Ailsa Abraham's Blog: Ailsa Abraham, page 64

They like it!!!!

TWO more 5* reviews for Alchemy on Amazon.uk! 

5.0 out of 5 stars A Slice of Magic, 15 Jun 2014


By
Ms. Carol Hunter - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)



Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Alchemy (Kindle Edition)
This is a very clever book written by an intelligent and knowledgeable author. It’s clear that Ailsa Abraham has not only done her research but has a wide knowledge of world religions and politics and has used these to construct a whole new culture. However, like all ideal states this one has its flaws, which is that those who engineered the system forgot to factor in the frailty of human nature where money, power or the need to control the populus are concerned. Switching points of view gives the reader not only in-depth look at the characters but also a 360 degree view of events. Very worthy of a five-star rating.


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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars I know it’s a cliché, but I couldn’t put it down., 1 Jun 2014


By
Loddie - See all my reviews



Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Alchemy (Paperback)
This isn’t my genre but I do like to read outside of it now and again. And I’m glad I did. Alchemy had me gripped from the start and, yes, I know it’s a cliché, but I couldn’t put it down. I liked the author’s style of writing and the way she wrote about the interesting characters.

If you want to read a book with terror, magic, adventure and romance then pick up this book. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you, readers, I love you! I’m working on Book 3 as we speak. 
Oooo – Riga is doing a Black Shaman wardance around the room, Iamo is grinning like a Cheshire cat and Adrian and Helen just opened a bottle of wine! 


 

Let’s dis Nature!

Scene: The Board Room of the manufacturers of Tampax.

CEO: Our sales figures are terrible. What has happened? Why aren’t women buying our products any more? Yes, Gavin, you have your hand up?

GAVIN: It’s the ecological impact, Boss. Some of the chemicals are very bad for the soil, the wrappers are non-biodegradable and this new pearl thing is a disaster. Also we can’t dissuade women from flushing them down the toilets.

CEO: Gavin, I don’t think you quite have the idea here. The ethos is “freedom”. Use it, chuck it in the lavatory and get on your bicycle or go for a swim. What the hell are all these tree-huggers and rubbish-sorters doing?

GAVIN: The eco- conscious women are buying a product that is re-usable, washable and they only have to buy once. They say it’s better for the environment, better for their health and much more economical.

CEO: OK. So – tree huggers eh? Save the whales fans eh? Come on, everyone, brain-storm! What can we do about this? Marcia?

MARCIA: Well, they are out to save the earth, so if we could find a figure that represents…say, Mother Nature and make her like, your worst teacher at school and really, like, horrible, out to spoil your fun…

CEO: I’m liking this a lot. Yes. Nasty old woman who wants to stop your fun so you, hip gal, use Tampax, do your own thing, get on out there and screw the consequences! Love it!

GAVIN: I really think this could backfire on us, Boss. If we start dissing Mother Nature there are a whole bunch of Druid types who will take offence.

CEO: You have completely lost the plot, Gavin, you’re fired!  Marcia – start drawing up plans for the new ad campagne – Mother Nature is a spiteful old bitch! I love it!!!!

What have they just done?

 

 

I talk to …

Oleander. Also come in white and pink!

Unlike poor Clint, I talk to everything and I get answers and listeners. This morning was a great example.  I love coming down here because the flora is different. We are surrounded by oleander, olive groves and almond trees. I don’t know if you have ever seen a “last year’s almond” but they are small black shrivelled things like mummified versions of the ones above.

Inspecting a tree today and congratulating it on this year’s crop, touching the velvet green fruit, I noticed that one of the old ones had legs. The converation went somethng like this (if you can imagine my interlocuter speaking like a ventriloquist’s dummy with teeth clenched)

“Hello. You aren’t an almond. You’re a bug.”

Olive trees just like here.

“No, no, I’m an almond. Honest.”

“Well if you are an old almond, how come you’ve got legs then?”

“Oh alright smartarse, I’m a bug, now push off!”

It’s small exchanges like this that makek my little world so lovely. I talk to the bugs …..

Dear Mr. Scholl

I’m writing to let you know that your Athlete’s Foot treatment also works wonderfully on another but less well-known condition. I call it “Athlete’s Tit”.

For larger ladies such as me, over whom gravity won some time ago, hot weather can produce the same symptoms as athlete’s foot but further north. Of course this is due to the same conditions, bacterial growth in damp warm and enclosed areas.  For some time my doctor assumed I was allergic to my underwear and had me change my washing powder, type of bra and issued me with enough creams to keep keep a whole maternity ward going for a year. This proved counter productive as my brassière simply slid around on the cream and I was forever rescuing my right cup from half way up my back.

It was only when my husband compared my  symptoms with those of Athlete’s Foot, from which he suffers from time to time,  that he came up with the bright idea of trying your product and within days it had cleared up.

Thank you. I am not seeking any publicity for this, I just thought that your advertising department might make use of it – Scholl Powder – whichever end is hurting!

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Abraham, satisfied customer.

Reasonable?

Imagine the scene. You are in a tea room with a friend. You don’t know me from Adam but your friend does. You’re having a conversation when I storm over and say “Your views are repugnant to me as a XXXX and I am therefore obliged to headbutt you in the face very hard”.

Not only was I not included in your conversation but how high to you rate A) me as a person and B) the cause for which I made such a fuss?

Not much either way eh?

I would have done both myself and my cause an enormous dis-service. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if neither of you spoke to me ever again and went around saying “I met one of those XXX people – right nutter!”

So could you please all stop doing that on FB?

Call it a parable, call it a “let’s pretend story” but get the message. Thank you.

Tagged: My Writing Process! | SocialBookshelves.com

Tagged: My Writing Process! | SocialBookshelves.com.

Dane, who was brave enough to interview me over the phone, despite my stutter and hesitation, has been kind enough to nominate me. Go see what he says about his style!

Off we go again.

Despite the total disaster that was our last attempt at going “down south”, the Old Feller and I are hitching up the van and heading back towards Narbonne, stopping off to see friends and relations on the way.

If you want to know why it was a disaster you can always get a free copy of the novella that resulted from that last trip “Four Go Mad in Catalonia” from Goodreads. 

This morning I’ve designed a new publicity poster based on some of the great reviews I’ve had on Alchemy and if I get time I’ll see if  Buffer wants to play and programme some tweets and FB posts in… don’t hold your breath.

If I’m lucky I’ll pop in from time to time to say “what I’m doing on my holidays” but mainly I’m going to be writing. Off down to the town hall where everyone knows me and I have my own coffee mug.

Respectfully Yours…

Hello, Friend!

English is one of the few languages that does not have a formal and informal version of the word “you”.

In most other European languages it is very easy to show respect to someone by using the polite form. Only when one becomes closer to a person does one use the familiar form and then usually by invitation. Colleagues, neighbours and people we see every day will be “tu” in French. We don’t have to make a big fuss about how you address people. We even switch between situations. My doctor is Seb (first name) but I call him “vous” in the surgery and “tu” when we are out and meet socially.

Even using first names is not proof against this. I have worked for managers who insisted I use their first names but we still called each other “vous” in conversation (the formal variation).

In English we are stuck with calling people Mr. Mrs. or Miss (Ms.) to underline our distance from them. In some societies that is considered stand-offish or snobby. Quakers refuse to use these forms of address as they believe in total equality of all people. You are your name – full name or first name or “Friend” if they don’t know you at all.

Where I grew up in Cornwall we would rather have cut our tongues out than call people Sir or Madam. Where did they think they were, Harrods? So if we didn’t know their names we had a whole thesaurus of male and female “mate-names”. You all know m’love and m’hansum, but maybe didn’t know about my bird, my lil Jenny Wren, or Cocker (watch out for that one, it could mean they are spoiling for a fight, as in “Now see here, Cocker!”) None of these were offensive. If we knew your name we’d use it. We didn’t so we called you something friendly instead.

I’m still enough of a “luvvie” to call people darling a lot even though my acting days are well behind me. Thanks be! People are now used to it and so not surprised that, since my stroke, my memory not being very good for names but fantastic for faces, I resort to “Hello there, sweetie/ darling/ honeybunch” because I really can’t remember. I do this in French too. Ma biche, mon brave, ma grande, mon petit…just as I used to do in Cornwall.

It’s friendly. It may not strike some people as respectful, but then they are the sort of people I would address as Mr, Mrs or Ms – meaning their opinion doesn’t really count for much in my universe.

Don’t care!

 

Deepest apologies

Yesterday, (2nd June 2014) I published what I believed to be a heart-felt recommendation for Suzan Collins’ book “Beyond my Control”

Those who know me, which is most of you reading this blog, will know that I would never knowingly offend or upset anyone and that compassion is one of my most prized characteristics both in myself and others.

I was, therefore, distressed to find the following on Twitter.

 

victoria smith ‏@victori89243114  1h

@ailsaabraham@suzancollins That’s not a book review. Its you shouting about how gr8t things are in France. Have you read the book?

@ailsaabraham@suzancollinsYou have been insensitive about a very proud lady! I am so angry!

@ailsaabraham@suzancollinsI didn’t like the piece where you wrote something about ‘you let them kill you darling’.

While I am still a little unsure as to exactly what caused this outrage, I am publishing a full apology to Victoria Smith and anyone else, especially Suzan Collins if they were offended by my piece. I offered to delete my post but other readers have asked me to leave it as they found it compassionate and instructive.

I will, however, repeat that the book is excellent. I still think it should be required reading for anyone dealing with the NHS.

Once again, Victoria Smith, I am deeply sorry to have caused you such rage.

 

Comparing patients’ notes

I have just had the “pleasure” of reading Suzan Collins’ book “Beyond My Control”

I put pleasure in inverted commas because it enraged me. It is a very factual and unemotional account of what must be one of the most harrowing situations possible. An elderly parent in the hands of uncaring and obstructive “professionals”.

Despite the fact that Suzan Collins is an expert in the field of care for the elderly, she was unable to get satisfactory results or even responses from the nursing home or hospital which treated her mother in a way that I would consider abusive and eventually manslaughter if not murder.

Why was I so outraged? Probably because I live in France where it is acknowledged that we have one of the best health-care systems in Europe. Yes, we pay through the nose for it out of our salaries but nobody quibbles because we know that we will get value for that money. There is no two-tier system where the poor have to wait years for treatment while the rich buy their way to the head of the queue.

Private surgeons are not taking up valuable time and facilities doing work on their own account using public property. Old people are not left in a corner to die and dignity is considered above all things. Cost is never a consideration. If you need an expensive MRI scan you get one. You paid your contributions, you are just as entitled as anyone else to the services.

The first time I woke up in a French hospital, having been through both sides of the British system, I thought I was in a private hospital and cried my eyes out. How was I going to pay for all this? Only two beds in a room, a TV on the wall, people asking me what I would LIKE to eat? This was nothing like the NHS hospitals I knew of old.

Our nurses are (with few exceptions) very kind and compassionate so one of them immediately came to see why I was crying. Did I need medication? Was I in pain? What could she do for me right this minute? (see any differences?) No – I worked, I paid my contributions, I had nothing to pay for unless I made phone calls from the telephone by my bed -yes, my own phone with the number written above the bed so people could call me and not cost me anything.

You will, by now, understand why I was grinding my teeth while reading of the treatment of this proud, elderly lady who didn’t want to make a fuss, be a bother. No, darling, you didn’t, you just let them kill you.

This book should be required reading for all customers (yes, you are) of the NHS and every person who works for it in any capacity. At the end of each chapter is a list of useful rights, resources and organisations. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Suzan Collins