Review - The Dancing Floor

I had this review from W_.  We were both guests at a friend’s place and, Scottish weather being Scottish weather, the haggis hunting that day had been postponed due to the traditional sleet and snow that typifies Spring in the Highlands.  Seeking distraction and entertainment, I wandered to the library hoping to find at least our host’s selection of plainly bound pornography.

W sat by the fire, both were smoking.  Beside him on a small table rested an oversized decanter.  The glass was in his hand.  W was known to bring his own supplies on these trips, having once being forced to spend a weekend snowed in on the moors with only the host’s blended scotch to pass the time.

‘You’ll want the Buchan.’  He advised, gesturing to a bookcase with his foot.  ‘To your left, second shelf, yellow dust jacket.  ‘The Dancing Floor’.  That’s what you want.’

He topped up his glass and, without invitation, began.

‘The Dancing Floor may not be the greatest book ever written, but it’s the greatest adventure story I’ve ever read.

Its construction is superb.  Its author’s audacity breathtaking.  It begins with an admirably short introduction where the writer explains that this is a story he heard from a friend as they both passed the time when taking civilized refuge from an unseasonable climate.  By the end of that first paragraph, one is hooked.

The astonishing thing is that, for a novel of adventure, so very little happens for so very long.  Buchan shows exceptional nerve, and prodigious skill, in maintaining, and building, tension, moving inexorably towards the climax, where a lot happens in a very short period of time.

The premise is intriguing.  The first portion of the book deals with the storyteller’s friendship with a young friend of the family, and how this singular young man is visited by an annually recurring dream.  Surely, the reader thinks, this must be the key to the adventure and not just mystical tosh.

It’s a measure of Buchan’s confidence that the Great War is briefly explained as an wholly unexpected interlude offering adventure and excitement.  One cannot but help admire Buchan’s mastery of understatement here, as both central characters are clearly profoundly affected by their experiences at the front, most markedly in it being confirmed to them, on a grand scale, that when beastly things are in the offing, a British gentleman is justified in grabbing a pistol and the initiative and jolly well sorting things out, no matter where this might take him.

Then the book takes a most unexpected turn, the young man and his strange dream all but vanish from the narrative and we are introduced to a rare and exotic bird, a young and, naturally, beautiful woman who is far braver than any of the male characters.

Her somewhat shocking behaviour in London society is explained away by her growing up abroad and, page by page, we learn more about her background, and the terrible fate that awaits her.  She is determined to make amends for her father’s misdeeds at the family home on a remote Greek island.  The islanders however, think that this can best be achieved by torching said home, and her.

And so the book races towards its conclusion, but not before Buchan pulls off a masterstroke, changing narrative perspective at a crucial point but in such a way as to excite the reader rather than to frustrate.

This is a masterpiece.  Its depiction of London pre and post Great War is superb and Buchan’s depiction of the effect of the conflict on even the stoutest of English hearts is surprisingly compassionate in a tale of high adventure.  He is also gifted in describing the society of the time.

The Dancing Floor is a tale of high adventure, dazzlingly well written.  It is about destiny, self determination, family, friendship, conflict and Bad Blood.  It even manages to combine a dash of mysticism with what some might consider heroics, and what other will recognise as the British gentleman at his best, under pressure, with nothing but his wits and a firearm to save the day.

An astonishing tale of high adventure, astonishingly well written.

Anyway, you should read it.’

I bought my copy of ‘The Dancing Floor’ in the Brazen Head second-hand bookshop in Burnham Market, North Norfolk.  This book is the epitome of why it is simply wrong to own a Kindle.  It’s hardback, it’s got its dust jacket and it’s in fairly good condition.  I’d guess from the ‘reprinted’ history at the front that it’s the June 1938 edition.  Knowing this, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that somebody may have been reading this very book, a thrilling tale of high adventure that includes a passage on the characters adventures during World War One, whilst World War Two raged about them.

What really thrilled me though was when a bus ticket fell out of it as I read on and turned the page.  Then a few pages later, another appeared.  Two tickets, both dated July, one for 9:23, another 10:49.  A return trip…where?  To enlist?  Was some young man reading this book as he bumped to and from an appointment with destiny?

What could make this better?  Only one thing, the tickets have an advert for ‘Turners quality sausages’ and ‘Turners pork pies’ on the reverse!

Those tickets have remained there for what must be decades, and one can only speculate why.  I certainly hope that whoever originally owned the book finished it.

I do know this.  It cost me £4 and it is now the most precious volume in my possession.  The bus tickets still sit inside it, holding place.

You don’t get that with a Kindle.

And as we’re discussing war, the other thing you don’t get with a Kindle is stopping power for a bullet.  It might hold 20,000 books, but the only way a Kindle is every going to feature in a ‘I’d have been a goner if it hadn’t been for my hardback copy of ‘Reform School Girls’ I always carry in my breast pocket’ story is if they bring out the Kindle Kevlar.

Review - The Assassination Bureau, Ltd

Assassination these days is such an impersonal affair.  Typically, some bloke living in a dusty climate, usually sporting the sort of beard normally associated with the wilder sort of prophet or cider-guzzling tramp, turns to his mate and just has time to say ‘Do you hear somethi…’ before his world gets, briefly, loud and bright.  A few hours later green and grainy footage is released, shot from the nosecone-cam of something travelling very vertically very quickly towards what looks like an ariel view of two blokes, with beards, in a dusty climate.  It’s green and grainy for the few seconds before everything goes, briefly, white.  Cut to a newscaster who, depending on the broadcaster, will either gravely announce the spectacular televised passing of some boogyman who bothered democracy and goats in equal measure, or will be shouting ‘USA, USA’ and doing fist-pumps.  About three minutes after that, the footage will be on YouhooTube, edited into a montage with a dozen other clips just like it and accompanied by a booming rock soundtrack, probably ‘We will rock you’ by Queen.

That’s twenty first century assassination, impersonal and remote, courtesy of a drone built by a corporation somewhere in a state with more wheat than culture and flown by a bloke in an anonymous looking building in a retail park in Newport Pagnell.

Jack London’s portrayal of assassination is a stylish affair.  Set in early twentieth century America it has it all; a trans-continental chase featuring steam trains and ocean liners, fine dining, gentlemen, a lady, quite a lot of violence both implied and explicit, and a profound sense that the author thinks that it probably would be a good idea if an organisation such as the Assassination Bureau actually existed.

For The Assassination Bureau Ltd., assassination is an art.  More than that, assassination, if practiced perfectly, can be a social service.  The assassins of the Assassination Bureau Ltd. have practiced their craft and are perfectionists.  If a client comes to them and wants a target assassinated, then the Bureau will conduct its own discreet enquiries and only if convinced that the assassination is socially and morally justified will it act.

This purpose is set out in the first few pages of the book.  If you have the money, you can approach the Bureau to have somebody killed.

So it is that rather unpleasant types are done away with (apparently in a variety of styles, business clients prefer to have their enemies disposed of in a discreet fashion, whilst anarchist groups prefer something a little more ‘red’), as those too frightened to bloody their own hands hand over a sizeable wad of cash.  The services of the Bureau do not come cheap.  The Assassination Bureau, it is clear, is very much a luxury service.

Ivan Dragamiloff, Chief of the Bureau, is convinced of its moral rightness, as are those assassins, skilled craftsmen all, who deliver the service.  Indeed, a sizeable chunk of the novel is given over to the debate about the rightness, or otherwise, of a select, secretive and unaccountable body of men engineering social change, to the benefit of their bank balance, by bullet and bomb.

The opening pages are fascinating enough, a secret society of assassins, moral ambiguity and a Chief of an organisation who has the decency to run the Bureau from a book lined study with a deaf-mute servant.  Things step up a gear though when the fabulously named Winter Hill discovers the existence of the Bureau, meets with the Chief and, after successfully convincing the Chief of the moral wrongness of the organisation, pays for the Chief himself to be assassinated, by his own organisation.

Bound by the strict moral code that allows the assassins to do their work with an easy conscience, the Bureau set about trying to assassinate the Chief, himself a master assassin.

The pace is relentless, letting up only for occasional truces that usually involve a spot of fine dining followed by mayhem.  The narrative stays with Hill and the chase is played out in a series of telegrams he receives as the members of the Bureau try, and fail, to assassinate their own Chief.  As a narrative device, it’s a compelling, interesting way of building suspense.  Then, as the chase moves into high gear and the protagonists come together for a series of confrontations building towards the climax, the narrative becomes more conventional, even if the subject matter does not.

Moral certainties are examined in some detail in the book.  Of course there is the whole ‘is it right to kill a bad person’ question which kickstarts the plot with the same instant results as slippering a fox, but other questions arise too, such as just who is in a position to judge who is bad?  The victims of the Bureau include thugs and bent policemen and corrupt politicians, but also respected businessmen, beloved family men, who happen to, at some point in their past, have had a ruinous effect on the lives of others.  One can reform oneself, but one cannot escape the past.

An outstanding read and a romantic vision of a bygone age when value really was put on personal service, even if it was of a type you would rather have avoided.

Review - Thursdays in the park

Oh Jesus, make it stop. 

Reading this is like literary waterboarding, with slurry.

It’s worth noting that this edition at least had 1.5 line spacing, so it’s actually a slim novel. 

Better still if it had been anorexic. 

The first page has a husband criticising his wife because she drinks too much.  Certainly reading this book drives one to the booze, so actually being a character in it would inspire a terrible thirst one would imagine. 

So far, so formula, the reader gets all of two thirds of the way down the first page before wondering when the first vicar is going to pop up.  In that at least, the book does not disappoint (page three, in case you were wondering).

Full disclosure: writing this review was something of a challenge, as the most straightforward way of conveying my opinion of this book would to be to take a well-used carpet knife and gouge the words ‘THIS IS SHITE!’ into the cover of the book. 

Then smear it with excrement.

Then torch it.

I freely acknowledge that this is an over-reaction.  There is no place for the exclamation mark in any considered review.

So just how bad is it?  Let me express it this way.  If the Taliban’s media strategy had been to post one of their trademark fuzzy, foam flecked rants on Youtube with some bearded arse pointing to a copy of ‘Thursdays in the park’ and screaming ‘this is where educating females to write gets you’, and not ‘let’s shoot schoolgirls’, then I’m not saying anyone would be any more accepting of their wicked message, but maybe, just maybe, they’d be playing a little less dodge-the-drone every time they popped out of the cave for some fresh milk.

This is a sad, unhappy and deeply cynical book.

Why cynical?  The author has clearly thought carefully about the demographic of her readers and how to convey that her principal character is successful and affluent.  Hence, early on, it is established that the main character’s kitchen has Bosche appliances and is decorated with National Trust paint.  Mid-range appliances and a paint brand more associated with heritage and tea shops than actual decoration sends a message alright, and that message is ‘the author looked round her kitchen and described what she saw’. It’s cynically judged to appeal to people who either want it confirmed that they have achieved the sort of middle-class life that they read about, or who aspire to owning a Bosche cooker and decorating with National Paint.  It’s also not right.  Affluent people who live in leafy suburbs of London have Agas and decorate with Farrow and Ball paint.

Sad and unhappy because it’s full of sad and unhappy characters.  Everyone in this book is, to a certain extent, sad and unhappy and that includes, by about page seven, the reader.  The principal character is unhappy because her husband has moved into the spare bedroom and won’t explain why.  Her daughter is unhappy because her husband is annoying, the husband is unhappy because he is an unappreciated artist, the bloke the principal character meets in the park is unhappy because, oh, I don’t know, either he’s a widower or allergic to trees or something.

There are a couple of toddlers involved. 

In fairness, they are not unhappy. 

But by Christ they’re irritating.

The toddler also provides the plot driver for the Great Peado Scare.

It has a plot so formulaic that this novel could have been packaged not so much as an e book but rather a powerpoint slide at the sort of desperate conference held at a hotel chosen for its convenient transport links rather than its beauty, where the chef is on the run and the rest of the staff are hoping to be deported back home any day now.

Positives?  Well, it’s quite short, and it confirms all the prejudices one might hold about the sort of people who frequent health food shops, but essentially it’s an exercise in grinding frustration unhappy married to a failed attempt at being a novel seeking to examine the relationships of family life across generations and the effect dramatic change can have on what are thought to be certainties.

Review - The Warden

A masterpiece and, fittingly for a novel about money, a plot that revolves around accountability. It’s a compelling story of a good man who tries above all to do good in an imperfect world where others, through ignorance or because they are misguided or, in the case of members of the press, because they are vile, cause harm either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is a stunning novel, but with every turn of the page the reader mutters ‘this will not end well’. The question here is not so much can a good man triumph? but rather what would his triumph look like, and what, coming back to accountability, would be the cost?
It is, however, an absolute joy to read.
I grew up in a cathedral town and, reading the description of Barchester in the opening pages of ‘The Warden’, where Trollope describes the town in loving detail, I was convinced that he had based his fictional Barchester on my home town. Trollope’s description of everything from the cathedral close to the alms houses that the plot of the novel turns on being, if not exact, then an entirely faithful depiction of the essence of the places in the town I grew up in.
Then again, anyone who has grown up in a cathedral town will probably claim the same. There is a pattern to those places. More probably, it is Trollope’s genius that makes the place familiar.
As there is a pattern to the cathedral closes of Barchester, there is a pattern to the story here too, although that is by no means a weakness. Rather, the reader progresses with a gathering sense of foreboding as the tale simultaneously unfolds and tangles.
An honourable man is confronted with a criticism of his character by a family friend when the accusation is levelled at him that he, the titular Warden of the alms houses, profits personally from an arrangements that sees the residents of the alms houses disadvantaged.
Essentially, everyone is content until an individual acts out of a misguided sense of public spiritness, with the situation further complicated when others with their own agenda intervene to their own ends.
This is, in short, an astonishing book, and a compelling read.
In it Trollope takes aim at some obvious targets, but justly so. Given that the principal characters in the book are clergymen, and the story features eminent lawyers, it really does say something that it is the press, and the popular press in particular, that is singled out for vilification. Trollope’s demolition of the principles of the press is absolute, his demonisation of those who sit in unaccountable judgement of others they do not even know, utter.
The Warden contains the best depiction of the unaccountability of the press, and the lack of care journalists have for individuals fed to the press that I have ever read. Trollope so neatly captures the self important arrogance of the popular press and those that write it that one is almost compelled to hire a muckspreader and head for Fleet Street to make a not very subtle point about what newspapers are full of.
Barely as the reader stopped muttering ‘fucking right Tony!’ when Trollope takes aim at the even less accountable, anonymous, ‘author’, the pamphleteer hiding behind an alias, sharing their ill informed opinions in a desperate bid to be as popular as they are smug (which would take some doing).
Having essentially destroyed the tabloids and bloggers, the reader might expect lawyers to come in for some criticism also. The reader is not disappointed.
The church itself is spared harsh criticism. True, it’s the Anglican faith being described here, so the only thing the choirboys need to be worried about is being late for evensong, but generally the priests of Bartchester are a jolly pleasant bunch who are genuinely committed to serving the spiritual needs of their flock.
‘The Warden’ is a compelling tale of the unintended consequences of the actions of those who meddle to do well, how events once set in motion can move beyond the control of those that set them in motion, and how those without morality or honour seek to exploit discord for personal gain.

Firearms review - Four Barrels Good!

In his guest post, Montague Steeplethorpe delights in the versatility and sheer destructive force of the latest offering from a famous York gunsmith.

Because the proprietors of every safari park we contacted were so bloody unsporting, we have been unable to test the manufacturer's claim that the 'Carnagecaster X-13 Jubilee Special Edition' can indeed stop a charging rhino in its tracks.  We can, however, confirm with authority that it is quite capable of stopping a speeding Honda Civic quite effectively, with our shot taking out first the engine block, the speaker system and finally, in a rather spectacular fashion, the petrol tank.  To that extent it is judged rather more effective than the flashing 'watch your speed' sign that was previously the sole deterrent in the village to the idiot youth who had made a habit of driving through the village with no regard for the speed limit, the safety of others or indeed that anyone else may not share his appalling musical tastes.

Other experiments proved that the Carnagecaster is equally effective against badgers, deer, duck, poachers and, on one unfortunate occasion, a very surprised cow that made the mistake of startling me.  I can also report that engaging 'panic mode' when unprepared, causing all four barrels to discharge simultaneously, until ammunition is spent or the thing overheats and explodes, results in the effective vaporisation of whatever you were pointing at at the time (in this case an unoccupied - one hopes - caravan), a dislocated shoulder and a short spell in hospital being fussed over by nurses.  Hearing returns in two to three days, preceded by a not un-musical ringing.  Any facial hair will return in time.

The Carnagecaster is such an impressive example of the art of the gunmaker that merely slipping it out of its case to give it a polish, as I did last week in a crowded train, had the effect of silencing the entire carriage with the exception of a few stifled sobs.  It is unusual but gratifying to see craftsmanship still move the travelling public, who I presume are working class, to tears.

And no wonder.  The detailing on the Carnagecaster is quite superb, and a great deal of thought has gone into its design.  For instance there is a sturdy rubberised grip at the end of the barrels meaning that when ammunition is exhausted, it can be wielded as an effective club.  That is of course if you have not decided to affix the optional 'Neptune' three pronged bayonet (which is also excellent, by the way, for digging potatoes).

Much has been made of the Carnagecaster's versatility, and rightly so.  Quad-barrelled shotguns have been with us for some time, but the Carnagecaster is one of the very few to allow different types of ammunition to be fired either singularly or simultaneously.  For my trial I elected a mostly straightforward combination.  Top left, a simple steel shot for game, manual load.  Top right, once again a straightforward choice for the rifle barrel, 'deerpopper 500' shells in a magazine of 20.  At Christmas of course, one can switch to the variety with the explosive tip, commonly known as 'red misters' for their effect on their surprised target.

Bottom left, always a popular choice, a blend of charcoal enriched iron shot and white phosphorous.  This is, I have found, useful not only for hunting at night, illuminating the target for a brief instant before cooking it, but is a remarkable deterrent against poachers.  The cartridges are belt fed but for the field come in a drum of a dozen, with one 'up the spout'.  Ask your munitions man for 'a baker's dozen gypsy candles' and he should be able to sort you out.

Bottom right, described by the manufacturer as the 'ordinance option'.  A somewhat difficult choice.  Originally I went with the 'Helmand hello!', a solid tungsten bolt used to blow the doors of opium traffickers off their hinges over there, before finally settling on another favourite from that part of the world; Depleted Uranium.  Manual load.  If you have to use more than one, you are advised to improve your aim.

The Carnagecaster offers excellent value for money (POA from Pressers & Co. of York), demonstrates that it is possible to be a master of all trades and ensures you are prepared for most rural challenges.

Review: The Busconductor Hines

Glasgow is a gritty city. There's grit everywhere, like dirty urban sand. Where the hell does it come from? A sound bet is that the abrasive climate of biting wind, driving rain, hail, snow, sleet and the other character forming elements of Scottish weather is eroding the sandstone, granite and, that particular feature of cities, dirty concrete, the same way that the sea grinds down cliffs, seashells and pebbles to make a beach.

Cities have their own brand of dirt. Out in the countryside mud is the dirt of choice. And cow dung, and of course the inescapable plastic bag stuck in a hedge, but mostly mud. In cities, dirt comes in the form of a patina, layered on top of buildings that were, in a fit of optimism, built out of light-coloured stone. This allows for that particular urban effect of the building being streaked with dirt as the result of rain falling through the layers of pollution stacked up above the city sky like soggy strata before finally hitting the buildings as mostly water, but containing a proportion of whatever pollution is popular that day, and trace elements of pigeon.

Years ago, this pollution was generated by the soot from a million dirty coal fires, which Glaswegians huddled round for warmth during Scottish winters (duration: September to May). In modern times, the coal fire has been replaced by the three bar electric fire. It is important that only two bars of this are ever lit, not because of issues of economy but because of that peculiar Scottish belief that you should never feel too cosy or comfortable. This progress means the pollution from domestic heating has been moved out of the city and is all produced, in truly modern style, by one huge coal fired power plant, with a bloody big chimney belching pollution into the sky, situated in what used to be a pretty Glen.

The architecture is specially designed to collect dirt. The bold Victorian monuments to civic pride in the city centre ideal for collecting pigeon shit, the tenements that Glaswegians inhabit are a graveyard for litter, the grit blown by the breezes or gales of the windy elements of the elements into the tenements, piling up in wee drifts in the stairwells, stairwells painted the unhealthy pinks and green of the municipal pallet that consists of colours never found in private homes or healthy bodies. Municipal green is also the colour of the uniform that the bus conductor, Hines, finds so demeaning, ill fitting and uncomfortable, but which he chooses to wear all the time.

Hines, bus conductor, husband and father (and trying heartbreaking hard to be a good and loving husband and a dependable and doting father, though trying less hard to be a good bus conductor), is not healthy. The source of his physical ills are to be found in his tin of tobacco, from which he incessantly rolls his own fags. Essentially the man is forever smoking one enormous, never-ending cigarette but, out of deference to the laws of physics he has chosen to do this in tens of thousands of instalments of home-rolled ciggies.

The source of his psychological ills are a lack of motivation (ironic for somebody working in transport) and a nagging feeling that he's somehow letting his wife and child down.

Hines is anonymous and unnoticed by the travelling population, but he recognises that he is at the centre of, and star of, his own desperate existence, with the power to redeem or damn himself. Hines is a good example of somebody who knows exactly what's required to improve their lives and the lives of this he loves, but who either won't or can't make the effort for reasons that are sometimes a mystery even to him. He's a frustrating character but a principled one, trying in his own way to be honest and maintain some sort of dignity in what can be challenging circumstances (busses). He is flawed, fallible and acutely human.

This is a cross-section of a man’s life, mundane, desperate and even on one occasion amusing – never has the preparation of that traditional Scottish dish of mince and onions been so lovingly described.

Review: Whisky galore

Accents are funny things. Think of a Welsh accent and, unless you’re welsh, you probably think of a blend of coal-dust and valley-dwelling simpleton blended with the sort of ready access to phlegm that is a pre-requirement of pronouncing all those words with too many ‘L’s in them. The Irish accent can be southern, all deedily deedily, or northern, used to shout sectarian claptrap. The English accent is a different proposition altogether. If asked what an English accent was like, most people would affect a posh voice and trot out a home counties drawl, all gymkanas and strangled vowel sounds. But of course Brummie is an English accent too, as is scouse or East Anglian, although that last is too close to folk music to be rightly considered an accent.

The Scottish accent is usually played by its stunt-double, Glasweigan. But the odd thing about the Scottish accent is that the further north you go, the clearer and more musical it becomes until, in the highlands and islands, the soft and marvellous accent is possibly posher and clearer than anything the English can attempt, but with an added musical lilt that lifts it into the realms of the otherworldly, much like the people that softly speak it. Probably this is because when the weather is wild, the people can’t be and while the climate may be foul, your neighbours at least should be civil to you.

What’s quite uncivil is war. Even here in the remotest parts of Scotland, the second world war is making its ugly presence felt, touching even the smallest and remotest of communities. The young men are either going into the services or into the merchant marine, the morale is the island is scrutinized by officious officials from the mainland who consider the combination of abuse, banter and complaint that flows around the hotel bar as more than the simple ABC of conversation but rather a threat to national security and, worst of all, there’s rationing. And not just any rationing, we’re not talking about powdered egg or a lack of curved yellow fruit, no, we’re talking alcohol rationing, in particular, whisky!

Whisky galore describes the drink in such loving detail that it will have you reaching, grasping and gasping, for a dram. The first half deals with the whisky drought on the island and the cruel effects of the rationing on the inhabitants as they euologise about the drink they are denied. The longer the drought persists, the more the topic is discussed and the more acutely the lack is felt. And when the drought breaks, in the form of a genteely shipwrecked cargo ship that is transporting boundless bottles of bounty to America, exported to help the war effort, the transformation is startling as the islanders are soaked in scotch and good humour.

Whisky is the 40% proof life blood of this little community. Nothing gets done without it, especially those activities that require inspiration and moral courage and poetry in the soul, such as wooing, standing up to your mother and composing poetry. Luckily it also assists the more mundane pastimes of sitting down and blethering and, of course, binge drinking.

The novel also offers an interesting take on sectarianism, with one island being protestant and the other catholic and the only resulting tension being that each set is shamed into being devout by the other, believing that an observed lapse would lead to a loss of face. The protestants in particular have a hard time of it ‘keeping the Sabbath’ essentially entailing, as it does, a day of enforced inactivity – something of a religious trial when the activity concerned is a spot of rowing combined with a little light salvage.

‘Galore’ is, in and of itself, such a marvellous word. One simply cannot associate it with anything negative. ‘Nazis galore’ for instance, is a phrase one is unlikely to see. Ah, but whisky galore is glorious, as musical as the language, as wild as the landscape and as rich in flavour as a truly great scotch, with a ruggedness balanced by notes of wet heather, warm peat fires and warmer characters.

Review: The wicker man

By and large, pagans are annoying, combining as they do the unholy trinity of the self righteousness of a religious group that considers itself misunderstood, the smugness of a religious group that feels that they are the true religion and hence are privy to The Answer, and their unique element of dressing and behaving like characters at a live fantasy role playing weekend.

Pagans essentially fall into two groups. The first of these is pagan lite. These are the ones that you see at festivals, who once read a book about ley-lines but have yet to realise that there is more to being a pagan than black mascara, piercings, lots of bad silver jewellery and arseing around at Glastonbury.

These are the sort of people who complained bitterly for years that they were being denied freedom of religious expression because they couldn't get access to Stonehenge during certain festivals and, when English Heritage relented and allowed them access to the site on the solstice, celebrated their religious freedom by sitting cross legged on a rock playing a flute, badly, and guzzling Merrydown, all the while being studiously ignored by the 'real' pagans, that is; blokes in beards and white sheets who claim to be Druids and, because of health and safety regulations, are confined to 'sacrificing' a leg of lamb, all the while wishing for a return to the good old days when they would be up to their elbows in virgin.

The pagans in 'The Wicker Man' are quite a different proposition altogether. Some have beards, some drink cider but all are from what one might call the fundamentalist end of pagan religion.

The plot concerns a staunchly Christian Highland police sergeant who receives a letter reporting that a child has gone missing on a remote Scottish island, famous for it's apples and isolated nature. Sergeant Howie investigates and discovers a closed community practicing the pagan faith and particularly fertility rituals at every opportunity, especially those that require flouncing round a maypole or bonking. The Sergeant does not approve, but al fresco group sex is the least of his problems as he uncovers what he suspects is an island wide conspiracy.

Howie is, literally, a man alone, stranded friendless on an island. Small islands can be weird places, they don't even have to be surrounded by sea. Anyone who has been to a remote farming community, insular and cut off from the world by a sea of wheat or beet will know that they can be peculiar places, home to a peculiar people. That effect is enhanced here because the whole island is a farming community and, surrounded by the Atlantic, there really is no escape.

The sense of menace and tension grows with every turn of the page and every turn of events. Howie's paranoia, justified or not, is ramped up to a degree that the reader starts to feel a little of it themselves. There's a very uncomfortable suggestion that what's happening to Howie could happen just as easily to the reader. Anyone who has stopped in the middle of nowhere to fill up with petrol or ask for directions and felt somewhat uncomfortably cut off from the rest of the world, without even the comfort of a mobile 'phone signal, will recognise the sense of isolation.

Along with this growing sense of peril is one of anticipation. The book is called 'The Wicker Man' and one wonders just who or what the wicker man may be. The revelation is a true moment of horror, possibly only working because the tension has been building throughout the book.

The oddness of the place, a Scottish island that grows fruit and the oddness of it's inhabitants (these are not 'pagan lite' folk) is subtly conveyed. The island's Laird, Summerisle himself, is as suave and charismatic as you could hope for in somebody who may just be behind all the shady goings on, his cool confidence only faltering in his last exchange with Howie.

A disturbing and thought provoking novel that moves from thriller to horror in chilling increments. Not one to be read on a caravanning holiday in the back of beyond, but certainly one to be read.

Topical chocolate

In the run up to Easter, the shops are brimming with chocolate bunnies and eggs. What is it about a Christian event that compels one to eat chocolate?

Take Christmas! Traditionally a time not just for the sort of commercial excess that the government hopes will kick-start the economy but also a time of feasting. A time of year when you are not only accepted but expected to have alcohol with your breakfast, when folk who normally watch their weight can be seen adding double cream to just about every dish they cook, including gravy, and where nothing makes more sense after a huge roast dinner than to serve a heavy fruit pudding, with cream, on fire.

These days I have a glass of something fizzy and a bacon sandwich for breakfast but, when I was a child, my breakfast consisted of as much of the contents of my Cadbury selection box as I could manage before the sugar rush made my hands shake so much I couldn't unwrap any more chocolate.

The selection boxes of my youth seemed huge things, as long as your arm and stuffed with many different sorts of chocolate. If you had siblings, then complicated trades were established as favourites were exchanged. Ultimately of course this was futile, it was all Cadbury chocolate, and each different type of chocolate bar was essentially the same product in different coloured wrappers with either a sporting or space theme.

As important as the chocolate were the games on the back of the box. Expensive toys were left unattended, traditional board games that would, later over Christmas lead to bitter division (has a game of 'Risk' ever ended harmoniously?) were forgotten as one hunched attentively over the back of the box, studiously reading the rules for a turn based game, the object of which was usually to get to the centre of the board, thereby making your opponent cry.

Essential to making progress round the board was the colourful six sided cardboard spinner that was used instead of a dice. You cut the spinner out of the back of the box and pierced its centre with a match stick, making it spin. Luckily, back in the day everybody smoked and so matches were never in short supply. Oddly, you never thought 'let's just use the dice from the Monopoly set that's lying open over there', but always went to the trouble of making the spinny thing. These days you could devote a whole hour on QVC to flogging a bit of coloured card and a spent match as some enthused-to-the-point-of-medicated woman bangs on in a slightly shrieky voice about 'crafting'.

You could almost taste the disgust as the parents looked on and wondered how on earth the 99p selection box had become the star prezzie.

Today's selection boxes seem a bit dull by comparison. I think the way forward must be the retro selection box. I don't mean some sort of crap nostalgia trip requiring you to bid on line for antique chocolate that results in your kid exhibiting a baffled expression on Christmas Day when confronted with their Six Million Dollar Man selection box with the contents two decades past their use-by dates. I mean a home made selection box!

All you need is a load of chocolate bars, some cardboard, pens, imagination and a boundless disregard for modern manners and equality legislation.

First things first, the chocolate. You'll need to combat the problem of the shrinking snack. It's not just your imagination, nor the fact that your hands have got larger as you have grown older; chocolate bars are smaller than they used to be, both by dimensions and weight. So, you need to find a way to upgrade the chocolate from bite sized to a respectable portion. The best way is of course a saucepan and some new moulds, but if you're in a hurry glueing two bars back to back using melted chocolate will do the job just as well.

Wrappers should be scanned, enlarged and then printed onto grease proof paper prior to being used to wrap your chocolate bar. Be sure to remove any product information that is not in English and may offend. This is especially important for any product information about a chocolate bar in printed in Arabic. Chocolate may be many things, but the snack of choice of desert dwelling people is not one of them. Replace any nonsense about daily allowances of fat or sugar or amphetamine or whatever with a single letter of the alphabet inside a gold circle. Do not explain why you do this. Children will automatically scent a competition of some sort and start hoarding wrappers. This means you can also remove the 'keep Britain tidy' symbol, your wrappers will not be blowing about in gritty concrete shopping centres, they are going to be safely in a box under some child's bed.

Next up, the selection box. Pick a theme; Christmas is always popular but is it Christmas under the sea, or on the moon, or is it tied to a popular television character, like Brucie? Up to you but if you're stuck for inspiration, you can't go wrong with a picture of Santa in a rocket ship. Ticks all the (selection) boxes.

Right, now the game. It's got to be simple, it's got to turn based and it's got to allow for reversals of fortune and for the lead to change for reasons other than a simple throw of the dice, or rather spin of the twirly thing. Pick your theme; 'lunar space race', 'race car race', 'catch the gypsy' and so on and design your course, remembering to place the all important forfeit squares, such as 'your joke about being able to see some sort of alien ship approaching earth backfires as you spark mass panic across the globe, go back two squares', 'you are suspected of using an illegal diffuser, miss a turn' or the classic 'you arrive at the illegal travellers encampment in the dead of night, but have forgotten your petrol and matches, go back to start'.

Finally the spinner, numbers or symbols or both? Certainly it's numbers for simplicity but symbols add a certain something to the gameplay. I favour the seven sided spinner with a drink symbol meaning that if it comes up, it's time to knock off for a glass of fizz. Remember, you can have that appearing as many times as you like, seven being the ideal in this case.

Review - 'Mad World' by Paula Byrne

There was a time, in particular before World War One (AKA 'the Big Show'), when the aristocratic class ran the country. They went to the best schools, went to university and then proceeded smoothly to some position in Government until they arranged for their father to be killed in a hunting accident and took their seat in the House of Lords, looking forward to a succession of good dinners and putting a serious dent in the global supply of claret. Of course the War changed all that as the upper class were exposed as not fit to lead a conga line, never mind a charge at the enemy.

Reading 'Mad World', one is left with the profound impression that it's a wonder the aristocracy managed to stop buggering one another long enough to do anything at all. There's so much sodomy going on that it's a rare page that doesn't see somebody plunging into a chum with indecent haste before getting hammered and making a spectacularly bad marriage to a wife who turns increasingly ill tempered as she discovers that she is second in her husband's affection to the entire male staff of the household, including the grooms and the compost lad.

With all the men drinking and buggering the help, it's little wonder that the women get a little bitter and come over as somewhat brittle. At least that's the impression that one gets from the author. One also gets the distinct feeling that the author doesn't like any of the people she is writing about. This makes for an uncomfortable read, quite appropriate for a book largely about buggery.

There's not a lot to like in the characters described here. Fun in literature, in real life somebody who is bent on self destruction can be quite dull. What it did do very well was draw a very clear line between being a drunk and being an alcoholic. Drunks drink every day, cope with mammoth hangovers and manage to function in whatever pocket of society they find themselves in. Alcoholics drink to oblivion, which is where they end up, with skin like the sort of paper you unearth on an archaeological dig. However, both drunks and alcoholics make for dull company - the only people who find the company of drunks amusing are other drunks; it's difficult to deliver a witty bon mot when you're slurring your words, your sense of timing is all over the place and you're holding a kebab in one hand and a pint of stella in the other. These are not conditions to bandy witty conversation, these are conditions to drink two pints of water and take yourself off to bed and for Christ's sake don't make a pissed-up call to the ex. Reading about people getting drunk is less tedious because there was always the possibility, the book being set in the country, that there would be an amusing accident when some hooray tried to shag a steam powered threshing machine but that never happened and the only effect was that I ended up rather fancying a cocktail at eight in the morning as I read this on the train to work.

There is, at the heart of the book, a tragedy that is profound, and profoundly well described. It's the idea, the very idea, of unfulfilled promise. It is quite apparent that if one goes to Eton, those are the best days of your life. Everything else is a failure to fulfil your early promise. When you go to college you don't dazzle as well as you did at school, and then your career isn't the success that was expected when you were at college. Basically, unless you go straight from school to be the first man on Mars, you're a disappointment.

This is either a tragedy or, as I suspect, adult life.

It's also profoundly sad. Who is anyone to say that another has not fulfilled their promise until the lid is firmly screwed down on the box - and even then? What if they had kept that year they spent discovering a lost civilization in Iceland a secret? As for early promise - I'd say that anyone who stopped being ritually sodomised when they left school had actually made something of an improvement on their life - unless they like that sort of thing.

So the best days of your life are essentially being buggered by bigger boys until it's your turn to bugger boys. Ideal preparation for a career in government.

The aristocracy are portrayed as wild and brittle. Everyone's drunk, everyone's screwing one another, or others, everyone's either rich or festering in poverty and there is a constant merry go round of aristocracy staying with one another. This allows the bed-hopping, buggery and boozing that marked the era. Luckily everyone looks really well dressed and has sensible hair, and the veneer of respectability and glamour lends the whole of the proceedings a sort of louche charm.

Madersfield Court is described well. I've actually been there and loved the house and gardens - any house that comes with its own moat sends a certain message, which is usually: 'stay that side of the water while I reload my blunderbuss'. The gardens are stunning and contain a pet cemetery. This is what we expect from the aristocracy - beat the servants but honour your Labrador.

It's a fascinating insight into the life, as was lived then, of the aristocracy. And you kind of get the feeling that apart from trading up from opium to coke, the lives of the rich are pretty much the same now, except with less moats. At the same time, one could see the same drama of family disgrace, heavy drinking, infidelity and bad behaviour as being played out on any sink estate in the country. If you drinking your breakfast of car-boot vodka from a bottle, it's squalid, if you get your butler to decant your breakfast Champaign into jugs, it's glamorous.

This book then, is something of a paradox. I found it interesting and certainly ended up thanking my lucky stars that I didn't go to public school and hence can still walk without waddling. But there was an undercurrent not quite of disapproval but almost of disapproving envy, and a lack of empathy from the author, so while the book was interesting, it wasn't enjoyable and it's not a book I would recommend to others - though I would like to discuss it with others that read it - because I'm not sure that buggery and alcohol is everybody's cup of tea.