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.

In Which I Chat About Cricket On The Radio,H P Lovecraft And Being Misled By An American President

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Have gone through a number of ebooks yesterday. About as varied as they could be.

So let's start with Can Anyone Hear Me? An account of BBC radio's Test Match Special Abroad by Peter Baxter a producer and commentator. I am a fan of listening to cricket commentary much more than watching it on television. It's a sport with gaps, and because of those gaps the commentators potentially talk about anything without losing track of the game. This is what makes cricket, and particularly cricket on the BBC different as, so far at least, there are no commercials.

Of course the Test Match Special team of the Seventies to the nineties has assumed such mythic status that there is a tea mug of a photo of these men. I have that mug....unfortunately packed awaiting the move. I've also read Peter Baxter's previous book with regard to their exploits in Britain and the best complement I can give this one is that it was enjoyed just as much. The closest way it can be described is as an after dinner speech done by the editor of Wisden.

Needless to say it's is an acquired taste. You would need to like cricket on the radio in the late eighties early nineties. It's like a book on wine, not just any wine but white white, and not just any white wine but from the outer limits of outer Mongolia. But if you have that taste I'd highly recommend it.

So once that was finished the next ebook turned out to be an H P Lovecraft short story Through The Gates Of The Silver Key. I'd never read him before, as I prefer my horror writing to be of the quiet chill down the spine variety. Still he has a reputation as being a master of his craft and I was curious.

Well it was rubbish. Regular readers to this blog will know that I try as much as possible to avoid giving out the details of a book as to avoid spoiling things but honestly I wouldn't know where to start describing this one. All I will say upon finishing this story was to seriously wonder whether Lovecraft was on drugs (a quick check on the internet suggested surprisingly not).

There is a twist to this tale which I could see (even if a ghost was in the way) a mile off. Truly the most horrific thing about it all was that this story actually got published in the first place.

So dear reader, if you approach an ebook with the title "A Book Lover's Holidays In The Open" what would you expect to be reading? Me I'd be expecting a man chatting about his holidays whilst buying and reading books which he'd also chat about. The sort of thing that I, a lover of reading would appreciate.

But no.Former president Theodore Roosevelt devotes just one, ONE chapter to his holiday reading and that's that for books thankyou very much. It's like creating a work called An Opera Lover's Holidays in Europe and only describing fat people expensively singing once. I tell you if I was alive when it was originally published (1916) I'd have demanded my money back under the Trade's Descriptions Act.

So what does he talk about as he wanders around the world? Well how much he's a fan of various safari parks but as far as I could gather really just to act literally as a feeder park for hunters such as him so that the stock is constant. There are chapters on hunting that just simply take your breath away by how mundane he describes the act of killing an animal.As if afterwards he's off to shops to get some milk

He's also racist. The N word is used and in a telling remark he describes native helpers in an African hunt showing more effort than "civilised" people. He didn't seem to realise that what he essentially said was that the native African people were better than the white guys. Oh the irony.

As for Native Americans? Well he is a fan of native American culture being kept and that they should have an education (including being converted to Christianity) but for the moment just to prepare them for menial labour until the day comes when they be assimilated into proper society. Let's not forget here that native Americans had to deal with not immigration but what was really an invasion from across the sea.

Let me take this further. If you are a white American how would you react if you read a sentence like this?

The White people have made long strides in advance during the last fifty years thanks to the presence of Latinas in their neighbourhood.

You'd be offended right. What if I was to tell you that in the book Theodore Roosevelt uses exactly the same sentence except for "White People" read Navajos and "Latinas" read white men (white women apparently being of no help whatsoever)?

Theodore Roosevelt reveals himself to being a racist, and possibly even worse than that a patronising racist. Unacceptable views wrapped in a civilised veneer. It possibly could be the best way to describe this book.

My Kindle it appears has a sense of humour. For the next ebook to randomly chosen to be read is Orations by John Quincy Adams who was also a President of the United States. Let's hope I like it.

Until the next time.