Closure

So far all I have given you is excuses. I’ve tried to explain why this blog dried up but not really what happened in the meantime, at least not in terms of the books I read. The blog updates may have stopped but the reading didn’t. It slowed down because of the drugs but it certainly didn’t stop. Anyway, the blog was at least a couple of weeks behind the curve anyway as I had read a bunch of books I hadn’t blogged about by the time I stopped updates. So without (too much) further ado I want to list all the books I read in 2010 but didn’t blog about, including brief review comments as appropriate.

#71. Twitchhiker by Paul Smith – one man’s attempt to get halfway around the world relying only on offers of help from Twitter. Interesting idea, less interesting book as I recall. I did learn that Pete McCarthy of McCarthy’s Bar fame was dead though while reading this book, which made it a little more interesting.

#72. Marching Powder by Rusty Young – much more like it! A fascinating insight into one of South America’s toughest jails and a great story that is well told to boot.

#73. The Ice Man by Philip Carlo – OK, it’s an American book about an American contract killer in America written by an American. But burglarised? Seriously? Someone needs to beat that word out of them. Also I recall this book ending rather suddenly, when it could have gone on and been so much better. We get the full story of this Mafia hitman while he’s a free man but don’t get much of his story when he gets caught and banged up. How did he feel? How did he cope? More on the arrest, on the hunt for him and on his capture would have rounded it off much better.

#74. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne – before I read this I was convinced I knew the basic premise and that in involved a hot air balloon somewhere along the way. Err, nope. Was that a mis-remembered image from the Steve Coogan film or something from the Willy Fogg cartoon? And if you have clicked that link and watched the YouTube video try getting the theme tune out of your head now. Anyway, no balloon but not a bad little story really even if Passepartout mes across as a complete dick.

#75. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich – one of the many books about the MIT blackjack gang that is supposed to have taking the Las Vegas casinos for a fortune and forced numerous rule changes as a result. It was adapted into a film too, 21, but that was a steaming pile of crap. The book is better, but that’s not too difficult. In fact 21 is one of the reasons I haven’t seen The Social Network yet. Not being on Facebook is one reason but quite enjoying the Ben Mezrich book (The Accidental Billionaires) and fearing another shitty film adaptation is the main one. But then The Social Network is supposed to be alright isn’t it?

#76. Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich – another ‘true’ story, this one about American traders getting rich off the Asian markets but I can’t help but wonder how many of these people are composites of several individuals and how many of the events truly happened. Mezrich seems to go in for these so-called true stories but I can’t help but think they are rather sensationalised. Most true stories don’t sell because they are dull and need sexing up a bit.

#77. Breaking Vegas by Ben Mezrich – I think this was called Busting Vegas in the US but it seems to be Breaking Vegas over here. Certainly my copy is Breaking. Another MIT blackjack story, this one supposedly more true than the other as it mainly revolves around Semyon Dukatch (although the spelling of his name changes a couple of times) and the second of the blackjack gangs. Dukatch even offers a bit up himself at the end of the book, a short chapter on the techniques used, to add an air of authenticity. The same doubts about how true the tale is come to the fore though. It has the pub story vibe. Imagine you’re in the pub with a few mates and you’re telling a tale. How accurate are the main points of this story? Are any of them embellished for effect or to make you look better in this tale? Yeah, right!

#78. Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks – another supposedly true story and ever the cynic I am left wondering whether the little twist in the tale really happened. Tony Hawks sets out to play the Moldovan football team at tennis. We follow him on his journey trying to track down the players and get various parties to agree to let him play them at tennis but there are a few bits in there that just make you think “my, that’s convenient and makes for a better story to recount when you get home”. Or at least they made me think that, you may be more forgiving.

#79. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – I’m not 100% sure why the book I have says Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the front when the story itself seems to be called The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Does anyone know what this book is actually called? I have the Wordsworth Classics edition and like a lot of these old classics the publisher seems to have gone all out to make it hard to read. Some of it is the author’s fault, such as the  excessively long paragraphs,  but the publishers haven’t helped by using a small font and really packing in the text. It doesn’t say so on the cover but this volume includes a few other of Stevenson’s short stories too. I wasn’t too bothered about The Merry Men, Will O’ The Mill (throughout which I was thinking of Evil Edna for some reason), Thrawn Janet and Olalla but Markheim and The Treasure of Franchard were rather enjoyable.

#80. Cat Confidential by Vicky Halls – it was shortly after Cat had died and I felt I owed it to the new cat(s) we were getting to make their lives with us as comfortable as possible so I thought I’d try to get inside the mind of a cat a bit more by reading this book I bought for the missus a few years back. It made me think about a few things from a cat’s perspective, things I might not have considered otherwise so it served a purpose I guess.

#81. Cityboy by Geraint Anderson – I used to read the Cityboy columns in one of the free London evening papers so when this book came out I bought it in an airport for a bit of light holiday reading. And that’s what it is really. It’s supposed to be a true account of one man’s career in the city, lifting the lid on the excesses and cityboy lifestyle but once more the cynic in me throws a massive shadow of doubt over bits of it which somewhat spoils it. Without that suspension of disbelief books like these don’t really work. I really object to books dressing themselves up as true stories when many of the characters and events are composites. But then as I said earlier, unless it is sexed up a true story won’t sell.

It is now the end of October, and with Cityboy in the bag I have exceeded my target for the year and I still have two months left. Yes! But with the side effects of the drugs cranking up things were to slow down rather.

#82. Hold’em Poker by David Sklansky – I was in one of my limit hold’em phases and wanted to take things back to basics.

#83. Any Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O’Farrell – this is a chunky volume, as one would expect bearing in mind it covers two thousand years of British history, so it took a while to get through. This is the ideal sort of book for me though as it is educational without being dry. John O’Farrell is amusing at times (the material doesn’t allow for too much comedy) but has also taken the time to get his facts straight which obviously helps with a book like this. The missus got the sequel (An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain) for Christmas but I am doing the decent thing and letting her read it before I pinch it. I might be waiting a while though as she reads much more slowly than I do.

#84. Witch and Wizard by James Patterson – I had taken a rare trip into town, going round the shops with the missus for reasons that currently elude me when we came across people giving away hundreds of copies of this book to passers-by. A free book – I’m having that! It seems it was being given away partly to promote the new book in the series but I was willing to give it a go as James Patterson is a renowned thriller writer. This series is more aimed at teenage kids but overall the book’s not bad. It’s mainly setting the scene for a long series of books but the writing is decent, the main characters develop at a decent pace and I reckon tweens would rather enjoy it.

#85. Definitive Guide to Betting on Horses edited by Nick Pulford –  as a gambler I figured a refresher course on the basics of horse racing wouldn’t hurt. This is another that took a little while to get through though, for various reasons.

#86. Amazon Kindle User Guide – it’s now just after my birthday now so early December and I have only read four books since end of Oct. The drugs really kicking in but I have also picked a couple of long books to slog through in that period. Once I had hit the target I decided I should tackle some longer works as I had nothing to lose. Perhaps that is why I read the Kindle User Guide cover to cover. Who reads instruction manuals these days? I read this one and at several points went “coo, that’s clever.”

#87. Blood, Sweat & Tea by Tom Reynolds – I actually read the Kindle version of this but I can’t seem to find that on  Amazon now so I have linked to the paperback instead. Whatever, it’s just a blog in ‘print’ format really and one that doesn’t always work that well as context is sometimes lacking. I wouldn’t rush out to buy/download it, honestly.

#88. Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder – yes, I read it because it was free on Kindle. It’s an interesting concept – your eyes can be used to determine whether your body is the current vessel for a given soul which means one can take advantage of a service allowing one to store life lessons and valuables ready to be passed on to the next body containing your soul in order to give that ‘you’ a headstart in life – which helps enormously as otherwise it’s fairly standard thriller material with the usual plot twists and character traits evident. It builds towards a sequel but I won’t be rushing to seek it out. If I come across it cheap on the Kindle I may read it but otherwise I shan’t bother.

#89. Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker – I really like Charlie Brooker but for some reason I don’t find myself compelled to seek out his every work. I rarely remember to watch Screenwipe or Newswipe when they are on. I missed his zombie thing (Dead Set?) and I don’t read his Guardian columns, not even online. But then again had I spent the last few years reading his regular Guardian columns I wouldn’t have had any use for this book as it is a collection of said columns from a few years back. It’s actually just a lazy reprinting of loads of stuff Brooker has written before which must make it a cheap book to print (just like the Jeremy Clarkson books I read at the start of the year). But it means I get to enjoy a few hundred pages of Brooker vitriol all in one go and that is a glorious thing. A man not afraid to swear when it is needed, and to do so properly and in full rather than alluding to the swearword by asterisking out key letters. He’s a fantastically grumpy misanthrope who writes a beautifully immature column when he wants to. I must watch more Brooker.

#90. ‘F’ in Exams by Richard Benson – when I go to someone’s house I tend to look at their bookshelves. You can judge a person by the general decor of their house but that’s their public persona. They know that side of them is open so they can manipulate how they are perceived. They can hide their collection of porcelain dolls so you don’t think them weird, especially if they are a man in their 30s. But it is harder for someone to really sanitise their bookshelves, which is why I like to have a nose around when the opportunity presents itself. At christmas I went up to stay with the missus’ parents and thus had a neb around and grabbed this for a bit of light reading. After all, when the opportunity to have a quick read of someone else’s books presents itself I often take it with both hands. The book was supposed to be genuine exam question answers but I have my doubts as to how many were actually real (how many times have I written that recently?) and how many were written for comedic effect by someone other than the person taking the test. This is not a book I would by and is probably better suited to an email or website but it passed a few minutes nonetheless.

#91. Balderdash & Piffle: One Sandwich Short of a Dog’s Dinner by Alexander Games – another borrowed read and this time it was much more like it. I love words so to hear about the history of some more esoteric words and phrases is a joy. I really enjoyed the TV series when it was on (although that was in part due to the fact that it was presented by Victoria Coren) and while this book wasn’t up to the same standard it was a pretty good read.

#92. Dawn Of The Dumb by Charlie Brooker – back to my bookshelves now and more Brooker columns from the Guardian. I’m not sure I got this finished by the end of the year so should I count it as number 92? Can I pull the “I’ve started so I’ll finish” Mastermind trick with books too?

Excluding books I didn’t complete in the calendar year (including the first and last book in this blog) I make that 90 books in a year. My target was 80 so I haven’t done badly. In fact I am quite pleased with how things have gone. It’s nice to be able to quantify my reading speed in terms that everyone can understand. I read around 90 books a year. Without the drugs in the last couple of months I would have easily pushed 100 I reckon. Ah well, 90 is a more than respectable total.

And that’s it from me. I have proved over recent months that I am bloody useless at updating this blog so from now on I probably won’t bother. I set out to see how many books I could read in a year – and also see what variety of books I read in that time – and I have documented the challenge to a greater or less extent here so it feels like job done. I will still be trying to read as many books as possible but I don’t feel the need to blog about them any more. I think it’s probably best for all involved if I just draw a line under things now.

Thank you for reading and I hope we meet again, perhaps on a different blog I don’t update for several months.

Mat

I blame technology

It was my birthday at the start of December. Had I not virtually given up on this blog by then you could have wished me happy birthday at the time but don’t worry about it now. Anyway, one of the presents I got was a Kindle. Y’know, the eBook reader thing from Amazon. Technically speaking it was a joint birthday and christmas present but I had been telling people when they asked what I wanted for my birthday that they were more than welcome to make a contribution towards the Kindle I was buying and in doing so could help turn it into a gift rather than just something I fancied having. So getting the Kindle was no surprise, particularly since I ordered it myself a few days before my birthday. I had ordered it blind though – blind as in I had never seen or used one rather than blind as in the sense of I couldn’t see anything on the computer screen and I accidentally bought a Kindle rather than booking a holiday or whatever. I’ll tell you what though – Kindles rock!

I had seen reports and review over the past few years saying that most eReaders were OK but nothing more. The screens weren’t always that clear in all lighting conditions and from all angles and what have you. The devices were bulkier than expected and just rather disappointing. They had promise but ultimately failed to live up to said promise. Was the same to be true of the new Kindle? Not a bit of it!

Every time I mention my Kindle to someone they ask how it compares to an iPad. A reasonable questions perhaps but one I can’t answer having never even seen an iPad other than on the telly. I don’t know anyone with an iPad. OK, I might but no-one I know has mentioned to me they have an iPad so as far as I am aware I don’t know any iPad owners. I also don’t really like Apple products. I hate Macs, I have no use for an iPod and don’t need an iPhone. I can’t put my finger on why I don’t like Apple, I just don’t. I have never even used or held an iPod. I don’t know how they work. Consequently I don’t know what iPads can do compared to Kindles so don’t even ask me how they compare.

The Kindle is black-and-white (greyscale) though and doesn’t have a touchscreen. Does that help any?

What the Kindle does offer though is a crystal clear display – text and images. The text size is customisable so the user can change the font size, line spacing, text density and so on. If you have ever tried to read paperback versions of the classics they have often laid them out with such a hideous text density and small font that it makes it desperately hard to read. Not on a Kindle. Throw in other features such as built-in dictionaries so you can look up words in the text you’re reading just by moving the cursor over them and a full search function covering the contents of your Kindle, the whole Amazon store and the internet if you so desire.

There is an experimental web browser in there too – and it’s actually rather good. It’s simple and doesn’t handle websites that require pop-ups or multiple pages but it works well enough for other stuff. And with the 3G Kindle it is Amazon picking up the data charges so you can surf the web to your heart’s content. I was reading books in the evening then on waking the following morning I was checking the score from the Ashes tests, all on one device.

If you’re the kind of heathen that would make notes in the margin of books you can do that with a Kindle too. You can highlight passages and virtually dog-ear corners as bookmarks too. Ugh! Books are made to be respected and treated accordingly but if you want to deface your virtual books then you can.

You can synchronise reading a book across multiple devices too, including iPhones apparently, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. I gather you can read a book on your iPhone on the commute and when you get to bed that evening your Kindle will know where you are up to automatically, which all sounds very clever and rather unnecessary too.

If you have heard people talking about eReaders then you have doubtless heard discussions about eBooks too, especially the cost. For some reason many eReader owners think that having a device means they are somehow entitled to a load of cheap or free books. They should never have to pay for a book again, sort of thing. Yeah, because owning a pair of eyes means never having to buy a printed book again. So let’s set the story on eBooks straight shall we?

Work that is now out of copyright – including most of what is dubbed ‘the classics’ – is available in digital format for free. It’s out of copyright so people can do what they like with it. Some backs that are still copyrighted are also available free. Some authors trying to establish themselves are offering books for free. Writers may allow the first book in a series of novels to be made available for free download. I guess they are using such books as loss leaders effectively. Like a drug dealer offering you that first hit for free in the hope that you get hooked and keep coming back for more. Or something.

There are quite a lot of cheap books available too. By cheap I mean some less than a quid, others maybe a couple of quid. Imagine one of them cheapo bookshops knocking out end of line stock for a fraction of the RRP. There’s a lot of eBooks along those lines.

And then there are the regular books. Some are fairly cheap, others aren’t. If the book has been released as hardback only then expect to pay more for the digital version than you might expect. The publishers don’t want you getting a cheap copy ahead of those who are waiting for the paperback version do they? If you wanted a printed version you’d pay the hardback price or wait till the paperback comes out. The same is true of the digital formats too. So you’re still going to be paying seven or eight quid or whatever for the eBook version of hardback books. If you want the book that much you’ll pay the price though, right?

So there you have it. There is a lot of free stuff available for the Kindle if you’re prepared to broaden your horizons, try new authors and read some classic literature that passed you by until now. But sooner or later you may have to dig into your pocket and pull out some cash and actually purchase some books. Incidentally, to give you some idea of the price of eBooks, the average price of the Amazon top 20 non-free titles is £1.69. While I accept that price may be a factor in some of these books appearing so high up the charts it’s still pretty amazing to think you can buy 20 books for a little over £30!

Wasn’t this supposed to be yet another reason I haven’t been updating this blog like I used to? Instead it’s turned into a cross between a Kindle review and some general blathering. How has the Kindle contributed to my failure to update the blog? Like virtually all electronic devices a Kindle looks the same whether it contains one book or one thousand books. I can read as much as I like on it but I won’t get an ever-growing stack of paperback books on my desk. Without a growing pile of printed word I have no reminder, nothing encouraging me to write my review of the book and get it back on the shelves (if I can find room). Kindles are a fantastic piece of technology but mine hasn’t helped me with this blog. It’ll really come into its own while I am in hospital though…

Not quite one in a million

Around the same time as Cat died I was diagnosed with a rare adrenal gland tumour called a pheochromocytoma. I say rare but according to Wikipedia there are approximately two to eight per million. Does that make it rare? Wikipedia goes on to say that when they were mentioned in ER they “usually generated interest from the doctors due to the rarity of the diagnosis.” That fits with my experience too actually as the various doctors I have seen have been quite fascinated by my case and several have mentioned me being  a case study they may write up.

Let’s take a figure in the middle of the quoted range and say there are five cases per million. In the UK that means there are something like 300 pheochromocytomas, right? They are apparently more prevalent in young or middle aged adults so we could potentially adjust that figure down to exclude the very young and the elderly. Say something like 200 cases then. Say 150 if you prefer. Whatever. The fact remains that there are more people in the UK with this rare tumour than people currently managing a Football League club. Every club has one and I’m sure you could name several but would you class football managers as rare?

Interestingly the doctors I have seen have been referring to my “pheo” or calling it a “mass” or occasionally a “lump”. Is this a sign of the times, dressing things up so as to avoid offence? Can the NHS not call a spade a spade? Have some focus group decreed that the word tumour has too many negative connotations and has been show to unduly worry patients so staff have to use the term “mass” instead? I prefer to call it what it is – a tumour.

If there has been a memo sent round the NHS asking staff to use “mass” rather than tumour it obviously hasn’t reached everyone. My mum (who is an oncology nurse or something) was talking to someone at her hospital a while ago about my condition. On hearing what I had the fella said something along the lines of “Pheochromocytoma? Isn’t a malignancy of the adrenal gland?” Exactly. There’s a damn good chance my tumour is benign but at least calling it a malignancy gets the message across better than “mass” does. Mass just makes it sound like a harmless bit of extra tissue, not the root cause of my health problems for the last two years!

From what I understand this pheo has been at the root of everything wrong with me. I first reported abdominal pains to my GP in January 2009 and eventually got referred to the gastroenterology clinic at the hospital. They spent a year – on and off – doing various tests all of which came back normal. During one of the early tests a student nurse spotted my blood pressure was high. Hypertension runs in the family somewhat so after a quick visit to my GP I was given drugs to control that. Meanwhile I was being fobbed off with a diagnosis of IBS. I spent several sessions with a psychologist in case the problem had a mental cause and after some CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy, not cock and ball torture) I was pain-free. Yes! Subconscious stress seems to have been the main issue.

Around the same time the gastroenterology clinic were having one last throw of the dice – a 24 hour urine test. Aha! It may not be anything to worry about but my noradrenaline level was way off the scale. I was discharged from that clinic and referred to endocrinology in case this noradrenaline level was of concern to them. It was. Very much so. They repeated the test another couple of times to be sure and in doing so confirmed their suspicions that I had a tumour on one of my adrenal glands. In fact they went back over my CT scans from some months before (ignoring the original report that said my adrenals were normal, incidentally) and picked out the lump quite nicely. Apparently. I haven’t seen the pictures, unfortunately. Abdominal pain and hypertension – classic signs of a pheo. But who was going to stick their neck out and diagnose that without plenty of evidence to back their diagnosis up?

So there we have it, a lump. And what do we do with a lump? We cut it out. As well as the lump, the adrenal gland itself has to come out too. But it’s not so bad as the other one just takes up the slack apparently. But before the surgeon can sharpen his knife I needed to be given a load of drugs. I was likened to a ticking timebomb by the endocrinologist and it was his job to chemically dampen me before the surgeon effectively defused me. The first stage was to get me alpha blocked, then he could add beta blockers to the mix and once they kicked in I was good to go. At this stage I was introduced to what has been the bane of the last few months for me: phenoxybenzamine.

Alpha blockers relax certain muscles and help blood vessels stay open, rather than being closed up by the action of noradrenaline and thus lower blood pressure. I was to come off the blood pressure meds and take phenoxybenzamine instead. In doing so I went from feeling pretty good to feeling fucking awful! The patient information leaflet for phenoxybenzamine lists loads of side effects and I was steadily ticking them off. Nasal congestion – yes. Lightheadedness – yes. Dizziness – yes. Nausea – yes. Tiredness or feeling faint – yes. But my blood pressure was only slightly lower than it had been. It seemed as though the pheo was working flat out to counter the effect of the drugs – yay! So the phenoxybenzamine dose was steadily upped and with that the side effects worsened. Weak muscles – yes. Complete exhaustion – yes.

All the time Christmas was getting closer. Unless these drugs kicked in properly soon then there was no way the op would take place this side of Christmas, in which case I would be on these nasty drugs for even longer. It was mid-November before the hospital got the phenoxybenzamine dose right and could then add propranalol into the mix. Even then it could another couple of weeks to get that dose right too. But finally we were there. And by there I mean a place where the surgeon would be happy to even think about operating. Coincidentally this is the same place where a short walk to the shops and back leaves me knackered, I feel faint when I stand up, I often wake in the night with pins and needles in my limbs, I am constantly tired regardless of how much sleep I get and I am usually in bed by 9pm. My blood pressure is low, I have crippling abdominal pain at times and I generally feel like shit too. But at least the surgeon will operate now.

Well not now as such, but in a couple of days. Unless they cancel on me at the last minute (which I am told is possible) then I go under the knife on Wednesday. I’ll be in hospital for anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, depending. Ideally the surgery will be done laparoscopically (keyhole) in which case recovery times are much shorter but in some cases – especially those of larger tumours and mine is around 3cm x 2cm apparently, which makes it a similar sort of size to the adrenal gland I think – they need to really cut you open and then you can expect to be in hospital much longer. I won’t know whether my op was laparoscopic or not until I wake up in intensive care and look down to see how much of a mess my left-hand side is.

Still, once I have recovered after the op my abdominal pain should have gone, my blood pressure should be normal and I should be healthy once more. At least that’s the plan…

Anyway, it’s nearly three months that I have been on these drugs so three months of complete exhaustion and feeling really rough. That’s badly affected my reading. On the face of it I would have thought that being in bed by 9pm most nights would mean I had a lot more time to read but it’s not worked out that way at all. I have been so tired I have been reading less than normal. And reading less means a lack of compulsion to update this blog. See, I knew I could get this back on track even if it has taken me nearly 1500 words.

And I’m still not done with the excuses…

At last, an update…

It’s been a very long time since I updated this blog and it’s probably about time I explained why that is. In fact there is so much explaining to do that I will do over the course of several posts.

Back on October 7th I was writing about Dewey the library cat from the book of the same name and in doing so ‘spoke’ a little about my own cat (called Cat). I was talking about how ace she was and how great cats are in general, so much better than dogs. Well, the following day the world obviously decided I had got rather too cocky and wanted to get its own back. It did this in a rather cruel way by taking Cat from me.

Friday 8th October. The missus was out for the day. This in itself is not too unusual as she has a regular job and isn’t a slacker layabout like me. But on this day she was not at work but spending the day with a friend somewhere. Chessington? Thorpe Park? One of those theme parks anyway. I was at home by myself, which again is not unusual. Cat was coming and going as cats do. She was so often my company during the day time; it was comforting to know there was another sentient being about the place and that I wasn’t alone. Having the radio on is one thing but a pet has needs and is dependent on you for certain things so makes you feel wanted, important.

It was late afternoon and Cat had gone out earlier in the day and hadn’t come back yet. Once more there is nothing unusual about this; she would often sleep just the other side of our back fence in the neighbour’s garden and saunter back when she wanted to. But she hadn’t had lunch (as far as I could recall) and it was bordering on teatime so she’d want food soon. Still no sign of her though. Late afternoon became early evening and my calls for Cat were going unanswered. Missing more than one meal really was unusual – where was she?

I stepped outside the back door to look around and also so my call would carry further. I saw a shape on the edge of the lawn, slightly overhanging the path and knew instantly what it meant. It was something I had dreaded happening although I knew some day it would come. We didn’t know how old Cat was, only that she was north of about 12 years. She had lived rough and as a stray for a lot of that time (again, as far as we knew anyway) so surely she wasn’t in tip-top condition health-wise. We had been lucky that she hadn’t needed to go to a vet as she hated confined spaces such as boxes and pet carriers. She had a real fear of being trapped and always had to know where her exits were.

There on the lawn was Cat, dead and slightly damp as the evening dew was starting to form. I didn’t know what to do in these circumstances. This was my first real contact with death excluding a pet goldfish when I was much younger and the passing of a fairly distant relative well over 20 years ago. My mind was torn between dealing with the practicalities of the situation and dealing with the grief.

How long had she been out there like that? Had I spotted earlier could I have done anything to help? Had I now been so engrossed in work on my computer and had looked out the back windows that afternoon could I have saved her? Had I contributed to her death? It looked like a sudden passing based on the position of the body but I still have no idea what killed her. But practical matters sprang to the fore: I had to let the missus know and I had to deal with the body. I covered it with one of her (Cat’s, not the missus’) favourite towels and phoned the missus. She just about managed to work out what I was saying through the sobbing and promised to be back as soon as she could. I dug out a cardboard box big enough to hold Cat ready to move her into that when I was ready and able. As it happened that time didn’t occur until the missus was back and she could help me because Cat was a big girl – not fat big but long and with rigor mortis she was tricky to get into the box just right. We put the box in the shed and set about grieving indoors.

Something else about that night has just come back to me. The electricity board were doing some emergency repairs round the corner and had to switch the power off for a few hours from about 8.30pm. Great! No TV to take our minds of the tragedy of losing a pet and friend so we retired to bed to read by bloody torchlight! Needless to say the power outage was not what we really needed on top of everything else that night.

I said earlier that we hadn’t ever had to take Cat to a vet so she wasn’t registered with any of the local practices. And unless you’ve had experience of dealing with a dead pet how do you know what to do with one? The internet, of course. Before the power went out I was able to google how to deal with a dead cat. We decided we would have her cremated and her ashes returned to us and that the local vet could sort this out for us. So the next morning we took her to the vet, arranged the cremation and picked out a nice little casket for her ashes. We had no idea how much this was going to cost us but at this stage we didn’t care – we’d pay whatever it took to give her a proper send off. Incidentally it cost just over £100 which sounds like a lot but she was really worth it.

Everything has to die, I accept that but I confess I found it hard to deal with at the time. Soft as it may seem it really hit me for six. I think that the later in life one first experiences grief the harder it is as one has become accustomed to everything around you not dying. If it is possible to do so I think Cat died in a decent manner. She wasn’t attacked by another animal (either as the cause of death or after death, by a fox or whatever) so hopefully it wasn’t too painful for her. It looked sudden based on the body shape, and I probably found her fairly soon after the event so could make sure she didn’t come to any more harm. Plus it happened on a Friday afternoon so both the missus and I were free the next day to deal with the vet and so on. It also meant we could spend plenty of time together – we went for a massive long walk in Richmond Park – helping one another grieve. If I had one regret though it would be that we didn’t get anywhere near enough photos of Cat. We took her for granted in that respect. As Joni Mitchell sang, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

During the time we spent together mourning Cat the missus and I discussed getting another cat, maybe even getting two if they came as a pair. The weekend after Cat passed away we were contacting local rescue centres and even dropping in to Battersea Cats & Dogs Home. We met a few cats at Battersea but none of them really struck a chord with me. Then we arranged to see a mother and daughter pair at a local rescue centre the following weekend and I had a really good feeling about them. I had been looking at their online profiles on an almost daily basis. I so wanted them to be perfect for us. On the way to meet them the missus must have cottoned on to my desperation as she warned they may be right for us but we would meet them anyway and see how it went. Anyway, long story slightly shorter, within a few minutes we knew Treacle (mother) and Patch (daughter) were ideal and we agreed with the rescue centre we would take them the next day. And those two lovable buggers have been rocking my world ever since.

As an aside, as if this post need to be even longer, we found out something fascinating from the lady who ran this rescue centre. She started Kittikatz Rescue after the local Cats Protection League shelter closed. That was around 1999. It was based literally round the corner from us and the garden of the shelter is pebble’s throw from our garden. Was Cat a rescue cat after all? She was probably about the right age to have been nosing around the shelter when it closed and from what we heard they closed the shelter at the drop of a hat, taking the cats they had in there with them (wherever they went) but leaving the semi-feral cats that were using the shelter for food etc. We know Cat turned up next door to us at one point several years before we moved in and looked bedraggled and starving so they fed her. Then we helped feed her and eventually housed her (when we realised she didn’t actually have a proper owner). Was she one of the cats that used the local shelter for food until it closed when she was forced to fend for herself until we took pity on her? It kinda fits and would explain quite a lot. There’s no way of knowing for sure but I like to think that’s true.

Anyway, we have learned the lessons from Cat and already have quite a lot of photos of Treacle and Patch. They are much younger than Cat was (around 4yrs and 2yrs old now) and it’s interesting to watch their personalities develop as they settle in and become more confident. They are still both very wary of strangers but so affectionate and loving towards us.

So between losing Cat and then settling the new furballs in I kinda lost some enthusiasm for this blog so updating it fell right down my priority list. There are other reasons too but they are best kept to other blog posts…

#69. Dewey

Dewey by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter

Dewey is a cat, and it’s a well-known fact that cats rock. Cats are far and away the best pet anyone can have. A pert squirrel would be cool, perhaps better than a cat, but they are too hard to domesticate so cats top the pile. A cat will do what it wants, when it wants. Fantastically independent when they want to be and utterly dependent on their owners when it suits them – it’s amazing. And unlike dogs they can take themselves for a walk, and you don’t need to wander the streets or frequent the local parks carrying a small plastic bag of their crap as most dog owners seem to do. Nothing says I love my dog more than carrying one of it’s turds around with you. And before you mention cat litter trays I want to point out that my pet cat is so well trained that it always goes out when it wants the toilet, and based on the fact that there is never any crap in my garden I can only assume it dumps in someone else’s back yard – perfect!

Dewey, after whom the book is named, is a cat. A library cat, in fact. Now, it’s many a year since I have been in a library and the last one I went in was probably the one at Manchester University rather than a public library but even so, I have never seen a cat in a library. Yet this book, which is American, makes it all sound reasonably normal. Maybe it is in the States, but not over here. But Dewey was so cute and changed attitudes in a small town and, according to the subtitle of the book, “touched the world” that he was clearly worthy of his own book.

One cold January morning, Vicky Myron of Spencer, Iowa found a little kitten dumped in the night drop box of the library in which she worked. The kitten was filthy, really cold and starving. She washed, warmed and fed the kitten, dubbing him Dewey Readmore Books. From then on, and for nearly 20 years, Dewey was a feature of Spencer library and a big part of the community. His fame spread and people would travel from all over to meet him, which is both bizarre and somewhat understandable as you read about what an awesome cat Dewey was.

Dewey’s is a heart-warming, feelgood tale but his is not the only story told within these pages. The author (Vicki Myron) gets in on the act too, and we hear about her life and how it changed during the Dewey years, as well as how the town of Spencer changed. And while this might sound rather heartless, I don’t really care about Vicki Myron. Sure, she’d had a tough time of it and all but I’d much rather hear about the cat curling up in a box or jumping on unsuspecting library patrons than about a woman’s experience with breast cancer, how she had to cope as a single mother following the split from her alcoholic husband and various deaths within her family. Her family is of little interest to me and is only really relevant to the story is as much as Dewey could apparently tell when she was down and would make an extra effort to cheer her up. Myron’s story is padding, basically, and could have been cut down significantly in my view. But what do I know about writing a bestselling book?

Dewey’s is a fun tale packed with cute cat moments but ultimately you know what’s going to happen to him, and when the end comes it is quite sad. Perhaps Myron’s tales of misery are littered throughout the text to prepare you for this point, who knows.

I find it hard to believe that one cat can change a community in the way that Dewey is alleged to but then small town America is a funny place isn’t it? I do know though that if my local library had a cat in it I’d go more often, but probably not to borrow books.

#67. Costa Blanca (AA Essential Guides Series)

Costa Blanca (AA Essential Guides Series)

When you go on holiday you have to have a little guide book don’t you? Maybe you don’t, but I do. I like to know in advance what’s worth seeing and what to avoid as well as to have some sort of idea what there is around the place. I tend to start reading these guides just before we go away, perhaps even finishing them off on the plane as I did this time round, so that it’s all fresh in my mind and I have some inkling of what I want to do while I am out there. Not that I ever book a holiday without first checking the place out online, but there is only so much you can learn from Wikipedia and Trip Advisor isn’t there? Once I’m satisfied there is enough to see out there and enough to keep me occupied then I am happy to book to go somewhere but I do like a little guide book to give me more details of what to expect.

Alicante is a lovely little place. It has a gorgeous palm-lined promenade and a quaint little old town packed with bars and restaurants. As with a lot of continental Europe it has a lot of pretty little churches and cathedrals too, and despite the fact that I am not in the slightest bit religious I can appreciate a nice building and a lot of churches I see fit the bill there. It was also a very clean city. I don’t recall seeing any litter and everything seemed really clean and smart. This is probably down to an army of street cleaners and council workers cleaning everything up. We saw loads of them about and they do a great job at keeping the place looking good.

Alicante also had a restaurant in the pretty little square behind the town hall that showed exactly why one shouldn’t rely on Google to translate between languages. That’s not to say one shouldn’t use Google as a translator, more that one should get the translation checked by someone who speaks the languages in question if you plan to use the translation on anything that matters. The dessert menu included “fragmentation hand grenade” and “dumbfounded sky bacon”. Yes, really.

When you learn that in Spanish “fragmentation hand grenade” was “piña” you might guess it was actually pineapple, and if you knew that the Spanish military often refer to hand grenades as pineapples you can see how the mistranslation came about. “Dumbfounded sky bacon” is a whole different kettle of fish though. The native name for the dish is “tocino de cielo” which roughly translate’s into “heaven’s little pig” or something along those lines. It’s basically creme caramel anyway. So “dumbfounded sky bacon” isn’t a million miles away from what they wanted but it doesn’t make any sense to an English speaker. But then if we translated “pigs in blankets” into Spanish and put in on a menu would a Spaniard expect to be served sausages wrapped in bacon?

By the way, while writing that last paragraph I had to look up how to write the groovy accented ñ character. I didn’t know about these special Alt codes you could use to write accented characters in Windows applications. That has really rocked my world. If you don’t know about these codes then have a play. Hold down Alt in any Windows application, type 0241 on your numeric keypad and let go of Alt. Hey presto – a ñ! Isn’t that neat? And of course there are other codes for all the other accented characters. 0231 will give you a lowercase French c with a cedilla like this: ç. Come on, how cool is that?

But I digress, for a change!

There was a bullring and a bull fighting museum in Alicante. There weren’t any fights on while we were there but the museum was open (and free!) so we had a little look round. It was all in Spanish, unfortunately, but there was all manner of regalia and paraphernalia as well as several bull’s heads mounted on plaques on the wall. There was a little leaflet in English summarising the museum’s contents and from what I can gather a bull fight is a whole performance rather than a proper fight. It’s obviously not a fair fight but we have all seen various videos and stills of a man in a frilly costume being gored by a bull and thought “Ha!” but generally speaking the idea is that the bull dies. But it seems there are numerous different parts in this performance and the matador is only one of them. There are numerous other players out there too and I’d kinda like to understand who they are and what everyone involved in a bull fight does. There seems to be some of ranking and hierarchy of matadors too and I don’t understand any of that either.

 

Part of me would love to see a bull fight, to experience the theatre of it all and to understand why it appeals to the Spanish. I’ve been to America and attended a basketball game to see why they love that so much. I’ve been to NFL games, admittedly in London so it’s not quite the same but it’s close. I’d quite like to go to a baseball game in the US too to try and understand the appeal and how the natives view the game and how they treat the whole day as an event of which the game itself is just a part. These things are such an intricate part of people’s lives and I’d love to get inside and see what it really means to those people.

 

While we were based in Alicante we didn’t spend every day there, we did get out and about a bit. For example, we nipped a few miles up the coast to San Juan. It’s a little resort just to the north of Alicante itself and has a much bigger beach than Alicante. Not that Alicante’s beach is small. It’s a nice beach, a good size, very clean and has a lot of facilities as one would expect of a blue flag beach. Unfortunately when we went San Juan was closed. Almost everywhere was shut and looked like it had been for years. We pottered about and barely saw another soul. Sure, it was grey and looked like it might drizzle but it was still warm but there was no-one about. Throughout the time we were there I had Morrisey’s Every Day Is Like Sunday going round my head. This was the seaside town that they seemed to have remembered to close down.

 

We also nipped further up the coast on a groovy little tram to Benidorm. It’s a shithole! It’s my idea of holiday hell. Loads of concrete block hotels set along a couple of beaches with a rocky promontory in the middle. And along the sea front are packed endless bars and restaurants advertising full English breakfast with all English ingredients, mugs of Tetley tea and pints of English beer. Had it not been peeing with rain I’m sure we’d have seen a great number of lobster red Brits round these places too. I hated it there. You can easily imagine the streets in the height of summer running with urine and vomit as the pubs start to close up. It was horrible. I suppose the best way of describing it for me would be like in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge is visited by the ghost of christmas future and is shown how miserable he’ll be unless he changes his ways. For me Benidorm is how holidays could be if I’m not good.

 

We also popped inland a bit to visit Elche, which is another nice little place with a beautiful old town. The guide book, and tourist info, said to avoid the new town as everything tourists want to see is in the old town. They’ve laid out some nice little routes around town so you can see all the sights, including a number of palm groves. And if you go up the bell tower of the cathedral there you can get a good view out over Elche and only then can you really appreciate just how many palm trees there are about the place. There’s millions of the buggers! There are some nice parks too as well as the palm groves. I think we’d have spent more time mooching about Elche had it not been raining.

 

So there you have it, the highlights of the Costa Blanca as I saw it. Every time we took a little trip out of Alicante it rained so if I were you’d I’d just stay in Alicante and chill out there.

 

#65. Databases Demystified

Databases Demystified by Andy Oppel

Two down this morning, only another 11 to go!

This is a bit of a weird one. I wanted to make this blog about the books I read for pleasure rather than including books I needed for what passes as work these days. However, I have to make a bit of an exception in this case. And it’s only a bit of an exception as this book crosses the business/pleasure boundary in some ways. It fulfills the business criteria because it’s about databases and I am embarking on a major software development project that requires a massive database back-end and I have no real experience with databases so needed a primer. But it also ticks the pleasure box as I read this book of an evening rather than during working hours. I was so keen to learn more about databases and get the grounding in database concepts I so clearly need that I was prepared to let this one slip into my personal life rather than staying in the work domain. I hope not to make a habit of that else I’ll end up blogging about various other software books I have round my desk, including books on SQL Server Express Edition and ADO.NET and no-one wants me to go there.

Patronising is the word that springs back to mind as I flick back through the pages of this one to remind myself of it. The main body of the book is fine and does a pretty decent job of getting the concepts across. I can see myself keeping this book to hand for a while as I get to grips with database usage so I can refer back to it for certain concepts. However, at the end of each chapter is a quiz. The front cover of the book claims this is “a self-teaching guide” so perhaps some sort of quiz element is to be expected. Do we need a quiz at the end of every chapter though? I skipped them completely as I found them horrible, not because I wasn’t learning enough to do well in them but more because I thought some of the questions completely missed the point. Let me give you an example from the SQL chapter:

SQL was first developed:

1. By IBM
2. In 1982
3. Based on ANSI specification
4. By ANSI
5. In the 1970s

Does it fucking matter? Later questions in this quiz test understanding of joins and operators and the like, useful things you need to understand. Knowing when it was developed and by whom has nothing at all to do with being able to understand SQL and use it effectively, which is surely the important point.

 

And there are many more examples along these lines through the quizzes. If I am going to adopt the star schema for my data warehouse it’s important I know who developed it isn’t it? No, it’s bloody not relevant in the slightest. Grr!

 

OK, I’m calm once more. The book is heavily weighted towards OLTP (online transaction processing) whereas most of what I need databases for will be OLAP (online analytical processing) but this book will still serve as a handy reference and concept guide for a while, until I am truly up and running with my databases at least.

 

#54. The Timewaster Letters

The Timewaster Letters by Robin Cooper

It’s not a book on sports betting – what’s happened? I came across this book on Amazon when I was desperately hunting for some new books to read and figured it was worth a go as it was only a few quid and sounded amusing. It actually reminded me of something I had done myself in a way so I immediately empathised with the author and recognised what it was he was trying to achieve.

Robin Cooper has taken it one stage further than I ever did though. All I did was embellish my CV and experience slightly and then apply for jobs I had absolutely no chance of even being shortlisted for. Cooper, on the other hand, has taken it upon himself to bother a great number of big business and many of those seemingly pointless associations that you see advertised in obscure trade magazines (National Federation of Fish Friers Limited, for example).

The basic premise is this: assume the persona of a nutter (think of the nutter in Jasper Carrot’s famous ‘nutter on the bus’ routine and you’re pretty close, write a letter to the chosen organisation and await the response, looking to spark up a bit of a conversation. The letter can’t be entirely serious but must have the air of a genuine enquiry so that the addressee doesn’t immediately register it for the piss-take it is and provides a response. Take all the letters and replies and publish them in a book. Done.

A quick look on Amazon shows this formula has been repeated several times by different authors and I’m not entirely sure this was the first of such books but it’s the only one I own so all I have to base my opinion of the genre on. And having bought and read this one I’m not sure I need a sequel or imitation volume.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it and a couple of bits did actually make me laugh (although I still wouldn’t go as far as some of the reviewers quoted on the book covers) so that’s a positive. Some of the letters are fairly weak (such as asking the Archbishop of Canterbury for advice on founding a new religion, what to believe in etc.) whereas others and borderline genius (‘mistaking’ Friends of Blue for a boy band fanclub rather than the pottery enthusiasts they actually are) so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

I think some of the character development is taken a bit too far too and the nutter factor could have been toned down a bit. While the reader gets to ‘enjoy’ some in-jokes (Parmaynu the ping pong bat, for example), which presumably also amused the author when he was writing the letters, it doesn’t come across so well when the same in-joke is spread across multiple organisations, none of which have any connection with one another so don’t see the repeated theme getting more extreme. What the later bodies subjected to these in-jokes see is a man who has seemingly lost more of his mind than he had previously; they don’t have the ‘joke’ in context if you see what I mean. The joke escalates to a certain extent in the letters Cooper sends but some of the later replies are quite flat and staid as they just don’t get it.

I know what I mean and whether I am getting that across is not the point here. The point is that this is a pretty funny idea – for a while. The length of this book is about right and you feel that it would be hard for Cooper to continue to keep this kind of idea fresh and funny, which is why I don’t feel the need to even think about buying any of the similar alternatives on offer at Amazon. This will never be high on my re-read list either. It was once of those books that was funny first time through and will need a fair amount of time to pass before I found it sufficiently funny to bother reading it again.

#42. British Politics For Dummies

British Politics For Dummies by Julian Knight

This is the book I have needed for ages. My understanding of politics has been pretty poor for a long time now and this was just the primer I needed to make sense of what’s going on around me.

I found myself with so many questions about politics in the last few months, especially in the run-up to the general election when politics dominated the news headlines. I knew my own thoughts on what I would like the government to do (I’d be screwed if I didn’t even know that, eh?) and I guess that kinda formed my political allegiance as it meant I preferred many of the policies of one party over another. But I have long since had a problem with the electoral system in use in general elections.

British general elections use the first-past-the-post system. Or at least they do for elections to the main parliament in Westminster, let’s gloss over the regional assemblies for now even though Wales and Scotland are technically parts of Britain too. So the candidate that gets the most votes in a constituency wins the seat, regardless of how many votes they actually got. They don’t have to get a majority, just more votes than anyone else standing for that seat. And it doesn’t matter if they win by one vote or several thousand – a win is a win. The party with the most MPs gets to form the government and their leader becomes prime minister, in a nutshell.

So do you vote for who you think will be the best representative for you local constituency or for the party whose leader you would prefer to represent the country as prime minister?

That’s the problem I have with the way general elections are run in this country. The person with the local interests at heart may belong to a party run by an odious cretin who you’d hate to run the country so where does your vote go?

And why do we have a system whereby the prime minister is actually unelected by the vast majority of people he represents? I’m not just talking about the PM not having a majority in an election, I mean most people don’t get a say in who the PM actually is. The party leader is voted for by members of the party and that party’s MPs (mostly) but mist of us aren’t in a political party so don’t get to vote for who leads it. The PM is also an MP so is elected by people in their constituency, which again, most of us don’t belong to. So the vast majority of us have no direct say in who runs our country. Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Good old British politics and it’s traditions eh?

Now let’s go back to those regional assemblies, in particular the Scottish parliament. They use the additional member system, combining proportional representation with first-past-the-post voting. Each constituency has a seat in the parliament and MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) are elected in the same way as in Westminster. But each party also has a number of additional members elected via proportional representation. Voters put their ‘x’ in the box for a named candidate (for the first-past-the-post ballot) and have another vote for a party rather than an individual. These party votes are then totted up and each party gets an additional number of MSPs based on the proportion of votes their party got.

That makes sense to me. Why don’t we have that in England? Oh yeah, tradition. I don’t know a lot about the Lib Dems and their plans for electoral reform but if they are going for something like this then I quite like it. I can vote for a candidate and a party separately, the two need not be the same. I can vote for the person who would be best on a local basis plus vote for the party whose leader I would like to be PM. Great.

I always wondered how proportional representation worked and thanks to this book I now know. I guessed you got seats based on the number of votes you got (which is why the Libs Dems support it as they tend to get a much larger share of the vote than is represented by their presence in parliament) but I was never sure how these seats were allocated. I was getting hung up on constituencies and the fact that currently an MP represents a geographical area so you have local representation. That kinda goes out with window with proportional representation. But this additional member system makes sense.

When it comes to politics I knew my lefts from my rights and knew as much as I needed to about the roots of each party. I knew enough about who forms the cabinet, the different types of election and so on. On the face of it did I need a book like this that goes back to basics? (do you see what I did there?) It has certainly helped put a lot of things in perspective for me. It’s interesting to see how British politics has developed, and how when we need to we can throw off the shackles of tradition and the “because it’s always been done that way” attitude and get sensible about things as we have when it comes to the regional assemblies so there is hope that things can be neatened up in the main parliament also at some stage. It has also helped put a few famous names into context (Disraeli, Gladstone etc) as well as reminding me of some of the political scandals I had forgotten or was too young to understand at the time (Westland Helicopters for one).

I’m certainly no political expert now but I’m also no longer a complete ignoramus when the conversation turns to all things politics.

#33. Once More, With Feeling

Once More, With Feeling by Victoria Coren & Charlie Skelton

I ought to confess up front that I have a bit of a soft spot for Victoria Coren. Cute, clever and loves poker – what’s not to like about her? I read her other book (For Richer, For Poorer) a few months back and it seems she can write too. So let’s she what she has to say about porn shall we?

The book starts in London with the authors reviewing porn for The Erotic Review and thus we get an introduction to the two main characters throughout this tale: the authors. Vicky and Charlie met at uni and have a strong platonic relationship, one whereby they feel comfortable not only watching porn with one another but critiquing it also. And it was during one of these porn review sessions that they remarked that they could probably make a better porn movie than the one they were watching. And so the journey begins.

The pair head to Las Vegas for inspiration (and for Coren for the blackjack and poker tables too) and while there set about developing a plot for their film. From there they had to Los Angeles to see how it’s done, taking in a porn shoot and meeting some of the big names of the industry to get some advice. That they get some good tales to add into this book is a convenient by-product I’m sure. LA leads to Amsterdam where the script is written, where casting takes place and where the film is ultimately shot.

What you have with this book is many things really. It’s part love story (Coren and Michael, one of the star’s of their film; Charlie and Nina Hartley), part exposé on the porn industry with some of the good side and some of the bad side revealed, part insight into how a writer/film maker/artist can struggle to make headway with their chosen project plus much more.

It’s wonderfully written and fantastically entertaining. The quotes on the covers would have you believe the book is a laugh riot but that’s just not true of this or any book I suspect. If they made a TV version of this book and you were watching it with company then I can see how this could be hilarious but as I have said before, I’m not one for laughing at books. To me laughter is a shared, social emotion whereas books are intimate, private moments. You read to yourself (at least I do and I assume the vast majority of the rest of you do too), quietly in your head and so its not conducive to out-loud laughter. Don’t get me wrong though, the book is amusing, its entertaining but by it’s very booky nature it’s not laugh-out-loud funny.

I don’t feel I have done this book justice really. It is dead good, honest. But I don’t think I’ve got my writing or book reviewing mojo back yet after my break, which is slightly awkward as I’ve got some paid writing to get done in the next few days. Eek!

Maybe I’ll be back on song for the rest of my holiday book reviews…