Different viewpoints

I was intrigued when someone in the course of a discussion on the internet said to me that they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live in a village. The main reason for their comment? They would be lonely without hordes of people around them. They didn't seem to understand my comment that you can be lonely in a crowd.

I have no problem with people wanting to live in cities - it's just not my thing. I find people in villages very friendly. When I walk to the the post office - about 5 minutes - I find that everyone speaks to you. The same in the post office and shop. When I go to the hairdressers the conversation is often general and involves the hairdresser's three staff and all the customers there at the time. Same with the doctor's waiting room.

The walk to the post office has been known to take me more than an hour because I've met so many people to talk to. In spite of that life is quiet and much slower than city life. If I wake up about 2.00 or 3.00am everything is quiet outside which it never would be in a city.

Yes there are disadvantages. No theatres nearby, though there is a cinema about 6 miles away. There are libraries and mobile libraries but no art galleries unless you want to travel about 40 miles. There are some specialist museums - such as the bulb museum - that's flower bulbs not electric light bulbs; and there are big houses to visit not that far away - nearest is 10 miles away. With mail order and the internet you can get anything you want delivered and there is a furniture shop about 5 miles away which is very good and very reasonably priced in spite of a captive audience.

I like being able to walk into the doctors and be addressed by name by the receptionists - it makes me feel I belong - though it could indicate I go there too often! Crime is low - virtually non-existent in this village. It's a bit higher in the two neighbouring towns though in both of them you could walk through the town centre at night on your own without any qualms about safety.

Road Closed

Road Closed is Leigh Russell's second novel and the second in her DI Geraldine Steel series. I really enjoyed the first one in the series Cut Short and I looked forward to reading Road Closed. I wasn't disappointed.

The plot is complex with several apparently overlapping investigations. There's the unsolved series of burglaries, a murder of an elderly lady which might have been an accident and a deadly arson attack. Pretty standard police fare you might think. But then things get complicated with an apparently unprovoked attack on a local small time villain. Geraldine herself has problems with her on/off relationship with Craig, a local estate agent, her mother's death and a demanding friend who can't understand Geraldine' devotion to her job.

The characters are believable and I really like Geraldine herself who is far from perfect, unlike some fictional police officers. I also liked the way everything dovetailed together so that while you're reading you get those light bulb moments when a piece of the jigsaw slots into place. I thought the petty villains and the arson victim's widow were particularly well drawn as was the elderly man whiling away his time in the seedy pub.

Enjoyable crime, without the graphic blood and guts so many authors use and well worth reading if you enjoy psychological police procedural novels where the police seem like real people with lives outside the job. I'm looking forward to the next one in this series.

I will be posting an interview with Leigh Russell on jillysheep on Monday 14 June 2010.

Mind your language

I was amused by an incident this evening when I called into Sainsbury's on my way home. A woman pushing a trolley and accompanied by an angelic looking 4 or 5 year old child was screaming at the top of her voice at 2 thuggish looking teenage boys who were using the F word rather more freely that is acceptable in polite society.

'I don't come shopping to hear people using that sort of language in my child's hearing.' Grabbing hold of a young member of staff. 'You need to bloody well get security to get these bloody people out of here.' Only certain swear words allowed presumably?

Security men are a new concept in our Sainsbury's and the two I've seen seem a bit weak and wimpish so I doubt they would have done anything. With a good hard push I could probably flatten either of them. They can usually be found standing at the door where you come in when perhaps they ought to be wandering around and keeping watch for the handbag snatchers or perhaps standing at the out door and checking people's receipts.

Any sort of crime is pretty hard to come by around here and people are very careless with their purses when they're shopping so I presume some opportunist thief has taken to snatching convenient handbags as the notice has only recently been put up.

Bus journeys

I was reminded today by a passenger I quite often talk to on the way home of a bus journey at the beginning of this week. There was an elderly couple on the bus - I've seen them before - and the man is always really nasty to his wife. The topic of conversation was at first what might have happened to their house keys. The wife fished in her bag for them and produced them and remarked perfectly calmly that she'd got them because she'd locked the door on their way out. He then started on at her saying she should shut up talking nonsense because she was really winding him up and he kept on repeating this phrase.

The rest of the passengers were sitting there with bated breath. Then he said had she noticed the price of onions on the market that day. To which she replied no she hadn't. Someone else on the bus called out the price to her and she repeated it to him. Whereupon he started on at her again how she shouldn't go on like that and everyone was laughing at her for being so stupid. It was all totally unnecessary abuse. The lady I was talking to commented that she wondered what would happen if the wife suddenly turned on him and strangled him - as that was what she felt like doing and she didn't even know him.

I suggested that maybe if the chap's wife did we'd all be interviewed by the police as witnesses and of course we'd all be saying 'no comment' and 'I didn't see anything' to protect her. We were saying today that we could just imagine the headlines - police interview 20 bus passengers who didn't see anything when a murder was committed in front of them. Police do not expect to make an early arrest.

This could make a brilliant crime story - perhaps this is my task for this weekend . . . .

Brilliant idea for a crime novel

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7777086.stm

I can't help feeling this has been used in a crime novel but offhand I can't think of one. An actor on stage was supposed to commit suicide by cutting his throat. He picks up the knife thinking it's the usual blunt stage prop and finds out too late that it's a real knife. Fortunately he survived to tell the tale and the audience having applauded a brilliant special effect were shocked when the 'corpse' got up and staggered off stage.

The police are investigating.