October Book Review

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

I’ll admit that there was a touch of the book snobbery that went on between myself and this book. Sometimes we all succumb to it and although I have no idea how it ended up on my bookshelf (I tend to suspect The Times/WH Smith book of the week offer for all random purchases on my shelves) I eyed it with some suspicion for quite some time, thinking that it wouldn’t be “My type of book.”

So it was quite nice to be surprised really when I got going with this book and found myself thoroughly absorbed in the story. It tells the story of three women from each generation and their discovery to find out who they are and where they came from, both genealogically and spiritually.

I have to admit that at certain points along the way it felt like the book was really too long and could have been cut down a margin, but it wasn’t that much of a turn-off, and the love story that appears at the end felt a little clunky and actually unnecessary, I would have been more impressed if things hadn’t been so formulaic. Nonetheless, this was a good read and I will be keeping my eye out for copies of The House at Riverton, now that my snobbery has been abolished.

We Are All Made of Glue – Marina Lewycka

I read A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian years ago and loved it and have been meaning to read Two Caravans but have just never got around to buying it (strange seeing just how many books I do get around to buying).

I didn’t love this as much as Tractors (yes that’s right, I can’t be bothered to type out the title again). It has the same kind of warmth and humour in it and I enjoyed reading it but it just didn’t rock my world really. Mrs Shapiro is a wonderful character and really the most likeable person in the book – I think where it fell down was that I couldn’t muster up enough feelings towards the main character, Georgie Sinclair. She’s kind of a sap to be honest and even when she’s not being a sap I just couldn’t care enough about her.

Mrs Shapiro is Georgie’s elderly neighbour – living in a massive crumbly old house with a plethora of cats – and when she has an accident, she names Georgie as her next of kin. Georgie then has to go into battle to defend Mrs Shapiro’s right to live in her house against foes such as social services and hungry estate agents, but on the way begins to discover more of Mrs Shapiro’s past.

It was good, it’ll just never get read again if you know what I mean.

The Piano Tuner – Daniel Mason

I think Jill might have recommended this to me a long while back and I saw it in a charity shop and picked it up for a couple of quid. I like getting hardbacks for not much money, I feel like I’ve beaten the system somehow.

Slightly wimpy piano tuner Edgar Drake gets summoned by the army to travel to Burma to tune a rare piano. The piano belongs to an eccentric Surgeon-Major, Anthony Carroll, who has succeeded in bringing peace to the warring Shan states but is a law until himself.

The book tells the story of Edgar’s journey across from misty London to the jungles of Burma and into the arena of Carroll, who may, or may not, be all as he seems.

The pace of this book is slow. S.l.o.w. Perhaps this was purposely to reflect the slow journey he makes across to Burma (we don’t meet Carroll until half way through the book) or perhaps it’s just a slow book. Who knows.

And whilst you’re wading through the book and wondering if it’s ever going to end, it suddenly shoots off into the distance and the last 50 pages of the book race ahead like some kind of whirligig, leaving you struggling for breath behind it, saying “Whaaaaaaat? What the hell is happening here?” And it continues at this breakneck speed right up until the very surprising end when you go, “My god. Did I enjoy that book or not?”

I’m still not sure to be honest. I felt like I was in a constant battle with Mason, begging him for just a little bit more information. I’m all for having to use your imagination at times in fiction but this was just too hard, I felt like things just never got explained and Wimpy Edgar’s wife back at home never gets a look in poor woman.

Strange would be my overall verdict but kind of worth reading, especially for the ending.

Superfreakonomics – Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

It seems probably pretty standard that I would like this book. I have the degrees and all but I promise you don’t have to an economics geek to appreciate this book and it’s bigger brother, Freakonomics. You don’t have to understand economic principles at all (good thing given that I’ve completely forgotten everything I’ve ever been taught) but you do have to be fairly nosy. Nosiness is an advantage because you will have to natural thirst to try and figure out why people behave in the way that they do.

I had a minor complaint with this book however. It’s a pitfall I guess when you have a suddenly massively popular book like Freakonomics that no-one really saw coming. I got a whiff when I was reading this one that they were trying just a little bit too hard to impress us with their ‘freaky’ ways. Freakonomics was good because it made you chuckle a bit, with Superfreakonomics they have deliberately set out to rock the boat – the subtitle of this book is “Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance” – see what I mean? Deliberately provocative.

But actually if you take that last bit about suicide bombers, this is actually a couple of pages at the end of what is actually an incredibly interesting chapter about behavourial economics and database and profile building. I know they have to hook people, hence the reference about suicide bombers but in a way things like irritated me. But I guess that’s possibly the snob in me.

I love it though, I’m bound to, I’m clearly biased, but it’s honestly and funny, clever and most importantly, easily digestible book which will make you consider the world just slightly differently.

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Book of the month has to be Superfreakonomics I’m afraid. Entertaining and educational? Yes please! Although please check out Freakonomics as well because I actually kinda preferred that one.

I’m also thinking that I maybe need to look back over the winners of each month and perhaps come out with a Book of the Year. (Yes I am thinking that far ahead.) Thoughts?

So you think you can dance?

So a while ago I told you about the Pump (snigger) class that I started going to at my gym that I liked but that didn’t really feel like I’d worked up a sweat.

I’ve found my Working Up a Sweat class.

ZUMBA
Oh my goodness me, lordy loo, this was the most fun I’ve had with clothes on in a long long time. Three of us signed up for the class, reckoning that there would be safety in numbers. It took us a while to get there, Zumba is unfortunately the latest big thing in the exercise world, meaning that the only two evening classes that the gym runs are booked out well in advance. It took careful preparation and a very early phone call the week before to finally get us in and we were all feeling more than a little trepidation by the time that we got there.

Beyond seeing early morning infomercials for Zumba I had no idea really what to expect, all I knew was that it was kind of like dancing. Hey I do that most days in the privacy of my own bedroom, I can handle doing it in a room full of other people surely.

There’s no beginners, intermediates or advanced classes in this. You’re all in this together. The instructor asked who was new and three hands shot up in the air – we weren’t pulled to the front, we weren’t given any special instructions, we were told to just have fun.

First things first. You need to be able to find the beat. People with no rhythm need not apply. Also an ability to independently move your arms and legs is a bonus. Not necessary, but a bonus or you’ll end up either smacking yourself in the face or the person behind you.

It’s basically Latin style dance steps. Of a sort. I don’t know that Len Goodman would approve of the kind of the salsa steps you’re doing but this is where the roots lie. Different songs come on and you keep dancing.

And dancing.

And dancing.

(Please remember to take a bottle of water with you or you might die.)

At one point I thought I was going to drop and then I made the mistake of looking at the clock. Only 25 minutes had passed. Not even half way through. That made me even more certain I was going to drop.

A bit later on I remembered the story of the red shoes and thought that I might be destined to dance forever.
A little bit later I wondered if I really should have made a will out.

But these were all secondary to the screaming voice in my head that kept shouting “OH MY GOD THIS IS THE MOST AWESOMEST THING EVER!”


And my request to find a class that would make me sweat was more than granted – I was pretty disgusting by the end of the class. But you know, disgusting in a self-satisfied way.

I wasn’t perfect by any means, there was one step in particular that I just could not get the hang of and when I tried very nearly broke my ankle, but I am determined I’ll get it next time. But there was only one crash in the class and that was into my friend so we decided that didn’t really count.

The three sweaty messes decided that we wanted to definitely do it again but our plan was foiled by the ridiculous popularity of the class which was already booked up for the next week by the time we came out of the changing rooms. You can only book classes one week in advance so this Monday I was well prepared and a phone call placed at 7.30am meant that the three of us are in, it’s an early morning phone call I think I’m going to be making for a long while to come.

It was hilarious, there is just no way you could do this and not laugh at some point, mostly at how inept you are. Try and not look at yourself in the floor to ceiling mirrors they insist on having in those rooms. And try not to stand directly behind the incredibly skinny person who has clearly been doing Zumba for a long time, the urge to whack her on the back of the head will become too strong.

Ooh and one more thing. A couple of days later you will become very aware of the fact that you have hips. I had no idea your hips could ache, Shakira once told me that her hips don’t lie and I guess mine don’t either, Zumba is a workout and a half.

Two little words

There are two words that strike fear in my very soul.

Fancy. Dress.

I hear those words and my heart sinks, it sinks far far down, past my stomach and nestles somewhere mid-thigh.

I find it hard to explain how much I hate it. Which is a drawback given that that’s the subject of this blog post.

I think it stems from the fact that I’m not a Look At Me (LAM). I think when people don’t have much confidence they go one of two ways – they retreat into themselves, keep quiet, keep their head down or they become incredibly loud and draw attention to themselves a.k.a. they become LAMs.

LAMs have always confused me somewhat. If you’re so afraid of people talking about you and being mean to you why would you start shouting and screaming and drawing attention? I think the basic premise is that if they are drawing attention to themselves then that is on their terms, they’re in control of what people are talking about and this is infinitely better than spending your time wondering and assuming that people are being awful to you. But this is merely conjecture, I can never know what goes on in a LAM’s head because I am 100% not a LAM.

Fancy dress sits comfortably with LAMs for obvious reasons but I have another theory why they like it so much. Fancy dress allows LAMs to not be themselves for a short period of time – the person that they are, the not confident, constantly paranoid being, gets shoved to the side and they get to become someone-else. If you’re someone-else then no-one can be mean to you for who you are – if they think your costume is rubbish well they’re just having a go at your lame attempt to be C-3PO, they’re not having a go at you yourself.

My fellow Anti-LAMs feel sick when it comes to the prospect of fancy dress. Actually sick. No jokes. That’s how much I don’t like it and how stressed I get at the thought of it. I actively try to not draw attention to myself, if I’m out and being drunk and rowdy I’m not trying to get people to look at me, I’m just having fun with my friends. I’m not the person standing there, breathing in, my eyes flickering constantly to the side seeing who’s watching me having fun, I’m too busy having the fun.

LAMs find my fear of fancy dress incredibly difficult to comprehend, “Oh come on, it’s not that big a deal” they’ll say. Well actually it is a big deal for me. If I decided that I wanted to go out for my birthday next year and everybody had to come out with me and we all had to be naked – how would you feel about that? Would you be up for it? Asking me to go out dressed in fancy dress garners the same response as if you asked me to go out naked. I do not want to do it.

I generally dislike being told what I should or should not be wearing. I don’t feel it’s anyone’s place to decree that you must dress in a certain way or wear a particular item of clothing. Surely you’re supposed to feel comfortable when you go out? There is no way on god’s earth I am going to feel comfortable in some ridiculous get-up.

And then they say “Well you don’t have to do it.” Right. Because being the only person not in fancy dress will be infinitely easier than just doing it and spending the night feeling like crap.

My favourite charge that gets levelled at me when I groan and pull faces about the possibility of fancy dress is that “you’re no fun.” No, sorry, incorrect. I am fun. I might not be confident about a lot of things but I’m confident that I’m an okay person to have on a night out. I know how to enjoy myself (and I’m getting better at doing it without the aid of alcohol. Slightly.) and I can do it wearing the very clothes that I’ve chosen to go out in. If I’m dressed up and feeling and looking like a twat I won’t be fun. I’ll be too busy worrying that I’m feeling and looking like a twat.

But there’s no way of getting out of it. It’s inevitably going to happen at some point and try as I might to avoid it there are certain situations where you have to succumb.

Hen-dos are such a time. A friend is getting married soon and we are off to Sheffield for the weekend to drink too much (yes including me, sorry Warfarin but I’ll be using alcohol to thin my blood this weekend) and hopefully embarrass her. And we’ll be doing it dressed in 50s/60s outfits.

The hen did text me shortly after the announcement was made telling me that she knew I would be freaking out about it but she chose something that could be widely interpreted and for that I thank her.

I am playing on the safe side. Very on the safe side. I got me a 50s-style dress (hurrah for Mad Men influencing the clothes in the shops and hurrah for Matalan for being inexpensive) and a Bump-it, lots of black eye liner and I can get into the spirit of things. Yes I know that technically I’m mixing my 50s and 60s but please don’t sue me. I won’t be wearing this kind of outfit like some of the girls are but hey, I’m sticking within the rules.

To be honest I still want to throw up and will almost definitely come close before we go out because I’m wearing something I would never normally wear but that’s where my good friend Alcohol will step up and help soothe away my anxieties. (Am I ever going to break this dependency on alcohol? I fear not unless I have a brain transplant and grow the confidence gene.)

But just spare a thought for me as I do my best to channel my inner LAM and come to terms with the horror.

Just because I don't weep and wail

Have you ever wanted something so much that you actually started to convince yourself it was true?


The reason I’ve been a little quiet lately is that as well as things being incredibly busy at work (it happens once in a blue moon before I’m left twiddling my thumbs and wondering what it is exactly I get paid for) I was preparing for an interview.

I wanted this job with every fibre and bone and inch of tissue and globule of blood in my body. Jobs in the kind of thing I want to do do not come around very often. In fact they just don’t come round at all. Especially in Hull. This job was related to what I do now, was a real step forward for me and I knew, I knew I could do it.

I have felt like I’ve been stagnating for a long time in my current role. I’m blocked from developing further by my boss (albeit inadvertently, he’s just not good at managing people) and by my line manager (who just has no idea what I’m capable of and seems determined to prevent me from doing my actual job) and it’s just irritating. I’m capable of more. I can feel my brain atrophying by the second the longer I stay in this position.

I applied for the job and threw myself into the application form – I spent a lot of time drafting and re-drafting my personal statement, determined to get it right. And I, along with 75 other people, applied for the job.

I didn’t hear anything for weeks and had resigned myself to the fact that it just wasn’t going to happen for me when I suddenly got an e-mail in my inbox – I was invited to interview.

My elation knew no bounds. I thought that I could really stand a chance at this. I prepared and I prepared and I prepared for the interview (this wasn’t just a bog standard interview – it involved a presentation, formal interview, interview with young people and a written test. Yes really.) because I really wanted to make sure that I got it right.

Whilst I was prepared I allowed myself to dream. I thought how great it would be to be hitting the heady heights of £20k a year instead of the pathetically awful-considering-I-have-a-Masters-degree £16k I’m currently on. I thought how great it would be to finally have some kind of idea of a career and develop that notion, instead of doing something that I’ve fallen into. In short I got carried away.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that my boss knew I was applying for the job (we’re both unhappy with things and both looking to escape, not least because our positions are only funded until June 2011) and kept talking about it as if I’d already got it, so certain was he that I would. I allowed myself to get swept away with it all and dare to dream.

I’m not an optimist at all – on a good day I’m a realist, on a bad day the worst pessimist you’ve ever met – but I don’t really apologise for it. It allows me to keep a level head and to not get disappointed very often, but for some reason all level-headedness disappeared and my brain went into full blown optimist mode.

I could do this job. I was qualified for this job. I could get this job.

Except that I didn’t get the job.

I crashed and burned severely over the weekend. And I mean severely. I don’t actually remember the last time I felt that hopeless. And that was the word – hopeless. I don’t deal well with losing at the best of times but the complete and utter sense of failure I felt was enormous and nearly crushed me, and is still leaning on me heavily.

I asked for feedback and I got it. It was between me and one other person. They didn’t doubt I could do the job for a second, but this person just scored slightly higher than me on the interview matrix and they have to do what the matrix tells them i.e. not hire me. They couldn’t really give me feedback because they said it wasn’t anything I’d done wrong and that it was such a close call that it came down to really tiny, almost insignificant things. They said that I need to try and take a lead on more projects in my current role – I explained that that was the problem I was in – I won’t get the chance to take the lead on projects in this role, that’s why I want to leave. But guess what? I can’t get jobs without demonstrating that I’ve taken the lead. Hello Catch-22.

They told me I shouldn’t be disheartened. That I should be pleased. Out of 76 people it came down to me and one other person, that’s a great achievement. I know that and I understand that’s good but this isn’t really the situation where 2nd place counts for something.

Trouble with me is I’m not that much of a weeper and wailer. I retreat into my shell and try to solve the problem myself. Whilst that tactic has its benefits, it has a tendency to mean that people just don’t see how hard I take some things. I think they think I’m armour-plated, “Oh she seems fine, she’s put things behind her and is getting on” but really I’m a wuss who takes things to heart. Really takes things to heart. I still beat myself up about things I did a long, long, long time ago and there’s no need to at all, everyone survived and got on with life, but I don’t like to not be good at things – I don’t like to think that I’ve failed at being a good girlfriend, a good friend or a good potential employee.

I know I’ll be fine, I might not be armour-plated but I am fairly resilient. I will feel good that I came in 2nd and I will carry on looking for other things. I will tell myself over and over that I’m not a failure because I know I’m not really. The level head will return. But, for now, I will continue to limp a little bit, lick my wounds and perhaps give out the odd wimper.

I didn’t really want to post about this, who wants to tell the whole internet that they suck at life, but I’m almost certain that it’s “creatively” blocking me at the moment and I’ve found it near on impossible to write about anything else.

Goodbye negative energy, goodbyyyyyyeeeeee.

Maggie & Maud Update

“How are Maggie and Maud?” I hear you ask.


Well let me tell you.

Maggie is hilarious to the max. She persists in giving the impression that she hates me with every fibre of her body. But only when Dorothy’s around. When it’s just me in the house I become the perfect substitute and she won’t leave me alone – she follows me about the house yowling and complaining that I’m not paying her any attention. If I’m sat at the table on my laptop she comes and sits beside me. When I go and sit on the sofa she will immediately climb (ungracefully it has to be said) up and sit as close to me as possible. She has even sat on my knee (she’s not a bigger sitter on knees kind of gal) but only when there’s no one else around to verify these facts.

This behaviour was brilliantly demonstrated recently. I had a half day and decided to put my pjs on and lie on my bed, have a read, mess about on the internet. I allowed Maggie to come up with me as a special treat. She lay her full length on the bed, she found a spot in the sun, she rolled about, she got upset when I lay down and turned my back on her, climbing over me to snuggle in against my front. Until it got to about the time when Dorothy would be due back from work, at which point she went downstairs to yowl and complain at Dorothy when she walked in to let her know how awful I was and how I’d been ignoring her.

The truth will come out though Maggie. There are photos to prove it...

Maud is a mysterious little creature. She spends most of her time outside, although as the nights draw in she is tending to stay in a bit more. She does her best to rile Maggie up by going and sitting as close to her as possible – she knows that although Maggie makes all the scary noises and hisses and growls at her, she never actually follows through on anything and secretly quite enjoys lying with her.

Maud’s most annoying trait is to not come in when you open the door and call for her, but to wait until you’re on the toilet or in the bath (our bathroom is downstairs by the way in case this doesn’t make sense) or making a cup of tea at which point she will howl relentlessly and pitifully to be let in and will not stop until the door is opened. This means that more often than not you’ll hear an exasperated cry from myself or Dorothy in the kitchen that will be something along the lines of “In a MINUTE Maud!”

She has also taken to Eddie’s trick (ah Eddie, I still can’t say your name without a tremor in my voice) of sitting on the garden wall, except instead of peering in at us, she somewhat creepily stares intently at the students who live in the house next door to us. She is an official Peeping Thomasina.

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Here ends the Maggie and Maud update.

At last...

Quick blog post from me.

Apologies for being not a brilliant blogger over the past couple of weeks, life has been doing it's utmost to be crap at the moment and get in the way of everything.

But I have to tell you this.

Because I want to put it on Facebook but can't because it's not my place...

Remember this blanket?

It finally has a recipient.

I have a niece at long long last.

Much as I love my 3 nephews I have been desperate for a niece and finally I have one.

Daisy was born a couple of hours ago and I am INCREDIBLY excited about it. EEK!

Failsafe way to get rid of dirty callers

Many many moons ago before I was twinkle in my mother’s eye, she worked for the Samaritans.

(In fact I became a twinkle in her eye once she met my father there.)

As well as going out with a team to visit people in her homes she was in the office a lot, manning the phones and trying to help people in distress.

However they had one nuisance caller, who was making calls of a somewhat fruity nature shall I say.

The official line was given that they weren’t to put the phone down on this gentleman, he could be in need after all, but that they should instead try and steer the conversation away from dangerous territory and try and get him to talk about something innocuous.

One evening, my Mum gets the call. Keeping in her head that she has to distract him she starts to tell him that she’s currently re-decorating her house and that it’s keeping her very busy as there are lots of rooms to do.

He asked her “What’s your hall like?”

Mum was pretty pleased with herself, she had successfully got the dirty caller to stop making sexual remarks and got him interested in talking about home interiors instead.

“Well,” she said to him, “My hall is quite long and narrow with a very steep staircase in it, we have to be careful when we’re coming down it that we don’t fall, and there’s anaglypta wallpaper on it [don’t judge, it was the early ‘80s] and there’s the living room and the dining room off it and down at the bottom...”

At this point the man interrupted...

“Not your hall, I said what’s your HOLE like!”

And in disgust, he put the phone down on her.