Alone With Donald Trump.....In A Manner Of Speaking

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So picture the scene. Wales are playing Ireland in the six nations championship. Wife is watching that with "the girls". Wales of course eventually won winning the six nations, the grand slam and rugby bragging rights at least until the World Cup.

(And of course the Welsh mathematical theory that national rugby success is in equal and direct proportion to the mess of their club game still stands)

Daughter is revising for her exams.

I am alone. Even the weather is no company. Wind and heavy rain with an unseasonably grey sky above.

In fact the only company I have is Donald Trump...... being the next book to read from the library.

Fire And Fury - Michael Wolff

In this blog I rarely chat about a book as I'm reading it in case my opinion changes at the end (as was the case with D H Lawrence). But given the circumstances and as it's such a good read so far I thought I'd make an exception here.

Mr Wolff was given access to the White House (which would probably have been denied if they'd known what he would produce). Trump and his entourage denies what was produced and I've no idea either way. Trouble for Trump though is that given his known behaviour in public what is written here certainly seems credible.

The impression of Trump here is of a nasty lazy man who didn't expect to win the presidency (and in terms of the popular vote remember actually didn't) and is struggling to do the job. It also gives the impression of bewildered acolytes around him. Trying to contain "the Donald" as best they can but finding that eventually he breaks free.

It was interesting to read that Trump runs the White House on the basis of separate cliques fighting for his attention and approval doing the same piece of work. Do you know who also did this? Hitler.

Do you know what the worse thing about Trump being president is? Whatever we thought he was going to be it turns out he is far worse than that.

It's a tribute to Mr Wolff that from such a complex subject as Trump, how he operates and those around him (and were around him - given he fires people with such regularity) is a book that's readable and understandable for an Eastender living in Wales.

I've read about third so far. Let's hope the rest of the book is just as good.

Until the next time.

Why Do I Continue To Read D H Lawrence When I Hate Him?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Sea and Sardinia is finished and well to a D H Lawrence hater like me nothing, and I mean nothing has changed.

The only real pleasure it gave me was it's shortness. Otherwise it really should have given the reader a truer sense of the fate that was going to befall him/her by retitling the book Twilight In Italy2 aka you thought no one could make Italy/Italians even more boring than I did the first time.

Lawrence is a man incapable on cutting down on paragraphs. As if using so many words hides the fact that for the most part he's writing pure unadulterated twaddle. That, and his racism ( he the inglese observing these unsophisticated people living their lives as if he's in some type of experiment sets me on edge) made it for me an awful book to read.

It was one of those books that gave you a palpable sense of relief when you finished.

(A quick aside. The next book I'm reading is Can Anyone Hear Me? by Peter Baxter. It's essentially anecdotes about doing the Test Match Special BBC radio cricket broadcasts abroad. In all the housemoving stuff I'd completely forgotten that the cricket season had started and that the quiet pleasure of listening to the sport on the radio has returned. I will listen to that tomorrow, whilst continuing to box or crate our lives away. It'll be either that or cutting the grass for what I intend to be the last time before we leave......all depends on the weather)

So then a writer that in this blog has a status of regular villain. And yet I still read him and will probably continue to do so in the future. The question came into my head. "Why"?

(A question that could also be asked of my attitude towards writers that I don't hate but am neutral towards such as F Scott Fitzgerald or Jane Austen)

So then is it peer pressure? Yes and no. If you are the person who is in the minority with regard to an author then you do as a reader want to plough on and think is this next book going to be different? Well remember in all the times I've criticised Lawrence I've always stressed that it's based on the books that I've read. It's not impossible that you can dislike a work by a writer but love the next book you read from him/her. In the course of this blog I've had that experience with Michael Palin and, probably more pertinently, outside of this blog Kingsley Amis.

But that I'm willing to read further books by someone with a reputation does not mean that I will necessary change my mind. It's just that as a reader I'm willing to change my opinion to some extent if the right book comes along. Call it literary blind date. In the case of D H Lawrence though the right book hasn't come thus far so to me he just should be grateful for Lady Chatterley's Lover or else he'd be forgotten aside from people using his books as a cheaper form of Valium.

Until the next time.

Flying To The Moonstone And The Return Of A Blog Villain

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well in this literary bucket list that I've seemed to have stumbled upon since my reading habits have been totally devoted to the Kindle now that every other book has been crated, boxed whilst preparing to move house The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins has been finished.

This mystery novel is a best treated as a Victorian entertainment and I approached it on that basis. Judged accordingly although it's not the best book I've read this year it's an early contender for the one I've been pleasantly surprised by.

The thing that got to me about this was that Wilkie Collins plays tricks on the reader and I don't mean crime style red herrings either. It's written from the point of view of various characters as it progresses. So that people at the beginning of the book are not necessarily going to be the main attraction at the end. Also he is not afraid to have characters dominate the novel in the early stages only to disappear and return later on. There is probably only one person who is consistently through the mystery who the reader is not sure what to think of.

I enjoyed the book immensely. But there are caveats. As it was written in the Victorian era there is a sense of masters and servants, also of the lowly position of women in that time. A sort of "know your place". However these are not caricatures. You do get the sense of real people.

The caricatures are the "Indian" gang that permeate the novel. They really are "cliche Indian". Coming to Britain as "jugglers" (if there was a modern version made of the book they'd be software engineers) with their "Hindoo" religion. It was low level racism. Though I'd argue mitigated, at least in part by the ending which I can't explain further for fear of spoiling it for you.

So the next book in the great ebook unread turns out to be Sea and Sardinia by D H Lawrence. Honestly I pick these books at random but those of you who kindly read this blog regularly will think I've done this deliberately. For alongside Arsenal football club and Bridgend Labour Council D H Lawrence is a regular villain.

(A quick aside. You will note that the Prime Minister Teresa May came to Bridgend when she visited South Wales yesterday (I was working so I missed her majesty). The Conservatives aren't stupid. Come to a part of South Wales where Labour have run a region pathetically)

Of the books I have read D H Lawrence is remembered for the pants taken off Lady Chatterley but should also be remembered for boring the pants off the reader. Furthermore you may remember that I read his similar Italian book "Twilight in Italy" whose only literary feat was to make the nation and it's inhabitants seem dull.

So I don't hold out much hope.

Until the next time.

D H Lawrence,Oscar Wilde and Guisborough Town FC

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Chatting and reminiscing about a couple of towns in my last few posts does mean that I need to go through the books I have and am reading during the past days. Given that the next few posts will revert to the house moving situation which all of a sudden has moved a lot quicker it's better that I deal with it today.

Have finally finished The Rainbow by D H Lawrence. Nothing has changed from my earlier post on the subject. Lawrence is still the literary super villain of this blog and I doubt it will ever change.

When that was finished the next amongst the pile of ebook unread turned out to be Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde.

The best way to describe these stories is this. Imagine you've gone to a fancy restaurant. Having had the main course that you didn't enjoy you're then presented with something relatively light as a dessert. After eating it, you realise that just going home and having some chocolate ice cream would have been more substantial, tastier and cheaper.

That's my view of this book. Though not awful these semi comic stories (so don't expect a laugh a minute) are OK in themselves (though the last one, The Portrait of Mr W H needed some editing) but ultimately too light to be remembered warmly.

So the next ebook, and the one I'm currently halfway through is Far From The Massive Crowds by Mark Cowan. This is a fan's diary of the 2010/11 season of the team he supports, Guisborough Town of the Northern League.

It came with many advantages immediatwely, it's a football book (tick) it's a football book about a team and a league I've little knowledge about but appreciate given the attitude of fans of bigger clubs to the League of Wales (tick), it's a football diary where few people outside the North East will have any idea of what's going to happen next (triple tick and an explanation mark for the excitement of it all).

What it also has now I'm reading it is a genuine sense of humour, a writer who is honest when his team doesn't play well and also has the capacity to like other teams whilst always being faithful to his first love. That I would argue is the sign of a true football fan.

If this was a man you'd be having friendly banter with him down the pub. It's so far the most enjoyable book I've read this year.

D H Lawrence, Oscar Wilde. And yet it's a book by Mark Cowan about Guisborough Town FC that's the best of the three. Who'd have thought it?

Until the next time.

Alone At Work With D H Lawrence

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I was working yesterday (Saturday) in the afternoon/evening shift and had known beforehand that it was going to be one of those days where not much was going to be done because of things outside my control. In this case mainly involving the oddly shaped ball that Wales was going to be using playing France in the last match of the Six nations series.

That, with the probability that many Welsh fans were going to becoming Irish for their subsequent game against England and the generally miserable weather outside the window meant that there was going to be plenty of time for me to continue reading The Rainbow by D H Lawrence.

Trouble was that unlike the previous times this opportunity came my way it was going to be with that Lawrence guy. The one that drives me up the wall and down again with either his pretentious twaddle or mind numbing boredom.

So there I was, alone with D H Lawrence, the literary equivalent of being stuck in a lift with someone you don't like but trying to be polite.

And if you ask why don't I just try another book. Well I've always believed that the reader should follow the principles of a Mastermind quiz master in that "I've started so I'll finish".

It began interestingly, an East Midlands farmer marries a Polish woman in the 1840's. Now that did cause me to suspend my belief from a very high level. After all the chances of a British farmer marrying a Pole are about as remote as they will be in a few years time when Brexit takes hold. Still despite some really outlandish prose he got my attention.

But then everything for me went typically Lawrence. First you get a thousand words being written when twenty could do. The man in the lift had suddenly produced a bottle of whisky in his pocket. This was literature as alcoholism

And just like a non violent drunk it suddenly gets all maudlin and dull. Page upon page of utter boredom. I was reading and thought to myself "What is the point of all this?"

He'd fooled me before. The last D H Lawrence fiction I'd read was his final novel Kangaroo. Where I began interested and finished solely grateful that I could put the book back on the shelf.

And do you know what the worst thing about reading on the Kindle is? It's that it tells you how long you've got left before the agony is over. One hour twenty one minutes (yes it's that precise). It would really have to do something for Lawrence to stop being one of the regular villains of this blog.

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.

From Wales To Armenia In A Day. That's What Reading Can Do

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It's three forty five pm yesterday. I'm in the car waiting for my daughter's school bus to arrive. The weather is cliché Welsh. Cold, grey and pouring down with rain. No matter that this band of rain is going to sweep across most of Britain it's obviously "Welsh" weather. To sprinkle the cliché off you remind yourself that it's a Monday. I want to go home and have a cup of tea.

For this day I'm abandoning my normal reading schedule. Having hardly read anything for the last few days from being unwell I decided to concentrate on finishing one book of the current four I've got on the go at the moment. And, as it's the one, closest to the end that was An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman.

This book is an account of his time in Armenia helping to translate a work by an Armenian writer into Russian. It's in the nineteen sixties so, Armenia as an independent nation doesn't exist (part of the then USSR). Interestingly Grossman does refer to Armenia as a nation often in this book. I'd wondered whether at that time it was rather like what Wales, Scotland are like now.

I've no idea whether calling it a Sketchbook comes from the Russian, but it's really a perfect title. There seems to be an organised randomness where he would explain something that happened to him and then go off on a tangent on something else only to return to the original event. The point though is that it's done effortlessly, and you the reader are not lost as he does so.

It's exactly what Twilight In Italy by D H Lawrence should have been but wasn't.

You can guess from the above that not only did I finish this book but I loved it. A book about a country (now) that I know little about in a time I can barely remember and yet (early days I know) it's the best book I've read this year so far. When I eventually move towards his novel Life and Fate it will encourage me.

Would it also encourage me to visit Armenia? No. Simply because I'd suspect that most of "the Armenia" that's in the book has long since gone. A few years ago I'd decided to visit the village of Gilfach Goch as it was apparently where Richard Llewellyn based his novel How Green Was My Valley. I knew that the coal mine was no more (interestingly there's now a wind farm there - quiet as well) but the building that the Inn/hotel was based on in the book was a ruin bordering on rubble.

One final point that I've mentioned in an earlier post. Not exactly a spoiler but the introduction might mention a fact about Grossman that will affect how you read the text. I can't go into any further details but you have been warned and not read it until you've finished the rest of it.

So the next book amongst the great eunread is Welcome To Kington by Miles Kington. A collection of this humourist's columns. I got it as I was wondering who else to read in this vein aside from Alan Coren and he came to mind.

From Wales To Armenia in a day.....that's what reading can do.

Until the next time.

Do Tablets Have Feelings? Did Porthcawl Library Miss Me? Can You Be Hammered Twice In A Month? And Other Deep Thoughts

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Firstly it appears that the situation in Bridgend Indoor Market has become even worse than when I spoke about it in October (http://sopralalunawithpenguinsintherain.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/perhaps-maesteg-is-not-only-indoor.html). Even more stalls are closing and today the situation even made the front page of the local newspaper. Next time I'm in the town I'll have another look.

I have to report a death, well I think it's a death anyway of my Samsung tablet. Tried to switch it on this morning, nothing. Not a Kindle of the Fire of life. Speaking of which good thing I'd recently bought the Amazon Fire. Probably the most foresightedness thing I've done in a decade.

Of course the question I need to ask is whether the Samsung felt somehow offended by the arrival of the new younger, quicker, faster pretender and was just so upset it committed tabloid suicide? The timing seems to suggest that it couldn't bare a rival and just gave up.

Must admit that apart from trying to see whether it can be resuscitated to get out a couple of photos I'm not particularly bothered by the situation. Though that's due to luck than judgement.

In an action which again may seem premature (there's a viewing on the house tomorrow) returned to Porthcawl library. It has been a week since I'd put books on the counter and quietly walked out. Assuming that I'd be leaving the borough shortly thereafter. Well that fell through so wanting to avoid the celebrations and parades of the prodigal book borrower arrived there early.

My intention had been to reborrow the two books I'd returned last week. But while Marian Keyes collection of articles Under The Duvet was an easy find it appeared that someone else was interested in Mark Chapman's recollections of trying to instill sport to his children so it was not there. A need arose then to get a football book and the one I eventually decided was.....

Sven Goran Eriksson - Sven My Story

Leaving aside his private life (to be honest I'm not bothered with what consenting adults do in private as long as there are no issues of hypocrisy) the thing which both Eriksson and England's other foreign manager Capello had was that early promise led to extreme disappointment. It should be an interesting read.

It is according to the front cover blurb quoting The Mail On Sunday it is the book "Everyone's Talking About". Don't remember my mother mentioning it to me .

After that memorable return to the book borrowing fold I went to the PAWS charity bookshop and bought four Penguin paperbacks for a pound (Penguin book budget now £2.07).

These books were:

R K Narayan - Tales From Malguidi

This came from the Penguin 60s of pocket books produced to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary.

Nadine Gordimer - July's People

I've read a couple of novels by this writer and she didn't disappoint so this will be interesting.

Ernest Hemingway - Green Hills Of Africa

This is an account of a "big game safari" in East Africa in the nineteen thirties. I ummed and arred about buying this book because I'm assuming he's hunting these animals. Ultimately though I felt it was important to read something from the man who tried to put a sort of romantic tinge in hunting and well aim to shoot it down. That's right I'm going to do a hatchet job.

Finally it's that man again:

The Rainbow - D H Lawrence

Well we'll see what I think of this when it comes amongst the great unread.

Twenty six days ago on a Friday night I watched West Ham lose five nil to Manchester City in the third round of the F A cup. It's happened before. About four years ago they lost to the same score in the cup to Nottingham Forest. The TV cameras cut to a small boy crying his eyes out. Remember thinking that I'd just turned fifty and I felt like crying too.

Well this evening there was a league match between these teams and in view of West Ham's good performance since that match there was a good chance the result wasn't going to be the same this time around.

Well it wasn't . It was four nil.As I sat down with my coffee in front of the TV I watched open mouthed as the team I followed capitulated as they did earlier this year.

I've had better evenings.

Until the next time.

In Which For Two Weeks I've Become Old Dad

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

For the past week, and for the remaining part of this one,I have found myself at three fifteen on an afternoon along a lines of cars on a busy road outside my daughter's school waiting to pick her up there.

I have had companions. It had been dull D H Lawrence, now the more amiable Alan Coren to pass the time whilst I'm there. But it was only yesterday did I realise that I was, temporarily, old dad. The man who would pick up his daughter regularly from primary school and drive her straight home with rarely any dramas (" How was school?" "Fine").

Since the move up to secondary school this changed, as had she. Being now a teenager the old parents collecting her cramped her style. And as the place was a half hours drive away from where we lived, she wanted to take the school bus instead.

But for a short while my daughter's knee injury has brought us all back to the future. Given that unlike the bus she could put the seat back on the car seat to stretch her leg out. there would be a car taking and picking her up.

Thankfully now better than she was. But at the beginning her pain was such that when she looked at me I didn't see the questioning everything teenager but as a child seeking help. And in the reverse I wasn't the boring stick in the mud who nagged at her to do her homework and tidy her room. Or the man who deliberately limited her time online simply by changing the passwords on her laptop or Ipad. No I became old dad.

So three fifteen. Deliberately early so that I can get a reasonable space. (Impossible to actually get into the school at this time as it's packed with buses). I stay in the car, daughter knows roughly where I'll be parking so I won't wait by the school gates to pick her up. No parent (I'm not the only one) stays by the gates, it's just not done. The Sixth formers get out first and eventually the rest. Daughter throws her coat at the back of the car and her school bag at the front.

It won't last. Next week she'll be well enough to go by bus and already she's back to picking up on faults both real and imagined of her old parents. To be honest, I was exactly the same at her age. Indeed my mother often recounts the story of when she accused me of lacking a sense of humour. "Well I eat your cooking don't I?" came the reply.

Until the next time.

In Which D H Lawrence Is Used As A Sleeping Pill,Bridgend Town News And The Return Of Alan Coren

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I woke up around two o'clock on Sunday morning and went down to watch some Welsh language TV programmes I'd recorded. Today (Monday) morning I found myself awake at one twenty five am.

But I had a plan.

The Kindle was fired up. The plan was simple. Despite what I'd said in my previous post I was to read one chapter of the current book, then would try and go back to sleep.

Well I read the chapter, got back to my pillow.....and slept like a baby.

Which only goes to show that under experimental conditions D H Lawrence is as good an alternative as a sleeping pill.

Eventually today I'd finished that book. Twilight In Italy. An account of his time there. It was a book solely remarkable in that D H Lawrence was able to perform the amazing feat of making Italy and Italians dull. It was gibberish boxed in boredom wrapped in pretension.

Lawrence could not resist the cliché of the simple, primitive Italians being observed by him, the sophisticated inglese. Having Italian blood in me would have riled me to have accused him of racism....if I hadn't been bored into submission in the meantime.

The next book on the great e unread is The Man Who Knew Too Much By G K Chesterton. I've never read a Chesterton book before so am looking forward to it.

Had to go to Bridgend Town today. Another shop in the town, a ladies clothing shop is closing down.

Another sad closure

Now a shop has opened in the town. One that sells pre owned tablets, DVDs and the such like. I don't think this means the revival of the town though. Far from it. Indeed although there are out of town stores it's telling that there are four shops where you could get pre owned stores in Bridgend but only one that would sell new television sets without an instalment payment plan attached to it. Says everything you need to know about the town really.

Final piece of Christmas news. The body that is the Christmas tree has been boxed up and is back in the attic.

A masterpiece of wrapping

Wife was unimpressed. Said that her friend W could fit her tree back in the box completely shut "and it was bigger". My response? " Give W an award then".

Snow is apparently forecast for the later this week (cannot tell you how much I want it to avoid us). In the meantime though as I waiting for daughter to get out of school I realised it was getting lighter. Which meant I could return to the "car book" Toujours Cricklewood by Alan Coren. Already I feel myself smiling as I'm reading it.

Alan Coren would never make me sleepy.

Until the next time.

Passing The Time Caused By Insomnia WithTea, Polish Biscuits And Australian Football

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I went to bed at a reasonable time (eleven). But they came a moment when all of sudden my eyes shot up. My thumbs were twiddled. I was bored....and awake.

Dark outside. Wife asleep. What to do?

You might think I would have fired up the Kindle to continue reading Twilight In Italy by D H Lawrence. Certainly as a literary sleeping pill it might have worked. But despite the fact that I can read a book in almost any place the one exception to that is in bed. For some reason my back feels stiff and I'm not comfortable. It's not an option.

So yet again it's time to look downstairs and watch a programme from the great unwatched on the DVR. It's only when I'm downstairs that I suddenly realise what the time is .......12:50am.

Amazingly I have a plan for being awake so early. Whilst I can't sleep watch a football match I've recorded. Just the match. No pre,half ,or post time stuff. Just the match. Then go back to sleep.

First though priorities: A cup of tea and some Polish wafer biscuits (chocolate flavour). I'm running out of the biscuits. Need to get some soon.

Hot Tea (And Biscuit) Action

Taking it I notice that the next match to watch is from the Australian (plus One New Zealand team) Hyundai A League dated December 10th. As I've explained before can watch sport (especially football) months after the event as long as I don't know the result, so if the league is across the world that will be even more .

The game was the Western Sydney Wanderers (after all like Bolton and Wolverhampton where else is there to wander) and the modestly named Melbourne Victory.

(A quick digression here: The team I follow in this league is Adelaide United. Champions last season,,not doing so well this.And the reason? Because they are one of the few teams with a proper football name. Most have the sort of quasi ra ra American sports team name which doesn't work because it's well, not North American.. Brisbane Roar? Perth Glory? Really?

That said, the oddest name was that of Melbourne City before the oil powered Manchester City machine took it over. They were called Melbourne Heart. Probably the most metrosexual name for a football team in the history of man, or should I say Person, kind.

I assume the finances of the Melbourne Victory are built from the foundations laid by their shirt sponsor, Builders Academy.....I'll get my coat)

But back to the match the Wanderers started well. There was a shot that it the post, travelled the goal line but impolitely decided not to cross it. It seemed like a close game until near the end of the first half when Barisha, the Victory's star player pounced from a parry by the Wanderers goalkeeper, Andrew Redmayne of a shot from  another Victory player. He was condemned by the Fox Sports commentator for this goal. Personally though had a Wanderers player been first there to collect the ball it would have been fine. Such are the football percentages. Anyway that's how the first half ended. One nil Victory.

No time for half time analysis. Fast forward. Mind you the Hyundai A League did answer the question few people in Britain were asking. Whatever happened to Mark Bosnich? Well he's a TV pundit, just not for me today.

The second half was just one sided and for most of it one manned as Barisha scored two further goals. The second of which reminded me of Winston Reid's second goal for West Ham against Swansea where one man out jumped two defenders to score.

Victory had their Victory and I had my ninety minutes of football. Went back to bed then and slept properly until the morning.

So thankyou, tea, Polish wafer biscuits and the A League. You made insomnia bearable.

Until the next time.

Morning In Maesteg With Michael Palin

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well, although decorations are still up for a few more days, this is the moment when the world returns from the Christmas/New Year stuff and faces reality in the face. For my daughter that meant the return to school.

As I mentioned in an earlier post a problem with strained ligaments in her knee and amongst other things what that meant was that for the first few weeks of this year I, as part of the Dad service, becomes her school bus driver. That's in the sense that I'll drive her as much as possible to and from school in the Kia so that she could put the seat backwards and extend her leg.

Her school is a half an hour drive away from where we live, and it's not that far away from Maesteg. This was important because, as it turned out, there was a viewing on the house at the (to me) odd time of 10:30am. So what I decided was to drop her off and then spend my time around the town before returning home.

Surely winner of the Best View From A Town Centre Car Park In Britain Competition?

And Again

It was an icy morning. So much so that the I couldn't get into my Kia on the drivers side the lock had been frozen up! But once the mighty Picanto  got going the journey was fine. Once at Maesteg the first stop was to the 135 year old Indoor market that has been cruelly threatened with closure by the Labour, and yes I'm going to repeat that,Labour, council (if you're interested I have written a post about that late last year - click on Maesteg in the labels).

The original By laws - Hung proudly in the market

You may remember that when in the market I buy books from the stall there. But what you may not know is that you can buy the books from the market café if the stallholder is not present (as she wasn't when I was there eight thirty in the morning). This was convenient in more ways than one because I'd decided to while away some of the time by having breakfast there.

So with a budget for Penguin books of £4.57 two books were bought from the stall. The first one was:

Jane Austen - Emma

Now I must admit to have never read a Jane Austen book before. When I was (much) younger I just saw her as a writer "for girls", an upmarket Mills and Boon. Nowadays it's simply that her books have not been next to read amongst the great unread (they are all on my Kindle).

This was the other one:

D H Lawrence - Women In Love

Now those regular readers of my blog know that, based on the books of his that I've read. I'm not a Lawrence fan. Let's see whether this can change my mind. It's not impossible for me to change my general view of a writer, as I will explain later.

Those two books cost me £1. Good value. And something that would be lost if the Labour council had their way and closed the market.

So I paid for them at the café whilst also ordering a big breakfast. I chatted to the lady about the threat by the council. She told me that the council had underestimated the reaction against the proposal to close the market and turn it into a library (that doesn't surprise me). She also said that the decision as to whether they would get the EU money (yes I know) for this renovation of the town hall would not be made until November. One other thing that didn't occur to me in my stupidity but she pointed out. The council want to use EU money to create a big town centre library in Maesteg when they used EU money to take the library out of the town centre in Bridgend.

This is typical Welsh labour, ignore the basics, try and force the big idea not thought through instead.

Anyway time for breakfast

Not Continental Today - Mind you the drink was a Cappuchino

It was delicious. Note that Bridgend Council. Something yet again that would be missed.

You may notice the book on top of the pile. The Michael Palin novel Hemingway's Chair. I took it with me to read whilst I was waiting for the breakfast. I won't chat about it properly until I've finished but let's just say that I'm loving this as much as his diaries were a disappointment. So you see, I can revise my views on a writer.

I went to a few other charity shops in Bridgend and bought one more Penguin book. It was this for a pound (so budget now £2.57).

Philadelphia - Christopher Davis

What's interesting about this book is that it's a novel based on the screenplay for the film. Presumably after VHS and DVDs this was one of the last to be made.

On my way home (having done a little grocery shopping) I stopped from time to time to take in some of the views.

Just outside Maesteg Town Centre

And I think my favourite view of the day. From the nearby village of Cwmfelin.

Stunning

As for the viewing? Don't think it went well. Came home at Eleven and whoever came were gone.

Until the next time.

Call Of The Wild by Jack London aka Black Beauty Part 2

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

There is always for the reader too many books too little time. And so you try and avoid as much film/TV series/any illustrations of a book as possible. But of course you're never going to completely successful. Snippets will come to your view.

If you take the Lord Of The Rings / Hobbits books for example. I know there is a search for rings, the hero has funny ears and there are old men with authority and white beards. Nothing though that would be any degree of spoiler to when I actually read the series.

So we come to Call Of The Wild. by Jack London, the latest ebook I've been reading. The snippets I knew beforehand were as follows. It involved a dog,it was set in somewhere icy and there was a sympathetic male character. I knew the final fact because though I've not seen it "the film of the book" starred Charlton Heston and if he's in a film you know he's not playing the bad guy be it in ice or the Planet of the apes.

What was unexpected, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to mention this, was that this turned out to be Black Beauty Part two. A different animal, I know. Tougher, I know. But still Black Beauty Part Two.

Essentially this is about an animal taken from a more comfortable environment and what it has to experience with different owners. It is tougher. It has literally, more bite,  but in concept it's no different from Anna Sewell's novel.

Is it better than Black Beauty? Given I read the latter as a child not sure whether my view would be swayed by the passage of time. What I will say is that the whilst Call of the Wild is readable I'm not sure whether it deserves classic status especially as now I've realised it's basic concept is not new.

Perhaps indeed there should be a greater appreciation, as I've also explained in earlier posts, of what Anna Sewell actually did.

The next one on the great ebook unread is Twilight in Italy by D H Lawrence. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not a fan, but let's see if this changes anything.

Until the next time.