Here On Earth - Alice Hoffman

I laid in the bath this evening, bubbles seeming to continue to multiply whilst simultaneously popping near my ears and decided to read a couple of chapters of my book.
I'm not entirely sure what time I got into the bath but I think it was about two hours before I finally realised the water was cool and the bubbles had all but gone.
Turned out that a couple of chapters wasn't enough, I finished the book. And loved it.

It went in a direction that I felt I should have anticipated but hadn't and was hanging on every word. I occasionally find myself jumping to the last sentence of the page I'm on, in a rush to have an answer to what's happening within the paragraph I'm reading.
I remember my grandmother read a lot of crime books, she told me that she always read the end of the book first so that she wouldn't grow to like the character of the murderer and end up being disappointed in them.
I can understand that to an extent. The characters in this didn't develop as I thought they would, the relationships changed in ways I didn't expect. What I was sure would be the end didn't even feature.
There were lines I wanted to memorise for their beauty whilst carrying envy I didn't put those sentences together myself.

All this from a tale of a mother and daughter, March and Gwen, gone to a funeral in March's home town and the story of the strength of her passion for her first love.

I loved how the storytelling swapped from mother to daughter to friend to person to person in the blink of an eye. Seeing everything from all angles and so very accurate in showing that so many situations are not the way you imagine because your vision is coloured by your assumptions.

It was beautiful and sad, touching and heart wrenching.

Tuppences

As I stood in the Post Office this evening with my mammoth pile of parcels a guy came to the window and I overheard him saying he wanted to pay a bill. I wasn't really paying attention until I heard a strange noise and glanced in his direction. He had a huge margarine tub filled with tuppences and pennies.
I attempted to surreptitiously glance at the bill to see how much it was. Almost £200.
I tried to imagine what £200 in tuppences would look like.
The lady behind the counter narrowed her eyes and said "It isn't ALL tuppences is it?"
The chap said that not all of it was, but a lot of it was coins.
Then proceeded to tip them all out.
It was the kind of noise you dream of every time you play a fruit machine. Or in my case those tuppence machines that I play until my fingers turn black, all the while determined to win the piece of tat just out of reach. Then when it finally falls and is within my grimy hands, I stand, stare and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Well it's either that or my determination to make the giant overhang of coins make that delicious crash, until you stoop to collect your winnings and realise you fed the machine with over a quid and have twenty pence to show for it.

Anyway, it would never, ever occur to me to go in and pay with a margarine tub full of coins.
I'd be incredibly embarrassed. What's so uncool about coins? Especially those little pennies and tuppences?

Patterns

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
- G. K. Chesterton

I like to see patterns in things. Most of the time I imagine them, but I like the world of coincidences.
When I collect my parcels together and complete the certificates of posting I like it when all the people have the same initial, or all live in houses with names not numbers. Just feels like something in the world lined up neatly.

I've rediscovered my love of reading and am to be found, nose deep in a book at some point every day. I've always had a love of books, but once out of the habit of reading it was far easier to sit and watch tv instead. Now that my love of fiction has been reawakened I'm flying through book after book.

I'm currently reading Here On Earth by Alice Hoffman which I can't get enough of. It sat on the shelf for a long time and now I feel sorry that I didn't get to the story before. But I like the pattern that I'm imagining exists that links book to book to book. The main female character is called March, in my previous book (The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd) had characters called August, May & June. See? There's a link, they're all named after months of the year.
I know I'm imagining it but still...

And the link from The Secret Life Of Bees to the book prior to that (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee) laid in the racial tensions evident in both.

Is everything linked in the world in some way? In this small world of ours? Is it all subject to those six degrees of separation?

I must say though that I really liked The Secret Life Of Bees, every now and then you watch or read something and wonder if maybe you don't want to be a beekeeper? Or a jet pilot (Top Gun)? Or able to talk to the animals (Dr Dolittle)!
Those stories set in a time of such change, like The Secret Life Of Bees and To Kill a Mockingbird really change your view of the world and they make me wonder how I would have felt and behaved all those decades ago. Would I still hold the same views that I have now? After all, Atticus Finch speaks about how women weren't allowed to be on juries - he joked that we'd talk too much and ask too many questions. Uttering such a thing today would result in uproar from the sexual equality groups. Although I am all for equality, it has to be said, I'd quite like to have been spared from the mind-numbing boredom that was jury service.

Anyway, I am loving all the books I'm reading. I've either been very lucky or am too easily pleased but I haven't, thus far, found many books I haven't enjoyed. I found D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow quite hard work but enjoyed it all the same somehow.
The only book in my life I can ever remember hating was Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I know it won awards but I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Nor could I bring myself to allow it shelf space.

Karma's A Bitch

So I've driven to Stansted and back today already and it's only 10.30am
I love other drivers, I really do.
I'm very grateful for the way they examine my rear bumper so closely when driving behind me.
I also love how, when driving precisely half a mile faster than the lorry in front of them, a lorry pulls out and proceeds to take five miles to overtake. I like how they indicate to let you know they're going to pull out, but how they always time it until they're three-quarters of the way into your lane anyway, thus encouraging you to test that your brakes are operational. I appreciate how my safety is at the forefront of their mind.

And to the guy who drove remarkably slowly in front of me, refusing to pull in, then when finally overtaken seemed to develop some sort of temper tantrum and floored it as he passed me again, I say Ha! And once again Ha! I hope you enjoyed your little chat with the gentleman in uniform that pulled you over. I love Karma, especially when it's a bitch (and not at my expense).

I'm pleased to see Friday roll around, it hasn't been the best of weeks, with its fair share of bad news. I almost made a full week without injury too, until last night. I look like a troop of mosquitoes partied on my arm, but I just burned it. What is the name for a number of mosquitoes? A swarm? Hmm, if so, they need something more impressive.
After all, it's a murder of crows, a crash of hippos, a parliament of owls, I think that mosquitoes deserve something, purely for their irritation value.

I just looked and birds have, by far, the best collective names.
Check it out:
A murmuration of starlings.
An unkindness of ravens.
A convocation of eagles.
A charm of finches.
A pitying of turtledoves.
I wonder how much they vary country to country, continent to continent?

Dreams

I don't usually remember my dreams these days but last nights has stuck with me.

So, although I'm at a house I've never been in before I know it's home.
I'm in the front garden behind a bush (what I was doing there I have no idea) but suddenly a full grown tiger strolls into the garden. He sniffs around the lawn and then saunters out again. I emerge from behind the shrubbery and make a dash for the front door, which is one of those that is almost entirely glass and as I turn to shut it and lock it, the tiger has reappeared.
In a very human manner he's got a paw in the door to stop me shutting it. Then suddenly his nose is in the gap of the door and I'm punching him in the nose!
(Because that would happen!)
He pulls back and I shut the door but whichever way I turn the key it won't lock and I have to keep pushing on the door to keep the tiger out.

And this is where it gets weirder, for some reason the tiger is suddenly sitting on a newspaper, not a broadsheet, just a little tabloid affair. The tiger shrinks and goes to sleep. I open the door, roll up the tiger in the newspaper, run down the street and throw it away.

I run back to my house, but the tiger has woken up by being thrown away (funny that) and is chasing me again - and is back to full size! His paw is in the door again as I slam it shut but this time I manage to remove the paw and lock the door.

Then I woke up.

What the hell is that about?
Now I know your dreams are supposed to work through what happened that day, but I was not in contact with a single tiger all day! Honest!

Calamitous

Tim and I drive to the airport so that he can fly off and join Mum in France.
We arrive, take a ticket from the machine, which gives you precisely ten free minutes - is it me or is that not a wee bit on the stingy side?
East Midlands Airport does everything in its power to ensure you will end up paying for your parking, yes, you get ten free minutes - but it then forbids you from stopping almost anywhere but a designated space, all costing precious minutes. Now it's not that I'm especially tight with money, it's just that if I'm going to take out a mortgage, I'd prefer it to be for a house, not for parking in their car park.
Eventually we find somewhere to stop, Tim unloads his things and heads off to the departures whilst I head to the exit, still with five minutes to spare. I get to the exit, wind down the window (grateful to be in their car which has windows that wind down unlike my own lovely vehicle). Ticket in hand, I stick my arm through the window and aim for the slot. I'm not sure if the car rolled or if the wind caught the ticket but suddenly it was gone.
I flung the car into reverse, leapt out (ripping my skirt in the process - naturally) and was faced with about two dozen identical tickets littering the floor.
Excellent.
I made sure that the rip to the back of my skirt wasn't causing any kind of indecent exposure, crouched down and started rifling through the tickets. I won't even try to describe the looks I got from the passing cars because I'm sure they're quite easy to imagine. Finally I found one, with today's date and the approximate time we arrived. I ran back to the car, hopped in, drove back up to the exit, inserted the ticket without incident and the display read 'this ticket has already been used for exit'.
Shit!
I reversed again, jumped out (without further tearing to my skirt) and started searching again. Found another and repeated the process.
You know what they say about third time lucky?
Ha! Second time lucky for moi!

Oh yes, the barrier lifted, the display told me to drive safely and I was free.
Ah the thrill of the open road.

I'm really quite pleased that the next airport trip is to Stansted.

Random Notes On My Day

I opened a brand new carton of milk this morning, sleepily poured it on my bran flakes, settled myself on the sofa and took a mouthful.
It's really unfair that unopened milk, well within its Best Before date would go off. The label should change colour or something.
It does make me wonder where on the scale of nasty tastes sour milk comes. I'm giving it a high vote!

Then, I only had enough peanut butter for one slice of toast.
Does the cosmiverse not appreciate that I do not function well in the morning and to not press me with challenges?

Later on though, the Red Arrows took off directly above my head, which was mighty cool. I could almost make out the rivets on the planes.
And, as if to make up for its taunting me earlier, the cosmiverse did not place in front of me a single slow driver and for this I am truly grateful.
However, it did choose to taunt me instead with a beautiful bedroom set at Hemswell. Maybe I need some maple....

I spoke to my sister, Siobhan, who regaled me with the nightmare of her recent move to Bristol, but she's loving her new place. As she picked up the Texan accent so quickly when she was living over there, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before she's uttering the words 'Alright my lover?'