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todayiamadaisyA story.
I would have been eight or nine. I was at home with my grandmother on the farm. Mid-afternoon, so it must have been the weekend or school holidays. My grandmother was cooking: she had some scones in the oven and was now chopping vegetables to make a casserole. I was... I don't know, just mooching about.
We heard a car. The house was right in the middle of the farm, accessed via a long gravel track, so we didn't get people passing by. If a car came, it meant to be there. We headed outside to see who it was.
The car pulled up on the lawn outside the house and a well-dressed older lady stepped out. She looked familiar, but I couldn't think why. She knew me, though. "Hello, Alicia!" she said in the poshest, plummiest voice I'd ever heard, which was also familiar. "And Jean, hello!"
My grandmother knew who the mystery lady was. She greeted her and asked how she was. Mystery Lady was well, apparently. She was on her way home from visiting someone and realised she was about to pass our gate. "And I thought, I'll just pop in and see how Pauline is... but I suppose she's at work?"
My mother was at work, but no matter, said my grandmother, inviting Mystery Lady in for a cup of tea and a fresh scone. Mystery Lady was delighted. She had tea, she had scones. She realised that my grandmother was in the middle of cooking, so she washed her hands and grabbed a knife and the two of them chopped vegetables and chatted for over an hour. She knew all about us and once she'd heard our news, she told us all about the holiday she and Jim had just been on. They had another cup of tea, then my grandmother wrapped up a few scones for her to take home for Jim. We walked back out to the car with her and waved her off. What a nice mystery lady she was.
As we stood there, watching her car head back to the road, I finally asked my grandmother what I'd wanted to know ever since the car pulled up. "Who was that?"
And my grandmother, still smiling and waving, said: "I have no idea."
I mean, you don't really need to know who she was to enjoy my grandmother's determined hospitality. But for completists: when my mother came home from work, we described the mystery lady who'd come to see her. Very posh, married to Jim, had a son called Steven, and a few other things we'd picked up. "That's Doris," said my mother. "You both know her." We did indeed both know Doris, now retired, but who had been for many years the hospital's head district nurse and therefore my mother's former boss. She once knitted a wardrobe of clothes for one of my dolls. No wonder she seemed familiar. My mother rang Doris that evening on our pale blue rotary dial wall phone to say she was sorry to have missed her, and also that we didn't know who she was. We could hear Doris laughing down the line.
Anyway, my mother went to Doris's funeral this week. She was 97.
March books read
* Lies Sleeping - Ben Aaronovitch (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
When I bought this, the woman at my local bookshop said, "We haven't done any special promotion for this, but we're selling so many copies. Perhaps I should read it." I told her she should start with the first one. As she should, or this book, a tale of police wizards tracking a faceless man and a woman with too many faces, won't make any sense.
I found this slow to get started and a bit episodic, but it gathers pace and picks up characters from past books as well as new ones, coming to the end with a bang. A lot of fun.
* Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyrou (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
Well, this was a ride. The story of Elizabeth Holmes and her faulty blood-testing company, Theranos, there were things in the first half of the book that I found immensely frustrating: no clear timeline, too many people, no real sense of Holmes herself (what did she actually do all day?). Things pick up once the author himself gets involved in the story — a journalist, he broke the news of the company's fraud — and starts to tie things together. The surprising thing about it is how unsurprising it all is: a well-meaning idea lost to ego, power, money. Terrible people being terrible, smart people being stupid, and good people being gullible.
* The Song of Seven - Tonke Dragt (1967) (trans. Laura Watkinson, 2016) ★ ★ ★
This is a Dutch children's classic, apparently; I suspect I came to it too late to really enjoy it. It's a mystery story about a young schoolteacher who gets involved in a search for missing treasure. I found it a bit slow and repetitive at the start, but overall quite charming.
* The Storm Keeper's Island - Catherine Doyle (2018) ★ ★ ★
Fionn and his older sister, Tara, are sent to stay on a small island with their grandfather while their mother is in hospital. Once there, he discovers that the island is hiding magical, mythological secrets. I expected to love this and instead I just... liked it?
* There's Someone Inside Your House - Stephanie Perkins (2017) ★ ★
The author's note at the back says she wanted to read this book, so she had to write it. Or she could have watched Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and saved herself the time.
(I enjoyed the characters in this book, but they deserved a much better story.)
* The Letter to the King - Tonke Dragt (1962) (trans. Laura Watkinson, 2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a straightforward, old-fashioned quest adventure, about a young squire who answers a call for help and winds up on a dangerous mission to another country. As a child, I would have loved this; as an adult, I found it very soothing.
I would have been eight or nine. I was at home with my grandmother on the farm. Mid-afternoon, so it must have been the weekend or school holidays. My grandmother was cooking: she had some scones in the oven and was now chopping vegetables to make a casserole. I was... I don't know, just mooching about.
We heard a car. The house was right in the middle of the farm, accessed via a long gravel track, so we didn't get people passing by. If a car came, it meant to be there. We headed outside to see who it was.
The car pulled up on the lawn outside the house and a well-dressed older lady stepped out. She looked familiar, but I couldn't think why. She knew me, though. "Hello, Alicia!" she said in the poshest, plummiest voice I'd ever heard, which was also familiar. "And Jean, hello!"
My grandmother knew who the mystery lady was. She greeted her and asked how she was. Mystery Lady was well, apparently. She was on her way home from visiting someone and realised she was about to pass our gate. "And I thought, I'll just pop in and see how Pauline is... but I suppose she's at work?"
My mother was at work, but no matter, said my grandmother, inviting Mystery Lady in for a cup of tea and a fresh scone. Mystery Lady was delighted. She had tea, she had scones. She realised that my grandmother was in the middle of cooking, so she washed her hands and grabbed a knife and the two of them chopped vegetables and chatted for over an hour. She knew all about us and once she'd heard our news, she told us all about the holiday she and Jim had just been on. They had another cup of tea, then my grandmother wrapped up a few scones for her to take home for Jim. We walked back out to the car with her and waved her off. What a nice mystery lady she was.
As we stood there, watching her car head back to the road, I finally asked my grandmother what I'd wanted to know ever since the car pulled up. "Who was that?"
And my grandmother, still smiling and waving, said: "I have no idea."
I mean, you don't really need to know who she was to enjoy my grandmother's determined hospitality. But for completists: when my mother came home from work, we described the mystery lady who'd come to see her. Very posh, married to Jim, had a son called Steven, and a few other things we'd picked up. "That's Doris," said my mother. "You both know her." We did indeed both know Doris, now retired, but who had been for many years the hospital's head district nurse and therefore my mother's former boss. She once knitted a wardrobe of clothes for one of my dolls. No wonder she seemed familiar. My mother rang Doris that evening on our pale blue rotary dial wall phone to say she was sorry to have missed her, and also that we didn't know who she was. We could hear Doris laughing down the line.
Anyway, my mother went to Doris's funeral this week. She was 97.
March books read
* Lies Sleeping - Ben Aaronovitch (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
When I bought this, the woman at my local bookshop said, "We haven't done any special promotion for this, but we're selling so many copies. Perhaps I should read it." I told her she should start with the first one. As she should, or this book, a tale of police wizards tracking a faceless man and a woman with too many faces, won't make any sense.
I found this slow to get started and a bit episodic, but it gathers pace and picks up characters from past books as well as new ones, coming to the end with a bang. A lot of fun.
* Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyrou (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
Well, this was a ride. The story of Elizabeth Holmes and her faulty blood-testing company, Theranos, there were things in the first half of the book that I found immensely frustrating: no clear timeline, too many people, no real sense of Holmes herself (what did she actually do all day?). Things pick up once the author himself gets involved in the story — a journalist, he broke the news of the company's fraud — and starts to tie things together. The surprising thing about it is how unsurprising it all is: a well-meaning idea lost to ego, power, money. Terrible people being terrible, smart people being stupid, and good people being gullible.
* The Song of Seven - Tonke Dragt (1967) (trans. Laura Watkinson, 2016) ★ ★ ★
This is a Dutch children's classic, apparently; I suspect I came to it too late to really enjoy it. It's a mystery story about a young schoolteacher who gets involved in a search for missing treasure. I found it a bit slow and repetitive at the start, but overall quite charming.
* The Storm Keeper's Island - Catherine Doyle (2018) ★ ★ ★
Fionn and his older sister, Tara, are sent to stay on a small island with their grandfather while their mother is in hospital. Once there, he discovers that the island is hiding magical, mythological secrets. I expected to love this and instead I just... liked it?
* There's Someone Inside Your House - Stephanie Perkins (2017) ★ ★
The author's note at the back says she wanted to read this book, so she had to write it. Or she could have watched Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and saved herself the time.
(I enjoyed the characters in this book, but they deserved a much better story.)
* The Letter to the King - Tonke Dragt (1962) (trans. Laura Watkinson, 2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a straightforward, old-fashioned quest adventure, about a young squire who answers a call for help and winds up on a dangerous mission to another country. As a child, I would have loved this; as an adult, I found it very soothing.