Mid Summer - And More Criminal Reading

It's hot. Dry. The other day a bee swarm flew through the garden looking for a new home .. chasing that queen.

In fact it is too hot for The Old Man in his current state. At least, this is what he says, as he sits indoors in the dark watching tennis on telly and occasionally making it out to the frosty air of a local, air-conditioned supermarket.
But actually I believe him.

And then there's all that waking up at 4 in the morning... tossing and turning. Not long after that... the dawn chorus starts and it grows light. Though I don't really mind. There is a blackbird whose distinctive song I seem to have heard for years. Is birdsong hereditary? No. I don't really think so. It must be an old bird ... just like I.

So ... all of this contemplation of time passing and the aging process has made me a little reluctant to post recently. Alors! Also - so much makes me angry these days. Brrrr! Whaaa! What to do with it.

I have another book review up - over on the Euro Crime blog. This is for "The Memory of Evil" third in Roberto Costantini's weighty Italian-Libyan trilogy of "Evil" built around Commissario Michele Balistreri of the Rome Murder Squad - from his childhood and youth in pre-Gaddafi Libya through to  his police career in Rome and on up to 2011 and the fall of Gaddafi, and his search for resolution of his own past and that of his blood-brother gang in 1960s Libya. The trilogy is impressive and not for the faint-hearted on many counts. For further detail - pop over to Euro Crime via the above link and read the detail.

Meanwhile... I'm off to drink some more water and contemplate a slice of watermelon for lunch.

Criminal Reading: Norway, 1969 - Satellite People by Hans Olav Lahlum

Satellite People by Hans Olav Lahlum
Beginning with an enigmatic phone call from a wealthy tycoon wishing to discuss an imminent threat to his life with Oslo homicide detective Inspector Kristiansen (known as K2), Lahlum's crime novel is both tribute to and dedicated to the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.

Potential victim and detective never keep their Monday appointment as the tycoon is killed during a regular Sunday gathering of family and friends. His killer's identity provides the core conundrum for detecting partners K2 and his young, precociously bright, wheelchair-bound, friend - Patricia. But more people will die before they unearth the killer from amongst the dinner guests.

I try, but have to admit to rarely finding the "constructed" style of detective novel, full of chronological interviews, witness accounts and deductive discussion, a gripping read. So, much as I admire Lahlum's writing from reading his third in the "K2" series The Catalyst Killing a while ago, for this reason alone it took me some time to finish "Satellite People", his second novel in the series.

Lahlum is an excellent writer and this English translation by Kari Dickson works well. I like the way he sets his books retrospectively in the late 1960s and 1970s, a period which can still touch both pre- and postwar Europe (the dead tycoon in this story had been a member of the Norwegian Resistance) and in this way is able to bring a flavour of contemporary Nordic Noir social psychology to his plotting whilst constructing his books as classic, constrained, detective-mysteries.
In his end note, Lahlum pays tribute not only to Christie but to Conan Doyle. I can't help wondering if, given Lahlum's underlying sense of humour, he relishes the fact that Inspector Kristiansen is very much the Dr. Watson to Patricia's "Sherlock".

Believe it or not, despite causing me a slight reading struggle, I really recommend Lahlum's K2 series to fans of classic detective stories.

A Political Propapagandist's View Of My Childhood

Well. The UK Election is done with.
The Conservatives have slipped up and Labour have got their voters in. Onward and upward.

One thing I have noticed ... one thing that has been puzzling me ... is when, exactly, did the word "socialist" become a term of deep abuse in the UK? It may not be your flavour of politics but to some so-called pundits it seems to have become a politics "beyond the pale". Link it to the term Marxist and apparently we should all be running around in circles and checking under the bed for bugaboos.

The recent Labour Party Manifesto kicked this off, talk of getting rid of student loans, perhaps re-nationalising part of the transport grid.. government energy companies and so forth. This... they have been saying... is Marxism.

Did my conservative father realise he was living in a Marxist state during my 1950s childhood, I wonder? As he duly voted for Churchill, Eden, Macmillan? Under whose Conservative governments we continued to enjoy in the main Labour's free schooling, free healthcare, public transport, government owned utility companies? The post-war consensus?

We obviously did not see that these apparent pillars of Conservative Government were being manipulated by Uncle Joe from behind Winnie's "Iron Curtain".

I wonder ... how did my family escape the gulags? What with all those Ladies Nights down at the Lodge? Surely that was punishable under a Marxist regime?
Perhaps I was too traumatised and mistook the gulags for the leafy suburbs of Kent.

Guilty Pleasures: Film Music

I do admit that sometimes I like to listen to film music.
I have the odd CD of such....(Ennio Morricone)
Why is this a guilty pleasure? Because The Old Man do not approve of such a thing. Despite his own passion for  Badalamenti's "Twin Peaks" music. Well...like many, including myself, our own passions are the exceptions that prove the rule... He do sneer at the genre as a whole.... 'cos it is not proper stuff.
But if I like it. I love it.

So there I be on Saturday afternoon.... minding my own business... when Radio 3's "Sound of Cinema" pops up. This episode is not a mixed one, but a programme dedicated to the music of Nino Rota... (Zeffirelli, Visconti, Coppola's "The Godfather"...) I'd already missed Part One last week... but I be able to listen to this one - dedicated to his work with Fellini.
I be transported to the world of Italian film. Sunglasses on, I bop around a bit. Oh, I enjoyed it, me.

Brit-based listeners can catch this episode over the next few days til about 23rd August - here.

Travels With My Film Life: Naples, 1963 - Rosi's "Le Mani Sulla Citta"

Ciao! We are having a very noisy and dramatic time in what has turned out to be a very noisy, dusty city. All this building going on... And the music is very loud also. The Old Man is getting grumpy and looking for ear plugs.
We spend most of our time amongst the wheeler-dealers of Naples - Councillors, politicians, developers .... Councillors who ARE politicians and developers...
We are watching "Le Mani Sulla Citta" of 1963 by Francesco Rosi. Starring American actor Rod Steiger (dubbed) as property developer and councillor Edoardo Nottola. (This is the same year that Rosi's mentor Visconti released his film "The Leopard" starring another American name - Burt Lancaster.)
Nottola's building practices cause the collapse of an adjacent tenement, killing two people and maiming a young boy. But most of the film is about what goes on in the City Hall as elections come up - much wheeling and dealing.
The music is loud, the people are loud... there is much arguing and shouting going on all the time. But above all this is a film about corruption... about the underbelly of the development race going on in Rosi's native Naples at the time. Certainly the opening shots are jaw-dropping as the aerial shots of the buildings reveal new blocks perched on "stilts" over the frail sloping land.

Grey Doll & Criminal Reading: Marco Vichi's "Death in Florence"

I am back from my film-life tour of Italy. But I would just like to finish this Italian theme by telling you about a crime writer that I really recommend -  Marco Vichi. And his latest book to read in translation is "Death In Florence"

Vichi's main character is homicide detective Inspector Bordelli. The books are set during the 1960s... with Bordelli as a man in his fifties who has memories of wartime Italy and the partisan struggle. His police colleague is a younger man, Piras, who is the son of one of Bordelli's fellow partisans.

If you like a hefty slice of history... and social history... with your crime. And you don't mind at all if it is served along with striking characters, descriptions of food, a sense of place.... not to mention plenty of plot... this is the writer for you. I find him a tad darker than Camilleri (and his popular Inspector Montalbano) but that's my taste... I am that kind of gal.

With "Death in Florence" a boy disappears as he waits to be collected from school. Eventually his body is found, bearing the hallmarks of rape by more than one person. It is a dark story for Bordelli and one that again takes him back to past memories. In the midst of his hunt for the perpetrators the relentless rain fills the River Arno and bursts its banks with the famous Florence flood of 1966. All of this is detailed too as Bordelli watches the destruction and joins the teams of people attempting feed each other and clean up. After the flood he and Piras are free to resume their hunt for the boy's killers.

It is a great story full of detail and character and you can read a detailed review here over on the Euro Crime blog.

Travels With My Film-Life: Italy - The Grand Tour - Early Bertolucci in Rome

Qui siamo a Roma. And this is Rome in the early 1960s....
We have travelled from Bertolucci's most recent film, "Me & You", to his very first as a director.... "The Grim Reaper" released in 1962. We spend most of the time in the poor districts of Rome and from the opening shot we know that there is the body of a woman. But who killed her? Like Kurosawa's "Rashomon" we see the scene as told by different suspects.... the young men and boys who pass through the night-time park where she is last seen..... standing, waiting for a "customer". Each story gives us a flavour of their lives and each story is punctuated by the rain storm that sets the timing of their versions. Which is the truth?

Based on a story by Pasolini, there is a quality about the film that does conjure up Pasolini's own films. Again critics do dismiss the film as derivative... but hey! It's Bertolucci's first.

For me.... there is something vivid about the people, scenes and settings that gives the feel of the time. Blimey I do myself remember those frilly blouses and mohair jumpers.... and the cheesy cha-chas!

BBC 4: Serving One's Past As a Cultural Stew

One of the unexpected side effects of being elder is to find one's lived past regurgitated as edutainment  in a garbled form.

So it be for me when I do settle down to BBC 4's "Fabric of Britain: The Golden Age of Knitting" the other evening.

All is smooth going until we reach my own lifespan's experience - the 1950s onwards - and I admit to gagging a bit as 1950s home knitting culture is fed to me purely as some kind of desire to "make things for one's loved ones"....

Let me see now.... my recollection is that money is still tight post-war and into the mid-1950s at least. New "manufactured" clothes are considered expensive by many, hence... you make your own because that is all you can afford. To paraphrase The Old Man's grandmother ... "They's can't schemy must lowster." (If you can't be brainy you have to do physical work) or in terms of my argument..."if you ain't got the money you have to make it yourself."

By the time the "documentary" hits the 1960s my eyes are revolving in their sockets. Showing clips of young girls grooving in lacy mini dresses. Just to be pedantic. This is not knitting. This is crochet. I know. My big sis do crochet just such a dress for me at the time, white cotton.... And where does that fashion come from, I ask? Most likely the same street-savvy of "make because you can't afford to buy". Paris fashion of the 1960s features hand-crafted lace mini dresses and the nearest us plebs can manage as substitute is crochet. Voila! The crochet mini- dress.

The documentary then goes on about the "sweater dress" that all the "girls were crazy for". I don't remember that craze, and believe me I do have my eye on fashion even if I be too plump, rural and un-wealthy to get my hands on it. But I do remember the "skinny rib sweater" that everyone does want .... but is not mentioned in this piece.

So... by the time the doc have disposed of knitting in the 1980s without mention of Patricia Roberts but instead with a display of Gyles Brandreth's awful novelty items, I be weeping. Apparently there be no knitted fashion in the 1990s. But I do remember my black fine-knit Nicole Farhi dress as the clothes-love-of-me life at that time. Apparently I be buying and wearing knits in the 1990s in some alternate future/past.

The recent resurgence of "knitting groups" as tackled by the programme's pundits is something else. But it is glossed over. Perhaps it is nostalgia .... or a backlash against manufactured clothes? I dunno. But the fact which is unmentioned in this TV analysis of the "Golden Age of Knitting" - is that present day fashion/clothing industry economics is the very opposite of that of the 1950s. Then, hand-knitting was done with standardised woollen  and cotton yarns in various forms and the clothing manufacture industry was still largely a British affair. The designed, synthetic yarns of recent years, by contrast, cost a fortune. Buying enough yarn to make a fashionable garment - always bespoke patterns for these yarns because they are so individualised - is an expensive project. On the other hand the manufactured knitted clothes now available from high street and supermarkets... courtesy of the sweat shops of south-east Asia... cost a few pounds and are bought and chucked at whim.

All in all... a sloppy bit of documentary. And by the way... I never met anyone in the 1950s who do actually have one of they knitted toilet-roll covers shaped like a crinolined lady that the programme delights in displaying and smirking over.

Plainly... my entire life have been spent in an alternate fashion past.

For uplift and real inspiration on fashion and the older generation I do recommend taking a look at Channel 4's "Fabulous Fashionistas" repeated.....  Marvel and Enjoy. (OOPs my mistake on original post. Correct time and channel is Sunday 22nd September 20.00 hrs. on Channel 4-7) 

In Which The Old Man Takes Comfort In A Ken Loach Documentary

What with "The Funeral" and the upcoming local elections at which we have no candidate we can vote for .... The Old Man do grow increasing apoplectic.

Last night he do take comfort in his Ken Loach documentary - "The Spirit of '45" ... and do nearly weep he be so moved about it all.

Tis our generation that basked in the welfare state, I know. And what a fine thing it was. What a shame it is being buried as we speak ... and without benefit of a ceremonial "do" like the woman what broke it. There. Colours to the mast. Nailed.
For myself I shall be following columnist Owen Jones with close attention.

Mrs D Ponders Crime And Espionage: Stuart Neville's "Ratlines"

Mrs D be gratified to find that Stuart Neville can switch period, place, and character with his latest book "Ratlines".... a factional thriller set in Ireland in 1963 where the murders of ex-Nazis and their fellow-travellers being investigated by Lietenant Albert Ryan of Military Intelligence.


You can read a review at Euro Crime here.

Listening To The Radio: The Flower Fields of Cornwall

Sorry, but I am a bit remiss in the Blog department at the moment. Not helped by continuous mists, rain, fog and the gloom that do accompany it all. Today, for the moment, the sun do shine. So it be all hands to the pumps for the washing to get it out there to dry (no tumble dryer here).

And that do lead to burying the dead rat I do find in the pathway... Yes you did read that right. Dead rat. Rural life. And probl'y despatched by a neighbours' cat...

Then I do clear up the layers of "Cornish palm" leaves lying about from the last few days of bad weather.... What with washing up, mopping the floor.... here I am. Well what I really mean to say is... that I come in from my rat-burying duties to find I am missing a programme on BBC Radio4 about "The Flower Fields of Cornwall". Very interesting it be too. (So I must go along to the website and catch up on the whole thing.) Because in part it is talking about the tiny patchwork fields that were made at the very edge of the land above the sea. You can still see a few (and some are allotments) over at Mousehole where they were recording. But I remember, in my youthy days in Carbis Bay, my friend and I would walk the lower footpath towards St. Ives. And I did wonder about these tiny sloping patches directly above the rocky shore, hedged and somehow looking deliberate. I did see the remnants of cultivated violet crops there, no longer tended and picked, but still growing... the dark purple, large flowered and fragrant variety that would be sold in little bunches. So,  I am really pleased to find out that I was not mistaken and that these must have been the remnants of  "quillets", the name given to these tiny strip fields.

Good Morning Starshine: That 1967 Thing

I do find myself singing over my breakfast making.

"Good Morning Starshine...." goes I.  "Dibby dub dooey... la-la-la-la-LAA...." as you do. "Hair" ... that 1967 musical thing.

The Old Man drifts in and expressionlessly drifts out. Soon the record is on the turntable. But not the big 1969 musical version. True to his nature, The Old Man never has just one recording where two will do. So he do have a recording  (what he do get from a charity shop) with the original off-Broadway cast who opened Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York in 1967.

Neither of us have listened to it properly before. Stripped down. Sounds more clearly like the current rock/pop songs of the time in some ways. Not the lush musically enhanced versions we be familiar with. I like it.

Ah. 1967. A year when I do enter art college. The world my oyster and "Art" calleth. I do remember a party .... daisies in the field, daisies caught in the car door as we drive home.... "Giddy...Glub...Gloopy..."
I do let my own hair grow. It be curly and grows out rather than down. By the early 1970s bus conductors (I know... that's a retro job, I am afraid) are remarking that they be surprised that I can get onto the bus.... the hair be so high and wide.

Travels With My Film-Life: Brittany 1969 - and Chabrol

Alors mes enfants. The other evening we do travel to Quimper in Brittany courtesy of Claude Chabrol and his 1969 thriller "Que La Bete Meure". Tis elegant, thoughtful and dashed clever this one. I very much enjoy it as do The Old Man. A grieving father seeks revenge on the "beast" hit and run driver who knocks down and kills his young son. Having located the man with obsessive cunning and a few coincidences, he do find a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work who bullies and terrifies everyone around him. There are twists and turns and the whole thing is very good. Not a thriller so much as a cool puzzler. Add a Brittany landscape that be very reminiscent of Cornwall....

I didn't know that the film is based on a British crime thriller written in the thirties by Nicholas Blake. Even more... I do not be aware that "Nicholas Blake" be the pseudonym of  Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. There's a thing.

You can read a Eurocrime review of the 1938  "The Beast Must Die" by Nicholas Blake, republished by Vintage earlier this year,  here.

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

When I be a sprout of a teenage schoolgirl... back there in the 1960s... I did buy myself a copy of Ray Bradbury's "The Day it Rained Forever", a Penguin collection of short stories.
Where would my darker imagination be without Bradbury? My psyche rattled for years with the aftermath of "Something Wicked This way Comes". Midwest America would never be the same.

I think he be such an important influence we never knew it. Bradbury wrote "Fantasy" before it became a byword for dragons, wizards, medievalism and works that stretch into at least eight titles. His imagination be prodigious.

Never mind reading his political opinions... George Dubbya be such a good thing... yada-yada.... It will only disappoint. Well me anyway. Why do so many American sci-fi writers turn out to be such raving right-wingers?

Sigh... Good-bye Ray... and thanks for all the stories.

Thauma-Thauma-Thaumatropes

Qu'est-ce que le thaumatrope?

Mmmn.... "Thauma" = Greek for "Magic"; "Trope" = "something that turns". Therefore it be a "magic turn" innit.

Or rather tis a Victorian toy made from a disc with an image on either side of it and a thread at each side. When you rub the thread between your fingers it turns the disc and the images combine to form the illusion of one combined image... owing to the "persistence of vision". And I been playin around making some. Cos I like wasting time like that. Mrs D would also tell you that they share this persistence of vision thing with the animation malarky.

And when I was a youthy girl at art college way back then in the late 1960s... I did rather like the "optical" approach to paintings. This made me be considered a bit of a freak by the self-expressionful tutors. And so I was shut into a small studio with the only other student in the college who made optical paintings or Op-Art as they used to call it.

My days at art college were largely ruined by the tutors.

But then, they did not share my persistence of vision.

Strolling Down the Highway: Bert Jansch 1943 - 2011

Moody teenagers.... 1965... me and me school friend Ros obsessively listening to her LP of Bert Jansch on the old portable record player in the bedroom: Angie, Needle of Death, Courting Blues...

There's already been the sacred Bob in our lives with "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", and "The Times They Are a-Changin". (Of course one dutifully marvelled at the purity of Saint Joan Baez.) But I don't remember anyone else with near the same punch as sacred Bob

... except for Bert Jansch.

It's probably around this time I decides to walk about with no shoes on.... I mean walk to St. Ives, walk around school.... surely they didn't let me do that? St. Ives already warming up to beads, candles and the clanging of hippy bells... Me stopping walking around with no shoes on... after that foot infection. Slouching into folk clubs... but twas all very traditional there... Brenda Wootton and John the Fish.

No, after a while we had to slump by the harbour and stare at the water - contemplatin' getting back to the grittiness and miraculous guitar-playing of Bert Jansch.

And Now I'm Listenin' To...

A goldfinch singing, bees buzzing, crickets and grasshoppers rattling.

It's a hot day in late July.

Anybody ever see Jonathan Miller's "Alice in Wonderland"?

I loved it when I saw it on the telly way back then in the 60s.

I remember the opening as a vivid sound portrait of a summer day. Listen to and watch this clip on YouTube.

The Old Man's Night Shift

So the final two episodes of "The Night Shift" were shown on BBC Four last night. (As talked about in previous post.)

Sorry if any of you sample it and are shocked to the core by subject matter and language... But when Georg Bjarnfreðarson, the shift manager, decides to educate his young son about "the facts of life"... complete with naming of parts and graffiti-drawings on the white board...
The guy is a control freak pedant who summons his only two co-workers on the walkie talkie - addressing each as "Trainee Personnel " and "Forecourt Personnel" respectively.

Munching breakfast, I ask The Old Man about his times on the evening shift of a petrol station way-back-when. Was it like The Night-Shift?

"Naaa.... well... We did have to ban the cars from a Nationally Known Driving School..."
"Uh?"
"They knocked too many pumps over."
"Uh?"
"And I only got to use the Tannoy once..."
"Mmm?"
"The local Liberal candidate drove by in his van with his election speaker going... "
"Yeah?"
"... I Tannoyed back: You lying git, I know you're a Conservative!"
"Mmm?"
"But eventually, I got the sack."
"Uh?"
"I went to the pictures the evening the clocks changed and didn't realise. So I turned up to work two hours late instead of the usual one...."
"Oh. Nothing like "The Night Shift" then...."

Breon O'Casey: 1928 - 2011

Enough spleen - as in the previous post about Fat Cats.

Instead....
Well I'm sad to read of the death of my jewellery teacher when I was at school in Cornwall - during the 1960s.

Breon O'Casey died, at the age of 82, last weekend. Maker, printmaker, painter and sculptor, I think of him as the last of the St Ives' Artists to leave us. The St Ives of the 1960s that I remember, that is.

I was still at school when I went to his evening classes at.... I think Redruth Art School. I went with a schoolfriend whose family knew O'Casey. And Breon would kindly pick us up in his car and give us a lift to the classes and then back home. I remember him as a burly, gentle-voiced man with a bit of a smile on his face, and as a patient teacher.

In his class I learned to solder, shape, and polish; to make rings, chains, earrings - and, in my case, to set stones not very well. I recall my determined effort to enamel a simple design onto a ring... The enamel never fused and the ring collapsed impressively. But I don't recall a single "Tut"- nor any feeling of failure infused into my efforts by Breon. Believe me, that's quite a gift.

So maybe it is no surprise that, on returning to Cornwall from London... my first serious efforts to get back into creative work were given over to jewellery making. Breon O'Casey, I realise, was a strong keystone in my creative learning. I'm sad that he has gone, but I'm thankful that I was lucky enough to have been taught by him.

Oh- and you can read his obit in The Independent by clicking here.

Listening to Lenny

The other night we wuz watching the Tony Palmer documentary of Leonard Cohen's 1972 World Tour on BBC4. The Old Man has a hankering to see this and is thinkin of the Leonard Cohen numbers he likes.

I am not so sure. There's no doubt Leonard Cohen's songs are a signature of the 1960s - 70s. And as such, I hear them through a veil of recall. A West Country flat inhabited by a crew of female art students who drift through the "mattress on the floor" rooms, whilst again and again Suzanne takes Lenny down by the river and feeds him ... "tea and oranges that come all the way from China..."

His moody good looks; sweaters, raincoats, and cigarette smoke.

But it has to be said that I grow increasingly impatient as I watch the documentary. The pontificating and poetising; clips of general "Hey let's be cool about this..." stuff; the chaos of letting it all hang out. And some truly awful pomposity. I grunt and shuffle as the documentary finishes. And the Old Man says:

"Perhaps you don't like Cohen as much as I do."

Then the next programme starts up which is a recording of Cohen's 2008-9 World Tour. And we say - well why not watch a little of this as well. On stage the lights go up. And out comes this 74 year old geezer in a sharp suit and a snap-brimmed fedora. He steps up to the microphone .... and nails it.

Drink, hard times, and five years or so in a Zen monastery have maybe contributed to the honing process. Same songs reworked, and smoking along with great musicians behind him. Yes. The old guy floors 'em. And... Bam!
He got me.

He might get you too. Try clicking here for a YouTube clip from the 2008-9 tour.