I am happy for people to read and comment on my journal. If what you read interests you enough to make a comment, that's great.

But I am NOT happy for people who have self-published books to find a post, make some loosely connected comment and then go on to blatantly promote their book. If that's your intention in coming here, then go away and do your promoting elsewhere. If you comment in my journal, I'll just delete it and report it as spam.

For anyone who's not here for self-promotion, welcome. :-)

I read lots of Agatha Christie novels in my early teens; in those days, when the YA genre didn't exist, they were a natural progression from the childhood mysteries of Enid Blyton and Malcolm Saville. But I haven't read Agatha Christie much as an adult. I like her plots and her clue-puzzles, but not her (lack of) characterisation or her writing style. Actually, I think I prefer Agatha Christie as done on TV in the 1980s and 1990s (Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and David Suchet as Hercule Poirot) to Agatha Christie on the printed page.

However, someone mentioned The Sittaford Mystery on a forum recently, and when I came across it in a second-hand bookshop yesterday, I thought I'd give it a go. Apparently, snow, lots of it, was important to the plot. So I thought it would make a nice read over a winter weekend. As it turned out, this was a particularly balmy winter weekend (20 degrees), so no open fire to read it in front of ... but no matter.

And, what a surprise. The murder occurs really early in the book. Really early. The body is discovered in chapter 3 and we never actually meet the deceased. I didn't realise any Agatha Christie books existed where the murder didn't happen until at least midway through the book.

And, second surprise, there's no familiar detective in this one. No Hercule Poirot. No Miss Marple. No Tommy and Tuppence (thank God, too, for that). In Christie books it's quite common for Poirot or Miss Marple to appear quite late in the book to solve the crime, and I kept waiting for that to happen. This book, after all, is set in a hamlet, the murder is announced during a seance at the exact same time as the victim is meant to have died (oh, what dodgy forensics). Surely, surely Miss Marple would make an appearance having heard about the murder via some relative or maid who just happens to live in Sittaford? But no. In this book, Emily Trefusis, the fiancee of the accused, and Charles Enderby, a young journalist, play detective. Do they appear in any more books, does anyone know? I quite liked him, but found her irritating.

As a teenager, I used to find it easy to work out whodunit. It was always the least likely person. Obviously, I'm out of practice, because I didn't guess it. But it was the least likely person. And yes, snow is very important to the plot.

Plenty of poetry on my flist this morning! In general I'm not a great poetry lover, but there are some I really like. Being cynical by nature, my favourites stem from the 1930s when poets were writing about things that were very wrong with the world. The ones I like least are those that go on and on about the beautiful countryside (the pastoral poets). Yes, I agree that the countryside is beautiful, but why did they never mention the flies or the cowpats? Hmm.

Anyway, here's one of my favourites. I won't print it in its entirity. Just my favourite verses.

Toads by Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on.

Given I don't think I know anybody who's really happy in their job, this probably sums up 21st century life pretty well!

And another that could have been written for our times is Louis MacNiece's Jigsaw II:

Property! Property! Let us extend
Soul and body without end:
A box to live in, with airs and graces,
A box on wheels that shows its paces,
A box that talks or that makes faces,
And curtains and fences as good as the neighbours'
To keep out the neighbours and keep us immured
Enjoying the cold canned fruit of our labours
In a sterilised cell, unshaved, insured.

Just think, this guy never even saw a MacMansion ... But if he were alive and wrote that today, he'd be castigated for not putting a positive spin on it.

The new Malory Towers books by Pamela Cox are out - well, half of them are. Three were published on 4 May with the other three to follow in September. These books follow Felicity Rivers's school career after Darrell left, because, of course, everybody who read Last Term at Malory Towers thought: "Gosh! I wish I knew what happened to Felicity after Darrell left school." No, me neither. I won't be buying these, but have a couple of thoughts about their publication:
* The six books are being published almost simultaneously, as happened with Ann Bryant's new series of boarding-school stories, Silver Spires. All six Silver Spires books were published in August last year. Is the instant series going to become the new norm with children's books, I wonder? It's interesting, because when I was a kid the books in the bookshops had been around for years - Enid Blyton, the Chalet School, the Lone Piners, the Jills. Waiting from year to year for books to be published didn't happen. Well, I suppose you had to wait for years and years for Armada to publish the Chalets, but the hardbacks were there and in libraries and schools. But in general, if you liked a series it was possible to read the lot. Whereas maybe if the target market for Silver Spires, for example, had to be content with one or two books appearing every year, then their interest might well be gone before the third book came out. Much better from a marketing perspective to have the whole series ready to buy.
* The new Malory Towers books aren't the only Blyton follow-ons due to be published over the next or so. The syndication of Enid Blyton is now well underway, and in the years to come the name Enid Blyton on the books won't mean any more than the author name Carolyn Keene on the Nancy Drews. I really don't like this. For all I know the new books might be brilliant (and I have heard many people say that Trevor Bolton, who's writing The Secret Valley, a new book in the 'Secret' series, is an excellent writer). But once you add in these new books, plus the new Famous Five ones, and the Naughtiest Girls, and the Just Georges, you're going to hit the point where there are more non-Blytons with the name Enid Blyton on the cover than Blytons with the name Enid Blyton on the cover. I do feel the same about the Chalet School series fill-ins and continuations, but at least that has stemmed from fandom, not from a big company trying to turn a well-loved author into a "brand". Only time will tell whether these new books prove as enduring as Enid's originals have been. 

I haven't read the book because it never appealed, but I thought I'd try the DVD (reason being it takes less time to watch a movie). We watched it over two nights because I kept nodding off to sleep during the first half. (It was that gripping.) The second half was much better, though. I thought it only took off when Bella went home to meet Edward's family. And at the end I was quite interested to know what will happen next. What will happen between Edward and the young Native American lad whose name I have forgotten? And what was the female vampire (Victoria?) who appeared at the end up to? I'm almost tempted to read the second book in the saga to find out.

However, I have realised just how little I know about vampires. I didn't realise, for example, that they don't eat or drink. Or sleep. Or that they could move so fast or play baseball so well. Or that they could tell what people are thinking. I don't think I've actually read a book about vampires, not even Dracula. I don't think I've ever watched a vampire movie either. So no wonder I didn't know how much was based on vampire myth and how much had been made up by Stephanie Meyer.

Why are people so into vampires at the moment? The YA shelves are crammed full of books with titles like Vampire Academy. I'm not sure I really get it. And why is sex with a vampire such a very desirable thing?

When I migrated to Australia almost 14 years ago, there were two books everyone here was talking about. One was The Hand That Signed the Paper by Ukrainian-Australian Helen Demidenko, soon to be unmasked as hoaxer Anglo-Australian Helen Darville. The other was The Monkey's Mask, a lesbian thriller in verse by Dorothy Porter.

These two books and the interest in them introduced me to two things that are very specific to Australian publishing, and that remain the same to this day. One: Australians love the migrant experience, and by that they don't mean the experience of the British, American or Canadian migrant (hence a more recent literary hoax). Two: Australians love something quirky. Think of the very successful Aussie movies and they've all been a bit quirky.

And The Monkey's Mask is definitely quirky. I borrowed it off a workmate when I first came here, and always intended to buy my own copy but somehow never got round to it. Until yesterday, when I found it (and a few other great books, including Sharon Creech's Bloomability) for $2.90 at Dirt Cheap Books. It has everything: a murder mystery, sex, social comment and comedy all in 256 pages of verse. Here's the investigator, Jill, musing on the family function she's obliged to attend:

Family barbecues
hit the nerve
like a drunk dentist

why didn't they reject me
when I came out?

And her reflections on the then missing teenage girl, as described by the girl's parents:

it's not like her
she doesn't take drugs
she doesn't even smoke

she wants to be a journalist
photos

she's pretty
she's sweet
she's too good to be true

It's an incredibly clever book and justly won lots of awards here. Dorothy Porter sadly died last year, a huge loss to Australian literature.

Because I'm working on the second Cotterford book, I spent some time earlier this week reading a couple of second books in school story series. I chose two of the more recent series, Anne Digby's Second Term at Trebizon (1979) and Harriet Martyn's Jenny and the New Headmistress (1984).  I also started reading DFB's Captain at Springdale (1932), not because it's a second book, but because it's the only Springdale I have and I'd never read it. So I thought it would be useful to read in terms of going cold into a series I'd never read before.  Except I found I did know a few of the characters, courtesy of Dimsie (who also appears in this book).

Second Term at Trebizon contains lots of hockey, music and bickering. And lots of clues as to why Tish is behaving strangely and what Nicola Hodges is up to.  I wonder if Anne Digby ever wrote adult detective stories, like Ruby Ferguson did? She'd have been good at them! I like Digby's characters but the stories are way too short. I like Balcombe Hall more than Trebizon, because although it's a very posh school, the characters seem more real and much more like some of the kids I was at school with. Wanting to leave at 16, taking no crap from the teachers, saying the food was &*#@ ...

But oh, what a difference it would have made to the inhabitants of Trebizon and Balcombe Hall if they'd been born a little later and enjoyed the benefits of modern technology.  At Trebizon, a quick Google on 'Hodges Road Haulage' would have saved Rebecca from having to ask awkward questions of the prefects (and it might have revealed impending disaster for Sue's father and saved a lot of bickering too). At Balcombe Hall, a mobile phone would have prevented Ariel from being kidnapped, or at least got her saved more quickly. And poor Mrs Vaux, deprived not only of the still in-the-future mobile but seemingly of even a landline in her flat at Balcombe Hall – she and her guests, locked in by Sylvia and co., only get out because the Admiral signals for help from the window!

On the first page of Captain at Springdale, Peggy Willoughby arrives at school and needs to go to the post office so she can buy stamps to send a postcard to tell her mother she's arrived safely. It struck me that 50 years on, with no mobiles and most likely no landline access except in emergencies at school, Rebecca and Jenny probably communicated with their parents in exactly the same way. What an incredible difference just 20 years has made in all our lives. No wonder fantasy is the preferred genre for authors in terms of writing for children and young adults – because the real world changes so fast that technology you write about in 2009 could well be completely outmoded by 2011 ...

I spent a very enjoyable two hours last night wallowing in sporting nostalgia on YouTube. The first thing I watched was camcorder coverage of some of the women's gymnastics at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the second was a documentary looking back at the Steve Ovett/Seb Coe clash at the same Olympics.

I remember the Moscow Olympics very well. I'd finished A levels, was waiting to see if I'd got into university, and spent the two Olympic weeks in front of the television. I was really only interested in the gymnastics and track and field. I wanted Nadia Comaneci to win the women's gymnastics and Steve Ovett to beat Sebastian Coe. Like most people, I thought Coe would win the 800m and Ovett the 1500m, but would have liked Ovett to win both. In the event, Ovett won the 800m and Coe the 1500m. Comaneci came very close to winning the gymnastics all-around title (which she was defending from Montreal), but lost out to the Soviet Union's Elena Davidova, after Comaneci's beam mark was held up for about half an hour because of a judging dispute (the coverage was on ITV at the time and they even delayed the ads to wait for Comaneci's score ... those were the days).

Last night, watching these, and remembering that I was disappointed with Ovett's 1500m bronze and firmly convinced that Comaneci had been robbed of gold because the Olympics were in Moscow and she was Romanian, I felt annoyed with myself with just not appreciating the talent of the time. To have both Ovett and Coe representing Britain then was just incredible, and it was a pity that the papers took sides so much and encouraged the public to do so. And, as the camcorder coverage shows, all the East European women gymnasts were fantastic back then. Davidova's routines were highly original and she deserved her gold. But there were just so many other brilliant gymnasts around at that time, some of whom didn't even medal individually, so high was the standard. I don't enjoy watching women's gymnastics today, because there is no artistry and the routines seem less fluid. The camcorder coverage is really interesting, because you get to see lots of gymnasts (though part 4 seems to be missing) and I certainly never realised how noisy the crowd was!

Very entertaining! It took me right back in time to sitting in the "front room" with my dad, in front of the telly, while my mom sat in the "living room" on her own, whingeing about the fact the Olympics seemed to be on every channel!

I was surfing the pony books pages of Jane Badger's website last night and came upon something I'd never realised before - Anne Digby, the author of the Trebizon and Jill Robinson books, is married to Alan Davidson, who wrote the Annabel books and, under the alias AD Langholm, wrote the brilliant school/pony book Queen Rider. This is something not even mentioned in The Encyclopedia of Girls' School Stories, in which both are listed, and both are listed as living in Sussex. Is this news to everyone else, or is it something that's generally known and I'm the last to discover?

When I'd finished a small proofreading job this morning, I made the most of the beautiful autumn weather and went for a local walk. There were plenty of toadstools to photograph!





And a slightly hazy view from the mountain:



I've also read Wearing the Poppy by AJ Toledo, better known on LJ as alliekiwi . She sent this book for Gabe as part of a swap for First Term at Cotterford and it arrived yesterday. Gabe read it as soon as he returned from school, and you will be pleased, alliekiwi , to know he went and found his Anzac pin and pinned it on his school uniform straight after reading it!



The book, written for children, tells the story of AJ Toledo's Great-Uncle Jock, who was killed fighting with the ANZACs in the First World War, at the age of 27. It also explains why New Zealanders wear a poppy on Anzac Day (25 April) - the poppies shipped out for Armistice Day didn't arrive in time for 11 November and so were worn to commemorate the day the ANZACs went into battle in Gallipoli (25 April 1915). Here in Australia we wear a pin on Anzac Day and some people wear poppies on Remembrance Day, so I guess our poppies must have turned up. However, Anzac Day is our main day of remembrance and all the kids know about it. Remembrance Day isn't observed the way it is in Europe.

This was timely reading for Gabe, as there was a report in the newspapers here yesterday saying that Australia seems to have forgotten that the New Zealanders were part of Anzac Day (the papers dubbed it Aac Day). So now he has another perspective as they learn about Anzac Day at school. I really enjoyed reading it too, alliekiwi , and I'm glad your great-uncle will be remembered by thousands of kids in this way.

Gacked from callmemadam .

1) What author do you own the most books by?
It has to be Elinor M. Brent-Dyer because I have all the Chalet School series bar two, and a few of her other titles.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Bible! There are about five Bibles in the house, I think (too lazy to walk down the other end of the house to check).
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Alan Banks, but it's not a secret.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Jilly Cooper's Wicked. I stopped reading halfway through. Dire!
8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Actually, it was a book I edited just before Christmas. It was called Eating with Emperors by Jake Smith and it told some of the stories behind the menus at state banquets in Victorian England, the Kaiser's Germany and Imperial Russia as well as in more recent times. Beautifully illustrated with the original menus and photographs, too.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I won't be tagging, and I wouldn't force anyone to do anything. People should read what they want to read!
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
No idea!
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Don't know, but the Alan Banks mysteries would be good on the telly.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Any of those Jasper Forde novels (though they probably are already movies). I just don't get the fuss about Thursday Next.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I have dreamt about my own Louise and Juliet, which was rather weird.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I read a Harold Robbins when I was backpacking. Someone had left it behind at the backpackers hostel and I had nothing else to read at the time. It was better than I expected, actually.
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
A toss-up between Lord of the Rings and Ulysses, both a hard slog and the latter somewhat incomprehensible to me when I read it age 19.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I havent seen any obscure Shakespeare.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians!
18 ) Roth or Updike?
I haven't read either. *blushes*
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never heard of them!!!!!!
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot, as I can't stand Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I own all of Dickens's works (inherited from my grandparents) but have only read about five of them.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The Go-Between
24) Play?
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
25) Poem?
The Waste Land by TS Eliot
26) Essay?
I don't read enough essays to have a favourite, but I really enjoyed Robin Bowles's 'Police Line: Do Not Cross' in Outside the Law 2.
27) Short story?
Toss-up between 'Salmonella' by Tim Kennemore and 'Blind Faith' by Roland Vernon
28) Work of nonfiction?
The Complete Book of the Olympics by David Wallechinsky. A very entertaining history of the Games, updated every Olympiad.
29) Who is your favourite writer?
Peter Robinson
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Marian Keyes
31) What is your desert island book?
The Go-Between
32) And… what are you reading right now?
I'm about to read Wearing the Poppy by AJ Toledo, which arrived in the post today ...

I read this book after becoming obsessed by Secret Army. This is the story of the men from Bomber Command who were shot down in enemy territory during World War II – and of the men and women who helped them make their way back to Britain.

It's a great read, following the experiences of a handful of young RAF lads who found themselves having to bail out of their plane and landing in Nazi-occupied Belgium, France or (worst of all) Germany. Barely out of their teens, they would then try to find a sympathetic local who was brave enough to help them hide from the Germans and get back to Europe. If caught by the Germans, the RAF lads would end up in a prisoner of war camp. If caught by the Germans, the locals would find themselves tortured and shot or tortured and sent to concentration camps.

When I read this, it was reassuring to know that the people I was reading about had been interviewed by the authors recently (the book was published in 2007). Because that meant that when they were caught by Germans, I knew they survived, so somehow that made it easier reading (especially when it came to the chapter dealing with the women's horrific experiences in concentration camps). Too many of their friends and relatives didn't. 

'The thing that struck me most in this book was how young the women were. The Comet escape line – on which Secret Army's Lifeline is based – was run by a woman in her mid-20s, Andrée de Jongh (code name: Dedée), who – used to accompany the evaders in a perilous trek across the Pyrenees so that they could reach neutral Spain. Some of the escape-line workers, like 17-year-old Nadine Dumon, were only in their teens. Teenage girls who wanted so much to overthrow the Nazis that they risked torture and their lives to help British airmen (and did indeed end up in concentration camps). These were real heroines, real kick-ass girls way before the feminist revolution and affirmative action.

But it wasn't all heroic. There was the man who wanted to be in on one of the escape lines, believing there was money to be made from it. He was rejected by those who ran the line — so he shopped them to the Germans. And there was the boyfriend who, when jilted by his girlfriend, went straight to the Nazis to tell them she was part of an escape line hiding British airmen. 

Being the cynic I am, I can't help thinking that in today's money-crazy society, if the world were ever at war in that way again, we would see rather more of the unheroic acts than the heroic. I hope we never find out if I'm right or wrong on that one!
  

Gacked from bookwormsarah .

1) The worst reading experience that you have ever had?
I made myself read the much lauded Lord of the Rings during the summer vac when I was 20. I was bored out of my brain and  very glad when the time came to finally put it down. Now I shake my head in disbelief that I made myself do that. Today, I'd have discarded it after a couple of chapters. Life's too short and that book's too long! (I gave up on the movie once Strider came into it.)

2) The best reading experience you have ever had?
Nothing has ever bettered reading and loving Five Go To Smuggler's Top, aged about 7, I think, at primary school. It began a lifelong love of crime fiction and George was an early feminist icon!

3) Which book has affected or influenced you the most so far?
Well, my favourite school stories (the Chalet School, Malory Towers and St Clare's and, later, Kingscote) must have had the most impact because I still collect girls' own books, wrote a murder-mystery novel set in the school-story world, and am now writing my own school stories.  But Germaine Greer's writing (1970s, not her more recent stuff) influenced my teenage feminism.

4) Have you ever read a book that you got really scared of?
Yes, when I was 16 I read a book called Devil Daddy by John Blackburn. I can't remember anything about it now other than that there was a character called Tania Levin in it. But it scared me so much the night I read it that I couldn't turn the light off.

5) What do you use as a bookmark?
Proper bookmarks.

6) When do you usually read? At home, work, while cooking, in the morning, noon, afternoon, before you go to bed...?
School holidays and weekends are when I do most of my reading. During term time, I'm busy book editing in the day and then ferrying my son to after-school sports, then getting dinner, getting him to bed, then I usually flop down with a glass of wine and a dvd. But weekends and school holidays are more relaxing (I usually don't work then) so I have time to read. 

7) Do you remember the first book that you read?.
Excluding good old Peter and Jane, the first 'proper' book I read was They Found a Cave by Nan Chauncy. I was at primary school in England and this was the first 'real' book I was allowed to borrow from the classroom library when I'd finished with Peter and Jane. The book was by a Tasmanian writer and set in Tasmania. Tasmania meant nothing to me then, but twenty years or so on I met my now husband in Tasmania, while I was backpacking and he (an Aussie) was on holiday.

8) Which do you prefer - paperback or hardcover?
Paperback. Except for old books, where I prefer hardback.

9) What are you currently reading? What page are you on?
Home Run by John Nichol and Tony Rennell. I'm on p. 366 (of 469).

10) Do you ever leave "a mark" (deliberate and/or not deliberate) in your books? For example, write in them, underline quotes, coffeemarks or food crumbs and etc.
No. As a student I underlined things, but now I don't.

11) Does the title, amount of pages and the cover affect you when you are considering a specific book?
The title is the thing that catches my eye, and then I read the back cover blurb and the first page or so. If the first few paras suck me in, I'm hooked. The amount of pages is irrelevant, as is the cover.

12) Do you ever browse through [to the last pages in order find out the ending?]
I usually have a quick peek up to four pages ahead of where I'm up to. Then get angry with myself because I find a spoiler!

13) Has knowing the ending of a book (example, through spoilers or a movie) ever made you decide whether you will read the book or not?
No. A book's not about the ending, it's about the journey. I'd even read a murder mystery where I knew the ending.

14) Is there a book that you have read more than five times?
The Go-Between by LP Hartley would be the only one, I think - it was an A-level text, and I like to re-read it during a very hot summer. Which is most summers here. I love that book.

15) Have you ever been in an accident where the book was the cause? (for example, almost getting hit by a car when reading while walking, or having stacks of books falling on you from a bookshelf...)
Not that I recall.

16) Do you sell/give away your books or do you keep them, even though you don't like one of them?
I generally keep my books, including the ones I don't like. Which is stupid, really, because they take up valuable shelf space.

17) Do you have some kind of book system, where you write down what you are reading, have bought, will read, will buy and etc?
I have a notebook where I list the books I read. I'm doing it on LJ too now.

Last night we finished watching Secret Army. After nearly two months of it being a nightly ritual, I am really going to miss it. Fortunately, I still have one of the special features (interviews with some of the cast) still to watch, as well as Home Run to finish reading, so I will be able to slowly withdraw from it. :-)

( cut for spoilers and because I know I keep rabbiting on about this series! )

I shall really miss watching this! Am now on the look-out for Kessler and Wish Me Luck to take the WWII viewing theme into winter.

ION, I see that Girls Gone By are publishing The League of the Smallest later this year. I never could get into Clare Mallory (I can't stand 'crack house' school stories!), but have always liked the idea of this book, being on the shorter side myself!

Plus, now I've finally upgraded from basic, I'm discovering new things I can do on LJ (or perhaps I always could do them and never looked around before), such as layouts and links, and posting photographs. Wish I'd upgraded before now!

It's not often that I find myself smiling with delight on a supermarket trip, but today, on a visit to our local Safeway, I did just that. For back on the shelves, after an absence of at least a year, is Mon tomato sauce, made in Echuca, Vic., and, IMO, the best tomato sauce in the world.

Like many other great products, it disappeared as the dreaded supermarket brands started creeping onto Australian shelves (a trend I'd seen in the UK years earlier). Safeway's this, Coles' that ...  Goodbye relatively expensive but good quality home-produced goods, hello cheap crap made God knows where.

But today, as I looked among the tomato sauces for something reasonable, there it was ... Mon. I made my delight known to one of the workers at the supermarket, who intimated there had been some surprise by management at how much shoppers missed their life-long favourites.

Of course, the cynic in me says it's funny how the once-popular brands are returning to our local Safeway just as Aldi have been given a permit to open just opposite. But who cares why Mon is back? I'm just happy it is and hope this is the beginning of the end for the supermarket brands here in Australia.

I went to Borders today and, while I didn't find any of the recommended books (not even the Miep Gies one, which surprised me), I found and bought a book called Home Run: Escape from Nazi Europe by John Nichol and Tony Rennell. It's about stranded soldiers and shot-down airmen who travelled back to Britain from the occupied countries via escape lines – in other words, Secret Army in real life. I've started it and it looks as if it's going to be a good read.

I keep hoping to find the Jane Beaton adult school story, First Year at Downey House, but it looks as if it's not going to be released here. I'll have to buy it when I'm in England.

In contrast to the last three weekends, this weekend has been very lazy, with late breakfasts, lots of games of swingball in the back yard with Gabe, and pleasant afternoons out in the sun imbibing either red (yesterday) or rosé (today) wine. And, of course, Secret Army in the evening. My favourite character died last night. :-(  Tonight we start on Season 3.

Yesterday was the first day I was able to relax in what seems like ages. For the past few weeks I've been manically editing an enormous encyclopedia of Australasian crime, which I'd fallen behind with during the bushfire situation. But I sent it back on time, phew.

And in what couldn't have been better timing, the Autumn and Winter copies of Folly arrived in yesterday's post. My subscription expired before last Autumn's edition, and I didn't renew then because of exchange rates. But I'm now re-subscribed and it was good to catch up with them. I particularly love the illustrations in Folly. And, also well timed, we now have a new free-to-air digital channel that's all sport. Something to watch at last!

I also made the most of beautiful autumn weather to go for a long walk.

So, what else? Well, Hawthorn lost their opening game last night, to Geelong (Gabe's team) who they beat in last year's Grand Final. I was expecting that (it's a fairly normal thing for reigning champions to lose their opening game, in most sports) and the winning margin was slim, so I remain optimistic about back-to-back Premierships. Hawthorn and Geelong will be the two teams to watch all year, I think.

And we are still watching Secret Army. We are near the end of Season 2 now. I cannot believe how good it is compared with today's TV. Each episode is an hour and the characterisation is superb. You see shades of grey in all the characters, and at times even feel some sympathy for the head of the Gestapo, Kessler. So much time and detail has gone into it, and the writing and acting is excellent. I shall really miss it when we've watched the final series, though apparently there's a spin-off, Kessler, which I'll try to get hold of. And maybe I'll get Wish Me Luck, about women agents in occupied France, which I never watched when it was on telly in the 1980s.

I haven't been reading much at all this year. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird and am now wondering whether to read some of the unread books on my bookshelves or whether to go to the bookshop this weekend and find something new. After watching Secret Army, I've a hankering to read some non-fiction about the Second World War, so if anyone knows of any really good books, please recommend. I mean human-interest type books,  rather than military ones.

I am frantically trying to play catch-up on an enormous editing job that I started in February, but which I lost a great deal of time on because of the fire situation. I'm working weekends as well as in the week at the moment, which is why I'm not around much right now.

Anyway, at night when I've downed tools for the day and Gabe has gone to bed, Grant and I are working our way through the complete DVD set of Secret Army. Secret Army was a TV drama that was on TV in the late 1970s (and, I think, early 1980s) and is about a group of people who run an escape line for British airmen to return them to the UK when they've been shot down. It's centred on a cafe in Brussels. Sounds familiar? Well, yes, the comedy series 'Allo, 'Allo was a send-up of this show.





Anyway, it is fantastic - well acted, well scripted, some interesting characters. The escape line is run by a woman, Lisa, which is terrific and was probably revolutionary for 1970s TV drama.  The cafe owner Albert, like his comedy counterpart Rene, is having an affair with his employee. There's an Englishman working with them, who fancies Lisa, and she sort of fancies him but doesn't trust him. Then there are the Germans (no crush on Albert here, though) - the subversive head of the Luftwaffe, Brandt, who dislikes and is always trying to outwit the Gestapo man, Kessler.  

But! It is grim. Unrelentingly grim. There's never a happy ending to the episodes, even if kids are involved. It's as if Thomas Hardy himself wrote Secret Army, with anything that could go wrong going wrong. So probably it's not the best bedtime viewing - the other night, after watching it, I dreamt I was being chased by Nazis. But it's compulsive and I find myself looking forward to it at the end of the day, along with a glass of red.

Secret Army does, of course, get an honourary mention in AF's Run Away Home. Two actually, IIRC. I think Lawrie watches it, and I think either Edward or one of Karen's stepkids watches it too. Actually Run Away Home isn't unlike an episode of Secret Army, with the Marlows forming an escape line (one doing their bit and handing over to the next person on the line), and even part of the ending - ( cut for spoiler )- has a touch of Secret Army  gloom about it.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at or think of this book without remembering Black Saturday. It was a birthday present in January and I'd read a fair chunk of it by 7 February. As we sat with our aircon on on that 46-degree day, I was reading the part of the book that included the script for the 2008 series finale. The part where the Doctor and co. look out at the sky and are horror-struck by what they see. It made for uncomfortable reading when the sky outside was pinky-grey, like a scene from Armageddon. It took me another two weeks before I could pick the book up again and finish reading it.

All that aside, this is a great book if you are a) a Doctor Who fan and b) if you've ever written any fiction. It consists of a series of emails between Russell T. Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, written between February 2007 and March 2008. The emails include plenty of discussion of the 2007 Christmas special and the 2008 series (series 4) and also some of Russell's ideas for the 2008 Christmas special. Often he attaches a draft of the script he's working on (either writing from scratch or rewriting - he does a lot of rewriting of other script writers' work), and it's fascinating to follow his thought processes as he drafts, writes, rewrites and edits. And so many things impact upon his original ideas - like an actor having to drop out of the series because of ill health, or Catherine Tate signing up for a full series thus forcing Russell to abandon the new companion he'd spent weeks creating. And the budget. There's a lot about the budget - or lack of it. For anyone who's ever wondered why The Doctor doesn't get out of London one Christmas and perhaps spend the festive season here in Australia ... the answer is the budget. Or lack of it.

There are so many points he brings up that makes you think, "Yes, that's so right." Like how some writers have their characters make remarks that you never hear in real life, but that the writer has heard other characters say on television before, so think that must be how screen-people have to speak. I know I've found myself making that mistake in my own writing - having a character say something that I've never actually heard a real person say, but that I've 'heard' lots of characters in books saying. Another one was where he said that when people are having a conversation, often they're not really listening to each other, they're wrapped up in their own world and that the best scriptwriting reflects this. A series that managed this very well in the past was Tenko (that's my opinion, not his) - the 'two monologues' form of dialogue was used often there and to excellent effect.

What else? Ah yes. You hear a lot about the various guys Russell fancies. Russell Tovey is one, but there are quite a few others, including the guy who plays Maria's dad in The Sarah-Jane Adventures. I did wonder whether, had Russell been straight and gone on and on about a young female actor's bum the way he did about Russell Tovey's, the female actor might have claimed sexual harrassment. As to that, I wonder how Russell Tovey feels about it, that this middle-aged guy has the hots for him. Others whose reaction I wonder about are the various movers and shakers at the BBC that Russell blasts (quite fairly, in my opinion, as they do seem to have the competence of some of the CEOs we've all been reading about in recent times). It's quite amusing to have a BBC Books book that declares some of the decision-makers at the BBC to be fools. Oh yes - and how do some of those scriptwriters feel about Rusty's comments on them? Like Gareth Roberts, when Russell wonders in the email if he'll be able to manage the Agatha Christie story. I wonder if Steven Moffatt (whose scripts Russell thankfully never rewrote, because Moffatt is by far the better writer of the two) will be as much of a control freak on the show as Russell?

You can't help liking Rusty, though, as you read this book. He is so enthusiastic about the show. I somehow can't imagine him never coming back to it.

The new Jane Brocket book will be out in July (very conveniently for me to be able to pay at the UK price when I'm over there). It's called Ripping Things to Do: The Best Games and Ideas From Children's Books. And I just know, somehow, that I will be more successful at trying out these games and ideas than I've so far been at testing the recipes. (But then, who wants to bake when it's 40 degrees outside? Now it's chilly and I'm wearing jumpers maybe I'll get round to baking a cake. Easter holiday project with Gabe.)

As a family, we regularly play a game I came across in a Famous Five book. We call it 'The Animal Game', but I don't know if Enid Blyton called it that. It was in a book I no longer have - I think it was Five on a Secret Trail, but I could be wrong. It involved going through the alphabet and naming animals until you ran out and then moved on to the next letter. This is a family favourite on long drives. Occasionally we vary it to other things, like Australian cities/towns.

As a kid, the Five Find-Outer type club I was in had a Hallowe'en party for grown-ups to raise money for charity and we used one or two games from Exploits of the Chalet Girls. Other than that, I can only recall things like Snap-Cork in The Rat-a-Tat Mystery, Impertinent Questions in The Chalet School and the Island, and of course all the various tricks played in the books ... I wonder if any of them will make their way into the book?

Some people, though ... They just have this knack of spotting something that has "bestseller" written all over it. With all my love of kidlit, why did I not think of doing this? Why did no-one on my flist think of doing this? I'm sure that somewhere on one of the forums/lists, there's been at least one thread on games from the books and food from the books that we'll all have contributed to at some stage ... And the idea was staring us in the face and just passed us by!