Authors Electric

Here is my annual garden surprise - the poppy we planted years ago, and which, once it's made its grandiose statement, dies back completely to near-invisibility until the following year. This was how it looked last year, but it doesn't look much different now. The difference is in me, because I can't yet risk walking round to the place where it grows in order to photograph it, due to what feels like a never-ending convalescence from ankle replacement surgery back in February. I never expected it to take so long to get back to normality. It was major surgery, so I knew the deal - two weeks in bed with a heavy leg cast, followed by six weeks in a much lighter cast, then the dreaded boot, and then, at last, the thrill of being able to walk to the shops. Yes, the website said it would be a year before things would be really approaching that stage, but I didn't take that too seriously. My health was good, I wasn't sedentary, I ate properly, so hey! after the longest th...

I'm about to order Jan Needle's: RUMP OF RUMP HALL - THE RISE OF RONALD T RUMP.   Having always loathed "THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS" (all the animals seemed to be middle-aged or elderly clubbish gentlemen - not my scene) I love Jan's satires, and know I'm going to enjoy this one. Having said that, I do, accidentally, own a copy of one of  Kenneth Grahame's lesser-known works: THE GOLDEN AGE, first published in 1899, with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish ( I believe he went on to p ro duce biscuit tin lids which are now collect ors' items). Here is Graham's lost childhood in idyllic English countryside. I n parts, i t's a funny book, with small boys' fantas y games along with inscrutable aunts and amusing elderly gents, but it's also sad, full of nostalgia for a world that was rapidly vanishing, and as with everything written around that period and later, there's the shadow of the First World War just around the corner ...