Petrina Binney's Blog, page 66
March 25, 2019
Day #84 The Love Of a Man For His Goats
Mervyn is our local goat farmer. He’s a gentle giant who calls everyone ‘sweetheart’ and he’s asked me to write his memoirs for him. I suspect he’d write them himself except that he’s busy with his goats. Also, he says he can’t read.
When he was younger, he was walked home early from school by the headmaster’s wife. She walked briskly, holding his hand and tutting loudly.
“I’m very disappointed in Mervyn,” the headmaster’s wife told Merv’s mother on the doorstep. “I’ve just caught him smoking.”
Mervyn was four years old and went up to his room, leaving the women to talk.
“Smoking is very bad, dangerous in fact,” the headmaster’s wife continued, watching him scamper up the stairs. “It’ll stunt his growth.”
“Yes, well. Thank you,” said Mervyn’s mum and shut the door.
Mervyn is now an adult, six foot three, and still has an occasional cigarette. When he comes to the Clubhouse, he drinks Newcastle Brown Ale and tells the staff about the traffic accident he had, which nearly killed him, when he was twenty-one. All the staff love Mervyn. All the members of the Club love Mervyn. He is, without doubt, one of the kindest people I know.
Anytime there’s something vacuous on the television on the back wall, he’ll turn to the staff and say, “You don’t want to watch TV, sweetheart. You want to watch a goat.”
There’s something rather lovely about that.
March 24, 2019
Day #83 A Summer Breeze
Okay, so we’re working our way through towards the changing of the clocks.
The days will get longer and lighter and everything will feel… like it’s not holding its breath anymore. It was one of my favourite things when I was younger and I still love it now: walking to the shop in the evening.
Yeah. My needs are few.
If I can look at the clock, see that it’s only half-seven, and then take a casual stroll up the massive hill towards the convenience store and its endless supply of staples (milk, Tunnock’s caramel wafers and cloudy cider). A brief chat, nothing serious and then, I’ll just saunter back, a warm breeze in my face, the sky a sort of school-tie-blue, and come home to a wicker chair waiting on my porch.
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Perhaps a book, sitting on top of a waiting pint glass, preventing entry to a million flying insects that would desecrate the inside of the glass with the remnants of whatever they’ve landed on earlier in the day.
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A book as bouncer. And the night stays warm until just after nine and the book can be read until then.
March 23, 2019
Book Review – Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
Book Review – Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
First published 1976
Now, I’m going to have to go into quite ludicrous detail about why I loved this novel so much. It was a birthday present to me from friends when I was around twenty. I have no excuse other than – life – to explain why it’s taken me this long to get to it.
The story centres around Joan, a wickedly humorous, occasionally clumsy and (an unkind person would say cowardly, so I’ll just say) weak-kneed fantasist who takes on more convenient personas whenever her life gets too complicated or flaccid, depending on how she’s living it.
Joan has lived in the shadow of her oppressive mother, for whom she was never good or thin enough and her near-silent father. She has only known true kinship with her overweight and happy aunt. Joan has strived for friendships which were largely one-sided. She has drifted into relationships without ever totally losing or really giving herself.
She has a terror that the people in her life will discover she’s a fraud. She has been fat – they can never know. She has written umpteen costume fiction books – they would be mortified. She has lived with a man who saw of her only what he wanted to see – the damsel in distress, the broken little virgin. And with one lie spilling into another, and the increasing complexity of the lives she lives in tandem, she has little choice but to walk away from the lot of it.
Joan has created herself. Perhaps she is too close to her creation and, consequently, longs to step away. Aspects of her life that are beyond her control – her crusading husband, her lovesick boyfriend, the quasi-friend who used to torture her when they were children and who, maddeningly, has no recollection of this fact – are distractions to her work (about which they cannot know) and herself (who they simply do not know). She fluffs up elements of her history and romanticises things that, perhaps could have happened, but never did because: if it makes a better story, it’s not really a lie.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, she’s gone and told me a lot of the plot here. Is it really worth reading?
Are you serious?
It’s Margaret Atwood. Put down everything you have and go get the book. She’s tremendous.
Also, the friends who bought this for my birthday, knocking on for twenty years ago, wrote in the flyleaf to say – “Read this and thought of you.”
You might be wondering if my friends were right, if there is any similarity between the main character and me.
Read the book. If you know me, you’ll know.
https://amzn.to/2TTYQeq
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Day #82 Sawdust
I’ve known people who keep cars in their garages. I’ve seen some of the world, you know. But for myself, the garage is a place for everything else.
When I was a kid, my Dad used the garage as his carpentry workshop and as a dumping ground for stuff on its way to the tip. Mostly, it was where he made furniture and, at one point, an A4-sized stencil of the whole of the UK and Ireland, for me to use in geography classes. It was brilliant, and saved me the awkwardness of trying to sketch something akin to a semi-recumbent, tiddly headmistress sitting alongside a snapped-neck koala. Really. Look at it. It may take a few drinks to see it, but tell me I’m wrong.
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The fact of it is, my Dad was pretty happy in his workshop. He had his radio playing best of the eighties, no dodgy calendars that might have upset my mother, but he had a few dozen planes, saws, all manner of hammers, and his pipe. He didn’t much go in for power tools so the whole place smelt of warm, but not burnt, sawdust, and occasional wafts of pipe tobacco.
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There was a time when I was about nine, I went to my Dad’s workshop and chatted to him for a while as he packed tobacco into his pipe. He’d been chiselling away at something for some time and there were wood chippings on the ground around a huge metal vice. Aware that my mother would complain about her kitchen floor if I tracked the chippings inside, I stayed in the doorway. My Dad struck a match, lit his pipe, and flicked the match to the ground, quite convinced that the flame would go out on its way down – as it had a billion times before. This time, it didn’t.
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I suspect he’d been looking forward to the restful relaxation of his pipe, with most of his work done, a little chat with the offspring, and suchlike. Instead, he wound up almost dropping his pipe and dancing around on the smouldering chippings, trying to keep the flames from catching too enthusiastically, and taking out a couple of tins of varnish and half the family on the way.
My mother and her mother took out the net curtains in the breakfast room in much the same fashion, flicking their matches towards the kitchen sink, in the early nineteen-sixties. I think everything was just more flammable years ago. But the smell of sawdust is one of the finest things there is.
March 22, 2019
Day #81 The Dubliners
By blood, as far as I’m told, I’m Irish-Scottish-French-Welsh, possibly Jewish, possibly Cornish. I will never (look, I’ve typed it, so I mean it), never get my DNA checked with one of these send-away companies. Frankly, I like the idea that I’m a bit of all-sorts. I can only imagine my disappointment if it turns out I’m not as everything as I think I am.
Anyway, the Irish side… Closest to me in terms of history, I used to think I’d move to Dublin as soon as I turned eighteen. On my eighteenth birthday, a group of my friends went to Ireland for a holiday. I didn’t go along with them on account of – I didn’t know a thing about it.
Before we start feeling lousy on my behalf, I should explain one minor detail… They queued outside Blarney Castle, eager to kiss the Blarney Stone and seal their luck for all their lives. After nearly an hour, they gave up and – walked away. Can you imagine? Walked away.
When they returned and told me about it, I told them they’d ostensibly ruined their lives and no amount of vigorous rock-sucking would save them. I’m a good friend. I tell the truth.
Anyway, getting back to The Dubliners…
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When fully-Scottish people hear bagpipes, it stirs something deep within. Like butterflies in the stomach, wearing power suits. For me, The Dubliners feels like butterflies in the stomach, and maybe there’s a cat in there with them.
This is the best of the best as far as I’m concerned. The Rocky Road To Dublin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxBKgOyMzSc
Prepare your stomach. If there’s anything even vaguely Irish in there, your gizzard will start dancing.
March 21, 2019
Day #80 A Lie-In
See, and it’s one of the best things about this holiday I’m planning with Tara. Wherever it’s going to be (yeah, I have quite a lot of planning to do), I think there should be a view. Somewhere near the sea. We already live in a wood, so, the sea it is.
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Tara loves to swim and (yes, I’m pushing it time-wise, given that beaches are closed to dogs from the end of April to the beginning of October), there’s nothing to match the sea air for taking a break. Plus – fish and chips. For me. Tara’s a dog. I’m not going to break her stomach with batter and oceans of vinegar – which is the only proper way to have chips.
But a lie-in: turning my head to look through light and shuttered windows, straight across the sea, and a glimpse of the sun, shining like a yellow bauble in the sky, while Tara chases seagulls into the air.
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Sounds like heaven to me.
March 20, 2019
Day #79 A Brand New Pair of Socks
I’m going to let myself believe you had a little shudder then. Just from the title.
A Brand-New Pair of Socks.
There’s nothing to beat it.
Not yet moulded to the actual shape of a real human foot, not stretched, no holes exposing unloved toes or unremarkable edges of ankle, no dodgy seamwork digging into the cuticle.
A new pair of socks. Fresh, like a sprinkle of daisies over your feet. Trust the shudder. New socks are among the best things in life.
March 19, 2019
Day #78 Libraries
One of the only reasons I remember the late eighties with any clarity is because there was a library challenge in primary school. As we approached the summer holidays, and six weeks of not doing much at all, the school suggested we take out and read books from the library. If we managed to complete one book a week, for the whole of the holidays, we’d receive a certificate at the first assembly of the autumn term and a library badge for every completed book.
I don’t suppose we wrote real dates on school work back then. It was a simpler time. But I know I noticed when the certificate went from stating 1989 to, seemingly from nowhere, 1990.
When I was little and my mother was in hospital quite a lot, I used to take out books from the hospital library. The librarian was a French lady called Jacqueline who was married to a surgeon. She wore long, 70s style, corduroy skirts and little leather ankle boots.
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I don’t remember what sort of tops she wore, but I wasn’t that tall. Anyway, Jacqueline was my heroine. She’d read everything, and she understood not to pick out books that were too babyish for me.
So, as far as I’m concerned – libraries are amazing. Everything is there. Anyone can read anything. Money defines nothing and nobody. And sometimes, there are French women.
What’s not to like?
In other news, there’s a copy of my first book on the Devon Mobile Library van and another one in Ottery Library.
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I’ve practically gone global.
March 18, 2019
Day #77 Game Of Thrones
I went to a Quiz night last week, and found that one of my Movie Nighters had come along wearing the finest T-shirt in existence. I know it’s the best because I have the exact same one, currently in my washing machine.
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Clearly, Rob has been watching Game Of Thrones. As have I, for quite some time. And there is little better than being one of two in a crowded room, chatting about Game Of Thrones and watching peoples’ faces drop.
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Yes, all right, there’s a lot of violence and, in all probability, they’ll all wind up dead, but it’s soooo cool. There are battles and diplomacy and dragons and marriages of convenience/political gain/love. The love ones don’t seem to last, unless there’s a bloody and unnecessary ending. But, and I’m quoting myself here:
“Any idiot can tell you that a third of all marriages end in divorce.” She lowered her voice and patted Fiona’s hand. “But don’t lose hope, because the rest of them end in death.”
Excerpt From: Petrina Binney. “The Girl With All The Cleavage (Sex, Death and Dinner, #0.5)”.
Go on. Go shopping. I dare you.
UK: https://amzn.to/2NZtnRG
US: https://amzn.to/2J9QnyD
There’s a lot of life and death stuff, as well as giants and mammoths and scary living-dead types in Game Of Thrones. There are the utterly gorgeous and well-off, who have their own problems, as well as the plucky and overlooked. There are some of the finest actors in the country and the best of the lot is Lady Olenna, played by Diana Rigg.
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She’s intelligent and dangerous and rude, and one of the finest compliments I have ever received was when I was told I’m a bit like her.
I’ll take that any day of the week.
March 17, 2019
Day #76 – Fable II
When I was born, my parents were firmly in their forties. I don’t know whether they decided to spare me some of the modern world because they didn’t know about it or because people, in general, try to raise their children the way they were raised or what, but I didn’t watch an ounce of television until I was five.
Even then, my mother tried her very best to keep me away from it, in case it damaged my eyes or, more likely, my brain. Video games were few and far between, and demanded a level of imagination to be played with any real fervour. I can’t give you a timeline on video games because I was more of a Lights Alive girl.
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However, when I was ten or eleven, and getting into skating, I took a tumble on the ice and almost broke my wrist. To assist in my convalescence, my buddy Alex, with whom I used to skate, loaned me his Atari console. I remember a giant spider and an endless effort to retrieve big pink crystals, but that’s about it. I’m sure it did help to renew the strength in my wrist, whatever it was. When I got back into my skating, I really didn’t give it another thought.
When we went to Canada, my cousins played a lot of Super Mario Kart. I didn’t get it. It was getting in the way of my reading ‘Little Women’. Maybe it’s for this reason that I’ve always thought of myself as older than my years.
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And then I met Aimée.
Quite soon, she introduced me to her friend, Jack. He got to know me as someone who was interested in ancient civilisations, culture, mythology, and such. Soon, it was Christmas. I surprised Aimée with a games console because I knew she was into that sort of thing. I was probably re-reading Daphne Du Maurier, and Jack surprised me with a copy of Fable II.
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Fable II is a video game with castles and rock trolls, magic and a gazillion villagers who the player needs to get on side, or firmly off-side. Either way. There are monks and shadow worshippers, so the player can be a goodie or a baddie, depending on mood, or personality. To top it all off, the narrator and advisor to the main character is voiced by Zoe Wanamaker, who has the finest voice in the country.
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I lost days to Fable II.
Actually, days.
It’s all Zoe Wanamaker, I’m sure of it. She’s tremendous.
