The Girl on the Train, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Quality of Silence

Crime thrillers are not my usual choice, but the hype and forthcoming movie of this extremely popular book by Paula Hawkins had me intrigued. The Girl on the Train is actually a very well plotted story, full of the usual twists and turns and what turned out to be useful clues along the way. The great thing for me was that there is no gratuitous violence or creepy shocks. Just a real page turner that you want to savour and not necessarily get to the end too soon. Surprisingly good.

My sixth Anne Tyler and one of her best. In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant we are right at the heart of one fragmented family, the Tulls. The mother, Pearl, has brought up her three children on her own after her husband Beck left when they were young. Cody, Ezra and Jenny are now grown but, like us all, memories of their their childhoods often surface, not always in a good way.

I liked how each of the ten chapters was told from the point of view of one of the family. It is Ezra who works in the restaurant but "the family as a whole never yet finished one of his dinners--it was as if what they couldn't get right they had to keep returning to." Again and again.

The Quality of Silence was somewhat disappointing  after having enjoyed Rosamund Lupton's previous two classy thrillers. I lost interest in Yasmin and Ruby's journey across Alaska as I thought it went on far too long. The format of telling Yasmin's story in the first person alternating with her deaf ten year old daughter speaking in the first person worked well to begin with but then became a little too predictable. There are moments of high tension and drama, but for me they couldn't sustain the bleak Alaskan winter.

The George Askew Story - Five Generations of Agricultural Labourers Part 2

I posted Part 1 on 26th December last year when I ended by saying I wanted to look at farming in that area around where the family lived in Lincolnshire. Little did I know then where this study would take me. From my first internet searches for the East Fen I found a wealth of information including many books on the subject, some I have copied from the web and some I have bought.

What I now realise is that although we know that George's father James was, according to the 1851 Census, an agricultural labourer, this is not necessarily the case for the previous three generations: John Ayscough (1781 - 1846), John Ascough (1758 - 1844) and Thomas Ascough (1735 - ?). It is possible they combined working for the local landowners in the enclosed fields at the end of the Wolds above the East Fen with being fen commoners. Certainly before 1800, the villages on the margins of the fen had common rights on the wholly unenclosed East Fen, West Fen and Wildmore Fen.

The proximity of Toynton St Peter and Toynton All Saints (wrongly marked on the above map as Upper and Lower Toynton) to East Fen is particularly interesting. The map above (by Wenceslaus Hollar and dated 1661) is included in Dugdale's "The History of Drayning and Imbanking of Divers Fens and Marshes"of 1662 showing "The Deeps" of the East Fen. These permanent large ponds are shown on all the maps of the time. My latest prize possession is "Maps of the Witham Fens", a huge volume where R.C. Wheeler has searched for every old map he could find of this part of Lincolnshire. Even the (undated) enclosure map of the East Fen (probably around 1801) still has most of the Deeps unenclosed but now possibly cut off from the surrounding villages.

The Deeps were important to the commoners in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the extraction of peat and then for fishing and fowling. So my research now extends to these more ancient times but particularly how the lives of the common people changed from a hard but fruitful rural existence on the margins of the fen to where their loss of independence through no longer having access to enclosed the fen meant they were now dependent on the new landowners. As I.D. Rotherham puts it in his book "The Lost Fens"  this was "England's Greatest Ecological Disaster". But for the inhabitants it meant so much more.

The Bearbrook 10K

This was the second year I ran the Bearbrook 10K that starts and finishes at the rugby club in Weston Turville. Whereas last year it was quite sunny, this Sunday was cloudy, almost perfect conditions for the race.

Something strange happened. Somehow my training over the last couple of weeks had gone really well but I did not expect to beat last year's time by over a minute. Fifty four minutes and six seconds chip time is a faster pace than many of the 5K parkruns over the last couple of months and my best time ever for a 10K.  And it has hills! I have no idea where that came from.

Thanks to my friend Philip who lives on Worlds End Lane for taking the photo above outside his house, and Alison for hers as we past Bates Lane.

Neon Demon, Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne

Only it's director encouraged me to see this weird movie. Nicolas Winding Refn's "homage" to the fashion industry follows sixteen ("always say nineteen") year old Jesse (an interesting performance from Elle Fanning) through the minefield of LA models. Why LA? Just typical of this director. The dialogue and acting are on the surface really poor. But wait a sec. That is how they all sound? I just wanted more plot. Fortunately Jena Malone’s Ruby is deviously malicious as a makeup artist who divides her time between painting the faces of the living and the dead.

Beyond what? I'm not sure we ever found out. The new Star Trek movie is a moderately enjoyable run through of plots we have seen before. But the screenplay by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung just about saves the day, trying hard as it does to be witty and sharp. Not sure that director Justin Lin made the most of the hugely expensive sets, the action seemed to be mostly by numbers.

Another director whose films I never miss. Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have been tempted back after a nine year absence to make another Bourne installment. A pretty simple plot and limited dialogue but the set pieces in Athens, London ( I had no idea how Paddington Basin had grown) and Los Angeles are amazing. All three involve huge crowds and innumerable extras. Tommy Lee Jones as the CIA chief looked too old and assistant Alicia Vikander too young, but that's all part of the fun. A great spectacle but curiously uninvolving.

Cymbeline at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

This was the first time I was able to see this rarely performed play, The plot is highly complex but even for someone new it was simple to follow. It reminded me of Pericles that I also saw for the first time this year, in that everything is explained at the end. But unlike the crazy revelations in that play's final scene, Cymbeline makes perfect sense. Even though the programme confirms "some 30 denouements in the final scene - although only one of these is news to the audience".

What made this performance so enjoyable was how director Molly Still had kept us involved for the whole of the three hours. Not played for laughs (as was this year's Globe production according to the lady next to me), it captured a sense of unease and danger that possibly reflected the times we live in. But then love conquers all.

The cast was fine. Innogen is the main character and in her debut season for the RSC, Bethan Cullinane gave a thoughtful performance. An actress to watch out for. However, the stand out actor that evening was Romayne Andrews, an understudy, catapulted into the lead role of Posthmus. His lack of experience never showed and he deserved the applause from the cast at the end.

Behind the Scenes Tour at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Visiting Stratford for an evening performance of Cymbeline, I took the opportunity to go on the Behind the Scenes Tour in the late afternoon. This is an excellent way to see backstage. Our guide was very informative and answered all our questions.

The tour took us to see the  lighting and direction booths, before heading past the dressing rooms. We were then taken past the wardrobe department and wig making workshops, through to the new theatre auditorium.

We sat in the high seats of the main theatre and the Swan and watched preparations on the stage for the evening performances. Having already seen Doctor Faustus, it was great to see how the backcloth of a thin plastic material was put together on the floor in three taped panels before being  hoisted upright into position. Fantastic.

Tring Book Club- Sweet Caress by William Boyd

He may not write the best prose in the world, but boy can William Boyd tell a great story. I just find his novels so readable, the story just seems to flow. No pyrotechnics, but every page has interest. The life of Amory Clay is not always easy, but what trouble she encounters is usually self inflicted. But as the author "quotes" at the very start "from time to time - you feel life's sweet caress". Attractive, reckless, unreliable, intelligent. Amory is all these and much more.