Country mouse city mouse views

And the country mouse decided that even in the glow of momentous celebration and despite her great love of the soft respiration of energy as the leaves fall to the ground, even then was it time to pay a visit to the city mouse.

In some trepidation she prepared to depart from the safe and very quiet Meadowplace, where the food is ordinary and the routine is dull and the views are pretty but pretty much the same. She got ready to spend a weekend in the Very Big Smoke.

So tomorrow afternoon the country mouse will be driven away to the airport whence she will fly to London where she will drink tea to the bottom of the cup and go where she wants when she wants, as long as she gets to city mouse's wedding on time, and she will finally see Tate Modern and the Globe and she will maybe eat some Thai food and probably drink a cocktail, and there will be different views come Monday!

Bon weekend......

Views, books and decades of the week

 Definitely revelling in Autumn here.

 Definitely wondering if I need to revel in Autumn outside our garden.

 It's just that the novelty of having it all outside the door hasn't quite worn off!

 It's a very good time to be here.

 My baby will have been on the planet for his first decade come Wednesday, so we did lots of celebrating this weekend.

 And I even read two books this week. Admittedly they were both school books borrowed from Miss H's English room!

 I wonder did Morpurgo mean us to be wholly supportive of Tommo? Because I did find him ultimately unadmirable. There was a wonderful moment towards the end of his timekeeping when I wondered had he redeemed himself  by taking Charlie's place. But no.

I've only before this read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. I loved Of Mice and Men just as much. I was harrowed by As Mice and Men just as much. George I did find admirable. Heartbreakingly.

In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

 John Steinbeck in his 1938 journal entry

Books

So this week I did finish a book, so I did. It was the third in Tony Macauley's series about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, so it is. He writes it entirely in the dialect that we all spoke in Belfast at time, so we did, and yousns might not understand a blind thing in it!

He went to up Coleraine University; I went to Queen's here in town. He does rightly record the snobbery to which this decision would have subjected him! He rightly records everything I remember from my university days: coming from not particularly pleasant areas of Belfast to the ivory towers of academia, the insider politics of third-level Christianity, the angst and the inspiration, the legwarmers and Duran Duran.

It was a good read and I found it incredibly poignant, though I don't know how universal that would be. Mind you, he does have a big following in the States, where I suppose interest in Island Ireland and all her corners is high. Interesting to be reading a book so steeped in the consequences of Loyalism and Republicanism in the week where not so Island Scotland decided that maybe the time wasn't just right.

I think All Growed Up isn't just as gripping as the first book, Paperboy, and the second, Breadboy, certainly wasn't. I think the two sequels bring nothing new apart from the on-going narrative. Paperboy had all the freshness of a book written in this voice, from this persepective. So if you hadn't read any Macauley, I think I'd still recommend Paperboy.

I have started rereading Divorcing Jack by Bateman- a whole other outrageous depiction of Belfast! I should really get around to reading anything other than this first novel of his. Three years ago some of us went to a reading Colin Bateman was doing and took our copies of Divorcing Jack along with us. We told him we were reading one of his books for Book Club. He was happily impressed until he asked which one. I think he was appalled that after his prolific output, including very successful TV dramatisations for which he wrote the scripts, we were stuck on the first one. At least with Tony Macauley I'm keeping pace!

PC thinks that Macauley's next book will be about his move into peace and reconciliation work, for which he was already quite well known before the novels. That can be my token nod in the direction of Peace Day!

Anne

I stayed in bed feeling cold-ridden and just plain tired this morning. Then when all the men came home they told me that there had been a video about me in church. Here it is! Maybe it's not just about me!

More on books later x

Views not quite from my window

So balmy has it been every single afternoon that I come home from school and install myself on my long-ago birthday present lounger and I breathe. This was after all one of two goals for this year. The breathing. I think I have used the lounger more this week than I have done in a few summers.

The other goal was to link every Thursday to Jane's international views. The breathing has hitherto been the more consistently successful of the two goals, but I feel I'm making progress!

There has been a mist hanging over Belfast Lough for well nigh two weeks now, and I can't remember what the County Down coastline looks like, nor can you see the war memorial on the top of Knockagh Hill beyond the little maple tree.

This isn't the view from the window, but it's pretty close. 360 degrees from my semi-horizontal state of semi-slumber. Homeworks, dinner and all else on hold for fifteen minutes a sunny day. And it's nearly the weekend xx

A bad book week

This week I haven't finished one single book. I did dip into one that I hope to finish for next week, but last night I gave up on one completely. I don't usually do this. I mostly have to keep going to find out what happens next. I did admittedly abandon The Shack. Literally. I left it on a bench somewhere between Guildford and Brittany. And I skim read the theme that interested me in a book about a girl from a bookshop who goes to work with a reclusive author.

However last night I realised in a liberating gust of breath that I did not have to spend one single more moment of my life being dragged through the morass of humanity's representation that is The Poet by Michael Connolly. No, I am not linking to it!

We seem to have gone crime fiction mad in book club. The Agatha books were missing from my tick-list and I was happy to have a go therewith; but this Connolly novel does exactly what I hate most with fiction.

We know that our world is an evil, dangerous, polluted pit. We know that men, and women, abuse the physical possibilities of our human bodies. We are surrounded now with tales that disgust and deplore.

I just find that sometimes with a novel, I'm not sure whether the author is taking my trust and engagement and dragging me through the dirt for the good of the themes within, or whether they are taking my trust and engagement and money and making for the hills.

So enough. No more. I shall finish the other book I started and then I shall find myself Something Good To Read. Probably starting with People of the Book as recommended by Dormouse! Warn me now, sweet mouse, if you think there is ANYTHING distressing therein!

What I did this evening instead of finishing my second book in two weeks was grab Master Heart, the Farmer's son, before he took up his usual evening position in my garden and demand apples. Mr Heart, the Farmer's Husband, had already sent me home a huge bowl of blackberries and my Good Housekeeping Cookbook tells me that blackberries and apples can be jam.

Round the corner and up the lane we all trotted, stopping to chat to our next-door neighbours, their goats. Through all the little gates, through the old garden, and into the orchard.

 We didn't need to send small boys up trees for all the apples, but it does help.

Then back down the lane and home. With clear minds and wholesome thoughts. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Views

We have been enjoying the most fabulous September weather this week. Every day is warm and airy. We get home from our schools and pour ourselves straight into the garden. The conkers are becoming visibly brown and are just ready to fall all over us and we cannot wait.  Please note the fine linen spread on our recently moved table.

I had not one but two parcels waiting for me this afternoon. One was very expected and may I just congratulate Clarks for using a sensible courier who can take a decision that doesn't involve spending your weekend driving the length of the borough to retrieve undelivered mail?

But Sandra of Thistle Cove Farm- thank you immensely for this beautiful tablecloth! I have been imagining what American feasts it has already hosted. It is quite the most perfect companion to Scarlet's gifts of last month. Bloggistes really are a kind and generous band of folk.

The solitary pear on my Christmas pear tree has now clearly reached a weight that allows it to hang vertically rather than horizontally. This is emcouraging, if slightly less smile inducing.

We moved the garden table from under the kitchen window because I wanted to have a quiet corner for herb pots and thinking. This is the starting point! These chairs sat in full sun just under the kitchen window in Strawberry Land and they were my thin place. A place where the barrier between Heaven and Earth is thin, and where God is strongly felt.

Glorious sunshine to the front as well. That tree in a pot was waiting for us when we arrived just over five months ago, and it has taken me all this time even to begin to have the courage to rearrange things. Its next move might involve more than a rearrange.

This tree, however, is much more intriguing. Answers on a postcard, or in a comment, please?

Bloggistes of my world, may the Son be shining on your face all day x