How Ellery Queen Saved Me From Boredom Whilst Out Of Town Shopping

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well it was a Sunday, and unusually I wasn't working. What could I do on this classic bright but cold November day? Well go out with wife and daughter to buy clothes of course. And not just buying clothes, but buying clothes in an out of town warehouse store about twenty minutes away.

The wife had received some sort of offer from the clothes retailer Matalan and had wanted to buy clothes for myself and our daughter for Christmas (thus losing the element of surprise) as well as stuff for herself. As she needed to make sure it fitted I was dragged kicking and screaming (in my mind at least) to go with them.

I was going to miss the game between Arsenal and Tottenham. But that didn't really matter as a West Ham fan like me it was as if you were watching a fight between two people you don't like knowing that the winner was going to be very,very,smug.

Now here I should explain something. There are probably few things where men clearly superior to women but one of them I would argue is in choosing clothes. I'm not saying whether the choice is correct, just in making the decision. A man would notice an item he liked, buy it and that was that. On the other hand there seems to be two particular ways a woman does this.

The first option is to pick an item of clothing, have doubts,then go for two, three, four similar items before returning to the first item for another look.

The second option is to buy about four items, take them home,make a decision and then take the unwanted bits back to the store for a refund.

In both cases they will ask you, as the partner, for your opinion and when you give it proceed to ignore it. Especially when the answer was approving.

So I knew that my brain was going to be turned to mush by all of this. That's why I hate clothes shopping with the wife and now she's a teenager my daughter.And it was also why I took a book with me. Because I didn't want to take the library books in case I lost them, and the Beatrice Webb was a large hardback it could only be The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen.

Llantrisant, where the Matalan was was about twenty minutes away from where we lived. When we arrived there another of my pet hates revealed itself. You will find as we continue this blog that as I've grown older I'm not really a "Christmas/New Year type of person. I just accept it and hope it goes quickly. However if there's one thing I really,really hate it's Christmas in November for the simple reason that it's November,

Already the TV ads have appeared and worse than that those TV Christmas channels which shows American TV films where somebody has a crisis in their lives only to be resolved when they find "the true meaning of Christmas".I felt sick to discover they'd commenced at the end of October.

The shops, in November have turned themselves into a Christmas wonderland of things to buy as a gift and watch the recipient generally ignore later. Matalan was not an exception. I wanted to take a picture but it would've been too obvious and people would have just asked why. Let's just say gaudy would be an apt description.

As it happened it came quickly quite clear that Matalan (other than a pack of five socks) had nothing that was in my size. Let me digress here for a moment. Since my incident with the Subway "hearty Italian" baguette. and my front teeth I'd gone off eating baguettes,crisps and sweets. And because of especially not eating crisps whilst I'm not saying I'm an Adonis with a six pack I've gotten noticeably slimmer.

I was therefore surplus to requirements. The wife and daughter had garnered in about ten minutes a group of blouses for them to try out in the changing room before whittling down to a lesser number to work out later. In that moment my wife had an inspirational moment.She turned to me and said "Why don't you read the book in the car?"

She didn't need to say it twice. I was off.

So that was why I claim to be the only man ever to have read an Ellery Queen crime novel in a retail car park in Wales. I want a plaque for eternity.

And not only did I read it, I finished it. So let me say that the opinion I gave in my last post has not changed. It was readable but dated. Thank you Ellery anyway.

This of course means there is a new book to pick from the great unread, That book is:

1116 - C S Forester - The Commodore

I've read one Forester book before, The Gun and I didn't like it. This is however the first Horatio Hornblower book to come my way so I have some hope for it.

Until the next time,

Ellery Queen And The Mystery Of My Front Teeth (With Added EU)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may remember that I mentioned in my last post that I had a problem with my teeth after eating a "Hearty Italian" baguette in Subway a week ago.One of my front teeth is slightly chipped at the bottom and the other has a mark across it like a crack in a window. Despite it's look though there is no wobble. They're still hanging on there.

The worst part though are the gums which have ballooned worryingly as if it was a photograph taken from the air of Mars.Exercise for the week has been throwing Corsodyl at my mouth.

I'm not saying that my teeth were perfect beforehand but this ratcheted up the worry level.

Well Friday I'm at the dentists for a pre arranged appointment before all of this occurred. As usual I took a book with me, the Ellery Queen, to read whilst I wait to be called to my doom. It's alright as entertainment if your brain doesn't go beyond first gear. Mind you like a standard black and white film of the thirties it doesn't wear it's age well. Neither you could say did I at that moment.

I'd read about three chapters when someone I knew entered the dentist. He was a father of a girl in my daughter's school. Hadn't seen him in a few years. We were friendly without being friends.

We exchanged greetings and I enquired then how "the lady wife" was. There were two reasons for this. Firstly it's the standard thing you say to a man when his partner's name escapes your mind. Secondly however was curious how she was. Because her high powered and high paid (compared to me) job was working to promote the EU in Wales. She may not be the first person to be made redundant because of Brexit but she was one of the first who knew that she was going to be.

She is apparently alright but "angry" at the referendum result. I have seen her at work a couple of times. Such as being at an EU stall in an Eisteddfod about ten years ago. She loved her work, and now it was just going to go away.

He personally did not understand how Wales as a whole voted to leave. I suggested my theory, which I've mentioned in this blog before that nothing powers the right/far right more than the perception (doesn't matter if it's true or not)of unfettered immigration.

He nodded and then said "Britain is entering interesting times"

Now what I haven't mentioned until now is that the gentleman is Anglo Chinese. Now I'm saying this because there's a Chinese curse which goes "May you live in interesting times".

Mention this. He smiles and then proceeds to repeat the sentence. At that moment a nurse calls my name. I'm being summoned. We bid each other goodbye

As for my front teeth? It appears they experienced a "food trauma" in the reaction to the Subway baguette. I had thought food trauma was how I act to olives in pasta. Obviously now know better. The crack on the tooth was a filling which I had in when I last had a traumatic experience with food it appears. And my teeth will still be there with plenty of extra brushing,corsodyl and flossing. I leave there with my teeth relatively OK and not as damaged as I feared......for now anyway.

Until the next time.

In Which Feeding My Addiction......To Books Continues

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Yesterday (Tuesday)was a day where there were things to do before I went to work on the afternoon/evening shift. First off was the library, not Porthcawl but Pyle where I needed to get a few documents printed and photocopied (our printer having run out of ink and discovering that looking for new cartridges was about as simple as discovering the source of the Nile).

Now I hadn't intended to borrow a book at a different library, honestly. But I was tempted.

Dixe Wills - Tiny Stations

This is about a man who decides to visit every request stop train station in Britain. It's the sort of one person mad challenge story that attracted me. So it was borrowed.

Now we had a viewing on the house at 1pm which meant we needed to get out well before that. The wife suggested that we as a family had lunch together. I said no on the grounds that as I was working I'd be too busy clock watching. So wife/daughter went out by themselves and I would spend the ninety minutes of free time left by having lunch in Porthcawl..and visiting the library.

I'd decided to read all the Sue Townsend books that I hadn't yet read having seen a documentary about her recently. Pyle library didn't have anything but Porthcawl did (aside from the one I'd already written and raved about before). It was this.

Sue Townsend - Queen Camilla

I'd read The Queen and I and loved it so am looking forward to reading this one.

Now being Porthcawl Library this also meant that I needed a football book to replace the disaster that was Sam Allardyce's autobiography. This was the one I picked.

Michael Calvin - The Nowhere Men

This is a book about football talent spotters. It does on the surface link in to the Oliver Kay book on Adrian Doherty I spoke about recently.

After that I even had a bit of time to buy a Penguin paperback from the Porthcawl Animal Welfare Shop.

Penguin Modern Poets 17 - David Gascoyne - W S Graham - Kathleen Raine

It only cost me 20p. Which means I've still got £1.40 in the Penguin book budget.

And amazingly I finished reading a book too. Geology in the Service of Man (1950 edition) by W G Fearnsides and O M B Bulman. Now to be honest I found it to be a literary sleeping pill but it doesn't matter. It's I who am the weird collector of vintage Pelican/Penguin paperbacks. So if these books are on a subject that normally I wouldn't read about then it's hardly the authors' fault. Mind you the description of the book as "Eminently readable" on the cover? Rocky if you ask me.

So that means I need another Pelican/Penguin paperback to fill the void there. From the great unread it turns out to be.

1149 - Ellery Queen -The Roman Hat Mystery

You know off the top of my head G K Chesterton and Ellery Queen were the only "classic" crime writers I've never got round to reading. At least one of those anomalies will be resolved in the future.

What this all means is that if we remember the Michael Palin book I read in the car I have now six books on the go,

Yes I know.

But when you have an addiction to reading it's hard to let it go. Even if  only slightly.

Until the next time.