The week so far

It's Wednesday already - amazing how time flies when you're having fun! Obviously I missed the fun. What is getting me down at the moment is the heat. I like hot weather - say a gentle 22deg C - that would suit me all year round. This is too much. They keep promising us rain - but no signs of it in this neck of the woods. A good night's sleep would help.

Work is as ever somewhat fraught with various people who should know better spreading doom gloom and misinformation. Our employer does not insist we have a driving licence as part of our contract. They do not dictate how we get to work. Yet one poor woman had been scared half out of her wits and into the bankruptcy court by someone saying she'd have to buy a second car to get to work as her husband uses the family car. They tried this on me 3 years ago - and failed - so I knew the answer. If you normally travel by public transport etc then that is how they assess your journey to the office they want you to go to. If people don't know the answer they should not make it up rather than admit they don't know!

Books - a somewhat neglected subject of late. I have finished Judy Astley's latest - 'Other People's Husbands'. This is the aga saga - can't call it chick lit as it's mainly older women - at its best. The story revolves round Conrad and Sara, and their two adult daughters - Cassandra and Pandora. Conrad is going through an existential crisis as he approaches his 70th birthday and Sara - in her 4os is going through a mid life crisis. Can their relationship cope? What happens if Sara's artistic career takes off when Conrad's is fading? Lots of sub plots and warm and lovable characters.

I've also started Ken Follett's 'The Pillars of the Earth' - a huge saga about the building a medieval cathedral. So far so good - but it's about 1000 pages and too heavy to carry around. I'm also reading one of Alison Joseph's Sister Agnes crime novels - 'A Dark and Sinful Death'. with Agnes being just as disobedient and iconoclastic as ever. A lady after my own heart.

Off to catch up on the internet and then a cold shower for me.

Pink Champagne and Apple Juice

I have just finished reading Anne Brooke's novel 'Pink Chmapagne and Apple Juice'. It is really good. Angie runs away from home and descends unnanounced on Uncle John - the black sheep of the family. He turns out to be a transvestite running his own club for like minded people in Muswell Hill. How Uncle John welcomes her into his home and yet manages not to 'corrupt' (her mother's word) her in the process makes for an amusing story. There are serious aspects to it though and Angie has to come to terms with John's role in the break up of her own family before the end of the story.

As might be expected the book is full of colourful and yet believable characters. Derek the doorman, Malcolm - Uncle John's lover, Philippe the French waiter and Heinrich the German chef who always cooks mushrooms. Thrown into the mix is Lisa - Angie's friend from university - who turns out to be lesss of a friend than might be expected. This is a brilliant story and it would make a good film or tv drama. Why it hasn't been snapped up by a main stream publisher I don't know. It deserves to become a classic like John Hadfield's 'Love on a Branch Line'.

It doesn't fit into any particular category and will still be readable in 20 years time. Go out and buy it! Anne Brooke has her own web site - www.annebrooke.com and a blog at www.annebrooke.blogspot.com.

I've also read Mary Nickson's 'Secrets and Shadows'. A group of people meet on a creative writing week in Scotland. All have secrets and shadows in their lives. Some are known to each other, some are strangers. All are changed by the course. Some find happiness where they least expected it others have a harsher future in front of them. Some have to make compromises and some find their ambitions are not realisable in the form they had hoped for. Interesting reading if you want a change from light fiction. This is still not heavy reading but it is more thought provoking than many.

I have just bought Ken Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth' which looks like a hefty read at over 1000 pages. It's about the building of a cathedral in the twelfth century. There is a sequel to it - recently published - 'World Without End'. On an epic scale I've bought John Cowper Powys' 'A Glastonbury Romance'. I've come across his books before mentioned in Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. www.philrickman.co.uk if you want more information.

Back to work tomorrow - I shall have to cut down on my reading then - not as much time.