Books and Things ...

A short post today as the weather is glorious and I can't wait to get out there!

A photo of the lovely tulips which the Other Half gave me this week.

A recently purchased tin from e-bay. I liked those cute cats with the bows and so had to place a bid. I then forgot all about it and thought that someone would have put a bid on at the last minute and beaten me to it but no, my luck was in and so this delightful tin found its way towards the ever growing tin collection!

The book that I'm reading at the moment is "The Flying Squad" by Edgar Wallace. It was written in 1928 and the subject matter concerns drug smuggling - namely, cocaine and the attempts of Bradley, a Police Officer in the emerging Flying Squad to catch the criminals. Although it is written in 1928 it is very relevant to the drug problems that we have now - murders, people being hoodwinked into smuggling, etc ..

When we were last in London I purchased the above "Dr. Zhivago" and I have now finished reading it. Growing up I never saw the film which starred Omar Sharif and Julie Christie as Yuri and Lara all the way through but caught a few snatches of it here and there. It is beautifully written and of course a fantastic love story. A comment on the back cover :-

"Belongs to that small group of novels by which all others are ultimately judged."

That comment says it all really - if you haven't read it, you will not be disappointed. It is a bit hard going at first as the names are in Russian and sometimes the characters are referred to by their first name and then by their surname and then by a shortened version of their name - so there was a bit of flicking backwards and forwards initially to the list of the Principal characters! For example, Lara's husband is called Pavel Pavlovich Antipov. Sometimes he's referred to as Pavel, sometimes as Antipov and sometimes as Pashenka or Pasha!

At the same time that I purchased "Dr. Zhivago" I also purchased Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go." I found this book very hard going and the subject matter something that was difficult to grapple with.

The plot concerns human cloning. Humans being created simply for their body parts. The three main characters just seem to accept their lot in life and you just want to scream - run away, set yourselves free ...  

I have also read Carola Dunn's "The Winter Garden Mystery". This was a very quick and easy book to read - a perfect holiday read. A body is discovered in the Winter Garden at Occles Hall. It is the body of the missing parlour maid - her boyfriend is wrongly accused of the murder - Daisy Dalrymple who is staying at the hall calls on her friend from the Metropolitan Police to come and help solve the murder mystery.

Yesterday was the last day of term and school finished at 12.30 p.m. I was supposed to be doing the school pick-up but work meant that the Other Half's mum was requested to help out at the last minute for which I was truly grateful.

It was a lovely Spring day. Here is Our Daughter and her friend posing in-between playing a game of rounders on the green near to our house.

Our Daughter's friends mum arrived to pick her up at 6.30 p.m. and we sat in the back garden and enjoyed a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio while the girls went to the shed / playroom and read some old Beano annuals and ate ice-lollies.

 I will leave you now with another photo of those beautiful tulips.

I hope that you all have a fabulous weekend and that the sun shines wherever you may be!

Until next time.

June.