London Trip

I spent two days in London last month on my way home from a family visit. I lived in London for a number of years until finally moving to Germany. I still call it my home town, though. I'm not sure of what the fascination is. It is a big city and yet there is something so endearingly parochial about it.
Paris or Berlin, on the other hand, are beautiful cities but they have a completely different atmosphere.
I love the little places in London where the tourists are not so thick on the ground. Where you can feel just how old this city is and how much history and human stories have taken place here.

One of my favourite places is the area around Temple. This little gem, almost unknown to the tourists, is well worth a visit. When you step into the complex, you are entering another world. It is the home of English law. There are signs at the entrance to most of the buildings giving a list of practicing barristers and solicitors. I almost expect to meet Charles Dickens strolling the streets.

The Temple Church built by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters is a step way back into history. It is worth reading about it in the excellent BBC article:

bbc.com/travel/story/20160510-the-hidden-world-of-the-knights-templar

I also visited St. Clement Danes church, completed by Sir Christopher Wren, Brompton Oratory and Westminster Cathedral (not as old as the other churches but still impressive). By then I had seen  enough churches. For me, they represent the spirit of old London, of places where Samuel Pepys and Samuel Johnson, two of my favourite writers, went to worship. 

For old time's sake, I visited Harrods in Knightsbridge but here I found that luxury and wealth didn't do it for me, so I did not stay very long.  Next I went to South Bank in the hopes of finding the open air book market (much more like it, from my point of view). It was school half-term and there was a lot of hurdy-gurdy and no sign of the book market. Instead I paid a visit to Foyles and bought a book -  Volume I of Somerset-Maugham's short stories, if you want to know. Of course I could have got this for a third of the price somewhere else but, well, I fell in love with the new cover and anyway, you have to buy a book at Foyles, don't you?

The great thing about London is that you are never far from a park. I went to pay my respects to Hyde Park, near Harrods, and watch people feeding the birds.

When crossing the road on my way back, I was delighted to see the Horse Guards riding down the street. Beautiful horses with glossy black coats and riders with those scarlet uniforms! I remember when I worked somewhere near Chelsea that they used to ride out in the morning in the middle of the rush hour. I still remember the gleam on sunlight on brass buttons and bridle buckles.

What I had forgotten is that you do so much walking in London. By the end of each day I was exhausted and very ready to retire to my tourist hotel in Earls Court. I lived here for a few months many years ago. Earls Court itself has not lost its cosmopolitan atmosphere and yes, there is a little shop where you can buy all the essentials on your way home. Nice to see things have not changed that much.

Before I knew it, I was on the airplane home and I felt like I'd been away a month!  See you soon again, London.

Really, Karl? - Getting Some Perspective

This blog is going to be a rant of sorts, so if you're not feeling up to it, click away now.

The sad news of Karl Lagerfield's death was announced last week. He was certainly a talented designer, no question of that. One of the things about him mentioned in a potted obituary was that, aged about 4 years old, he requested a valet. Really, Karl?? His cat, Choupette is worth millions as is his estate.  Well done, Karl Lagerfeld.

I have to contrast this world of luxury, fashion and undoubted talent with, for example, Leyla Hussein, a leading campaigner against female genital mutilation (FMG) and all the work she does for this cause. She cares.

Take Emma Sky, a British Council employee, who volunteered to help rebuild Iraq and ended up governing a province. She became adviser to General Ray Odierno from 2007-2010. Her novel In a Time of Monsters: Travels through a Middle East in Revolt is out now (Atlantic). She also cares.

David Nott has just published his memoir War Doctor (Picador). He has spent over 25 years operating on victims in some of the worst war zones in the world with very few resources to help them or him, as a volunteer for the Red Cross and MSF (Medecins sans Frontieres). He is also an NHS consultant in London. He cares.

Having read articles on all of the above over the weekend, I had to sit down and ask myself how I would like to be remembered? I think you will have guessed the answer.

Best Sellers

I ordered two novels from the library because they got such good write-ups in the Press and endorsements from other novelists. I tried hard but I couldn't finish any of them even though the plot in both cases was intriguing.
For me, I have to be interested in the story's main character. It is not enough that they have a problem to solve, are in danger or part of an intricate spy plot. If a character doesn't gel with me, I can't muster up enough interest to finish the novel. In addition, I like well-written stories. Having said that, I have to admit that both of the above novels were well written. Both were translated but still managed to catch the authors' style. I take off my hat to the translators. Having worked as a free-lance myself many years ago, I know how difficult it is. But the stories themselves dragged on and on. In both books, I skipped several chapters, skimmed over the rest, and discovered that I had not missed much in the story. A disappointment all round.
As I am about to go on a short trip to the UK, including a visit to London, I did not want to start another long novel, so I went through my Eric Ambler collection and pulled out The Schirmer Inheritance. This is not one of his best known books but I have always enjoyed it. It is short (195 pages) and to the point and I am drawn to the main character, a somewhat naive young lawyer sent to Europe to find the heir to a huge fortune. It was written in 1953 and for that reason alone is a gem! It is hard for us to imagine that in those days, most communication was via letter and not telephone, and train was the favoured mode of transport.
Although often called a master spy story writer, in fact Ambler very often placed his main characters in a strange and difficult situation and had us all glued to our seats while they extricated themselves. He is still well worth a read today.
And I will have finished the book tonight before I leave for my UK trip.  I plan on visiting the book market on London's South Bank. Maybe I'll find some more gems there.

Watching the Birds - where ideas for stories come from

I've been out walking on the beach this morning. The sun was shining but there was a bitterly cold wind from the North. The chill factor was definitely living up to its name.
Watching the sea birds, though, made me think of how very like humans they are in their behaviour.
As I walked along this morning, the elegant Oystercatchers were in their own little group, busy digging in the wet sand for whatever creatures Oystercatchers eat (apart, presumably, from oysters). Nearby were a group of sea gulls, jostling each other and squawking at the top of their voices. Now and then one of them would advance on an Oystercatcher and chase it away. The Oystercatchers had enough of this treatment after a while and took off in an orderly group for a quieter part of the seashore. Some minutes later a bunch of crows decided to join the sea gulls and their raucous voices made themselves heard above the screaming of the gulls. They were still warring with each other when I left them behind and continued on my way. It didn't look as if either party was going to give up ground or indeed score a win over the other party.

 

I'm afraid the picture doesn't do justice to the scene as I couldn't get too close without frightening them all away and anyway my camera isn't very powerful, but you get the idea. Here is another picture of my route which turned out a little better:

 

 

To return to the theme of this blog, I should say that I found plenty in the behaviour of the birds to develop a story on fights over territory or disputes among neighbours. Plenty of ideas there for the importance of setting boundaries, of being tolerant, and of the challenges if the main character in a story had to leave his/her environment because of unfavourable circumstances.
All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable walk with plenty of food for future plots.

Murder most foul - why we like crime stories

I recently read an article which mentioned our predilection for reading about crime whether true crime or fiction or natty detectives. The writer seemed to suggest that we were a bloodthirsty lot. I'm not so sure that she was wrong.
From the earliest times, ordinary people liked to watched spectacles of some sort. Juvenal, a Roman poet from the late 1st/early 2nd century said people only want "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses is what he actually wrote, which roughly translated means bread and games or circuses). I don't think we have changed that much in the intervening centuries. Public executions were popular. Take for example Samuel Pepys diary entry for 16th October 1660 in which he says that he went to Charing Cross to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered. When his head and heart were shown to the people there were "great shouts of joy".  And have you noticed that whenever there is a major incident, terrorist or otherwise, people get their mobile phones out and start recording?
Nearly all of us have stopped at the scene of an accident or of a major fire to see what was going on.  It's not that we revel in others' misfortune. I think it is the herd instinct, wanting to know what happened to our fellow human beings, and the feeling "that could have been me" which makes us do this. Of course, the nightly news broadcasts keep us up to date with all the major catastrophes around the world. Good news never does sell well except maybe at Christmas.
Be all that as it may, crime fiction and true crime, in both book form and on television, remains very popular with readers and viewers alike.What a pleasure it is to curl up in bed at night or stretch out in the most comfortable chair in front of the fire and read about the solving of a murder.
I enjoyed writing my Sergeant Alan Murray murder series. I am not a fan of blood-curdling descriptions of how victims met their end. I prefer the detective side of it and this is shown in my stories. Murray is head of a small police station at the foot of the Kerry Mountains in the heart of rural Ireland where crime of any sort is rare and therefore all the more shocking when three women are murdered within a short space of time.

The Elusive Sleep

There is nothing I like better than curling up with the Sunday newspapers after lunch. Online editions can never (I hope!) replace the printed word. There is a world of news and gossip and frothy information contained in every Sunday edition. Politics, fashion, domestic and foreign news, and editorials and commentaries from people who know what they are writing about and a few who don't.
I love it!

Last Sunday, I was struck by the bias towards sleep in many of the articles I read. The recently published book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is providing food for thought, it appears. My guess is that a lot of people found it in their Christmas stocking. I must confess that I didn't read all of it, I mainly concentrated on the parts relating to seniors (being a senior myself, and a bad sleeper to boot). I'm afraid that I didn't really agree with his findings that we all need more sleep than we realize. Quite frankly, I find that if I have a really bad night, I usually catch up the next. As well as that, everyone has a sleep pattern of their own. And obsessing because you didn't get what you're told is the right amount of sleep, is more likely to be detrimental to your health than anything else.  When my kids were small, I felt I never got enough sleep, later I slept less, waking up in the middle of the night. I used to get very frustrated but I don't any more. I found the best way of coping was to either relax and wait for sleep to come or if feeling restless, I made myself a hot drink and watched a bit of television until I felt tired enough to go back to bed and sleep.
I daresay that if any sleep scientists read this, they will wag their collective fingers at me, but all I can say is it works for me.

A couple of things to think about

I came home on the bus from shopping in town just as it was getting dusk. When I looked out of the window I could see all the houses lit up still with Christmas lights. Those dots of light on the country landscape are magical to me somehow. They signify home, warmth, being welcomed. No wonder we light everything up on these, the darkest days of the year. Soon we will tidy away the decorations - there is a tradition that this has to be done before January 6th although I know a lot of people who don't follow it to the letter. And before we know it, the evenings will stay bright for longer and we will start thinking about Spring and summer holidays and sunshine. Yes, I know we will most likely get some bad weather in the next two months. I think it was Tsar Nicholas I of Russia who said "I have two generals who never fail me: Generals January and February", referring to the brutal Russian winters which defeated Napoleon among others who tried to invade. Be that as it may, we have not seen winter until we do see what January and February dish out to us. I don't mind a bit of snow, I must confess!
For Christmas my nephew gave me A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by Amor Towles. I had not heard of this author before but am really enjoying reading this book. Towles' first novel RULES OF CIVILITY was a New York Times bestseller and I intend to get hold of it when I have finished this one. So now I have a nice stack of books waiting to be read. Wonderful. That is the nicest thing about getting books as presents. You end up discovering authors you never heard of. (In the old days, ending a sentence with a preposition would be frowned on - I have no idea if this is still the case, but I've done it anyway, so sorry to anyone who is a stickler for grammar and style).

Not too late to wish all my readers A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!