C is for Cadaverous

An old man is sitting in the autumn sunshine. His eyes are sunken and his skin looks sallow and dry. In the chill breeze the legs of his trousers flap against his skinny shanks. Drifts of fallen leaves swirl unnoticed about his shoes. Two magpies peck at some discarded rubbish behind the bench. A woman walking past pauses, curiously, anxiously. She leans over and tentatively touches his hand, it is cool. A siren sounds on the main road, but the man does not stir. She waits a minute. He breathes a deep sigh, opens his eyes and smiles at her.

(Linking back to the A to Z challenge)

B is for Betwixt

"If you're only going for a walk then he can go with you."

"But mum ..." he said.

"Unless you're not telling me everything?"

"No, we're just friends, I said."

Ben hopped up and down on the spot expectantly, eyes pleading.

He looked at him and sighed, resigned.

She was waiting for them at the end of the road and greeted him with a shy smile. The breeze whipped her long hair around her face. Ben reached out his other hand to her. They stood a moment, both feeling the small trusting warmth of his hands.

"Come on, it's this way."

(Linking back to the A to Z challenge site, where you can visit other participants)

A is for Adultery

The setting sun is bright behind the half lowered blind and the shadow of the washing line bisects the table between them. After the 'How was your day?' formalities there is little left to say; what little there is is left unsaid. The food is shuffled around plates listlessly, she eats her potato tiny piece by tiny piece. At each sip the wine turns sour in his mouth, but fingers rest on the stem for want of anything better to do. She pushes her plate away and sighs. A phone beeps abruptly in the silence and, then, their eyes meet.

(I have decided to go for a month of Flash Fiction, also written to the 100 Words format, just to add to the challenge. Written for the A to Z Challenge. Title suggested by Creature when I requested inspiration.)

Blog Stuff going on in April

Have done really well on the Orange January Challenge (reading, I think, 4 books) and not-so-well on the TBR Double Dare challenge (reading hardly any from my TBR pile between January and March) I have decided on a few new challenges.

Firstly is the Muriel Spark Reading Week, 23rd to 29th April, hosted by Stuck-in-a-book and Harriet. Having read a couple of her books since I started this blog I thought it would be an excuse to try another, or two.
The other challenge is nothing (or not necessarily) to do with reading. Dunk sent me in the direction of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I have felt a bit uninspired recently so I thought it might give me a bit of encouragement to write about something different. So, in theory, there is going to be a daily post (with Sundays off for good behaviour) for the whole of April, based around the letters of the alphabet.

Work Whinge of the Week: Council Tax Bill Day

Fortunately 'Council Tax Bill Day' has become Council Tax Bill three days, since we have been allowed to spread out the delivery, but we are still talking a nice fat letter to every address that is in addition to the normal workload (that's six to eight extra boxes of letters). The first ones began arriving last Friday but most have come over the weekend so my trolley has been loaded to the max the last two days (when on a tuesday it is usually only half full.)

I guess I should be grateful for small mercies; since the move to Manchester I have avoided the dreaded 'National Trust Day'. This is the day, some time mid January when the National Trust sends out it's annual members handbook. In an area where in some villages every other person in a member this used to triple our workload on the day they arrived. I know I shouldn't complain since if there were no letters I would be out of a job ... but why do they have to all arrive on the same day!

Book Reviews and all that

I am sitting today printing off past papers from the Edexcel site for Creature to practice on so you are getting a bit of a catchup post about recent reading.

I had to rush 'There but for the' by Ali Smith back to the library last week before I had the chance to review it. Like 'The Accidental' which I reviewed almost exactly a year ago, it has been longlisted for the Orange Prize, and it was a similarly weird book. For all the other apparently intellectual quirks and references that were lost on me it was enamoured to me by the information that the young girl Brooke was named for Louise Brooks, because my daughter Tish (real name Thymian) is named after the character that Louise Brooks plays in 'Diary of a lost Girl'. It seems silly but such small incidental information can frequently give me a bond with a story that might otherwise have passed into obscurity. On the surface this is a tale about Miles, who shuts himself into a stranger's spare room during dinner and stays there, and all sorts of stuff starts happening around him, people are drawn in and the whole event takes on a life of it's own, until it almost becomes irrelevant whether he is still in the room or not. It is a clever book, about words and language as much as it is about people, and about society as much as about personal relationships. I liked all the references to Greenwich and the meridian and Brooke's obsession with it. In fact she rapidly became my favourite person. It kind of drifted inconclusively to the end in the same way 'The Accidental' did, which I liked, as if things aren't really as important as all that.

'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlett Thomas was also long listed for the Orange Prize, back in 2008. This book was on audiobook and it seemed to go on and on interminably, or maybe it was just really slow to get in to. I am not sure if I liked it. It was almost trying to be too clever, not 'literary' clever but the premise for the story is clever, but then it mixed up science and superstition and religion and it became a bit too much for me. Our protagonist Ariel discovers a copy of a rare book, 'The End of Mr Y' and it contains instructions for reaching the 'Troposphere', a kind of mind space, where you can enter other's consciousness and move through time and space by jumping between people or even animals. It is all very surreal and the ideas about existence outside your physical body tend to leave me a bit cold. It got a bit carried away with it's own cleverness and I was bored and in the end took it to work to listen to just to get it finished as I wanted to find out how it all ended... and it was a bit predictable. Sorry.

Have also listened to 'The London Train' by Tessa Hadley and 'The Whole Day through' by Patrick Gale, neither of which made a big enough impact for me to was to write anything about them. Or maybe I just can't be bothered much at the moment, am very much lacking any inspiration from anything I have read, certainly not enough to want to jump up and down and tell people to go read it themselves.

Cable Jumper and all that

I have been working on this cable jumper for over a month and finally finished this afternoon. It is done in a lovely lambswool and silk yarn, which is quite heavy and warm. It is knitted to this pattern from Interweave Press called Celtic Dreams. I have concentrated pretty hard but there still a couple of minor mistakes in the cabling ... but I won't mention it again if you don't:-)

Tish came over to hang out and have dinner and having seen the three little pigs and the big bad wolf ...

that Creature (who still doesn't want her picture taken but wants recognition for her talents) made the other week (to accompany the story on the iPad), she pulled out the felt bag and made ... rabbit, fox and tiger.