May
29
2010
2

May books

Tall Poppies by Louise Bradshawe is a cracking read if you like chick lit books. Nina is a poor Jewish girl who becomes a brilliant ball-breaking business woman. Her ondoing is sleeping with her boss who seeks to cut her down to size. Elizabeth is a privately educated little rich girl, and aforementioned daughter of the boss of Nina. Both get on his wrong side and both then have to deal with the consequences. Initially arch-enemies they soon join together to become a brilliant team. I really enjoyed this book and thought the characters were well thought out. Well worth a read.

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Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella was a bit of a disappointment as I loved her books in the Shopaholic series. The star of this book is Emma Corrigan, a somwehat insecure 25 year old. Whilst on a business trip she is on a plane that she things is going to crash and she spills all her secrets to one of her fellow passengers, including lots of information about her colleagues at work. She is pretty horrified when this passenger walks into her workplace and she finds out that he is the big boss. This was an OK book but I found it a bit of a non-story to be honest. It will go straight back to the charity shop for someone else to read!

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Exit Music by Ian Rankin is the final chapter in the Inspector John Rebus stories. It is the week before his retirement and he is presented with the murder of a Russian poet. Rather conveniently a delegation of high-level Russian businessmen is in town and the connections seem rather to clean.

A great story with lots of twists and turns. Well worth a read, but then again, almost all the Rebus novels are worth a read!.

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The Lord God Made Them All by James Herriot is such a charming read. This book flits back and forth over his time as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales and also includes some recollections of boat trips he went on to accompany livestock to Russia. These stories in particular had me laughing out loud. My Mum tells the story that when she was pregnant with me she was reading a James Herriot book whilst she was waiting for one of her antenatal appointments. Apparently she was laughing so loudly that she was forced to read out the bit of the story to the entire waiting room!

It is only now that I am living in Yorkshire that I feel like these stories have some read resonance. Driving across the Yorkshire Dales I can see how isolating it must have been when the weather was bad and how difficult treating animals would have been in these circumstances.

I love these books and could read them time and time again.

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The Closers by Michael Connelley is a pretty good read. LAPD’s Detective Harry Bosch is back after taking three years retirement. Returning to the unsolved cases team he and his partner Kiz Rider pick up the case of a teenagers who was murdered 18 years before. What looks like a fairly straightforward case turns into a nightmare of police corruption and race relations. A good book and I really like the way Michael Connelly writes. A little bit like Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels I think.

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I seem to be on a bit of a murder-mystery killer-thriller trip this month. Next up is Violets are Blue by James Patterson. Detective Alex Cross is on a mission to capture the Mastermind, the evil genius who has been chasing him over the years. However, a minor interruption to this is a series of murders with rather bizarre overtones of vampires and tiger bites. An utterly unreal story but I did enjoy it even if it was slightly ridiculous!!

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The Island Walkers by John Bemrose is a book with a fab review on Amazon. However, I just didn’t get it. To clarify The Island is a neighbourhood and the Walkers are a family who live on the island. Set in the 60’s around the mill trade, the story (if you could call it that because there doesn’t really seem to be much of a story) follows this family through unemployment, the birth of the union, affairs and a family in crisis. The eldest son Joe has a huge crush on the most unlikeable character ever put into a book and somehow I just didn’t find any of it particularly enjoyable. I pushed on through reading it but I didn’t enjoy it and I certainly didn’t find it a good read.

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Flying With the Angels by Victor Pemberton is another WW2 based novel. Set just after the Second World War this story features the Angel family, born and brought up in London and having survived the bombing of their house and living in a prefab, the Angel family a facing a new challenge. How to rebuild their lives and find enough money to survive, especially as food and clothing is still being rationed. Lizzie is the eldest daughter and makes the decision, along with her new husband, to emigrate to Australia. A nice story about family ties and the difficulties faced dyrung the post-war period. I like these books. I know they are formulaic and probable written for the older reader, but I enjoy them, even if the story is almost the same in every one of Pemberton’s novels!

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
May
29
2010
0

Yay!

The Mister and I are off camping tomorrow with a whole load of friends. I love camping and I am getting excited!!! We went camping to the Lake District last year… this is what we got up to but I am not sure we will be so fortunate with the weather this year! This time we are off to North Yorkshire, so not too far to go but I can’t wait!

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May
25
2010
4

A restful weekend

I had a lovely weekend at home with The Mister. We had no plans, no social engagements to go to and it was absolute bliss! On Saturday we went up to Ilkley and sat by the river. Apart from the screeching children (none of whom seem to be able to communicate in anything other than shouts!) it was peaceful and lovely. On Sunday we spent the day in the garden. The Mister mowed the lawn and I potted up copious amounts of yummy edible things. We are now eating our own salad, and hopefully we will have tomatoes, courgettes, peppers and chillies in the near future. It was a very needed weekend of rest and relaxation.

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May
15
2010
0

Delightful Durham

Well The Mister and I have had a fun day out with some peeps from the Ship of Fools. As far as Shipmeets go it was kind of unplanned as we had arranged a time and a place to meet but not much out. We spent a little bit of time wandering around the market in Durham and then we went up to the Cathedral. We weren’t really able to look at much as they were filming Songs of Praise, but one of the advantages is that we got to hear some fantastic choral singing. We also had a wander around the shops, ate cake and drank coffee and generally had a lovely time. So… onwards to… pictures!

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
May
15
2010
5

My Mum

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Today it is my lovely Mum’s birthday. It’s a big birthday…. but obviously I am not going to tell you how old she actually is!!

I love my Mum, she is the bestest Mum around and she has given me so much love, support, care and laughs over the years. She is great fun, an amazing organiser and I am missing living near her at the moment. We have lived apart for many years, but at the moment I wish I lived nearer. I wish she was around the corner and so that we could go out for nice walks and play Scrabble and just spend time together. However, she is in Guernsey and I am in Yorkshire. So, I would like to take this opportunity to wish her a fantastic birthday and to tell her just how very much I love her!

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
May
10
2010
9

The etiquette of swimming

Well, some of you might be surprised to find out that there is an etiquette of swimming, but having had a frustrating swim this morning I am adamant that it exists. So, here are the rules!

1. If the swimming pool is laned off please do not sit at the end of the lane taking up all the wall space so that people who are actually swimming (the clue is in the fact that it is a SWIMMING POOL) can push off when they are swimming laps. This is particularly directed at old people who think it is their divine right to get in the way. If you want to chat there is a nice coffee shop in the leisure centre – go and use that.

2. If you swim slowly that is fine but please do not swim up the middle of the lane. Please be considerate and swim at the side so that people faster than you can overtake.

3. Please do not stop dead in the middle of the lane and stand up. I will swim into you if I am swimming behind you.

4. If there are lots of people in the lane please do not bring your small children who are wearing armbands into it. I understand this may be difficult if the main part of the pool is being used for swimming lessons. Might I suggest that you use the small pool?

5. Please do not glare and tut at me when I overtake you. I just want to have a good swim and increase my heart rate to a reasonable rate so that I feel like I am actually doing some exercise rather than lying in a cooling bath.

6. And this final one is a plea to the managers at the leisure centre. I understand that school swimming lessons are important, but if you say that the main pool is open but with restricted lanes then please make sure that there are at least two lanes open to the general public – one for fast swimmers and one for slow swimmers. if necessary why don’t you lane off the pool width ways so that people swim short lengths but at least they get the chance to have a decent swim without running into each other.

End of rant…. can you tell I am pissed off?

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
May
09
2010
1

Liberation Day and Guernsey Futu

One of my current favourite websites is called Guernsey Futu. It is kind of a sarcastic take on Guernsey news and comes up with such classics as “Noonday gun job cruel metaphor for sexual impotency”, “Struggling banks turn to hedge-veg” and a particularly entertainig take on the electoral crisis entitled “Brown: ‘Britain is Futu’”.

Today is Liberation Day in Guernsey and this year they are celebrating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the island from the occupying forces of the Germans. Guernsey Futu has come up with a classic article entitled “Locals remember Red Cross hashish bonanza”. It had me giggling all the way through. I am not sure who writes this website but I think it is very very clever.

NB) Futu is a Guernsey patois word which means ‘tired’ (although I suspect it probably actually means “fucked” but I am unable to prove this!!!) This word is regularly used by my mother when I phone her up and ask her if she is alright… the inevitable response of “I’m futu” comes back.

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May
05
2010
2

The weekend

I had a fabulous weekend. My parents flew over from Guernsey and we had a party on the Saturday night, kind of an evening wedding ‘do’ for those people who couldn’t make it to the island. It was lovely, but I didn’t take any photos because I was too busy drinking wine!

It was lovely having Mum and Dad here for a few days and on Sunday we went up to Constable Burton to visit their tulip festival. The claim to have planted about 6000 bulbs, but sadly as the weather has been so rotten the vast majority of the bulbs had not yet bloomed which was annoying. I did manage to take some nice pictures though.

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The gardens were absolutely lovely and we even met the owner of the house. Actually I was chatting him up for some information on the house and he was telling us how expensive it was to run and he was complaining about the pollution on the side of the building from when there used to be factories in Leeds. I offered my dad’s services to come and steam-clean the building!

On Monday we took a quick trip up to Harrogate. I love that town, beautiful architecture and lovely tea-shops. What more do you want? I didn’t take too many photos, but this one was taken outside a bra shop. It amused me to much that I had to take a picture!

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
May
03
2010
1

Philippa Stroud, sexuality and me

I was a little bit bemused to take a look at my WibStats and find out in that in the last 24 hours the number of unique visitors to my blog had increased by 166%. Now, by anyone’s standards this is quite impressive. However, I then was meandering through a few groups on Facebook and discovered that someone has posted a link through to my blog from a group called “If Cameron cares an ounce about LGBT people, he’ll sack Philippa Stroud”. They link my blog to the group by stating that “her [Philippa Stroud’s] church, New Frontiers, doesn’t just have an issue with lgbt people, but also women”.

I have to admit that I am quite bemused by this link and thought that the subject deserved a mention.

This subject has come up due to an article in The Guardian newspaper entitled “Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to ‘cure’ gay people”. The article stated that the leaders of the church that Philipppa was involved in were praying for people to be ‘released’ from their homosexuality and there is a quote from a transexual girl who said that

“She [Philippa] wanted me to know all my thinking was wrong, I was wrong and the so-called demons inside me were wrong. The session ended with her and others praying over me, calling out the demons. She really believed things like homosexuality, transsexualism and addiction could be fixed just by prayer, all in the name of Jesus.”

The interesting thing for me is that I was certainly aware that things like this were going on in the Newfrontiers churches that I was part of about 10-15 years ago. At the time I was wrestling with my own perspective on sexuality and faith and was trying very hard to support friends who were coming out to church leaders who believed that they could be cured of their homosexuality. I am not surprised these issues are coming back to haunt Philippa, and I am equally not surprised that they happened. It would seem that the Newfrontiers view of gender is extremely black and white and if you do not fit into the cultural and social norms and expectations set before you then you are extremely isolated. This is not only for gay people, but also for women with opinions, as I have discussed on this blog many times.

(In an interesting aside, the Ekklesia website has made the point that Newfrontiers believes that women should submit to their husbands, and as a result would the electorate actually be electing Philippa or her husband. If she has to submit to him and this clashes with the Conservative viewpoint what would be the consequences of this? For more info see the link here. Just an interesting aside I thought!!!!)

I loathe the perspective that homosexuality can be cured, and I fully believe that churches, church leaders and the ex-gay movement should be held to account for the pscyhological damage they have done to countless men and women. Thank goodness for organisations such as Beyond Ex Gay and Courage who seek to support people with finding out how they can balance their faith and their sexuality.

However, I would like to make one disclaimer here. I have known of Philippa and her husband David for many, many years, and I do not believe that they are bad people. I believe that they are extremely devoted, committed Christians who do things according to their beliefs. I believe that their strongly held beliefs are in some cases extremely misguided, but in essence they are good people.

David and Philippa Stroud have made a huge difference to many different homeless and addicted people through the work they have done over the years. I hope and pray that this story does not undo this good work. Equally, I hope and pray, that being held to account for previous (and possibly current) beliefs will cause them to reconsider why they hold these beliefs.

To sum up, I believe that this is a difficult issue and the fact that it has hit national newspapers is a good thing. For a start, we need to see what our politicians are made of – both morally and ethically. We also need to have the issues around faith and sexuality continually raised. This homophobia, sometimes expressed and sometimes hidden, needs to be brought out into the light and challenged. Only then will the church be able to move on, and only then will gay men and women be accepted for the wonderful people they are and will be able to contribute to their local church in a meaningful way.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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