Sunday 26 July 2015

Grey Doll Boosts Her Criminal Reading via Bitter Lemon Press

Well, I don't usually win competitions but last week I do. Hurray.
I like to read crime fiction from foreign lands (as you may know) and in order to keep an eye on new releases I subscribe to a newsletter from Bitter Lemon Press... an independent publisher which specialises in translated crime fiction and "roman noir" titles.
I entered a quick competition in the last newsletter .... and did win three books of my choice! Thank you, Bitter Lemon Press.



I've picked Entanglement by Polish crime writer Zygmunt Miloszewski (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)... his first book (I think) in his crime series featuring State Prosecutor Teodor Szacki.

Hotel Bosphorus, (translated by Ruth Whitehouse) and first in Turkish writer Esmahan Aykol's "Kati Hirschel" mystery novels.

And... Nights of Awe by Finnish writer Harri Nykanen .... the first of his Inspector Ariel Kafka books. (Translated by Kristian London.)

Did you see what I just did there? I take my crime fiction addiction very seriously. If it is a series, I like to start at the beginning. Then I know there's plenty more to come, if it's for me. I'll let you know how I get on with them. But for sure, if you like crime in translation... take a dip in Bitter Lemon Press's catalogue.... it's a tempting box of chocolates for crime fans like I.

Friday 24 July 2015

Jumping Pink Grasshoppers

Chorthippus parallelus (pink form)
Wildlife is being a bit wild at the moment. At the time I was hosting a fledgling sparrow in the bathroom.... I spotted a pink grasshopper on the granite hedge of the garden. See?

Apparently these are a variation of the Meadow Grasshopper. Though first I wondered if it had some kind of "chameleon" quality because it did blend so well with the pinkish leaves and stems of the surrounding campanula.
Maybe it just knew where to be.

Wednesday 22 July 2015

The Guest In The Bathroom - Part 2

... All Monday my guest chirps in the bathroom. The weather is full-on Cornish mist but I keep the window wide open (for the parent and the fledgling) whilst worrying about pneumonia in fledglings and such like. I can see that my guest is being fed - a very small clump of bird-feeder seed and several legs that were once attached to a Harvestman litter the box. The guest itself is on the floor again. I put it back in the windowsill box and close the access door to the loft.

But my guest is a magician. After an hour or two, I take a look... I can see no birdie but there is chirping coming from the loft. Heaving a sigh, we remove the access door again. There is a flurry of wings but nothing to be seen in the gloom. Perhaps the adult is coming to feed its chick by the roof space? Hearing loud chirps later in the day, I go into the bathroom again. No baby bird to be seen, not on the floor, not in the box. I look up at the loft hatch and there.... is a gapey yellow beak pointing at me from the dark of the roof space. Chirp.
How did you get up there? Or... are you a fledging sibling? I give up and mop up some of the bird poop and harvestman legs.
As it grows dark I go up to close the window. All is quiet. No birdie to be seen. I guess it is sleeping wherever it is. Tuesday morning - all is the same. No chirps. No bird. Peace and quiet. A sense of "Gone".
I close the loft access and wonder at this last conjuring trick.
Then I mop up and gratefully run a bath.
Bye-Bye Birdie and good luck.

Monday 20 July 2015

The Guest In The Bathroom

It is the second day since our guest took up residence in the bathroom.

We have had fledgling problems in the past and on Saturday morning... there are chirps behind the bathroom wall where chirps should not be heard. During the course of the day these chirps move upwards and grow louder. On Sunday morning I remove the ceiling trapdoor and cautiously stick my head through the access hole. I can see a yellow, gapey beak pointing at me in the gloom. I slowly lower myself back to the floor, open the window wide... and leave, closing the door behind me. Later in the day, I am indeed cheered by the sight of an adult sparrow flying out of the bathroom window. But the chirping goes on and grows louder. The Old Man thinks the bird is now in the bathroom itself. The day grows dark. I open the door. The fledgling is on the floor, next to the bath. I close the window against the dark (surely Parent Sparrow have gone to bed now?), collect my night dress... and leave.

All night long I suffer guilt about small sparrow in the cold, dark, bathroom corner. I feel sure he have died of cold and hunger. So this morning, as dawn strikes, I am relieved to hear the chirps start up again. I creep into the bathroom. Very small sparrow is in another corner... delicate spatters of poop are growing in number. I open the window wide, creep out again, closing the door and returning to my bed. The next time I look, on my way to breakfast, the baby bird (it has all its feathers but is still very yellow round the beak-corners) is in yet another corner of the room. And I realise that there is nowhere for it to drop down into flight. Flying will mean lift-off from the floor. Doubt if it can manage that. And does the Parent still come to it? A flurry of shocked wings behind me tells me that it does.

The Old Man comes up with a temporary solution. He finds his polystyrene propagating tray with its sawn-off end (don't ask... can't remember why). I put it onto the bathroom's deep windowsill, with a towel covering part of the unsawn-off end (shelter). Next I pick up the outraged fledgling and pop it into its new "nesting box", on the sill and by the open window. I sigh, gather my toothpaste and brush and leave the room again.

It be chirping loudly as I write. But I do wonder when I get a wash.

Friday 17 July 2015

Animated Goings On: Mrs D's Hair

I have a dreadful feeling that Mrs D will be having some kind of discussion with her Long-Dead Mother soon ..... About hair.

Mrs D's Long-Dead Mother will have views.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Boxed Set Time: Fortitude

The Old Man and I have just worked our way through the boxed DVD set of "Fortitude: Series 1". (Series 2 is due out in 2016)...

This £25 million budget chiller looked right up my Nordic-Fandom street... Set in the Arctic; murder and mayhem in an isolated town; greed, hints of skulduggery and plenty of gore; big name actors and actresses. What's not to like?
Ah-Hem. Let me just say that viewing the entire series took all of me and The Old Man's ... fortitude. I don't mind stretching the boundaries of my imagination, psycho-chill..and sci-fi tolerance but the final episodes broke us. And set me back greatly in my attempts to build up The Old Man's tolerance of crime thrillers. The bad science enraged The Old Man... and the script and editing enraged me. Oh Dear! I couldn't agree more with poor old (Stanley Tucci's) DCI Morton when he do say towards the end ....
"I hate this place."

Friday 10 July 2015

Grey Doll Turns From A Life of Crime...To Magic: Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell

I loved the BBC TV serial adaptation of the novel "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke which ended last month. The story is a blend of alternate English history and fantasy with perhaps... an element of satire. The production is a terrific blend of script, performances, visual effects, sets and props... which re-creates the book's world beautifully. And I find this a great relief..... because I am a little tired of visuals produced by over-clocking the CGI in a production so that everyone and everything, including the light, appear to have been been fed through a single smoothing filter.

Not so with this one. So...every hat I own is taken off to director Toby Haynes and adapter Peter Harness. Eddie Marsan's "Mr Norrell" is pitch perfect - all timorous distrust, dull wig and little pot belly. Berti Carvel's "Jonathan Strange" is as dashing and Byronic as you could want. (The whole thing seems to take a nod at the distinctions and conflict between the Augustan Alexander Pope's "Norrell" versus the Romantic Lord Byron's "Jonathan Strange"....er... I think). Most of the performances were really strong so I would if I could not stop here with me glowing praise but......

Anyway, I love it all so much that I have downloaded the hours and hours of the spoken word version of the book from Audible and am plunging into its world of Georgian England alternate history and the battle between Theoretical Magicians and Practical Magicians all over again. A wonderful book, wonderfully written... and a long-time in writing (am I surprised?).

Note: Whilst researching Susanna Clarke, I see that she is the partner of (perhaps under-estimated) British sci-fi writer Colin Greenland, quite a few of whose books sit on my shelf from my sci-fi-reader phase. Well. There you go.



Saturday 4 July 2015

Mrs D's Hair Expresses Itself

Mrs D have surprised herself with a new hair product which have given her hair a strange new life of its own. She do get enraged by her hair and is obsessed with "product".
Meanwhile I am nursing a headache and staring at the Saturday Pizza dough while it do stare at me....
And The Old Man be hacking and coughing as he have been doing all week.

The Garden is full of Ringlets which is more than I can say for Mrs D's hair.

(With apologies... having some trouble with Chrome and Blogger....so have reloaded today's post....This is a strangely difficult day on my computer... some stars must be crossed.)