In Which Votes Are Cast,Books Are Read Paul Theroux Is Writer As Hitman and Possibly Discovering Another Reader

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well as I'm writing this blog it's Saturday morning at 7:14am. Not only am I awake but astonishingly so is my daughter.

A couple of days back I cast my votes in the National Assembly elections for Plaid Cymru. Now we know that that Labour are the largest party. Plaid have progressed,albeit slowly. Still it is progression not regression and that is important.

Speaking personally I regret being unable (in a small way) to help Plaid,the party I'm now a member of during the election due to ill health. Hopefully I'll do better in the local council election and see whether the party can dent the incompetance that Labour currently rules Bridgend with.

The rise of UKIP in Wales is a disappointment. Suppose though that the politics of fear is powerful anywhere.

Well a number of books have been finished. The first one was the library book Spanish Swans by Pablo Gomez about the those Iberian players who helped in the rise of Swansea City. As the book went on like a mountain descent it started from a peak and went downhill into dullness from then on. Mainly because as the book progressed it did not tell me anything I didn't know already.

But then the realisation dawned on me that it wasn't the writer's fault or mine. This book was a translation from Spanish. So for the majority of the readers it was originally intended for it was all new. The mistake was publishing it in Britain.

Now the only other library book of the three I borrowed by Christopher Hitchens is wider than a brick so it was impossible to take to work. Visiting the library is impossible for me until Monday so another non Penguin book was needed to be plucked from the great unread.

This is the book I picked.

Andy Miller - Tilting at Windmills

This book is an account of the writer's attempt to shed a lifelong dislike of sport by taking up miniature golf. So far so good.

The Paul Theroux travel book The Pillars of Hercules is also finished.When I started it I'd described the author as a "professional" writer. This was I realise now wrong. The correct description of him is writer as hitman. Indeed if you look at early adult pictures of him he looks like an archetypal seventies assassin. Ready to kill some democratically elected politician before being foiled by Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.

For on the one hand he's cool,sophisticated and well researched. However he's equally cold,unemotional and self centred. Like a hitman you dislike the writer and what he produces. All my younger self prejudices against him came back as I was reading this.

So I need a new Penguin Paperback to read. This was picked from the great unread.

Kim Edwards -The Memory Keeper's Daughter 

When I mentioned on this Twitter I got a response from someone saying that it was one of the best novels she'd ever read. So all very encouraging then.

I'd bought this Penguin Paperback, which has the orange/white spine of their books published in America in a charity shop in Maesteg, Inside it though there was a calling card from a Kenneth Henry,Assistant Manager - Technical Training from New York. Well that card has an email address and I've emailed him. We'll see if he's a fellow reader. Hopefully he's still with us.

Until the next time.

Of Books Read And To Be Read. And Why I'm Learning Welsh Again

Hello there. Trust you are well.

When chatting to you about the books in my first post I'd forgotten in fact that I was reading three books at the same time. As all these books have now been read reckon I should start with the book I hadn't mentioned which is.....

Danny Baker - Going Off Alarming

Took this with me when visiting my mother on the Mother's Day weekend. On the London Underground it took me from Grosvenor Road to Epping and from Epping to Victoria by chuckle. I've a soft spot for these autobiographies, particularly for its first volume Going To Sea In A Sieve. It evoked a London of my youth as the mayor seems to make the present day capital a land for for Russian Oligarchs to live in. Even if his is South of the Border and mine is of the East.

Of course Iris Murdoch could not be more different from Danny Baker and that it appears includes my reaction to this Penguin Paperback.

Iris Murdoch - The Italian Girl

One thing I will make every effort to do is not to go into great detail about the books I'm reading because I don't want to spoil it for people who want to read it in the future. So let me say this. It was a disappointment having been a fan of The Sea,The Sea. What it was was arty twaddle, For a relatively thin book it was full of unbelievable characters with unbelievable traumas in an unbelievably short space of time. The most I'll say about it is that it was readable...but that was it.

I didn't have high expectations of Neil Warnock's ghost written book The Gaffer. But that didn't matter because this is best described as amiable. Essentially it was billed as an entertaining slice of a manager's life and judged on that basis you did feel cheated. If I had to choose between the Warnock book and the Murdoch one then The Gaffer wins. But both would lose when brought up against either of Danny Baker's autobiographies.

So there are new Penguins and Football books to buy. But I won't be able to do that until later this week so I went to the shelves of the great unread and picked two books. 

This was the first one....

Paul Theroux - The Pillars Of Hercules

As the cover says this is a chronicle of his travels  along the Mediterranean around 1994. I personally find travel books more interesting when read years after the actual trip. The phrase "the test of time" seemingly suited to it. My favourite travel books don't just capture a place but also a mood. That said I must be honest and say that I've never read any of his books in the genre before or indeed any of his novels. Not because of a personal dislike but simply as there as there are so many books and so little time that I've never got round to reading one until now.

Mind you I have read a couple of short story collections with an American consulate official as a central character. They were alright but nothing more (and obviously they did not inspire me to actively get seek out others in his canon). I do remember that the best word to describe these books was "professional" but writing to a reader I'd argue needs to be more than that.

I hadn't actively sought out another football book amongst the shelves of the great unread but it just turned out that this was the book came to my sight next.

Football Dynamo - Marc Bennetts

As (again) the cover explains book (this edition 2008) is about Russia and football written by a British journalist living there. One of my favourite type of books in this genre is one that mixes personal experience with general history. It probably explains why for example my favourite about boxing is In The Red Corner by John Duncan, about the relationship between Cuba and the sport.

Anyway it is I can tell you a fascinating read. How do I know this already? Because I've already started reading it years ago and am halfway through. It was bought many years ago. Remember beginning to read it but then another book demanded my attention beforehand for reasons I can't recall and so it was put back on the shelf (with the bookmark still on the point I left it) to be forgotten. If there was a moment you can go "ahhh" at a book it's now. Not now though (so you can cheer).

Now to completely change the subject I've recently decided to resuscitate learning Welsh. Now before chatting about the present an explanation as to the circumstances as to why I'd learnt the language in the first place is called for. Because it came about by accident.

Many years ago and before we had our daughter my wife had a job which required her to work on Wednesday evenings. At the time I felt at a loose end and decided to attend evening classes on that day. So looked at what was available. I'd wanted car maintenance as my stock move with any problem in that regard is to panic and call the breakdown people/go to a garage. But there were no lessons on that day. There were though lessons in Welsh for beginners.....so it began.

I always say that in a parallel universe there is a version of me proficient in car maintenance. Of course in another parallel universe there is another super me who can speak Welsh and  know his way around a car.

Anyway slowly but surely I started learning yr iaith Cymraeg.Getting to a stage where I passed the equivalent exam in O Level and had only just failed to do the same in the higher level. I found myself regularly watching the Welsh language TV channel S4C and the radio station Radio Cymru and practised the language socially in such occasions as coffee mornings.

However when I lost my job and found it difficult to get a new one I slowly became depressed and found it hard to concentrate on other things including Welsh. I performed disastrously in my second attempt in the exam at the higher level. My heart was not in it so just walked away.

So I was in a sort of linguistic limbo. Nowhere near fluent but a thousand times better than "the cat sat on the mat"

Now I have work, and slowly my mojo is coming back. So I'm returning dysgu Cymraeg. What I know in learning Welsh the first time is that experiences are introduced to you which are absent if you only speak English even if you're living in the country. My wife is from Cardiff and I know that in some respects I know more about this country than she does because I can to an extent speak the language.

What I also know is this. Whatever personal circumstances derailed me from learning Welsh I have always believed that the language has to survive. Because if Welsh was lost then there will be a piece of Wales that would be lost with it.

Perhaps I'm an old romantic...but there you go

I find that I can listen to general programmes on Radio Cymru and watch those on S4C and be able to catch the gist of what's going on which is encouraging. In another time I'll chat about these channels but you're spared today.

So the beginner's books are taken out. The old papers are dusted off and ymlaen.

The mutations are once again to be tackled (and I don't mean the X Men).

Welsh Language Action

I'll chat about how it's going on in future posts.

Until the next time.