Security

The title of a book by Stephen Amidon which I've just read. Set in small town America it deals in an understated way with the goings on - legal and illegal - of the people who live there. Edward is a security expert whose company installs alarm systems. He has a serious insomnia problem and an ex-girlfriend who seems to occupy his current thinking more than is wise. His wife, Meg, is an up and coming local politician. Doyle Cutler is a powerful local figure. Edward happens to be in his office when the telephone operator receives a message of an alarm activation at Doyle's house. Even though Doyle himself answers the phone and says everything is all right, Edward feels there's something strange going on and drives out to the house to re-assure himself.

A few days later Mary Steckl, a student at the local university claims she was sexually assaulted at Cutler's house on the night of the false alarm. Edward believes she is telling the truth and tries to find out what happened. His wife meanwhile has reasons of her own for putting a different interpretation on Mary's story. You can almost feel the claustrophobic atmosphere of this small town through the author's writing.

I thought the characters were interesting and believable and the writing was stylish. The book wasn't too American - which some American fiction is with loads of references it is difficult to understand if you live this side of the Atlantic. The ending also fitted the rest of the book even though it wasn't quite what I expected.

Is this really a pandemic?

Flu of any description is very unpleasant as I know from personal experience. certainly the last time I had it I didn't really care whether I recovered or not for about 3 days - which is bad. I can't help feeling the dangers of the swine flu are somewhat exaggerated just as they were with SARS and bird flu. Having lived through a smallpox epidemic - not that I remember much about it except queueing until late in the evening for the vaccination; as well as two serious flu epidemics and the Cuban missile crisis I'm not sure I'm going to lose any sleep over it.

Are a few cases in most of the major countries the criteria for a pandemic? As a percentage of world population the numbers seem trivial at present. Just looked it up in Wikipedia which quotes the World Health Organisation. It has to be a new disease and one that causes serious illness and spreads easily amongst humans. www.wikipedia.com So now we know.

Earthquakes

I am interested in earthquakes having experienced two in this country. I keep the British Geological survey and the US equivalent in my Internet favourites and look at the latest quakes most days.

There was one near Ulverston in Cumbria today which was pretty large by British standards - 3.7. I've just added up the number in the British Isles in the last 30 days and realised that this last month seems to have been quite active. 8 on the mainland and 3 in the English Channel including one today. Admittedly the British Geological Survey record quakes under 1 in magnitude but even so this seems to be quite a large number for us. Normally it's perhaps 4 or 5 and sometimes there's only one or two. Today the map is full of red dots!

www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/ should you be interested too.
www.earthquake.ugs.gov/ American version and covers the world.

Currently reading

I'm still reading People with a Purpose by Trevor Barnes about Teach Yourself books over the last 70 years. In total contrast I've also started reading Awakening by S J Bolton - whose Sacrifice I thought excellent some months ago.

People with a Purpose is brilliant for showing how ideas and attitudes have changed over the last 70 years. For example equal pay for equal work was just a pipe dream and considered a little stupid at that in the 1940s. On the other hand Teach Yourself Mothercraft stated quite plainly that bringing up children should be a joint effort involving both husband and wife which in the 1940s was perhaps ahead of its time.

Awakening is scary if you have a dislike of snakes. If you have a phobia then you'd be better not to read it at all. This author does suspense as well as anyone I've ever read. More when I've finished it.

People with a purpose

I've just started reading a fascinating little book called People with a Purpose by Trevor Barnes. It was written to celebrate the 70th anniversary recently of the Teach Yourself series. It consists of a very amusing commentary on books in the series from its inception in 1938.

First in the series was Teach Yourself to Cook in 1938. Shortly after there was Teach Yourself Flying - which was recommended to people wanting to join the RAF during World War II. It included a section on acrobatics and how to do them but included a comment about this sort of thing only appealing to young men. I don't believe there is a modern equivalent of Teach Yourself Flying!

In the early days there was one called Teach Yourself how to Live which was perhaps the forerunner of the modern phenomenon of popular psychology. War time titles reflected the restrictions on all aspects of daily life and Teach Yourself Dressmaking featured ways of recycling old clothes.

I'm finding it really interesting especially seeing how the style of writing has changed over 70 years and of course the subjects covered.

Dr Crippen rehabilitated

I finished reading Martin Edwards' Dancing for the Hangman - a fictional recreation of the events which led up to this infamous murder case. Crippen writes his version of his life in between conversations with his solicitor - who seems to have done him no favours - newspaper cuttings, extracts from evidence given at his trial and other contemporary documents.

Crippen himself comes over as a determined individual on the fringes of medicine even though he was a qualified doctor. It seems as though one of his main motivations was to earn enough money to keep his wife, Cora, in singing lessons and music hall costumes.

Crippen did not have private means and so he gravitated to the charlatan side of medicine in order to earn enough to support himself and his wife. He does not appear to have been terribly successful as a business man and was consequently just scraping by much of the time. He was by turns naive and knowledgeable about people and possibly trusted some to have his best interests at heart when they were simply furthering their own ends. Did he murder his wife? Will we ever know? This book certainly raises some interesting questions and puts forward one possible theory of how it happened.

I found the book fascinating and well written - though I have to confess to skipping over the gory bit! I thought the relationships between Crippen, his wife Cora and lover Ethel Le Neve were very well done and believable as was his relationship with the policeman in the case - Walter Dew. Did he think he got the right man? The way the media - then only newspapers - treated the case was also fascinating. Did they influence the outcome? We are never likely to know. Well worth reading whether you like crime fiction or true crime.

Ducks

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I like watching ducks. I was waiting for the bus yesterday morning and idly watching a family of ducks - mother, father and 5 tiny baby balls of brown fluff. They were pottering about the kid's playground - which is a large grass expanse with swings etc.

I noticed the mother duck was shaking out her wings and then preening her chest feathers and the babies were copying her. Of course their wings are hardly developed at that stage but they were doing their best to follow suit! Then they all curled up in a hollow and went to sleep with the father duck apparently standing guard with one eye out for danger.

Motorists round here stop for ducks to cross the road - especially at this time of year when there are babies about. Even buses and lorries stop so quite often you'll see a queue of 3 or 4 vehicles patiently waiting while a group - or even a single duck - cross the road. It's rare to see a squashed one.