The Insomniac Meanderings Post : As An Atheist I've Really Upset The Sleeping Gods Edition

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well as I start writing this it's 3:15am. Let's be clear here. I have the day off (four actually mind you I've worked the previous ten). I could wake up at any time I want but I've woken up three??!!!

The sleeping gods are very unhappy with me today.

The Brexit timetable is dominating the news as we see what clowns or perhaps even worse are in the two main Westminister parties at the moment. Few things move me away from it though one of them is what's happening March 9 when Cardiff City FC play West Ham. I have the day off (good news) but am facing the invisible timetable that I don't know when the tickets that Cardiff season tickets haven't bought will be available. So the situation as to whether I'll be able to be the quiet one amongst the bluebirds fans is unresolved.

I do hope I can get a ticket. West Ham are one of the few things that could make me forget about Brexit. Indeed it's probably the only thing that brings me to a state best described as ten year old happy (when of course they win).

In the world of Welsh Twitter the issue Brexit aside that has seen to dominate is the latest drama from BBC Wales Pitching In which I chatted about recently where people were angry about the depiction of Wales based on the trailer of the show set in a trailer park alone. Well I've seen the episode now and it's even worse than the trailer suggested.

I won't bore you by repeating myself here. Except that my theory that the casting director is English and living in England so only can hear one Welsh accent holds water (in case you wonder why I haven't checked it, well it's a bit stalkery if you ask me).

BBC Wales needs to avoid making cliché Wales productions like this if it wants to represent the nation. It's no coincidence I think that the standout drama shows from Wales (even those with English/Welsh versions) are those instigated by the Welsh language channel S4C.

Just registered for a People's Pension Webinar on February 28th. Yes I'm of an age now when it's not far away.

Am I one who is getting irritated by Kindle books on Amazon. That's to say those books that Mr Bezos promotes seemingly constantly by email etc. Am I the only one who is comfortable enough to read a book on a Kindle but disturbed when the book seems to be only on a Kindle?

Speaking of Amazon they have cancelled a subscription to Amazon Prime because the card (which was a prepay card anyway ) was out of date. Thing is I hadn't realised I clicked onto join it. Not particularly bothered except it reminds me to be careful for the future.

Alexa has just reminded me (it's 6:15 now)about Easy Yoga. An app that I downloaded out of curiosity. But as my left foot hurts I think I'll leave it for another day.....and relax.

Anyway time to go back to sleep now. Thankfully the urge to zzzz has caught up on me.

Until the next time.

How Matthew and Selma Save The Day. A Man's Search For A Romcom On Valentine's

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I'm working today, Valentine's day (ahh) but amazingly I will be off this Saturday (unusual for me) so thought it would be best to have a belated Valentine's night in with the wife having a meal I'd have cooked (Pasta bake. Don't get your hopes up. Still I'd have cooked it) and watching a Romcom later that I would have purchased from Amazon online.

But therein lies the rub. What film? I downloaded a fav of hers Four Weddings and A Funeral for her last year and like the other Richard Curtis vehicle Love Actually it's a film I dislike for being well packaged nothing. So you see being a man and picking a romcom is not easy.

I did think it would be mind you. My favourite Romcom even before I met the wife is the George Clooney/Michelle Pfeiffer movie One Fine Day. It's a favourite of mine if only because it seemed to be about realistic people falling in love with the special guest star being New York city. Far better than When Harry Met Sally which when I saw it gave me the impression it was co written by candyfloss.

So I purchase it online through Amazon Video to watch on the TV on Saturday. Or rather that was the intention. For it's not available.

I mean how could this be? I mean any movie/TV series nowadays seems to be available for sale. Even as I was trawling the German version of Three Men and A Baby. And certainly one with the George/Michelle axis should be there. But no.

So the search properly begins.

Realised as I was trawling through these films that in a lot of them the plot seems in essence to start as follows. Woman gets dumped. Woman tries to get away from her past in one way or another and then discovers man who is different from those she's dated in the past. Initially they dislike each other but.....

Well I had no intention of watching that sort of same old same old movie.

And how the woman "escapes" is stretched as well. In one she stays in her bedroom until some free spirits (which back in the day used to be called hippies) move in. In another the woman goes all Marie Kondo and minimalist until the free spirit of her sister and her daughter turned up.

Very close to being picked was a movie called How We Met starring no one I've ever heard of in which a disastrous first date gets even wilder after a policeman is killed (and it gets even wilder than that). Its seemed different enough and would have been my choice if I hadn't remembered.....

….Fools Rush In. The film I've chatted about before in this blog re my mad exercise in watching all the movies in  the Radio Times Film Catalogue 2013 starring Matthew Perry and Selma Hayek.

I liked it. I know the wife will like it. And given that it's about an American and Mexican getting along I know Donald Trump wouldn't like it. So it's a win, win, win and downloaded.

Next year though. I suspect the search will be even tougher.

Until the next time.

In Which Thinking Of The Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan Movie You've Got Mail Leads Me To The Main Enemy Of The Small Independent Bookshop

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it can lead you to things and moments that you half forgotten or slotted in the back archives of your memory. Yesterday @Warlkareham (all rights reserved etc etc) made a joke about the 1998 Tom Hanks Meg Ryan movie You've Got Mail (I won't tell you what the joke was. It's only fair that you have a look at his Twitter feed).

I'd seen the movie with the wife. Meg Ryan's small independent bookstore under threat from Tom Hank's megastore bookshop chain. Two things occurred to me when I saw the Tweet. Firstly with regard to my chat about Julie and Julia (also written and directed by Nora Ephron) this is unquestionably a woman's film. Or shall we say a film designed with women in mind.

But secondly, even though email is an important part of this piece I cannot think of a movie that has aged so quickly. After all if it was made today Tom Hanks' bookshop chain would be threatened by Meg Ryan's internet Amazon like monolith.

There is after all only one totally (if you also include stationery) bookshop chain in Britain. Waterstones. In South Wales I know of one in Cardiff and the other in Swansea but none in between. There are chains where books do form an important part of the stock (W H Smith / The Works) but other than those essentially in towns across this disunited Kingdom it's otherwise the rare small independent bookshop or a charity shop.

As an aside there is in the South East Foyles (which I've never liked) but the bookshop conglomerate I do miss is Borders. They really cared about books and it showed.

Now regular readers will know that I have ordered books off Amazon and that I have a Kindle and I'm not afraid to use it. But I still buy them from bricks and mortar places as well. No matter what the internet can do nothing beats the thrill of discovering something that has perked your interests from the shelves.

I won't say what I'm going to say next I've really thought through but it struck me yesterday that (ebooks aside) the main enemy of the small independent bookshop are not online retailers. Because if you're after a specific not easily obtainable tome then the internet is probably where you would go to anyway.

No. The main enemy of the small independent bookstores are the supermarkets.

Books occupy a relatively small space in a supermarket. But they will stock those that they know will sell and will use their purchasing power as large chains to be able to offer these books at discounted prices. Something the independent would not be able to do. As a consequence the small independent retailer would have less chance to attract what was used to be described as "passing trade" for an impulse buy.

So here's an idea...…...ban supermarkets from selling books.

We're obviously talking here about towns where there is an independent bookshop but why not?  After all competition would still exist from W H Smith and The Works as well as of course online. Also supermarkets could easily fill the space with something else. I suspect that as a gift aside most people don't go into Tesco and the like specifically to buy a book. So you know what? I don't think that shoppers - readers or otherwise -would otherwise care if they disappeared from the aisles.

Perhaps, perhaps just perhaps, you would create a generation of readers who whilst still purchasing online would also experience the wonder and love of stepping into a local bookshop.

Perhaps.

Until the next time.

The Amazon £5 Random E-Book Buying Game : November Edition

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I've not played this game in a while these are the rules.

Armed with just £5 in my e pocket I try to buy as many ebooks for my Kindle as possible starting with the Daily Deals and seeing how recommendations they influence me....and that's it.

This time though I'm going to match the number of books bought by getting the same number of free Classic books they do. Just starting with the recommendations from the last classic novel I read. Agnes Grey.

So let's begin:

Nothing interests me on the Daily Deals. Does Amazon really think anybody but snobs would be interested in the Ritz cookbook? Even if it is for 99p (I wonder why?!)

Go through their autumn deals for 99p again nothing interests me until I see a copy of Wishful Drinking by the late Carrie Fisher. A writer I've always wanted to read but never got round too. Bought 99p.

Trawl through the recommended picks. Nothing. That is until I see The Complete works of Henry David Thoreau. I remember once buying a postcard when I was a teenager where he spoke of people following a different drummer. Funny after all these years it comes back to me. Bought 99p.

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley. Shortlisted for the 2016 Booker prize is 99p. Worth a shout. Bought.

Peterloo The Massacre And it's Background by Donald Reed is topical not just for the film but also the unequal society has returned to Britain. Highly praised the book is 99p. Bought.

Finally Nick Spalding's novel Checking Out seems interesting. 99p. Bought.

So five free books to get.

Starting with The Way Of The Flesh by Samuel Butler. A book which seems ahead of it's time.

So we add also by Mr Butler Erewhon Revisited. Then Hudibras, then his notebooks and finally his book on Evolution. Not sure it it's supposed to be funny or not. Will find out in due time.

I think in all the cases of the free books it's fair to say the Butler did it.....I'll get my coat.

Until the next time

Am I Being Slowly Seduced By Alexa? (Other Machines Are Available)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So I wake up in the morning. In a zombie like state I'm making a cup of tea and some croissants (get me!) and what am I then doing? Going on my Amazon Fire Kindle  and asking for a "Flash Briefing".

No that's not some rude short story. It's Amazon's way of compiling the news headlines, the local weather, a short snippet from the Daily Show and TV Choice suggestions in a few minutes (all my chosen subjects). That's it. I can then ask it for my calendar (rarely above one item in that day) and ask it to turn on a classical music radio station from anywhere in the world.

The day begins.

Later I'd ask it for a traffic update on my route to work before I go. My specific route you understand not those around Wales/the UK on the off chance it's mentioned on the radio.

I can also play something bought on Prime Music or video should I desire it in the evening.

The thing is I've barely touched the surface. There are literally hundreds perhaps thousands of "skills" which could be added if I had the time to work my brain round them.

What it does is to throw your thoughts and tasks into one place without thousands of bits of paper to confuse you. There are issues though. We don't live in a land yet where people walk around supermarkets with tablets with a shopping list on them. So I write down on a piece of paper. Luddite of me I know but at least I've marshalled it all in one place beforehand.

But the biggest issue is speaking to Alexa. Anything slightly different to the norm confuses it. Yesterday I asked for the French classical radio station France Musique.

"I'm sorry there's no France music"

"No France music"

"Sorry there's no France music"

And this continues. I have to go all Inspector Clouseau like

"France musique" with as much emphasis as I could muster before it brought me to the radio station I desired.

I am balking though at the idea of Alexa connecting to machines. For example I'm not interested in an Alexa  controlled microwave unless it's able to stop during cooking a microwave meal, stirs that meal and then starts again.

Not against communicating with others through it. Though for the moment it seems simpler just picking up the phone.

Still as a sort of personal assistant it is growing on me. Whether too much time will tell.

One final story about the voice commands. Asked wife on Sunday whether she wanted anything when I went to the supermarket the next day.

"Loo rolls" came the response which I duly asked Alexa to put on the shopping list. This it announced.

On the screen however it said I asked for Lou Rawls.

Now if Lidls sells seventies R&B singers. Then I'd be very impressed.

Until the next time.

On Books : Where All Roads Lead To Rome Apart From An Embarrassing Turn-Off To A Cathedral

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Been a while since I've read books from my Kindle. Well these are four I've read in a few days as it's seems reading has powered back into my interests. All of them are available free as they are well out of copyright. Most of them also have some connection with the Roman Empire despite the random way I pick books there.

I swear my Kindle has a mind of it's own.

So let's start with:

Hannibal Makers Of History by Jacob Abbott. Mr Abbott was a prolific American author and this biography of the Carthaginian general who almost conquered Rome was written in 1876.

It's a workmanlike tome. It won't excite you to pursue the subject further but it's not dull either. Of the books I'm going to chat about today this it has to be said was by far the best.

Roads From Rome is a collection of stories from Ancient Rome by Anne Allinson published in 1913. I liked this one the least of the four I'm chatting today. Boring and not livened by having characters from that time ("Oh look there's Ovid, and now Virgil is making a guest appearance!")

Truly the greatest pleasure I received from this book was finishing it.

Now when you discover that Amazon have many old books no longer in copyright for free your instant reaction is to download them first by the digital ton and then properly ask questions afterwards. So when I saw a book called Ely Cathedral it was just downloaded. Though I do remember thinking I can't remember Ely in Cardiff having a cathedral (the main church in Wales is in another area of Cardiff, Llandaff). But not being an expert on churches and not normally interested anyway I electronically put the book to one side for another day.

Well that day came. And I discovered that this anonymous 1857 guide was about Ely Cathedral in Ely Cambridgeshire.....whoops.

So we have a book about a subject I'm not interested in in a place I'm unlikely to visit unless the wheels of my life really radically change. You won't be surprised to know I found the book dull. Though to be fair that's more due to me than the guide. If you're interested in churches then it might be for you.

Now the question I know you're asking as I'm writing this on an early (5:09am!) Sunday morning is this. What would the Emperors of Rome have been had they been living in the present day?

Some would have been politicians, others military figures, others managing a branch of McDonald's with Caesarean authority. But Meditations by Marcus Aurelius shows that this Roman emperor would have been a self help guru for in a Romancised way that's essentially what the book is.

Now unless you're interested in Roman history, or intend to live your life in the Ancient Roman manner in the same way someone  would wonder "What would Captain Kirk do?" when faced with any life event what you get if you take off the Roman aspects is ponced up common sense. Just like most self-help books really.

The next book I'm reading is Behind the Line A Story of College Life and football by Ralph Barbour.

Until the next time.

Let's Be Clear. Libraries Should Not Be Part Of A Capitalist Jungle. Even An Amazonian One

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As regular readers of this blog will know I have an Amazon Kindle and I'm not afraid to use it. Equally readers also know I'm a proud library card user and I'm not afraid to use that either, Perhaps that's what drew me to an article I saw on Twitter in Forbes online by Panos Mourdoukoutas entitled Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries To Save Taxpayers' Money (https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/07/21/amazon-should-replace-local-libraries-to-save-taxpayers-money/#2d4c7fee60a8).

Now at time of writing there are no Amazon bookshops in Britain (which is what he proposes to replace the library). But still libraries are under constant attack and are always the ones venerable to closure in the name of "austerity cuts". So using his article to defend the library service is I suspect an issue which crosses the Atlantic so here goes.

There is firstly a principle here. And that is the library is part of the community and because it is part of the community people trust it. No private company would have that trust. They would be in fact the Gatekeeper of knowledge for the very people who would need it the most. And when I say Gatekeeper it's in the Sandra Bullock film The Net sense of the word.

Despite what Mr Mourdoukoutas would imply I suspect that people enjoy walking into libraries and discovering a book to borrow. Discovering a book is one of life's quiet little pleasures. And people still borrow "physical" books. Who knows what the future brings but for the moment the reports of the death of the physical book are greatly exaggerated.

And some people don't have internet access at home. The library, and by definition the physical book provides a world of entertainment and information (ditto borrowing DVDs in the worlds of Amazon Prime and Netflix) and of course provides internet access.

He mentions places like Starbucks as where people hang out as something the library has replaced. Perhaps. But until I've seen a Starbucks where unemployed people are helped in their CVs for example I know which building helps the community more.

He refers to the Amazon online library. In Britain you have to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of it. That costs £80 a year. Where are the figures in the article to say using an Amazon bookshop would be cheaper than using a public library?

A library is an important resource. To lose it damages a community even in this digital day and age. Who knows what the future will bring. But for the moment it's worth fighting for in it's present form and I'd happily fight for the good fight in it's name.

Until the next time.

The Return Of The £5 Amazon E-book Buying game (£4.68 Version)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well it's the first of the month and the early morning. I'm in Essex exile whilst my mother is still in hospital recovering from her operation so at the moment have nothing much to do.

So in the spirit of shrugging my shoulders before I go and have a bath decide to resuscitate the Amazon £5 ebook buying game. Basically where starting from their Daily Deals and following from their recommendations try to buy the cheapest (though they would have to interest me) books I could buy for a total of £5.

This time though. As there is £19.68 in the account. The balance to play with, rather like chocolate bars, has shrunk to £4.68 for this month.

So let's begin.

I look at the Daily and Monthly Deals. Nothing screams buy me. So I look at the books that are "recommended" for me based on my ebook-buying purchases. One book strikes me instantly. The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf. A collection of essays. Worth a read I think so bought for 99p.

£3.69 left. "Top Picks For you" The screen emboldenedly pronounces. I look.I notice The Tenderness Of Wolves. Costa Book of the year 2007 (Costa has been going for over ten years?) . That too is 99p. Bought.

£2.70 left. Suddenly my eyes fall on a complete collection of the works of Marcel Proust. Have never read him but you feel that a subconscious literary bucket list in your head is saying "buy it". It is also just 49p so bought.

£2.21 left. The system then gives me the complete works of James Joyce. but I know I've Dubliners in the Kindle so I pass. Then I notice the complete works of Franz Kafka for 49p as well. That same literary bucket list is telling me not to be an idiot and buy it, and buy it now.

So I do. £1.72 left. The collected works of the essayist William Hazlitt crops up. 99p. Bought.

73p left. Spend 49p on the complete works of Alexander Pushkin. I know I have a novel of his (I think a poetic one at that) in storage at the moment. But hey. It's the complete set so why not? Bought and for this month the game is finished.

And I look at the books I've bought and think? Am I a proper reader? All these classic works that I haven't read. But then it comes back to the curse of the reader. So many books but so little time. Even at my fifty four years on this planet life interferes with the need to turn and now swipe the page. Still they are bought now. A greater chance that I'll get round to reading them sometime.

Until the next time.

How Bruce Chatwin, Brian Aldiss and the NRL Fared In The Rainy Sunday Test

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Although my daughter has one more day of the school holidays left to go but let's face it the Monday doesn't really count) the wife had plans for Sunday.

"Let's go to Tenby" she said on Saturday.

I shrugged. Been there done that. As I've said before in this blog I'm not really a beach person.But then again I'd no real alternative option so fine.

However it's now Sunday morning....and it's raining. It was one of those Sundays (wherever in the world you are) that aside from getting any necessary provisions you know from the moment you get up that you're staying in.

There's now a channel called FreeSports ....yippee to that...where you can watch....surprise,surprise sports without having to pay for it. As mentioned before because of the internet connection where we are renting at the moment I've had to drop BT Sports. This was good news for the wife and daughter as it meant the number of programmes I'd recorded dropped to one (Professor T). Now however I'm back DVR'ing as if my life depended on it. So they find they're watching something and then the screen suddenly changes to an Australian rugby league game. Oh how they love that

Ah yes Australian Rugby League. The NRL. A season about to go into it's final stages. I'm Ok with the sport. Football will always come first but don't dislike it. So on Sunday morning watched a recording of a few games. The most important for me being the North Queensland Cowboys versus the Brisbane Broncos.

This game, being the first to watch was going to decide which NRL club I was going to follow. But. even though it might mean that I wouldn't be able to watch them for the rest of the season I'm no glory seeker. So whoever lost would have, for what it's worth, my support.

Well.....go get them Cowboys from now on then.

I enjoyed the games of course having the advantage that not living in Australia meant I wouldn't know the result in advance and could watch them later. There is a possibility dem Cowboys will move into the final eight at time of writing but I don't know and am not finding out before I finish watching this week's games

In the afternoon though wife/daughter wanted to watch movies. In particular Evita starring Madonna. Wasn't interested in that (though it raises the question whatever happened to Jimmy Nail?) so picked up and continued to read In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin.

Now I haven't finished the book yet. But those of you hoping that I would be somehow transported into the wildlands of Argentina and wax lyrical about the prose will be disappointed. I don't like travel books where the natives are treated like exhibits for the examination of the writer. He is not superior.

Furthermore the chapters are short,very short, one, two, three pages long. Tells a story and moves on when you're sure he could have got into more detail.

You know what? It might have been a better read as a blog (before his time I know).

When the skies grew darker I turned to my Kindle and it's backlight for further reading. However Charles Dickens will  have to wait. Amazon always throw offers at you when you've bought a Kindle. Normally I can ignore them. But recently they've offered deals on works by the recently deceased writer Brian Aldiss who I wrote about recently. Well I was tempted and bought a complete set of the short stories he wrote in the fifties as well as a complete set of his essays. Not only that but cannot resist reading them (starting with the essays) now thus jumping the queue of the great ebook unread.

Will chat about it when I've finished. All I'll say now is that I'm not disappointed.

It's Monday as I'm writing this. It's raining...but I have work coming up.

Until the next time.

An Amazonian Mystery And Sects In The City

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

One of the things you have to accept, and I do, is that when you buy a Kindle Amazon are going to send you emails enticing you to buy further ebooks. Most of these are either based on their various offers for that particular month, or on books you've recently purchased which is perfectly fine.

However recently I received an email from them which stated that as I've shown an interest in The Panda Trap by Pascal Garnier here are some other works of his as well as similar writers for your consideration.

Now regular readers to this blog will remember that I read this book a few weeks back and did recommend it (Buy it soon. The way Britain is going reading a work by a French author, even in English, will be considered an act of treachery). Thing is though I actually downloaded it in January 2013.

I think that email was the first of its kind Amazon sent to me. So the question is how did they know I had after four and a bit years got round to reading it?

There are three explanations. Firstly it was just coincidence and I was just being paranoid. Well that's possible. After all I feel this in a queue of Tesco Express ("Express"? Choose the wrong moment and its more like a Tesco Donkey Cart for the time you have to wait).

Secondly that someone from Amazon is reading this blog. Oh I hope so. Fame at last and all that. Mind you the email address I use in this blog is different to the one I use for the Amazon Kindle.

The final possibility is that if you have the wifi on whilst you're reading an ebook Amazon can somehow know this. I think that, from now on, when I'm reading an ebook I'll be certain that it's on aeroplane mode.

No matter how well read you think you are every reader knows that there are gaps their knowledge. Well known writers that they have merely glanced at, are aware of but haven't actually taken the plunge into. This is mainly due to the other distractions of life as well as the fact that there are so many books but so little time.

Until this year I'd obviously heard of Emile Zola but hadn't read anything by him. However now I've read a book about his exile in London, a short story and now a novel Lourdes, the first part of a "Three Cities" trilogy written in 1984.

It is a good read, I did feel I was reading the French Dickens (I'm sure there's a French blogger describing Dickens now as the "English Zola") as there are various stories with one particular one that carries it through.

For commercial reasons or not Zola does not appear to give a view as to whether he believes in the healing power that the Lourdes legend has to give. It's fair to say though that he does not approve of the Catholic church as an institution.

What he conveys well is how people fuelled with a mixture of religious fervour and illnesses come to the city as a pilgrimage, almost like a Christian Mecca in that regard .Lourdes that emerges as the central character.

I'm looking forward to reading the remainder of the trilogy. For now though the next book is The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1834-1872. Volume One. Well it was free.

Until the next time.

On Haggard, Image vs Reality and The Amazon E Book Game (May Edition)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

What a difference twenty four hours makes. There was I giving praise to the early part of King Solomon's Mines yesterday but having finished it oh my word it reminded me of the unreal tosh that was Beatrice, the previous Haggard novel I'd read.

It is, as I said previously a novel clearly written to be a bestseller, but a Victorian bestseller. So there's the foreign climes, in this case Africa, and of course most of which is British Empire Africa. So you get the racism, this case of the "nobel savage" variety, as well as "we are the masters" feel that an Empire or hard right Brexit can bring.

Haggard lays that with a trowel. As well as early on the hunting of animals as sport. There is a moment where the characters stop their all important journey for a spot of shooting at creatures whose only crime was to live in their natural environment. I was only surprised they didn't have a cup of tea afterwards

And there's the plot which probably at the time made Victorian readers high on adventure but the modern counterpart makes you wonder whether Haggard was high on drugs.

The real question you need to ask yourself of King Solomon's Mines is this. Would an updated version be successful? I'd argue that it wouldn't be. I'm glad I read it. Literary bucket list and all that. But I won't be encouraging others to follow.

Many years ago, I think aged ten. I picked up Ivanhoe. I remember not understanding anything and putting it down. It was the last time I've ever done that with a book, since then I follow the Mastermind principle of "I've Started So I'll Finish".

Well it's not Ivanhoe but the next book in the great ebook unread is The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott which is set in The Crusades, the first in a succession of Middle East military failures by the West you could argue.

Yesterday I discovered through a third party (ie gossip) that a person I knew was in financial difficulties. My first reaction (inwardly) was to laugh. Now this may seem cold but he is the sort person happy to flash the latest/most expensive cars, holidays, phones, whatever at you so the idea that all of this was a front seemed like natural justice.

But on thinking this further perhaps there is something more worrying around the corner here in Britain. For he is the second person I know in such a state and both of them are similar. They both have I had assumed well paid jobs, both had expensive hobbies and both are fans of the latest whatever on the market (the second person though was less ostentatious). These were men with seemingly comfortable lives and yet all of it, should the gossip be believed, is hanging by a thread.

Everything I'm going to say then is based on my knowledge, as well as the gossip, of two people. But let's say everything I've been told is correct. These men were not happy with what they had. They aspired for something a lifestyle that was beyond their reach and might ultimately be disastrous for them. You might say they should live within their means and are grown adults, which is true. Yet companies pummel these ads constantly at us. You buy this whatever and your life will be better. You don't need to pay it all now. Oh no we can arrange terms of repayment so you can buy now and pay considerably more later. Don't worry about that though. Remember Image is everything.

And in this world we live in image is everything.......until reality bites.

Ok then as I'm writing this it's the first of May. It's 5:06 on the first of May on a Bank Holiday to be precise (not just reality but insomnia bites as well). And that all means the Great (as everything seems to have that as it's title now) Amazon Ebook Game ....May edition.

The rules of this game are simple armed with just £5 (though as I seem to have loose e change this month £5.92) and see how many ebooks I can purchase for my Kindle. Stretching the money out as thinly as possible.

So I'm looking at the Amazon Daily Deal. I'm not interested in what's on offer aside perhaps from The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. Should I buy it? Will I make a mistake in thinking that the book's not for me judging by it's girlie cover? Me the most manly of men. Especially when I take my spectacles off.

Go to Wikipedia. There is a quote from David Starkey describes her writing as "good Mills and Boon" (what does that actually mean) and another from Helen Brown saying that her novels have "lashings of romantic licence".

It appears then that in this case you can judge a book on it's cover. Rejected.

Now it's the turn of the Monthly Deal. I notice a Michael Connelly novel featuring Harry Bosch The Black Ice for 99p. Never having read his work before but hearing loads of good things about him I'd be a fool not to buy it....so bought. I go further through the list. There's another Connelly book offered at 99p, The Lincoln Lawyer, so that's bought as well.

The Black Echo. The first of the Harry Bosch books is offered for 99p as well. Great I think. I'll buy it as well I think. That is until the Kindle kindly reminds me I purchased it in 2015.....memories eh? But another Connelly book comes into the picture. The Poet. 99p so bought. And wait for it, an ebook original The Safe Man, 99p that's purchased as well. Looks like this is a Connelly month.

There are Harry Bosch short story collections on offer for 99p but I think I should read the novels first.

I look at what's recommended for me "in Literature & Fiction". Thomas Wolfe's novel You Can't Go Home Again intrigues me.99p. Taken.

That all leaves me in this month's budget with an annoying 97p to spend. I find Fathers and Sons bu Ivan Turgenev for 75p. Done.Leaving me with a carry over of 22p for next month.

Must admit I enjoy this game. You never know how things turn out.

Until the next time.

In Which Four Books Are Read In Twenty Four Hours And An Update To The Welsh Labour Metaphor

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well four books have indeed been read in a twenty four hour period. A combination of their relative briefness and my insomnia which has recently returned to bite by waking me up. Still four books off the list of Kindle great e book unread is productive.

(As a quick aside apparently ebook sales are falling at the exact moment that because all my traditional books have all been boxed/crated up awaiting the move I've used the Kindle the most. Thus showing my ability to join a trend at exactly the opportune moment! As I've said in the past though the Kindle (other e readers are available) does have it's strong points but nothing beats the quiet pleasure of turning a page).

And so to the four books:

Orations by President John Quincy Adams is really just a fancy title for a political speech. Let me save you the bother. It's not the Gettysburg address.

The Panda Theory by French writer Pascal Garnier. This is a novel of a man who wanders around a small town in Brittany and the people he meets. It's a story where nothing much happens, but it doesn't matter , because you the reader are affected by the ordinariness of it all. Essentially decent people trying to get a handle on their lives.

Needless to say I loved it. The blurb said that Garnier (a writer I wasn't aware of before buying the book in an Amazon deal) could be compared to George Simenon and I get it. Not only in the type of story being told but also in its relative thinness and its sense of place. I've never been to Brittany but  felt in the time it was being read that I was there. Garnier is a writer I'll look out for in the future.

Haydn is a 1908 biography of the composer by John F Runciman. Short,opinionated and basic (and that's just Runciman.....I'll get my coat) this really was a waste of time which upon finishing it made me able to go back to sleep.

A Ball Player's Career by Adrian C Anson is a sporting autobiography published in 1900 giving his account mainly of his time playing (and managing) the Chicago Base Ball Club.

It's a charming read, but not without bite. The story of a proposed breakaway league is fascinating. And the account of the way he left the club, having been betrayed by at least one person he'd considered a friend is heartbreaking.

Of the four books this definitely got the silver medal.

And the latest book I'm reading? King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard, Definitely one of those books that you should cross off your literary bucket list whether you eventually like it or not. It's not the first book of his I've read. As a teenager I read a novel called Beatrice which was pure unmitigated twaddle from start to finish. Still, this is obviously a more famous work and has stood the test of time, so we live in hope.

And speaking of time....it's metaphor time  and yesterday was probably the last time before we move I went to the barbers. It is, you may remember a converted van, outside what was the Ogmore and Vale Labour club, now but a sorry wreck of happier times and was what I used as a metaphor for Welsh Labour in an earlier post.

The Metaphor Returns

You will see that to the left of this photo is a van. That's where the barbers have moved to as it was right next to the club for years. Clearly something was going on.

On entering the van I mentioned their move and my assumption that something after all this time was going to happen was proved correct. There was a lady and male barber there. He said the building was going to be completely demolished. Not saying that this was going to happen by election day but what was an iconic Labour party building in the area will soon become just a memory, and a withering one at that. So not just a metaphor for Labour in the present but for them in future as well.

What I'm going to say next is what the barber told me. I'm assuming it's correct, but for all I know this is but local gossip. You will need to bare that in mind.

What he said was that the demolished building was going to be replaced by flats for social housing with a couple of shops at the bottom and the specific one he mentioned was a Co-op grocery store.

Now I have no problem with social housing. The lack of it in Britain I'd argue is helping to cause social instability but if correct the news about the Co-op shop bothered me. Why? Because there are two convenience stores just a block away.

Why would Bridgend labour council agree to this? We all know exactly what's likely to happen. The Co-op will come in. Undercut the two other stores and then will have the power to do what it likes as at least one would close down. Competition only works for a short while but eventually in this sort of circumstance there is only one or at the very least a predominant store remaining which will have the power to do what it likes without any major comeback.

As far as I can see it (and let me stress again it's on the assumption that what I was told was true) this is just the Labour council spreading their legendary incompetence in town management to the suburbs as well.

Incidentally we discussed the forthcoming elections (a lady hairdresser was there as well) and I stated that Plaid Cymru was having my vote. No one actually questioned me on it. No one said "You're an idiot" or "You're English why? ". Labour need to understand that many Welsh people are disillusioned. Carwyn Jones might blame Jeremy Corbyn but the cancer affecting them started a long time before he came to power. This is just an excuse to hide a party which has been arrogantly incompetent in government on a local and regional level in Wales for years.

As I left I knew the lady hairdresser would consider voting for Plaid. My job was done.

Until the next time.

How Moving House Has Increased My Reading And Measuring Male Maturity Through Jane Austin

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

There is a twilight zone stage that me and my family are living in at the moment. Preparing for the move though it will be a number of weeks ahead so that a lot of things have been boxed, crated, charity shopped or just thrown away at the local tip. A consequence of which is that circumstances throw themselves up with unexpected results.

It's five o'clock this (Tuesday) morning. Exactly one hour before I wanted to get up. Nothing to watch on TV either recorded or live (which seem to be plastered with people trying to sell you cooking gadgets you'll rarely use, cleaning gadgets you'll rarely use or get into some rigorous training DVDs that I'm sure will lead me to a six pack and heart failure The DVD/discs are crated, as are the paper books. Nothing else to do for that hour than read on my Kindle (other e readers are available).

Before I wouldn't have considered reading at this hour, certainly not a paper book, as it's not comfortable for my eyes. But given the back light there's no problem here.

So Amazon (and the companies that sell the other e readers that are available) there's a whole new market of people to flog your wares to. Those who want to read but can't get at their paper books....you're welcome....a free gift voucher would suffice.

The book I finished this morning was H G Wells' 1899 novel When The Sleeper Awakes. The first thing to say about this is that the only way you can read it is by suspending your disbelief to such a level you'll consider when finishing taking up high wire lessons. The plot can only be described as bonkers. Starting from the fact that we have to believe that not only can a man survive two hundred years in a trance but doesn't age either!

The other thing you need to abandon when reading the book is the thought that in essence H G Wells is rehashing the plot from the earlier novel  The Time Machine (Victorian gent in the future having to deal with the society there).

It is readable....just. It's also in parts racist. The "N" word was mentioned twice. This was both unexpected and unwelcome.

Next I read Emile Zola's short story The Flood (I know, never read him before and he comes into my life twice in a week). I won't go into the plot other than what's obvious from the title. What I will say is that if you're not moved after having read this you've a heart of stone and probably a member of UKIP.

And so to the current book I'm reading. Emma by Jane Austen. It's the first Austen book I've ever read (though some paper books are in the great crated unread.

It's funny how my attitude to Austen has changed even though I've never read her work before. As a child soon to be a teenager I rejected her because she was "just for girls". As a teenager/twenties I wouldn't read her because she seemed to be the thinking woman's Mills and Boon.

(As an aside I wouldn't condemn my past self for that view. I've written before how I believe that some female writers would have a far greater male readership if the covers didn't give men the wrong impression about their work. Marian Keyes is a recent example, though at the time Georgette Heyer and Norah Lofts were rejected by me exactly because their covers reminded me of Mills and Boon)

In my thirties and forties I had acknowledged that she was worth reading but life and other books always seemed to come before her. Now, in the age of fifty three, being I suspect the only man outside of publishing who has read a Georgette Heyer novel first Jane Austen has arrived in my life.

Hope I like it.

Until the next time.

Hooked On Classics (2) and The Great EBook Buying Game (2)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I've finished reading The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield and to be honest I was stunned.

These stories are very clever. Nothing much happens, no literary eqvilant of melodramatic music will enter your heads as you read them. The characters appear to live comfortable lives. And yet slowly she reveals people who are walking around in a state of quiet sadness.

You the reader are embroiled in the lives of these people for a brief while, but are affected by it.

It was quite simply the best collection of short stories that I've ever read.

The next ebook . Got for reasons of cheapness (it was free) is With Zola in England by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. It was Viztelly's (who was apparently a journalist in the old London Evening News) account of the time in exile of Emile Zola in England (in a time when Britain accepted people who fled their country of origin for political reasons) having left France to avoid imprisonment for his actions on the "Dreyfus Affair". So far so good.

As all my paper books are now boxed, crated etc in preparation for the move you may remember that I created what I'm now calling The Great Ebook Buying Game (given now the fashion is to title everything "great". From baking shows to Acts of Parilament that will turn Britain into some right wing wet dream).

Given that I'm not buying anymore paper books until we permantly move house. This temporary monthly game is simply seeing how many ebooks I can buy on Amazon for £5. I'm doing this as I'm writing this post now. So let's see what happens.

I go to the Amazon "Daily Deals" One of them looks Chick Lit stuff, one of them is George Orwell's Animal Farm (have read that) and the remaining one is The Humans by Matt Haig. It seems interesting enough. So it's bought at 99p.

Looked at "Recommended reads" for me by Amazon. Nothing grabs my attention. Then time for the 250 books they're offering for 99p. I stop at Absolute Friends by John Le Carre. You know I haven't read Le Carre in years. Bought.

Amazon then offer more "Recommended Reads" suggested by my purchase of the Le Carre. I stop at a biography of the Italian fascist poet Gabriele D'Annuzio. by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. I think about this one long and hard. Eventually I decide to buy it. There is a rise of the extreme right in Britain, I'm curious to know what turns people that way. Bought for 99p.

Looking further at the Recommended reads following my purchase of the biography leads me for some reason to the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. It's just 75p. Bought. This leads me to yet another Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt at just 49p. Bought.I have 79p left. So I go for another Sinclair Lewis book Free Air at 75p. Today then has become Sinclair Lewis day.

Until the next time.

Hooked On Classics Part One: Lorna Doone

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I'm in this twilight zone state of preparing to move house but not actually moving yet my reading has for the moment been reduced to my Kindle. A factor that adds another extra profit to those people residing in the Amazon e jungle.

As I've explained before my Kindle can be spilt easily into three categories. Those books bought at full price (the smallest of the three), those bought as an Amazon "deal" and those, mainly classics which were free.

Can't deny that in many ways having a lot of classics on the Kindle is not just financially a bargain (which it is) but also helps me go through all of those books that have obtained "classic" status but hadn't got round to reading because of life, the universe and everything.

That doesn't mean to say it's necessarily a rewarding experience. In previous posts I've discussed how Call Of The Wild  by Jack London essentially lifted the plot from Black Beauty. Or how the dullness of D H Lawrence's Twilight In Italy bored me into submission (the only remarkable fact of this book being that it made Italians seem dull) before I could go to town on it's racism.

And so we come to the latest e book that I've just finished reading Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. Definitely a novel where more often or not you will hear the word "classic" nearby like some sort of literary stalker.

The thing about Lorna Doone is this. If you take the plot line at it's most basic (Historical - for us - Romance set in a "wild" part of Britain) it is I think the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man.

My view of Lorna Doone is that if this was a football match it would have been a draw. Where this novel scores is in the description of its setting. You do feel that you're in the wild west (well South West .....Devon) in the late seventeenth century. Also the writing does drive you on. R D Blackmore does know how to tell a tale and I did want to continue turning (or in fact swiping) the page.

I said that it was the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man. It isn't however better. For a start Emily Bronte's novel is far more subtle and nuanced. There are shades of grey (not as in fifty) absent in Lorna Doone. It's the Wild South West where heroes and villains are (with one slight exception) clearly marked.

Also the male narrator's (John Ridd) opinion of most women is laughable in this day and age. He seems to treat them as tolerated pets that need to be controlled. The one exception is the eponymous Ms Doone herself. She is basically woman placed on a pedestal. Beautiful, graceful, devoted you have to ask if she is quite the catch how was it that she fell in love with a narrator who by his own admission is not handsome (remember that if you see a big/small screen adaptation).

So then a draw. Happy to have read it. Won't ever read it again.

I found myself afterwards on a slight artistic interlude when the next book on the great e unread turned out to Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries by the artist Albrecht Durer bought for my appreciation of the artistic value of having to pay nothing.

For a short book (read in half an hour) it really was a waste of time. This was less a travel journal and more of a ledger as he detailed what he bought and sold. As a writer Durer makes a great artist.

The next book to read is ....The Rainbow by D H Lawrence. Regular readers will know that along with Bridgend Labour Council and Arsenal football club D H Lawrence has become quite the villain in this blog. Still as Michael Palin has shown I'm quite capable of disliking one book by a writer and liking the next. So we live in hope.

Until the next time.

On House Hunting In South Wales And Ebook Hunting In The Amazon

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Yesterday then. Earmarked for initial house viewings. Saving time. The idea explained before is that as I'm working afternoon/evening shift for the next five days (this excludes Sunday) I would look at three houses and should I like them then they move on to face the more stricter test of wife/daughter on Saturday.

Four houses were earmarked. As it turned out however it would only be three that I would see. The fourth, when I was trying to arrange an appointment, went something like this.

"Well you see there have been two offers " said the estate agent "but we have been unable to reach the owners. I don't know what's happened".

All very well (actually all very not well) but the question remained why was this house still on the website? Of course didn't actually ask. I might need his help again in the future.

What this meant was that for Penarth and surrounding areas I had three viewings. One for nine thirty in the morning, the remainder for twelve and twelve thirty..........yes I know.

House number one was a relatively (I'm guessing thirty years) bedroomed modern house. It was OK. It certainly needed a bit of love in the decoration department but it was certainly livable. The downside, even allowing for our downsizing intention, was the kitchen part of the kitchen diner. It was just too small in the area of cupboard space (something like a wardrobe the wife never has enough of) and there was no obvious place for a tumble dryer. Still, it had enough going for it to be considered a maybe.

I then had about two hours to spare wandering around the streets of Penarth. Part of which was spent in a couple of estate agents I'd missed when first doing a trawl of them in January. One gave me a group of pamphlets with houses that were in our price range. The other was a combined lettings/estate agent firm. The estate agent was not there when I'd arrived so gave someone from the lettings side my email address assuming that a list of available houses was going to come my way. At time of writing no such list has come my way.

Otherwise had an early lunch of two sausage rolls washed down with Lucozade. Gastonome that I am.

Arrived early for house number two. A four bedroom semi detached just a few streets away from house number one. I spent the time whilst waiting staring to read Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. The sort of classic book you feel you should read before you die.

(The observant amongst you would realise that I've finished the Christina Rossetti poetry collection. To be honest it was the sort of thing that my opinion of is best described as a shrug).

What I hadn't understood from looking at the website was why the prices of house number one and two were so similar given that this one had an extra bedroom. The answers revealed themselves as you walked in. Not only did the house need decoration it also seemed to need cleaning from top to bottom as well some bits of plastering......and carpeting. Work had been done but whatever had been planned for this house it was unfinished.

The estate agent revealed why. Apparently the current owners had decided to divorce and just stopped the improvements in the house there and then. Obviously it's not for me to discuss their affairs (and let me stress I've no idea nor should I know) but I would've understood if it was following emotional recriminations of adultery but not because they had enough of each other. It seemed to have made more sense to have sorted the house out before going their separate ways.

But none of the above issues were the reason I rejected it. Neither was the lack of wardrobe space in the main bedroom.

No it was the mould.

And in a very unusual place too. Either side of the bed by the floor in that main bedroom. The estate agent said that she hadn't noticed it before. She suggested getting an expert to look at it but really that was clutching at straws. Rejected.

House number three was an end three bedroomed terraced Victorian house and I loved it. The bathroom was the first time in this whole process that I went wow. The place had character, charm and adequate space for our needs.

But there was an elephant in the room, or rather out of the room, and out of the house...parking.

The photo in the website suggested that it was on a street corner. There wasn't a corner. There's some sort of building and then a corner  There was a parking permit on a first come first served basis but as we have two cars the best place for the other is a quiet street around the corner which obviously would involve a walk. A maybe.

Later when I was at home and the wife came in I showed her the two houses I considered maybes. She threw even more doubts on house number three, disliking the kitchen colours for the cupboard (what?) and the bathroom (how dare she!) and laughing mockingly when I mentioned the parking problem. I suspect that the parking will be the thing that will kill house number three off. She will be seeing it on Saturday however.

Wife has also surprised me by being interested in a house amongst the leaflets one of the estate agents gave me when I had time to fill in Penarth. Surprised because this house is further from Penarth than I'd expected her to consider. So on Saturday afternoon she and daughter will be visiting three houses.....lucky them.

As until I've moved/settled all of my reading is going to be Kindle based I decided to temporarily change my book buying whilst waiting for that day. So instead of a £1 a week looking for a vintage Penguin/Pelican paperback I've decided on the first of every month to spend up to £5 on ebooks.

For the most part my Kindle is filled by classic books that are free (hence Lorna Doone) or by by cheap "daily deals" Amazon do. I'd read and enjoyed Victoria Coren's autobiography of her experiences playing poker,For Richer For Poorer, for just 99p (as I've mentioned before I loved it though I still couldn't tell you the rules of the game....or is it a sport?).

I also bought the Life of Pi by Yann Martel for 20p. Which, having read it, is nineteen pence too much.

So I started on the Amazon "Daily Deal". Nothing of any interest to me. Which is a shame as out of curiosity I looked at the deal the day before and it included books by Carrie Fisher which I would have bought.

Moved on to the "Monthly Deal". Most either were, or seemingly written in the style of a bestseller. None of them seemed to appeal to me as much they used to as a teenager.

(A quick aside here. I'm not against bestselling books - which I'm classing here as books specifically written to make money - it's just I suspect an age thing in terms of what I'm interested in now as a man in my fifties. Mind you. I did out of curiosity look for Arthur Hailey, one of my favourite "bestselling" writers and was shocked to find that they were on sale, as an ebook , for over six pounds!)

There was "We Need To Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver but as a parent I was avoiding that really out of fear.

Only then did I notice Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith for just 99p. I remember the book when it came out in 1981. It was one of those that you mean to read but somehow life interferes. Well opportunity knocked (don't have a doorbell) and it was bought.

Looked at the "Readers Who Bought This Also Bought". Most were subsequent books in the Renko series which were of course more expensive for this exercise. Also though noticed March Violets by Philip Kerr. This is the first book in the Bernie Gunther series of private eye novels set in Nazi Germany. It was both interesting and also at 99p cheap. Bought.

Having gone through the list looked at what Amazon were "recommending" for me. One of them turned out to be Das Kapital by Karl Marx. I've remarked before how I seem to be unusual in having drifted leftwards politically the older I've got. It would be interesting on reading this seminal work how left wing I've actually become. It was also 99p. Bought. Karl Marx as a bargain. Wonder when that was last said?

There were a number of cheap omnibus books by various (now dead) writers but the problem was that in one form or another I'd already got at least some of these. But casting my eye on the Amazon recommendations I noticed Oblomov the classic Russian novel by Ivan Goncharov. It was 99p,it was cheap, it was bought.

Having gone through the "Readers Who Bought Oblomov also bought" bit, I found A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. Never heard of this book before but apparently it's a Russian classic and the plot seemed intriguing. It was also 76p.Bought

And so it finished. Three books with a Russian connection, two with a German one. Or, Two thrillers, two classic novels and a work of political theory. Whatever that says about me I don't know. Probably Amazon do though.

Until the next time.

In Which Now I Take More Than One Tablet Plus More On Maesteg,Penguins and The White Stuff

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I start the post by the admission that, at time of writing, I'm the owner of two tablets. One is the Samsung (yes that type of tablet) I've had for a few years now. Works fine for me, though I'm sure if I let my daughter get her hands on it then things might improve....but I'm not.

Now I have another. An Amazon Fire (yes I know you're impressed). Why? Well as always with these things it's a combination of money and opportunity. Work gave out a £25 shopping voucher as a Christmas gift. Trouble was the shops involved tended to be specialised (I have no intention of going camping when central heating is available at home) or places that I wasn't sure what I'd wanted for the money.

But then I noticed Argos was on the list, and having known that they were flogging a 7" tablet for £49.99 (add £10 for the case) thought that if I'd use the vouchers then the cost would be cheaper. My other thought (and yes the brain does hurt) that post brexit these sort of things might be considerably more expensive in the future in case the Samsung went down. So the Fire was bought.

So  how do I use them? Well not wishing either to be offended basically it's 9-5 for the Samsung and 5 until sleep time for the Amazon (remember I do shifts so this isn't work related). I find that the Samsung is for more serious matters, the Amazon is far more for fun at present. There are some apps (Pinterest, Twitter, Podcast Manager) that are on both machines but as I mainly use Facebook in the evening I've deleted it from the Samsung. Exactly the same with Netflix, although Amazon keep on trying to tempt me with Prime Video until we as a family no longer have Netflix on the TV they might as well not bother.

(That said I can buy things on Amazon Video and put it on the cloud. You may think the best Revenge is eaten cold but it actually was season one - it went downhill after that)

My music collection, small that it is, has been moved to the fire. Always found it better than Spotify anyway. And of course I can use it as a Kindle ereader

As they work on different systems the contact and diary parts have to be written separately. Which may seem stupid now. But come the day when one of them falters then you'd understand.

Does all this make me an internet junkie? Well I don't know. Perhaps if you see me rushed into hospital for an emergency operation to extract either tablet from my hand...perhaps then.

Today (Friday) is the last day of my two week stint as chauffeur to my daughter to and from school. Although by no means perfect her knee is far better than it was before Christmas so from Monday she will be using the bus. After having dropped her off decided to go onwards to Maesteg for some grocery shopping. Noticing as I did that although the snow didn't appear to have hit the town it reached the surrounding hills.

So Maesteg. Best view from a town centre car park in Britain anyway, now with added icing.

Does make you stop....at least for a little while

And again

I will return to more views of the area in a moment. But first having also gone to the indoor market there which I've mentioned previously, two Penguin paperbacks were bought for 50p each (remaining budget now £2.57).

This was the first.

Helen Dunmore - A Spell Of Winter

Should perhaps mention here that when I revealed it on Twitter there were a number of positive responses. Seems encouraging then.

The other was:

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

As promised two more pictures before I leave you today. This was taken just outside Maesteg.

A quiet beauty

And this was from the village of Cwmfelin

If it wasn't for the cold I'd have been gazing for quite a while

This is exactly how I like snow......picturesque and from a distance.

Until the next time.