East of Eden

I got back into walking and listening to music and audio books. Dug out the iPod, it still worked but I'd totally forgotten how to use it. Thank Google for the internet. It taught me all I needed to know. First day I had it out  I couldn't even remember how to shuffle and was condemned to listen to a lot of Massive Attack. Got bored with that and re-learned how to load music. I don't do iTunes, hate how it's always persuading me to buy stuff. Uploaded the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Odetta. Blown away by Odetta.

Audio books. Wolf Hall. I have the book in the house, Bert loved it but I just couldn't get round to it. I enjoyed listening to it. Next was On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Never read it, although it's been on my shelves for a very long time. On The Road  put me in the mood for Steinbeck. But first I listened to Jane Eyre which I'd read as a child. I started with a Librivox edition, volunteer recordings. As always with Librivox, some of the readers were dire and there were ridiculous and irritating pronunciations. Who wants to listen to an American college girl pronouncing Hebrides as Heb-Rides. Not I. I found I'd already got a better version on my hard drive and abandoned Librivox. Then Bert had been reading (for the first time) Steinbeck's  East of Eden and he loved it. I'd read it twice before. The first time I picked it up was when I was still in primary school. My Uncle Desmond had a big collection of Reader's Digest condensed novels and I used to peruse them looking for the ones with pictures of animals or children. East of Eden appealed to me. There were illustrations of Cal and Aaron Trask as babies being bathed out of doors by the Chinese servant Lee. It got even better when the girl child Abra was introduced. I read the whole thing even if most of it flew over my head. Abridged novels usually leave out the juicy parts. My lord! I had no idea what East of Eden was leaving out. I read it again (complete version) in my late teens and could hardly believe that I'd read it as a child.

I always knew I'd get back to it some day. Listening to the novel has been exhilarating. I remembered a good deal of it, especially the parts that related to children. I knew that Abra was going to throw that rabbit package away. Back in my young days I really felt for Aaron and thought Abra a brat but now I understand her better. Today as I Dutch-hoed and prepared beds for Spring planting I listened to Lee tell Adam the story of his beginnings. That was a rough, hard story. It went over my head as a teenager. I couldn't have comprehended such an atrocity at that stage of my life.

I was first attracted to the book by the illustrations and descriptions of children. Now in my mature years I am delighted by the older characters, most particularly Samuel Hamilton and Lee, I even have a soft spot for Liza Hamilton who took to drink in her later years after a life-long abhorrence of alcohol. It turned out that it is OK if it is medicinal and is taken with a tea spoon.

I've read nearly everything that Steinbeck wrote. Notable exceptions are The Pearl, The Log from the Sea of Cortez and Travels With Charley. I have them all sitting waiting for me. And there is still the last part of East of Eden which, happily, I don't recall apart from something regarding soggy lettuce. And I'm hopeful of a miserable ending for Cathy.

I Suppose I'm Happy

My husband has left me, but only for a short vacation to Spain, Murcia to be exact. And he has left me the pigs, the chickens and thousands of plants to look after. Thankfully he has not left me his mother. She is on holiday too, but she only got as far as the Doagh Road. She was not impressed when she heard that her only beloved child was heading to Spain, said, "I dinnae know what's taking him over there. Would somewhere nearer home not hae done him!" I expect she meant Portrush.

While the pigs and the chickens are easy, the potted trees, shrubs and climbers are a nightmare. I was hours watering this evening and Don Quixote was annoying me. Well not the Don exactly but some bloody Librivox reader. She kept swallowing her words and was giving me the impression she hadn't a notion of the meaning of the text. Then the hose exploded and I drenched myself. Undaunted I fixed it and carried on. Must have a word with Bert about the ridiculous amount of trees hanging about this shanty. I shall insist that he must either sell them, plant them or throw them over a hedge.

So watering all done now, I'm wearing clean, dry pyjamas, blogging, listening to Pink Floyd, downloading Tess of the d'Urbervilles (with proper actor-type reader) and drinking gin. I suppose I'm happy.

Going In The Right Direction

I parked the car at Steen's Corner and walked half a mile in the direction of Ballymena, before turning right onto the Whappstown Road. For the part of the walk I listened to the last ten minutes of Three Men in a Boat. I found it just a tad flat compared to the previous  chapters but then, after the best part of a fortnight on the river, the three heroes and the dog were feeling a bit flat too. The weather didn't help them as the poor souls were caught in an interminable summer deluge and they just wanted to be home and dry and clean and to be eating a fine  dinner. You know how it is. So my pace was only at a moderately brisk dander, as I concentrated on the book's ending, and was only enlivened by a quick dash into a field for a pee.

Book over I switched the iPod on to shuffle and soon sharpened my pace.

• All Your Love, Magic Sam - good brisk pace, I really lengthened those strides.
  
• Smells Like...Remix, Fatboy Slim - got the heart going good altho' I thought the track was shite.
  
• Bit of Snooks Eaglin - stepping out well.
  
• In The Mood, John Lee Hooker - does what it says on the tin. Did he mean aerobic walking?
  
• Going in the Right Direction, Robert Randolph & the Family Band - I was practically jogging to this.
  
• Wheels, Come On Gang - a spring in my quickstep and a good mood enhancer to boot.
  
• Her Mind Is Gone, Professor Longhair - getting close to the car. Winding down the speed.
  

Best walk I've had in ages. 

The Wisdom of Satan and other Stories

Since I acquired my new fangled listening device I have had those kind LibriVox people read me the following books,

• Middlemarch by George Eliot
  
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  
• The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  
• The Mysterious Stranger and Other Tales by Mark Twain (Paine version)
  

And I am currently listening to The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame. That is a re-read but it's always enjoyable. I was reminded of a thought that I had when I read it first, and it was this - how come Ratty and Toad and Badger and the rest of them get to eat interesting food, go on caravan holidays and have houses and cars and furniture and stuff while other animals, such as the old grey horse has to drag Toad's canary-coloured cart, only gets to eat grass and lives in a paddock? Maybe that's where Orwell got his idea for 'All animals are equal...' Or maybe not.

I finished 'The Mysterious Stranger' yesterday. I was hanging out the washing when Satan was opining thus,

In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people.

Satan was speaking in the late 16th century, Twain writing at the turn of the twentieth. How we have moved on since then.

Here We Go Planting Nuts In May

I am now on my fourth LibriVox audio book. I've just finished 'A Tale of Two Cities' and am halfway through 'Heart of Darkness'. I've also been working in the garden, which is a sad neglected place where scutch grass and buttercups have been making a takeover bid.

I like weeding and I like listening to books while I'm doing it. Unfortunately for Bert, who works on the strawberry bed while I tear at nettles and scutch, my audio book makes me antisocial. I faintly hear him speaking and I shout,

I can't talk to you now! They're storming the Bastille!

He tries again a little later and I roar,

Give me a minute! Miss Pross and Madame Defarge are fighting to the death!

Yesterday we spent the dusky hour planting hazel trees in the wood. Bonnie, Paddy and Holly de Cat accompanied us. The hedge birds were frantically busy, as they always are at that time of the evening, the baby long-eared owls in the Scotch pine were starting their nightly tumult for food, the back lane was heavy with the smell of May and Blossom and cow dung. I carried a spade and Bert carried a big bundle of indifferent looking hazel whips, that any sensible person would have thrown over the hedge.   

We began the planting. I said,

Those will never grow. There's no 'R' in the month.

Och! They might grow.

I never saw the like of you for being at some fool enterprise that'll never make you a penny.

Sure what odds about money? 

Suppose you're right. I mean, how big a headstone will you need?

True.

I love these long evenings when we can do all this crazy outside stuff.

Me too.

And I love you too.

I know.

I Wish Weekends Were 5 Days Long

Run darlings!

I have felt rather cranky this weekend. Mainly because I had around five days worth of stuff I wanted to do and only two days to do it in. I spent a little time with Zoe and that was good. I visited the bluebells in Top Wood twice, for the first time my camera battery died, and I failed to get even one decent photograph. I took pictures of Clint's new goslings and found them rather camera-shy.

I made a rhubarb and ginger crumble.

I watched about an hour of TV and Danny MacAskill's YouTube video another couple of times. It's at over two million views now and only 17 of those were mine!

I researched the history of the McAnespie family and discovered a new cousin. (Third. Matty said it doesn't count. I disagree.) Called on the aforesaid Matty and gathered up her genealogy cuttings. She told me a funny story but I'm saving it for a blog post. (The muse rarely visits me these days.) Delighted in my newly grown up Niece-Sha and went for several walks, none long enough. Fell out, then in with Pearlie. Listened to a great lot of Middlemarch.

Another thing that made me cranky this weekend was what Clint did to Johnny's wall. Philistine! A blog post there too and I can be as insulting as I like for he never reads me. Too busy rearing geese and being a Barbarian!

And I have been getting irritated by the varying quality of readings and recordings on LibriVox. When it is good it is a joy. When it is not I grind my teeth. Still, my own copy of the book will be here soon and I'll do what I did with Our Mutual Friend - use my eyes to feast on the unlistenable-to chapters.

So Many Books...

If I can read around one and a half books per week, and live until my mid-eighties, that means I've only got enough time to read another 2000 or so books. More than likely, quite a few of those will be for light entertainment even though I haven't yet found the time read the complete works of Dickens, Hardy, Elliot or Austen. And there will be books I might want to read again. Unfortunately I don't believe in reincarnation. Even if I do come back it would probably be as a frog, or a flea, a hoodie, or Victoria Beckham and therefore wouldn't be very much inclined to read at all.

So having discovered LibriVox and bought myself an IPod, I've begun listening to audio books as I go for my walks or tootle around the house cleaning and tidying. At first I found the lay readers strange but soon got used to it. It's not like commercial audio books where the reading is often 'performed' by some fruity-toned act-or. That put me off at first, then I started to think of the readers as really kind folk who were taking the time to read to me personally. Which is what they are really.

And apart from increasing my intake of books I'm going for longer walks and doing more cleaning and tidying. Which is all very good.