Oh woe is me! My head really hurts...I am making friends with my hot water bottle and the echinacea. So, another poem for sustenance:

LIFE'S GIFTS - Olive Schreiner, 1855-1920, South Africa

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift - in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, 'Choose!'

And the woman waited long: and she said 'Freedom!'

And Life said, 'Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, "Love," I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.'

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

(Published posthumously, 1923)
from THE NEW CENTURY OF SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY edited by Michael Chapman.

I have retreated to bed with a box of tissues, Vicks Vaporub and ginger tea. Have a poem today:

AN AFRICAN ELEGY - Ben Okri, Nigeria

We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things.

And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so good
Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless things even in our pain.
We bless them in silence.

That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.

And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here.

And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.

from THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN POETRY edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier

Recently I was delighted to discover an influential African connection to the Cathedral, dating back centuries! Thank you to my father for sharing with me SACRED BRITAIN: A Guide to the Sites and Pilgrim Routes of England, Scotland and Wales by Martin & Nigel Palmer.

"For over fourteen hundred years God has been worshipped in this Cathedral through the prayers and praises of countless generations." This is imprinted on the evening prayer handouts at Canterbury Cathedral, serving as a reminder of the age of the place, and of all the people who have passed through it. Yesterday evening the Cathedral choir was quite, quite superb - the boys' voices in particular absolutely soaring. While the sun is setting later, it was not direct shafts coming through the windows, but a resonating glow of light through the medieval stained glass.

Among the many who have passed through, Adrian the African, comes as the greatest and most wonderful surprise to me:

In 668 the Archbishop of canterbury elect, Wighard, died while in Rome to receive his authority. The Pope, St. Vitalian, decided to appoint in his place a man who would broaden the understanding of the newly established Roman Church and assist in establishing a Catholic hierarchy in Britain. In fact he sent two men: one was St. Theodore, the other St. Adrian.

Theodore was a Greek monk born c.602 in Tarsus, in what is today central Turkey. Adrian was an African - possibly a black African - who had become abbot of the great monastery of Monte Cassino. It was to him that the Pope originally offered the archbishopric, and it was the African who recommended the Greek from Turkey. The Pope agreed, so long as Adrian went as well. Adrian was in fact to live for thirty-nine years in England until his death.

Theodore laid the foundations for a just and equitable administration of the Roman Church in England and tried to heal the wounds between the Roman and Celtic Churches. It was his brilliance that set the Church on firm foundations. St. Adrian became abbot of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul just outside the city walls in Canterbury. This later became St. Augustine's, and today its site is occupied by St. Augustine's College. This gentle but firm and utterly incorruptible African monk established the monastery as a place of high learning, teaching Greek and Latin as well as philosophy and ethics. So when you walk through Canterbury today and see and hear people from a wide range of religious and ethnic backgrounds you are part of one of England's great cosmopolitan cities - where once Greeks and Africans ran the show and did so in such a way that what we have today we owe in no small part to these two men. (pp.114-116)

Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Anglican Church worldwide, a fascinating architectural and historic UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it is falling apart. Pollution is causing the outside stone to peel off and disintegrate, and towards the end of last year a section of one of the rose windows simply fell out overnight. It is a mammoth task. They have launched a fundraising drive, should you feel inclined to dig deep into your pockets.

PITY FOR POOR AFRICANS
I own I am shock'd by the purchase of slaves,
And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;
What I hear of their hardships, their tortures and groans,
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
For how could we do without sugar and rum?
William Cowper, 1788
quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2007

In my March 25th blogpost, when last we encountered Equiano, he had been recently kidnapped and separated from his sister. Over the next six months he is sold on to several different masters and traders, eventually travelling by river until he reaches the sea:

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship which was then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew, and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits and that they were going to kill me...when I looked around the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted (p.22).

Equiano is just eleven years old! Realizing the scope of the terrible situation he now finds himself in, Equiano is overcome with grief and refuses to eat, resulting in his flogging. As the ship leaves shore, all the "cargo" are forced below deck:

The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers.This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable, and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated.The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable (p.25).

This shocking experience soon causes Equiano to fall ill, and because he is so young he is allowed on deck unchained. It is hardly better - here he witnesses people throwing themselves overboard. After months at sea, the ship finally reaches Barbados. My next installment from Equiano's extraordinary life will pick up the trail here in Bridgetown. All extracts from Paul Edwards (Ed.) EQUIANO'S TRAVELS: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa the African.

A letter alerting me to two more books awaiting collection at the library have plunged me into a reading crisis! Ann over at Patternings was talking about this last week, and it certainly holds true for me, largely related to books I’ve reserved over the internet. Let’s face it – so tempting to reserve titles once you’ve been seduced by someone’s online review! What I realized looking at my teetering pile is that I have too many books on the go, but am finishing none. My mission for the weekend was to at least finish two which could be returned in exchange for the newly arrived ones. I've now done that, but am still engrossed in the following (all quotations from jackets):

26a – Diana Evans
In the past year it feels as though this has been shortlisted for just about everything. The rebirthing start has me wondering if it it my kind of book, but I'll reserve judgement for the moment.

THE BELLY OF THE ATLANTIC – Fatou Diome
I am a sucker for all books relating immigrant experience. I noticed this one around the time last year that the press here kept reporting on African bodies washing up on the beaches of mainland Europe – bizarre photographs of bikinied sunbathers under umbrellas with bodies slumped lifeless just yards away accompanied the column inches.

THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE – edited by Cathi Hanauer
I've had this checked out since February! Gender roles in workplace and home and the juggling act of modern societal pressures and marriage have long been an interest of mine. “Lifts the lid on an explosive social phenomenon: the angry working woman...”

THE CALIPH'S HOUSE – Tahir Shah
Shah buys and restores a house in Morocco. I'm all for a little restoration work. Morocco makes a nice change from all the relocation books set in Italy.

COMFORT WOMAN – Nora Okja Keller
The current book group selection over at Kimbofo's Reading Matters. Discussion starts Saturday, so I'll have to get a move on with this one.

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT – Gretchen Gerzina
Recommended by dovegreyreader following one of my enthusiastic ramblings on MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS. “As long as one has a garden, one has a future; and as long as one has a future one is alive.” Amen to that.

HARVEST OF THORNS – Shimmer Chinodya
“...a milestone in the history of Zimbabwe's war of liberation.” Highly recommended by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The Baobab Books copy I have is so dreadfully tatty that it is hardpushed to describe itself as a book. Countless library users have obviously loved it to death.

THE MARVELLOUS ADVENTURE OF CABEZA DE VACA - Haniel Long
“In late November, 1528 a handful of Spaniards, survivors of an ill-fated expedition to Florida, were washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these was Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, thirty-eight and the lieutenant of the expedition...a little gem that tells of what men can and cannot do when they must do something or die.” The Ecologist reading group selection.

POOR MERCY – Jonathan Falla
“Farah ibn Mashoud, a sweet-tempered young man of promise, was shot with a high velocity rifle on the road from Nyala to El Fasher – a work of some skill.” One of those unforgettable first sentences. Set in Darfur, Sudan. Given the current crisis there this seemed a good place to start. Fiction written by a former aid worker to the Sudan.

SACRED HUNGER – Barry Unsworth
Too thick! Too thick! Too thick! No doubt it is a good book, but the hardback's biblical proportions have left it languishing by my bedside.

STARDUST – Neil Gaiman
I've only ever read his graphic novels, which I consider works of pure genius. But the film of STARDUST is released this summer. I usually never see a film before reading the book (if it has literary antecedents) so it is giving me incentive to see this one done and dusted promptly. Danielle at A Work in Progress has just finished it.

TOLKIENS' GOWN – Rick Gekoski
Anything to do with used and antiquarian books is guaranteed to lure me in. Recommended by a South African friend, who recognises an obsessional book nature when she sees one.

Oh dear, the morning's post just plopped onto my mat and guess what? Another library reserved title has arrived. I wonder if they would consider increasing the number of books I'm allowed out at any one time?

"There are no Other People. It's just us." Go and read Neil Gaiman's piece from Thursday April 19. Follow the links through. It was the photos that got me.

There's nothing like wandering around a vast hall full of excitement - books are in the air! Well, truthfully, a library or good bookshop is better, but it is the promise of things to come which I always enjoy at the London Book Fair. Not working at buying and selling them this year meant that I was free to roam at will. I do miss knowing ahead of time what is coming out later in the year - anticipation and delayed gratification do add to the relishing of a new title by a favourite author. So collecting catalogues and chatting with the reps I used to see in the shop was interesting.

However, LBF is changing, and some of the big publishers wall themselves in like Fort Knox, staffing the entrance with folks that eye you with suspicion ("You shall not pass!"). It is always refreshing to pass the smaller publishers, like the charming Snowbooks (whose Emma Barnes coincidentally keeps a delightful publisher blog), a much friendlier lot.

My favourite freebie from the fair is an advance copy from the kind folks at Faber of Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: Our Year of Seasonal Eating. It is not out until July, so there's no information on their website yet, but the blurb from the back of the book reads:

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia they set themselves a task: to eat local produce, grow their own or go without, in an effort to live in a way that is better for them and the environment.

This is the story of their first year. They plant vegetables, rear turkeys and get to know their local farming community, overcoming substantial hurdles they face by trying to live a simple life in an "eat now/think later society". Along the way they discover just how compromised our food supply has become and how estranged we have become from the natural processes of the food chain.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, and stuffed full of delicious recipes and factual sidebars, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for living in a way that is enriching for communities and respectful of the planet.

I thoroughly enjoy this kind of book, increasingly important in today's world as we search out ways to make our lifestyles more sound and forgiving on the environment and those around us.

When I was a child, growing up on a mission station in rural KwaZulu, there wasn't much choice in the matter - we had no electricity, collected rainwater for drinking, pumped water from the river for household pipes, grew vegetables and kept chickens and geese. Town was far away and expensive, and we needed to be more or less self-sustaining. John Seymour's SELF-SUFFICIENCY was our bible and I remember having a (somewhat bizarre, I grant you) fascination with the pictures describing slaughtering animals - but then we did that ourselves too. It seemed like a perfectly normal way to live, but I realize now how incredibly hard my parents worked to keep us all going. But this re-engaging with land, growing your own vegetables, keeping your own animals is receiving a resurgence in interest in the west, which is no bad thing.

A few years ago Leo Hickman was challenged by The Guardian to live a more sustainable lifestyle in London for one year. He wrote about it in the paper and afterwards produced a wonderful book called A LIFE STRIPPED BARE: my year trying to live ethically, describing his experience. I highly recommend it (my own copy is loaned out at the moment so I can't give you a sample). It is funny and thought-provoking, and entirely non-judgemental. What comes across strongly is Hickman's desire to live a healthier lifestyle for his family's sake. He is not prescriptive, but stresses the importance of educating yourself in options available for the life you lead, and then making informed choices that feel comfortable to you, rather than simply accepting the structure of wider society as an insurmountable and overwhelming obstacle to change: engaged living, if you will. It was a funny and poignant book. A companion reference volume A GOOD LIFE: the guide to ethical living covers issues and suppliers in the UK, but read A LIFE STRIPPED BARE first, as it is the bit with soul.

Thanks to Musical Dave for pointing me in the direction of an ongoing urban sustainable living project in New York City. NO IMPACT MAN blogs daily about his family's experiment, with some wonderful, thoughtprovoking and hilarious results. The "comments" are often marvellous as people make suggestions for how to improve his life.

Something we are very interested in ourselves, although my meagre planting this week of the herb patch is such a tiny step. This weekend, it will be purple sprouting broccoli, lettuce and tomatoes going in. I'll let you know about the Kingsolver. In the meantime I'm thinking climbing beans and pumpkins...

I'm off to the London Book Fair today (meetings). I'm actually rather looking forward to it. Having retired from bookselling for the moment, I am not there to frantically work so will simply have the pleasure of moseying around looking at what is on offer from the various publishers. Much more fun.

So, just a few items to keep you amused:

The Orange Prize shortlist for 2007 has been announced:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (yay!)
Rachel Cusk - Arlington Park
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Jane Harris - The Observations
Anne Tyler - Digging to America - Chatto & Windus

Alexander McCall Smith talks about his first house in Botswana.

Oh, for more booksellers like these! Matthew Crockatt and Adam Powell of the lovely independent bookshop Crockatt & Powell discuss the UK booktrade:

For us the idea of a bookshop is that your hardcore customers, the ones who keep you alive, who buy 50-100 books a year, they want to come in, chat to us about books, see books they haven't seen before - they want to feel like their passion about books is being reciprocated. (Copyright David Teather, THE GUARDIAN)

And lastly, Pascal Wyse in the Guardian Weekend magazine has a little piece called "Wyse Words" which always reminds me somewhat of THE MEANING OF LIFF by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. On Saturday his definition was:

Refleshment The reserve spurt of energy that joggers deploy when passing someone sexy, even though they're so exhausted they could throw up their own heart. Body language is transformed from flailing sweatbox to "I'm fit - and so are you, baby. Let's work out." Once safely out of sight, they fall over.

Excellent. I've just recently rejoined my local gym. Oh so familiar.

You've still got until Friday to put your names in the hat for a free copy of Fadiman's EX LIBRIS.

Dover Castle in Kent is one of those really satisfyingly castley castles, if you know what I mean - moats, ramparts, tunnels, hugely thick walls, a fabulous keep...the sort of place one imagines English castles to be when you're small and reading books about England from the other side of the world. This weekend I visited with a friend and we had a whale of a time exploring. Did you know that apparently Henry VIII moved around a lot because of the stench in his castles when everyone was in residence? It looks like Dover used rainwater in the garderobes, however, so it may have been on the cutting edge of lavatory science! The stained glass windows in his castles kept his glass cutters busy - every time he replaced a queen, they had to replace the windows! There are fantastic medieval tunnels with the guns still in place and a tucked away concealed guardroom at the bottom of the moat, with a simple but effective multiple gated entrance slightly easier to defend. You really get a sense of the age of the place down there (the castle was built in the 1180s).

One of the big attractions is that beneath the castle, in the famous white cliffs themselves, are a rabbit warren of tunnels begun in the Napoleonic era but extensively expanded during the twentieth century. The evacuation of Dunkirk was organized from here and you can still see military command equipment and paperwork on display from the period. There was an underground hospital as well, and extraordinary footage shows ships sinking and bombers being shot down off the coast with crew bailing out in parachutes. I was particularly amazed by this because serendipitously, like so many books I read, the latest choice slots right in with this period. Last week on the new books display at the library was K.M. Peyton's most recent offering, which I snaffled up immediately. A choice between a "how to drive" manual and fiction? No contest!

I loved Peyton's Flambards series as a teen - the horses were ok, but what really gripped me were the planes and cars - the excitement of new inventions coming into their own was perfectly described. She had a superb sense of place and time, and I also remember the series being rather angst-ridden and romantic, which is perfect young teenage reading. I haven't read them since, so this recollection is no doubt flawed.

The new Peyton, BLUE SKIES AND GUNFIRE, is set in the Second World War at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, and having just seen the footage at Dover when I started the book this weekend, I had vivid images of aerial bombing raids in my head as I read. Josie is evacuated from London to stay with relatives in the country. Hormonal and stroppy, it is a life-changing experience for her. She has moved near an airbase and by the end of the book we have discovered, through Peyton's plot-driven descriptions, something of the dreadful realities of the lives of fighter and bomber crew at that time.

Yesterday's Sunday Times (another coincidence) carried a review by Michael Burleigh of a new book out on on RAF Bomber Command (BOMBER BOYS: Fighting Back 1940-1945 by Patrick Bishop). Burleigh writes: "The statistics are sobering. Between September 1939 and May 1945, RAF Bomber Command lost 47,268 men, killed on operations, with a further 8,305 killed in training missions. Almost half of the 125,000 men who volunteered for this service did not survive: a rate of attrition considerably higher than that suffered by officers in the first world war." If you cannot quite picture what this means, the review notes:

The odds were against the bomber boys. In 1942, fewer than half of all heavy-bomber crews would survive the 30 sorties of their first tour and one in five would make it through the second. In 1943, only one in six could expect to survive one tour and one in 40 a second. A Canadian airman kept a book, listing names and odds. "Do you know, Bill, you're on the chop list tonight?" When asked to stop, he objected:"We know some of us are not going to return."

H.E. Bates's FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE begins with an eerie description of flying back towards England following a mission, and the thoughts in the pilot's head as the wounded plane limps and then crashes. Bearing in mind that Bates himself flew during the war, this description is no doubt creepily accurate. In BLUE SKIES AND GUNFIRE Josie dates a young man, but then falls in love with his brother, a fighter pilot. While one might be forgiven for thinking the result would be a fairly predictable read, it isn't. For one thing, Peyton's own experience (she was aged ten to sixteen over the course of the war years) shines through. The plot delivers a real kicker at the end, which has you re-evaluating human nature (I won't say more). This is teen fiction of the highest order, especially for those who like historical novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It seems appropriate to finish this post with an extract (apologies for the length, but I think it is charming) from Peyton's wonderful Author's Note at the start of the book, as her experience colours the book throughout. She writes:

I lived on the outskirts of London and saw much of the Battle of Britain in the sky above. I was on a train going to school which was machine-gunned, and had to shelter under trees a few times out in the country from a Spitfire, flying very low, shooting up a Messerschmitt, or vice versa. I was not evacuated until the time of the doodlebugs, when I went to an aunt in Birmingham after school broke up for the summer holidays. The doodlebugs were terrifying, but I actually enjoyed the excitement of the rest of it. We were not bombed out, luckily, although we had all our windows blown in, and my school was very knocked about. In winter we had lessons wearing all our outdoor clothes, including gloves for there were no windows and no heating. We all had terrible chillblains.
So this book, although fictitious, is written with a lot of true things in it. I did have a very romantic, innocent affair with a man ten years older than myself who was wireless operator/gunner in a bomber. He flew on raids over Germany night after night and was shot down once, parachuting into the sea. He was very lucky to stay alive. His brother, a pilot, was killed. He proposed to me under the cherry blossom in Kew Gardens. I have never forgotten him.

Xiaolu Guo's protagonist "Z" about whom I blogged yesterday, reminded me of a poem I grew up on, expressing the pain and frustration of having one's name and identity evaporated, really because others cannot take the trouble to see the real person. I tracked it down, and here it is.

First, a translation issue 'Wat is daai, se nou weer?' means "What is that, say it again." More importantly, the poem must be seen in the context of Apartheid-era bureacracy and society. All black people working in cities were required to apply for a pass in order to work or pass through an area other than where they were born, without which they would be arrested. This was a vile system - in other words just to get from place to place within your own country you had to have documentation. Because white officials were uninterested in black names and language, (and also as a way to deliberately make people feel oppressed) almost all black people in South Africa eventually acquired a "school name," in other words a name easy for white people to pronounce. One of the fabulous things about the new South Africa, is seeing this practice gradually falling away, with full names used, and all languages represented on official documentation, but it will take time. While it seems a small thing, it is yet another way to enforce rule over others when you take their name and personhood away. I don't think this is a great poem, but it is a great expression of pain and confusion and in the end perhaps that is what makes a good poem...

MY NAME - Magoleng wa Selepe, South Africa

Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa

Look what they have done to my name...
the wonderful name of my great-great-grandmothers
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa

The burly bureaucrat was surprised.
What he heard was music to his ears
'Wat is daai, se nou weer?'
'I am from Chief Daluxolo Velayigodle of emaMpodweni
And my name is Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.'

Messia, help me!
My name is so simple
and yet so meaningful,
but to this man it is trash...

He gives me a name
Convenient enough to answer his whim:
I end up being
Maria...
I...
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.

from EXPLORINGS: a collection of poems for the young people of Southern Africa compiled by Robin Malan

By way of preparation, should you attempt to say this out loud yourself: "q" is a hard, echoing click a bit like a cork popping - place the main part of your tongue on the middle of the roof of your mouth towards the back and click; "c" is a soft sound - place the tip of your tongue against your top front teeth and click; "x" is a click through the side of the mouth between the teeth (as when using the universal sound encouraging a horse to "gee up"). Go on, try - you know you want to!

Thanks to the friendly people over at Chatto & Windus, I have been reading my way through Xiaolu Guo's A CONCISE CHINESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARY FOR LOVERS, recently longlisted for this year's Orange Prize. I'm not convinced that this book will make the shortlist, but that's not to say that it isn't an interesting and thought-provoking read. If I have one criticism of the title, it felt almost as though there were two books in one, struggling to get out. On the one hand a hilarious book about discovering a new language and culture, in the vein of David Sedaris' ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, and on the other hand a darker almost more seedy novel. Interestingly, while the first half had me entranced and laughing out loud, it is the feel of the second half which has remained with me. So although I can't say I enjoyed the second half, it has lingered on, giving me pause for thought.

There's nothing like an outsider to comment on mainstream society and Guo's character "Z" (no-one can be bothered to pronounce her name) is a delightful prism through which to view British eccentricities, while reflecting back on her own ("The day when I arrived to the West, I suddenly realized I am a Chinese"). The novel is laid out with each chapter the definition of a new word, and Z's English improves exponentially over the course of the book, as do her criticisms of the new society around her, her confused feelings for her lover, and fears about returning home to China - this really works. Half way through the book Z comments in the midst of a hilarious moment, "Your friends look at us three Orientals, like look at three panda escape from bamboo forest." There is an underlying pain here amidst the hilarity, and she gets this spot on.

Like Tsitsi Dangarembga, Guo looks set to produce a wonderfully varied output of both film and literature (her film HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY has just won Grand Prix du Jury at the International Women's Film Festival in France). She is writing about the widespread phenomenon of the immigrant experience, the outsider looking in, and she does this without sounding worthy or patronizing.

As I regularly blog about my struggles learning Tamil, you know the angst I go through grappling bemusedly with linguistic challenges. This is the strong point of Guo's book. She is utterly believable in her portrayal of baffled language learner. Here is a taster:

proper adj real or genuine; suited to a particular purpose; correct in behaviour; excessively moral

Today my first time taking taxi. How I find important place with bus and tube? Is impossibility. Tube map is like plate of noodles. Bus route is in-understandable. In my home town everyone take cheap taxi, but in London is very expensive and taxi is like the Loyal family look down to me.
Driver say: 'Please shut the door properly!'
I already shut the door, but taxi don't moving.
Driver shout me again: 'Shut the door properly! in a concisely manner.
I am bit scared. I not understanding what is this 'properly'.
'I beg your pardon?' I ask. 'What is properly?'
'Shut the door properly!' Taxi driver turns around his big head and neck nearly break because of anger.
'But what is "properly", Sir?' I so frightened that I not daring ask it once more again.
Driver coming out from taxi, and walking to door. I think he going to kill me.
He opens door again, smashing it back to me hardly.
'Properly!' he shout. (pp.16-17)

Yes, well, I'm usually a week late for everything only this time I have an excuse because the books hadn't arrived yet (and they still haven't, but I've changed supplier!). It is (was) BAFAB week, otherwise known as "Buy a Friend a Book Week" as envisioned by Debra Hamel. The idea being to give a friend a book "for no good reason." A nifty idea, I think. Although I never need much of an excuse to add to my own burgeoning shelves, it is always a good thing to pass on a book or two to others. So, I have chosen Anne Fadiman's EX LIBRIS: Confessions of a Common Reader to give to a friend, and I have an extra copy to give away to one of you lucky blog readers out there too. Dovegreyreader has a novel way of selecting her BAFAB winner by making her cats walk across post-it notes! My selection process will undoubtedly be more mundane (names in a hat?!), but equally fair. So if you'd like a copy of EX LIBRIS, do say so in the comments or send me an email and I'll add you to the pot (where you are in the world does not matter, I will post anywhere).

Here's a taster; Fadiman has just tried out a list of words she doesn't recognize on family and friends in the hopes that they too will not recognize them, so she won't feel so bad. A few correctly identify the occasional word (she refers to them as Wallys after Wally the Wordworm from her childhood - you'll have to read the book to discover the delicious details of this story):

All the Wallys could remember exactly where they had encountered the words they knew. The English professor said, "Mephitic! That must mean foul-smelling. I've seen it in Paradise Lost, describing the smell of hell." My brother, a mountain guide and natural history teacher who lives in Wyoming, said, "Mephitic, hmm, yes. The scientific name for the striped skunk is Mephitis mephitis, which means Stinky stinky." The lawyer, who, incredibly, had bumped into mephitic just the previous week in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, possessed particularly vigorous powers of memory. When I asked him to define monophysite, he said, "That's a heretic, of course, who believes there is a single nature in the person of Christ. I first encountered it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of which I read an abridged version in a green Dell Laurel edition with a picture of Roman ruins on the cover that I bought with my allowance for seventy-five cents when I was in grade school, at the bookstore at the corner of Mill Road and Peninsula Boulevard in Valley Stream, New York. I read it while walking home. It was springtime, and all the trees on Mill Road were in bud." No man ever remembered the face, dress and perfume of an old lover with fonder precision than Jon remembered that glorious day when he and monophysite first met. (p.15)

Surely you must want to read it after that?! Do you recognize yourself, or someone you know? To add to sauciness around this read, it has recently been linked to plagiarism charges against Ben Schott; you can have a read here.

The IMPAC/Dublin Literary Award 2007 shortlist has been announced, whittled down from 138 novels (12 in translation) nominated by 169 libraries from around the world:

ARTHUR & GEORGE by Julian Barnes
A LONG LONG WAY by Sebastian Barry
SLOW MAN by J.M. Coetzee
EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE by Jonathan Safran Foer
THE SHORT DAY DYING by Peter Hobbs
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy
OUT STEALING HORSES by Per Petterson
SHALIMAR THE CLOWN by Salman Rushdie

Oh lordy - as usual I haven't read any of them, although the Coetzee, Hobbs and Rushdie are in my "To Be Read" pile!

For light relief, and to complete my African set of Niki Daly picture books, I ordered PRETTY SALMA in my last package from the Africa Book Centre.

I've read confusing descriptions of this title, variously describing it as "South African", "Ghanaian", inspired by Anansi stories and by Little Red Riding Hood. Hmmm. In reality, the author/illustrator is South African, but the story has a distinctly Ghanaian flavour. Daly's South African books have beautifully realised naturalistic illustrations, highly appropriate for the subjects covered. PRETTY SALMA has more stylized, but nevertheless effective, imagery all pointing to life in West Africa.

Based on the Little Red Riding Hood story, Salma is sent to market by her granny. With shopping completed and ignoring all of granny's dire warnings, "instead of going straight home, she day-dreamed and dawdled into the wild side of town" where the wily Mr Dog neatly divests her of all her belongings and partially therefore her identity. But Salma knows where to go for help - to her grandfather who, dressed as Anansi, is telling stories. With help and various accoutrements (an atumpan is a Ghanaian talking drum) they set off to rescue granny from becoming "granny soup":

Salma picked up Anansi's atumpan and beat it loudly,
Goema goema! Grandfather picked up his rattles
and gave them a fierce shake, Shooka shooka!
Little Abubaker, who loved
a good story, joined in with
clapping sticks, Kattack-attack!
"Let's go!" cried Salma.

Delightful.

One of the things I've hugely enjoyed about leaving the great daily commute up to London and working from home, is a growing sense of community. My typical day begins rising with the (enthusiastically loud) birds in the line of trees just over our back hedge, and once the giri has left for work I knuckle down to a few hours work. On a good day I will have accomplished oodles by lunch, on a bad day I will have stared blankly at the screen or found that the ironing pile, the dishes, or scrubbing out the bathtub are ever so much more interesting. By the afternoon I'm getting cabin fever and will walk into town (a 20 minute brisk stroll), and now that the weather's fine it is still light when I get back so the garden magnetically attracts, pulling me in with the joys of weeding (actually, I hate weeding but find it strangely therapeutic). Then it is about time to start cooking dinner, or re-heating the leftovers.

What has changed drastically is my lifestyle. Where once I was on the train by 7am and returning at 9 or 9:30pm, I rarely rush anywhere now. It wasn't until I stopped insane commuting that I realized just how tired and stressed I was, and (unless needs must) I will never opt for a commute again. Almost all our shopping was supermarket-based surrounded by hordes of other people rushing to accomplish the same mission (get in and out as quickly as possible). I'm not knocking it, just explaining how it was. I still pop into the supermarket, as there are some things I can't get anywhere else, but I'm much more focussed on small, local businesses these days. The charming result of this, is a genuine engagement with community which I'd not even particularly noticed was missing.

Yesterday, for example, chatting to a distinguished looking gentleman I've known about town for the past ten months or so, I discovered he had offered the first university-level African and Caribbean literature course in the UK back in the 1950s! How amazing! We mentally raced through our bookshelves and will be trading bits and bobs shortly. I love that at the local farmers' market which runs six days a week, the baker, the cheese stall holder, and the veg stall staff all know us (not well, of course, but enough that it is a beginning); the Bangladeshi grocer gives us freebies of chillies and ginger (he's the only place in town to get paneer, bitter gourd, tiny baby brinjals and curry leaves for Indian cooking); the Kenyan Indian newsagent family are charming (we've progressed to me being chided if I don't look like I've just come from the gym when I pop by for my paper); then there are the staff at the wholefood store, the librarians (of course - I practically live there) and the retired clergy...

Small town life - it exists despite itself, but you have to know where to look, and you have to have time. I have to thank the giri for that: giving me time while he slogs away for the both of us.

THE WORD (from LABORATORIES OF THE SPIRIT) by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

A pen appeared, and the god said:
'Write what it is to be
man.' And my hand hovered
long over the bare page.

until there, like footprints
of the lost traveller, letters
took shape on the page's
blankness, and I spelled out

the word 'lonely'. And my hand moved
to erase it; but the voices
of all those waiting at life's
window cried out loud: 'It is true.'