Bookwitch

I owe my friend CG this title. We had a Nordic ladies lunch about a week ago, and CG is good for stories anyway, but I felt right at home with her senior moments, because I appear to have a few of them myself. CG talks like Little My of the Moomins, which makes her literary, too. And I found a few years ago that we share Adele Geras, and I do like a shrinking world.

Anyway, it’s all about forgetting the simplest things. Not that the complicated things are easier, you understand, but there’s the professorial touch about it. I can remember (yes, really) that lesson at school when the teacher asked me what the day’s homework had been about. I couldn’t recall, which didn’t look very good. Had she only asked me a specific question regarding the homework, I’d have been fine. I knew it. Just couldn’t remember the bigger picture.

I was reminded last week of an anthology I own, because Michelle Magorian wrote one of the stories. It’s called War, Stories of Conflict, edited by Michael Morpurgo. And I’ve been ashamed for years that I’ve just not got round to reading it. So, out it came, and I started with Michelle’s story. I had read it before. Checked the other stories. I had read them, too. Somewhere, some time in the last few years I read the book, before putting it back on the shelves. I just wonder when?

Not to worry. It’s a wonderful collection, with stories written by some of our best authors. I bought it because George Layton, who’s in it, talked about it while we had lunch. It wasn’t just the two of us, unfortunately, but I did have lunch with him. George is someone I was dead keen on when I was a teenager. Weird, how things happen. He very kindly assumed I’d know all the Swedish entertainers that he knows. I do, but only from magazines and television. Nice to be treated like an equal.

As Daughter and I watched, yet again, one of her favourite episodes of our favourite NCIS, I was reminded of how easy I have it. There, poor Agent McGee who writes crime novels in his spare time, found that the characters from his as yet un-finished next novel were being bumped off. So, who had access to his top-secret manuscript? We were assured that the really keen fan will search through authors’ rubbish bins for clues as to what they are writing.

The witch didn’t have to do anything as crude as that. Declan on Crime Always Pays emailed to ask if he could (!) send me his next novel as a Word document. I allowed him to do this, because I’m a kind witch. Also, because I was fairly desperate to read the new book.

The Blue Orange, as he calls it, is a continuation of The Big O, with all the same characters, except those who may have died in the first book. Plus a couple of new ones. The Big O was very funny, if rather full of four-letter words, and had endearingly inept, mostly minor, crooks.

In The Blue Orange we meet them again, and this time I found myself quite fond of even the less charming ones. It’s a mad-cap race across the Continent, with everyone ending up in Greece, where Declan has totally taken over his favourite holiday island, which I understand was quite nice before this.

As is to be expected, there are so many double-crossings that the witch developed a squint trying to cope. The best thing is simply to sit back and enjoy, while laughing quite a lot. The story is crying out to be made into a film, and I know which part I can play.

And as Mother-of-witch so rightly said, crime is not nice. But this kind of crime is as nice, and as funny, as it gets. The worst baddies are killed or have lots of blood removed in interesting ways, and maybe the rest lived happily ever after. I’m hoping for more. And sooner rather than later, Mr Burke.

Anyone who by now has the slightest inclination to read The Blue Orange, will want to murder me. The book will be out in the US in the autumn of 2009. If he gets round to it, Declan might just publish it in Ireland in the spring. 2009 again, I’m afraid.

And he is checking I’m not selling it on ebay, so I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. But I just felt I had to rave about it now. I can always re-rave when the time comes.

That’s a kind way of describing some of us. Did you watch The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on television on Easter Sunday? We all did, including Daughter, who at first didn’t think it was for her.

I had wondered how they could translate the charm of the books to film, but it worked very well. Even the slight changes to the plot were fine. Botswana didn’t quite look as I had imagined it, but it was beautifully colourful. I’ll have that yellow fridge any time. And the turquoise walls.

Smooth talkers are the same everywhere.

But contrary to Daughters suggestion, I don’t think I’ll wear the kind of dresses Mma Ramotswe wears. We are not the same kind of traditional build.

The young witch used to frequent Brown’s, much to the surprise of her elders and betters. It was the lure, which good old-fashioned English places and customs have for foreigners. It’s related to liking Midsomer Murders, which I last tried rubbishing in the company of my Swedish neighbours, only to be told how much they love it.

Well, Brown’s is supposed to have been the inspiration for Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel, and the book was written in the hotel lounge. I used to go there for afternoon tea, which in the olden days cost about a fiver, and that felt a lot less then, than whatever the cost is today.

It was worth it purely for the show put on by the very professional waiters. A friend of mine couldn’t stop talking about how they could remove the table cloth, with a flourish, while things were still on the table. Pretty good entertainment that was.

I was reminded of this the other day in London. Not only was I in Mayfair, close to my old haunt in Albemarle Street, but the hotel where I talked to Budge Wilson the next day, made me think of Brown’s, too. Budge’s hotel didn’t come out well in comparison. I need to return to Brown’s to see for myself if the staff can still speak English, and if they know how to serve tea. Surely they must? But I think the chintz may be gone.

Foreigners need chintz, no matter what that famous flatpack furniture store says. We like the feeling of old criminal London, from the Victorian crime novels to the postwar smog that was so good to commit murder in.

Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart is good for atmosphere, and so is his New Cut Gang books. And there’s not just Agatha Christie, but Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers and others. Mother-of-Witch always said murder’s not very nice. She was right, of course, but as fiction in the right setting, it’s also very, well, comforting.

Do you know Crictor, the brave boa constrictor? I used to love him, despite being frantically phobic about snakes. I suppose there’s always an exception to every rule.

Crictor is a picture book from 1958 by French artist Tomi Ungerer. It’s still around, and sadly it seems to have been picked for this year’s Swedish book sale. We need books like these around. Always. It does seem to be available in English still, though.

Young Crictor comes to live with a little old lady, Madame Bodot, in a small French town. She looks after him like a baby, Crictor joins in by going to school, etc, and eventually becomes a hero by rescuing Mme Bodot from some thuggish burglars.

My copy of the book, which appears to have been improved on by colouring in with oil pastels (Now, who could have done that?), came from the Retired Children’s Librarian, long before she retired. When I was in my early teens she asked for it back. Not because I wasn’t looking after it properly, but because Swedish television stole “her” copy. In those days she was head of the children’s library in the posh bit of Stockholm near television centre, and whenever they needed anything bookish they came to her. They made a programme about Crictor, but omitted to return him afterwards. And the Retired Children’s Librarian felt she needed to safeguard at least one copy of the book. So I gave it back.

Over the years I thought of him occasionally, and when Offspring turned up on the scene, I asked for Crictor back. So the brave snake made the journey across the North Sea, in a suitcase belonging to Mother-of-Witch. Never forgetting the oil pastels or the television people, I have always kept him with me since, and not in either of Offspring’s bookcases.

For World Book Day in the year 2000, or thereabouts, Daughter needed dressing up as a book character for school, so we turned her into Mme Bodot, complete with Ikea snake. And absolutely nobody knew who she was.

I remember saying a while back that I already have a face for Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, and so I didn’t feel that Kenneth Branagh could really be Wallander to me. Maybe I can learn to accept change.

While on half term holiday I watched a more recent Wallander on television, and found that the man going round arguing with someone at the beginning of the film, was actually Wallander himself. New actor; new face. And I really didn’t feel this was Wallander. Perhaps I could adapt, but there’s only so many faces one man can have. To tell the truth, I didn’t feel this actor played Wallander as I understand his personality to be.

I’ll have to wait and see what Kenneth Branagh can do with him. Can Gilderoy Lockhart ever be a moody Swedish policeman?

Can a blog have a birthday? Or is it me who has the birthday? Whatever, the witch and her blog has made it to one year, today. I looked at my statistics (and I don’t mean waist measurement, you know) and I have written 300 posts, which I find a pleasingly round sort of figure. Couldn’t have managed anything that exact if I’d tried. Even more impressively, I’d have had to deal with 7578 bits of spam if it hadn’t been for whatever it is that shoots to kill.

What I’d really like is some green cake. This isn’t some peculiar witch food, but actually what Swedes like best. I believe that the most popular cake sold or made is Prinsesstårta, which is covered in green marzipan. (To go off on a tangent here, the Offspring and I once watched a children’s television programme in Sweden, which was all about a man sitting down and staring at and eating a green marzipan covered piece of cake. We never did get the point of that, and wondered if tastes in children’s television had gone downhill dramatically.)

As yesterday was pancake day (I mean Shrove Tuesday) we actually have some pancakes left over. And on Sunday we “Shrove Tuesdayed” it for the Swedes here, by baking them a semla, which is a sweet bun filled with almond paste and topped with cream. Now, it so happens we have cream left over, too. That means we are ideally placed to make Findus’ pancake cake, at long last.

As I started my 301st post I had no idea I’d be waffling on about sweet treats quite so much, but then some posts do take even me by surprise. I’ll attempt to be more literary by tomorrow.

Thank you everyone! I couldn’t have made it without you.

How much influence did she have, the Retired Children’s Librarian? Hmm. Well, she was an adult who read children’s books for a living. And as a family friend she provided me with reading material throughout my childhood. Good books for Christmases and birthdays, and the occasional book left behind after a visit. She also had the good sense to give me LPs once I got to my mid-teens, so she knew when to give up, and it wasn’t even as though I had stopped being a reader.

She, too, was heavily into crime. Still is, now that retirement means she doesn’t have to keep up with all the trends in children’s books. She would come and stay for her holidays, well equipped with crime fiction for the duration. And then she’d leave some behind for me. I used to think it was her being generous. Now I’m beginning to wonder if it was a sneaky plot to get me reading certain books? I particularly remember Craig Rice. Very funny.

The shoe is on the other foot now. I was so enthusiastic about Harry Potter nine years ago, that she bought the first book when it had been translated. I believe she read half of it before chucking it across the room in disgust. And can I get the woman to try Philip Pullman? No, I can’t. Knowing that the Retired Children’s Librarian is not keen on fantasy, I invested in Sally Lockhart and I Was A Rat. Not wanting to do things by half measures, I got them personally signed by Philip. She still doesn’t read them! Sally Lockhart is crime, and everything she likes in a book. Why??

Never mind. The Retired Children’s Librarian has an excellent memory, and it’s still possible to ask detailed questions about books and she’ll remember. I will have forgotten it by next week. So, I wonder if it’s coincidence or influence that I’m a children’s books and crime fanatic, too? What’s more, as I was thinking about books to recommend to less enthusiastic young readers recently, I suddenly remembered, that about thirty years ago the Retired Children’s Librarian wrote a book about that very subject. Coincidence, again.

Just wish I could get her onto the internet. Anything to stop her watching more Midsomer Murders.

The bookwitch household is not known for its tantalising social life. We are, quite frankly, very boring.

One New Year’s Eve, I think thirteen years ago, I recorded a Sesame Street New Year special, which for some reason was broadcast in the middle of the day. This was at a time when Son and Daughter and I watched Sesame Street religiously, every weekday with our lunch. I thought it was a lovely programme, so kept the video (fairly illegal, I believe), and most New Year’s Eves we watch it. I even try to time the start so we can have twelve o’clock coincide with the ball falling off Wolfgang’s nose.

So, that’s what we’ve just done, for the umpteenth time. Being a Cookie Monster fan, I love it when he eats the credits.

Hope we will all have a good 2008!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really enjoyed last night’s The Shadow in the North on BBC. It was as perfectly adapted as I imagine it’s possible to do, given the length of the film allowed. I felt it was all there, and no glaringly obvious things missing. And all the actors were perfect, which I hardly ever find with book dramatisations.

My blog in the Guardian’s TV section today says pretty much the same thing, but do have a look anyway.