PfMyO-X-rax1MU3hYsLqjkZ50Y7Y4hMdNzxoEQCyhwD8hwWGxXLEnQPF7mSjIENsCuvrTRHKdHJZauc9asR-Fve-5ZTKeory8N4q/s320/Tamil+Nadhsswaram.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nadhaswaram<br />Courtesy <i>The Hindu</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet in rural India it’s all very
different. When the girl goes into puberty, a lot of things start to
happen very quickly, not only within the complicated chemical
circuitry of her own body, but in the family body too there’s a
whole load of frantic activity taking place. The family store room is
raided for camphor, turmeric and <i>kumkum</i> red powder. There is great
excitement generally as older sisters and carefully selected aunties
are summoned to the family house. Senior male members gather together
bundles of rupees and cycle or motor themselves to the out-caste
village where the Drummers and Nadhaswaramare summoned to attend the
house at 8 pm. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">All through the night drummers are
drumming and people are excitedly talking about the fact that the
girl is now technically, biologically ready for marriage. Nothing is
really going to happen, apart from all the clamour and excitement,
but the gossip, even though marriage is a long way off, is mostly
about who the husband might be. Nothing is known, nobody usually
knows as only a few days earlier she was a girl, but over here,
people will speculate further down down the road. The more
uncertainty there is, there more is there talk, and when eventually a
husband is decided upon, even more village talk is generated, most
likely all about the nest of future uncertainties this might create.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wake up groggily from such
interrupted and clanging sleep, worried at what it must be like for
the poor girl who has been kept awake all night, seated in the small
throne they have created for her. I need to go to see her, for the
last few minutes she is with us. I approach the throng and the crowd
gives way as I approach to have a look. She smiles a little wanly at
me and asks if I am all right. I return the courtesy, asking if she
got any sleep, even though I know she didn’t. She is really fazed
by now. She’s getting ready to boost herself into another bout of
false, second wakeful day, a day which is to be her first as well as
her last.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Aunties, sisters and cousins suddenly
appear to be thick upon the ground. Gathering thicker and thicker
they begin to swarm and cluster round her. The men are thinning out.
You begin to notice that they are paying their respects and beginning
to walk away and go about their duties. It’s time for me to pay
mine and I look upon her for the last time ever. Childhood memories
flood into my mind, and perhaps they do into hers as well. She rushes
forward for a hug, which I return as best I can before giving her a
peck on the cheek and wishing her good luck: a select gaggle of women
will be gathering round her now, making preparations to take her
completely away.
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And then something very mysterious
happens. She’s carried off to an unknown place, known only to a few
select female relatives. She will be moved to this secret location
for 3 or 4 days. No man is allowed to know any detail of the process
which will be taking place. The women are so tight-lipped about what
happens during those few days, you couldn’t slide in a sheet of
rice paper, and even if you could the moisture from the lips would
turn it gradually to pap and only form a tighter seal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When she makes her return to society
the little girl has gone. The walk is different, the entire
body-language, the dress the face itself. From the inside out she has
gone and in her place stands a confident young woman who will greet
you in Namaskaram. From this point on, she will tend to shun the
company of men, and all her dealings with them will be in a lighter,
firmer, altogether more respectful mode. It leaves you feeling kind
of stunned, until you start to look at other folks. Any hunt for the
ones you knew may well end in failure. No-one’s quite the same.
Society is changing in every direction. Nothing remains the same for
very long.</span></span></div>
</div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-85991262907184004542012-08-21T12:16:00.001-07:002012-08-23T04:41:11.792-07:00Our Hilarious Monarchy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14760263-the-monarchy" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1338695671m/14760263.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14760263-the-monarchy">The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens">Christopher Hitchens</a><br />
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/389156637">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One day early in the morning I was feeling ever more broody as I mooned around the landscape of my Kindle. I’d been clicking and sniffing between books I could read next, in that horrible in- betweeny mood in which I found myself. I’d just finished reading the second volume of an excellent trilogy and I needed a break, a breather, a period of recuperation and recharge before plunging into the explosive third volume and it was in this ‘need a short, sharp break’ frame of mind that I browsed my 5-way button to <i>The Monarchy ~ A Critique</i> by Christopher Hitchens, for no particular reason apart from the need for a total change. By the time I’d reached the end of the free sample I was chortling away as I hadn’t done for many a merry month and rarely have I clicked that ‘buy’ button with such eagerness. ‘After all,’ I reasoned to myself, ‘£1.49’s just over what I paid for a pint of IPA draught at the local when I moved to this village 30 years ago.’</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So without further ado let’s take a look at the The ‘News’ presented as if it’s set in stone. As Christopher Hitchens (1949—2011) writes: “We know that this strident, bombastic noise is a subliminal appeal to think of ‘News’ as part drama, part sensation and part entertainment”. The beauty of this opiated numbing show is that you never know whether your trip is going to be good or bad. The same thrumming monumental brass rhythms will tell us either that the Queen Mother has got a fish bone lodged in her throat, or that we’ve just severed diplomatic relations with Iraq. YOU are left to decide which item carries the greater weight.</span><br />
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<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLPNkZXpYtLxnUM9eu4RQhoKWXG_JXdaNaPpvD_ga13wxeXRoAXh0GreicmrWdg5dqzES5Fh0tMmvZ_1kyh2jN0rRMFY9FMP6yaXlpyMhtP2BpVnOXZXFGJ42jwKNtFYXpGS7mHw6fgYrv/s1600/Screenshot+from+2012-08-20+19%253A56%253A02+Longer+Face.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLPNkZXpYtLxnUM9eu4RQhoKWXG_JXdaNaPpvD_ga13wxeXRoAXh0GreicmrWdg5dqzES5Fh0tMmvZ_1kyh2jN0rRMFY9FMP6yaXlpyMhtP2BpVnOXZXFGJ42jwKNtFYXpGS7mHw6fgYrv/s320/Screenshot+from+2012-08-20+19%253A56%253A02+Longer+Face.png" width="262" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Already long, our Prince's face lengthens<br />even more as the news worsen</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Chris (Yes, let’s hob-nob for a bit!) invites us to look at absurdities like the ‘Investiture’ of Royalties which to most of us mean a lot if we don’t think about them, but examined closely they amount to absolutely nothing. Just look at this on the myth of the ‘Investiture’: “The official guide to the ceremony dissolves in contradiction here, because it says of the sacral moment that it comes from Zadok the priest, who anointed Solomon as King of the Jews, and that the ceremony follows the old Saxon ritual, and that the moment is to be accompanied by the singing of Handel.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The more we bring our pet-theories into the light, the more threadbare, nay mendacious our propaganda seems. ‘Invisible earnings’ may indeed be comforting dummies to suck in times of crisis, but in these days of costing everything up why do the powers that be seem incapable of coming up with an estimate? And while we’ve revelling in contradictions, what exactly is this ‛special relationship’ which we apparently hold with the USA? — What does it amount to? In these days of costing everything up, listing and categorising every aspect of our lives, which boxes does it tick? And what exactly is the ‘unseen hand’ of the money market?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>
<b>The End of This Post</b>
</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Back-chatter</i> : </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">End, what do you mean, ‘End’? Monarchies and Dreams don’t have an 'End'. They dissipate in the morning mist when the sun rises, only to re-form with the coming of the night. Monarchies keep folks dreamy, happy ready to chase the rainbow to its end.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Think Barbara Taylor Bradford, man, finish with all this <i>Woman of Substance</i> fantasy and begin to <i>Hold That Dream</i>. Never mind about subscribing to The Sun or Mail, just keep to the news for your daily fix. Suck the curate’s egg of the ice-cream cone, starting with the sickly raspberry ripple and the tang of the lemon twist. Lick your way through the chilled artery-clogging fat of the ice cream and don’t stop until you reach the sickly nugget of treacle at the end. Worry not, you’re in the Ukay. Just keep taking the tablets and watching The News....
Dang, dang, Dang
16/08/12 13:51:10 Stop Press (Dissected)
(1) The Duke of Edinburgh has been admitted to hospital because of a bladder infection.
(2) This is just a routine and it’s giving no cause for concern.
(3) He’ll be in for a few days he’s receiving intravenous antibiotics.
In juxtaposition to this we’re asked to also know that:
(a) The Duke is 91 years old and it’s always serious at this age.
(b) (Invisibly: He obviously can’t swallow tolerate tablets, hence the anti-bio’s)
(c) This is the 3rd time he’s been in hospital in the past 9 months, the first time being before Christmas when he was admitted because of a heart problem
20/08/12 06:24:36
The Duke is having to spend a fifth day in hospital.
Remember it’s (a) Just routine and nothing to worry about.
(b) He isn’t allowed any visitors (Only one telephone call from The Queen so far)
(c) If the stay extends to a sixth night, there will then bee ‘cause for concern’
Despite their apparent longevity,
(Long-faced Prince)
Monarchies are really a transient and ephemeral phenomenon which are lent their solidity solely by the careful presentation of choreographed images flashed onto our retinas, much in the way that ‘movement’ in a movie is really a sequence of still images. The images presented here now need to be frozen in aspic, at a time when very little appears to have happened. Let’s keep in that way before the routine of the fifth day lapses into the concern of the sixth. If it gets to that, matters will be a little more serious than the tragedy of our Duke missing The Boxing Day Shoot of Christmas 2011.
Hurried Royal Notes scribbled frantically as I try to close this blog entry (again). I blink my eyes awake after a late night, first carefully checking my limbs and hair to see whether I’ve woken up as Nicholas Witchell. Fortunately I haven’t, as my hairs have no trace of gold or red in them, they’re just showing me an agéd grey and I’ve woken up as me, the same me as I’ve always been: </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yymNZ_zaRRt0eDlfCKCV-Jm4jmFh40FgGOkL__59r02b6TI2kMHTJX7y4AAmP8HN39ibh8kXWaD_4dygG2CCkrnYv7Sj1nAau_RpWECMp2ZOvOojZfbLXSN4dcpBYVmtIU-GKMPmiKIs/s1600/The+Duke+article-2078181-0F44828400000578-808_634x468.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yymNZ_zaRRt0eDlfCKCV-Jm4jmFh40FgGOkL__59r02b6TI2kMHTJX7y4AAmP8HN39ibh8kXWaD_4dygG2CCkrnYv7Sj1nAau_RpWECMp2ZOvOojZfbLXSN4dcpBYVmtIU-GKMPmiKIs/s320/The+Duke+article-2078181-0F44828400000578-808_634x468.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will The Duke have to miss the</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Boxing Day Shoot?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">(** Prince Philip has been taken to Papworth Hospital rather than a local cottage hospital.
Rather. Rather. What on earth do they mean “rather”. There is no RATHER about it!
Cottage hospital are totally incapable of inserting stents into a coronary artery. Papworth Hospital is the main, the only hospital in the area which is capable of performing the procedure.)
STOP PRESS:
The Queen’s corgis have got into a scrap with Princess Beatrice’s dog Max. I don’t think I can stand any more of this. Off with them, all you get out of my sight! Mad Hatter, I call to you. Please make yourself welcome in my house any time you want...
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a>
</div>
</div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-65464308595030762462012-08-14T04:17:00.000-07:002012-08-14T04:17:57.602-07:00Killi’s Very Civil Ceremony ~ A Sweep Through Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQA_P0Il2T3Z5elsgT_Z-u0yhXgT3ugBMu5b1uFa-bcKpGIUkW-0yHFFk7jK9GtfVTC7UcVihJNaG4c46_Bolck43yxZJM_2hnACUOuTJZ_4CyZkypQg03Npye0dq-Xtv5VvjVwgJIDsRS/s1600/4+-+Photo0013-Killi+Turned.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQA_P0Il2T3Z5elsgT_Z-u0yhXgT3ugBMu5b1uFa-bcKpGIUkW-0yHFFk7jK9GtfVTC7UcVihJNaG4c46_Bolck43yxZJM_2hnACUOuTJZ_4CyZkypQg03Npye0dq-Xtv5VvjVwgJIDsRS/s320/4+-+Photo0013-Killi+Turned.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> About 20 years ago, in some middle of
nowhere track in India I met an eleven-year-old boy who said his name
was Killi. Killi attended (from time to time) the local village
school and his favourite lesson was called... Truant. “It’s
simple,” he explained to me, “School is about learning things,
and when I go to class I learn nothing, apart from the fact that the
teacher either isn’t there or doesn’t do anything when he is.
Even were he to beat a boy one day, we’d all have a little
entertainment spiced with our resentment, but more often than not he
can’t even be bothered to do that. He just tells us to carry on
studying.”</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpTedEbyqmy4IPZBaypQ-_aVg5zBMfIMnUA-Dtu9urAIuklutz_xEfo3QzyxVPp49AInkz9B8rgmvVbm5yuHeH4Ao7xXxekf4CXUzDGlTgn7NhQ7Xe-4CW-8t6SQj8N48uSOobCSo6Du5/s1600/0a+-+KUMAHEAD.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpTedEbyqmy4IPZBaypQ-_aVg5zBMfIMnUA-Dtu9urAIuklutz_xEfo3QzyxVPp49AInkz9B8rgmvVbm5yuHeH4Ao7xXxekf4CXUzDGlTgn7NhQ7Xe-4CW-8t6SQj8N48uSOobCSo6Du5/s1600/0a+-+KUMAHEAD.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Really 11</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t long before Killi’s lost
the isolation of his Jungle adventures. “After all” added a
school-chum, you need to have a buddy with you in case of snakes.
“And I suppose my parents <i>would </i><span style="font-style: normal;">miss
me” said Killi in reply. “More like they’d miss someone lugging
jars of water from the village tap at 3.00” a.m. grumbled his mate
Vibhu. You know how we stand in there in all weathers keeping each
others’ places in the queue before grabbing a bit more sleep until
we go to attend classes that aren’t there!” Killi simply didn’t
reply to this, but he welcomed the company nonetheless, and soon
there was a gaggle of four or five boys playing hooky as they
explored the jungle nearby.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the course of
time, Killi and his mates would come back with many things, mostly
Nellikai or wild gooseberries, their ragged pockets bulging with the
hard green fruits along with string and unprotected razor blades.
These became a currency with the boys as they emerged from the
forest, sharing them round, but only with kids who were prepared to
do other work in return. I swear these children had several sets of
eyes. They’d shared and bagged the prestigious job of pushing the
wheelchair, so I would use this free form of locomotion to explore as
much of the mountainside as I could with wheels permitting. It wasn’t
long before I’d scream out NIL (STOP!) because I’d seen a wiggle
of movement under some plant and ordered them to bring it to me.
Astonishingly, most boys were terrified of some of the creepies like
bristly devil-headed caterpillars, advising me to be careful and not
to touch. Persuading the diábolo to leave its stalk and wander along
my hand while I blew mock kisses in its direction. That raised my
social status even more, and I must admit I much enjoyed the power
which was heaped upon me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t long
before my room was filling up with bugs, millipedes and inch-worms,
not to mention the odd sweet-jar which contained soil and ant lions,
and occasionally a flower-pot snake or two. As the specimens poured
in I soon realised that I was biting off more than I could chew, or
indeed feed. And what is more I saw that all this gathering and
collecting “for John” had very little to do with me until the
small runnel of regular absenteeism from the village school turned
into a river. John would be well and truly in the spot-light if it
was traced to him!</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It Was Like This: Thanks Getty!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Matters came to a
head one day when I found that unasked, a boy had cycled a further 12
miles into the depth of the jungle and came pedalling furiously back.
He presented me with a live chameleon he had captured there and
thought I’d like to keep it as a pet. A live chameleon was
something I’d never met face-to-face before; I’d always wanted
one as a child and now my wish had been granted in a quite unexpected
way. Even so, I had a strange surge of emotions sweeping through me
at the moment; Deeply touched that a boy had cycled so far on my
behalf and that he’d correctly guessed what I would love. At yet at
the age of 44, I’d also learned that the creature would be
thoroughly accustomed to the deeper jungle world which was his home
that very morning. After giving the boy a hug of thanks, I told him
that it could not be.
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On opening the
little box, the lizard had done its utmost to convince me that it was
a Fischer-Price Plastico-rubbery toy which had pipe cleaners embedded
in its limbs. The creature seemed frozen & dead, but after
leaving it alone a little it started to move jerkily and roll those
googly eyes. The boy pleaded for me to keep it but I explained
through my friend that back home in Tiruvannamalai the conditions
were totally different. There wasn’t the humidity and the greenery
there, and even if he lived he would never find a mate. Without his
jungle cover he’d soon become a target for a hungry crow and rat,
or perhaps he’d simply die to have his flesh picked off by ants. I
think that of all the futures I saw, that was the saddest
possibility.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGS4eBTFTFzDQlCLjkqPo8FP0k3kNtnEJDKEDi8AWJE0Qt0JRzdpPXeq3ZlA1pkjNrHDFXjWEuZbw2nJnF0fIS-H7LFfCNgOS9jOlZAooYl0u75W-_cYRh2YAQV-6CxeleAXmYitypDJG6/s1600/1+-+Image059+with+brother+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGS4eBTFTFzDQlCLjkqPo8FP0k3kNtnEJDKEDi8AWJE0Qt0JRzdpPXeq3ZlA1pkjNrHDFXjWEuZbw2nJnF0fIS-H7LFfCNgOS9jOlZAooYl0u75W-_cYRh2YAQV-6CxeleAXmYitypDJG6/s200/1+-+Image059+with+brother+cropped.jpg" width="197" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Killi With Brother Ramana</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And then one day he
decided to clean my floor with a brush, push the chair even more and
make my breakfast. Jungle adventures were left behind as time’s
broom swept us all on. I missed him sorely when I returned to England
I determined I would bring him, with his brother, to help me
throughout the year. Inevitable difficulties followed, the most
formidable of which were the Home Office Dragons who made it an
almost forgone conclusion that entry to the UK would be referred.
“Highly unlikely” was the term used in their letter to my MP.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPc0FZMLCw_NSZzLpjq3Y5BNpcgKQkwrp4pqDJ7BTzQKl3Ewm19zoIsly8y4ukY6nz_rDnhN918RVl9XyxrqjNZ_KQS3OSIQteo6c_5XW8QM1YUrFopVzM6qZhfwu61vNKsx_F68-6Go3/s1600/3+-+Raj+in+Airport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPc0FZMLCw_NSZzLpjq3Y5BNpcgKQkwrp4pqDJ7BTzQKl3Ewm19zoIsly8y4ukY6nz_rDnhN918RVl9XyxrqjNZ_KQS3OSIQteo6c_5XW8QM1YUrFopVzM6qZhfwu61vNKsx_F68-6Go3/s320/3+-+Raj+in+Airport.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Surprise followed
on from surprise. Who knows what happened in the intervening years.
Somewhere along the road that chameleon lizard must have traded
places with an axolotl. In the course of leaving the watery humid
jungle a veritable dragon has emerged to begin his life as a
fully-fledged UK Citizen.</span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5SwfLYphH8fIv4WmB-v30LsDMThfwffD8_bICjIAsYXxlfTKB8TnrdpL10aZHrx2Nj6vuJcCMN1PsGiRza6ZalhNFaN9mfwF0hio56u51YcSlVMdFSe1ms8J89cLUXBjwEWpAxLqQVUs/s1600/5-IMG_0965.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5SwfLYphH8fIv4WmB-v30LsDMThfwffD8_bICjIAsYXxlfTKB8TnrdpL10aZHrx2Nj6vuJcCMN1PsGiRza6ZalhNFaN9mfwF0hio56u51YcSlVMdFSe1ms8J89cLUXBjwEWpAxLqQVUs/s320/5-IMG_0965.JPG" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Killi's UK Welcome Ceremony.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the picture, in front of the portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, we see Killi with the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, Penelope Walkinshaw as well as Councillor John Powley. Killi has just received his Certificate of Nationality.</span></div>
</div>
WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-32261534977942334182012-07-31T09:30:00.001-07:002012-08-05T09:52:43.578-07:00"YOU" ~ It Had Its Moments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12171731-you" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="You" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1341179835m/12171731.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12171731-you">You</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/217442.Joanna_Briscoe">Joanna Briscoe</a><br /><br />My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/380830275">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /><br />Sat Jul 28 09:06:41 BST 2012 <br /> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I need a little bit of intrigue in a book to give me the
energy to read through the following acres of prose. Unless the prose
itself has such entrancing properties that I can wallow in it at any and
any point, I invariably I need bribing. I'm a fish who's too lazy to
swim any distance unless somebody's dangling a worm on a hook to pull me
through, and the first little worm was the snippet that a school-girl
has a raving crush on the English master, whilst her mother carries on
her first lesbian affair with the English master's wife. What a
delightful set of ingredients, I thought. With those items loaded into
my trolley it wouldn't matter too much at the checkout which plot I
selected from the range dangling on their hooks for to select. If plots
were sweets, Maltesers would guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable read.<br /><br />
However, I noticed that the Publisher was Blooms bury and they are a
firm with whom I feel that (despite the fact that they do the Harry
Potter series and are consequently swimming in far too much money) you
can hardly go wrong. My prayer that Maltesers would be the dangle-plot
for Ms Briscoe to adopt were swept aside as I looked for something more
obscure. I needed a sweet I quite enjoyed as a child but wasn't really
sure about. Something like marzipan which I convinced myself I would
love once I'd become a proper grown-up. Newberry Fruits sprang to mind.
They were a sugar-crusted jelly in lime, orange and lemon and they had a
liquid centre which gushed all over your tongue when you bit into them.
For some reason I fancy I'd plumped for those. Or had they been
pre-selected for me? <br /><br /> I slogged and groaned over this book,
wading heavily through the chick-litty e-pages, which stayed drearily
parochial at their best or navel gazing at their worst, not that I have
anything against deep contemplation. But you are, I feel, to come to an
inner peace, love and understanding when you do that. <br /><br /> It
dragged on and on. I kept looking for something else to do, something
tantalizing to read, and managed to get myself thinking, madly, that if I
left it alone for a bit it would somehow have magically have read
itself on a bit further. The Siren whispers advised me to dump it as
there was plenty else for me to enjoy. But I don't do that, and at the
time I firmly believed that 'proper readers' simply didn't do it.
Nonetheless, by the time I’d reached the halfway mark I was as teed-off
as ever and sorely tempted to dump it as 'failed to finish'. When a book
does that with me it's in serious trouble. <br /><br /> It perked up
quite a bit at the 60% mark and I sailed through the batch of pages,
deciding that I was quite enjoying it really, and that it had reached
the 'all forgiven' point, as long as it kept up the pace and didn't
slacken its hold. Something more needed to be dangled on the hook now,
and I demanded a diet of shrimps followed on by succulent high fat low
cholesterol Dublin Bay Prawns.<br /><br /> Unfortunately there was no tasty
diet. In true seventies style I found I was munching my way through a
slice of wholemeal mung-bean pie, and all I really got was he ocular
equivalent of jaw ache. As the story dragged its fuggy hash fog, I began
to care little what or who Cecilia’s mystery baby was and by the end of
the novel, despite the occasional description which held me captivated,
I found that I simply couldn’t care less.<br /><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></span></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-67416919893494559352012-07-09T10:29:00.000-07:002012-07-09T10:29:22.465-07:00Our Gay Son<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Tue 03 Jul 2012 17:43:26 BST><br />I spent a day feeling stunned after the completion of <i>The Assassin's Apprentice</i>, followed by a day of shivers as I underwent withdrawal symptoms because the story had come to an end. The following day I pointed my quivering finger at The Royal Assassin and pressed "Buy Now" followed by "View Downloading Items" and as the cyberdrug infused its way into my system, the shaking stopped, my head cleared, and I was able to carry on with normal conversations and think about my next meal. After that, I left-clicked and selected "Remove from Device", fancying it was one of the notes I used to write to Father Christmas scrawled on tissue paper sucked up the chimney flue and making its way to the Cloud.<br /><br />I felt unable to handle the events held in that shiny new volume today. I needed an interlude, a little break, a light visual to fill a corner of my hungry mind, but only a corner of it as I needed to increase my capacity for handling tension and pain before moving on to volume two.<br /><br />17:43:50 <br /><br />Just over 50% of the way through. I'm finding it so honest, frank and open and I have rarely nodded and underlined as much as I have in this Kindle book. It surprises me. It delights me, and by that I mean it has my undivided attention. By 'delight' I don't mean enjoyment in the normal sense of the word, but I go with it. I suffer with the author's pain of what he must have undergone when his youngest son, whose life hung by a thread when he was very young, came out to his parents as gay.<br /><br />Exactly why I am enjoying so much I find much harder to understand. I am not a Christian struggling with my sexual orientation and I haven't jettisoned Christianity because of its stance on homosexuality. I jettisoned most of it at about the age of twelve when I attended a Billy Graham meeting which our school took some pupils to see. I went through curiosity, because I wanted to see angels appearing, or Pentecostal flames lighting upon the heads of the ones who were called. I tried, oh Lord how hard I tried to go along with what Billy was saying and to believe whatever he was saying, and when he got that glazed but somewhat sweaty look upon his face and asked for true believers to "Come Forward", I asked to be pushed up to the front, not because I had felt anything, but I because I wanted to see what would happen next.<br /><br />What happened next looked very promising to me: dapper smart young men in crisp suits circulated amongst our select gathering and asked us, individually whether we believed in Jesus Christ and accepted him as our 'Savior'? I was very tempted to believe in Billy's pitch, especially if it meant moving a world with such pretty young men, but true to what my Dad had told me — not to fall for anything without checking it out a bit more first — I replied that I wasn't really able to 'believe' on the results of listening to one preacher. (Privately I saw Billy Graham more as a show doll with plenty of make-up on his face, and little if anything beneath that). One of the cute little men then opened his Bible and said, "Perhaps you'd like to read what The Bible says about unbelievers, John?" and there it all was, held out for me to read. Hot fiery nasty stuff which would happen to me if I didn't believe in the Bible. If there was any prefabricated self-contrived bubble about this meeting which I'd made up before attending, it had now burst, pretty young men and all. I suddenly found the entire affair highly amusing, and I couldn't stop myself from smirking. With words like "My God is much bigger than all that" I turned my back on Christianity, and to this day I have never really turned back.<br /><br />Until Now. This little book, this painful writing out of the author's deep hurt and anguish, has caused me to think again. A little. The author spent 40 years of his life serving as an evangelical Christian, with many years spent in Africa, and there is no doubt that he was thoroughly sincere and that he achieved a lot of good, working as a missionary during that period in Uganda.<br /><br />The pain started when the author's good wife got her contractions early and was rushed to hospital. She gave birth to twins, one of whom died and the remaining child, a little boy, was premature, his life held in the balance. So he was much cherished. It was in his late teens, flanked by his heterosexual and highly supportive brother and sister, that he came out to his parents as gay, which was, understandably, a tremendous shock to his parents. <br /><br />Finished!<br /><br />At the conclusion of this short book I could not but be struck by the resonant similarities yet very marked differences in our two spiritual 'journeys', —as everyone seems to be calling their life stories these days— : The similarities were days spent in the tropics, but the author had a far worse time of it than me, as he witnessed more beatings and deaths than me as well as undergoing a severe bout of malaria. Mr Robert-John spent years as an evangelical spirit-led Christian who perhaps included hell fire threats in his eagerness to make conversions along with possible episodes of homophobia, made in the conviction (as he saw it) that homosexuals were an abomination in the eyes of God. Strangely enough, I had also decided by the time I reached puberty that I too was an abomination under the Christian ethic, but this belief had nothing to do with sex, as I didn't know at the time what the Christian stance on homosexuality was. I just remember believing that I was chaff because I was an unbeliever, or simply not good enough for Heaven. By the age of nine I had decided that because I didn't believe in the way The Bible wanted me to, I was chaff [Insert pic] . I was the useless husk that surrounds the good grain, and The Bible told me that I was going to be burned in the fire†. I decided that there had to be a use for chaff. If it was no use to The Bible and its adherents then perhaps there was another religion which found a good use for chaff. </span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3oqwZ02sTQp9Xz1SRn9thbZ7MlAxpa431urna5tbJzuCqdw0i0moAr6GTEK81MKNc4Cc2zPUH4z0OkZcH-9wjVkATJWZ_K5FwPvhAPao2vxqZih3yKDUUkcKRsKR6oY2O5nJDtuyk-W2/s1600/John+knew+he+was+Rice_chaffs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3oqwZ02sTQp9Xz1SRn9thbZ7MlAxpa431urna5tbJzuCqdw0i0moAr6GTEK81MKNc4Cc2zPUH4z0OkZcH-9wjVkATJWZ_K5FwPvhAPao2vxqZih3yKDUUkcKRsKR6oY2O5nJDtuyk-W2/s320/John+knew+he+was+Rice_chaffs.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Paper and straw dolls came to mind, but I was sure that cleverer minds than mine would have more ingenious ideas.* <span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><br />Years later I grew into the way of Hindoo-ism learning to forge a pathway through to Yoga and the East, and it wasn't long before I discovered the health benefits of bran. I then found a much bigger God than the bigoted bipolar trucculent brat of the Old Testament. He was unbelievably great, so great that he didn't live in some far off inaccessible corner, so hard to reach that so far the only two persons have made the trip: Jesus Christ and The Virgin Mary. He was so great that you couldn't even limit him to being inscribed with a name. Yet this bigger God was closer than we can imagine, 'closer to you than your jugular vein', to echo the Qu'rân (50:16).<br /><br />My early truancy from the Christian Faith led me to the pathless path and I was often bruised and scratched by the thorns I encountered along the way. The author of this book was far more secure in the tenure of his faith. Yet the world in which he lived and moved and had his being was uprooted when his son came to him and his wife on Boxing Day 2005 and announced that he was gay. Prayers and therapy were not tried because the son had no intention of going along with all this evangelicism. The young man was flanked by his fully supportive heterosexual sister and brother when he came out to his parents, so Mum and Dad found themselves rather isolated.<br /><br /><i>SURPRISING OUTCOMES</i><br />I was surprised to learn that the outcome of the author's journey was that he became a reluctant atheist. I wasn't disappointed. I have no problem with atheism whatsoever and I find it an excellent position to start. Sometimes I wish I could be one myself, but I'd only feel more able to do that when I find someone who's able to explain to me what they mean by atheist and what they mean by God. And when I find a few definitions which match up.<br /><br />The other surprise, to say it again, was that I found myself enjoying the book as much as I did. I was after all just taking a break from the spell which had been cast upon me by volume I of The Farseer Trilogy and I wanted to read something on the small side, but different in subject and mood. Certainly I didn't expect to get quite as deeply sucked into the author's cathartic story. <br /><br />~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~<br />*In my maturer years, I learned that chaff can be turned into bricks for fuel; it can make a wonderful insulating material. Furthermore my doctor prescribes me little sealed sachets of chaff (<i>ispaghula</i> husk to mix with water and take after my meals. It keeps me nice and regular and I feel fighting fit. I just *knew* that chaff was a valuable commodity indeed).<br /><br />† Matthew 3:12 <i>His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-60665074880354208912012-07-08T05:05:00.000-07:002012-07-08T10:15:12.432-07:00Our Gay Son ~ I Was Gripped<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15734646-our-gay-son" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Our Gay Son: A Christian Father's Search for Truth" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1341356862m/15734646.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15734646-our-gay-son">Our Gay Son: A Christian Father's Search for Truth</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5814242.David_Robert_John">David Robert-John</a><br />
<br />
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/362917073">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /> <u>Tue 03 Jul 2012 17:43:26 BST</u></b>></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I spent a day feeling stunned after the completion of <i>The Assassin's Apprentice</i>, followed by a day of shivers as I underwent withdrawal symptoms because the story had come to an end. The following day I pointed my quivering finger at The Royal Assassin and pressed "Buy Now" followed by "View Downloading Items" and as the cyberdrug infused its way into my system, the shaking stopped, my head cleared, and I was able to carry on with normal conversations and think about my next meal. After that, I left-clicked and selected "Remove from Device", fancying it was one of the notes I used to write to Father Christmas scrawled on tissue paper sucked up the chimney flue and making its way to the Cloud.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I felt unable to handle the events held in that shiny new volume today. I needed an interlude, a little break, a light visual to fill a corner of my hungry mind, but only a corner of it as I needed to increase my capacity for handling tension and pain before moving on to volume two.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>17:43:50</u></span> <br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Just over 50% of the way through. I'm finding it so honest, frank and open and I have rarely nodded and underlined as much as I have in this Kindle book. It surprises me. It delights me, and by that I mean it has my undivided attention. By 'delight' I don't mean enjoyment in the normal sense of the word, but I go with it. I suffer with the author's pain of what he must have undergone when his youngest son, whose life hung by a thread when he was very young, came out to his parents as gay.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Exactly why I am enjoying so much I find much harder to understand. I am not a Christian struggling with my sexual orientation and I haven't jettisoned Christianity because of its stance on homosexuality. I jettisoned most of it at about the age of twelve when I attended a Billy Graham meeting which our school took some pupils to see. I went through curiosity, because I wanted to see angels appearing, or Pentecostal flames lighting upon the heads of the ones who were called. I tried, oh Lord how hard I tried to go along with what Billy was saying and to believe whatever he was saying, and when he got that glazed but somewhat sweaty look upon his face and asked for true believers to "Come Forward", I asked to be pushed up to the front, not because I had felt anything, but I because I wanted to see what would happen next.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">What happened next looked very promising to me: dapper smart young men in crisp suits circulated amongst our select gathering and asked us, individually whether we believed in Jesus Christ and accepted him as our 'Savior'? I was very tempted to believe in Billy's pitch, especially if it meant moving a world with such pretty young men, but true to what my Dad had told me — not to fall for anything without checking it out a bit more first — I replied that I wasn't really able to 'believe' on the results of listening to one preacher. (Privately I saw Billy Graham more as a show doll with plenty of make-up on his face, and little if anything beneath that). One of the cute little men then opened his Bible and said, "Perhaps you'd like to read what The Bible says about unbelievers, John?" and there it all was, held out for me to read. Hot fiery nasty stuff which would happen to me if I didn't believe in the Bible. If there was any prefabricated self-contrived bubble about this meeting which I'd made up before attending, it had now burst, pretty young men and all. I suddenly found the entire affair highly amusing, and I couldn't stop myself from smirking. With words like "My God is much bigger than all that" I turned my back on Christianity, and to this day I have never really turned back.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Until Now. This little book, this painful writing out of the author's deep hurt and anguish, has caused me to think again. A little. The author spent 40 years of his life serving as an evangelical Christian, with many years spent in Africa, and there is no doubt that he was thoroughly sincere and that he achieved a lot of good, working as a missionary during that period in Uganda.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The pain started when the author's good wife got her contractions early and was rushed to hospital. She gave birth to twins, one of whom died and the remaining child, a little boy, was premature, his life held in the balance. So he was much cherished. It was in his late teens, flanked by his heterosexual and highly supportive brother and sister, that he came out to his parents as gay, which was, understandably, a tremendous shock to his parents. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /> <u>Finished!</u></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">At the conclusion of this short book I could not but be struck by the resonant similarities yet very marked differences in our two spiritual 'journeys', —as everyone seems to be calling their life stories these days— : The similarities were days spent in the tropics, but the author had a far worse time of it than me, as he witnessed more beatings and deaths than me as well as undergoing a severe bout of malaria. Mr Robert-John spent years as an evangelical spirit-led Christian who perhaps included hell fire threats in his eagerness to make conversions along with possible episodes of homophobia, made in the conviction (as he saw it) that homosexuals were an abomination in the eyes of God. Strangely enough, I had also decided by the time I reached puberty that I too was an abomination under the Christian ethic, but this belief had nothing to do with sex, as I didn't know at the time what the Christian stance on homosexuality was. I just remember believing that I was chaff because I was an unbeliever, or simply not good enough for Heaven. By the age of nine I had decided that because I didn't believe in the way The Bible wanted me to, I was chaff [Insert pic]. I was the useless husk that surrounds the good grain, and The Bible told me that I was going to be burned in the fire†. I decided that there had to be a use for chaff. If it was no use to The Bible and its adherents then perhaps there was another religion which found a good use for chaff. Paper and straw dolls came to mind, but I was sure that cleverer minds than mine would have more ingenious ideas.* </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Years later I grew into the way of Hindoo-ism learning to forge a pathway through to Yoga and the East, and it wasn't long before I discovered the health benefits of bran. I then found a much bigger God than the bigoted bipolar trucculent brat of the Old Testament. He was unbelievably great, so great that he didn't live in some far off inaccessible corner, so hard to reach that so far the only two persons have made the trip: Jesus Christ and The Virgin Mary. He was so great that you couldn't even limit him to being inscribed with a name. Yet this bigger God was closer than we can imagine, 'closer to you than your jugular vein', to echo the Qu'rân (50:16).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">My early truancy from the Christian Faith led me to the pathless path and I was often bruised and scratched by the thorns I encountered along the way. The author of this book was far more secure in the tenure of his faith. Yet the world in which he lived and moved and had his being was uprooted when his son came to him and his wife on Boxing Day 2005 and announced that he was gay. Prayers and therapy were not tried because the son had no intention of going along with all this evangelicism. The young man was flanked by his fully supportive heterosexual sister and brother when he came out to his parents, so Mum and Dad found themselves rather isolated.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><u><br /> <i>SURPRISING OUTCOMES</i></u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I was surprised to learn that the outcome of the author's journey was that he became a reluctant atheist. I wasn't disappointed. I have no problem with atheism whatsoever and I find it an excellent position to start. Sometimes I wish I could be one myself, but I'd only feel more able to do that when I find someone who's able to explain to me what they mean by atheist and what they mean by God. And when I find a few definitions which match up.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The other surprise, to say it again, was that I found myself enjoying the book as much as I did. I was after all just taking a break from the spell which had been cast upon me by volume I of <u>The Farseer Trilogy</u> and I wanted to read something on the small side, but different in subject and mood. Certainly I didn't expect to get quite as deeply sucked into the author's cathartic story. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">*In my maturer years, I learned that chaff can be turned into bricks for fuel; it can make a wonderful insulating material. Furthermore my doctor prescribes me little sealed sachets of chaff (<i>ispaghula</i> husk to mix with water and take after my meals. It keeps me nice and regular and I feel fighting fit. I just *knew* that chaff was a valuable commodity indeed).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">† Matthew 3:12 <i>His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-49034277002993088292012-06-20T01:08:00.001-07:002012-06-21T08:37:08.294-07:00Mr Oliver, Will You Offer Some More?<div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />I know that people think they know what you're doing, Mr Jamie Oliver, and I'm pretty sure that you think think you know it too, but I'm not sure that you've ever sat to one side to think </span><i style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">about</i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> what you're doing with food and what you feed into the minds of people who follow you. Yesterday morning I saw you with a knob of celeriac in your hand. I believe you were making some kind of salad with it. You said (words to the effect) that it was too much bother to peel it finely, so you took a sharp knife to cut the skin off in slices, in the process leaving convex lenses of celeriac flesh lying on your work bench, all neatly coated with skin.</span><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">As a child, Mr Oliver, I can remember my mother opening the pedal bin to inspect the potato, apple and carrot peelings. Nothing was usually said, but if she found more than two or three slitherets of vegetable flesh adhering to the skin, she would summon the scullery maid, and I have only a brief memory of one girl who made the same mistake twice. A shame, because she had such a lovely character.</span><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">We were brought up to be very conscious of food waste, the value of food, and the efforts which people make to bring it to our table. Mr Oliver and his ilk however, seem to trivialise it, belittling the food which brings them light and life, thereby turning the entire subject into a comedy. He likes to whack it, bung it, wham it, sling it and then 'drizzle' oils and dressings over his creations. He draws twirls, twists and shapes it upon his plate and presents it more as a picture than a plate of honest tucker to fill you up and send you on your way. </span><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Whether you want to hear it or not, he effuses about all the spices and flavours intermingling in his marinades, whereas in my day the judgment of the food was left to us. We were plate-fed dishes of food which we could spoon or fork into our mouths as we wished, at our own rate. As we ate our meal, cook would not also indoctrinate us with vacuous notions about what was going on within the dish before we ourselves had a chance to decide what we thought of the meal, and whether we wanted to know more. Satisfied silence gave her all the comfort she required.</span><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Which would you rather have? To be presented with a dainty little picture on a plate and fed a lecture about what you might discover if you ate it, or given the meal to enjoy at your own rate, while cook stepped back to see if you were enjoying it? Supposing the eater were to show delight and end up asking you what had gone into it, and how you prepared it? Did you make the soup this morning, or did you do it the previous evening and left it all gel together in the fridge overnight? Did you fry the spices first and then grind them, or perhaps you ground them briefly before crushing them between stones before frying? Perhaps you put them in a muslin cloth and twisted them like washing from a boiler tub, squeezing out the juices between the pores of the cloth? And if you did that, what did you do with the remaining pithy pulp?</span><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Mr Jamie and his kith and kin are young, too young perhaps, to remember hardship, scarcity and need. Yet as surely as the sun will rise upon the morrow morn, so also will those hard times visit us again. I wonder if Mr Oliver, with his slapdash sling-it, bung-it, whack it attitude, has made plans for those times, if not for his own sake, at least for the sake of others whom he feeds.</span></span></div></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-86725767461973145612012-06-16T10:02:00.000-07:002012-06-19T10:32:30.970-07:00Who Vadis, Mr Rathbone?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10141564-inherited-danger" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Inherited Danger (The Dawning of Power, #2)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328304771m/10141564.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10141564-inherited-danger">Inherited Danger</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2854898.Brian_Rathbone">Brian Rathbone</a><br />
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My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/349548463">3 of 5 stars</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I keep on thinking that there must be different ways to write a review Of late I've been reading a slew of books, then taking a ½ day breather before moving onto the next one. Reading interests me much more than the chore of writing about what I've read and besides, I think a book's spell lasts better if you don't keep on about it too much. You want to bask and submit yourself without communicating it all. So I've been reading the first volume of trilogies, and then leaving them well alone. After a while I'll recap on what I've read before asking myself what I thought about it all in retrospect, and whether I want to read further.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One such first volume was <i>The Call of the Herald</i> by Brian Rathbone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After The Call of The Herald had been finished I thought well yes, It's OKay. The question for me, of course, is will it stay in mind? And that is something which only time can tell. Sometimes you really enjoy a volume "at the time", but in retrospect it can go flat. Sometimes it does well in holding itself together as time progresses, and sometimes is grows and grows, until the ineluctable force pulls you back to itself again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br />The Call of the Herald</i> didn't do that for me, but I did enjoy the character of Catrin, the dirty grubby farm-girl who got herself into trouble with the Mr Bumble of a teacher; a nasty boy makes trouble, and Catrin is blamed and expelled from school where she ends up getting herself into even more bother. Plastered in horse-shit, things are never Catrin's fault, but she always gets the blame. However her foot may always be planted in the squish of the barn yard, but her spirit connects with the stars when she finds that the presence of comets triggers magnificent powers within her being, slapping down injustice and righting wrongs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In <i>Inherited Danger</i>, the story continues. It's taken new twists and turns and our fondness for most of the characters in the first volume usually deepens. One thing however which annoys me in Rathbone (or indeed any writer) is when a negative factor occurs at the beginning of a sentence and the problem is all wrapped up by the time it's reached the full stop. "He didn't appear happy about her outbursts, but he supported her nonetheless." is a good example of this. After all, at this stage we are used to wildcat Catrin's explosive bursts of temper, and we're used to the presence of moderating Benjin too. It could have been reworked a whole load better, I feel. Faux pas-ey things like "You're eyes are better than mine" show a sloppiness and lack of care, and I had the distinct feeling that the author was concentrating too much on the feedback from his audience and being wowed by people "liking" stuff than in attending to the material he was writing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This, I feel, is the fork in the road for Mr Rathbone. To the left is the road which follows the fans, and to the right is the desire to devote himself to the characters in the story, and to let the narrative breathe through the pores of his skin. I feel the author has strolled a few yards into the left way and is being looked after well there. He's fed and rested and he has good company. On the other path the terrain is bleaker and full of loneliness if he selects the right-hand path, where the number of fickle fans has thinned out. This is where the ones remaining assess the situation, as they watch the writing mature and it's in this group that the author may have future supporters. The mettle of the readers is tested here, and the author needs to try to avoid sentences where a problem is introduced at the beginning and ended with the full stop. He also needs to develop some of his characters a little more before he throws them away, but I think and hope he can do it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Having read volumes I and II for free, I'm very happy to go to pay for the third because I want to find out what happens through the actions of our heroine Catrin and I could easily fall in love with the newly-named spirit called Prios; whether her impulses land her back in horse manure she grew up shovelling, or if the same dung will be used to make enough bio-gas to mount her on her steed and gallop with authority into the fray remains to be seen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">NB: Under the old system, this book might have acquired four stars. Under the new it's three, and it's just about clambered up to that position. The reason for this is that it's been cast into shadow by another book, in the same genre which whispered its way onto my reading device, which towers like a colossus over my life. The more I enter its world, the more two-dimensional the present one seems to be. The Dawning of Power series needs to look to its laurels.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-38111375795892930842012-06-09T22:38:00.000-07:002012-06-19T10:33:54.359-07:00My First Dip into Dame Stella<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12149825-rip-tide" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Rip Tide (Liz Carlyle, #6)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328305188m/12149825.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12149825-rip-tide">Rip Tide</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/166873.Stella_Rimington">Stella Rimington</a><br />
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My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/345596731">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">74% of the way through.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s a thriller.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s crisply and reasonably well-written, if not brilliant. However, the main thing is that it’s holding my interest. It’s held me most of the way, but it did go slightly soggy at about the 60% mark. However, if this were a cake, the middle would be ever-so-slightly soft. It had faint memories of being allowed to scrape one’s finger round the inside of Mum’s mixing bowl before the placed the cake in the oven. In the days when it was OK to do that, even though you were dutifully told not to do it because it might give you worms. Things never were the same after Edwina Currie told us we were no longer allowed to enjoy eating our soft-boiled eggs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At three quarters of the way through, Miss Rimington’s cake is packed with interest, soft fruit on the inside, yet the almonds are baked to perfection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If this story were a real cake, or even a good meal, I’d be thinking that I could happily go on doing this for ever, so it’s 5-stars up to here, for no particular reason which is usually the best reason I can give for enjoying anything. Unfortunately though, novels like cakes and tuck-in meals can leave you with the feeling that you never want it to darken your doorstep again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’d been putting off the reading of this because I have always felt that Ms Rimington is far too big for her boots, but I now feel that her boots may have grown. Her cake has the contrasts in it which I like. Sweet and sour, savoury and mellow, and it manages to achieve this without adding to much fat, so it’s great for my figure too. By this I mean the tensions between Liz Carlyle and the MI6 man Geoffrey Fane, whom I could quite happily floor even when I’m in a good mood. The Muslim—Western tensions work well for me too because there’s also a good dollop of affection, love and admiration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s time to stop now, and read the book to the end now that I’ve taken my breather. After finishing it I’ll look back to see if my thoughts are still the same. Ms Rimington’s four stars are assured. I wonder whether she can hold on to her five? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">24/05/12 06:18:10 AM</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> It’s finished. Certainly it was very exciting, and it held my interest pretty well. It only went slightly gooey in the centre and I was nowhere near in any danger of getting bogged down (For example, I’ve been stuck somewhere in the middle of Wilkie Collins’ The Black Robe for far longer than I care to remember.) For sure this is not Victorian Stodge where people worry themselves sick purportedly over the issue of conversion to Roman Catholicism. Certainly I feel I’ve become re-attached to reading a good thriller.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I can’t stand straggly loose ends to a story, and for sure Ms Rimington has done a good job of tidying up the narrative with string, knots and ribbons, and that for me is where I slightly whinge the other way. It’s all a bit too neat and tidy, parcelled up and packed away and somehow I really can’t buy such a pretty ending when the plot involves al-Qaeda. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">About 80% through any novel I begin to feel sad that the world in which I’d made my home is coming to an end. It’s here that I begin to cast my eye around to see what’s going to be next. I’ve picked on one of those books which gives a warning that if I read it it will change my life forever. I could say the same thing about reaching the end of any day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But to return to Rip Tide: yes, it’s certainly enjoyable, even if a bit tidy and prissy. It didn’t quite live up to to my expectations, but there again, most books don’t. It’s OK, and I’d always be ready to dive into another of Liz Carlyle’s adventures.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-12821113250018111772012-05-03T01:48:00.000-07:002012-06-19T10:37:14.054-07:00Thrilling Creepiness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13605556-the-revelations" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Revelations" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1334660409m/13605556.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13605556-the-revelations">The Revelations</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3234402.Alex_Preston">Alex Preston</a><br />
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My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/317913000">3 of 5 stars</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Thrilling Creepiness</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am not at all comfortable in the company of fundamentalist Christians, but I like to feel I’ve built up a degrees of tolerance over my many decades of exposure. Yet Cults and small extreme groups of religious bigots can easily drive me right to the edge of sanity. Small groups of controlling individuals give me the creeps, and the main characters in this book are just that: Smug, self-satisfied, hypocritical jerks who preach the wonderful help they’re giving children in Africa with their front side. Meanwhile their backsides are sucking up to powerful bankers and business city gents who are spreading out into America whilst developing a brand name with which to market themselves. Backing the hypocrites whose monetarist and profit-driven policies generate the poverty they set out to ‘heal’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Every time I’ve read a novel, up to now, I’ve found a character to identify with, but in this story I found it almost impossible to like any of the characters; and yet right through to the last lap I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So without further ado, let’s head into the questionnaire:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /> <br /><br /> <u>Before & During</u><br /> </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Did it linger or stay in Mind?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Yes. I woke up at 3.30 a.m. Wondering what was going to happen next.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Dreaming About It?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Probably, because of my previous answer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>"Got-to-Get-Backness"?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Yes of course. What a Question.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Did it Tweak Deep Past Memories?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Yes. Powerful memories surfaced of Billy Graham’s pretty little well-dressed young men threatening me with Hell-Fire. Bible passages underlined in red ink. All at the tender age of 12.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Didn't-want-it-to-End-ability?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — I wanted it to end in the sense I wanted to see this Cult collapse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Glad you read it?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Definitely. I had a whale of a time with it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Did it go "soggy" in the middle?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Only to the extent of being a French Omelette. The centre didn’t dribble.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Would I want to read another one of his?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Definitely. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>If it was eBook, was it it well formatted? Were there chapter divisions?</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> — Yes. It was all very good. All in all, I was thoroughly enjoying myself, convinced that we were up for a 5-star job.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /> <br /><br /> <u>After</u><br /> </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Oh dear. And now for the Dreaded Ending and for the general after-taste left in my mouth by the story. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Credibility</u>: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Very credible; highly and frighteningly readable at first, and intriguing too. And there were some really nice turns of phrase. I was so impatient to find out how it would end. Yet the ending was terribly, terribly crass. I could hardly believe that after the story and the build-up, such a hum-drum ending would be pulled in. OK, the story itself wasn’t entirely believable. I see that now, but within the parameters of relative belief I’d put up some scaffolding which I was getting used to, and I quite liked clambering around between its poles. It wasn’t tailor-made for my mental architecture, but it wasn’t a bad fit either. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Yet what happened with The Police? They were sniffing along the trail left by mobile phone messages nicely and it was just a matter of time before the thing reached the only conclusion it could logically reach, but that didn’t matter for me, because I was intrigued to see how the author was going to handle it. The story is, as far as I’m aware, set in the United Kingdom, and we know that The Police are having to make cuts. But we don’t expect that the serge of their uniforms is going wear so thin that it’s not just fraying, but you can see strands of wool beginning to untwirl in your hands. Oh dear! I never thought I’d see the day when I could reach out and poke a hole in the fabric of my childhood fantasies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> And the dog? Oh no. The dog called Darwin was dumped and left for the team of characters to manage. It was passed from place to place and hand to hand. The characters remembered to put it out for a poo and wee, but if in a town no mention was made of doggie bags or bins; nobody had any dog food so it was just thrown slices of ham, or whatever it was the characters were eating, apparently quite content with whatever it was given. Incredibly, Darwin never suffered from the runs or constipation. That’s two books I’ve read this week, each with a token dog whose behaviour was in danger of causing the tale completely to unravel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> If a book’s standing is in the balance, a dog can make or break a story, or rather cause the scales to come down either way, but I don’t think that can be said to have happened here. After a splendid start and page-turning middle the main characters — never stronger than card-board cut-outs in the first place — thinned down from grove- to tissue-paper thin, becoming so transparent it was empty space.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-84640740888949539742012-04-16T11:03:00.001-07:002012-06-13T00:37:44.894-07:00The Blackest Joke<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">At some time in the early ’nineties I was moseying along the streets of Chennai through the jangling zig-zags of hawkers, beggars and cripples, some of them with partly eaten faces. Yet I was buoyed up in my rosy cloud, happy happy in the knowledge that all suffering and pain was really an illusion. I was in a chauffeur-driven air-conditioned car, being taken back to my host’s office. Lunch was to be served to us in our self-contained Guest House and our host Raju, CEO of a prosperous leather goods company, had a break in his morning schedule and had invited us for a chat and a progress report. While I happily babbled about the underlying <i>śruti</i> note of Being which carried on regardless through all the illusory turmoil of the external world, he chuckled quietly in the back-ground and waiting for me to finish he reminisced that I reminded him of his sister Suniti. He’d brought her back a gift of bubble liquid from Blackpool Pier where he’d been pulling pints. She was delighted: sitting under her arbour she’d blow rainbow spheres at the wall squirrels and sun birds, her face glowing with delight, and Raju would run round the garden too. He’d got a secret pin concealed within his fingers and would run after each bubble as the little girl blew it out and prick it as quickly as he could. Suniti would weep. Friends had told her that British Bubbles lasted far longer than Indian ones and now one of her fondest illusions was being dashed.<br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now Raju, with just the hint of a devilish curl rising from the end of his lips told me that he now had a more sophisticated pin, and would it be OK if he fine-honed it by relating a current joke to me. Settling back with with my Coke-with-a-Mango-Twist I readily agreed to hearing another of his jocular tales:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“You see”, he said “There were these three politicians: Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, and Lalú Prasad. I take it” he added hopefully “that you know a bit about ‘our’ Lalú?” The clan certainly wasn’t very wholesome, but after all Maya was Maya or Illusion. All this, the diseased streets, swish offices and the tubby man sitting in front of me, all this was part of the fabrication. But my soul was tuned to the unchanging <i>śruti</i> string and I was well able to ride unscathed through all of it. So please go right ahead with your tale.</span><style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Very well,” he added. “As I was saying, these three famous figures all happened to die on the same day, and sitting before the Judgement of The Almighty, their pro’s and con’s of all their deeds were summed up and sentence was due to be passed. According to the Laws of Karma the Almighty determined that none of them had been exactly fair in their dealings with men and they were all sentenced to an eternity in Hell. Although these days, he added, Hell has had quite an overhaul. The fires-and-brimstone, sulphurous fumes with their devils’ pitch-forks poised to insert them into unmentionable places — they’re all still there, but mainly kept for the die-hard fundamentalists, homophobic Mormons and their ilk. All this, I’m afraid, is getting expensive. Resources are getting as scarce here as they are in the material world and sadly we still have to keep a few places reserved for several bishops and a few Popes. They took out insurances sealed by Beelzebub, and now everybody in Heaven, Hell and Earth is having to pay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“All defendants are bundled into an omnibus and delivered to their respective quarters according to the darkness of their deeds. And that was that, until one fine day in the middle of the night when a general communiqué is issued that at great expense A Telephone has now been installed. Residents can now call back home and keep in touch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“As chance would have it, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Lalú Prasad are all adjacent in the queue, with Bill being the next in line. The Booth Man in Hell writes down the number, makes several attempts to make a connection and finds himself speaking down a crackly line... “Hilary?... Howya doing? …. Good, good. No sweat, I am a reformed man..., What... ? No, no, I’m not allowed fly-zips on my pants as I told you before... What?... SURE you remember me promising you that. Look, Hilary, we’ve both been there. Just remember when you kiss Chelsea tonight, be sure tell her that Daddy loves her very much and is working off his bad karma just as fast as he can. Yes, he sure hopes to see her before her 13th birthday.” <<i>Click</i>></span></div>
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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Bill checks his watch, delighted to see that it was just 1 minute, 16 seconds and receiving his ticket he gasps to see the total of $2,498.35, including aborted connections. Arguing and remonstrating with him, the Booth Man in Hell assures him that the amount is indeed correct. Telling himself that America is quite ways-away, he consoles himself that there wasn’t anything else to say to Hilary anyway and that Chelsea could make do with a Telegram and card for her birthday. He begins to head back to his quarters, but hesitates when he hears that Nelson has just been connected to Winnie Mandela. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“‘Well, m’dear, there’s no need to be <i>quite </i></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: normal;">so vindictive towards those boys... no, DON’T try to recruit any more... What?... Yes, yes, I’ll have a word about removing my video from the next Ubuntu CD... Yes, OK I agree it was hardly a sincere move... Sure...” and for another 3 minutes or so they chat generally about ANC stuff. Bill can’t help craning his neck as he receives the invoice ticket and both gasp when they see the total of $342.65. He gasps at the realisation that Nelson’s call was four times longer than his own yet just a fraction of his own cost. Nelson buckles his wallet and swaps looks with Bill. It’s Lalú Prasad’s turn now. Bill and Nelson can’t help loitering near the handset, unable to resist the desire to ear-wig on his phone chat with his wife. He and his near-illiterate wife Rabri, two lentils in a pod have been managed to keep themselves plump and well-fed despite the kernels crawling with maggots, and the two are soon romping away as they discuss the next rival’s downfall, who’s to be poisoned with arsenic and who with cobra venom, the mounting difficulties in increasing the inflow of black money, and reviewing Lalú’s new team of fresh young, pretty male rowdies. </span> </div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“All told, Lalú’s call lasts 38½ minutes, and Nelson and Bill are rubbing their hands together calculating what the total Bill for Lalú was going to cost.</span></div>
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</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“ ‘One Rupee, Sir’ added the Booth Man from Hell, and when they made their protests in unison with the demand for an explanation, the Booth Man added in a bored manner: ‘It’s just a local call.’</span></div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“So India is Hell,” added Raju. And Hell is what we’re all living in. Right Here. Right Now. Whatever rosy complexion you may care to put upon it, and when the penny finally drops is entirely up to you”.</span></div>
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</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">In a dizzy sickness I fall deep down into a nauseating, black depressive spiral. Yet when I focus inward and away from the oppressive externals, the <i>śruti</i> note was still there, and then I realised that wherever my foothold may have slipped a rung or notch, the note had always been there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sources: <a href="http://%e2%80%9c/">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Lalu-Prasad-Yadav">Times of India </a></span></div>
</div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-64463422009996261172012-02-17T01:04:00.000-08:002012-02-17T01:10:39.608-08:00Eight Weeks A.D.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">One even I was idly chatting with my
carer. Duties were done and differences put aside, on neutral ground
when the subject of abbreviations surfaced. In a little quiz I asked
him: “We all know what B.C. means. Know what A.D. Stands for?”
“Yes” answered the proselytiser smugly, “I do. It stands for
“After the Death.” I don’t think Benjamin really believed me
when I told him it didn’t, even if it amounted to almost the same
thing, so to keep the new peace I added that I was sure that in some
small corner of my universe, A.D. will indeed stand for just that.
That moment has now arrived. In my precarious hamlet known as Raj
Acre we are indeed eight weeks After the Death. After the death of
the matriarch monkey who lies buried a small stone’s throw away
from where I write these lines, pondering at times what she meant to
the community, what her position was in the society and whether she’s
remembered.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">She had a place all right. Opinion
here seems to be that she was Chief Wife to the group leader. Being
the largest and the best-fed female in the troupe, she was
undoubtedly his favourite concubine. She carried his child. The child
clung to her belly like anything, so much so that if you saw her in
the half-shade you’d think she had an excrescence or overgrowth, a
giant skin-tag attached dependently from her underbelly. Which course
of he was. It wasn’t that he <i>couldn’t </i></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: normal;">take
his leave of her independently. He could do that. He could wander one
or two metres from her body as if he was a thread on a reel. But she
never reeled him in. He reeled himself in, his instinctive recall
leash triggered by the slightest fright. The slightest thing which
happened and it was Back to Mum, because Mum was the safest place in
the whole wide world of Raj Acre. Whatever nasty fights broke out
amongst the monkey gang, or between the monkeys and the wild dogs
here, things were always safe for our infant. Safe from everything he
was when he was with Mum.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVoKTa4Pup35s0Y-HfxS0E8_hch3MNHkbGm9juYljhRAapzHwSduG0p5FuVqXmBlLDl8c83L9ve5Pd5Szh7ImD1eyQPtAAZUDiTaTu70rNoMfbsdtO5W-io72pcX9057K3apUEl_9pzEb/s1600/DSC00734.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVoKTa4Pup35s0Y-HfxS0E8_hch3MNHkbGm9juYljhRAapzHwSduG0p5FuVqXmBlLDl8c83L9ve5Pd5Szh7ImD1eyQPtAAZUDiTaTu70rNoMfbsdtO5W-io72pcX9057K3apUEl_9pzEb/s320/DSC00734.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dad in a Reflective Mood</td></tr>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The death of the
matriarch saw a sea-change. Her baby was in denial. He had one
solution to all his problems which was Go Back To Mum so that’s
what he did now that she was dead. He wrapped himself tightly round
her still body, sucking on her cold, black milk-less nipple, puzzled
bewildered and unbelieving. All the troupe were watching from their
hidey-spaces between the trees, and most of all the Leader was
watching, very carefully. Of a sudden he ran down from the branches
and scooped the youngster up, carrying him up and away.
</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was a rude
weaning for the infant. I wondered how he would eat and whether there
was another female with milk, a wet-nurse who would take him on.
There wasn’t. It was take what Dad offered you, eat it and enjoy
it. It’s what he tried to do, and the child grew thinner and
thinner. Then he turned a corner; forgetting about Mum, his
allegiance was transferred to Dad who couldn’t offer milk but gave
the best protection he could give, which was the best there was.
There’s only one guy allowed to be Dad in the troupe, one guy who’s
allowed the mount the females. He who must be obeyed and given the
biggest, choicest share of everything there is.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzv2XqYQFnWVidTQDcoz8D4IDjp8aRzM9QpETPvvuYm7mK6s5Tt8kEvaBjX68xyKUIIW7irBLot4TY_bt2rVwXuaIx-0isjpvypWgzAa1LUhDLrWIMTO-JVc-W1lvvPIl4_qXmLtC7M8gQ/s1600/DSC00743.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzv2XqYQFnWVidTQDcoz8D4IDjp8aRzM9QpETPvvuYm7mK6s5Tt8kEvaBjX68xyKUIIW7irBLot4TY_bt2rVwXuaIx-0isjpvypWgzAa1LUhDLrWIMTO-JVc-W1lvvPIl4_qXmLtC7M8gQ/s320/DSC00743.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Orpan Tentatively Plays</td></tr>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The infant now
clung to the male’s belly, pressed closer to him than a limpet. And
the close bond soon turned to tough love. Dad would biff him, chasing
him along a tree branch, toward the thinner end where it was thin and
green. He learned that there was nowhere left to go, and after a few
moments of junior’s panic twisting his wizened old face, Dad would
lumber back into the bole of a tree, sitting there resplendent in his
leadership. </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And so it went on.
The sea-change continued its progress slower than the hour hand of a
clock. Members of the troupe were now more inclined to carry on their
business amongst themselves, while we tried to mind ours, which
usually included quite a bit of theirs.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mDB8jLVp6Zd9F107SPbSW0tnry_LkIUdE3hiuNRFpz_0IlwUjHmO3AXBVL8dLb2gY7V5jyQmGcg_YJ-aWyG_gwrOckrYPU7xyrZQZ34R6sdB38_nAXZtxxvvgwu16SmTGDvqY0e7RIJy/s1600/DSC00738.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mDB8jLVp6Zd9F107SPbSW0tnry_LkIUdE3hiuNRFpz_0IlwUjHmO3AXBVL8dLb2gY7V5jyQmGcg_YJ-aWyG_gwrOckrYPU7xyrZQZ34R6sdB38_nAXZtxxvvgwu16SmTGDvqY0e7RIJy/s320/DSC00738.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peeping Out from the Lower Fork</td></tr>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> When the caring troupe have
left me to make my meal or wash clothes, leaving me alone in my Cave,
the leader comes to see me, usually without baring his teeth and
without making a rude noise at me.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> He keeps his willy well tucked
into its fur pouch touch too which I gather is a sign of respect. I
don’t treat him any different to anyone else. He comes into the
‛Main Hall’ room and has a look around and I chat to him as if he
was anybody else, remembering not to smile. The other day I caught
him looking in my cloth bag and I told him off. He just lay it to one
side.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The baby is the
shyest one of all. He seems seems terribly in awe that Dad can be so
bold as to approach a Monster Ape and not get chased away. That’s
where I sign off from this file, abruptly and without notice, like
the power-cuts we get so suddenly here. My days here are numbered,
almost down to the fingers of one hand, and my laptop battery zooms
toward the zero point. These notes will be posted soon.</span></div>
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17/02/12
05:28:07</div>
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<i>Kanantham Poondi Village, India</i></div>
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</div>andavanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00528595439544598749noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-77714002886729936482012-01-23T03:41:00.000-08:002012-05-20T01:10:51.775-07:00The Leaf and the Lump of Mud<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was quiet in the forest, except for the blowing of the wind and the pattering of the rain. The forest grew when the rain fell, the soil became moist and thousands of leaves sprouted from the ends of the twigs and branches. In this forest there weren’t many flowers. They weren’t needed because the leaves were so very pretty. In the light breeze they danced on the ends of their twigs and as they danced they chattered away, as ladies often do.</span><br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Although all the Leaf Ladies were the same, each one was in her own way completely different from the others, and when they all whispered together, their chatter made a pretty twinkling sound which added to the music of the wind. The soil and mud however was very much the same as any other soil and mud, except that sometimes lumps of it would break away from the ground and when that happened each lump found that it could look around and see some of the plants and trees which had grown from their body.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Look at the lovely plants and trees which have grown from our bodies” said one lump of mud, “And look and those beautiful green fresh leaves dancing like glamorous ballerinas from the ends of the twigs”, said another as they looked up to the sky.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And likewise all the Leaf Ladies began each day by casting their eyes down in humility as they remembered where they came from. “We may be pretty and fine and fair,” they said, “But we all grew from the common mud and soil beneath us. Let us not forget this, sisters. Their solid character holds us up and gives us all the food and water we shall ever need.” </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Then let us start each day by giving thanks,” said another leaf, “And let us end it by giving thanks again to that from which we came,” said her friend. All the leaves agreed and nodded and danced in the wind on their end of the twigs and the sound they made was so tinkling and pretty that all the plants and insects and birds fell quiet as they listened to the song. The Leaf Ladies heard their own song too and were enchanted with their achievement. The mud however had no ears to hear these songs and just kept quietly feeding the plants, trees and leaves, and after a while the Leaf Ladies forgot about the mud which had no ears for lovely songs. In short, the leaves had forgotten their roots and the ground from which they all had sprouted, because they’d become distracted by the music they could make, and little by little they grew to despise the lumps of mud which had no ears. “Why waste our time singing to those who are tone deaf?” said one Lady. “And after all,” said another, “It isn’t that we’re not grateful to our roots, but these days we’ve become so busy practising our new harmonies.” Furthermore,” said the next Lady, “It’s rumoured that the leaves in the next forest are practising too. They grow on the lower slopes of snow-clad hills which feed them with fresh cool water and their voices are strong and can even move a stone.” </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoF37FMs-zijbj8dzhRhnp62ONRmmNKX-ZnsSL_rkD1vYKPKJkenVjCd6DV1yoDp_WIlQllA-USSr2N0xkPhghy_6NkBZ9qDfAh2niqr7fE7XwtLcjTAwWfLJEpWcIpNVrk0wAKE81EVZO/s1600/Mudleaf+000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoF37FMs-zijbj8dzhRhnp62ONRmmNKX-ZnsSL_rkD1vYKPKJkenVjCd6DV1yoDp_WIlQllA-USSr2N0xkPhghy_6NkBZ9qDfAh2niqr7fE7XwtLcjTAwWfLJEpWcIpNVrk0wAKE81EVZO/s200/Mudleaf+000.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Leaf become Queen of the Air</td></tr>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A few of the Leaf Ladies grew angry at the thought of this, and a slight blush of red colour crept into the green. Several of them jiggled up and down in a pizzicato frenzy, and</span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"> as they danced, some of the twigs became loose. One of them jumped off to be carried by the breeze and for a few moments this Leaf had moved from being Lady to reigning as Queen because she was held aloft by the air, </span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;">higher up than all her brothers and sisters and even higher than the songbirds on their branches because they need to have their feet on twigs if they are going to sing. </span> </div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: large;">She was very proud about being higher up than everybody else and believed she was the best. And for the few seconds she was indeed the Queen; but this was only because of the gust of wind which held her up in the sky, higher than all the rest, and it wasn’t long before she started to drift down, down below all her friends, tumbling below all the branches and the twigs and the trunks of the trees, all the way down to the forest floor where she landed right next to a lump of Mud! Within the space of less than a minute, Our Leaf had shifted from being the Highest of the High to someone who was so low that if she went any lower she’d be buried in the ground. </span><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"> </span> </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Leaf Lands with a Bump!</td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"> Not long ago </span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><i>Our</i></span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"> Leaf had been practising her song hard, hoping to make her voice rise high above the others, so that other leaves and forest creatures would turn their heads to look at her and her alone. She’d just started to grow a set of frills on the edges of her leaf and she did look exceptionally pretty rolling and tumbling through the air. So when she finally landed next to the mud-lump the expression on her face was one of total surprise.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> For the mud-lump, our Leaf Lady was one of the most beautiful things he ever saw. Leaf Lady was startled. In a word, she hadn’t a single word to say. If she’d sat properly to work it all out, she’d probably have thought that the mud-lump was one of the most ordinary creatures she’d ever seen, and her sisters up in the branches might have said he was quite ugly. So perhaps it’s just as well she didn’t have time to think!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet in a flash our Leaf Lady now realised that without her supporting twig, she had no safe place in this world. Everything up there changed and jostled and nothing was secure. Furthermore the wind which blew her off the twig was getting stronger. Soon it would sweep through the forest floor and then she would be blown clean away. So the first words she spoke to the lump of mud were, “Oh my! I never was afraid of the wind before, but now I think I must be swept away from the forest and the home I love.” Indeed the wind was rising up, but the mud-lump, although he was a clod, was also a fast worker.</span> </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Leaf is Safe from the Wind</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4371428081470874611" name="120119-1059"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4371428081470874611" name="120123-1132"></a> <span style="font-size: large;">“As I have no fear of the wind”, he said “I shall shield you from all harm, but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me sitting on top of you” and with that, the mud-lump jumped on top of Lady Leaf, who would normally have been flabbergasted at such an unseemly action. After all he was just a lump of common mud and his dirty body would smudge her pretty sheen, still tinted all with pink. Yet from deep within, she felt that right now she needed a body with some weight, and what other body was ready to help her in this way. Nobody at all!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lady Leaf thought about her life up in the trees with all her sisters whispering and singing away, and what fine words were used and how good they all made her feel. And then she thought about her life down here on the forest floor lying underneath a clod of sticky mud. For a moment she missed her life ‛up there’ and she even tried to wriggle away, but as soon as she poked out one of her frills she felt the howling of the wind. Then she knew for sure that without the Mud holding her down she’d be blown clean away, and indeed when she opened her eyelid a crack to peep out she saw many of her sisters crying and wailing as they were blown away from home. She found it a little strange not being able to move much, but when she thought about it (and this was the first bit of proper thinking she’d ever done) she could have been out in that wind and completely blown away just like her sisters! The moisture in her beautiful sheen would have dried out. And when she did a bit more proper thinking, she found that being still and quiet in the forest she loved was not so bad after all. In fact, she found it strangely peaceful, and a delicious sense of calm began to flow over her. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After some time the wind stopped blowing and the lump of mud, true gentleman that he was, managed to plop himself away from the Lady Leaf so as to leave her alone. She was a little stained with mud, but being a true Lady at heart she didn’t make unkind comments on inconveniences, especially as the one who had made her all dirty has also saved her life. Indeed, she’d had a lot more time to ponder deep within her self lately. She’d been protected during the wind storm by one who had kept her safe at home, and that’s something which had never happened when she was with her high up friends who never stopped jiggling about. She’d spent a long time with her muddy lump now. He never said much, and he only used a word when it was necessary, and the more she thought about it the more sense it all made. She knew that the mud lump thought only when he needed to think and when that was done, he stopped, content to settle into the forest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, something else was now beginning to happen: The sky grew dark overhead as rain clouds gathered and heaved. It looked as if they were going to burst and rain upon the forest. The Leaf was happy at this, and looked forward to being washed all clean so that she could look all shiny and pretty again. But the mud lump felt something he had never known before: He was afraid. A deep unknown fear had crept up behind him. He was moved to think and said out loud, “Lady Leaf! I AM AFRAID! Oh God in Heaven, I am now afraid of rain!” Our Lady looked at him astonished, as she had been feeling quite the opposite, and she sang out in a tinkly voice: “Why?” </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Leaf keeps her New Friend Safe from the Rain</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The mud lump opened one of his hollows to speak but no word came, chiefly because a new feeling had crept over him and he didn’t have a word for it. “Things are different now” he said. “Many times I’ve crumbled off, in one shape or another, from the forest floor, every time with different bits from here or there, and many times I’ve melted back into Father Earth, sometimes to be reformed again. I never feared the rain before. In fact it was a relief for me to lose my funny shape with all its lumps and bumps; but now, somehow after meeting you, it’s all different. You see I think I’m....” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Oh shut up!” said Lady Leaf who had always been very quick and rather practical too, “So many words don’t suit you at all. Can’t you see that the rain is going to fall right now? Not long ago you jumped on top of me without a word, and now the time has come for me to jump on top of you!” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And that’s just what she did. She was far more nimble than the mud could ever be, so she floated rather than jumped, only to be pinned down by the first drops of rain which pattered from the cloud, wrapping herself over the lump of mud, who didn’t melt away into the ground. Furthermore our Lady had a very welcome shower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Events happen quickly in this tale, although telling them takes longer, and it was only within the space of a minute or two that Lady Leaf had sung her heart out, been torn off her twig, floated like a Queen of the Air, landed on the ground and met a lump of mud who had introduced himself by jumping on top of her when the wind blew. Now their positions had been reversed and she was wrapped tightly around the lump and protecting him from the rain. It was an extraordinary meeting and a most unlikely friendship between two people who were such opposites in every way. Yet they had formed a delicate relationship, and both had changed. Lady Leaf was as beautiful as ever yet somehow the veins in her body ran deeper now; and they were a little drier than they used to be. Of course the mud lump made sure she had as much fresh rain as possible. He kept his body a little wetter than before. By sucking moisture from the ground he was able to give her the occasional massage and mud bath and this certainly helped. Some of the red colour from the Leaf’s earlier anger had now seeped into the mud, and sometimes you could see little streaks of red colour in the body of Our Lump, especially when it was twilight. It was as if he’d had a dab of rouge. Some of the Leaf Ladies remaining high up in the branches caught glimpses of the couple as they went around together. Peeping through the gaps between their crowded sisters they giggled and tittered and said the two had fallen in love, and did you ever hear of such a thing!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile on the forest floor the couple continued to weather their storms, but the mud was starting to feel wetter than usual. Truth was that Lady Leaf had lost a lot of her pretty sheen, and every time it rained now she couldn’t quite manage to hold all the water off her lover and protector. One day the sun came out a little more and both had a chance to sit side by side, enjoying the Autumn of their days. Many of her sisters from up above were falling down now. Without protectors they were blown around, often mounding up in heaps in the boles of trees. “I’m glad that things have turned out this way” she said, and meeting you has made me the happiest Lady alive.” The Mud said nothing as he looked at her very deeply. Small holes were appearing in the body of the Leaf where the rain had penetrated, and he knew that they were both going to... “Oh don’t say anything!” laughed the Lady Leaf to the Mud, “Not even in your thought! Bless you, you have always been the Perfect Gentleman, so eager to protect me from myself, so keen to shield me from unkind words. But I know the truth, my dear! Separated from my twig, I cannot live for long. I am drying out, and my life up there and also down here with you is coming to an end.” If you looked at the Mud Lump now, you see he was a little redder than before he’d had a little pink on his cheek.. It was the effect of the slight drying out caused by the hazy Autumn sun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Heavy Rain Coming Tonight!” said the Mud. “Lady, will you cover me one last time? We cannot last through the deluge as two, but with your help, we’ll stay together for a little longer!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Oh need you ask!” she tinkled in reply: “Where in this planet would I rather be than here with you?” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The couple continued in their special relationship for the rest of the day, smiling, sharing, often joking together, and by the end of the day they both were Ready, happy in the knowledge that come the morn they would both be a couple no longer. The rain arrived, and Lady Leaf jumped on top of her partner. They continued where they always had been, and saw that nothing had really changed. It pelted onto her body and the Mud sighed, a sigh of contentment as more and more rain pelted through the holes in his lady love. Wetter and wetter became the mud and holier and holier became the Lady until she was far more Hole than Leaf. Soon all her colour had gone, and all the flesh tissue between the veins which held it all together. By the end of the night all that remained was a skeleton leaf, and the man she loved had joined joined his Father in the ground.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After that the rain stopped, and the forest fell silent as it waited for the new day to dawn.</span><br />
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<i>Acknowledgement</i>: Many go to Ms Gabriele Ebert, whose sketches provided the fuel and the thrust for this tale. </div>
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</div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-81480603132045913582012-01-14T02:46:00.000-08:002012-01-14T02:46:37.035-08:00An Engrossing Tale. Sort Of.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12142664-drowning-rose" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Drowning Rose" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41uPmbboLRL._SX106_.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12142664-drowning-rose">Drowning Rose</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11749.Marika_Cobbold">Marika Cobbold</a><br />
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My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/261658263">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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I fell straight into this book and became absorbed to such an extent I began to swear every time I was interrupted by somebody wanting something. OK, what they wanted was to remind me that it was time for me to eat, or go to bed; or perhaps I’d care to get into the car which I’d called for earlier and it had been waiting for me for 25 minutes. Annoying irrelevant things like that. Things to do with Me. That’s the extent to which it dragged me away from my own annoyances. Opening my Android phone I pulled up a note, wrote “Did Sodding Life Get In The Way?” and emailing it to myself I added it to the list and put a tick in a new box for my list called Review Criteria. Then I returned to guffawing chuckling, smirking and nearly sniggering at some of the antics three of the main characters, known as ‛The Princesses’ got up to. The theme outside this clique was unfolded by a fourth girl, Sandra/Cassandra whom the other three kept excluding from their lives. Many little strings were tweaked for me here, and once the joking, smirking and nearly sniggering had burnt itself out, these situations always twanged the nostalgic air in a minor key. Most of all, the story reminded me of someone I knew a long way back. I loved the odd take she had on life, the pokes she gave to nearly any- and everybody, especially to herself, many little verbal quips which ignited, flared and died away. Yet underneath this frolicsome, funny and yet rather cruel charade it seemed a deeper purpose was slowly moving, something which was distracting me from the subliminal underflow by all the frill and froth bubbling away in front of me. I tensed myself and waited for my jaw to drop .<br />
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The story kept me thinking further back to my own childhood as I remembered how desperately I wanted to make friends with other children, especially boys; yet most boys spent their time lying on their stomachs ruffling bedsheets and candlewick covers into mountains, dales crevasses canyons and rolling plains. They were positioning their little plastic soldiers into the smooth steps and slopes formed by the sheets. Many of the men were half-folded in a crouching position with rifles mounted on their knees. This set was ‛our’ people I was told, and the opposite set of people were called ‛Jerries’. The game was to lie in ambush behind folded rocks, ruffled trees and crimped-up bushes going “ack-ack blam-blam-blam!” to see how many ‛Jerries’ you could shoot down. It was all rather horrid. Considering my Dad himself had been a decade out of The War as a fighter pilot he must have been engaged in this, yet he’d always remained silent at home. When I wouldn’t join in with these boys they labelled me ‛sissy’ and some of the nurses added that if I didn’t like playing with boys I should have to play with girls instead. Which is exactly what I did. <br />
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The girls with their loves and hates sometimes spat poison at me like “Today we’re all ganging up on you” or “Linda says your radio’s no good ’cos it crackles” which would come out in an early morning hiss, followed later on by the making up with its love and smiles and whispered conversations about ‛Who’s going to cuddle Johnny next?’ or ‛Has anyone seen his willy?’ It all came hurtling back to flood my mind. Yet Drowning Rose was far more than these memories of half a century. Here it was the use of words and the gentle self-mocking of the protagonist — a girl called Eliza, who had grown on to restore porcelain pottery — which had me captivated and enthralled. A lady who loves to mend things in this broken world will always have a firm place in my heart. Lovely phrases like “sitting there as if he belonged, the glass of wine in his hand, his legs outstretched, cutting the kitchen floor in half” and “This bore the nose-print of my mother and I had wanted to ask her to please not put ideas into an old man’s head” were examples which lingered with me for a long time. Here was a lady whose words and me would I hope make very merry partners. <br />
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On this ghastly system of awarding ‛Stars’ to the book, I was thinking Five Stars, Five Stars all the way. I just couldn’t think of any other score for it. At times I was chuckling till my chest hurt and I had to take a drink of water. In fact I was high on the ride of the narrative and I kept on wanting more.<br />
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Yet sadly the hope of finding a new author whose work I could merrily munch through became a little jaded when I reached the section titled “Cass and Ben”. I was puzzled at the complete shift in tone. It wasn’t that another element was being brought in, as I was expecting a gear change at some point in the narrative. It was just that the change was so sudden, so different; so alien that I checked my ebook several times to ensure that I hadn’t somehow jumped into the middle of another tale. I now seemed to be in a pulp fiction novel I’d picked up from the Bangalore Bus Station in 1985. I told myself never mind, it will all fall together and make sense. And fall together it did in a way which was OK. Sort Of. Still I kept asking myself “How?” “Does the way this falls together work as well as the rest of the tale?” and sadly it didn’t.<br />
For me it’s a matter of what you come to expect. The more the writing engages me, and the more it holds me in thrall, so the more I anticipate —and require— that the standard be maintained. So any shift which is below par and below tone in the harmony of the piece cannot entirely work. Nonetheless I had a hell of a time with this story and would love to have given it its Five Stars. Miss Cobbold’s exercise didn’t quite pull off though, which is a shame as it’s such a good story and there’s plenty of meat and trimmings here. If only a few extra resources had been applied to giving it a good brush, comb and spray before the final presentation to the public it would have been a cut far above what the ‛Princesses’ in the narrative could have managed. <br />
When I look back on it, I certainly enjoyed it. But the strange jarring of the Cass and Ben chapter with its sad consequences certainly worked. But only Sort Of, and to an extent which appeared more limited every time I looked at it. I just couldn’t quite get rid of that feeling of being let down at the end. My jaw opened slightly, but it never really dropped. I’d been on a good ride, and I know the author has plenty of other rides available. So would I fork out on another one? Certainly the reader could do a lot worse than reading Miss Cobbold’s books. Yet many other artists out there have lots of different rides nuzzling me in all the right places and I’m giving their call more attention than listening to the capable harp of this author. It will be yet awhile before my hand lands on this author again when I give my book carousel another spin.<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2120029-john-champneys">View all my reviews</a><br />
</div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371428081470874611.post-44022324693184188852011-12-31T01:50:00.000-08:002011-12-31T01:50:26.632-08:00Only in India...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Only in India...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Can you go to the Government “Electric City” Office (as some call it) to pay your monthly bill and be turned away because of a power cut.</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If your coco-nut tree is struck by lightning you’re entitled to a grant. When the Claims Officer calls to assess the damage it’s customary to offer a cup of coco-nut milk from your own tree.</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If you’re destitute you’re entitled to a monthly government allowance. You must fill in the appropriate form declaring your sorry state and sign that you have no family and no friends and know nobody at all. The form must be witnesses and signed by somebody who knows you very well.</div></li>
</ul></div>WhoRamanoidshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242059715496699342noreply@blogger.com2