Walk With Me

Last time I took you for a walk with me, most of you seemed to quite enjoy that, and so, if you like, you are welcome to join me again - this time, for a longer walk, so this post will beome a bit long with more pictures than what I usually post.

By now, I think all of my readers know about my parents' allotment - I have certainly mentioned it often enough here recently :-)

And almost exactly a year ago, my mum and I did just what we did yesterday: take the train from our home town to the town closest to where the allotment is, and walk the rest. You can compare the pictures from a year ago to current ones here.

This time, though, I wanted to document more of the actual walk, and show you who we met on our way.

Shall we set off, then?

Starting out maybe half a mile after the train station, towards the vineyards. Look at that glorious cloudless sky!

 These will be turned into Trollinger. For now, they just need a few more such sunny days!

We met this fellow in the vineyards. He wasn't bothered at all and simply walked away calmly when we got too close for his liking.

 Just some shots of the vineyards. I love those old dry stone walls.

 Reaching the top of the slope, a bench awaits those who need a break (we didn't, not yet).

What an abundance of apples! I hope they'll get picked and won't be left to rot, as sadly sometimes is the case when people can't be bothered to look after their orchards.

 On we walk across the sunlit fields...

 ...down through a little valley and uphill again...

 ...and from the top of the hill, we can already see the village where, a bit further out, the allotment is.

 We take to the right...

 ...and at the bottom of the hill we meet some horses:

 Walking on towards the village...

 ...and to the bridge that leads into the village, crossing a river called Murr.

 It is not deep enough for boats, at least not here, which is partly responsible for it being so clean and healthy.

Healthy enough for trouts! Can you spot them? There is one very clearly visible towards the top right corner of the picture, but if you look closely, you will find lots more.

 The heron patiently waits for some careless trout swimming his way.

Almost exactly a year ago, my mum took a picture of me at almost exactly the same spot. A lot has happened since then!

 Coming into the village.

 Entrance to their Town Hall, built in 1580.

 A typical house for this area.

 We cross the village...

 ...and get out at the other end...

 ...past more vineyards.

 These geese were not too keen on having their picture taken!

 But the beautiful flowers (are these called Morning Glory in English?) didn't mind.

 More uphill - but this is the last bit, there's only another 15 minutes or so to walk from here.

Not going past without saying hello to the donkeys! They are very friendly, obviously used to being treated kindly by humans, and their fur is very well groomed.

 Right! Last bit uphill...

 Almost there!

This is the path in the allotment area, my parents' is the second to last off the right side.

All in all, the walk had, once again, taken us about 2 hours for the 10 or so kilometers, at a leisurely pace, with two short breaks and some photo stops.

We were ready for coffee and cake now!

 The fig tree is still here (see last year's post).

 And so are the flowers...

 ...apples...

 ...raspberries...

 ...and peppers. My dad grows black, green and red ones.

View from the bottom of the garden towards the patio; you can just about make out the blue table cloth on the table where we sat for our coffee.

I am so glad that I spent this beautiful day mostly outdoors - we didn't have that many this summer, and who knows how many more there will be before it turns too cold for such a long walk.

Read in 2011 - 20: Time For Bed

The subtitle of this book by David Baddiel says "A Novel About Sleep, Sex and Skewed Clocks", and also on the cover, it says "Very, Very Funny..." Roddy Doyle.

Now, we've been talking about book reviews about a week ago here on Frances Garrood's blog, and I guess most of you will agree with me when I say that book reviews are very much a matter of personal taste and mood. What one would enjoy reading in a certain situation may be put down with a shrug, not speaking to the reader, a year earlier or later, due to different experiences and situations in life.

Therefore, when I read something like the "Very, Very Funny..." comment on the cover of a book, I never simply trust it, and such comments usually do not induce me to read or buy a book.

What does make me want to read a book, though, are the reviews of my fellow bloglanders here, or when my mum or my sister have read something and tell me about it. Also, the reviews I find in my weekly newspaper, the ZEIT, are often interesting, and I have read and/or bought books more than once because of something I found there.

"Time For Bed" was given to me by my mum some time ago. Back then, she told me how she'd come into its possession, but I must admit I've forgotten the story; all I know is that she didn't want to read it and so gave it to me. She does read English books, but not almost all the time like I do, and I don't think she would have liked this one anyway.

Why not? Because it is rather vulgar, and I find the main character hard to sympathize with. Gabriel Jacoby is an insomniac in, I think, his thirties, who shares a flat in London with a guy who is just as un-indearing as he is. The place is described as teeming with dirty dishes, dying potted plants and heaps of useless clutter that I know I'd go insane about after just stepping through the front door. He does not work apart from writing the occasional bit for his brother's paper, and generally just drifts along in his life, being as obsessed about his not-sleeping as his mother is about the Hindenburg (you can find out about that here on Wikipedia). His father apparently does nothing but yell abuse at his mother all day, something that I did not find funny at all, but quite upsetting for the sheer idea of it and the over-use of really nasty swear words. 

Don't get me wrong - I am certainly not a prude, and not alien to use a less-than-white word every now and then myself if something or someone makes me very angry, but I do not enjoy vulgarity and obscenity. The sex scenes (there are not quite as many as the subtitle would want us to believe) are alright, if you do not mind rather explicit (but short) descriptions.

The story itself develops as Gabriel tells the reader that he is in love with his brother's wife. Really, deeply in love - he just happened to meet her after his brother had already met her. Had it been the other way round, he is convinced Alice would be his wife now, and not Ben's.

Then Alice's sister returns after several years in the US, and the inevitable happens: Gabriel and Dina become an item.

Quite far into the book, in chapter 22 (of 25), we're in for a surprise (at least I didn't see it coming). The way the book ends nicely rounds up the plot, and is it only my impression or is there a lot less of the swearing and vulgar language going on? Some scenes in the second half of the book were really quite funny, and some bits I even found touching.

Here is how Gabriel describes his feelings for Dina after they have been together for some time:

I feel more and more that I respond towards her without reference to her sister; that, weighing up the matter rationally, taking into account her complexity and her sarcasm and her secrecy and her skin, I am probably more compatible with tight and wound-up Dina than with slack Alice. Of course, the employment of rationality is surely the biggest cliché of romance: we all know that there is no better indication that the lovelorn hero really wants to be with X than telling hismelf that, rationally, he is better of with Y. But in reality, calibration can be made, and, in this case, the calibration is the difference between reality and fantsay; I know now that it's stupid to try and compare my feelings for Dina with my feelings for Alice because they live in different emotions compartments.

Some pages later, there is a whole paragraph dedicated to Dina's eyebrows:

Her eyebrows lift together in the middle, giving her a troubled, slightly pleading look which makes my chest ache. I've learnt, now, that the range of Dina's eyebrow movements extends far beyond ironic arching. They can bend to indicate interest, dive together for convern, flip for amusement, and much more: they are two synchronised swimmers on her forehead. Much of the beauty of her face, in fact, lies in its mobility, a mobility which is happy to run the risk of occasional ugliness, as opposed to Alice, whose face is constantly beautiful, but constant to the point of stasis.

That bit goes to show how well David Baddiel can write - even more of a shame, then, that he has not put it to better use in this book.

Oh, and I can't believe this is only my 20th book this year! Hardly impressive for someone who calls herself Librarian :-)

More Catching Up

One year ago, I wrote about how the beginning of a new month feels for me here, and somehow, this is especially true for September.

This year, I am in quite a different situation; for one thing, work has changed for the better. There are a number of other changes that happened in the course of the year, most of which my regular readers know about.

Work and other things have kept me busy; there are several things lined up in my mind I want to blog about during this month, such as Gratitude, Patience, the GamesCom 2011, my autumn wardrobe (this post has given me the idea for that), some recipes and book reviews - quite what you are used to read from me.

But for now, I am only going to show you some pictures I took three weeks ago (I told you there is a lot to catch up with!), because they fit the mood and feel of these last days of summer so well:

The plum tree at my parents' allotment, full of delicious plums on August 12th - now, at the beginning of September, my parents have so much fruit they hardly know what to do with it! There is, believe me, a limit to the amount of plums I can eat, and to the number of cakes my mum can bake and we can eat :-) She has now started on a plum liqueur, spiced with cinammom. Sounds good, doesn't it?

 A close up of some of the plums before they were ready to be picked.

Buzzards. It wasn't easy to zoom in on both of them at the same time with my camera. My fascination with these beautiful birds is as big as when I wrote this; and I am happy to let you know that The Longing - or at least one important part of it - has been fulfilled this year.

Then, there are the wasps... obviously conferring on the tip of my small yellow plastic watering can whether it is worth bothering me or not. "Shall we bug Meks a bit, what do you think?" - "Nah, she just turns hysterical, it's not much fun to watch her flailing her arms and running from the kitchen." - "You're right, won't do us any good if there isn't some food in it for us." And off they took, once I had opened the kitchen window as widely as possible.

There should be a book review soon, as I am on the last few pages of my current read, and maybe I'll manage to write some more over the weekend.