The hero is a member of the United States Army who finds love but also finds himself conflicted with duty to his country following the events of 9/11  He falls in love with a girl who holds the key to helping him understand his father and their unusual ways of communicating.

It is not really a “feel-good” book – or is it? Certainly, the plot twists and turns in unusual ways. As readers we learn about maturity and tolerance and ultimately we are convinced of the reality of true love. I read it whilst struggling with a biography of the Queen (more about that if I ever finish it,)  In fact, I found myself almost unable to put Dear John down. And that despite the fact that the plot was not going the way I wanted it to. Perhaps I am too influenced by fairy stories or romcom films.

I think it deserves a nine out of ten. What do you think?

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Poor housing, poverty, fear, ignorance, lack of discipline…… all endemic in areas where leprosy flourishes. All equally present in our own society as instanced by the riots/looters and sheer violence and criminality over the past week. The Sunday Papers and pundits are voicing all sorts of theories, some of them every bit as violent in their vitriole, as the original participants themselves.

The theories include the following:

• Greed
• Lack of Education
• Poverty
• Gang culture
• Laziness
• Unemployment
• Benefits “trap”
• Drugs and alcohol
• Single parenting
• Lack of good role-model
• No male influence in the household

You can probably add in many more ideas of your own. What strikes me today is the way that people are struggling to make sense of what happened. It is clear that many of the supposed reasons have their roots in the same culture as for leprosy. I suspect that the Leprosy Mission is supported like other charities, by both regular and one off contributions of money, and also through legacies. It’s not so easy to know what to do to make things better about our young people.

It is also much more difficult to try and fix people, as it were, especially when Human Rights can be so misused. What on earth are women thinking of when they march in scanty clothes declaring the right to be sluts? Or am I just getting past my sell-by date?

I long to see speakers visiting churches, politicians, local groups, with concrete ideas for ways to make things better amongst disaffected young people. This coming week thousands of children will be starting school for the first time, here in Scotland, the biggest thing we can do is to ensure that they leave school able to read, write and do standard arithmetic. That way everybody can engage in discussion and in working together to ensure a fairer society.

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Up until ten years ago I would write to friends and family. They weren’t literary triumphs, but they were the daily doings of a Minister and I had a vague sense that the letters themselves were an important part of keeping in touch and commenting on the recipients ups and downs. Nowadays people like to text with one liners and text-speak. I feel left out of it by and large, since there is rarely any mobile phone signal at home, and I get fed up wandering around holding said implement up in the air, tutting as signal bars come and go.

I guess this blog is the nearest I get to sharing ideas, thoughts and experiences with friends who drop by. Yet I know that some of my family never read it. On occasion I forget that the others do, and then if I have slipped up and allowed a down day to be recorded, there is a phone call – always welcome. Where it gets difficult in comparison to writing to an individual, is that a letter wins hands down, because it can be a personal conversation. A letter can focus on the other instead of concentrating on the self. The nature of a blog does not allow this, a blog is mixture of ideas and random thoughts albeit with opportunity for feedback and comment.

So it is back to the eternal question – why do we write our blogs? As I sit here at the computer I hear the washing machine finishing its cycle, the TV in the background, (it’s the cricket) and I look forward with anticipation to brewing the mid-morning cappuccino. It feels like I have shared a tiny portion of my life in a remote corner of Scotland. It’s been a connection, a connection that matters and grows and makes me smile. Yes, I’m sorry I don’t do letters very much, but I am glad to be part of a growing breed of bloggers.

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Interesting things about me: – a hard one but here goes

1. I once danced on the table at a 50th birthday party – and I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol (or drugs!)
2. On a memorable occasion, just before a wedding on the top of a hill, the wind blew the marriage lines away. Fortunately, I was able to run after them….. robes flying in the gale. Oh yes, and I caught them.
3. My best friend when I was in primary school emigrated to Australia. Now I can’t even remember her name, but then I felt as if my world had come to an end.
4. My English Gran told me to call her Auntie, and I was a bit scared of her.

Four bloggers I like to visit: the caveat is that I enjoy all the blogs I read, so these four are important for other reasons.

• Friko’s Blog frikosmusings.blogspot.com because her writing is of such a consistently high standard; she challenges me and makes me think.
• Kelvin’s Blog thurible.net because he keeps me up to date with all things Anglican as well as the Scottish Episcopal Church. He says things the way he sees them, and often makes me laugh.
• Sara’s Blog www.saralovesdogs.blogspot.com because I have gradually fallen in love with her and her dogs. She is so patient and has such fun with her Shelties and posts lots of photos and videos.
• Time Goes By, Ronni Bennet’s blog for all things on ageing and living well.

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So HBTW or Him-with-a-spatula-and-a-spanner set to over the last few weeks to source and fit a replacement oven. Judging by the smells coming from the kitchen, it is already being put to good use.  I tend to be the clearer-upper, so I am glad that it has got self-cleaning sides. I have to admit that seeing any new item of kitchen equipment reminds me of my mother.

That leads to a meander down memory lane. I found this photo of my mother dating from around 1966. It is from a 35mm slide, so the quality is not all that great. She looked happy and youthful here and I found myself thinking how poorly I have aged. Then I realised that in 1966 Mum would have been round about 42……. and I’m 25 years older. Enough said.

Anyway, if you haven’t wandered off you may be wondering why talk of a pristine new oven reminds me of the previous generation. My mother was a housekeeping Diva. Everything had to be kept as new; the floors sparkled and everything smelt of lavender polish. The trouble was that she started to take things too far……. not quite into the level of OCD but not far away. She stopped cooking (so it’s a generational thing with me – drat!) but only because it would have dirtied the cooker. When she died the cooker looked brand new, yet it was over 30 years old.

Even though many of the old memories are sad I’m still glad to have them. They are kind of bitter-sweet. However, it’s true to say that the older we get the more we understand our ancestors. I try to remind the generations after me to ask all the questions they can think of. Especially as it doesn’t look as if I am ever going to write my Opus Freda – though there is now the blog. Flights of whimsy or torrents of anger, glimpses of joy and serious questions.

What questions do you wish you had asked a relative who has now passed on?

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Yesterday I finished looking at the DVD about her life – Enid. Perhaps I should say that it was loosely about her life, for I had the feeling that we were being given a caricature without any explanation or depth, other than what the imagination could conjure up.

It was hard to watch, especially when her books meant such a lot to me in childhood. My early years were not exactly straight-forward, so I was definitely one of the children Enid wrote for who wanted to escape from the humdrum of life. There wasn’t a lot of colour in my mind’s pictures of my memories of the 1950′s – The Famous Five and Mallory Towers gave me extra friends and family that were missing in my own life. The film was well portrayed, Helena Bonham Carter is indeed a genius at portraying biographical characters, she seems to be able to mold her looks and personality into the person portrayed.

The original biography by Barbara Stone, is probably worth adding to the book list as the write-ups suggest that it is a “warts and all” look at her life, showing her success as a writer and her seeming inability to be a close and loving mother to her two children, whilst she displays tremendous kinship with her young readers.

The other book that I found interesting is Looking for Enid by Duncan McLaren. It is more of a travelogue and journey through both places and writings…… interesting in its own way, but as is the case with such a personal perspective, it does rely heavily on the experiences of McLaren himself.

So there you have it. The reason for my love of reason is the love of a genre of fiction that rested my spirit. Blyton’s world of plenty and adventure was a comfortable and safe one. What do you think of her – author and person?

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A creature of habit indeed, and of course it helps to ensure a decent night’s sleep – unless one of them is sharing a sad story – there are a few of those in amongst the nature watch, routines of Maine life throughout the year, visitors, talks, reviews and illnesses.

But all is not well at bedtime these days. I find myself coming to the end of a day’s entry and I immediately want to write a comment. Online reading of blogs and articles has made me used to expressing an opinion, and I miss it with the printed word. Does anybody else have this trouble?

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It’s what he says about Writing that amused me. And made me feel like getting back to the Creative Writing stage that winter heralds. He says:

Writing fiction is agony and ecstasy in equal measure, depending on how the day is going. I do not write groundbreaking literature. Neither am I of the deeply cerebral or highly esoteric school. I write what I hope are well-crafted stories that will take you out of yourself.

Just so …….. exactly what I would love to do, then he goes on to tell a wonderful story. He was attending the British Book Awards:

As prize-winning authors steppedup to collect their (awards), Jeffrey Archer leaned across to Jilly Cooper and whispered, “What wouldn’t we give for one of those?”. Jilly whispered back, “And what wouldn’t thy give for sales like ours?”

And I love the way he speaks about his potential readers:

It is the hope of every novelist that their work will be taken up and discovered to be “unputdownable”, wherever the reader may be. I do not care whether my novels are bought in hardback or paperback, taken out of the library or snapped up for 50p from a charity shop. They can be read on the bus or the train, in a book-lined study or on a lilo, by butcher, baker, computer-maker or housewife. They can be denounced as of little consequence and ignored by the classier literary supplements. It matters not. Provided that they can give the reader a day or two of escapism, and a fraction of the pleasure that they give me to write, I ask no more.

Brilliant. And after all, I do write the blog……….. and autumn is coming…..time to write!

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And I’m definitely not including the pretty picture.

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I Want to Write Something So Simply

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as your read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think -
no, you will realize -
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your own heart
had been saying.

Oh to be able to write like that.

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