Change is inevitable

Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party gives away the end of the story on the first page: "It caused a mild scandal at the time, ... an error of judgment which resulted in a death." The book then describes events leading up to the incident, which takes place a few months before the outbreak of WW1, when Sir Randolph invites a group of privileged people to take part in a shoot at Nettleby Park. The old-fashioned peer has "all but bankrupted the estate" to entertain the late King.

It's Friday, it's five to five...

I must have been watching BBC's Crakerjack! aged six or seven, but all these years later, if someone says "It's Friday", my next thought is always, "It's five to five". So here's Friday's verse a triolet celebrating a kids' telly programme.

It's Friday night, it's five to five,
it's Crackerjack!
Oh what a time to be alive;
it's Friday night, it's five to five,
and on TV, a party vibe.
Hear that 'crack'-ing word? Shout back!
It's Friday night, it's five to five,
it's Crackerjack!

This is Thursday

The 1970s, IMHO, was the best decade for music, and you could get it all on Top of the Pops on Thursday evening.

Every teen in 70s Britain
on Thursday evenings would be sitting
at half past seven, in front of the box,
eagerly anticipating Top of the Pops.

Wednesday: half-day closing

Here's my verse for Wednesday.

Before the birth of the online store
buying goods was quite a chore,
and woe betide the afternoon shopper
who, mid-week, might come a cropper
'cos many a town across the country
had half-day closing, every Wednesday.

Not much to say about Tuesday

I thought I might as well write a rhyme for Tuesday too. Here's a Tuesday limerick:

Here's Tuesday, there's not much to say;
its child in the rhyme's full of grace.
With a spiritual bent,
the last before lent
is for pancakes and stuffing your face.

Monday starts the working week...

A lttle senior rhyme to start off the week:

Monday starts the working week
but not for senior retirees
whose waking thoughts are nearly always
"another day, but which one is this?"

Much, much too rich for his own good

Before picking up The Hare With Amber Eyes, I was under the impression it was fiction. My heart sank on discovering it's a family memoir. I'm not a fan of this sort of non-fiction unless it's warts-and-all, or humorous and self-deprecating. But it was a Book Club choice, so I swiped to the first page and began reading.

The book's set in late 19th century Europe, WW1, and the inter-war years of the 20th century. French art and literature loom large, both of which are interests of mine. So far so good. As for the family, it takes in three generations of the Ephrussi bankers, from whom de Waal is descended. He says, "I know that my family were Jewish, of course, and I know they were staggeringly rich". He traces these ancestors using a collection of 264 netsuke as a device, moving through generations and locations according to who owns the small Japanese carvings, one of which is the titular amber-eyed hare.

Not for the faint-hearted reader

José Saramago's The Cave isn't for the faint-hearted reader. It was a book club choice, and such was the density of words that I was 40 pages short of finishing before the meeting. One of our members thought it was terrible, the main complaint being a lack of punctuation.

At first, I too wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it, however the more I read, the more I was struck by its style of writing. I began to imagine Saramago sitting before me, reading the book out loud, like the actors on the old UK children's TV series Jackanory.

Briefly, the elderly potter, Cipriano Algor has a predictable, productive and happy life. His daughter Marta helps him make pots for The Centre, where his security guard son-in-law Marçal works. Marçal is hoping for a promotion which will allow the three of them to move from their rural community to a rental apartment in The Centre. The plot isn't intricate, the characters are nicely drawn, and we even get to listen to the thoughts of the dog, Found, whose relationship with Cipriano Algor is charming.

It's been described as dystopian and Orwellian, and raises questions about what to do with your life when you no longer work. This may not be the intentional theme of The Cave, but that's what I was thinking when I finished it. You might want to read Plato's allegory of the cave before starting, or you can just enjoy it for what it is; a story with a happy ending.