Sweet Swan of Kennet

Film Diary: Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1976)

2006-06-19T22:03:00.000+01:00

I've got a bit of catching up to do. This was the first film I watched after the move, back at the end of May.

They say you shouldn't go back, and perhaps this film is the one to prove me right. I had very fond memories of it, not least because Julie Christie is in it, and Donald Sutherland, and the lovemaking scene is legendary (when I was talking to Julie Christie on the phone once, as you do, I asked her about that and she giggled and said what a lovely man Donald was). But also because I recalled a film full of quiet menace with a shocking dénouement. A little surprising, I always thought, that it came froma short story by Daphne du Maurier (Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers isn't a million miles away, either.)

It was a little disappointing, really. Julie Christie looked gorgeous, of course. Donald Sutherland looked preposterously 1970s, and the whole thing looked dated in a way that much older films don't. Ah well, let's write this one off to experience. And it wasn't that bad...

A new home, and a shameful confession

2006-05-31T16:15:00.000+01:00

The shameful confession is that I have caved in to the inevitable and purchased a digital camera. It's a Nikon Coolpix L3 and I suppose it's convenient for everyday work. The big Nikon is still there for special work though.

And the reason I've taken this disgraceful step is so that I can take lots of pictures of my new house:

and my new environment.

You can see pictures of the house and its surroundings here.

What a miserable way to say goodbye!

2006-05-18T13:53:00.000+01:00

There are few things more dismal than a running track in heavy rain. Of course, when I was a teenage runner this didn't happen to the likes of me because the Gosling Stadium in Welwyn Garden City (home of Verlea AC of which I was a junior member) couldn't afford a "Tartan" track and you couldn;'t run on cinders in heavy rain. Now every self-respecting facility has an all-weather track and that means we poor sods have to go out on it.

So it was that yesterday, in teeming rain that would do credit to my new home (the wettest town in Britain!), I made my final appearance at a Reading Roadrunners track night at Palmer Park.

We were scheduled to do hill work at Kendrick Road, as it happened, bt nobody had the heart for that. So I did a six-lap warmm-up, a set of six fastish 400m reps with 200m recovery, and finished with two warm-down laps. In pissing rain. I was sodden! And then to add insult to injury, hill training was replaced by leg work, up and down the stand, in betwen the reps and the warm-down.

So it was quite a meaty session really, and despite the rain I felt good after.

I don't yet know where I'll be able to do track training again. Lots of scope for running on hard wet sand though.

Rosie by the River

2006-05-14T15:45:00.000+01:00

Friday's scheduled half-hour got missed again, because of a pile-up of things to do in the morning and a friend coming to visit in the afternoon. So it was all the more satisfying that today's attempt at 5 minutes continuous running went exceedingly well. I took it slowly at first and, once again, I found I'd unconsciously worked up to a good pace by the end. I felt strong when I finished, too!

I went right down to the Cunning Man at Burghfield, did a little circuit around the pub car park to turn round, and finished off returing downstream. The last bit was carefully calculated so that if the towpath was still blocked above Southcote Lock, I would be finished without having to stop to clamber round the detour. It was just as well - the fallen tree was still there and although I'd cut myself some slack, with the increased pace at the end my 55 minutes took me right up to the blockage.

Now if the tree had fallen across the IDR it would have been cleared away pronto, wouldn't it? It seems that between them, Reading Borough Council (highways authority responsible for Reading PROW no 2), Sustrans (responsible for NCN strategic route 4) and British Waterways (responsible for maintaining the towpath of the Kennet & Avon Canal) lack any sense of urgency in clearing this important right of way. Just because it's closed to powered vehicles. Pah!

Film Diary: Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)

2006-05-10T14:35:00.000+01:00

In 2005 the banlieus of Paris erupted into riots as the frustrations of the sidelined Arab and African communities boiled over. It came as a shock to the bourgeoisie Parisienne, which had drawn a veil over the suppression of the Algerian Liberation movement, forty-five years earlier.

Caché opens with a shot of a comfortable suburban neighbourhood. The shot lingers and lingers, people pass, cars come and go, it's just an ordinary day. And then, just as we wonder what's going on, the shot is revealed as a video, shot by a CCTV-like hidden camera and left on the doorstep of the house at the centre of the camera's vision. The house is the home of Georges Laurent, a presenter of literary television programmes, his wife Anne and their talented but restoless 12-year-old son Pierrot.

More of these videos keep arriving, showing scenes from Georges's life and accompanied by childlike drawings of violence. Georges, who is accustomed to being under the scrutiny of the camera, is nonetheless terrorised by these banal images, and the strains begin to show. Can the videos be awakening memories of a dark secret in Georges's past? And what has this to do with Majid, the Algerian boy adopted by Georges's parents when he wasa small child.

This is a film where very little actually happens, yet it is full of significance. When something dramatic does happen, it sends a jolt through the audience (and this is a film which really needs to be seen in a cinema). Though on the surface the events depicted affect only a few people and yet, through the medium of the big-screen television, we are reminded of the wider context: the earlier brutality shown to the Algerian demonstrators, and the ongoing conflict in the Arab world.

Those who need the quickfire cutting of Fight Club and the soupy scoring of Gladiator will no doubt find this film baffling. Much of the film is made up of long, lingering shots like that opening one, of noting very much. You are expected to work quite hard, however, because there's more going on in thise shots than you might first realise and there's a wealth of detail to take in. Hint: This is especially true in the very last shot. There's a lot going on but you need to be watching out for somebody you will recognise.

I found this showing at the Reading Film Theatre, tucked away in the middle of the University campus where townies such as I seldom venture. It was very well-attended but I was disappointed and a bit annoyed to hear that the RFT had cut its showings from three a week to two a week, and dropped most showings of non-English Language films. This one was an exception, and the policy of Anglo-hegemony is ironic given the underlying message.

I doubt if you'll find this at the local multiplex, but if you do appreciate good cinema it's well worth finding somewhere that's showing it. Cracking stuff!

What a difference a day makes

2006-05-10T14:26:00.000+01:00

After struggling for 30 minutes yesterday, today I cruised comfortably for 40 minutes, right down to Burghfield Island.

I did the loop beyond Southcote by the longer, more winding route along the Kennet rather than the straight route long the canal. It was just as well as there was a tree fallen across the towpath as I discovered on the return walk. I can't think how a tree would have come down in recent calm conditions, I suspect foul play.

The only difference I can think of between yesterday and today is that it wasn't overcast. Quite the contrary: it was a gloriously sunny morning and in fact getting a bit warm for running.

Running out of puff with Rosie

2006-05-09T17:49:00.000+01:00

It wasn't a great run this morning. I still can't undersatnd how, just two days after flying effortlessly for 45 minutes and could go on and on, I'm puffing and panting and stumbling for 30 minutes, however slowly.

It was overcast and humid, and the instects were bothersome again. I suspect also that the air quality wasn't too great. The sun has come out since then and it's a lovely evening.

And I did finish my 30 minutes without stopping to walk. Even if it did take me a long time to get my puff back.

Literacy in the Landscape

2006-05-08T13:32:00.000+01:00

Spotted in Elgar Road, Reading, yesterday:

Oh dear...

Rosie on the Rebound

2006-05-07T12:44:00.000+01:00

Well now, that was much better!

This morning I ran for forty-five minutes without stopping. It was very comfortable and I could easily have gone one, I think.

Starting from the corkscrew bridge at Coley Hill, I set off slowly just as I did on Monday. To begin with it was overcast and rather muggy, and the biggest problem was clouds of thripses, or thunderflies, those rather ethereal black insects that sometimes erupt in great clouds at this time of year, especially in humid conditions. I've not seen so many for years and it's rather unpleasant having them blow in your face while running. Still, the sun came out after a while; it was glorious then and the thripses seemed to vanish.

Though I started very gently I noticed that by the time I'd gone past Southcote Lock I was cruising along at my normal speed without having made any conscious decision to speed up. I went right down to the weir and Burghfield Island and then back along the non-navigable Kennet almost to Southcote Lock again.

Did I mention that on Wednesday we at the Roadrunners did an outrun along the river from Kennet Mouth to Sonning and back? No, I thought not. The idea was to do twenty minutes out, turn, and then twenty minutes back. I did that without stopping and at a brisk pace which had me panting at the end. This was and also on top of at least twenty minutes warming up and getting to Kennet Mouth, so I did a good hour's hard working out.

I skipped my session on Friday. Let's draw a veil over that.

Film Diary: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

2006-05-06T10:53:00.000+01:00

The first rule of Fight Club is, you don't tak about Fight Club, you just bang on about how wonderful it is. Presumably so that mugs who go to see it and can't see how wonderful it will feel somehow inadequate.

All right, this isn't really a film about fighting. It's the spiky existential nightmare of an anomic character, who might be a distant cousin of Camus' Étranger but is far less likeable, lashing out against a smug, decadent consumerist society and unleashing somthing far worse.

At least, I think that's what it was about. At times I felt it was simply about being gratuitously unpleasant. It's certainly one of that new breed of film in which no shot is allowed to linger for more than half a second, lest the atrophied brains of the MTV generation have to strain themselves to think.

I'm told it's full of terribly clever cinematic and consumerist jokes which you need a satellite scanner and a PhD in cryptology to pick up. I didn't pick any of them up. But then the old maxim applies - if the audience don't get the joke, it's the comedian's fault.

In short, I though Fight Club sucked. Maybe I'll revise my opinion if I can bring myself to watch it again. Maybe some kind soul will show me the key.

Running with Rosie

2006-05-02T20:32:00.000+01:00

After Sunday's debacle I sought advice fron the denizens of the Runners World web forums. This afternoon I put into effect what I had learned.

I started at my usual point on the corkscrew bridge. And then I went really slowly. Like, shuffling at not much more than walking pace (actually doing something like 13-minute miles). And I plodded on like that for thirty minutes, and then stopped. Well, I didn't stop, I just walked the rest of the way home.

It was very comfortable. Not once did I feel puffed, although I was breathing hard by the end. Nor did I feel at any point that I really needed to stop. From the point where today's 30 minutes came to a natural end it took me six-and-a-half minutes to walk to the place where last Friday's 30 minutes took me to. I felt I was well within my capacity and could co on.

But I also feel cheated. Worse, I feel I cheated myself. I copped out, I didn't test myself. I was found wanting. But maybe that's the paradigm for my life in general. And maybe, just maybe, this is the right way to go to build up to greater things.

Film Diary: Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)

2006-05-02T20:25:00.000+01:00

This is by way of complete contrast to The Seventh Seal. If Bergman's fable was a spoonful of caviare then Gladiator is a veritable Mississippi Mud Pie of a film - the pleasure it provides isn't a symphony of flavours and textures to be savoured and thought about and remembered, it's about sheer overindulgence and you don't care too much where the choclate beans came from or that the cream came from a can

And that's the thing. Gladiator is immensely enjoyable in its way, but it works by a constant bombardment of the senses. It's full of things that work like sugar and give you a rush of energy and leave you feeling full and having a good time, But a few hours later you feel strangely empty. There's not much story there that hasn't been told many times before. After all, in less tha two hundred years Rome had had Caligula, Nero and Domitian. The emperor Commodus is a bit of an also-ran as bad emperors go!

Having said that, Russell Crowe is bloody marvellous. Good company for those venerable hell-raisers Richard Harris and Oliver Reed who also shine in minor roles. Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus kept on inviting unfavourable comparisons with John Hurt's camply sinister Caligula from the BBCs I, Claudius (though that was a very different kind of drama). I can't remember who played Lucilla, such was her impact. It was a very macho film, after all, and it cried out for a Katharine Hepburn, a Bette Davis or a Rita Hayworth to cut through all that testosterone.

It was about spectacle, after all, which is why it was twice as long as it needed to be, and why it opens with an extended, confusing and rather pointless battle scene presumambly to get the adrenaline pumping. There was once a chap called Shakespeare, you know, who wrote a play called Macbeth. He, like Ridley Scott opened with a glorious victory in battle against the odds by a general. Only he conveyed it, not with pyrotechnic wizardry, but with one wounded soldier reporting to his ageing king. That's all you need.

It's interesting that I saw this in the weekend that saw the death of J K Galbraith. Galbraith recognised that a capitalist society has a problem. It needs an educated population to keep generating new commodities for people to consume in order to keep. But it also needs to keep the same population from thinking too hard about what it is being pressured into consuming. The answer is to numb the senses by pummelling them into submission and not allowing the individual either the time or the space to think critically. That's what Gladiator, along with most contemporary culture, is doing and as such it is a fine symbol of our time.

Well that was rubbish wasn't it?

2006-04-30T11:51:00.000+01:00

I'd been quite pleased with my running regime since the Reading HM - with one exception (and there were mitigating circumstances like doing it on top of a full English breakfast) have managed to do all my scheduled runs in reasonable comfort and without a walk break. I'd done 30m, a broken 30m, 30m, 35m, 30m, 30m, 30m, at a gentle 10-11 minutes per mile.

Today I set myself 45 minutes.

It was a disaster.

I started off fine. The first mile flew by and I was going comfortably. Then my breathing began to fall apart. I had to stop for a short walk break at Fobney Lock after 20 minutes, and then struggled on until I had to pull up at 35 minutes for a long walk.

Out of self-disgust I made myself do bursts of running after that, including making myself run up a hill as a punishment, and doing a full knees-up spring for a couple of minutes, and I probably ran 45 minutes altogether but I don't think that kind of broken running is doing much to build my stamina.

What really bugs me is that, nine months after I first ran 30 minutes non-stop, I still can't do much more than that without stopping to get my breath back, however gently I take it. I shouldn't really be getting this puffed out, should I? That's not what it says in the books. And I find myself wanting compared to the woman interviewed on Woman's Hour this week, who went from nothing to London Marathon ins six months - and she didn't stop for a walk until 20 miles.

I bet this never happened to Paula Radcliffe!

Running Update

2006-04-28T16:06:00.000+01:00

Once again I've fallen behind.

I'm grinding out 30-minute sessions consistently now. On Wednesday I went along Tilehurst Road, across the park and via Circuit Lane to the railway, whereupon I turned towards Coley and took in the nastly little hill. That went pretty well, I thought.

Today I returned to the Kennet. My thirty minutes took me from Coley Hill to the far gate of Southcote Lock, so not quite as fast as last Monday, but faster than the Monday before. I'm feeling quite puffed on the way. I'm not going fast and I have a feeling I shouldn't really be feeling puffed at all, at this stage. Perhaps somebody could advise.

This evening I shall undo some of the good work by visiting the Reading Beer Festival. This will be the last time, after all, and where I'm going there's a dearth of decent beer. Well, you can't have everything.

Film Diary: The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

2006-04-28T15:40:00.000+01:00

Finally I've got around to signing up for DVD rental from Amazon, so I can at least partly overcome a major source of frustration in my life, the lack of somewhere to see the classic films which I love. Watching on the computer isn't ideal - what I would really like is an auditorium in which to share the film on a big screen with fellow enthusiasts.

I was spoiled as a teenager, having easy access to the Welwyn Garden City Film Society, whose long-time Chair was Fred Aicken, a genial Ulsterman (and prolific contributor to the letters column of The Guardian over the years) who also happened to teach me chemistry. He publicised the society vigorously within the school and his enthusiasm was infectious. That was how I got to see films like The Seventh Seal for the first time, Fred Aicken's legacy to me of chemistry is questionable, but he taught me to love and understand the cinema.

Anyway, The Seventh Seal remains, thirty-five years after I last saw it, a magnificent film, utterly mesmerising and as fresh and relevant today. But what really impresses me is that it takes on dark subject matter - the film is about death - without flinching, but it does this without histrionics. There's also room for a lot of subtle humour, and the characters are utterly believable.

Films like The Seventh Seal are timeless, and it is a crime that they are kept away from the public in favour of the disposable tosh being churned out by the Hollywood bean counters.

Rosie on the Road in the Rain

2006-04-25T12:37:00.000+01:00

I'm being lax again!

On Sunday I set myself 35 minutes in very light drizzle. I ran along the Kennet starting from the corkscrew bridge in Coley (the slight incline of the road bridge followed by the steeper downhill of teh corkscrew gets me off to a good start and of course the bridge itself has quite a bit of spring in it.) Thirty-five minutes got me wel beyond Southcote Lock and almost to the Cunning Man at Burghfield Island. It felt like hard work and I was panting quite a bit before the end but i got there without too much discomfort and without needing to stop. I feel that I'm strating to return to my pre-Christmas form.

Today I set out for a gentle thirty minutes along the same route. I must have run faster than I did on Monday of last week because thirty minutes took me well beyond the Southcote footbridge and right up to the weir beyond the lock. It was drizzling at the beginning and raining quite hard by the end, but it felt comfortable to run in. Once again I was puffed by the end and my legs were feeling the strain a bit, but I easily managed to complete the task without stopping and at a good pace.

Rosie on the Sands

2006-04-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

I've been away, so I haven't had an opportunity to upodate my running diary so far, but I'll make up for lost time here.

On Wednesday I had a chance to replicate a run I last did on New Year's Eve 1969, when I was 15 (it was the early morning of the day of a family wedding, and a day which had consequences that have rattled down the years). I was on Walney, and I made my way over to a starting point by the allotment in North Vickerstown where my late Uncle Frank used to grow onions the size of footballs. From there I ran to Mill Lane, the length of West Shore Road, and then along the sands of Earnse Bay to complete my 30 minutes. The conditions were magnificent, the tide was right out, the sky was blue, you could almost count the new-born lambs on Black Combe, and the panorama of Lakeland Fells shone in all it's glory. It should have been a run to raise the spirits, but somehow I didn't feel like somebody who had run a half-marathon ten days early. I had to stop at the end of West Shore Road to use the loo (none too salubrious) and then running on the sand wasn't the smooth easy ride I'd imagined it to be. I had to stop a couple of times. The moral, I think, is not to try to run on top of a Full English Breakfast, but hell, if they are going to charge that much for a room these days then I want everything I'm paying for! Still, I did it and thye setting was magnificent. A Walney Half-Marathon would be a wonderful thing, methinks.

Yesterday I was back in my old haunts, running the Kennet round in the anti-clockwise and downstream direction starting from Coley Hill. It was fine - no need for any breaks in the 30 minutes apart from the crossing of the Southcore bridge.

Going Home

2006-04-17T21:36:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up very early, and I'm going to catch a train Oop North.

I'm going home for a couple of day. If all goes well, soon I'll be moving up there for good.

I say 'home' - well I left there when I was a baby and only returned for occasional visits to grandparents for the next twenty years. After that I had no grandparents left, so in thirty years I've been back no more times than I could count on the fingers of one hand.

I always felt a bit shame-faced about my home town of Barrow-in-Furness. It never sounded very prepossessing. But somehow one's opinion mellows when you recollect that here's a town on the end of a remote peninula, blessed with one of the longest, flattest and safest beaches you'd find anywhere, overlooked by the Lakeland mountains, it starts to sound attractive. A lot like the west of Ireland, in fact, without the tourists. And housing is still cheap!

I suppose it's an acknowledgement that I'm winding down to retirement, but I'm really looking forward to it now. Like a new adventure, and a new beginning full of opportunity.

Wish me bon voyage!

Rosie on the Road

2006-04-17T11:03:00.000+01:00

Just when you thought spring would never come this year, the wind has swung to the west, the sun is shining, it's a gorgeous spring day, and I was out of bed good and early to enjoy it.

Today is also the day to return to running after my week's layoff following the Reading Half Marathon, so it couldn't be a better day to get going. And this time I'm goingt to stick to a regime and be really fit for my next race (don't know what yet, but I'll be looking for a 10K around June, location depending on this week's foray Oop North of which more anon.)

By the way, Neil, I have a nasty feeling I never thanked you for your excellent training advice, which I shall be taking on board as I move onwards.

Today I set myself a gentle 30 minutes along the Kennet towpath. It wasn't pretty, I was struggling a bit towards the end - that's how much I've lost it - but I did it without a break. And that's the base to build on. Things are looking good.

The Literary Ghetto

2006-04-13T11:58:00.000+01:00

I don't often find myself in disagreement with Julie Cohen, although life would be so dull if we didn't disagree sometimes. Something came up at last night's Reading Writers meeting which let toi such a disaqreement - albeit amiable.

It comes down to how one is supposed to write for young people. When I was a teenager there were no 'young adult' books. I longed for the day when I turned thirteen and I was allowed to leave the Children's Library behind and use the 'proper' library. I read Graham Greene and Margaret Drabble and Evelyn Waugh and Emily Bronte and John Steinbeck and Henry James, and the various Pan Books of Ghost Stories and Horror Stories (some of which were pretty gruesome.

These days, such things are dismissed as 'inappropriate'. Young people have got to be presecribed reading matter scientifically calculated for their age, for it has been decreed (allegedly by educationsists but more probably by bean counters) that at age N they will have a Reading Level of R and if anybody deviates from that - especially if the Reading Level is greater than R - we don't want to know (they are probably elitist). Also, the protagonists of the prescribed literature must resemble the reader in age and social standing as precisely as possible and it is well-known that all children live in single-parent families at the top of tower blocks. (For some reason though, children are permitted to read about hobbist and elves as protagonists but not intelligent, well-heeled young ladies from late nineteenth-century Boston). And heaven forbid that a teenager should be challenged by a polysyllabic word and have to use a disctionary!

I wonder what harm is supposed to come to teenagers if they are exposed to Henry James, or Val McDermid, or Margaret Atwood?

I can't help feeling that all this publishing-by-formula is stifling reading by suppressing flights of fancy. Film-making by numbers has killed the cinema, should it kill books too? Or am I being jaundiced?

I would tell would-be writers to write what they feel, and the hell with the publishers' bean counters.

Literacy in the Landscape

2006-04-10T16:58:00.000+01:00

Down at the Butts Centre, young men in battle fatigues are flogging paintballing events...

And this one really made me laugh out loud...

The Reading Half Marathon: a mile-by-mile account

2006-04-09T17:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I did it, as you see! And now I'm really stiff and achey.

It didn't go as well as I hoped though. I fully expected to smash the PB I 'set' in my debut half-marathon in Wokingham. And for almost half of this race I was very comfortable. And then it began to fall apart.

Perhaps the mistake i made was to jog the three or four miles to the start, as a warm-up. Warming-up was necessary because it was a chilly start to the day, although conditions for the race itself were just about perfect. Anyway, I started by cruising easily up my own road. We'll come back to that in a minute. I went straight to the start, which was another mistake. Runners who reported to the Madejski Stadium first were well provided for but near the start in Green Park it was hopeless. Men were peeing in the stream and us girls found an alternative facility behind the brambles. The nettles are growing though...

Anyway, I finsished, and now I have a third medal to hang on my bedhead, to go with the Brighton 10K and the Wokingham HM. Here's a mile-by-mile account, with splits.

MILE 1 (Green Park to Hartland Road) 10:15
The race starts promptly, but for me starting well back it takes twelve minutes from the gun to cross. Once I start I'm going easily and I'm pleased with that split time because I'm weaving through the fun-runners. By the mile marker, which is on a hill, some people aree walking already. Not me though, I'm feeling good.

MILE 2 (Hartland Road to Whitley Wood Road) 9:57
Cruising happily and taking the lower part of the long hill on Whitley Wood Road in comfort. No problems so far then.

MILE 3 (Whitley Road Road to Shinfield Road) 10:54
The top part of Whitley Wood Road is a killer and I walked a bit of it. Not a great problem though. On Shinfield Road I was moving well. Somebody called out my name at one point buit I didn't recognise anybody. Maybe it was another Rosie. Jackie the Roadrunnewrs Coach cave me a big cheer. I'm cruising along comfortably towards the back of the pack and getting a tad puffed nut no great problems.

MILE 4 (Shinfield Road to the University) 10:32
The first drinks station just inside Whiteknights Park is welcome and I'm beginning to feel it in my legs. At this point there's a counter-movement and we're running alongside the runners behind, so I can see with some satisfaction just how many are behind me. It's good to get off the roads for a while.

MILE 5 (University to Kendrick Road) 10:32
Kendrick Road is one of those roads you are glad you run down and let gravity to the work. Especially as my legs and bum are beginning to ache and the lack of proper training in recent months is beginning to tell.

MILE 6 (Kendrick Road to Kings Road) 11:59
It's downhill to the bottom of London Street and then things really start to fall apart, with the detour aroun the IDR and then the short but sharp passage of The Oracle and Yield Hall Lane. The drinks station is very welcome and I reflect that at least I'm nearly halfway. Or that I've got to do it all again.

MILE 7 (Kings Road to Oxford Road) 12:07
A disaster! Right in the middle of town too, where the biggest crowds are. I'm starting to lose all the ground I made up as my legs turn to jelly.

MILE 8 (Oxford Road to Tilehurst Road): 11:40
I have to rally a bit because I'm running up the long hill where I live. But I can't make it to the top without walking for a bit. Once I'm on Tilehurst Road I'm on a familar training route and it's not too bad.

MILE 9 (Tilehurst Road to Bath Road): 12:32
A real shocker, this. I linger by the water station in Liebensrood Road and find it hard to stand upright.

MILE 10: (Bath Road to Rose Kiln Lane) 11:44
A little better. Getting the mileage into double figures gives me a temporary morale boost. It can't last. I'm wondering if my legs will hold out. I'm well ahead of my Wokingham time though and I should shatter my PB. Shouldn't I?

MILE 11 (Rose Kiln Lane to the Basingstoke Road) 12:10
The Basingstoke Road is long and bleak and straight and unforgiving. That 11-mile marker never seems to come and I'm starting to suffer from cramp now. I'm walking more and more.

MILE 12 (Basingstoke Road to Green Park) 13:17
Ouch! This one was most uncomfortable. My legs are in agony and I'm walking most of this.

MILE 13 (Green Park to the Madejski Stadium) 11:57
From somewhere - I know not where - comes a second wind. Perhaps it's the other half of the counter-movement that I'm passing including people I passed a while back. But they look very thin on the ground - surely not all that many runners passed me? Because since the University I've kept up pretty well with a lot of the same people. The second wind doesn't carry me all the way up the Mad Stad approaches but it helps me round the outside of the stadium itself. Mile 13 comes up just as we turn into the stadium and it's a great feeling with just a hundred metres or so to go.

THE FINISH
Finishing inside the stadium is kinda special. It spurred me top put a spring on over the last fifty metres to cross the line with a big grin. And then I'm out of the stadium before I know it, to collect my space blanket, my medal and my goodie-bag. I'm not quite with it. I try to find the Radio Berkshire people but can't. I collapse in the Roadrunners tent, where I am onsumed by cramp.

Lots of people say how well I did and dismiss my sense of disappointment. After all, not that many people ever run a half-marathon, let alone two within twelve months of taking up running at the age of 50!

Take Me To Your Leader!

2006-04-06T15:08:00.000+01:00

Yes, we have a fresh invasion of the Vegetables from Outer Space!

As well as a kohlrabi, this week's fruit & veg box contains:

One cauliflower
One Sweet Mama squash (I really don't know what to do with all these squashes - ideas, anybody?)
Two avocados (yummy!)
Three courgettes
A box of cherry tomatoes
A bag of red russian kale (I have learned to love kale)
Six bananas (all ready for the Half-Marathon then)
Seven Royal Gala apples
Four pears of unspecified variety (but they look an unusual pink colour

Looks like a good week then!

Countdown to Reading: 4 days to go

2006-04-05T20:42:00.000+01:00

I am reprimanded: I haven't reported on progress for a long time now.

Training has been spasmodic I'm afraid. A lot of this is to do with the cold weather that just goes on and on - not that we've had a lot of snow and ice, but the northerly and north-easterly winds have been unrelenting, and training becaomes an unpleasant experience.

So I'm not as fit as I should be. It's not that I get puffed out, or that my legs ache. I principal there';s not a lot wrong, but I haven't felt anything like as motivated as I did before Brighton last November.

That said, I'm fitter than I was before the Wokingham Half-Marathon two months ago, and I finished that in the cold and the rain. I didn't really want to know my time for that , but the Reading Roadrunners newsletter has recorded my Personal Best for a half-marathon, 2:36:25.

Reading should be a different matter. It's a much bigger race for a start. And there will be crowds to cheer me on. There will be hills too - Whitley Wood Road is not something I'm looking forward to, as the course climbs from the Kennet valley to the heights of Whiteknights Park. There's my own road too - I can't be seen slacking in front of the neighbours! But I'll be very disappointed if I don't set a new PB b y a considerable margin.

And it's not to late to sponsor me. I'm running for Bag Books again, and you can sponsor me here!

Tonight I made a long overdue visit to the Reading Roadrunners for a track night. Lots of 200 metre intervals, and I feel wrecked but I know it's done me good. Ha bloody ha!

Literacy in the Landscape

2006-03-30T15:41:00.000+01:00

IT 'literacy' is fine, then. But not, I suppose, the other sort.

I'm rather touched by this one. The writer has, I think, gone to some lengths to get 'owing to' right. But oh dear - Butt me no Butt's!

To be fair, the writer has also got this right in the body of the text but once the stable door is open...

I also like the pedantic way the writer has given St a full stop (not in normal British usage) and given bus an apostrophe (rather quaint).

[What do you mean, the idea of closing St Mary's Butts is funny? I don't understand. 'Butts' was the name given to an area of open space used for archery practice and the road - which is very wide as it was laid out for trams - is named after the butts that once stood there.]

This week's veg box

2006-03-30T15:28:00.000+01:00

It's a Small box this week. It contains

1 bag of potatoes (variety Orla)
1 bag of carrots
1 lettuce (but I never know what to do with these)
1 bag of cherry tomatoes (nice!)
2 leeks
1 cauliflower
1 bag of spring greens

The leeks and cauli are destined for soup. The spring greens will find themselves cooked up with onions and some Polish sausage.

Any other ideas?

Foodiness

2006-03-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

For the Annual Dinner of the Reading Writers - which takes the form of a pot luck supper in recent years - I made some cheese and potato pierogi and some spicy tomato sauce to go with them.

The pierogi - a Polish speciality somewhere between ravioli and a cornish pasty - were well-enough liked, but the tomato sauce went down a storm.

I suppose you want the recipe, don't you?

Oh, all right then...

SPICY TOMATO SAUCE

You need:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 dried chillies, seeds removed
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 400g tin of tomatoes
150 ml vegetable stock
1 Tbsp tomato purée
A pinch of brown sugar
1 Tbsp dried basil (a handful of torn fresh leaves is better if you have them)
salt and pepper to taste
1 shot glass dry vermouth

Cook the onion and chilli gently in the hot oil for 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and garlic, cover and simmer for 10 minutes

Add the stock, tomato purée, basil, sugar, salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Tip the lot into the blender and whizz until smooth.

When ready to use, add the vermouth and reheat.

Do you want the pierogi as well?

CHEESE AND POTATO PIEROGI

For the Pierogi:
150 g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 egg
water to mix

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and break the egg into it. Mix it up together from the middle out, adding water a little at a time until you have a dough that is soft but not sticky. Cover with a damp cloth and leave somewhere cool for an hour or so.

For the filling:

150 g potatoes, peeled
1 Tbsp ricotta or other curd cheese
Lashings of grated (proper) cheddar cheese (the more the better)

Boil the potatoes. Drain and mash with the ricotta and CHeddar.
That's it.

Now:

Take a small amount of the dough and roll it out very thinly on a floured board. Cut out circles with an 80mm (or thereabouts) pastry cutter. Repeat until the dough is used up.

Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each circle. Moisten the edge of the circle. Fold over and seal with a fork.

Add the pierogi a few at a time to briskly boiling water for 5 minutres. Remove with a slotted spoon when done.

Serve with tomato sauce.

Enjoy.

Literacy in the Landscape (2)

2006-03-28T15:54:00.000+01:00

I know a lot of people think the "due to/owing to" distinction is a lost cause, but even so you'd think the lawyers drafting a formal legal declaration would get it right, wouldn't you?

('due to' is an adjective phrase and can only qualify a noun or noun phrase. The rule is: if in doubt use 'owing to'. And if you don't know the difference, us' because of'.)

Literacy in the Landscape (1)

2006-03-28T12:55:00.000+01:00

Now I have this phone that takes pictures I have to find an excuse to used it, don't I? And this new project is not only where it comes into its own, but also lets me start something about one of the more irritatingly buzzy creatures in my headgear.

Like this one, on a minibus parked outside my house this morning:

If you pull Handel, do you hear the Water Music?

And this one, in the window of Partyland - a tacky shop in Reading's main drag:

Never were so many greengrocer's [sic] seen together in one place!

Back to the Birch Trees

2006-03-21T23:32:00.000Z

Three years ago I visited the place of the birch trees - Brzezinka - near the industrial town of Oświęcim in southern Poland. So what, you might say. Until you hear the German version of those names. Under Nazi occupation, Brzezinka became Birkenau, and Oświęcim became Auschwitz.

Naturally IK took some pictures. Only black and white, I felt, would do justice to the place. I shot it on 400 ASA Fomapan - film of Czech manufacture available cheaply in Poland - and developed them shortly after I came home. It's taken me three years to get them printed, partly because of the emotional power of the images, but now it has been done. You can see more here

Life can never be quite the same after visiting Auschwitz.

A Good Swim Ruined

2006-03-17T13:16:00.000Z

It's too cold and miserable to run today, so I went for a swim instead.

Normally I enjoy my swim, but today was one of those days when everything goes wrong, I don't get the support I think I deserve, and I end up feeling angry, frustrated, and cheated.

First of all was the older bloke who wasn't going to let anybody or anything interrupt his rhythm. When somebody is in my path I slow down and/or take evasive action. Every time this clown passed me or crossed he kicked me. When he approached a turn just behind me he barged me out of the way. I complained to a young lifeguard who attempted to speak to him at the end of his length, but the guy just ignored him. Eventually I waited for him to finish a length and then obstructed him so he was foirced to stop. He whinged about having only two lengths to go until his fifty, and I said I wasn't stopping him swimming fifty lengthys, just asking him to stop and speak to the lifeguard as he had been swimming dangerously. He muttered something about me getting in his way, and swam off again. I asked the lifeguard if he was going to take action. The lifeguard said he wasn't, and he wasn't going to talk to me any more. I asked to speak to his line manager and he just walked away.

So I went to find the manager, and discussed the matter with him. He had a quick word with the lifeguard and the guy in the pool, but it didn't sem to be any form of reprimand.

And then there were a bunch of kids in the pool. Now, we've only just had half term, and Easter is still a month away, so presumably these kids were twagging off school. I had resumed my swim and these lads were jumping off the end, once deliberately right in front of me. I complained again to the lifeguard, who told me that they were entitled to do this. One of the kids - an Ed Grundy lookalike (I don't know what the car-thieving, drug-dealing, burgling, wife-and-child-stealing oik fom The Archers looks like but I imagine him to hava a long face, a short intellect, acne and no sense of his own worthlessness, just like the lad in the pool) - then started to shout abuse. I left the pool again to complain. The kid got out too, and went to throw a punch at me. He was led away. A huddle of staff gathered around me. It was all my fault, appaently.

Grrrrr!

This week's Veg Box

2006-03-09T14:55:00.000Z

I've also been lax about reporting my veg box lately. It's being unwell as does it. Anyway, this week's fruit and veg box has arrived within the last ten minutes, and contains:

Three heads of calabrese brocolli
Two very small red cabbages
A box of mushrooms
A box of four tomatoes
Four courgettes
Two garlic bulbs
Six mandarin oranges
Four navel oranges
Six bananas
A kohl rabi

The last time I tried a kohl rabi I was less than impressed. I'm a sucker for buying things that look intriguing and the kohl rabi - a cross between a turnip, a cabbage and a being from outer space - is the most outlandish of all. When I cooked it though, it just tssted bland. I'l try again and see how I get on.

Riverford are struggling to fill the box with local produce. This is because of the unusually dry and cold winter and the late spring. It's all very well insisting on local produce and I do when that's reasonable, but I don't believe in austerity for the sake of it and in depressing weather I need something to cheer me up. Only the mushrooms and the cabbages in this assortment are UK-sourced and I can't be doing with just that!

Countdown to Reading: 31 days to go

2006-03-09T12:54:00.000Z

It's been a while since I reported on progress. That's because not much has been happening.

At the end of last week I had a relapse of my bug and I'm still snuffly, so I've been easing up and taking it easy until I can shake it off. Until today, anyway, the weather has been vile; wet, windy and cold. Today the temperature has risen markedly but it's raining again.

I have been swimming though, just to make sure I keep in trim. Yesterday I swam another personal best - fifty lengths of the Central Pool. I'm well within my capacity too, it's boredon rather than tiredness that finishes me off, although I find I can switch off altogether in a way I can't when I'm running. The other thing I've noticed is that I'm no longer the slowest in the pool, I'm overtaking other swimmers regularly!

I woke up in the night with awful cramps in the backl of my calves though. I don't know if there's a connection.

Backsliding

2006-03-03T16:09:00.000Z

I woke up feeling like shit today. Sore throat, clogged sinuses, no voice.

So I didn't run. I didn't run on Wednesday either, seeing as when I went to set off for Palmer Park at 5.30 it was blowing an blizzard outside. With five weeks to go before a half marathong though, I don't want to get right out of it.

And besides, it's two years to the day since I stopped smoking, and I couldn't cop out on that of all days, could I?

So I went swimming. Forty lengths of the Central Pool - a personal best. I'm no great swimmer so it took a long time but I'm sure it must have done me some good!

Back to work

2006-02-24T11:19:00.000Z

It's nearly two weeks now since I ran, and the Reading Half Marathon is six weeks away.

The last outing was, of course, a thirteen-and-a-bit trot around the lanes between Wokingham and Twyford which I shouldn't have done. I'm not really supposed to go out again yet but armed with my snazzy new Polar FS2c heart rate monitor I set off for a gentle 30 minutes along part of the Half Mara route (Tilehurst Road, Liebensrood Road, Bath Road) aiming to keep my heart rate at or about 130bpm.

It all went fine for the first two miles and I was feeling good, but after about 20 minutes I had a coughing fit that set the rate way up so, the better part of valour being discretion, I stopped and walked the rest of the way home.

Anyway, I guess I'm on the mend and soon I'll be back to normal, and meanwhile things aren't all that bad. There's plenty of time until the race.

Imitations of Immortality

2006-02-23T08:27:00.000Z

The presentation and workshop on Parody I gave to the Reading Writers last night was a bit of a mixed bag. Much of the work that came from the workshop element was excellent. Members were invited to write a scene from a hard-boiled crime novel in the style of P G Wodehose, or a scene from P G Wodehouse in the style of Raymond Chandley, or either genre in the style of Jane Austen, or (for those really stuck) a parody of any writer they admired.

I'll be posting some of the best results on the website. Tony, an elderly ex-lawyer who sometimes seems to in this world but not of it, was in his element here and clearly relished the task and his Wodehousian vignette on Hollywood Boulevard was a delight.

On the other hand, it became abundently clear that I'd made a misjudgement somewhere. In my presentation, which I struggled through with a sore throat, I aimed to show that parody had a long and respectable history and went through a set of examples from the young Jane Austen to Wendy Cope. And I could see eyes glaze over. the earthy Don, at my right elbow, indulged in a bit of sledging, this was far too hoity-toity for him.

One of my points is that parody works best when you recognise what is being parodied, and I have always assumed that those who would write would also love reading widely and would recognise a variety of well-known styles from literature. That's what misfired - Hugh Kingsmill's Housman parody drew blank looks from all but Tony - I thought Housman was a well-known, distinctive style. As for the supreme parodist, James Joyce, this extract (which I find very funny indeed) fell as flat as a dead hedgehog:

What action did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?
At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey

Was it there?
It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.

Why was he doubly irritated?
Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.

What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?
To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.

A man has arrived home and discovered he's forgotten his keys. It doesn't need a lot of this kind of high-flown language, and how pretentious and out-of-touch with Ordinary People Mr Joyce must be. But of course, Mr Joyce the master of language knows better than anybody that you don't need high-flown language to describe everyday things. But not so the Church - and Joyce trained as a priest, so he should know (he was also a fine singer and relished words - the passage works best whe read out loud in a Dublin accent). He's taking the piss out of the Roman Catholic Catechism, of course.

I need to rethink. When this kind of thing happens the negative thoughts cut in and I tend to feel isolated and defensive.

Just A Face in the Crowd

2006-02-20T17:20:00.000Z

I had my final session with my counsellor this morning. I'm not sure how beneficial it's been. I guess I got something out of it in the limited time available, and ideas to work on, but I don't think I've got close to the underlying problems and I seem to have run out of support.

As ever, it all comes down to the way I interact with the people around me, or to be more precise the way I feel invisible in many social situations. Yes, I know many people who know me are surprised by this. This is why I need therapy or at least counselling to get to the bottom of it.

Verity the counsellor (no relation to Verity the Detective Inspector) thinks I should write about it more.

We were talking today about going to conferences, particularly those which are spread over several days. The Open University summer schools that I went to in the 1980s and early 1990s are an excellent example, I think. On arrival on the Saturday afternoon I was fine. I used to get myself sorted out and then mingle happily with the new arrivals, and not have any problems. I'd go to icebreaker events and chat happily with a variety of people. And then after a couple of days I'd find that, without my realising it, the people around me had 'clumped' into social affinity groups and I wasn't part of any of them. So I felt lonely, and depressed, and unloved.

Something similar tends to happen in a shorter time scale at parties. Well, tended to happen because I haven't been invited to a party for many years. I mingle happily with the early guests, but later on people have formed into clumps and I'm not part of any of them. So I drift from clump to clump and try to be accepted, but I feel frozen out. So I feel lonely and isolated and unwanted, and presumably dull and uninteresting.

And there's the rub. Dull and uninteresting. It happens, with subtle variations, with groups on the 'net too, where I'm not actually meeting people. Where others are feted for their wise words and scintillating wit, my own contributions and witticisms fall down dead. Now, I happen to think that I'm more than averagely bright but then I feel I'm not really supposed to say that because it's arrogant and it's not in my script. Just as, when I was at school, it was never to be my part to be praised for anything and I was supposed to sit quietly and the back and applaud my peers for their brilliance, so it's not my place now to be brilliant, I should just praise the brilliance of othere who may blow their own trumpets without accusations of arrogance.

Do I make sense? And if I don't, would you like to point out the flaw in my logic?

Perhaps I should check what I was posting four weeks ago.

The daft things we do in pursuance of leisure

2006-02-19T19:47:00.000Z

I may be unfit to run at the moment but marshalling the Bramley 20/10 was supposed to have been a way of keeping in touch with my club, the Reading Road Runners who were organising it, and still having a week off to recover from this bug.

I wsa up bright and early and dressed against the cold with lots of layers and my recently retired running shoes on my feet, amd on the train to Bramley. Lack of wheels wouldn't, I though, have mattered as I was down to run the water station at the end of the race, so conveniently close to Bramley station. Anyway, me being good and early the head honcho buttonholes me and tells me I'm needed somewhere else as someone has reported sick. 'Somewhere' is initially just down the hill and round the corner from the station where I was to join Helen, whom I didn't think I knew, in protecting the first rush of runners from Chelsea tractors lurking in the side road. Well, that was no problem, since I'd be even closer to the station. But then once the starters had gone by Helen and I were to race widdershins roan the course to guard the spot where the Devil's Highway (the old Roman Road, m'lud, from Londinium to Calleva Atrebatum) cuts across the route just before the 18/8 mile marker.

That wasn't so bad. The sky was overcast but it was dry and not too cold. For twenty-five minutes Helen and I chatted up some memvers of the Tadley club come to cheer on their mates. Then the first two runners came thundering by, one on the other's shoulder (but they were in two different races). Then a gap before the thrird runner. Then a long gap, until the pack came through, in a trickle at firts then thick and fast, then thinning out towards the tail. Then they became scanty again.

Early on I shouted "Come on Road Runners" to anybody and everybody in the green vest with the two blue diagonal stripes (and as I hadn't got my glasses on, quite a few runners in vaguely green vests from other clubs). As I got to know the other colours I cheered them on too - "Come on Plymouth!" "Way to go, Eastleigh" "Well run St Albans!". And I clapped everybody else. I clapped until my hands were raw, but at least it kept my hands warm.

And then hardly had the last plodder gone by for the first time (and Helen and I has a chance to take turns having a loo break) when the leader came through - alone this time as he'd shed his pursuer at the end of the 10 mile race. Then a gap - not so long that both runners couldn't be seen at once but long enough to know that barring a catastrophe the leader wasn't going to be caught. Then a longer gap before the third, and then two together. A gap before the sixth and then they started coming, though not in a pack now.

It wasn't until a quarter past two, more than two hours after the leader had passed for the second time, that the last runner passed, saying "I bet you're glad to see me!" And we were, because while the 20 mile winner would just about have got home in the dry, it had been raining more and more insistently for most of those two hours. Helen and I were just glad to get into her car and drive back to Reading to get warm and have something to eat. We got on just fine in the end. I now have a snazzy hat in luminous yellow!

Lots of runners took the trouble to acknowledge our cheers and even to call out thanks to the marshals. I regret to say that the further back the runners were, the more they were incliuned to do this. The front runners just ignored us. Probably too busy contemplating their own egos to acknowledge that without people like me and Helen and dozens of other Reading Road Runners prepared to give up their Sunday lie-in to hang around a lonely crossroads for three hours in the February rain.

Ah well, believe it or not, I enjoyed it.

Never Again! (until the next time)

2006-02-12T17:48:00.000Z

I should never have started in the Wokingham Half-Marathon today.

Wiser virgins would have taken account of the fact that I've been trying to shake off a bug for a couple of weeks now, my recent training has been crap, and last Thursday I reported to the Royal Berkshire with an acute asthma attack and spent a couple of hourse attached to a nebuliser and tying up a triage bed.

But I did start. And hey, look what I've got!

In truth, this was no Brighton-like triumph. My running sucked. I finished behind the pack with the stragglers (but by no means last) in 2 hours and 33 minutes. The official result will add three or four minutes to this because this race wasn't chipped and it took that three or four minutes to get from the back of the pack to the start line - the worst thing about this generally extremely well-organised even was the severe congestion at the start, both before and afterwards going thorugh a bottleneck. However, that is no matter, and neither is my knowledge that I could have doen a lot better had I been properly fit (I wasn't, so it's no good speculating.)

The important thing is that I girded up my loins against the weather (wet and cold) ang generally feeling crap, and I FINISHED. 21 kilometres! 13.1 miles! Significantly further than I've ever run before!

At one mile, before I'd even completed the opening lap of Cantley Park, my lungs were fit to buirst and I needed to take my first walk break.

At two miles I had severe doubts about whether I should have started, and nearly stopped there and then.

At three miles I was losiong the pack, whci was what I wanted to avoid. From the bridge over the M4 I looked back and saw the sweeper buses a long way behind me. This cheered me up somewhat. From here I settled into a run-walk routine and concentrated on getting myself round the course and not getting swept at the 6 and 10 mile marks.

At four miles I saw the front runners, five miles ahead of me now, on their way back to the finish.

By the five-mile marker I'd fallen in with an number of other runners and we started to play tag. I started to find a rhythm at lasdt, although still run-walking.

At six miles I waved past a support vehicle that stopped to ask if I needed help. At this point I realised I'd almost emulated the Brighton run and was still going, although it had taken me twenty minutes longer than Brighton.

At six and a half miles, the halfway mark, we were weaving through Hurst and I was lagging behind my group. But I found a second wind from somewhere. From here on the mile markers fairly flew by. I refused to let myself walk past a marker, nor a gatheriong of marshalls, police or ambulance crew.

At eight miles I was back with my group and some others had joined us. We were still playing tag, taking turns to set the pace and being supportive. I knew now I had enough puff to see it through.

At ten miles I really felt I'd already achieved something and was within striking distance of home. I'd done the ten miles in under two hours too, so that meant I wouldn't suffer the ignominy of being swept if the marshalls chose to do so.

And then between ten and eleven miles, it dawned on me that it wasn't puff that was going to defeat me if anything did. My legs were beginning to turn to jelly.

At twelve miles I was beginning to limp a little. But with just a mile to go, how could I stop?

I walked a lot of that last mile. I was feeling the first twinges of cramp, and I wanted to save as much as I could for the final run to the finish. And I diod finish in style, I think, even though most of the crowd had gone home by this time.

What made the day most memorable, though, was the cheerfulness and constant encouragement of the race officials, ambulance crews and police. They were all magnificent.

It's a much nicer medal than the Brighton one, too!

...

Cross-fertilisation

2006-02-09T21:50:00.000Z

My friend Julie Cohen and I decided to try an experiment, and at the same time attempt to pull a fast one on the Reading Writers group. Each of us is quite at home in our chosen genre; crime for me, erotic romance for her. But what would happen if we changed over? We thought we'd each submit a first chapter in the other's chosen genre to the group's manuscript evening, and see what happened and who noticed.

Julie has reported on her experience of trying to write crime here. As for me, I also find that the exercise was curiously fruatrating. Where Julie found it difficult to write crime fiction seriously and veered towards a ghost story where she felt instinctively more comfortable, I found myself veering towards parody. I could only really make progress by satirising the form and shovelling in the clichés.

As it happened, the Reading Writers were no fools and had us sussed quickly. I'm never going to be a serious writer of romance but it was great fun trying, and I learned a lot. And if I can't take the genre terribly seriously that doesn't mean I hold it in contempt or despise the craft of its writers. Far from it - my respect for them has grown considerably.

And as with all forms of creation, cross-fertilisation makes for health and viability.

On the other hand...

2006-02-03T18:25:00.000Z

Just to show that I'm not biased, here are three cartoons that were printed by newspapers in Saudia Arabia (first two) and Qatar.

I don't know about you, but I find those pretty offensive. Equating Israel with the swastika is particularly crass. Much more so than the innocuous Danish cartoons. As far as I know, though, nobody has blockaded the European empassies of Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Nor have there been riots in the streets, or threats against citizens of those countries. And certainly no apologies from the countries concerned.

I rest my case, m'lud.

No Lego

2006-02-02T14:14:00.000Z

Eighteen years ago, when I could still afford to buy hardback novels, I bought a copy of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie a week or so before its official publ;ication date. I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I'd read and enjoyed it again before it became apparent that there was something controversial about it. It even had me intrigued about Islam. I might have begun to explore it.

Then people began burning copies of it in the streets of Bradford, and then further afield. Now, I don't like books being burned, however I feel about the contents, so I was appalled by this. Then it got worse - the fanatical theocrats in Iran passed a death sentence on the author. This was too much - I co-sponsored a motion at my Constituency Labour Party in support of Salman Rushdie and his right to literary freedopm, and was shouted down and called a racist for my trouble.

Well, dammit, I don't see why I should feel ashamed of living in the tradition of the European Enlightenment. It's a good tradition, dammit. Nowhere else has found a better one. I feel offended by people who call my society 'decadent' and and 'immoral' - especially when those who call it so are those who find it expedient to reap its benefits for themselves. Actually I feel offended when people lob mortars at Jewish nursery schools, or blow up teenagers going to a dance or scientists enjoying a dri8nk in a bar. I'm furious when women are denied the right to work and to associate freely, and forced to wear sacks over their heads. I get angry when evangelical 'christians' murder doctors or demosntrate outside theatrical performances, or sikhs riot in the streets in objection to a theatrical performance. I hate it when film-makers are stabbed to death in the street for helping to make a film critical of the treatment of women in a particular religion. And I think it's almost the worst thing in the world. Only almost because the one thing worse is authority standing by and letting it happen.

And now, there's uproar because a Danish newspaper published some fairly innocuous cartoons satirising Islam. There are threats of economic boycotts of Danish goods, and Paletinian headbangers have taken time out from blowing up Jewish children to blockade the EU mission in Gaza and thraten to kill any Danes they meet. And what do the authorities in enlightened Europe do? They stand back and let it happen, and instead of condemning the control freaks of the Islamic world they condemn the free European press for being free. The owners of France-Soir even sacked the paper's editor for daring to run the cartoons.

Well, I'm pissed off with all this, and just to prove it, I'm posting the 'offensive' cartoons here.

Offended by that? Tough. Get a life. Chill out with a Danish bacon sandwich and a beer.

An Appeal

2006-01-31T15:01:00.000Z

Will the anonymous poster who talked about codependency in a reply to yesterday's blog please make yourself know to me. I want to ask you somthing.

Ten books every schoolchild should read

2006-01-31T13:34:00.000Z

The Royal Society of Literature invited the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Philip Pullman and Joanne Rowling to nominate ten books that every child should read before they leave school. And good grief, what a kerfuffle it's caused!

Especially Professor Motion's list. Don Quixote? Tut! The Portrait of a Lady? Heavens! Ulysses? Whatever next?! Elitist! Pretentious! Boring! Irrelevant!

When I was sixteen I had a copy of D H Lawrence's Women In Love in my locker. Originally I thought I'd got hold of something mucky but I did read it. I found it wasn't mucky at all but I did enjoy it and it haunted me for some time afterwards. I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed The Rainbow, though, or Sons and Lovers, or for that matter Wuthering Heights, or Brighton Rock, or The Grapes of Wrath, or indeed The Portrait of a Lady. I read all of those at about the same time. And no, I wasn't studying English A-Level, I was doing sciences and only recently I'd failed O-Level Eng. Lit! All of those books I have read several times since, and none of them have ever lost their magic. Jane Eyre took me a shamefully long time to come round to, and I didn't read it until I was in my 30s (and when I did I read it in a sitting on a sunny afternoon lying on the grass in Kensington Gardens. Ulysses took me until my 30s too, and that took me four months to read, but gracious me, how it lingers in the memory, so much so that when I visited Dublin for the first time, fifteen years later, Dublin came alive through its lens. Even Dublin a hundred years on.

As Andrew Motion says, these are not easy books, but they are challenging, and there's nothing wrong with a challenge. That, I think, is what has gone wrong with our educatiuon system in recent years. Expectations have become too low. We mustn't allow children to be confronted anything that they might find difficult. They might be traumatised by it, made to feel a failure and blighted for the est of their lives. This, of course, is nonsense - you never really do anything well until you've made a frightful hash of it - and the result is a remote-control generation growing up with narrow horizons and the attention span of a gnat. Nor should children only be expected to read what is 'relevant' - in my childhood 'relevant' meant living in a tower block with a mother who worked night-shifts and a drunken father, which was rather remoter from my experience than was Isabel Archer's London.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs Nicholson, who taught me in what would now be called Year Six, my last year of Junior School. In the weeks leading up to Christmas she read to the class from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. We loved it, of course. And then she pulled her master stroke. Those cat poems were written by a man called T S Eliot, who also wrote this. And for Christmas she read us The Journey of the Magi. I was gobsmacked! I don't think I've ever understood The Waste Land, even when I studied it for an Honours-level OU course, but that hardly matters, because the sheer beauty of the poetry is unforgettable, and there are new things to discover about it with every reading. Which is as good literature should be.

All this is not to say that children should only read 'classics'. There is good writing coming out all the time, although it's hard to see it sometimes in the torrent of low-level tripe. Nor should it be said that children or anybody else should not read 'genre' fiction. That's ridiculous - I read mountains of genre fiction and I write it too, so I hope lots of people will read it. But the merit of a classic canon is that tghey are books that are known to endure. Others will be added to the list with the passage of time.

Yopu want me to offer my own list of books every child should read before they leave school, don't you? Well, I want to as well. Here goes:

William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Robert Browning: Men and Women
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus
Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon

(And as with all lists, it's painful having to leave things out.)

Effluent from a putrid brain

2006-01-30T13:10:00.000Z

I went to see my counsellor this morning.

The reason I see a counsellor is that I have Issues and because I keep badgering for some service from the Mental Health services. Grudgingly, I'm allowed six measly sessions with a counsellor and I've just had to have an eight-week layoff between the second and third. If I were dross from Whitley Wood I supppose I'd not only have free access to the mental health services but also a social worker to pat me on the head and tell me that if it weren't for the bourgeoisie grinding me under the collective boot I'd be a professor of philosophy.

But I digress. Actually, that little outburst is a part of my Issues. I feel alienated as an intelligent woman from a society that despises intelligence - dismissing it, for example, as 'elitist' and 'pretentious' and 'middle-class', none of which is intended as a compliment. If it's not populist it ain't worth shit. 'The Lord of the Rings' is the greatest novel ever written and the works of Henry James and James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are 'boring' and 'pretentious'. An expensive and overlong remake of 'King Kong' is obviously superior to the 1933 original because it's in colour and is full of technowankery. The upshot of this is that I can't go to se a decent film. 'The Constant Gardener' may be up for a hatful of Academy Awards but it only got a one-week run at the only cinema in town. I feel alineated from my camera club because nobody is interested in working with film any more, except me (hell, I enjoy the process - digital ain't the same and the quality ain't as good). I love opera, but can I go? Can I hell. In Italy every self-respecting town has an opera house. Not in culturally uncouth Britain though. And heaven forbid that seats at Covent Garden should be subsidised, that would guarantee an outcry from the populists. And whatever happened to the live theatre?

Because I feel isolated I feel angry. Some of that anger goes very deep. On a bad day it comes out as blind, boiling rage, often out of a blue sky. It happens generally when I feel belittled, cut, put down, or otherwise made to feel worthless. It happens in a gathering when I start to say something and somebody else cuts in as if I weren't there (my mother used to do this at family meals). My strategy in then past has either been to shut up, and feel resentful at being cut out, or to raise my voice so that I can be heard. The latter is me trying not to be invisible (or deliberately ignored) but also tends to escalate the tension. So I need another strategy for coping with that. (It also happens in net communications too, where I feel my offerings are being ignored, or that they are dull and clunky and not very bright so they can be dismissed). The anger boils up, too, when I feel put down by some uncouth stanger, like the young man who abused me the other day when I asserted my right to cross Chatham Stret against his assumed right to carry on going. He was about twenty and non-too-bright, whatever made him think I would defer to him?

I suppose I'm just depressed and in need of some TLC. But if you are reading this and you recognise what I have said, spare a thought.

Aaaaargh!

2006-01-25T12:52:00.000Z

I've been grounded for a week! And I'm on the waggon!

The doc says I should take a rest from running for a week. He's also put me on a course of Erythromycin to shift the chest infection that's been exacerbating my asthma.

At least I can swim to keep exercised.

Countdown to Wokingham: a further report

2006-01-24T22:28:00.000Z

I was out for 40 minutes this morning.

It was crap. I was panting hard after less than ten minutes, even though I was taking it slowly. I had to stop for a walk break several times. My legs feel strong, it's the breathing that's the problem

I'll be going to the doctor in the morning. I hope he'll be able to do something about this background chestiness. Apart from that, things can only get better.

Coundown to Wokingham: 19 days to go

2006-01-24T09:59:00.000Z

I've been a bad girl and haven't journalled for a couple of days.

So I didn't mention that on Sunday I ran for 65 minutes. Down the Kennet, round Palmer Park and back down Wokingham Road and home.

It wasn't good. My asthma was bad - triggered by the low-grade cold which is bugging me lately - and in the first half of the run I was struggling. After that I slowed right down and finished in reasonable comfort.

I'll be going out again shortly, so expect another report later.

Countdown to Wokingham: 23 Days to Go

2006-01-20T13:18:00.000Z

Last night I even dreamed about running.

It was one of those dreams where you try to run but your legs feel dead and useless and you can't move. Disturbing. Scary, even.

I don't know what I'd been doing physically while I was dreaming (I believe that the body is effectively paralysed while dreaming anyway) but when I woke up my left leg hurt like hell. I did wonder whether I ought to run at all today.

After I'd padded about for a bit the pain subsided leaving only the ache in my quads from the other night. So I thought I'd test the leg and if it was ok I'd do 40 minutes at a brisk but not falt-out pace. And that's what I did, barring one very short walk break while I took a snort of Ventolin.

I ran through the back streets to Caversham Bridge. Then I crossed the bridge, which is a bit of an arch so I had my short pause at the end of it. From there I ran down thenorth bank of the Thames to View Island, across the island and lock, and then back to Caversham Bridge by the south bank and thence home.

42 minutes altogether. I feel fine.

Supporting Independence

2006-01-19T17:23:00.000Z

I needed a tub of emulsifying ointment (it makes great moisturiser; it's what keeps me young-looking and a 500g tub costs £3.50 lasts a year!) So, mindful of my New Year resolution, instead of going to Boots I went instead to my local independent pharmacy, Saood on Oxford Road.

Saood is run by a Muslim man who dresses in full Muslim garb and goes to the mosque on a Friday. He's a very nice Muslim man. I often see him out on the street and he never fails to smile and say hello. There's also a woman I assume to be his wife. She is English and white, and has adopted the Muslim dress including headscarf. She is also very pleasant. I have never had any complaints about the shop, the service is always friendly and courteous.

I do get queasy about one thing though. One corner of the shop, by the door, is dedicated to a selection of Muslim literature. I had a browse through some of this, especially as it related to women. It is depressing and it is scary. One book is called "Why Most Women Will Go To Hell". Another tells how women like "English ways", which are of course immoral and corrupt. So they must be protected by being given a proper Muslim education and kept isolated from the depraved English.

In this country we recognise the right of all people to free association. We also recognise the right to believe what you want, not what you are told to. If some people don't like that, they don't have to stay here.

Food is comforting too

2006-01-19T17:02:00.000Z

In case you thought I was a healthy food zealot (and nobody who knows me at all well would think so) let me say that I also made a batch of Ginger Nuts. I've heard it said that it's not worth making biscuits because bought ones are so good. I beg to differ - I am zealous in my resistance to factory food, and these home-made biscuits are quite different from anything in the supermarket.

You want the recipe don't you? Of course you do!

GINGER NUTS

500g self-raising flour
250g unsalted butter
150g golden syrup
125g soft brown sugar
100g chopped glacé ginger
4tsp ground ginger
4tsp bicarbonate of soda

Mix the flour, sugar, ground ginger and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl, making sure all lumps are removed.

Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan, then add to the mixture in the bowl. Add the glacé ginger and mix to a dough.

Pull off walnut-sized pieces of dough and roll them into a ball. Flatten them slightly between the palms, and place on a greased baking sheet with plenty of space between each one. Bake for 20 minutes at 150C.

You will probably have to bake the biscuits in batches.

What in this week's veg box?

2006-01-19T16:22:00.000Z

It's a Fruit and Veg box this week. Here's what we have:

Avocados: Two of these, fairly small. I'm minded to make some guacamole.
Aubergine: The most beautiful of fruits. It breaks my heart to cut one of these open and cook it. I could do a moussaka I suppose but it's more likely that I will turn to Ursula Ferrigno's indispensible book Real Fast Vegetarian Food. I love this book - it was the first book to convince me that vegetarian food doesn't have to be worthy-but-dull.
Mushrooms: I suppose mushrooms are one of the few things that can be produced locally all the year round. Always useful to have around anyway, although these days I find I preger a bag of dried forest mushrooms from the deli.
Cauliflower:. Hmm. I haven't used up the last one yet. I think there'll be cauliflower soup in the menu soon.
Red cabbage: Another timely reminded that it's a greta time to make bigos, the Polish hunter's stew.
Ginger: At last, a piece of ginger root, without which so many stews and casseroles are not complete! This has been the only vegetable I've had to resort to the supermarket for since I started getting the boxes.
Purple sprouting broccoli: You can tell it's the low season for vegetables.
Apples: These are imported organic Braeburns - crisp and sweet. Dumbed-down oranges. Small and with a hint of bitterness.
Bananas: I like these organic bananas. They come from a cooperative in the Dominican Republic. They are small and sweet and go well in my porrage.

Countdown to Wokingham: 24 Days to Go

2006-01-19T16:03:00.000Z

It's a little over three weeks until the Wokingham Half-Marathon, and I don't really feel up to it.

After last Sunday my left knee felt a bit tender, especially after I turned suddenly in the kitchen, so I rested it for a couple of days. Last night I thought I'd put it to the test at the Reading Roadrunners. That seemed a good idea as there would be plenty of people about if I needed support and I could pull out at any time.

I go off to a bad start. I almost didn't finish my first warm-up lap as I got breathless very quickly. After the session got going properly I did another two warm-up laps and that was better. I did them quite fast too - coach Pete said I was 'going great guns'. Then the stretches amd mobility exercises went well, and a session of four laps alternate jogs and strides felt good. I was tearing along the straights and my knee was holding up fine.

Then came the killer. Half an hour of leg exercises, a mixture of running up and down the steps in the stand interspersed with different kinds of squats. Ouch! OUch! Ouch! By the time we were dispatched for four laps of warm-down my legs had turned to jelly.

I slept deeply and all day today I've been stiff and aching in my knees and quads. Not pain though. I think my knees will be ok. Touch wood.

The Ultimate Gaming System

2006-01-16T14:10:00.000Z

It fits easily into the palm of the hand. It comes bundled with hundreds of games, some of them for solo play, some for exciting multi-player real-time interactive play. It's very reasonably priced, if you can find it. But it's very hard to find.

I went looking for a pack of cards this morning. Not that I actually needed one at the moment but I wanted to know where to get one when I do. Nothing fancy. Just plain, standard backs. Nothing promotional. Nothing with Harry Potter or Star Wars characters in place of the court cards. Not Pokemon or Top Trumps or other collecting cards. Not in a big box with plastic poker chips and your own green eyeshade. Just a pack of playing cards. Simple enough, really.

I did find a source. Tucked away at the remotest corner of the top floor of John Lewis, with the childrens toys.

Well, you can't make a fat profit from playing cards, can you? You can't market a New Improved Hi Tech version every Christmas and make parents feel mean for not buying one at great expense. You can't tie it in with fast food or reality TV.

What depresses me almost as much as the lack of availability of simple pleasures is the sheer gullibility of a public which lets itself be manipulated by the marketing oiks. They should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Rosie on the Road

2006-01-15T21:42:00.000Z

I nearly forgot to log my run!

Today I was scheduled to run for 90 minutes, the longest yet. In the end I kept going for nearly 100 minutes, although there were a few walk breaks.

I climbed up to the University via the long hill of Redlands Road (although I walked the last and severest part of that) and ran across the campus and down Bulmershe Road. Then a circuit of Palmer Park and through New Town to Kennet Mouth. Over the horseshoe Bridge and home via View Island and Caversham Bridge.

I think I may have injured my knee slightly. It ached after I got home and I had a sharp pain when I twisted on it in the kitchen later. Some rest is required.

2006 Reading List (2) - Janet Evanovich: One For The Money

2006-01-15T19:36:00.000Z

New Jersey girl Stephanie Plum (if she were a Brit she'd wear white stilettos and operate out of Romford) is an unlikely bounty hunter. It's being absolutely skint, having her car repossessed and being reduced to sharing food with her hamster Rex instead of her accustomed diet of pastries that drives her to ask her dodgy cousin Vinnie for a job with his bail-bond agency. Vinnie doesn't have very much confidence in her but because he's short-staffed (his agents keep getting shot at), Stephanie's got a week to find her man for a $10,000 commission.

It's not that she has any trouble finding him. In fact whenever Stephanie finds herself in a hole, her quarry always seems to there to get her out of it and then humiliate her before scarpering again. And then she's got worse problems when a psychotic boxer starts to stalk her.

I really enjoyed this. It was genuinely funny without descending into farce or spoofing the genre. The holes that Stephanie falls into are believeable, and she grows on the job. I'm looking forward to reading more of Ms Plum's exploits.

Love in Death

2006-01-13T12:54:00.000Z

Of course, I can't let talk of sad deaths go without mentioning the demise of Birgit Nilsson.

Wagnerian sopranos are supposed to be immensely fat with a face like a raven's arse. Birgit was the greatest of all Wagnerian heroines and she was not at all like that.

As I write I am listening to her singing Mild und Liese (aka the Liebestod) from Tristan und Isolde. As always, Birgit's rendering of this lifts me above the grey day. I will be clutching this recording on my desert island.

Thank you Birgit!

An Empty Space

2006-01-13T11:59:00.000Z

A new term began last night for my Russian class.

It wasn't a happy reunion though. One of us was missing. David Silsoe died on New Year's Eve, of pancreatic cancer. Nobody was much interested in Russian. We wanted to talk about David.

I haven't been with the class long. Most of the others had known him longer because they had been together for two years before this one. Still, David was somebody you remember. He was very intelligent, for a start, but he didn't flaunt it. He was gently and kind and eager to help. He was the one who cheerfully gave me a lift home after each class, even though it took him out of his way back to Rotherfield Peppard, and was good company on the way

I wasn't the only one who hadn't realised he was a Lord and had been an eminent QC before his retirement. If he specialised in things that I would have fiercely opposed, that does nothing to diminish him.

The world is diminished without him.

I'm not sure I want to continue with the class. Nothing to do with the above (although that will have resonances now), it's just that I find it very frustrating. I want to press on with more reading, and the class is much too slow for me.

Rosie on the Road

2006-01-13T11:46:00.000Z

I did some intervals this morning.

Five minutes warm-up, followed by eight reps of one minute fast, one minute slow, followed by five minutes warm down.

That sounds easy. It felt like hell.

The first couple of reps were fine. After the fourth rep, I didn't jog for one minute, I walked thirty seconds and jogged thirty seconds. After the fifth and subsequent reps I walked one minute and jogged one minute. Each rep became more and more agonisiong and seemed to go on for ever.

I did it though. And I'm sure it must have done me good!

This week's veg box

2006-01-12T15:58:00.000Z

It's a Small box from Riverford this week. It contains:

One bag of potatoes - Cara, which are small and not great for mash but the do good rösti
One bag of carrots. I don't know what variety they are but they seem to be crunchier and less flavoursome than some I have had.
One bag of onions, which are rather small.
One huge celeriac. Not as huge, though, as last week's which I haven't used up yet.
Two leeks, destined for soup, possibly with the potatoes
One smallish cauliflower
One bag of kale. The list says it's red kale but it looks more like curly kale to me.
A string bag of brussels sprouts. EUGH!

In addition I got an onion bag, with decent-sized onions.

Mostly good stuff, anyway.

A bar of Coton's chocolate for anybody who can do for me and brussels sprouts what the BP staff canteen did for me and cabbage. Recipe suggestions please. My decision is final.

Rosie on the Road

2006-01-11T13:20:00.000Z

I was supposed to be doing 50 minutes tempo running - 5 minutes warm-up, two repeats of 10 minutes hard running and 10 minutes jogging, and 5 minutes warm down.

It didn't work out like that.

It was - still is - a lovely winter day. Mild and sunny. I was struggling with breathing though, right from the outset. Panting for most of the gentle warm-up. Ten minutes hard running was out fo the question. I did two, then walked for a bit while I recovered my breath. I jogged another five minutes and ran another two hard. Then I jogged down to the Southcote footbridge. That was half my session. Once over the footbridge I did something more structured - five minute chunks of three minutes jogging, one minute hard running and one minute walking, repeated five times to complete the 50 minutes. I walked for a while and finally jogged the last five minutes home.

Not good, especuially with a half-marathon in just a month.

Must do better.

Hats off, strangers!

2006-01-11T13:01:00.000Z

George Fox, the early Quaker, wrote in his Journals "When the Lord sent me forth into the world, He forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low.'

I wonder what the cantankerous Fox would have made of this story?

I'd think it was a one-off, except that a couple of years ago, when we had our office Christmas lunch at the Yates Wine Lodge, I was firmly told I had to remove my trademark black baker-boy so the CCTV could watch me, like Big Brother's telescreens. If it weren't the office lunch I'd have walked out in disgust. Not that I'd have been in Yates's in the first place.

Idiots!

Gastroblog

2006-01-10T22:29:00.000Z

My bank screwed up big-time today, and paid a standing order twice leaving me way over mu overdraft limit. They have apologised and done the decent thing but that still left me unable to go to the cashpoint. And it was cold and damp, and I was short of good things to eat.

So I went to the butcher and got what I could get most of for least, which means a bagful of assorted game. The great thing about having a butcher who is a proper licenced game dealer is that you get lots fo game at a low price, and wild meat, however cheap, beats farmed meat every time. Anyway, this was anonymous mixed game which I suspect was a mixture of rabbit and venison.

I made it into a simple, warming casserole. And it was utterly delicious. Move over Jamie, sometimes the basic peasant fare is what you need. This is how I did it - but you know how to do this, don't you?

Cut the meat into cubes and dredge in flour. Finely slice a couple of medium onions. Brown them in olive oil for five minutes or so, then add two crushed garlic cloves, a couple of dried chillies with the seeds removed, and a sprig of fresh rosemary. Stir everything about for another five minutes then transfer to the casserole dish. Put the floured meat in the frying pan and brown for five minutes. Transfer to the casserole. Add a handful of celeriac chopped into cubes to the casserole. Take the frying pan off the heat and add 250g of stock a little at a time, mixing it with the remaining flour and oil. (If I were feeling like being more elaborate I'd use beer instead of stock, and for game in particular I'd use a Belgian kriek bier). Bring to the boil and let the stock thicken, then pour into the casserole. Top up if necessary until the liquid is halfway up the other ingredients, then cover and put in the oven for a couple of hours at 180C.

I served mine with mashed potato and kale, and that seemed exactly right.

Running with Rosie

2006-01-10T12:20:00.000Z

It was a rest day for running yesterday, but it was also such a crappy day all round that I didn't make any kind of post. For one thing, some process was running out of control. It was a Perl script that converts text to HTML and didn't like something in my mailbox, so it got bloated and kept bringing my pooter to a standstill. It buggered up my writing day something rotten, but I think I've sorted it out now.

So anyway, yesterday I wasn't in a position to record the fact that my race pack and number for the Wokingham Half Marathon arrived.

Last night I was plotting the programme for the Reading Writers. One glass of Shiraz went straight to my sinuses and I spent a horrible clogged-up night. For some reason I had a dream in which I realised I hadn't yet run round the streets (sorry, drives, this is Hoylake UDC we are talking about here!) of Greasby, where I haven't lived this forty years. And I could see the run perfectly. Up Neale Drive, along Dingwall Drive, down Escolme Drive, up Brookdale Avenue, down Appleton Drive, and home!)

Today I was out doing a 40-minute straight jog. I went along Tilehurst Road to Prospect Park, then by Waverley Road and Grovelands Avenue to Oxford Road, and my usual looping through the streets. Forty minutes brought me nicely close to home. I didn't feel great but I did it without a break.

Running with Rosie

2006-01-08T14:26:00.000Z

It's a funny thing, this running lark.

My asthma has been bad ever since Wednesday of last week. I had that crap run on Friday, and yesterday I seriously doubted I would get out at all today, I was that wheezy and clogged up with phlegm.

Last night I slept and slept, and didn't wake until well gone 10. Sleep, of course, knits the ravel'd sleeve of care (assuming I'm allowed to quote the Scottish Play here) and is nature's great all-round healer. I guess I needed all that sleep. Anyway, I wasn't wheezing when I woke up.

So I had my coffee (strong and black) and my porrage (with a banana in it) and set my countdown time to 1 hr 20 minutes. I thought that I was being very optimistic but it was something to aim for. It was raining lightly but there was little wind and it was quite mild, so very good running conditions. I aimed for a course as flat as I could manage without repetition, to give myself a chance.

So I snorted at my inhaler and I set off. A bad start - before I even got running, as I was turning from Russell Street into Oxford Road, a brainless oaf of a man - burly, cropped red hair and carrying a bulky Maplins bag - came round the corner. He glared at me and didn't deviate from his path so I had to step into the road. What happened to manners?

There was more bad manners in evidence as I ran down Broad Street. Running down Broad Street is a good thing to do early in a run, I find. You just can't stop with all those people watching you! Mind you, it's like running through a herd of cows. People see you coming but they won't move to give you a gap to run through. They come out of shops in a daze and they push push-chairs across your path so you have to be ready to run wide at a second's notice. Grr! I'll have more to say about good manners later today, I think.

So, I ran down Broad Street, carried on into Kings Road, switched to the Kennet towpath, switched banks by the footbridge and ran via Blake's Lock to Kennet Mouth. About twenty minutes so far. I was panting but I was doing well, and I deserved a rest I thought, so I walked over the Horseshoe Bridge and set off again up the Thames. It was hard gettikng going again and I started to pant hard for a moment, but I pressed on, alongside Tesco and Kings Meadow to Caversham Lock, and I was feeling better. Across the lock, over the weir onto View Island, along the island (doubling back downriver!) and over to the Caversham Bank. I took a walk break at 30 minutes, approaching and crossing under Reading Bridge. Then up the north bank of the Thames to Caversham Bridge. A short stretch but one where I was struggling a bit. Maybe that's my wall. I walked across Caversham Bridge and crossed Caversham Road, and started jogging again as I plunged into Randolph Road with 42 minutes to go to meet my target for the day. Knackered and not yet halfway!

Now comes the miracle. Randolph Road into Newport Road, York Road, Ross Road, Swansea Road, Northfield Road (all the old GWR terrace houses). Across the old Office World Carpark and down the snicket into Caversham Road. Under the triple bridges, and when I turn into Great Knollys Street, suddenly I'm flying! The pavement feels like prime Axminster and my legs are like velvet. Down the long straight, left into Bedford Road, right into Battle Street and past the swimming pool. I'm really close to home now and it would be so easy to give up and go for a rest and a shower now, but actually I'm feeling good, ejoying myself, and couldn't think of stopping. Weaving through the streets now. George Street, back through Bedford Road to the last bit of Great Knollys Street, by way of Cambridge Street and Gower street to Oxford Road by Reading West Station. Under the railway and then weaving in loops through the next cell of streets - Catherine, Curzon and Audley Streets. And then back home. Eighty minutes came up just as I crossed Oxford Road by Rileys, and I was home.

I'd run the last 42 minutes non-stop and could have done more. I felt terrific and it proves that it's worth pressing on when you feel wobbly because you can get over the hump.

Go go Georgie!

2006-01-06T18:49:00.000Z

I see the odious self-publicist and cryptofascist "Gorgeous" George Galloway had found a new outlet for his image, on Big Brother. I am spared this spectacle because i don't have a televisual device. However, I note that a number of his constituents in Bethnal Green & Bow want to know why he's neglecting his parliamentary duties. Good for them, I say!

Thanks to Harry's Place for drawing this to my attention.

Running with Rosie

2006-01-06T09:56:00.000Z

This morning was one of my crappiest days yet.

I'm still being bothered by asthma. I didn't expect to push myself, but all the same even running in short bursts I was struggling over a route I normally take in my stride. Still I did something and that's what matters.

I hope I'm not going backwards.

I need some new running shoes. I think I've worn out the current ones and I don't want to risk injury.

This week's veg box

2006-01-05T14:51:00.000Z

I've missed my veg box from Riverford. There was no delivery last week because of Christmas, so I was down to the storage vegetables - onions, potatoes, squash, roots in general.

Today they're back. It was a fruit+veg box this week, I have one of those in alternate weeks and as well as fruit it tends to contain more unusual vegetables than the small vegetable box I get in the intervening weeks. Because we are now in the dead time for agricultural produce this means that only 40% of the box is UK-grown. I believe in local produce where possible but I'm not so austere that I want to stick with basic roots and iron rations every January. So I'm happy to have the exotic stuff - which I'mn assured arrives here by boat.

This week's box contains:

A box of mushrooms - the ones with a brown crusty cap;
A box of four tomatoes;
A huge celeriac;
A white cabbage;
Two small avocados;
A bag of cavalo nero (black kale);
Two garlic bulbs;
Five large Braeburn apples;
Six oranges (Maroc);
Seven bananas of unspecified provenance.

The garlic is a substitute for the promised ginger, which is a bit of a bummer as I have plenty of garlic in but no ginger at the moment.

Cavalo nero, or black cale, is my absolute favourite food discovery of the past year. In fact kale in general has been a revelation, but the cavalo nero is something a bit special. (This is from somebody who until ten years ago loathed anything vaguely cabbage-like, except for pickled red cabbage. The turning point came when I was working on a contract for BP Finance in Moorgate, and had lunches in the excellent subsidised canteen in the Finsbury Circus corporate HQ. I helped myself to a generous dollop of what I took to be pickled red cabbage. Only when I came to taste it it wasn't pickled. My brain sent a message to my stomach to be revolted, but my taste buds overruled my brain on this occasion. It was glorious, just the soft side of crunchy with the most subtle hint of cumin. It was my brassicene conversion!)

The way I cook black and any other kind of kale is this: I tear the green bits from the stalks and toss them into the empty washing-up bowl, discarding the stalks. Then I pour a kettleful of boiling water on the leaves and let them steep for five minutes. Then I drain the bowl through a colander, hold the colander under cold running water for a minutre, and squeeze the liquid out of the leaves. Then I toss them for a minute in some hot olive oil in which a chopped garlic clove has been frying. That's all!

The presence of a white cabbage reminds me that it's time to make bigos, the Polish national dish. I made one last year that took three days to make and a week to eat, getting better and better with every passing day. This year I'm hoping to use my own kiszona kapusta (sauerkraut), as I have a bucket currently festering in my kitchen. Watch this blog for more details.

Running log

2006-01-04T21:45:00.000Z

It being a Wednesday when there isn't a Reading Writers in the evening, it was Roadrunners instead .

The thing about Roadrunners is that it's communal and under the supervision of a trainer (or trainers - my Beginners group is run by Jackie, Kathy and Pete - and they push you harder than you would push yourself on your own.

The downside is that running round the track at Palmer Park Stadium, although it's fast and flat and as good a surface as you can find, is mind-numbingly tedious. There's also big hairy beasts of runners who are very fast and who have no manners so they cut you up. A favourite trick is two of these clowns passing you, one on either side, shaviong both shoulders.

It was also cold - the surface of the high-jump area where we do our warm-ups was getting quite icy - and damp, and my asthma was playing up, so it wasn't the easiest of evenings.

All the same, I managed twelve steady laps plus eight lots of 200 metre reps. So a useful workout.

I feel like shit, to be honest. I need a good sleep.

2006 Reading List (1) - Philip Pullman: Galatea (1978)

2006-01-03T20:48:00.000Z

Very strange! A young musician travels to South America in search of his missing wife and becomes embroiled with an ex-Nazi and his zombie slaves, a city debilitated by ghosts, angels, erotic spirits made of electricity, intelligent automata, and a sinister foe who is at once a business consultant, an astrologer and a werewolf.

It's all rather cold, soulless and unappealing. It's hard to like the rather priggish protagonist and I never really cared whether he found his wife or not. But it's fascinating to see how so many ideas that bore such luscious fruit in His Dark Materials had their first flowering here.

This book is an American first edition of Pullman's first published novel, and I am offering it for auction on eBay.

Gastroblog

2006-01-03T17:14:00.000Z

Esther of the Semiotic Ghosts tells me she enjoys my foodie posts. So I'll make them a regular feature.

There was no vegetable box from Riverford Organics last week, so there are no fresh greeens in my cupboard. I'm using up roots, so today it's time to take another step towards the Best Hotpot South Of Rawtenstall project. This isn't a New Year resolution, it's a long term project. If we were a nation as proud of our food as the French or Italians there would be a Hotpot Trail arnd Clitheroe and pubs and restaurants vying with each other to be recognised as purveying the best Hotpot. These things don't happen and it's a national disgrace.

Of course, you need a proper traditional Hotpot to do it properly - you can get one from the excellent Lakeland Limited. And you really need mature mutton, not lamb, but mutton is hard to find and some neck of lamb just has to do, sometimes.

And this is what you do. You take

500g neck of mutton or lam, chopped up
500g onions, sliced thinly
1kg potatoes, peeled and sliced

salt, pepper, butter and water

Heat the oven to 200C. Put the meat and vegetables in the pot in layers. Season each layer with salt and pepper. Finish with a layer of sliced potato at the top. Pour melted butter on the top layer. Cover the pot and put it in the heated oven for 30 minutes. After this time, lower the oven temperature to 140C and cook for two-and-a-half hours. Take the cover off the pot for the last half hour.

Traditionally Hotpot is served with pickled red cabbage. Sauerkraut goes with it very nicely too, and so does thinly-shredded white cabbage sautéed briefly in hot oil with garlic and ginger.

Today I had a small celeriac that needed using up, so I peeled and sliced that and added it as an extra layer. I'm looking forward to seeing what effect that has.

An old friend return

2006-01-03T16:52:00.000Z

I don't envy Tom and the mammoth task he's set himself of documenting every one of the UK's 1000+ Number One hits in his idiosyncratic, and very elegant, way. So I'm not surprised he took a break during 2005, although I love the project and I miss his insights into the music I loved (and loathed) in my youth.

It was great to see him back in action yesterday. He must have been looking forward to it because he's plunged in again at the height of 1966, probably the last and greatest year of the singles market. After that came The Doors and The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, none of whom seriously expected to have a hit single. (I have a feeling I've said all this before, now I think about it).

How wonderful to read Tom on one of my favourites of the time, Chris Farlowe's Out Of Time yesterday. And today he's given only his second 10 - and why aren't I surprised that it goes to The Beatles and Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine? No single was ever more pivotal in the history of popular music. Both sides come from the the Revolver album after all.

Running log

2006-01-02T12:05:00.000Z

Up bright and early this morning, and off for a Monday morning run.,

It wasn't all that good, at least not at first. The air quality wasn't great and my asthma was giving me trouble even as I plodded along Baker Street, and by the time I'd got to the top of the hill on Prospect Street I had half a mind to give up after only a few minutes.

Still, I trotted on, along Tilehurst Road, across Prospect Park and the Bath Road and through Southcote to the lock, and back along the Kennet towpath. At the little bridge by Basingstoke Road I'd been running for 41 minutes and 6.5 km and my objective was achieved. I walked for half a km and then ran the rest of the way home - about 7.5 km which isn't bad.

Foolish virgin that I am, I have submitted my entry for the Wokingham Half Marathon on 12 February. Not for sponsorship, but a trial and Warm-up for Reading two months later.

I must be mad!

Sponsorship now open

2006-01-01T20:04:00.000Z

I've set up the sponsorship page for my next fundraising push for Bag Books. This is to be for the Reading Half-Marathon on 9 April.

Sponsor me through this page and Bag Books will be able to claim back the tax on your giving through Gift Aid if you are a UK taxpayer.

Please feel free to visit the page and be as generous as you feel you can be!

Rosie on the Road

2006-01-01T16:33:00.000Z

No good not starting the year as you mean to go on, is it? Not that I felt like going running this morning. Oh no! After the excesses of last night I didn't even wake until 9.40 and didn't get up until gone 10.30. Even then I didn't feel very energetic. It's back to austerity breakfasts as well (gotta keep that weight down - last night people I hadn't seen for a couple of years were complimenting me on how trim I was looking). Black coffee, and porrage with a spoonful of rum butter in it.

And then I set my countdown timer to 1 hour 15 minutes and set off with the hand-held Garmin. I started off running down Coley Avenue and along the ginnel to the railway tracks, down the hill to Southcote Lock, and then a new route along the Kennet towpath past Burghfield Island and the Cunning Man, into the lanes between Theale Pits and the M4, then up to Calcot Mill. From there home via Bath Road, Prospect Park and Tilehurst Road.

A tad over twelve kilometres altogether, though I only ran about ten and a half of those. I ran 6 km straight and returned home with three walks of about half a kilometre each. I did it all in a little over an hour and a half.

Not the best run ever but in the light of how much I drank last nightr I think I can count it as a good start to the year.

A New Year Dawns

2006-01-01T11:05:00.000Z

These are my resolutions for 2006

To continue to maintain my LiveJournal and this blog.
To place at least one novel with a publisher.
To complete the Reading and Bristol half-marathons.
To submit an entry for the 2007 London Marathon.
To get to grips seriously with darkroom work
To revive my former interest in keeping and breeding houseplants.
To raise GBP 2 000 for Bag Books.
To support independent shops and sources and to aim to eliminate supermarkets from my grovery shopping.
To end the year in profit
To remain healthy and cheerful throughout the year.

But they have a great sense of rhythm

2005-12-31T13:30:00.000Z

Over at Harry's Place, a blog which I read with a lot of interest, a good deal of sympathy, and occasional irritation, Gene draws our attention to this piece in the Washington Post by Peter Carlson, about a 1930s plan for the USA to invade Canada to counter a British threat. But the British had a secret weapon. No, not fierce Scottish laddies in skirts, but

Also, the Brits could be reinforced by "colored" troops from their colonies: "Some of the colored races however come of good fighting stock, and, under white leadership, can be made into very efficient troops.

Ha!

Something fishy here

2005-12-31T13:12:00.000Z

Am I alone in finding that this story doesn't ring true?

A man - a stranger - walks into a house unobserved. He enters the bathroom and finds a six-year-old girl in the bath. He then abducts the girl - again unheard and unobserved - and leaves her screaming in a nearby street.

I'm sorry - who leaves a six-year-old unsupervised in a bath? I would want words with the girl's parents myself.

Intimations of Mortality

2005-12-30T19:45:00.000Z

When I go for a run I quite often go along the Kennet towpath, starting under under the bridge that carries the Inner Distribution Road (IDR) over the river. I was there this morning, as a matter of fact, in the murk and the wind and the rain. It's a bit seedy there but I'm used to it and I don't think about it enough to feel threatened.

So it was disconcerting this afternoon to see in the Reading Evening Post thata woman and her two daughters were attacked under the bridge last Tuesday evening, as they were returning from the cinema. The younger daughter escaped but the elder daughter and the mother were set upon by adolescent scumbags while another scumbag filmed the proceedings on a mobile phone.

I make no apologies to the sensitive for calling these creatures 'scumbags', for scumbags is what they are and I don't care if their mummies smacked them when they were little.

My Teenage Correspondent advises me that the term 'happy slapping' has been much abused by the media and I'm prepared to believe that. This incident was a beating up, though, and all the perfumes of Arabia won't stop it stinking.

As I was saying...

2005-12-30T18:34:00.000Z

...before I was so rudely interrupted. Well, I can't actually remember what I was saying in my Blogger blog. It's been so long since I posted, the good people at blogger.com have removed what I wrote.

To be fair, I've been charting my ups and downs at LiveJournal, and I won't be abandoning that, but it's time I had a more outward-looking blog as well to record my meandering thoughts.

These thoughts will tend to reflect the fact that I'm a writer, busily rewriting one crime novel featuring the irrepressible Detective Inspector Verity Blanchard, writing its sequel, and working on the non-genre novcel that's been lying unfinished for ages now.

They will also reflect my photography. And my newly-acquired, in 2005, addiction to running (who'd have thought, a year ago, that I would run in, and finish in a respectable time, a 10 kilometre road race?). And my commitment to good food cooked from quality ingredients without recourse to 'convenience' food.

Not to mention my chaotic wibblings about the world at large. Which attracted a major invasion of frootloops once, but I'll have to start allover again won't I?

Come on - watch this space, and encourage me by commenting and giving me a link!