Keep Using Cash

I've never much liked the idea of a cashless society and Friday was an excellent example of why. Theoretically, I don't particularly want to give banks, credit card companies, or whatever applications I use them through so much free information about my spending habits, though in truth I don't think about that as much as I should. 

I try to avoid online shopping where possible partly to support local businesses - price matters but so does choice, a decent range of competitively paid jobs, the chance of some on hand expertise, human interaction, not having to negotiate around delivery times or drop boxes, not having packages stolen from your doorstep - and I don't believe Jeff Bezos got where he is by fair pricing and paying staff decently. The other reason is it lays you open to fraud from too many angles. 

I'm not a fan of high contactless limits either - lose your card and someone could spend hundreds of pounds on it in minutes, lose your phone and you're high and dry. I couldn't count the number of people using apps to pay via phones or watches who can't quite comprehend when the machines say no, it's time to verify your pin. I assumed Britain's relentless march towards a cashless society was a universal thing until I was in Vienna a few years ago and saw how many cash-only businesses there were there (they weren't big on Sunday opening either which was refreshing, if a little awkward when you arrive on a Sunday with no idea it's going to be an issue). 

After spending over a year and making at least 5 attempts with the Bank of Scotland to get a joint account I'm really not a fan of how banks have cut back on services either.  You need to have a face-to-face appointment to open a joint account. In some branches, the waiting list was over 6 months, in others there simply wasn't anybody who was authorised to set one up, but this is surely something people still need? The extravagant length of the queues whenever I go near a bank (never more than 2 tellers available on the desk) suggest there's no shortage of demand for them either. 

So with all this in mind, Friday was interesting. Our card machines were out for several hours with the Microsoft problems, and most of the day for some people depending on which systems their bank used. We've been seeing a bit more cash generally since the cost of living crisis hit - cash is easier to budget - which is my main reason for liking it. In the end a surprising number of people were ready with cash, they'd listened to the news and come prepared - there were also a fair few who hadn't and weren't. They were uniformly outraged that they couldn't pay as they wished and generally didn't have a bank card as a back up.

Are you, dear reader, cash or contactless people and if contactless have the recent outages made you think again about carrying at least some money around with you? 

Lessons in Crime - edited by Martin Edwards

It's been a while since I've read a crime classics anthology, and this one has been an absolute treat as well as perfectly timed for the start of the school holidays around here. At work we have a perennial debate; which is more stressful? Summer holidays or Christmas. The consensus is generally the school summer holidays on the grounds that not only do we not have the extra staff, but with our own holidays we have less than normal, and everyone is hot and bothered. Last Friday was the end of term here, a few thousand kids, very excited to be free of school for the next six weeks descended on the city center and it was chaos. 

If nothing else it absolutely put me in the mood for a few academic murders, kidnaps, and near misses. There are a couple of absolute gems in this collection - Herbert Harris's Low Marks for Murder where what seems like an excellent plan falls apart, somewhat to the readers relief as the culprit is a cold-blooded piece of work, The Harrowing of Henry Pygole which almost veers into horror territory, and Miriam Sharman's Battle of Wits all particularly stood out. 

It's a nicely put together anthology too with some old favourites - Dorothy L Sayers, Michael Innes, Arthur Conan Doyle, alongside some unexpected names - that Jacqueline Wilson and those 3 stories above all from names I didn't immediately recognise. I love an anthology that does this - gives me a few safe bets and introduces me to lots of new things, or encourages me to reassess a writer I don't normally care much for. Edmund Crispin for me in this case - but the example here is both short and effective and has temporarily made me forget why I generally dislike his books. 

The visits to Oxford are charming too, and altogether I thoroughly recommend this collection. It might partly be a timing thing and I've never been disappointed by any of the anthologies in the series, but one has gone straight onto my favourite list. 

Storm Pegs - Jen Hadfield

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this, and I'm not sure where to start with talking about it. I am on the other hand absolutely sure that one reading isn't enough to have properly got to grips with it, my copy is an uncorrected proof, in the fullness of time I'll buy the paperback edition and compare notes. 

Storm Pegs mixes biography, nature writing, poetry, travel, and an examination of language and place. It's both personal to the author's experience and full of moments of recognition and connection. Jen starts her introduction with a moment of wondering how to define a place like Shetland which defies easy definition. 'Where am I' She asks? I in turn am wondering how to define her book. 

The answer to both questions might be home. My relationship with Shetland informs how I've read 'Storm Pegs', not everyone will feel the same about it as I do, but reading this for me was like seeing a much loved view after a while away from it. When I wrote about Kathleen Jamie's 'Cairn' I talked about how these two books have become a sort of literary pair of meids to me - meid is a Shetland word for landmarks seen from the sea - line them up just so and you know where you are; you can find your way home, or mark a good fishing spot so. 

I stand by that. It's been an eventful few months full of change and planning, these books have been fixtures that continue to help me navigate through this current set of challenges. But why should you read 'Storm Pegs'? 

It's the structure of the book that makes it so special. If I've read Jen's posts about it correctly it's been years in the making, so most of the 17 years she covers are in the present tense and arranged roughly by season and by the sense of a word. There's a beginning, a first visit, the decision to stay, and an end for this book at least; the starting of a family. The middle part of all this exists outside of a strict chronology, it doesn't read like fiction, but it's compelling in a way I associate with fiction. 

It's Shetland that's at the center of this book, seen through Hadfield's eyes and experiences. She alludes to the things she's doing in that time - the travel for residencies and teaching, the poetry she's writing, the relationships she finds, and the house she builds, but they are peripheral things compared to the landscape she finds herself in and the elements that define it. If this book is like anything I've ever read it's Nan Shepherd's 'The Living Mountain' which must, I think, have been a key influence - references to it and to Nan's relationship with her beloved landscape run through the book. It's hard not to think of George Mackay Brown either, except that where he looks back, Jen looks forward or exists wholeheartedly in a moment. 

Hadfield's treatment of Shetland's language is interesting too - Storm Pegs is as much about exploring that language as anything else I think. Dialect as I remember it being spoken in the 1970s and 80s is fading away, but that's also been recognised and people are fighting for it. Mallachy Tallack talked about the twin pillars of accent and ancestry that gate keep a Shetland identity (I can't remember where exactly) with a sense of frustration of being kept out. 

Jen seems to have a less complicated delight in words that express something fundamental to her -  Lightsome/Lichtsome is one of them. She chooses to discuss it in the winter part of her book - I'd describe lightsome as something that you take joy in with others - good company and good times - an evening laughing with friends, though a person can also be lightsome. An example here is a group of women swimming through a sea filled with Mareel (bioluminescence - tiny luminous creatures in the sea that light up as anything moves through them). I have seen this, paddled in it, rowed a dinghy through it - it's magical, definitely lightsome, and so is the description of it here. 

The answer to Jen's question of where am I? Is somewhere a group of serious women can gather on a dark, drizzling winter's night to swim in a sea full of living light and for that to be both remarkable and not remarkable. I am not there but I wish I was. 

A Duke of One's Own - Emma Orchard

Another week has gone by in something of a blur. Work is busy; fortunately, after a not-great May, we've been flood-free for several weeks. There are interesting projects in hand, and on my part at least some excitement about today's election. I'm hoping for new faces and change, I'm not paying too much attention to polls - they've been wrong before. I'm not wildly optimistic about what the next few years will bring, the damage is too deeply rooted for a quick fix but if we can fix the water supply and work on the NHS as a country that would be something. 

I'm currently on a waiting list for an injection into my foot that will help with the referred pain arthritis is causing. I'm at the getting text messages to ask if I still need treatment stage of the process (yes I do, the arthritis has not gone away of its own accord). I hadn't considered the option of going private until the text landed, and haven't yet looked into it, but the pain is getting worse so at some point the consideration will be can I work like this? Or sleep. 

Altogether then there are a lot of distractions, so easy reading to keep my mind off the serious business of what kind of country we'll wake up to tomorrow is about all I can manage (current book is Lessons in Crime, the academic mystery themed British Library Crime Classics collection). I read A Duke of One's Own a little while ago, and because it was on a kindle app didn't exactly forget about it, but it was out of sight and therefore out of mind. 

Emma Orchard is a friend, we met during lockdown in the Georgette Heyer readalong on Twitter (as was). I like her books, I love the easter eggs for Heyer fans, the fact that her characters sometimes need to pee (I suppose it's part of the fantasy in a lot of romances that nobody has any bodily functions to contend with beyond sometimes being hungry). These books are funny, honest about female desire, and probably spicier than I would otherwise read.

The heroine of A Duke of One's Own is Georgie, sister to Lord Irlam, hero of the last book. Bridgerton style - because that's the current frame of reference, the Pendlebury's are a large and loving family of mostly boys. Georgie is a mess of a human being. She's young, stubborn, sexually curious, and full of hormones. It's a combination that has led to some very poor but entirely realistic decision making. 

The double standards applied to female sexuality are touched upon here, and although the consequences for stepping out of line might have been theoretically more severe in the past I sometimes winder how much they've really changed. I don't doubt for a moment that girls did mess around though, what mattered was not getting caught. For a woman in Georgie's position - a socially powerful family who will support her, and plenty of money, I also wonder how severe the consequences would even have been? 

This is Emma's third book, the tone is more assured each time, and again, the thing I really love here is that people might behave outrageously from time to time, but always in a way that makes sense for the character, and is understandable from a human perspective. Add to that humour, genuinely complex emotional situations, a hugely likable cast of side characters who get proper space and attention, and you have a series to really enjoy. 

D is for Death - Harriet F. Townson

I am so conflicted about this book. On the one hand, it's funny, pays homage to golden age crime fiction, specifically, but not only that of Dorothy L. Sayers, and does it with both wit and wholehearted enthusiasm. It's an entertaining setup for a series to come, has likable characters, dozens of easter eggs for like-minded fans of the aforementioned golden age crime writers, is set against a publishing and library background which is jolly, and makes some interesting social points.

On the other hand, it gets some silly details wrong - it's set in 1935, tights are mentioned instead of stockings, a man wonders around the Cafe de Paris holding a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne in 1 fist - it's a 38-kilo dead weight, I've tried lifting them, it's not a one-handed job. More importantly, there are some weird continuity issues around the main characters and all of it should have been picked up by an editor. Harriet F. Townson is a pen name for Harriet Evans which makes it all the more surprising. 

On the whole I really enjoyed it and think this is a series that's going to be worth following. I will never not appreciate a chapter heading of 'Miss Pym Supposes', it might be a while since I've read Dorothy L. Sayers but there were references I recognised instantly, and a very fitting almost direct quote from the punt scene in Gaudy Night (if you know, you know). The inclusion of people of colour, queer characters, and Jewish ones is done smartly and underlines both the diversity of pre-war London and the politics of the time. References to real-life characters such as Baba Metcalf and Brenda Dean Paul (I looked her up) are well used too. If you don't know or remember who they are and do look them up it adds depth to the reading and serves as a reminder of how much more colorful real life can be than fiction, but it's done with a light enough hand that there's no need to follow up if you're not inclined to.

My biggest issue was with Dora and her mysterious money. We meet her escaping from a thoroughly unpleasant fiance - initially, she's described as swiping all the cash she can find in the more or less abandoned for now family home, she's meant to have inherited money from her mother but doesn't know what's become of it, later there's talk of a bank account that she's using (an unlikely thing for a girl to have in 1935) then there are postal orders that she's spent on clothes, and finally, she's been saving every scrap of pocket money for her train fair. As the money discussions are generally accompanied by reflections on how financially precarious a woman's situation was in the 1930's especially those who had been bought up to be ladies it matters. 

There's an aristocratic male character who seems destined to recur who's troubling too. There's a reason that Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham made their aristocratic sleuths younger sons, so spoiler, the reveal about Ben (well sign posted throughout the book) undermines the believability of his character somewhat. 

Overall if you love Sayers read it for the references and the jokes, enjoy it for what it is, and hope that the continuity issues are sorted out before the next book comes out. If these kind if details ruin a book for you though, it's going to be best avoided. 

Not In Love - Ali Hazelwood

My reading is all over the place at the moment, it's also included a lot of advance review copies and I'm never quite sure what the etiquette is for those - do review when I've read them, in this case a month or more before they come out, or do I wait as I did with Cairn? I think I wait, which means my head is full of Jen Hadfield's extraordinary biography about her life in Shetland, but I'm looking at Not in Love which I read a couple of weeks ago pre-funeral when I was in a totally different mood.

Ali Hazelwood continues to be my favourite contemporary romance writer - and as I've given up dabbling much in that pool that'#s unlikely to change anytime soon. She has a note at the beginning to say this book is less romantic comedy and more erotic romance - which is sort of true although I'm not a hundred percent convinced it's markedly more erotic than her previous books. The mood is slightly different though and her plotting and characterisation improves with each book so I'm not complaining.

You know what you're getting with a book like this, and you definitely know what you're getting with Ali Hazelwood - is the heroine an intelligent and able scientist with her life mostly together but some personal issues - yes she is. Is the hero equally smart and capable in his daily life but emotionally flawed - yep. Do they work it out together - they certainly do.

This one skirts around kinks, is more sex-positive than some of the earlier books in that the characters unapologetically enjoy hookups (in this it's a more explicit take on Mallory's character in Check and Mate) but has the same enthusiasm for consent that previous books have. Consent is sexy so that's a plus in y reading. 

I liked that the villain here (SPOILER) was a not much more senior female scientist and the setting is industry rather than academia - not a huge difference at the end of the day, but with Hazelwood, it's the background details of the workplace and the associated politics that make her books stand out. Basically this does exactly what it says on the tin, it's intelligent and funny romance with a convincingly happy ending. 

Cairn - Kathleen Jamie

The last few weeks have been busy, a funeral followed by working at a book festival interspersed with normal work with the now traditional skeleton staff and all the problems that brings with it. It's been exhausting but I think the worst is over now and I can work on getting back to something normal. 

I read Kathleen Jamie's Cairn a couple of weeks ago after getting an advance copy through work, it blew me away (though how publication date has worked around so quickly is frankly frightening). It's a slim book that could be read in a couple of hours, though that would not be the best way to approach it - this is one to dip in and out of and consider at pleasure. 

Jamie has collected her thoughts here - sometimes just a paragraph at a time, and used them to build a marker of turning 60. She considers grieving the loss of her parents, seeing her children embark on independent adult life, how the climate crisis has developed - it's been a recurring theme in her writing. How it feels to get older and a hundred other things. It's a contemplative little miracle of a book that came to me at exactly the point I needed to read it - 50 and caught up with my own grief. 

I have loved Jamies's writing since I discovered her (late) in 2012, I don't know if this is her best book - maybe not, but the right book at the right time is a powerful thing. There is a Shetland word - meid, that refers to prominent landmarks, such as a hilltop cairn, seen from the sea. Line up 2 or 3 of these and they tell you exactly where you are, and help you maintain a fixed point at sea - generally a favoured fishing spot. This summer Cairn, and Jen Hadfield's Storm Pegs are the literary equivalent of meid's for me. Between them I've found a place of calm in uncertain times.

I read somewhere that this book really pushes the line between poetry and prose - I take the point and can't really argue with it, but I might be more inclined to say that for Jamie here there is no line to blur or cross. Anyway, it's a beautiful, meditative, book that says much about the experience of being well into middle age without trying to impart any particular wisdom, and for that last point I'm especially grateful. 

Queen Macbeth - Val McDermid

It's been a long couple of weeks, but it's time to look forward again and get organised. I've read and am reading some remarkable things, and whilst I'm trying not to be over hopeful I'm keeping everything crossed for an election that brings a certain amount of change with it. 

I think Val McDermid's Queen Macbeth is the 5th book in Polygon's Darkland tales series (I've checked, it is), and what an excellent series it's turning into, even if not all the books are for everyone. I didn't dislike Alan Warner's 'Nothing Left to Fear From Hell' but I doubt I'll revisit it. Equally, I still feel a little nagging guilt that Ginny Jones disliked Columba's Bones which will probably be one of my best books of the year. But dissent and discussion are a good thing and hopefully, she will forgive me/still more or less trust my judgment. 

Lady Macbeth is having quite a moment - there are 3 reasonably high profile feminist retellings of her story around at the moment. This book, Ava Reid's 'Lady Macbeth', and Isabelle Schuler's Lady MacBethad. And there is of course Shakespeare's play overshadowing all of them. Mcdermid departs quite quickly from Shakespeare's version of Gruoch, though she does keep the witches and I like the way she does it. 

This version relies more on a history that doesn't need to flatter a Stuart king and interestingly she has Gruoch betray her first husband to conceive her child with Macbeth himself. It's maybe another swipe at Shakespeare who conspicuously makes his Lord Macbeth incapable of fathering a child (last time I saw the play this seemed a key point in it to me). 

In this version, Gruoch and her closest companions have been in exile after the apparent loss of Macbeth in battle, and now the loss of her son before he could secure the Scottish crown. This Macbeth and his Lady have ruled the country well for some years, they have friends and loyal subjects as well as political enemies, but the tide has turned on them. Gruoch is a danger to Malcolm, the next man to claim the kingdom - there's enough support for her that she might prove a rallying point. We meet them as they're about to be discovered and be forced to flee.

What follows is a tense journey full of danger and heartbreaking loss set beside Gruoch's memories of his this all came to be. There's an unexpected twist at the end and a clever resolution - and as definitely the shortest of the 3 Lady Macbeth's around at the moment is a very good place to start with her. MacDermid's take is thought provoking and smart. If the Darkland series excels at one thing (it excels at a few) it's in getting a lot into a novella. This Gruoch is compellingly human and less morally grey than some depictions, less supernatural too - though again, the way prophecy is handled here is interesting. It's fun to see MacDermid writing ina  different genre too. 

How many books are you reading right now?

Way back when I started blogging one of the things it helped me do was focus my reading - one book at a time. It worked for years and then it all fell apart, a process accelerated by getting a job in a bookshop where the tempatation and the proofs are constant. Somebody somewhere, probably Twitter, was asking if they were the only person to have an upstairs and a downstairs book. 

Obviously, they were not. I live in a one-bedroom flat so I don't even have the excuse of stairs being an effort to justify the state I'm in here. So these are the books I have on the go. There is the bedroom reading - Storms' Edge is currently on the left hand side of the bed, Godkiller, which I started months ago, and was really enjoying but somehow never finished is on the right along with Silver Birch which has been my intended next book for a while but keeps getting pushed down the pile on the right hand side.

I'm not sure these really count, but they probably do - my collection of Slightly Foxed quarterlies live in the bathroom. It's ideal for reading in the bath if you want to avoid turning into a chilled prune whilst the water cools but you need to read one more page.

In the kitchen there's Greekish and Sebze which I'm cooking from extensively at the moment, Sebze is an interesting read as well if like me you don't really know much about Turkish food or culture. 

I'm behind on reading Rosie Andrews Puzzle Wood - again, a very promising start, it is currently my bag book, the one that leaves the house with me.

In my sitting room there is the chair book that I didn't mean to start the other day but which was so compelling that a quick glance was all it took to find myself 30 pages in. 

There's the floor book for the jumper I'm knitting - it's by the sofa, and got moved because I started reading the sofa book, also very promising. I bought this one based on the comparison to Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood - that's an intriguing combination if accurate.

My desk gives as good an indication as any of the amount of books around read as well as unread at any one time.

I could pretend that the other chair didn't have its own book - The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, the books on the floor here mostly function as a useful place to balance a cup of tea with the added bonus of occasionally throwing out a forgotten gem.

And finally, there's the book I'm truly thinking of myself as reading at the moment - an arc of Jen Hadfield's Storm Pegs which I'm enjoying very much, I only hope I can find the focus to finish it in a timely fashion. 

What are you reading at the moment?

Notes From an Island - Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietilä

It's been an emotional week. Last Monday my father-in-law went into hospital, he was released back to his care home on Tuesday as it was clear he didn't have long left. He passed away on Sunday, he would have been 98 next week, had an adventure and achievement filled life, and was an absolute gentleman. His last days were as peaceful and painless as possible with excellent care, his sons and grandchildren had time to say goodbye. It's as much as an any of us can ask for in the end I think, but it does not diminish the gap he leaves behind him in the world. 

I don't know what he would have made of this book - he might have thought, as I do, that it's a little slight - not much more than a collection of notes and images that celebrate life on a tiny island in a Finnish archipelago, but he would have been in entire sympathy with Tove and Tooti's love of solitude and independence. He might well have recognised the feelings expressed in the last few pages of the books and Tove's final essay which together make this something special.

After decades of happy isolation life on the island becomes untenable, the island itself changes from a refuge to a sort of prison, with the sea and weather a constant threat. Ageing limbs are no longer capable of jumping in and out of boats easily, or stormproofing a cabin. I grew up on a somewhat larger island with a few more obvious comforts (stone walls, running water, a phone line) but not so very many, we left it for good when I was 18 but I absolutely recognise that feeling of disquiet. 

I recognise it further from dad's consternation at running aground on an underwater bar one night, of mum's feelings of isolation after I was born in the middle of winter when it was more or less impossible for her to get off safely with me until I was around 3 months old - there was only dad for company in that time. The people who bought the island from us sold it just over a year ago when age and health issues caught up with them. They would recognise those feelings too. In truth any of us who have ever found our bodies won't quite manage what's required in the moment and are left considering what that might mean will feel the truth of Tove's words and feel her and Tooti's loss.

It's a beautiful book, a first celebratory and then elegiac meditation on a beloved place in the world, combining Tove's writing, their friend Brunström's log book entries - he helped them build their cabin and set up their life there, and Tuulikki Pietilä's (Tooti) aquatints. I found it helpful in a difficult week, you might find comfort here too if you need it.