A slightly misleading title, since no-one is really murdered "by nightmare" in this novelette. The nightmare element in the story is, instead, just what it is: nightmares the heroine is suffering from (and they don't really have much to do with the entire story).
I found this short murder mystery by Jennette Green for free on the Kindle shop, and I'm afraid I have to say that it would have been a bad idea to actually pay for it. Neither the writing style nor the plot are particularly good; I did not learn enough about the main character to really care about what was happening to her, or to her neighbours (one of them gets murdered, another one attacked).
On the author's home page, the summary for "Murder by Nightmare" reads:
May has never liked to be alone at night, because that's when nightmares haunt her.
However, when her husband leaves for the weekend, she's
certain she'll be safe home alone in their suburban neighborhood. But
when the man next door is attacked, and the woman across the street is
murdered, her life begins to take on a nightmarish quality. Who is
behind the attacks? Will the nightmares ever end?
All that sounds like it could make for a suspense-filled evening, tucked up cosily in bed with my Kindle and some chocolate. Instead, what I found was some very illogical behaviour from both the heroine and her neighbours, descriptions that did not lend any credibility to neither characters nor story, and me ending up only caring for Marmalade, May's ginger cat (nothing happens to him, I can tell you that without spoiling the story for you).
I can almost hear my sister's reasonable voice, telling me that I shouldn't expect any better with all the free downloads from the Kindle shop. Well, I've had some really good reads come my way through this method. This novelette wasn't one of them.
Yes, I know; I said in my previous review that my next read was going to be non-fiction. And it was - I have finished reading it and already written my review, but because I am corresponding with the author and have invited him to add his own thoughts and comments to my review, that post will have to wait until I have his reply.
In the meantime, I've read the continuation of "Teacher, Teacher!", the review for which you can find here.
Again, Jack Sheffield has managed to recreate a world that does not exist any longer, even though it is not in a very distant past, but actually still quite fresh in my - and probably many other people's - memory: the years 1978 and 1979.
In "Mister Teacher", we accompany Jack Sheffield (and many of the characters we already met in the first book of the series) through his second year as headmaster of a small school in a Yorkshire village. There are new children at the school, and we get to know some of the people from the village a bit better.
Jack's relationship with Beth evolves and undergoes several changes; he now meets her sister for the first time, and she provides some interesting scenes in the book.
Just as before, the story is sprinkled with bits and bobs typical for the time in which it is set, making no doubt for some nostalgic moments for British readers, and giving some formerly unknown information to anyone who did not grow up in England.
One such example is about money:
"I can't get used to these new smaller pound notes, Mr. Sheffield; they're like Monopoly money," said Vera. "The way things are going, they'll have pound coins next." She chuckled to herself at the absurdity of the idea.
A newspaper headline "Bearded Bobbies" is mentioned; in the article, which the staff of the village school share during a break in the staff room, a Police Superintendent complains about 8 per cent of all policemen now wearing beards:
"What was his name again, Vera?" asked Anne.
"Harry Potter", said Vera.
"Well, that's a name we won't hear again, said Sally defiantly.
Here is one last quote for this review, to show you how well the author manages - in my opinion, that is - to convey the general atmosphere of the place without being lengthy:
The journey along the narrow lanes to Ragley was always a joy in summer. The cow parsley stood tall over the wild grasses, while the magenta bells of foxgloves competed for attention in the midst of unfurling bracken. Red Admiral butterflies danced among the nettles and the young tendrils of ivy invaded the dense quickthorn hedges.
Throughout this series, the author shows a remarkable eye for detail; he has obviously done thorough research to get the facts right even about things that do not promote the story line as such. For instance, he mentions that a girl brings her Tressy doll to school and shows it to the other girls at play time. Of course I went and had a look at what Tressy dolls were like, and found this page. Other things I did not have to look up, because I remember them well enough from 1978 and 1979, when I was 10 and 11 years old.
The third instalment of the "Teacher"-series is waiting on my shelf. After that, I will have read them all; I know the 7th book has just come out (you can read about it here), and maybe I'll get it from my mother-in-law when I'll be in Yorkshire in July.
For Christmas 2010, my sister gave me a toaster you can see here. It has been much appreciated and much used, but, sadly, it stopped functioning a few weeks ago.
Especially for our extended breakfasts when RJ is here on weekends, I do need a toaster, but also for myself every now and then, and so there was but one thing: get a new one now, not wait half a year until Christmas comes round again.
I found this one - it was the last of its kind at the shop, and as it had been the display item, I got it at a slightly reduced price:
Doesn't it go very well with my other breakfast things, such as the cereal bowls (another present from my sis)?
Sometimes it happens to me that I come across an item at the shops at a time when I am actually not looking for anything, but the item clearly has "Meike" written all over it. Could be a dress, a pair of shoes, or - as it was the case the other day - a bag:
Of course I don't go to bed with a bag, but it matches the colour of my bedroom wall so well that I decided to take its picture there, this kind of light blue being my second favourite colour after yellow. The bag has the right size for an A4 file to fit in perfectly, and so it is very useful for work. It goes very well with one of my suits shown here, and I hope it will last for a long time - it wasn't expensive (not real leather) but doesn't look as cheap as it was ;-)
Oh, and just to show you how well the pair of trousers I got for my birthday goes with my new toaster, here's a "fashion shot" that makes it obvious to anyone that I am nuts about dots:
I wore this outfit last Sunday for the Horse Market parade. But - you guessed it - that will be the stuff for another (or several other!) post(s) :-)
Oh, and you can tell from my choice of outfit that Sunday really was a SUNday, true to its name!
I promise this is the last of my three posts about one single afternoon in and around the park(s)!
But as I said at the end of the previous post, after the Roman ruins, I walked through the deer park and came across some interesting creatures, and Kay can't wait to see them :-)
Here you are, Kay:
To be honest, the first two pictures are not from the deer park, but from the palace grounds. I took them from the top of the wall above one of the large courtyards, where some building and restoring material is stored. You can tell by the plants growing between the old stone urns and statues that nothing has been touched here in quite a while. I liked the combination of it looking so neat and tidy and yet forgotten and neglected at the same time.
Then, in the deer park, of course I saw - you guessed it - lots of deer. They do come close up to visitors, taking food (bits of old bread, chestnuts in autumn) out of your hand, but as long as there is plenty of fresh green grass to graze for them, they are not particularly interested in people.
On a narrow side path leading to the watering hole, where hardly ever anybody walks, I came across this adventurous sheep:
She was not at all bothered by me, just curious. Her coat still shows patches of the winter fur that has not come off yet. I think she is still relatively young and doesn't have little ones herself (otherwise she would have been with them).
Big boss was nearby, making sure his family was all well.
Kay, I won't have to tell you to look for the heart shape in this picture, do I? :-)
I also met a few red squirrels, but they were too quick for my camera, and of course there is a good variety of bird life in these big old trees.
This curious "creature" I spotted far in the meadow (no access for humans, because of the danger of branches falling off the old trees):
I quite like the idea of some ancient creature quietly living its hidden life in the depths of the park, but of course it is only a large branch fallen off one of the trees (which goes to show that the warning signs, forbidding people to walk there, are there for a reason).
To give you a bit of historical background for the deer park:
Eberhard Ludwig, Duke of Wuerttemberg (that was before it became a kingdom) and founder of Ludwigsburg, used this part of a forest as his own private hunting ground, for the pleasure of himself and his guests. He had it fenced in as early as 1707 (the foundation stone for the palace had been laid only three years earlier). His successors had some redesigning done on the park, until in 1806 King Friedrich reverted back to the more natural looks of today. In 1937, the deer park (its official name is Favoritepark, by the way) was listed as the first protected nature reserve of Wuerttemberg, and it still is one today. This means that people are not allowed to pick plants in there, start camp fires or do anything else potentially dangerous to animals and plants. It is fenced in with three revolving gates in order to keep the deer and sheep in, but admission is free, and it is a wonderful place to walk in or rest, no matter the season.
At the end of my previous post, I said that I walked on after my "rosy" visit to the park, visiting a place I had not been to in a long time, and that this would have to wait for another post. Well, that post is here now, and the place is a site of Roman remains very close to the deer park. Just to give you an idea of the general geography of the place: the palace grounds is the park where I took the pictures of the roses and poppies. It is separated from the deer park by a very busy road, but one can walk across a foot bridge without having to get too close to the traffic.
Both parks and how they are connected I have shown you before, but I have not taken my camera to the site of the Roman remains just outside the deer park until Wednesday afternoon, when sun, blue sky and birdsong beckoned me to leave my desk and go out for a nice long walk.
Any of my readers who are even remotely familiar with European history will know that the Romans were, at some time or other, almost everywhere - and my hometown is no exception.
While we do not have impressive ruins such as amphitheatres or baths and the like, we have our very own villa rustica - or at least we know where it once was.
In the 2nd century, a villa rustica was built on top of a long sloping hill rising up from the fertile Neckar (river) valley in what today is the edge of Hoheneck (literally "High Corner"), a part of Ludwigsburg. Wikipedia defines a villa rustica as "a villa set in the open countryside, often as the hub of a large agricultural estate (latifundium). The adjective rusticum was used to distinguish it from an urban or resort villa. The villa rustica
would thus serve both as a residence of the landowner and his family
(and retainers) and also as a farm management centre. It would often
comprise separate buildings to accommodate farm labourers and sheds and
barns for animals and crops."
What today is known as the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg was inhabited by Celtic tribes. The Roman occupation started in earnest in the first half of the first century, gradually expanding north-eastwards from the river Danube. 200 years later, in the year 260, some of the Germanic tribes living north of the frontier wall broke through that frontier and put an end to the Roman era in Wuerttemberg.
For a long time, the remains of the villa were used as a very convenient self-service quarry by anyone who needed building materials. The place's history slipped into oblivion. It would take around 1.800 years until, early on in the 20th century, some digging took place and the villa was rediscovered. The digging was not completed, though, and for the sake of preservation of the few remaining walls, they were covered again. In 1986, a more thorough digging was done, and finally, in 1991/1992, it was decided to turn the site into an open-air museum, open 24/7 all year round.
Today, the "museum" is a bit neglected, I'm afraid; the original idea was to offer a glimpse into daily life on a Roman farm by showing in small sample fields what sort of crop was planted and harvested in those days, and in a small walled garden, what herbs were used for culinary and medicinal purposes.
Both the sample fields and the herbal garden are still there, complete with the signs telling anyone who is interested the name of each plant and what it was used for, but some fields are overgrown with weeds or plants from the neighbouring plots, while others are barren. The herbal garden shows the same kind of contrast: some beds are as good as empty (the basil has, I suspect, all been picked by people who - not unlike those who in centuries past used the old buildings as quarries - consider the garden their personal supermarket), while others have been completely taken over by a species different to the one originally intended to grow there.
Still, the site shows the original outline of the buildings, along with a few Roman artefacts, such as this altar stone:
The inscription reads: DEO MERCVRIO CVLTORI RIPANVS EX IVSS(u) E(ius) L(ibens) L(aetus) M(e)R(ito), which means more or less "To the God Mercurius, carer of the field, Ripanus has gladly had this altar erected and paid for it." It is assumed that Ripanus was a wealthy landowner (some sort of gentleman farmer) who donated this altar, hoping for more of Mercurius' blessings for his land.
Horses played an important role in working the land, not just in the military part of Roman life, as this stone relief of horse goddess Epona shows:
As I said, the field-and-garden part of the museum is somewhat neglected, but the entire site has such a quiet and peaceful atmosphere to it, in spite of the busy playground on one side of it and the residential area on the other. Is it the closeness to the deer park with its large old trees and leafy paths, or the fact that the site is so little known that hardly anyone finds their way there? I don't know; I just know that I am glad I went there on Wednesday, read all the information provided on the signs and took these pictures to take home with me.
From there, I walked through the deer park, taking a route home different to the one I had set out on.
I came across some interesting creatures - not just deer, mind you! - there, but, once again, that will have to wait for another post.
And they come in (almost) all colours, as you can see from the pictures I took yesterday afternoon at the park:
Yesterday afternoon? Park? On a Wednesday? Yes - I decided to stop working at around 3.00 pm (I was working from home that day); all the tasks I had set myself for the day were finished, and it was simply gorgeous out there! So I grabbed my camera and went out.
I had difficulties finding any purely white roses; there were a few but they were hidden quite well behind green leaves, and I did not want to step into the flower beds (you simply don't do that at the park) to get close enough for a decent picture.
Of course I am aware that there is an almost infinite variety of colours for roses, but these were the ones I saw (and smelled!) yesterday.
Is anyone else reminded of these paintings, or is it just me?
Oh, and of course there's not just roses there at the park - I could have taken hundreds of pictures of all sorts of beautiful flowers. These poppies I found particularly striking:
They were huge, and I can't remember having seen poppies in that particular part of the park before.
I walked on after that (altogether, I walked for almost 2 1/2 hours) and visited a place I had not been to in a long time, but that will have to wait for another post.
While I was having a half-day trip down memory lane a few weeks ago, last Saturday I went for a shorter and closer-by walk with my Mum, a walk that took us to places filled with memories for both of us, although for different reasons.
After many days of rain and cold, Saturday began sunny and bright (although still very chilly), and we decided to walk from our town across the fields to the nearby smaller town of Kornwestheim. That picturesque place has featured on my blog once before, last year in April.
If he was still alive, my grandpa (Mum's Dad) would have been 99 years old on that day. And although we did not go to the cemetery to "pay our respects" (to us, a person's memory is not kept alive by a piece of rock somewhere, but by us remembering them in our hearts and minds), it was a good reason for going there and giving our walk a purpose.
At the cemetery, these beautiful azalea were just a little past their best, but still looking glorious:
Leaving the cemetery, we had three more stops in mind before making our way back to Ludwigsburg: First, I asked to walk through the Stadtgarten ("Town Garden") and look at the small fountain by the wall, the place of one of my earliest childhood memories. Second, we wanted to try and find the house were the painter of the beautiful sunflower painting used to live (more about him later). Third, we intended to have a drink and maybe a piece of cake or a snack at the small café that is our preferred stop whenever we are in Kornwestheim.
There were several roads we could take to reach the Stadtgarten, and we decided to explore a path not even my Mum was familiar with - and that is saying something, since she spent a lot of time in this town as a child and teenager, with her grandmother and many other relatives living there in those days.
The narrow public foot path took us along the stone wall at the back of the old (disused) cemetery. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I do have a thing for old, more or less neglected places, and so I couldn't resist taking a few pictures across the wall:
In the background, you can spot the spire of the old church that I showed you in my older post about Kornwestheim, mentioned and click-linked above.
We came out of the path still in the oldest part of town, with some beautifully restored timbered houses:
It wasn't far (nothing in Kornwestheim is really far) from there to the Stadtgarten, and we sat on a bench in the sun for a while, close to the fountain with the frog that I remember from the time I was about 2 or 3 years old - my great-grandmother was still alive then, living in the road next to the park, and I was taken there often by both my Mum and my Grandma when they were visiting.
For my Mum, sitting on that bench brought back memories of many a day spent at that very spot, reading books she had borrowed from her mother or from her Onkel Otto, books such as "Gone With The Wind" (which I have never read myself, by the way).
When the sun hid behind clouds and it became too chilly for our liking, we went to the café. On our way there, we tried in vain to find the house where the painter used to live, but we couldn't be entirely sure where it was according to the rather vague description my uncle (Mum's brother) had dug from his memory and sent her by email when she asked him what he remembered about the painter.
Of course, a lot has changed since Mum and her brother were children, but this is what we managed to piece together:
As mentioned in the post where I showed you the sunflower painting (click-linked above), the painter's name was Fritz Hartnagel. He was my grandfather's colleague; their workplace was a foundry in Kornwestheim (the company ceased to exist in 1981). Mr. Hartnagel's wife had cancer, and he quit his job in order to take care of her full-time. That was VERY unusual for a man to do in those days (we are talking the late 1940s or early 1950s here), and my Mum's parents were greatly impressed by that. Of course, back then, not working meant almost no money; the benefit system was not what it is today. To pay bills, Mr. Hartnagel sold paintings to friends and former colleagues; two of these ended up in my grandparents' possession: the sunflower one and another one of the Watzmann, a mountain in the Bavarian Alps.
We think that "our" Fritz Hartnagel was a relative of (most likely not identical with) Fritz Hartnagel, friend of Sophie Scholl and later husband of her sister Elisabeth. But we don't know exactly how the painter fits in; the area is right, and so is more or less the time frame. You don't know who Sophie Scholl was? She was a student (went to school in Ludwigsburg and later studied at university in Munich) who actively (but without violence) resisted the Nazi regime. For her resistance activities, she was convicted of high treason and executed in 1943, when she was 21 years old. She and the "Weiße Rose" ("White Rose", the resistance group) are very well known in Germany. You can read about Sophie here on wikipedia.
