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.

A Night Out At The English Touring Opera - Puccini's Gianni Schicchi

Just last week The Old Man and me did potter off to The Opera at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro ... which by the way is due to close this summer for at least 20 months whilst being redeveloped into a bigger and better venue ... they do say.
Where will us West Cornwall opera folks get to see an opera in the meantime?

But I do digress. English Touring Opera never fail. They are a great company that do save our opera-going bacon. This time we attended their version of two of Puccini's short operas: the dramatic and moving "Il Tabarro" (The Cloak) set aboard a barge on the Seine ... and the comic "Gianni Schicchi".

Despite viral throats having struck some of the singers, I was duly moved by the tragic Il Tabarro with its minimal, rusty iron, dockside setting.
But Gianni Schicchi did steal the evening. Everything about this ETO production - sets, costumes, singing, movement, acting were as ensemble, sharp, and knockout as can be. Stylised, yes, but it triumphed. The audience laughed out loud - and not just polite titters. Really - if you get a chance to see this version of a comic tale of scoundrel scam vs. rampant greed, you must give it a go. You've got till June!

Greydoll Reads The Women: Angela Carter and Colette

Sleepless nights a month or so back caused me to experiment with short stories as bedtime reading choice. Then too,  I fancied a break from gritty crime and instead to enjoy the company of ... not wolves as such but women.

Spurred on by listening to extracts from a biography of Angela Carter on the radio (The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon) I raided my bookshelves and found a copy of her collection The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories - re-imagined and retold fairy tales including Bluebeard, Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Puss in Boots amongst others. Each is a detailed tale spun from imagination, blood, eroticism, love and identity.  Angela Carter was a writer who loved language so much that her pages spangle and glitter with the relish of it and may not be to your taste if your relish is not equal to Carter's. Verdict: dark and toothy myths from female experience and imagination, rich enough for reading again and again. And if that ain't part of the definition of legend then I don't know what is.

But after this powerful dip into alternatives, I opted for another old favourite from my bookshelf - the French writer  Colette with The Rainy Moon, And Other Stories.
This is a collection filled with Colette's sharp observation and description in which, in the main, Colette casts herself as witness to and narrator of stories of love, obsession and relationship all set during the first half of the twentieth century. Her sharp but cool eye is as much a delight as her writing (in this edition translated from the French by Antonia White) and each of these short stories left me with something to think about.