Friday, December 7, 2007

"Why does it always rain on me?"

“Why does it always rain on me?”

Well, folks, to coin another song title, “Oh, no, it’s raining again!” As Les says, “Where’s the bloody sunshine?”
So today I am mostly mooching about in the house. We are having some people round tonight for drinks prior to going to the work night out which is to a cookery school. We are being picked up in a stretch limo. Hmm.That will be a sight for the neebours.
I have made friends with a lady called Anne who has a weaving business. She makes cashmere and cotton throws and has a loom modelled on the Scottish Harris Tweed loom. I’ve told her all about Paisley, my home town, which is the seat of the old Scottish thread industry. She has invited me to visit her workshop next week so that will be interesting.
As it is nearly the weekend, I am looking for trips to make! I am not going to Pretoria, the proposed talk is not happening, it seems. My friend Anne has given me details of some nice places to visit which are all around an hour from here and to please Les, don’t include too many shops…except for a craft market on Sunday…
Of course it all depends on this unpredictable weather! It is not at all cold but it is very, very wet and the pavements are quite flooded.
We went to the cinema the other night just to pass the time; all the schools are on holiday so there wasn’t much on for adults. We saw Mr Woodcock with Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon. Quite funny in an adolescent humour sort of way. We were the oldest there by far, I felt like I was on a school trip and could barely stop myself from counting heads and saying “Shh!” or “Get your feet off the seats!”
Next week” The Golden Compass” opens here, so I would like to go to see that, even though, shame on me, I haven’t read the books! However, that hasn’t stopped me from recommending them to scores of school kids over the years and they have all enjoyed them. As for my own reading, since arriving here I have read: Minette Walters “The chameleon’s shadow” a crime/ thriller, Douglas Kennedy “The woman from the fifth” a kind of bizarre time shift story, a magazine freebie by Taylor Smith called “Liar’s market” (spy novel) and Elsa Joubert “Isobelle’s Journey” which is translated from Afrikaans and is a historical saga covering the story of South Africa from the time of the Boer War to the end of apartheid. It served well to help me understand a little of the social and cultural background here. Now I am reading James Michener, “The covenant” which is a history of South Africa from ancient times up to the apartheid era, so that should fill in the period before the Joubert novel.
Not for me the scholarly trawl through mighty historical tomes, give me fiction any day! I finally found where the library is but is is closed on a Saturday and has no late nights, just Mon-Fri 9-5.Given that a lot of people seem to work 8-4.30, how’s that for reaching your audience, eh?

1 comment:

SamT said...

Mrs Barnes!! That's shocking, why did I always think you'd read Pullamn's books?
Maybe it was your dislike of JK made me think you were a Pullman fan!