New Year Resolutions - Three Months On ...

Anyone else remember their New Year's resolutions? Still going to the gym? sticking to that diet? I'm sort of glad my resolutions were easier....

Ok, I'm a bit late with this three month 'progress check' or whatever you might like to call it but April came in along with a nasty cold virus and it's taken me a week or more to shift it.

So...three months into my New Years resolutions and to be honest after a good start I think things are slowing down a bit.

Taking things bit by bit ...

Physical de-cluttering - I started off enthusiastically, sorted out a bin-liner size charity bag of clothes and took them to the drop off point, found some material left over from a previous project and gave it a new life, picked out some books that could go to friends or charity shops, and rescued some of last year's homegrown veg from the compost heap - one week making 'weird' marmalade from pumpkin, the next using up the pumpkin in chutney and turning stored apples and frozen raspberries into jam ....  BUT ....this last month things have been allowed to drift. In a way, looking back over the last month I realise how MUCH I've let things slide, so I'm determined to carry on with this. I really could do with a functioning spare room and the only way to get one is to clear the rubbish out!


Spend less time on social media - hmm, not sure about this one. I 'think' I've cut down on it during the day but possibly spending more time there in the evening. Without tracking who's using the pc and when, it's impossible to be sure....


Stop RT-ing every single competition - definitely a success! One resolution that I'm sticking to. I haven't won a single unwanted prize this year. Still entering the ones I actually WANT to win though...

Cutting back on book reading/reviewing  -  not by a drastic amount but enough to reduce the pressure. I'm trying to limit myself to books I REALLY want to read instead of agreeing to every offer. On the down-side, I'm still tempted to download every vaguely appealing book I spot on Netgalley

Get up earlier - erm, no! Definitely must try harder at this one.

Get a life - The feeling behind this was to get out more now the teen has left home, maybe try out something new but above all not end up (as some friends admitted they were worried about doing) staying in every night watching TV. In some ways I've been quite busy, but mainly doing the things I did before - a couple of book related events, theatre trips (Nottingham Playhouse Any Means Necessary  and Derby Theatre Look Back In Anger and an updated feminist version Jinny), and book club. A couple of nights out though really have fitted in with the new 'get a life' plan; the first an evening of acoustic music in a pub, the second an evening of both books and music - for us two oldies to go out to this sort of event without the teen in charge is unknown, so it's really a big step outside my comfort zone.


Get Out More - at first this was more a sort of pottering about resolution - walking up to the library, doing bits and bobs around the garden, watching the sunset - but as the year's progressed we've been out and about more  - to see snowdrops in bloom on an almost spur of the moment trip to Biddulph Grange Gardens while dropping the teen back off at uni, taking advantage of a sunny day to go out to a local park. Also, with flowers and salads shooting up in the greenhouse, and weeds trying to take over the garden, I'm spending more time outside, though preferably on sunny days.






Blog more - although I'm keeping up with tracking these resolutions, and writing about some of the places and events I've been to, I'm not sure I'm quite blogging as I'd intended. For one thing, I'd like to bring all my various blogs together (apart from the book review site) but I rather resent the time I'd have to spend organising this!


I think things are going ok at the moment, though both 'de-cluttering' and 'getting up' need some work. The next three months will bring us to mid-summer ...so I wonder how things will have gone by then...

Look Back In Anger (reaction not review) - Derby Theatre

It's a wet Sunday afternoon sometime in the late 1950s and Jimmy Porter is angry - oh my, is he angry! - about what he reads in the newspaper, about the weather, about not being able to get a pint on Sunday, about his wife's rich background, about the fact that no one will argue back at him, about his wife ironing while he wants to have fun (or at least an argument). He may feel frustrated, thwarted in his ambitions, and held-back by his working class roots. Maybe he wants to change the world  - but taking out his anger on the people closest to him isn't really the way to do it ..... and to be honest, after a while, Jimmy starts to come over as not so much an angry young man as a stroppy teenager.
.....and I haven't started on his attitude to women, both generally and towards his wife, Alison, specifically... Ok  Jimmy is a 1950s man, and the roles of men and women have changed a lot since then, but he's prepared to sit around while his wife does housework, expects her sympathy with his tiniest grievance but offers her none, and, for all his claims, doesn't really seem interested in her opinion on anything. He talks openly about the lovers he's had before he met his wife, and when she leaves him he's quick to find another. What he really seems to want is a woman who'll unconditionally adore him, agree with him all the time (no matter how quickly he changes his standpoint) and somehow magically get the housework done without upsetting his day.

Are we actually supposed to sympathise with this guy?

Look at things from his wife's point of view ....while Jimmy's having his little tantrum, she's working away, getting the ironing done. Nothing remarkable in that maybe, but Alison is a middle class educated woman - doesn't SHE feel frustrated by how her life has turned out? Did she expect to end up living in a one room bed-sit-style flat, with a husband who seems to complain day in day out about everything? Even so it's hard to sympathise with her - maybe because it's difficult to put oneself in Alison's 1950's shoes, but she does come over as rather too meek and mild, prepared to put up with whatever Jimmy says or does. She presumably still loves him and for any woman to leave her husband at that date wouldn't be as easy a decision as it would be today but I can't believe there was ever a happy ending in store for them.

The 60th anniversary production of Look Back In Anger at Derby Theatre is accompanied by a modern piece, Jinny, showing a modern woman full of unfulfilled dreams ..... I'm off to see it in a couple of weeks, so I'll wonder how she'll compare to 'old' Jimmy.

Spring Sunday

Glorious blue sky, the froth of blossom on sloes and cherries, and finding the first of the anemones .....Spring must be here

Biddulph Grange Gardens

Last weekend the sun shone and Spring seemed in the air, and being in the area we decided on an impromptu visit to Biddulph Grange Gardens.












As you enter, you're met by Italian-inspired clipped hedges, formal bedding, an ornamental pond and long tree-lined vistas




























but head further in and hidden from view are tunnels and stepping stones,













quirky design features such as a maze of daffodils,

a stumpery which looks like something out of a fairy tale,









 sphinxes guarding the entrance to an Egyptian tomb,

and at the heart of it a little bit of China

with the sort of bridge found on "Willow Pattern' plates,

It's rather like stepping through a gate into not just a secret garden but a magical one which transports you to the Orient.

The Only Way Is Indie - Books And Music

Do you ever find that sometimes you don't go out for weeks and then several things come along at the same time that you'd like to catch? It happened to me on Friday.
I'd already planned in a vague way to catch an independent publishing event at Nottingham Writers' Studio, then realised that a pair of singer/songwriters that I'd really like to see were performing locally the same night. Time to panic!
Then time to check venues and timings ..... almost unbelievably, the two events were taking place on the same street, literally opposite each other, and, with a bit of leaving early here and missing the opening act there, I could pull both in!

panel photo courtesy of Mud Press

First over to, and underneath, Nottingham Writer's Studio for The Only Way Is Indie; Dr Teika Bellamy of Mother's Milk Books, and Sara Jayne Slack of Inspired Quill had brought together a panel of twelve, representing independent presses publishing anything from graphic novels to literary fiction, short stories to poetry. Picking up a book from an 'indie' you're not going to find something destined for the 'bestseller' list or a celebrity memoir - it's going to be quirky, maybe a little avant garde, possibly a debut novel from an unknown author who could turn out to be the year's big discovery (and then get snapped up by a larger publisher for their next book).  Besides hearing about what independent publishers have to offer authors, things that maybe the large publishers can't, it was a great opportunity to meet up with authors and publishers - some I've met before, some I'd only so far talked to over social media. There's a proper write up of the event on OurBookReviewsOnline but for me it was time to nip across the road ... to Bunkers Hill.

If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago what or where Bunkers Hill was, I'd have had no idea. But then I heard on the social media grapevine that two of the guys I'd met through my daughter's music promotions  - Patrick Craig and Joe McCorriston - were going to be playing there, and I thought it was a great chance to see them again. The venue turned out to be, as I said above, just across the road from the book event, one of those pubs that advertise 'live music' on certain nights, and the 'stage' was a small area in one corner of the bar (No dartboard this time though)

I always expected to miss the opening act, local singer George Gadd, but I was disappointed to have got my timings a bit out and missed the beginning of Patrick Craig's set ..... still it's a good excuse to go see him next time he's up from London, and I at least managed to catch the whole of Joe McCorriston's set. Both are singer/songwriters with a folk/punk vibe and were as good, if not better, than I'd remembered (though it helps that this time I hadn't been left in charge of collecting entrance money!). It was a really fun end to the evening and I'm glad I went along.

,
 What struck me afterwards was the way in which both of the evening's events had been about going down an 'independent' route. In the same way that the independent publishers are investing in work that isn't mainstream, so are these musicians. Their music is their own, played and sung from the heart; not something shaped by management to fit what's deemed popular. Although both the bestseller lists and music charts have something to offer (though, please, not the latest formulaic thriller or boy-band song), there's a lot more variety to be found by looking a little beyond the obvious.









* photo of The Only Way is Indie panel comes courtesy of Mud Press

Snowdrop time

Glorious sunshine this week has seen me out and about enjoying snowdrop displays.












First we visited the gardens of Calke Abbey, owned by the National Trust

Then Shipley Country Park where snowdrops line the old drive to the now-demolished house.











The weather's been so mild that in places the snowdrops were having to compete with early flowering daffodils

Then over to Biddulph Grange Gardens - another National trust property -  where the snowdrops aren't in huge drifts but tucked in small clumps among rocks and tree stumps

and for the days I didn't go out, there were always the snowdrops at home..

Any Means Necessary - Nottingham Playhouse

 After a break for panto over the Christmas period, Nottingham Playhouse is continuing its "Conspiracy Season" with Any Means Necessary - a tale of state-sponsored betrayal which takes as its starting point the real life case of an undercover policeman who worked his way into the life and affections of a committed activist. Playwright Kefi Chadwick has built a dramatic, compelling story around these totally underhand tactics.
Mel meets Dave at a protest, they're attracted, he convinces her that although he's newly into activism he's as committed as she is. Their tastes in music and hobbies seem to mesh perfectly and before long they move in together - but while for her this is a real relationship based on shared love and respect, for him this is just part of his day's work, trying to work his way into the heart of the protest movement. It seems like the stuff of spy novels, but it's based firmly on fact.
I expected to be angered - and I was. I didn't expect to find it funny, which it occasionally is, and I didn't expect to find any sympathy for undercover cop Dave, but I did. It's easy to feel sympathetic towards the women who were exploited but for me one of the strong points about Chadwick's story was showing both sides of the argument; how by going undercover Dave put his 'real' life on hold and risked losing his wife and family, found himself torn between the two halves of is life, but whenever he had doubts about continuing his assignment was manipulated by his boss with false praise about the national importance of his work.


Don't be put off Any Means Necessary thinking it's dull, dry politics. As a play exploring just what lengths under-cover police work might go to, it's bound to be political and thought-provoking, but it's above all a good story, well told, occasionally funny, and excellently performed.


Previously in the Conspiracy Season - The Rubenstein Kiss