Depressing Footnote

As we drove up from Perpignan yesterday, I missed the first motorway access, and so we stayed on the old N9 as far as the Leucate junction.  Even in those few miles, we saw numerous ladies of the afternoon by the roadside.  It being the end of October, the lurid scarlet or violet frocks we saw so many of back in the summer on the N9 near Béziers have given way to a uniform of black miniskirts and leather jackets.   The local paper is full of adverts offering the services of call girls: 'forte poitrine, English spoken, accepte carte bleue'.  This is big business.  But then, back in the 80s, BT had to employ people to clear the calling cards out of London phone boxes as well.

The day dawns wet.  Fortunately, there was some heat left in the fire when I came down, so it is now drying the logs: I think it's catching again.  Fortunately, it is not too cold outside, so the room's getting up to a decent temperature.  I think it's an out-with-the-paints day: no point planning any outdoor activity more ambitious than driving to the baker's.

Oh, by the way, I'm finished Bookering for the year.  I finished Narcopolis yesterday on the plane.  The subject was depressing (though not without flashes of humour throughout) and the narrative style odd and full of Hindi vocabulary.  (In that last respect, the new touch-screen Kindle is helpful: touch and hold on a word and up pops the Oxford dictionary definition.  It knew a few of them, but I don't see much use for my new-found Hindi narcotics terminology.)  Maybe I'm setting my sights too high - I like a good read rather than one that leaves me fretting over what the devil I'm going to say when I have to write the essay.  I'm now reading a whodunit.

Ordeal by Ryanair

A far better ride up to Stansted than I’d feared: we left home at 08:00 and were there by 09:10 with no hold-ups, and not even a queue at the tunnel.  At the car park we were straight on to a bus to the terminal.  This meant, of course, that we had time for an extravagant second breakfast at the airport, and enough exposure to the Great Unwashed to acclimatise us to a couple of hours with Ryanair.  The flight got us here in just bearable squalor and discomfort, and on time.  The fellow at the Hertz desk persuaded us to upgrade, so we drove home in a rather large Korean Chevrolet 4x4 with leather chairs and all the toys we’re used to, plus a few, such as a reversing camera and satnav.  The gearbox is a bit old-school – we are used to the double-clutch DSG box, so it’s a bit of a come-down to have to use a jerkomatic box with a slush pump.  It does the job, and it’s nice not to have to think what to do with that silly third pedal that one usually finds in hire cars this side of the pond.  But I prefer to detect gear changes with my ears rather than the anagrammatic arse. 

The house is standing, and the fire is working well after an initial sulk.  We’ll take a ride along to see the firewood man tomorrow, I think, if it isn’t raining.  Thinking of firewood suppliers in times past, I’m wondering why the street isn’t full of our neighbour’s vehicles.  He used from time to time to provide us with the odd stère of wood – usually as green as can be – and parked his moribund vehicles in front of the house.  This incidentally tended to lead to our walking his oil leaks into the carpet.  We’re rather hoping that his family has outgrown the flat round the corner.  Watch this space. 

Rites of Autumn

Sharp frost overnight – we’ve seen the odd spot of rime on other people's windscreens - but last night’s was the first this year to make patterns on the conservatory roof.  As we have had almost 24 hours without rain, it was time to have a try at cutting the grass.  The mower did its best to refuse to start – I guess its ignition system is as sensitive to the damp weather as my joints – but it did complete a cut, and in the process chopped up and boxed most of the ash and oak leaves that our  neighbours’ ugly trees shed on our land every year.  It’s a muddy, sweaty job, and the grass is a bit chewed up in places by the mower’s driven wheels.  But all in all it looks less worse nor what it used to was, and Her Majesty's compost bin is close to full.  Out the front there’s the occasional blade of grass from the seed sown on the bald patch left by the unlamented leylandii. 

As for the fauna, we took a walk into the village this morning for some veggies, returning via the pond to check on the ducks.  Arthur was there, together with two noisy and well-grown ducklings.  Of Doris, no sign – nursing her noise-induced headache somewhere, I guess.  Here in the garden there are occasional rush hours at the feeders, usually, and conveniently, when we’re having our breakfast as well.  After a long absence, several nuthatches have been visiting.  Previously we hadn’t seen more than one at a time.  A pair of goldfinches – quite a rarity in our garden – spent a while at the sunflower seeds the other day, and we have suddenly attracted the attention of at least three jays, who come and feed from the peanut tray five metres from my vantage point in the dining room.  This is the time of year, I read, when they’re usually banking thousands of acorns.  Good job, I say: I’m forever hauling oak seedlings out of the garden.  Perhaps the crop has been poor this year: they are cleaning us out of peanuts faster than the squirrels can get to them.  We have a lot of this year’s scruffy young wood pigeons at the feeders as well, and it’s amusing to observe the pecking order.  But they’re all down a step from the jays, who see them off summarily.  Groups of long-tailed tits sweep in and out now and then: we tend to see more of them when there’s snow on the ground.  The usual robins, dunnocks, blue, coal and great tits are regulars, but we never see a house sparrow, though they are plentiful just a few hundred metres away. 

Fireworks last night.  The village next door has a bonfire and firework display every year around this time: I guess the village, like Lagrasse, avoids holding its annual display on the same night as the bigger show up the road.  I could see it well from the conservatory, though Martyn insists he got a better view by hanging out the back bedroom window.

Off south on Tuesday for a week.  I do not pretend to look forward to the rush-hour drive to Stansted.  We may leave early and linger over a lengthy brunch at one of the hotels. 

Modern Times

Lunch at La Dolce Vita on Martyn's birthday.  Decent meal, very potable house red by the glass, reasonable bill.  Lunch on Sunday at a pub in Somethingdean with Barbara.  Pleasant reception and brisk service, sticky table, uninspiring meal, adequate wine, shocking bill.

The touring performance of Calendar Girls is in Disgustedville at the moment, and it was a nice night out, even if the Assembly Hall's cellar leaves something to be desired.  The performances were generally very good, and we had a good ration of belly laughs.  Bit of a sting in the tail, however: there was a message from the bank's fraud department when we got home: my debit card seems to have been compromised: someone had bought £15-worth of pay-as-you-go minutes from one Mobile operator, and attempted to buy £10-worth from another, which was refused.  Top marks - for once - to RBS, who were quickly on the case, have refunded the £15 debited, and have issued a replacement card within 36 hours.  It's for the bank and the police to work out whodunit, but I have a theory, not unrelated to the only unfamiliar place in which I've used the card in the past few days. Next move: change all PINs.

It was good to practise my unmentionable hobby yesterday other than as chairman, the more so because the chairman was a dear friend from the same litter of 2004 swearers-in.  Gosh: I'm more than half-way through my career in said hobby, from which I must retire in July 2020, if I live that long.

The Booker

I suppose I oughtn't to be surprised at Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies taking this year's Man Booker prize.  It was an altogether better read than Wolf Hall, which had too many tricks and mannerisms in it for my liking.  I prefer the writer to be invisible: it is Freddie Forsyth's cranky intrusion into his narratives, for example, that spoils many an otherwise good yarn for me - not that I suggest he's in imminent danger of a Booker shortlisting!  It was the Self-conscious, artificial, modernist stream of consciousness of Umbrella that turned me off: indeed, I nearly gave up on it.  Ought a book to be deliberately made difficult and frustrating to read?  I see this morning that last year's much-derided 'readability' criterion is of less value than that of 're-readability'.  Discuss.  The Garden of Evening Mists is my favourite of those of the shortlist that I've finished so far.  The flapping around in time makes it a little confusing, but the careful construction of the two central characters redeems it.  I shall read Tan Twen Eng's first novel once I've finished the remaining two in this year's shortlist.  I rattled through The Lighthouse in a couple of insomniac hours, and am looking forward to finishing Swimming Home, probably later today.  Narcopolis awaits on the electronic shelf.

It's getting thoroughly autumnal here.  There are some lovely trees round about us, but the two that concern us are not among them.  Thanks to a strong wind from the south and east, the garden is now full of other people's leaves, and there are a lot still to fall.  We were lucky last year in that there were a few dry days in November when I could get out and hoover them up with the mower.  Let's hope this year will be the same. 

Il faut cultiver son jardin

One of the early steps on assuming the stewardship of Forges-L’Evêque was a critical view of the previous administration’s planting out of the pocket handkerchief of land that came with the masonry.  At the top of the agenda stood the huge numbers of leylandii all round the frontiers of the territory.  We may perhaps be excused for guessing that an earlier proprietor was a justifiably diffident naturist.  We Got Someone In early on to take down the line of trees down the east side of the garden, to trim and take a metre or so from the hedges to the south and west, and to hoik out a few more leylandii that stood where we planned to build the sitootery.  That was much welcomed by our neighbours to the east, who suddenly had sunlight in their garden.  It helped, of course, in their view that we then had to replace the fence (our responsibility), which had remained standing thanks only to the leylandii.  We got the same firm in the following couple of years to keep the hedges in order, but gave them the push when their prices escalated.  We’ve since been using a chap from down the road (who also keeps us supplied with eggs).  He charges us less than half the first lot's charges for hedge-fettling.  He came round on Friday, sorted the hedges and took out a further leylandii from the front of the house.  He has also had a hack at the overgrown cherry tree, so we’re starting to look a bit less worse, five years on.  I sowed some grass seed the other night on the bald patch under what had been the canopy of the mercifully departed tree.  Needless to say, we then had a hailstorm and several heavy showers.  I guess it was a bit late to sow grass seed anyway, but let’s see what happens.

Meanwhile, a little mail-order parcel of plants (primroses and pansies) has arrived, and they are now planted up in 3" pots to grow on for winter colour.  Our tubs are looking pretty miserable, so it’ll be good to get them emptied out and re-planted with new plants in fresh compost.  I hauled out one of the bigger clumps of iris sibirica the other day, and have been distributing and promising bits of it to friends.  If you want a bit, shout: there are four other clumps of it that would benefit from division.

 

An observer in the public gallery of a neighbouring Magistrates’ Court might tell you that an unfortunate and impoverished defendant left the other day with TV licence fines remitted.  A court may, of course, see him or her in due course for Council Tax debt.  Oh, and if you feel like dodging a £2.30 rail fare any time soon, bear in mind that this carries a £400 fine, plus costs and surcharge (fines tax) of £125, or so it appears from the public gallery.  And if the bailiffs have to turn out to enforce it, that adds a further £300, whether or not they take your flat-screen telly, or so someone in the gallery might have heard it said the other day.

At two-thirds of the way through this year's Booker short list, I'm wondering why so many writers, if not all these days, feel the need to hurtle backwards and forwards in  time in the course of the narrative.  I could cope years ago with the Rahmennovelle, but the current bunch of hopefuls seem to be vying with each other to confuse readers.  The likes of Mr Self sometimes shift 50 years and change narrators half way through a sentence.  Do they write the various epochs in separate windows, then press some sort of random-mix button?  I'm conscious that my MA Hons (failed) status doesn't exactly qualify me as a literary critic, but I think I recognise affectation when I see it.  So far, my vote would go to Mr Tan's The Garden of Evening Mists: at least he has the decency to use 'tell me what happened back then' once in a while to signpost a chronological gearchange.  Ms Mantel's latest is better than Wolf Hall from the point of view of accessibility (This time, she uses 'He, Cromwell, ...' rather than leaving you to work it out for yourself.)  I rattled through Alison Moore's The Lighthouse this morning in about three insomniac hours, and might read it again to see what, if anything, I ought to have got out of it.  I wonder if my MA (Ordinary) would qualify me for a place on next year's shortlisting panel.  I agreed with their conclusion last year, but am not impressed with this or last year's shortlists.

Modern Times

Disaster struck on Tuesday: my kindle suddenly refused to co-operate.  It had been getting a little slow on the uptake of late, and on Tuesday, rather than advance a page, displayed a lot of horizontal lines, then wouldn’t budge.  (I blame its having had to deal with Will Self’s affectedly incoherent Umbrella, which for some unaccountable reason is in the Booker short list this year.)  Management persuaded a brief flicker of life out of it, but brief it was.  We did all the troubleshooting stuff, but to no avail, so then it was on to the helpful young men in India via an appalling VOIP link, which probably accounts for their asking all questions three times.  Cutting a long story short, I ordered a new machine with a 20% discount, and it arrived today, 3-5 days sooner than forecast.  I am now slowly learning to drive the thing, and shall post the old one back tomorrow for recycling or whatever.  Today also brought, by courier, a couple of printer cartridges ordered yesterday.  My new laptop bag should arrive in a day or two.  Martyn’s birthday present arrived by the same route.  I wonder what percentage of manufacturing job losses is made up by courier van driver positions?

But most welcome arrival of the week was my computer specs, sent on by Kate and John after I’d carelessly left them in Lagrasse.  Phew.  It’s a tiresome fact of advancing years that I need at least three pairs of specs: the jack-of-all-trades varifocals (which are master of none, notably when it comes to turning out of oblique junctions), the reading glasses and the computer specs, with their minimal reading correction.  I suppose contact lenses or surgery would make life easier, but I’m not ready to take either step.

This year’s diluvian rainfall has found out one of our gutters: we’ve been treated for some time to a free water feature in front of the sitting room window.  Having agonised briefly about girding up our loins and doing it ourselves, we opted instead for GSI.  We rang George the gutter-fettler yesterday, and he sorted it out today.  I suspect the brackets were broken by the window cleaner we hired in preference to George, hence a degree of poetic justice.