Monday 4 March 2013

Scenes from a Poisoner's Life by Nigel Williams

Last week I went to the Oxfam bookshop, my friend Lotte told me she had been reading a lot more since her fiance started doing strange shifts and waking her up at odd hours to leave the house, I bought a book too so she would not think I was an uncultured fool.
I bought this book by Nigel Williams. I knew it would be easy to read as I enjoy his radio series HR (now on it's fourth series on BBC radio 4, Friday mornings) but books being easy to read has not been the problem for me lately. A lot of books I've started have been easy to read and lots of them good (some of them shite of course) I couldn't continue reading Giles Coren's book How to Eat Out after I got food poisoning (again), it just wasn't something I was desperate to pick up while still feeling iffy... Jamaica Inn I read half of because of a job I thought I might get but it was so dreadfully familiar to reading my own self-indulgent drivel that I started to think I might be Daphne Du Maurier reincarnated, doomed to write tosh forever. And then there are other books I've started and read usually more than half of then just forgotten about. I can't bring myself to blame 30 Rock. I definitely needed to watch five series in a row with no break for reading, sleeping, eating or working.
Anyway, I read Nigel's book and maybe it's just because of modern life that I found the concept of 12 short self-contained stories connected by the months of the year brilliant- you know, perhaps my attention span is horrendous and I need bite-sized literature. Or maybe it was just that he writes these shorts so well. It was like listening to the radio.
Or maybe it was just exactly what that three word review said on the the back; "Modern Wodehouse suburbanized." Am I that much of an arse that I can only read Wodehouse or his modern day equivalents? I think perhaps I am. Well, who cares. I went to the Arthritis Research bookshop and got another of Nigel's to take on my holiday tomorrow and I'm jolly well I'm looking forward to reading it.

Sunday 3 March 2013

Goodnight Mr Tom, Touring, York Opera Grand

Lovely show! I always watch the tv film when it's on and it was just as good, Oliver Ford Davies was wonderful as Mr Tom, probably much more moving than John Thaw but I've alway preferred him anyway... Good and gruff to begin with and excellent dad to Will almost immediately!
The puppet dog was brilliant as was the girl who performed her, we never saw her face til she took her bow at the end.
We all sobbed of course. Brilliant.