Birthday

'Only six more years,' my son tells me with great authority, 'and you will be an old person.'  I do feel this is a little harsh, but I suppose when you're ten, even fourteen seems positively ancient.  He did review his ideas briefly when Gary Speed died but no, it seems that I am once more fast approaching old age.

Despite the impending decrepitude, I do like birthdays.  When the children were younger we all had cakes and candles.  Any excuse, in fact, to make a day into a special occasion.  The desire for cakes and candles seems to have waned now, along with fancy dress at Halloween and decorating Easter eggs, but I'm still in favour of a little indulgence on one's birthday.

This year I have been suitably indulged, both with gifts and celebrations.  My love of gadgetry has been satisfied with a brand new iPhone.  I've never had a smartphone before so the ability to look anything up on a whim is compelling.  I'm not sure if Orange knew what they were letting themselves in for when I signed up for 'unlimited access'.

Paper books have not been entirely forsaken.  My political friend has given me True Blue - Strange Tales from a Tory Nation which explores the question 'Why would anyone be a Conservative?' I think I am going to enjoy this one.  I've also got Classics: A Very Short Introduction which I hope will help me decide whether to study classics with the Open University next year.

My birthday celebrations were rounded off by dinner at The Waterwitch with the Lancashire Ladies.  Stories of teenage internet surfing habits and 'old lady hairs' caused great hilarity and a good time was had by all.

Bees

Weekends bring many pleasures, not least a long soak in the bath with a good book.  Since most of my current reading is either study- or Kindle-based, I opt instead for Sarah Hall's collection of short stories The Beautiful Indifference.


'Bees' opens with a middle-aged woman finding her house-mate's garden littered with dead bees.  At first, I'm not sure why this story should work so well.  It's written in the tricky second person and has no dialogue at all, but then the prose is beautiful, compact but richly descriptive.  The bees are 'black-capped, like aristocrats at a funeral, their antennae folded, with mortuary formality, across their eyes'.  The woman reflects on her move to London after her failed marriage to a Cumbrian farmer.  I can't help thinking I've met this farmer, or someone just like him, in a village pub on the fells.  Until, at the end, she discovers the reason for the bees' demise.  And like the best short stories, it makes an impression, and then lingers.

I like the way good writing seems to sharpen your senses.  I close the book and listen.  Across the city, church bells ring and the starlings nesting in our gutter clamour for food.  From my son's bedroom, the incessant whistle of a police siren car chase.  The peace lily on the sill trembles in the draught of the barely open window.

I think of the bees that swarmed in our garden.  The clichéd cloud and drone, the hasty evacuation of young children.  Once swarmed, they gathered benignly on the stone wall, barely visible until you were an arm's length away.  The council did tell us what type they were, but I've forgotten now. Certainly, not comic-book bees; they were thinner and paler coloured.

I could add bee-keeping to my list of pipe-dreams, along with bountiful allotment keeping and hosting gregarious outdoor dinners as seen in the better lifestyle magazines.

In the meantime, I return to more mundane affairs - post-Freudian analysis of Dracula and a fun-run in the local park.

Bookgroup

At a playgroup eight years ago, I overheard one new mother telling another, 'I'm starting a bookgroup.  Would you like to come?'  To be sure, it was rather rude of me to gatecrash, but I do owe a great deal to that enterprising woman.  There are the fifty or more books that I wouldn't have read otherwise, for one thing.  Then there's the wine, the friendship and the wine.

Some people have come and gone, but most are in it for the long haul. We've fussed pregnant women, jiggled babies and now compare notes on how to motivate teenage daughters. In short, this is much more than a bookgroup.

The books we've read have inspired debate, theatre trips and a tear or two.  This week we discussed The Shipping News and ate Swedish pickled herring, washed down with a gin and tonic.  So much of the book seems to revolve around meals of some kind.  Can we tempt you with a squid burger or shark fin soup?  And as the sun set over Lancaster castle, we talked of icebergs and Newfoundland skies.

Book groups come in all shapes and sizes.  Mine is a perfect fit.

A whistle-stop tour

Do you ever take time off and then go back to work for a rest?

Twelve days disappeared in a flash.  A life-affirming combination of fresh air and books.  We walked  in the Yorkshire Dales in sun, wind, rain and snow, ate Masham and Malham steak pie and supped real ales. Well, a half of Landlord on my part, before returning to the reassuring blandness of a cold lager.

Serious study of The Portrait of a Lady was interspersed with more easy going reading.  On a friend's recommendation, I read my first Dorothy Sayers mystery, Whose Body?  Murder mysteries aren't usually my bag, but the combination of great characters and effective writing style kept my interest throughout. I'll know where to turn now for an entertaining read and some respite from the arduousness of the Nineteenth Century Novel.

If I thought it was cold in Malham, that was nothing to a bitter Newfoundland winter.  Although I was never quite comfortable with the disjointed style and incomplete sentences of The Shipping News, I did feel I was there, eating shark fin soup with the motley staff of the Gammy Bird newspaper.  I'll look forward to hearing the views of the Lancashire Ladies at our book group meet next week.

I took my kids to see The Hunger Games which has reached the lofty position of 'second best film ever' (behind Star Wars III) in my son's eyes.  For my part, I was glad to see a heroine with a bit of spark after the wishywashyness of Twilight's Bella Swan.

So now we've reached the last lap of the academic year.  There's light at the end of the degree tunnel, and a whole season of under tens cricket to look forward to.  Let the good times roll.