a gallimaufry

on how i spend my time now

I haven’t written about a book I’ve read this week because I have hardly been reading. Instead, I am completely addicted to the television series Line of Duty.

I had decided to watch the latest series, Series 6, as it’s shown on BBC1 because my friends are watching it. I thought the first episode was so compelling that I then rushed to the library to borrow the DVDs of the previous series. And for the last week, every moment when I haven’t been preparing lessons, teaching, cleaning, being nice to my family or waiting on the whims of the cats and the hens, I have been glued to series 1 and 2.

The series is what I would term at the macho end of the artistic scale: guns, police raids, brutality, corruption, crazy plot twists, no time to sniff the roses. Characters trot out jargon and standard phrases but the quality of the acting means that their expressions, their eyes, are often telling us more than their words. The phrase ‘line of duty’ takes on a metaphorical quality pretty early on. What and where is that line? Who crosses it (practically everyone) and why? Is it fixed? Loyalty to your colleagues is the highest virtue; how far can you let that take you before you cross the line? Line of Duty doesn’t provide any easy answers to this, everyone gets dirty one way or the other.

The two series I’ve watched so far feature the same central characters, who work for AC-12, an anti-corruption unit that investigates bent coppers. In the first series we watch the trajectory of a successful and popular detective inspector who, in order to cover up his ‘weak spot’, is drawn further and further into a web of criminality and corruption. The actor who plays him, and the writing, are so good that even as we are revolted by his actions we feel his anguish, his conviction that this is not who he is. His struggles form the core of the story. He is a classical tragic hero.

In the second series, the central character under investigation is more ambiguous. Hitherto an exemplary detective who has impoverished herself paying for her mother’s care in a home, she is (eventually) the sole survivor of an ambush on a protected witness and three police officers. Did she knowingly lead them into the ambush or has she been set up as the fall guy? Has she just been trying to do the right thing? As the series develops, we see the officers investigating her also make bad choices, commit adultery, hide their financial problems and lie about connections to the investigation in order to protect themselves or their friends. The series asks: are some actions acceptable in some circumstances and not in others? Why?

I am now impatiently waiting for the library to re-open tomorrow so that I can borrow the third series. I am also amazed that anyone remains in the police force since so many officers end up dead or compromised!

(Quentin Blake, illustration for ‘The Pig’ in Dirty Beasts by Roald Dahl, ink and watercolour, from here)

Meanwhile... I am trying to write a second children’s book. So far I have written one full draft. Then I started typing this up and got halfway through when I realised that my Cunning Plan for switching viewpoints in alternate chapters was actually a Terrible Idea. Now I have started again although with bits of the First Draft, telling the story just from one viewpoint – which has necessitated quite a bit of moving things around and changing things. I’ve also cut a sub-plot.

At the moment I have two major problems. One is trying to keep organised as I rewrite, but maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about that and hope that Future Helen sorts it out at the next stage. The other is that I now have a narrator who is a servant in an alternate nineteenth-century northern England. Obviously, her words will be read, not spoken, but I sort-of don’t want her to sound terribly middle-class while at the same time I don’t want her to end up either like Joseph in Wuthering Heights (unreadable!) or like a patronising stereotype (‘Oo arrh madam I do be heartily sorry’). My present solution is to get her to use a lot of idioms but I am not sure how well that’s working.

Anyway – I recommend Line of Duty. All of those years when people were saying it was good – they were right! Surprise! Is anyone else out there a fan?

a late start

Hello and a happy new year!

(Virginia Lee, clay sculpture and drawing; from her blog here)

I suppose I’ve been hibernating, in a way, these past few months. It turns out that December was quite a difficult month for me and by the time we reached the holidays all I wanted to do was hide and read. And then the transition period for Brexit ended, and there we were, me here in Belgium and my fellow countrymen in Britain, and even though I was completely prepared for it and knew what to expect, I suddenly felt excluded and rejected by my own country. Which was irrational, but there we are.

Anyway, after that massive whinge I can assure you I am feeling a lot better now. ‘What’s happening in Belgium?’ I hear you cry. Well, like everyone else we are mainly avoiding other people and most things – museums, galleries, theatres, cafés – are closed. Schools are not, although secondary schools and adult education centres are providing a mixture of online and in-school lessons. Hairdressers have just re-opened! People all across the land fluffed their grey roots and danced for joy. (Not me, as I’m a home-haircut person.) We’ve just had a verrrry cold week, which displeased the hens. We were warned by experts that icicles Can Be Dangerous. I played in the snow and never knowingly wore fewer than three pairs of socks.

(Boris Zvorykin, illustration for Snegurochka, 1925; gouache and ink; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

I’ve read a lot of good books and I will write about some of them here. I might change some things about this blog, I might not. I’ve been practising driving the car (I had about eleventy billion lessons in the summer and autumn, and now I have a special learner’s licence which means I can drive alone without my husband!!!!). The driving part is not so bad and I can now do this without turning into a trembling wreck, but I’m not terribly accurate at parking. Yet.

And I’ve gritted my teeth and got back to work on novel #2. It had been languishing since April last year. I had written a first draft, and then made a proper plan, and got halfway through a second draft when I abandoned it. Blowing the dust off it, I’ve realised that narrating it from two alternating viewpoints wasn’t working so I have been changing and planning some more and pulling out a subplot that was a bit rubbish. (A lot rubbish.) And then the wonderful Golden Egg Academy ran a series of free seminars for aspiring children’s writers over one weekend. The seminars were great: inspiring but also very practical and full of tips you could take away and put to immediate use. Judging by them, Golden Egg’s creative writing courses are extremely good and worth every penny but even so sadly beyond the gallimaufry purse at present (and anyway my writing is still very much a self-indulgence and not really a serious pursuit). So this was truly an opportunity and a boon.

I found a tiny snowdrop in our front garden this morning. That seems as good a sign as any to wriggle out of my nest of dead leaves and moss and emerge blinking into 2021.

hello 2020!

Happy New Year (belatedly). I hope that you all had lovely holidays. I did!

I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions because in the past I tended to make a massive list which was a complete overhaul of all my foul habits and terrible personality traits, and then after two days I’d have failed massively and would spend the rest of January, generally my least favourite time of year, feeling depressed and frustrated at what a total LOSER I was. (In addition to all my other terrible personality traits.)

However, 2020 seems rather a special moment, perhaps it’s the pleasing rhythm of the digits. It may be counter-intuitive to be cheerful when the year has begun with climate apocalypse, Australia on fire, Iraq and the US squaring off and authoritarianism on the rise around the world, and yet I am. And in this cheerful mood I have made some Resolutions! My cunning plan: to keep them small and on the vague side.

1. give more attention to a gallimaufry

I am going to find more time for this blog. Writing book reviews is very time consuming and I find mine tend to plod rather, and in any case I like the conversational aspect of blogs. So I might change what I write about a bit. (All right, this is VERY vague but I think it’s something that will evolve rather than be imposed.)

I also intend to run Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week again – watch this space!

2. read more widely

To break out of my fiction addiction I am going to read one non-fiction book, one long poem or one play a month. (At least one – I can read more.) This month I finally opened Alan Clark’s Diaries, which has been sitting shrink-wrapped on my shelves since 1994. (Alan Clark was a Tory MP who served in Mrs Thatcher’s and John Major’s governments, during which time he kept diaries which he subsequently published, I wouldn’t say they were scandalous but they did ruffle a few feathers as I recall.) I intend to post about this.

Loosely associated with this plan is a resolution to go as long as possible without buying any new books! This is actually Chris’s idea, which I have filched. (I had already bought a book when I read his post, so I am starting now BUT I am not sure I shall publicly announce when I do buy my next book because it might just be too shaming. I am a very weak person.)

3. finish my novel

I’m going to finish writing my second book (I started it in the summer holidays but have had so much work to do I’ve been unable to touch it since). Perhaps it will be better than the first one!

4. have more fun

It occurred to me that I am turning into a boring humourless middle-aged git. Oh no! Therefore, I am going to spend less time obsessively reading and ranting about politics and more time having fun. To this end I have already got drunk on fancy beer (the cats were very lucky that I couldn’t find the Marmite when I got home as I intended to smear them with it, one of my friends told me it was a flea-deterrent, though since then I’ve discovered that the cats are supposed to eat it not wear it) and bought some sheet music so I can start playing the piano again. This has got off to a good start.

What about you? Do you ever make New Year’s Resolutions – or are you already perfect? Heheh. If you’ve made any this year, what are they (or the ones you’ll publicly confess to, anyway)?

some short reviews

Time has passed and I haven’t written here.

I’ve been busy gardening...

...collecting some odd eggs from the hens...

...releasing a frog back into the wild (don’t be like Some People in my family and bring them home, leave frogs be where you find them)...

...attending to the whims of cats...

...and actually working too.

I have also been reading! But since my reviewing energies are all focused on preparing something for Shiny New Books, I thought I’d just mention some other books briefly here.

• Bath Tangle, by Georgette Heyer – If Heyer ever wrote an anti-Heyer novel, this is it. Her hero is so atrocious that you are simply begging the heroine not to marry him, quite opposite from the usual dynamic. He shares characteristics with some of her other, more likeable, heroes, but here we see only the dark side of them. Arrogant, rude, snobbish, bullying and guilty of sexual assault if not worse (his crime is alluded to in rather vague terms), Rotherham has not one redeeming feature and after reading this I doubt you will be able to look at Avon, Beaumaris and Alistair quite so indulgently ever again.
  (Though I did always worry about Avon and Léonie, even as a teenager that struck me as rather a dodgy relationship...)
• The Immaterial Murder Case, by Julian Symons – A rather brittle but engaging spin on the detective novel which pokes fun at the art establishment. Immaterialism is an art movement that believes in the value of what is not there, so the subject of a painting is what is omitted from it. During the opening of an exhibition of Immaterial art Stephen Follett, a universally loathed art critic, is found murdered.
  The case is narrated in turn by one of the suspects, a fairly dreadful amateur detective and a professional detective, somewhat in the manner of the multiple narratives of The Moonstone. The comedy is occasionally a little heavy-handed but I enjoyed Immaterialism a lot.
• Waiting for Willa, by Dorothy Eden – I started this hoping for something Mary-Stewartesque and it had a good premise: Grace receives a letter from her cousin Willa, who now lives in Stockholm, which is signed with their childhood code for ‘help’. When she arrives in Sweden, Willa has vanished.
  Overlooking the rather leaden writing and uninspired characterisation I read on but the dénouement was disappointing and basically everyone was an idiot. The only surprise was Grace’s callous victim-blaming at the end. Eden seems to have been very popular so perhaps this is not representative of her work?
• The White Witch, by Elizabeth Goudge – I read this over quite a long time as it has a slow pace and bears being put down and picked up again well. It’s a historical novel set during the English Civil War, and explores how a group of characters are tested by the conflict: Robert Haslewood, the squire; Froniga, his cousin and the white witch of the title; and Francis, a nobleman masquerading as an artist in order to spy for the Royalists.
  Goudge shows how courage on the battlefield is only one sort of courage, and that those without much power – children, women, gypsies, the elderly – are no less brave than the rich men who are prepared to die for their ideals. It was very soothing while Brexit madness was whirling about and a helpful antidote to cynicism.
• Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi – As ever Oyeyemi’s work defies expectations, categorisations, and cleverly seduces you into accepting whatever she throws at you. A country that may or may not exist? Gingerbread that tastes like revenge? A childhood friend who might be secretly influencing every step of your life?
  I can’t even begin to summarise this novel and am still reeling from finishing it last night, it’s rich, playful and mysterious to the end.
• The Diaries of Sylvia Warner, edited by Claire Harman – I am slowly reading these for Sylvia Townsend Warner week and they are wonderful.

Friday evening and a glass of wine are calling. Happy weekend everyone! Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

the last week of brexit?

Of all the Big Dramatic Weeks we’ve had so far with Brexit, this next one may prove to be the Biggest and Most Dramatic. Although the logical action, since Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement, No Deal and a Second Referendum have all been rejected, would be to revoke Article 60 as being the last option left, logic packed up her bags and departed Westminster some time ago along with her good friend common sense.

Instead, it seems almost certain that Theresa May will ask for yet another vote on her WA. Will it pass? Perhaps. Some MPs may choose certainty over further uncertainty, however little they may like the WA. The ERG, who are proving themselves yet again to be not the masterly tacticians they would have us believe, may be realising that this could be their last shot at a ‘hard’ Brexit (hence all that unconvincing waffle about Article 62 of the Vienna Convention). Theresa May is dedicating this weekend to persuading the DUP to back her – who knows what she is promising them, I dread to think. But then again, some MPs may be emboldened by the prospect of a lengthy extension (should the EU grant it) and working towards a cross-party compromise that is more widely palatable to reject the deal again. Then again, if May resigns someone even more inflexible or extreme may replace her. Aaargh! So many games being played...

Whether you are for or against Brexit, it is all pretty stressful, or at least so I find it. The stress is augmented by anger at the cynicism of some MPs, the sheer shoddiness and duplicity. Fellow Brits, how are you coping?

Apart from shouting at screens, I am spending quite a lot of time doing cross-stitch. This is an activity I never would have imagined myself doing. But I am making a cushion cover for my daughter. It is of an owl in the night-time. The design is printed on the canvas and all the wool (enough I hope!) was supplied with the kit, so it’s really so easy that even I can do it. Well, almost, I did absent-mindedly use the wrong colour at one point and have to unpick a lot of it. It seems to hit the same spot as doing a jigsaw puzzle and I find it soothing and addictive.

I am also immersed in an enormous epic fantasy novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. There was a lot of hype about this and it has a nice cover. It is also 800 pages long. When I am faced with the prospect of Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg, I run away to another world in which there are dragons and magic and I know that the Nameless One and his cohorts will ultimately be defeated by the forces of good.

I recommend both of these to anyone in the same boat as me. Bon courage, mes amis! How are you getting on?

of damp hens and lavender

It’s Valentine’s Day, the sun is shining and our kitchen is fragrant with the scent of wet hen, since I spent a portion of this morning washing Daisy’s bottom and drying it with the hair-dryer. Meanwhile, my tiny study is fragrant with the scent of dusty lavender, after a book avalanche knocked over a bowl of dried lavender I had imprudently balanced on the edge of the cupboard. The lavender is everywhere: all over the desk, books, heaps of paper and alas inside a drawer or two as well as I hadn’t closed them. I don’t even know where the bowl is, it seems to have slipped into another dimension. Anyway, perhaps this is a hint that I should tidy up.

All of this has turned my thoughts to James Elroy Flecker, and so I thought I would post a bit of ‘The Golden Journey to Samarkand’ from Hassan here. I became slightly obsessed with James Elroy Flecker as a teenager after my school put on a production of Hassan. It has been a while now though since I read him and while his attitudes towards the Middle East are disappointing to say the very least, the romantic lushness of much of his work cannot be denied.

Everyone rightly knows the beautiful Epilogue, so here is the Prologue.

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of the proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,—

What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,
Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,
And winds and shadows fall toward the West:

And there the world’s first huge white-bearded kings
In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,
And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,
Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.

II

And how beguile you? Death has no repose
Warmer and deeper than that Orient sand
Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those
Who made the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

And now they wait and whiten peaceably,
Those conquerors, those poets, those so far:
They know time comes, not only you and I,
But the whole world shall whiten, here or there

When those long caravans that cross the plain
With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells
Put forth no more for glory or for gain,
Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells.

When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

(Uncredited illustration for T.E. Lawrence, An Essay on James Elroy Flecker and Forgotten Warfare; Southampton, Mark Valentine, 1988; found here)

goodbye to january

Hello and happy February!

Sorry I haven’t posted for ages. January and February are my least favourite times of year, dreary and grey, all the fairy lights have been packed away and winter seems to stretch on for ever. I did write a few half-posts, on Brexit, on a couple of the books I’d read, but I lacked the will to finish them.

Anyway, today the sun has been shining and I’ve just baked some flapjacks! Do have one. I hope your 2019 has started well.

(You’ll need a fork.)

I don’t know why I felt the urge to bake flapjacks. Previous attempts have always ended up with something that had to be ‘broken into bars’ with a hammer, proved impermeable to teeth and could have been used as flooring had they been more evenly shaped; the odd pan had to be binned too. But I was inspired by the surprise discovery of two tins of golden syrup at the back of the cupboard. The 2008 ‘anniversary’ tin had been opened and half-used, the contents were now completely hard and blackened, but the ‘use by 2013’ tin was still sealed and what was within looked as I imagined golden syrup to look, so off we went.

(For those who are interested, I used a Mary Berry recipe I found on the internet, but with my previous mishaps in mind I ignored Mary’s advice to cook for 25-35 minutes and instead removed them from our (tiny fan-assisted) oven after 20 minutes. Hence the need for a fork.)

(Also they are very sweet and all your teeth will immediately fall out in horror.)

The Christmas holidays were lovely and I had a fantastic time at New Year as well. I stocked up on some books in charity shops (my favourite find being a 1947 Cresset Press edition of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne, which I’ve always wanted to read: this edition is illustrated with lovely wood engravings by Claire Oldham). I learnt that just because a ‘journey planning website’ gives you directions to walk along a road doesn’t mean that it’s safe to do so after dark (because it’s actually an A road with no pavement and cars whistling by at 70 mph). I visited Sissinghurst which might not seem the obvious thing to do on New Year’s Day but it is actually very beautiful with no leaves or flowers but patterns of branches. Of course, I had forgotten to bring my camera. It was nice to see Vita Sackville-West’s writing room again and I was charmed to see honey leaking down one wall of the tower – apparently from an old beehive that someone kept on the roof.

To get through this time of year I stockpile ‘easy’ reading, novels with compulsive narratives and not too much darkness, and I reread a lot too. Here are some of my favourites:

• Folk, by Zoe Gilbert
  I loved this, though much of it is very dark. It’s a collection of sort-of fairy-tales about an island community, focusing on different characters in turn and spanning a couple of generations. Like traditional fairy-tales, these are unsentimental and concerned with birth and death, sex, transformation, cruelty and strange kindnesses, but unlike fairy-tales the characters within them have individuality and when misfortune befalls them it is painful to read. The beauty of the natural world is celebrated even though the life scraped from its woods and seas is a hard and difficult life.
• The Gardener and the Carpenter, by Alison Gopnik
  Gopnik is a child psychologist and philosopher, and in this book she examines developmental psychology and evolutionary biology to demonstrate how modern-day ‘parenting’ is wrong-headed. She characterises a lot of parents as being concerned that they must develop a product: control pretty much every aspect of a child’s life so that it will become a happy, socially-acceptable and preferably high-achieving adult. Instead, parents should focus on their relationship with their children and on creating a ‘garden’ where children can learn and explore and become themselves. I was in agreement with her argument before she even made it, and I particularly enjoyed reading about all the evolutionary biology. It’s also made me very slightly less anxious about the amount of time my daughter spends in front of screens.
• The Dragon Hoard, Tanith Lee
  This was an impulse-buy in a charity shop and is a children’s book. On their seventeenth birthday, royal twins Princess Goodness and Prince Jasleth are cursed by Maligna, a distant relative and wicked enchantress. Princess Goodness becomes insanely good and starts giving away everything her family owns; Prince Jasleth turns into a raven every day, but at varying times and for varying durations. So the prince sets out to seek his fortune, which involves joining a quest to recover a dragon’s hoard. A cheerful, bouncing story, it put me slightly in mind of M.M. Kaye’s An Ordinary Princess.

A couple of weeks ago we reached the end of a fifteen-week course I teach every year. It’s a course with fantastic students but I find it very challenging and I have to spend hours and hours finding and making material and preparing for it. So suddenly I have a lot of free time, and this free time I’ve been devoting to revising my children’s book at breakneck speed in order to enter it for The Times and Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition, the deadline for which is the end of February. I am now completely disenchanted with my book but I decided to enter it anyway, what the hell, sorry judges for foisting it on you but at least it’s quite short. Then I am going to get started on another book which I am very excited about writing.

So for the foreseeable future, I’m going to be revising my book. I’m also going to making some cushion covers as we replaced our existing but broken Hideous Sofa with an even more Hideous Sofa and I plan on disguising it as far as possible if I can just find the fabric I have in mind for them.

I won’t be baking...

what happened in september

(Fluffy Chicken ruling the roost)

Well. That was a busy few weeks. Going back to work after the summer holidays is always a shock to the system (yes I know your heart bleeds for us poor teachers) but it’s been extra specially busy this year partly because I stood in for a colleague who had paternity leave and partly because our school is merging with two others and this involves synthesising all our ways of doing things, which basically boils down to a lot of extra paperwork, never my strongest point.

As I glare at the computer screen and try to look brave in front of new students, cobwebs and cat hair have silted up round the house, there are muddy pawprints in the bath and on every flat surface there seems to be a pile of paper, a miniature stable made from cardboard boxes, a plastic-bottle spaceship or a doll’s encampment. I have also blown up my lovely new food mixery thing, which I bought after this unfortunate incident, and had a first driving lesson which was pretty terrifying for all concerned including the trees.

Meanwhile in the garden, all those weeds who were discouraged from sprouting by the horrifically hot summer have now burst forth with a vengeance everywhere. Last night on Gardener’s World Monty Don told us we should never let weeds get out of hand but should tackle them a little and often; I had to sigh and eat some cheese.

(A rare flower among the weeds)

When I have time to read, it’s mainly been detective novels I’ve purloined from the charity shop and I don’t have anything particular to say about them. I’ve also read Saplings by Noel Streatfeild, The Outcast by Sadie Jones (both of which treated the effect on children of a parent’s sudden death), Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood and The Changeling by Victor Lavalle. The first two explore the effects on children of a parent’s sudden death, the third examines father–child relationships in a clever retelling of The Tempest, although it’s not the main theme of novel, and The Changeling explores the darker side of fatherhood. I hadn’t thought about these connexions until now but they are there. I have written half a confused post about The Changeling but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it.

Meanwhile, Frosty Chicken spent most of her days brooding.

However, last week she finally left the nest box and returned to the world of general hen business along with the others.

(Clara, Not Speaking to anyone)

In cat news, Clara remained aloof for a week or so but has slowly thawed, at least to Nala. The two of them play with each other, though it’s usually a chasing game that looks as if it teeters on the edge of not being a game. Clara continued to hate Olaf for much longer and I cannot say they are best friends now but all three cats will sleep on the same bed or in the same room together so I feel that all will be well.

(The only time Nala is still enough for a photograph is when she is asleep)

(One of Nala’s collections) (She didn’t arrange it, I should add)

Nala has turned out to be a big baby; she rushes about crazily and then falls asleep on someone and then bounces up again and bounds away. She collects things. She wags her tail like a puppy and is the most frightful thief and greedy-guts. She ate a frying-pan full of bacon which K had foolishly left unattended and will creep up on the unwary and try to bat food out of their hands with a sneaky yet very effective paw.

(Olaf, pretending he hasn’t just embarrassingly fallen out of the walnut tree in front of lots of people)

Olaf, apart from a disturbing taste for cellophane, is more discriminating in his eating habits. He rather views himself as Nala and Clara’s lord and master and simply expects to have the best place on the favourite blanket and first dibs on any food that’s going. However, he is also completely craven when it comes to children. He adores my daughter and loves being petted and spoilt by her and her friends, hurrying up to them when most cats flee in horror at the prospect of being clasped, kissed, bellowed at and bossed about.

(Spot the cats) (There are no prizes though)

Life is easing up a bit and I am feeling more chirpy; I still have to vanquish the combined evils of digital and planning but I am sure the forces of light are with me.

could this be the least attractive pudding ever?

 

I mean, I admit I haven’t done it any favours in my choice of serving bowl (well, there wasn’t really a choice, it was that or nothing). But I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that...

Should you be wondering, I made it using a jar from the Hema (on offer! For one euro!). On the label it does actually clearly call itself ‘Bavarois’ but my eye was drawn to ‘Blueberry Cheesecake’ underneath it. Now I suspect that is the flavour of bavarois, but at the time I thought that it was cheesecake mix. Cheesecake, yum! First mistake.

I had to whip 500ml of cream, so I got out the electric handwhisk, conveniently forgetting that I had had a little accident with it the last time I used it. After a nasty burning smell, one of the whisky attachments thingies flying out across the kitchen, and inflicting a minor electric shock on myself, I realised it was beyond hope. So I got out the balloon whisk and sat down to whisk by hand (surprisingly messy).

Just as I was thinking, ‘Oh good, this is finally thickening up before my arm falls off’, the cream separated and started turning into butter. Why was that? I’m thinking it was the heat, it is quite warm here. It certainly wasn’t from over-enthusiastic whisking.

It is hot and I’d used up all the cream in the house so as the buttery/whey mix didn’t actually taste bad I decided to throw caution to the winds and the contents of the jar into the bowl. And so you see the result. The English translation on the label cheerily suggests that ‘For an extra attractive touch, pipe a rosette of whipped cream on top before serving’ but I won’t be doing that thanks anyway. I’ve put it into the fridge. Perhaps it will magically transform into something tasty and less reminiscent of blackberry vomit.

cats, salt, mermaids

There’s a thunderstorm cracking on at the moment, bringing welcome rain and cool after some very very hot days. ‘Isn’t it dangerous to be working on a computer during a thunderstorm, Helen?’ I hear you cry. I expect so, but it’s all in a day’s work for a book blogger. If I disappear mid-sentence, you’ll know my house has been struck.

Not everyone is welcoming the storm though. It seems to have made the cats bad-tempered, and they actually fought in the kitchen a few minutes ago. Poor Mister Puss, erstwhile tough guy, hid under a cupboard, hissing, while Clara, puffed out to almost the size of a normal cat, stalked up and down with lashing tail.

Here she is on Saturday morning demonstrating her strange attraction to our paddling pool. (This is the second paddling pool we have owned, since she riddled the first one with punctures from her tiny claws scrambling up it – what cat seriously climbs up paddling pools don’t they all hate water? – and even this one has been patched a few times due to her insatiable but spiky love.)

In the chicken coop, friendship has triumphed. Fluffy feels no further threat to her queenship and stopped being mean to Frosty some time ago. Phew.

Anyway, moving on, some of you probably already know that the independent Norfolk publisher Salt has asked readers for help: if you’ve ever considered buying one of their books, now is the time to do it. Here is the page with the explanation and a list of fifty of their highlights. You can order direct from them or from a bookshop. They have a really interesting list, including fiction, poetry and literary criticism, with a crime fiction list, and their better-known authors include Meike Ziervogel and Lesley Glaister, plus Christina James’s series about DI Tim Yates.

I’ve ordered a copy of Simon Okotie’s In the Absence of Absalon, about an investigator looking into a series of disappearances. Nicholas Lezard, whose taste in books is always impeccable, wrote about it: ‘This is literature as insanity, the mind stuck in an endless loop – focused, it would appear, too closely on the job at hand. The detective story as existential crisis took form with Beckett’s Molloy more than 60 years ago; and the concept of the novel as crazed digression was first incarnated in Tristram Shandy, over 250 years ago. Okotie is in very good company – and has also set himself a high bar. He succeeds. Superbly.’ So if you feel like taking a punt on an author or book you haven’t previously come across, today’s the day to do it...

Finally, look look! After 150 years I finally finished sewing a mermaid doll for my daughter. I call her Rasta Mermaid, but she has now been named Stella, which I fear is only going to lead to trouble in E’s bedroom since her purple unicorn is also called Stella. The curious thing is that I made her from a pattern (in Jane Bull’s Crafty Dolls, though I made her hair using the method described here) and yet she is still bizarrely wonky. Truly, I am terrible at sewing. She is wearing a jacket made from a pattern in the same book. My mother says that mermaids don’t wear jackets; she is quite right but dolls are more fun with clothes. I wanted to give her a brooch too but E felt that was overkill.

Here she is again with her little sister, also modified from a pattern in that book, but this time (mainly) by E. I helped a bit. Instead of 150 years, she took us about an hour. The little sister has had about five names, I can’t keep up. I’m now working on a home for them, a tarted-up cardboard box, to be honest, but fortunately E is easily pleased.