I was relieved to finally put down this 'unputdownable' book

Claire Douglas isn't writing books for people like me, but nevertheless I do have some positive things to say about The Couple at No. 9, so I'll start with those.

First, the premise is great. A young couple called Tom and Saffy Cutler move into a cottage in a village somewhere near Chippenham, Wiltshire. It's owned by Saffy's grandmother, Rose. They want to make some changes and begin with the garden. While digging the builders discover two bodies, buried 40 years earlier, when Rose was living there with her infant daughter, Lorna. Unfortunately the elderly woman has dementia and can't remember what happened.

They fuck you up...

Lengthy family sagas don't appeal to me and I'd never normally have opened the covers of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. However, during a chat with an English-teacher friend I mentioned that I knew nothing about Shakespeare's King Lear. "Here", she said with a smirk, "this is a modern adaptation." So I took it, left it on the shelf for a couple of years where it kept staring down at me, and eventually thought I might as well read it so I could report back.

#NaPoWriMo Paint Pot Angel

So NaPoWriMo has ended. Actually, 2024 is the first time I've participated, and I only managed one new poem throughout April. The Poetry Society prompted me to choose an artwork featuring a figure, to ask the figure a question, and imagine the answer. Having visited Bristol Museum and Art Gallery recently, I went for their Banksy figure, Paint Pot Angel, which you can see in the gallery's ground floor hall.

Here it is then. Hope it makes you smile.

Banksy's Paint Pot Angel
I can't hear you! Speak up! What's that you said?
That Banksy has put a large can on my head.
I can't see a thing and I'm feeling quite faint.
There's a very strong smell. I think that it's paint.
Since two-thousand-nine I've stood in this spot.
Won't somebody please take the stinking pot off?
Hello? Hello? Are you still there?