Recent Reads

From the wonderful Rockport Public Library: Nicholas Drayson's A Guide to the Birds of East Africa

I'm taking the liberty of putting this book down halfway though and declaring it a miniature gem!  

How could you not love a story where, on page 2, our protagonist is reminiscing about his first Sports Day (circa 1959) in which he is party to a very dramatic mishap involving a cricket ball in his hand being grabbed by a black kite but in a self deprecatory way goes on to say, "Of course it wasn't quite accurate that he had no memories of the javelin throwing. Few would forget the incident with the Governor General's wife's corgi."

This is a gentle book in which gentle humor is mined from the deeply personal lives of characters gallantly trying to continue a courteous and polite society within a greater reality that is not by any means always gentle.

Mr. Drayson, in my view, takes some liberties with the language spoken by characters.  By language I mean as in English, Swahili, Hindi, Gujurati etc.  I have friends who hail from Kenya who whilst speaking perfect English to me, immediately lapse into Hindi (or Hinglish) when chatting among themselves. Mr. Drayson's Kenyan Asian characters continually speak and think in an English frozen in time and place, the same time and place that P.G. Wodehouse uses in a great many of his stories!   However, it is the prerogative of the writer to take such liberties, thank goodness, as without them it would be a far less charming book.

Part of the joy of reading is to skip from one genre to another and appreciate each one because of the sheer variety of writing styles and formats that are so available to us, thanks to such institutions as the Rockport Public Library which incidentally has the most amazing calendar of events within and without the library's four walls. 

Recent Reads

Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Rumor has it that my reading preferences now lean towards translations of Scandinavian mystery authors and that this may be on account of a certain Swedish American presence on the home front, namely my bra fru or good wife in our lingo.  After reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson I say, “Absolutely right - and bring on even more translations!”

This is a rip roaring read, guaranteed to keep one up at night.  The author, who sadly died in 2004 at the age of 50, has a wonderful knack of weaving stories within stories in such a way that I really had difficulty putting the book down.  At the same time I noticed myself slowing my reading pace down considerably towards the end of the book because I did not want it to end.

I have just discovered that this is the first novel in a trilogy.  Yes it is sad that the author died so young but he has certainly left very rich material for his growing readership.

Dept of Unintended Photography

Here I am trying to photograph our cat, Hazel who is luxuriating in a window.  Although this was a complete failure I rather like the photo.  Early morning light reflects brightly on the house while the background shows some of that lovely dappled light one sees before the sun gets too high.  Click on my slideshow to see a somewhat better image of this and other efforts.

Good morning!

This is my second attempt at using the movie function on my camera and it shows!  No, I am not in pain, just squinting into the sun!  I'll keep these vignettes short and sweet - one minute or a tad over a minute - in the future.

I am excited that the microphone picked up the bird song.  We welcomed our first hummingbird of the season to our garden on Saturday, May 16th.  This morning whilst having our first cup of tea of the day we heard a loon.  In the morning with no traffic we can hear clear down to the mighty Megunticook river.  There are still way too many bird calls that I do not recognize but I am working on it!

Keith, Daniel, Mark, Ben, Keiran, Dominic, Jim, Rory, Martin and all you men of Chester, UK: this splendid lawn could be used for putting practice - know what I mean, there are some ducky golf courses dotted around magnificent Midcoast Maine!

Au revoir,

B

B's pick of the web week

I'm indebted to Jon Henley for his article in the Guardian, Blackpool, je t'aime published on the 15th May, 2009.

The young french woman in in pearls suddenly finding her appetite for "casserole de Lancashire 'ot pot" is thoroughly charming and the retro videography portrays a Blackpool that I remember clearly from visits over 35 years ago. 

I would like to think that I would not be disappointed if I went back today.  This is, maybe, wishful thinking on my part but three cheers to Visit Blackpool for coming up with this delightful video!

Things that go bump in the night

There is a tiny chest of drawers which doubles as a step up to our bed for the most elderly of our three cats (Caligula: at almost 2000 years old is one of the few remaining Roman era cats still alive, curiously a sex change occurred sometime in the middle ages, Caligula is now a she).  The chest/step is on my side of the bed and the surface of the step is about one foot from the floor and about 1' 6" below the surface of the bed.

I had never given this little artifact much thought - that is until last night at about 2:00 am when my body came into contact with its rather sharp front edge.  Moments before I had been asleep and  experiencing a particularly frightening dream involving severe teachers wearing stained and ancient religious robes in decrepit Dickensian dark classrooms and corridors.  Moments before waking I had leapt from a hiding place to avoid being caught.  

That was it.  I was then brutally awake and aware of a burning pain in my right hip, there was a loud crash and I was on the floor with the little chest of drawers leaning on its side against me and most of the bed covers on top of me.  My DW (darling wife) was sitting up clutching what remained of the bed covers and wondering what on earth had happened.  Later DW told me that as she woke up all three cats jumped in unison off the other side of the bed as I moaned on the floor!

I don't appear to be seriously damaged although I have a corker of a bruising mass just under my trouser belt line on the afore mentioned right hip.  I'll spare you the digital photograph, spectacular though it is.

I'm intrigued.  I must have fallen out of bed as a child but I have no memory of doing so.  This is the first time that I can recall that this has happened to me, but I imagine (and hope) it is not uncommon.  Curiously my Mum used to tell us boys that if we ate cheese too close to bedtime we would have nightmares.  What do you know?  I had indeed enjoyed some slivers of a particularly nutty and delicious flavored parmesan (on special at Hannafords) not long before retiring to bed the previous evening.

Pseudo twitching on Sunday afternoon

The SS (my Splendid Spouse) and I decided early today to rest relax and enjoy this lovely May day in Midcoast Maine.  After a hearty breakfast at Boynton McKay Food Co. we walked back home for a quick pit-stop.  We grabbed our binoculars; I stuffed my Sibley Field Guide and Audubon bird list into one jacket pocket, and the camera into the other one and then jumped in SS's car and after a very short drive parked by the superb Rockport Public Library.  From there we walked through quiet village streets taking a meandering route eventually leading to Beauchamp Point.  On the way we spotted amongst other small birds a female American Goldfinch at a garden bird feeder.  Just as we were going to leave the paved (asphalted) road for the dirt Beauchamp Point road we heard clear, short whistles coming from high above our heads.  Looking up we saw two Ospreys drifting and soaring, low enough to be easily identified without the binoculars and once we found them through the lenses they were spectacular!

As a brief aside I must mention that being so isolated by time from my British roots I had thought that a colloquial British simile for birding was twitching, on a par with the more common bird watching.  It wasn't until I got home and looked up definitions of twitching that it dawned on me that twitching seems to have a negative or at least a derisory connotation.  Bird watching or birding as it is known as over here is a pastime one can do from time to time and gain varying levels of expertise of knowledge, field work and familiarity with matters ornithological. Whereas twitching is very much an obsession which can quite possibly be psychologically unhealthy just as being obsessed with continually washing one's hands can isolate one from one's peers. I am indebted to an article I found on the web: British Isles Birding by Richard Bonser.  The title of this post is linked to this article.  

Back to our walk: as we were tracking the Ospreys we momentarily lost balance and had to reach out and grab each other to stay upright.  Just as well, as we realized we were standing almost in the middle of the road and a car was approaching!

For extreme amateurs as ourselves the most frustrating thing is to be surrounded by woodland, to hear abundant and varied birdsong... and not being able to spot a single living bird... aaaargh! Luckily there are many consolations to a long walk, hand in hand with gentle sea breezes causing your hair to shimmer in the dappled light - well, causing one person's hair to shimmer.  It's just that ears flapping does not sound quite so idyllic!  

Anyway, back to birding: however, we did in fact score some points and did spot a ducky little brown creeper flitting from one tree trunk to another and skittering around the bark coming in and out of sight for a minute or so.

We left the little brown creeper to his world and strolled up and across the point to the very lovely Children's Chapel.  You can see photos I took of the chapel and the surrounding gardens and sea views.  It is a magical place but I will have to save yakking on about it for another post.  From the chapel we wandered down through the nearby golf course (the road runs through it) and eventually back to the Bra Fru's (Good Wife's) trusty horseless carriage and  back home to gallons of hot tea and slices of home made quince & blueberry pie.  All in all, a good Sunday.

Barrie's Continuing Education

Prior to my departure from Boston and my arrival in Camden, Maine I mulled over all sorts of ideas to "improve" my life, foremost amongst those ideas were various educational pursuits.  They all featured plans of a grandiose and time consuming and costly nature such as studying for a nursing degree with a view to becoming an RN.  Now, I know there was nothing wrong with having these noble ideas but they were all a bit close to, "Which hurdle race will I put in for now?"  Never mind that my knees are clapped out, my back is shot and my short term memory is on a downward slope!

Four months have passed and happily I have turned my (delicate) back on the hurdles and am now enjoying the bunny slopes of Maine's Adult Education network facilitated by http://fivetowns.maineadulted.org/.

So, this week has turned out to be a very busy week but it's been entirely free of any hurdles!  Monday & Wednesday evening was Zumba Fitness at High Mountain Hall with sublime teacher Korinn Scattoloni, and last evening, Thursday, was Composting with Beedy Parker and Sonia Spaulding. My goodness, this was another superb class.  Beedy Parker is a hot ticket, as they would say in the Zumba world.  She has a delightfully hands-on and hands-in approach to composting and she explodes any myths about fears of it being an exact science.  She gave me great confidence to go forth, get my hands (and arms) dirty and produce awesomely valuable black/brown gold for our garden.

I can hardly wait to get up close and personal with some of our very own red wigglers!

Adventure in adult education

When my SS (Sensational Spouse) and I reached the top of the stairs at Camden's High Mountain Hall http://www.highmountainhall.com/

I had a sense that we just might have been directed to the wrong class. Since I grew out of my bicycling shorts I haven't owned any lycra or spandex garments, and ahead of us on the dance floor I could see an awful lot of the stretchy material attached to very confident healthy looking, non-male bodies. (continued below video)

Not to worry, Korinn  http://www.highmountainhall.com/teachers/korinn-scattoloni, our charming instructor introduced herself and immediately apologized for a scheduling publishing error.  The error, of course, being that Monday night's classes were for advanced Zumba, but no problem, we were totally welcome to join in and we would have no difficulty picking it up.

SS and I looked at each other, shrugged and said of course we would join in.  Mercifully the hourlong session started almost immediately, eliminating further contemplation on my state of supreme un-fitness.  If you watch the You Tube clip above you will get the gist of Zumba.  Korinn was absolutely right in that each participant can go at their own level and have a thoroughly enjoyable time.  The old human bod is a wonderfully self regulated life form, so there really is no fear of injury.  However five minutes into the routine every muscle in my body was crying out for mercy but one is enjoying the music and movement so much that mercy has to wait!  

Towards the end of the program I became deeply aware of the contrast of my vision of Korinn executing a sinuous, graceful set of moves looking like a cross between the Hindu Goddess Durga and Kylie Minogue, while I, in attempting the same set of moves, looked like a senile orangutan with three herniated discs.  One's internal voice can be so cruel sometimes!

Besides SS and myself there was one other complete novice and at the end the three of us were soundly applauded by the rest of the class.  The class was a thorough delight with an inspirational instructor and a group of friendly people of a very wide age range.  We have four more classes so watch for updates!

The garden wakes up...

Drum stick primroses are springing up,

Tulips are coming out,

the magnolia is blossoming,

and Hazel is buffing her claws on the quince tree!