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Showing posts from 2020

Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

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2020, the year of constant surprises. I’ve never been a huge JK Rowling fan (I mean her books, not the person.  I’ve never met the woman so I can’t comment on her personally, unlike the Twitter dunderheads who like to misconstrue everything they read.) I have to give her credit for her vivid imagination and her wealth of knowledge and the amount of research she must undertake before putting pen to paper, but for me, her writing is prone to too much repetition which detracts from what could be an excellent read. So why do I read the Strike books if I’m not a fan of her writing? Easy. Tom Burke plays the lead in the TV adaptations and with it he has brought an interesting, complex character to life, one full of charm, charisma, and sparkle. I’ve become invested in the character; I want to know what the next instalment is about and what the future holds for Strike. So, for me to keep up with Strike, and to not feel like I’m wasting any of my day, I turned to Audible books for both Letha

Falling Angels in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt)

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The last holiday I partook was a week up in Scotland (Lauder) last Christmas. It was sublime; a chalet in the middle of a working farm, bedecked with Christmas trees and lights, and surrounded by various livestock. Being December, it meant there were long evenings in which to amuse oneself, and whilst it was the perfect setting to sit in a hot tub every night, there’s only so much wallowing and Prosecco that can be consumed in a week. I needed a book to read and the novel I'd grabbed and chucked into my rucksack this time was: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt The book is based on a true story, a crime classic published in 1994, set in a world of highly original literary characters who only required the author to weave their tales together to produce this compelling gothic tale of a Savannah society. Settling back on the veranda of the lodge, mug of tea in hand, I travelled to America to be alarmed, entertained and to laugh out loud with these overtly col

Walks in Mysterious Cheshire and Wirral by Tony Bowerman (Walk 10 - Little Budworth)

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“ Fancy doing a walk Saturday or Sunday?” “Yeah, sounds good to me.” “I thought we could do a walk in Little Budworth and hopefully find a spot by the lake for a picnic.” In Norman times, much of Cheshire was covered by four forests. To the west was Wirral Forest which had been substantially cleared, Macclesfield Forest covered the east Pennine slopes, whilst the central part of Cheshire was covered by the forests of Mara (now Delamere) and Mondrum. Back in those times, forests were no more than wastelands which were protected by laws so that the privileged may hunt in them. The forests were a patchwork of mixed oak woodlands and open lowland heath dotted with meres. Up until the 14 th  century, wolf packs could be found hunting amongst the cover of the trees, and both red and fallow deer grazed the lands until they were hunted out during the 17 th  century Civil War. Rare birds such as merlins, hobbys and sparrowhawks graced the skies, whilst swarms of bees gathered nectar for h

Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

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How annoying. You listen to a book. Write a few paragraphs about it, and then get distracted whilst supposedly looking for a suitable visual aid. Several weeks later you realise that all your thoughts are still sitting there unpublished!!! Graham Greene is possibly best known for his seminal works like The Power and The Glory, Brighton Rock and The Third Man. I can’t pretend to be an authority on his work, I read Brighton Rock whilst still at school and a few other extracts from various novels for “comparative purposes”, and whilst I’ve never read The Third Man, I admit to enjoying the filmed version starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles. Greene apparently wrote Travels With my Aunt as a bit of fun and a departure from his normal style of writing. His work often involved fragile, flawed characters that found themselves in distant lands; so this novel is no different in that respect, however, it’s impossible to try to tie Greene down to one stylistic genre. For those who have read

The Split - Laura Kay (Book Preview)

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Ally’s relationship is over, and she’s taking the cat ... When this book appeared in my in-tray, it was the comment about the cat that grabbed my attention. The cover didn’t interest me, nor the title, but the idea of someone storming off having found out that they have been betrayed by a loved one, cat whisked underarm, really appealed to my sense of justice. Romantic novels (or RomComs) are not the typical genre of book I’ll head towards in a bookshop; however within reading the first few pages, I realised that Laura had written a rather special novel which kept me engaged throughout the course of the story. The Split is a story of love but not your typical romance, it is about the strongest love of all…friendship. It doesn’t really matter what life throws at you if you have a strong support network of friends and this novel highlighted this. Ally lives with her girlfriend on a houseboat in London; that is until one morning when she is brutally dumped by Emily. She announces

Walks in Mysterious Cheshire and Wirral by Tony Bowerman (Walk 5 - Willington)

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With lockdown seemingly starting to ease and vistors being allowed back into the country (Wales) my friend Kate, popped over for the weekend. We did a quick afternoon walk (3 miles) around a village near me called Hope. (Live in Hope, die in Caergwrle as the old saying goes…the two villages are adjacent to one another and this saying has been used since at least the 19th century!) Anyway – unbeknown to me, Hope has a heritage park “Park in the Past” and whilst it was still closed due to Covid restrictions, Kate and I took a walk along the public footpath that surrounds the park which was still open. It’s a place I will be heading back to in due course at it looks rather beautiful and the field at the end of the walk was just teaming with swifts or swallows skirting over the grass catching insects. An absolute surprise and treat to watch so I grabbed a quick video on my 'phone. Not the best quality, but I hadn't expected to come upon such a wonderful sight!  Sunday was another

Walks in Mysterious Cheshire and Wirral by Tony Bowerman (Walk 11 - Whitegate)

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Having spent the last three hundred thousand, thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand days on home turf since lockdown started, it was with unbridled joy that I jumped into my car on Saturday, (1 st weekend where Welsh residents were allowed more than 5 miles from home) drove 23 miles into England, met my friend Kate and we had a ramble in the sunshine. It was wonderful to meet up in real life rather than on a Zoom meeting but our first walk of the year came with a few caveats. Firstly, it had to be a gentle breaking in walk, not one of my usual “oh it’s not very far,” cue 15 miles later getting very threatening looks off what is likely to be a soon ex-friend if I don’t find the car again very soon after proclaiming “don’t worry, I sort of know where we are!” Secondly, the walk would not consist of clambering up any large hills…something I wasn’t going to argue with….I’ve been sat on a sofa eating cake for four months. I can easily roll down a hill, getting up one

The Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley

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During lockdown, I’ve tried to make a concerted effort to go on a long walk once a week. I call it an effort, because I mean at least an 8-10 mile walk because there are only so many outings you can do in your immediate vicinity without getting bored. I concluded that the longer the walk, the more scope there was for finding new places. Up until 6 th July, if you lived in Wales, you couldn’t travel by car to have a jolly day out, so the start and end of the walk from the house might be boring…but the rest of the route could open up new experiences. As I tend to do the majority of my walking alone, I have started listening to my audible books en route. I used to listen to books in the car, but as it’s now mainly sitting on my drive there is a backlog of books to be listened to. A book that piqued my attention was Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but was reticent to share my thoughts about it. Should I publicly admit to reading a book by s

Perfect Addiction

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May 2017 I downloaded a book for my Kindle. No big deal I hear you say, but I am the person who loves the scent of ink on paper, who likes the tactility of turning a paper page. I am not a lover of the Kindle…in fact it’s just an app I have on my phone and tablet. It’s a device on which to have emergency books for when you’re sat on a train and you’ve just finished your physical book and you need entertaining for the last hour of your journey. (And you can’t look out of the window because it’s dark!) I had downloaded Perfect Remains by Helen Fields. I hadn’t heard of the author, or the book, but it was a free download so I wasn’t complaining. One journey back from London, this novel became my emergency book of choice to while away my journey. By the time the train had rattled into Chester station I was hooked…thank goodness for the quiet taxi driver, as that meant more reading time until I got home. The protagonist of the story, Luc Callanach, was raised in France, however,

The Kite Runner – Theatr Clwyd – 5th March 2020

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I’ve not read Khaled Hosseini’s novel, I’ve not watched the film and I missed the stage production when it arrived at Theatr Clwyd last year. I had heard rave reviews and so I was thankful that this time round I would be blessed enough to see the stage production…and I wasn’t to be disappointed. The reviews from friends and strangers were spot on. The production was spellbinding and a superior history lesson than either the media or the classroom could give you. The Kite Runner commenced life as a novel by Khaled Hosseini and it tells the story of Amir and his best friend Hassan (who is also his servant). Kabul was a tranquil place, people lived in harmony experiencing a conventional way of life. Privileged families would attend lavish weddings, full of colour and splendour and take family picnics in the foothills of the Hindu Kush to escape the heat of the city. Kite flying, which probably originated in China about 3000 years ago, was turned it into an art form in Afghan

Living in a Lockdown

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A very quiet yard on a beautiful sunny day. I’m back at work. I say back…I’ve been working from home for the last 6 weeks and probably putting in more hours from my garden than I have from the office; but needs must. There’s only so much you can do from home and whilst all paper work is now up to date and all the “missed” emails have been dealt with accordingly – mostly in the bin - I can’t deal with someone’s knackered lorry from home, which is a shame as I’ve rather enjoyed being incarcerated. I was watching BBC’s Saturday Kitchen a few weeks ago when Stacey Dooley was the guest. The host Matt Tebbutt asked her how she was feeling during the Covid-19 lockdown and she replied “I am spot on, it is a bit worrying about how OK I am with self-isolating, because I am quite anti-social, so I’m good.” I was a bit shocked, not because she was coping, but because she said she was anti-social. I guess I had the same look on my face, as others have when I say “I’m quite happy during lock

BANG BANG! Theatr Clwyd (19th Feb 2020)

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John Cleese, best known for Monty Python and Fawlty Towers has decided to tackle a little-known play by George Feydeau as his stage writing debut. This vaudeville styled French farce is the perfect antidote to the long working week; based on a series of comic situations which get more and more ludicrous as the play continues, it is a feel good fun fest that will have you laughing down the aisles and putting all your stresses and worries behind you – or at least for the duration of the play. George Feydeau was born 1862 in Paris. He was the son of a novelist and at the age of 20 wrote his first comedy, but it wasn’t until later, whilst in the army, that he wrote his first play The Dressmaker. It was a success, but it had George thinking about the farces that he had watched whilst growing up. He felt that the characters were mere puppets of themselves and that if you stood back and looked at the tedium of reality, it was often highly preposterous. He therefore started to loo

Oolong Formosa – T2

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I know – it’s been a while since I’ve written about tea. To be fair, I’ve never stopped drinking the stuff, or indeed making notes about it, however, getting those notes and relevant photo’s onto a blog page seems to be my permanent downfall. (Actually, having started organising the files on my laptop during lockdown, I also realise there are a number of outstanding theatre posts I’ve semi-written which have never seen the light of day either.) So… whilst the sun is trying to shine [???!!!!???? - well it’s not raining for a change] I shall endeavour to catch up….and then we can start afresh on all the glorious productions I’m catching up with via Ye Olde Gogglebox. Today, I am sitting in the garden editing my post about the play Bang Bang! I nearly made a pot of gunpowder tea to assist me, instead, this golden box of joy was shouting out for my attention. T2 is an Australian tea company (Melbourne to be precise, the first store opened in 1996 in Fitzroy, Melbourne) and whil

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein @ Theatr Clwyd, Mold

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(Watched Tues 28th Jan. 2020) I have a confession to make. I’ve never read Frankenstein. It was on the curriculum, but I couldn’t be bothered…I read the minimum amount of Gothic Horror I could in order to get me through the semester and then I spent the rest of the time horse-riding. I’ve never watched the films, so I have no idea if they’re any good or not, although I’ve heard that the book and the films have very little in common.  I haven’t seen the National Theatre production starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller as my preconceptions meant that I just didn’t find the tale that appealing.*  I did watch a version of Frankenstein by Box Clever Theatre Company once; it was a thought-provoking production and I thought that perhaps I should buy the book, but once again…before I could think about buying it, other tomes on the bookcase had vied for my attention and won. Now there was something that intrigued me in the advertisement for Rona Munro’s adaptatio