WHEN DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY …..

Pratchett Death in Discworld (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night I saw the 1998 movie Meet Joe Black  (that delicious Brad Pitt with an equally compelling Sir Anthony Hopkins) wherein a business tycoon is visited by Death, who is on holiday (well, sort of, partly, in-between usual duties, as it were) and who – for a short period – stands by the tycoon’s shoulder as he fights his last business battle and makes things right with his two daughters.  All is tidied up in the end: virtue triumphs, Death stalks away, Hopkins dies tactfully off-screen, and the mortal Joe Black lands up with the younger daughter in his arms.

And then there is Mr Golightly’s Holiday by Sally Vickers, a book I didn’t particularly enjoy, although other Book Club members raved about it. It follows the same theme, but this time it’s God who takes the holiday instead of Death.

The movie set me thinking about books featuring Death, which leads me instantly to the marvellous Terry Pratchett and his Discworld books.  There is the book Mort where Death takes on a human apprentice, called Mort, would you believe?  Death appears in many of the Discworld romps, always SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS and has a nice white horse called Binky, which he rides when calling upon people.. Say no more.  He also – on occasion – rides a Harley. The front mudguard of which has been replaced by a large animal skull. Other than this, Death’s accoutrements are standard: a damn great scythe, an infinite store-room of hour-glasses (yours & mine, I regret to say), hooded robes, and a tiny assistant, the Death of Rats, known as the Grim Squeaker. No comment.

Pratchett is quite at home with the gods, too. His Discworld is overseen?  supervised ? trifled with? by whole pantheon of gods one of whom is Anoia – “The minor goddess of Things That Stick in Drawers, Anoia is praised by rattling a drawer and crying “How can it close on the damned thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?” As she says, sooner or later every curse is a prayer. She also eats corkscrews and is responsible for Things Down The Backs of Sofas, and is considering moving into stuck zips.” I suspect Anoia is at work in our world too, never mind the Discworld..

Pratchett’s Gods live atop a mountain called Dunmanifestin (“Done Manifesting”, which is also as a pun on the traditional British house name Dunroamin).

If you haven’t experienced the riotous satire that exists in the Discworld, run to your nearest book store NOW and rectify this omission.

SHORT-SHORT #5

THE JAG ENIGMA

Jaguar’s motto of “Grace, Space, Pace” was epitomised in the 1958 Mark IX (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Hello Mom! Guess what? I saw the coolest car today – it was a Jag Sports – silver – and ..” Davey looked at his mother bent over the ironing board “that’s weird, the lady driving it had a red jersey same colour as yours.”
”Really? how ‘bout that? Hurry up and get changed for soccer – you need to leave in ten minutes.”
Phew – that was close! thought Isobel, folding Charles’ shirt. He was very fussy about his shirts. He liked them to be ironed just so.

 

Isobel’s sudden death from a massive aneurism left Davey bewildered and Charles rigid with suppressed grief.
“I’ll help you clear out her things” volunteered his mother-in-law.
“No thanks, I’ll manage” was the curt reply.
Charles tackled the job that weekend. Get it over with, he thought.
“Davey: stop digging in your Mother’s handbag.”
“But Dad, I was just helping” whined Davey “Look what I found”. He dangled a key ring with a set of car keys and a Yale key, on a Jaguar trademark fob.
Charles frowned. “You found those in your Mother’s handbag?” he said
“Mmm” said Davey “look at this cool Jag emblem”.

Whose keys were these? Charles asked himself. They didn’t own a car. Charles felt private car ownership was environmentally irresponsible when there was a perfectly good public transport system. And anyway, Isobel couldn’t drive. He fingered the bunch of keys. On the back of the fob were engraved the initials I.R.F. and a telephone number. Slowly his brain registered the facts. These were Isobel’s initials. This was their home telephone number. Had Isobel owned a car? It appeared to be a Jaguar, one of the most expensive cars on the market. It wasn’t possible. They had no spare money. And where was the car?
Systematically Charles searched the house for car related evidence : registration papers, garage bills, motor insurance, road maps. He found nothing. Which was not surprising, because Isobel had been meticulously careful to keep her car paperwork in a locked metal toolbox in the Jag’s garage.

When the garage lease expired, the exasperated owner, fed up with Mrs Robinson’s non-response to his phone calls, forced open the doors. The discovery of a dusty Jag Sports XK3 Roadster made a brief flurry in the local papers. ABANDONED JAG MYSTERY trumpeted the headlines, but nobody came forward with information.

Davey, like all kids, never read newspapers. Charles was in Dubai on a contract job at the time, so the headline escaped them both.
Davey hankered after a Jag all his life, to no avail. Charles fretted over the mystery car keys for years. He simply could not align his passive, obedient Isobel with a Jaguar sports car. Had she bought the car with Lotto winnings? Did she have a rich lover who bought it for her? Surely not, he thought, recalling her reluctant lovemaking.
Ironically he spent more time thinking about Isobel after her death than he ever did during her lifetime.

500 words

RECENT READS # 21 ROD – THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Lambo Uracco in London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lovely cheerful account of a Rock Star’s life – which he frankly acknowledges is pretty good: bags of money, impressive cars (he likes Lambo’s – translation for us plebs = Lamborghini), flocks of beautiful, leggy blondes, mansions in the UK  and Los Angeles, drugs du jour  – he’s quite open about his coke taking – apparently its prevalent in the music industry. His great passion, alongside music, sex and drugs, is FOOTBALL. He and his entire family are absolutely football mad. Rod currently plays for a team in LA, I think they’re called the Expats. Mark you, this man is in his early 60s.

His saving grace is his wry humour throughout the book, particularly a  chapter, yes an entire chapter, related in deadpan detail, on how to create and maintain his famous spiky hairstyle. Several of the Book Club Ladies related how, during the 60s, they would ask their hairdresser to “give us a Rod” and would emerge with the spiky, tousled Rod hairstyle.

The Ladies reminisced about Britain in the 60’s – going to the pubs & clubs, hitch hiking home, late at night, and how safe it was. Alas, no longer.

Living in Rhodesia in the 60s, we didn’t have nearly so much fun in our colonial outpost, being 10 yrs behind the times, although bell bottom trousers, mini skirts and wedge heels had arrived in darkest Africa. In the late 60s there was the escalation of the Bush War, continuing into the early 70s, and we PARTIED. A country at war takes refuge in hectic partying, it’s a well known fact.

The same ladies agreed we all love Rod Stewart, we’ve loved him since the 1960s, and we continue to love him 40 years on – the man’s practically indestructible, when you consider how his music still sells, and in Christmas 2012 there was a TV special Rod Stewart’s Christmas  and there he was in a natty tartan jacket (he loves tartan, proud of his Scottish heritage) warbling away with the great and famous.

The book has great photos and tons of fascinating anecdotes. I bet you didn’t know he’s a model train fan? He built vast layout/rail network in his Los Angeles home, necessitating the removal of interior walls so that the track could extend across the width of the building. Nice to be a Rock Star, hey?

And in closing I must confess I want his marvellous pounding anthem  Rhythm of my Heart to be played at my memorial. I don’t want a funeral, but I do want a gathering, and they’re all going to have to listen to Rod.

Slices of Quince

Edward_Lear_The_Owl_and_the_Pussy_Cat_1.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I feel very Edward Lear-ish at the moment, because I have been feasting on quince. Stewed quince, baked quince. If you bake quince for hours the fruit slowly turns a gorgeous deep pink. I’ve been racking my brains as to exactly which shade of pink best describes it – the closest I can come is to compare it to pink grapefruit. It’s a clear, delicate pink, but a deep shade.

Quince are a winter fruit in South Africa, and I have a vague memory of seeing them grow on an untidy hedge in a small country town. I’ve never known anybody who grew quinces. It’s only during the last two years they’ve been available in the shops. A clever farmer has cottoned on to the idea of growing the fruit commercially. They’re an old-fashioned fruit, and in bygone years, were turned into jams and quince paste, which I think was eaten with venison dishes.

They are the very devil to prepare, because the  round fruit has a consistency somewhere between a cricket ball and a granite boulder. The peel is citric yellow and quite thin, so I’ve adopted the strategy of scrubbing them vigorously to get rid of the greyish bloom on the skin, wash the fruit, and leave them unpeeled. Then I cut them into quarters and hack out the small apple-type brown seeds in the centre, which are surrounded by a gritty coating. It’s best to get rid of this, because the gritty bits are virtually unchewable.

I bake them in the oven with a handful of sultanas and sticks of cinnamon, with a teeny bit of water, or sometimes I stew them in a cast-iron pot on the stove top. Quince have to be cooked. They are inedible raw. But once cooked, they are worth the preceding toil and pain. They go well with yoghurt, custard, cream. You can put them into tarts, or make a fruit cobbler. I suspect they would also do well in a thick syrup, with booze added – both syrup and booze are on the forbidden list for me, but the rest of you can experiment. Bon appétit!

You may be wondering why I mention Edward Lear.  He wrote the marvellous poem  The Owl & the Pussycat which contains the lines:

They dined upon mince and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon …

I’ve always wondered what the word runcible meant. My reliable OED declines to offer an explanation and something tells me that – coming from the mildly crazy Edward Lear – he probably invented the word. Runcible… might it have been a twisty spoon? Or engraved with runic emblems? Or specially fashioned so that the pussycat’s claws could hold the spoon? Or was it just deep enough for an owl-shaped beak to pluck the contents from the spoon?  We shall never know.

By the way, The Owl and the Pusscat is Chocolat’s favourite poem, and my  second blog post  titled What my cat is reading appeared way back when on 24 February, 2011.

LIGHTNING RODS – HELEN DE WITT

I was really looking forward to her second novel with happy anticipation.  The wait has been a long one, since her marvellous The Last Samurai one of my fave books, which I have read at least three times, unusual for me. So I bought it at vast expense, on-line, and gloated over the hard-covered book (not available in paperback), and read it very swiftly – it’s not a long book.

Once I’d got over the shock of this outrageous, bizarre novel which – by the by – should be sold in a plain brown wrapper stamped, Age Restricted: 21 and over only, I realize I’m disappointed.  I know it’s unrealistic to expect a second novel to be a reprise of the first brilliant debut, but that said ….

The two novels could not be more dissimilar. Both in content and style. The first one told an unusual story peopled with quirky, interesting, sympathetic characters; I was spellbound from page 1. Rods has an arresting cover, with a bright blue background, and three sets of bright blue eyes (painted, not photographed) showing an expression of great surprise. Once you discover the contents, you realize why they look so startled.

In short, the book is a satire on modern American marketing and business methods, and the use of sex in the office environment, purveyed in a clinical, conveyor-belt manner, to male staff, the women serving as lightning rods for otherwise troublesome sexual energy which would – under normal circumstances – give rise to endless sexual harassment suits, low productivity etc. etc. The book has a sweetly reasonable tone which reports in a matter of fact way, the success of ex-vacuum cleaner salesman Joe who succeeds in launching, selling and succeeding with his crazy scheme.  It almost sounds like an anthropologist’s report on a sociological experiment, and less like an article from Playboy.

The dust jacket says that the book is irredeemably filthy and parts of it are – we’re full frontal with male fantasies, and some down to earth language and details on fornication.  But oddly, it also outlines in some detail how two former Lightning Rods go on to make glittering careers in the legal field and Supreme Court, all on their LR earnings.

On finishing the book I continued to feel flabbergasted at the theme and the plot – it is galaxies away from the first book and it’s hard toaccept that it was written by a woman . I deliberately didn’t read any reviews of the book mid-read, but will do so now and see what other readers had to say about it. It was much heralded when it appeared.

A COUPLE OF THE OLDEST BOOK IN MY BOOKCASE

Books (Photo credit: henry…)

Yesterday I enlisted the help of my char to tackle an annual task – moving the bookcase in my bedroom and vacuuming the carpet. We do a chain-relay routine where she gets down to the bottom shelf, which I cannot do, grabs a handful of books, passes them up to me, and I stack them in wobbly piles on the bed, until the shelves are empty. We then move the bookcase away from the wall, cluck over the thick layer of dust, and she wields the vacuum. I was relieved not to find any tiny mouse skeletons because that’s where Chocolat’s mice find shelter when they escape momentarily. The tiny spaces a mouse can squeeze into always amazes me.
When I’ve cleaned the shelves, and dusted the books, we then restack the shelves. I take the opportunity to weed out unwanted books (yes, there are such items, but not many) and this year I hesitated over The Mottled Lizard by Elspeth Huxley; it’s a charming account of a childhood spent in Kenya, but oh dear! The spine is torn, the pages have browned to a deep caramel colour, the cover is limp, and creased. The two giraffe have faded to a greenish-blue, it’s a sorry sight. There’s a price on the cover: 5/-. Five shillings! Can you imagine that? Inside the cover on the facing page is rubber-stamped: Rhod Price 6/-. I suppose the import charges to Rhodesia from Britain warranted the surcharge. Underneath that is another rubber stamp image, in pale red, barely legible: Carlton Exchange, Bulawayo. I have no memory of the Carlton Book Exchange, but I must have know about it, and probably used it. My eldest daughter, who remembers everything Bulawayo related, will be able to fill in the gaps for me.
The book was published by the Four Square publishing company in 1965. Although the book looks like a relic from the Boer War, it’s not actually that old.
Perhaps another contender for the title in this bookcase is one of my favourite books The Sunshine Settlers by Crosbie Garstin. The first page informs us that this edition is a Facsimile Reprint, issued by Books of Rhodesia, Bulawayo 1971, of the 1935 edition. It has been slightly amended by addition of black and white line drawings by Daphne James. I remember my Dad owning a copy of the original 1935 version, which I read as a child, and loved. The book was burnt when my Mum’s house burnt down in the early 1960’s – house fires ravage family memorabilia; you can buy a new stove, you can replace your clothes, but books, letters, photos are irreplaceable. Ditto the handsome brass box, with a tortoise shell pattern engraved on the lid, and ditto the two brass urns, with elegant tall necks, decorated with an engraved pattern of curlicues and flowers, all the way from Persia, a gift from Uncle Bill who worked in the oil industry, a million years ago when the country was called Persia. Oh well …
So when the Books of Rhodesia copy came out, I pounced on it with glee, and have read, and re-read it happily over the years. It describes pioneering life in Rhodesia in the early years, just prior to the First World War. My Dad came out to Rhodesia in the late 1920’s, and life on the farms hadn’t changed that much in the intervening twenty years. Life was just as hot, dry, dusty and challenging as it had ever been, but viewed through Crosbie Garstin’s twinkling Irish eyes it was all a splendid adventure. Try and read it if you can find a copy; sorry, but I’m not lending you mine!

THANKS – An Award !

To Fethiye and Beyond …     recently awarded me their

 

Thank you so much to The Smidge – I’m honoured .  Of course, as with every award it is now my duty to pass it on along with a set of rules which are:

• Include the award’s logo in      a post or on your blog.
• Answer 10 questions about      yourself.
• Nominate up to 10 other      fabulous bloggers.
• Link your nominees to this      post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been      nominated.
• Share the love and link the      person who nominated you.

So, here goes:

What inspired you to start blogging?   Probably a combination of  wanting to have a platform (& on occasion a soapbox) for my writing, and just because I could …. you know, if not, why not ? 

How did you come up with the name for your blog?   After a great deal of effort, after making a list of possible names all of which were awful, suddenly despatches from timbuktu just fell into my head! I liked the fact that it referred to Africa, to faraway places, and the word despatches  had the ring of  bulletins from battlefields, or progress of daring explorers.

What is your favourite blog that you like to read?  Difficult to answer but probably another wordpress blog : life to reset, which has marvellous pics & accounts of Japan, and sometimes Taiwan.

Tell us about your dream job:  The thought of having to work again after 12 years of retirement does not appeal, but … hmmm … owning my very own small, quirky bookstore crammed with all the books that I like (not to worry about prospective customers!). There’d be shelves of cookery books, travel books, poetry books, futuristic/speculative fiction/SF novels, comic novels, and art books. So if business was slow, I could just park off & read. Now that couldn’t be bad, could it? I might even make some money, if I wasn’t careful …

Is your glass half full or half empty?   Neither – it is absolutely overflowing. I love my life. That’s right, LOVE it. And when you love your life setbacks are merely little hiccups that can be easily overcome. As Terri Guillemets said ‘How can something bother you if you won’t let it?’  (Thanks to the Smidge for this response – I couldn’t have phrased it better)

If you could go anywhere for a week’s holiday where would it be?   Oh the agonies of choice.  Just a week? Venice, I think. But mid-Autumn. I don’t want to be fighting off hordes of tourists.

What food can you absolutely not eat?  Tripe -  a horrendous experience at boarding school, which I won’t go into.

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?   Dark, laced with orange, please. Alas: strictly on the forbidden list now … sigh.  

How much time do you spend blogging?   Not that much – it depends. I spend more time writing my blog posts, I think.

Do you watch TV – if so what are some of your favourite TV shows?   Yes, I watch TV. Sherlock – both the British & American versions; Big Bang Theory;  Northern Exposure; Blue Bloods; Master Chef Australia. Pretty much anything on Travel Channel.

My Sunshine Awards go to…

1. Life to Reset
2. Soulshine Traveller
3. The Fantastical Voyages of Flat Kathy
4. Dharmagiri
5. Travelling Mudskippers

Yes I know there are only 5 but I felt it made it all the more special to award just a handful of the wonderful bloggers I follow rather than just award them all – although I enjoy  each and every blog I read, these 5 are  that I read regularly and enjoy the most.

B A K & THE CARNAGE CONTINUES

Uganda Collared Sunbird (Hedydipna collaris) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

B A K ?  Back at Keyboard, of course. Do try  to keep up.

If I sound a little waspish it’s because my return to home, cat and keyboard has not been a restful transition. After a delightful fortnight in Kwa-Zulu Natal, surrounded by family and friends, enjoying lunches, a prawn braai, a visit to a game reserve, an evening at the theatre, splashing in the swimming pool  – in short, that rare event, a relaxing holiday, my return was angst ridden in the extreme.

My brand new laptop got mixed up with another laptop in the overhead compartment of the plane, and I landed up with a battered old IBM in an identical carrying case. There was no identification in the case and the laptop was password-locked. 48 fraught hours later the dilemma was solved, laptops were exchanged, and I will never ever travel with un-labelled luggage again.

Meanwhile, back at the home front, on return from the cattery, Chocolat was being sociable and affectionate, and sharing quantities of little red ticks she’d picked up on her outdoor excursions. Three tick bites later (have you any idea how itchy tick bites can be?) much brushing and combing of cats, purchase of one tick & flea collar which did no good at all, purchase of more Frontline which is anti-tick monthly muti, the ticks seem to have abated. Now I’m waiting to see if I come down with tick-bite fever. I sincerely hope not. It’s unpleasant. Other family members have been bitten during trips to the bush, and laid very low thereafter.

In between these excitements, Chocolat caught a large dove, which she carted inside and proceeded to harass. Luckily I arrived while the bird was still alive, and confiscated it. Miraculously it flew when I released it into the garden, but then I spent a long time picking up dozens – maybe even hundreds – of tiny feathers inside the house. Ho hum.  And two days later Madam marched in and laid her latest trophy at my feet: one small scarlet-collared sunbird, claws pathetically still locked around the branch where it had perched. No problem to Chocolat, who brought the whole lot indoors, bird, branch, the whole jolly lot. At the moment I’m off my cat, in a big way.

My latest read has followed this trend: the Swedish bestseller Silenced  by  Kristina Ohlsson – the grim tale of a family murder. Suffice it to say the reader realises by the end of the book that it is very unwise to upset one’s siblings, lest they take revenge. Be especially nice to your siblings, lest they be harbouring old grudges, and are plotting, right now, how best to achieve your downfall – if not total extinction. You have been warned.

Yup: I’m B.A.K. But not with a happy smile on my dial.

8 Hours Left To Twiddle My Thumbs

8 Hours Left To Twiddle My Thumbs.

AFK & A THOROUGHLY PEEVED CHOCOLAT

why? (Photo credit: currawongwhisper42)

 

Chocolat isn’t talking to me, ever since I wheeled my big green suitcase through from the garage.  She watched me balefully while I packed books, clothes, shoes, toiletries, gifts. Halfway through the process she stalked away, angrily swishing her tail. She knows from  bitter past experience that Suitcase = Cattery.

I’ve tried to ease the pain by offering her something light-hearted to read in my absence, like  P G Wodehouse’s Jeeves  novels – I always find Bertie Wooster very entertaining, and comfort myself that I don’t have fearsome Aunts to contend with.

Since that suggestion sank like a lead balloon, I tried again: what about Terry Pratchett and his wonderful Discworld novels I said?  Chocolat glared at me, swiped at my ankles with an angry claw and buzzed off for the rest of the day. Clearly nothing will suit Madam in her current bad mood, so she’ll just have to endure the durance vile, and for entertainment she can  shout loud abuse at the resident Staffies as they race around the lawn in front of the cattery runs.

So, dear readers, I shall be AFK as my friend Dr Sheldon Cooper would say – you don’t know Dr Cooper? The insanely picky genius scientist from TV’s Big Bang Theory?   Ag shame, as we say in South Africa. AFK = Absent From Keyboard.  I’ll be back – meanwhile: stay safe, stay happy and keep on reading!