Winter Wonderland.....

We have been promised snow for days now - and now at last it has arrived in Coventry. Everything looked lovely this morning but it doesn't look as if it will last too long. Joe is upset - claims his secondary school is the only one in the city that has remained open!

My new iPhone!

Lynnette said I should have an iPhone as "they are really cool". Well, being a very uncool sort of person I wondered if I would be able to get one. But apparently you don't have to actually pass a coolness test to own one - which is a good thing as I am sure I would have failed.

But it is very good fun and I am spending increasing amounts of time playing with my new gadget, adding apps, photos, music, etc. So now the house remains undusted, the ironing basket overflows and Bill is neglected. My New Year Resolution? To waste time on my phone...... And who knows, I may even end up as "cool".

Six go mad in Thailand.......

In July we took grandchildren Kevin, Liam and Bridget plus Bridget's boyfriend Brian to Thailand. We stayed in Bangkok for a few days and then set off by train to Chumphon. From here we took the night ferry to Ko Tao where we had a wonderful week. Then back to Chumphon to get a train to Hua Hin. This involved a really hair-raising race to the station to get to the train on time! We enjoyed our time in Hua Hin before and after a few days got the train north to Bangkok.

A great trip all round. Hope we whetted the children's interest in backpacking!

Glastonbury in all its glory

Glastonbury was great. The music, the crowds, the colour and the chaos - it was all excellent. We can now say we have had the real Glasto experience - the mud and the long-drop loos! And survived it all.

By Sunday night we were definitely suffering from sensory overload. We had seen Status Quo rocking all through the night, Tony Christie asking about the road to Amarillo, Tom Jones pleading with Delilah and then Madness welcoming us to the House of Fun. After the madness of Madness we retreated to the van for a reasonably early night.

Can't wait for Glastonbury 2010.

Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival

Just had three days at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival. We stayed in the van at Radnor's End Campsite - super little site and in walking distance of the town. The weather was glorious and there was a lovely atmosphere at the festival. Someone said "It is as if all the kids have gone to Glastonbury and left their parents at Hay-on-Wye!" Our first session on Friday evening was to see Geoff Dyer, author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varinasi. He spoke really well and was at the same time surprisingly modest and funny. At the end he was awarded the Bollinger prize for comedy writing by James Naughtie. We had an early start the next day to listen to Tobias Hill at 9 o'clock. He was brilliant. He read some of his poetry (which we tried to get hold of in the bookshop but failed) and excerpts from his book The Hidden. He talked intelligently and passionately about his work. Talented and handsome - what more could you ask for?

After a quick coffee we were off to hear Marina Hyde talk about celebrity culture. She was great - she talks as well as she writes and we could have done with a much longer session. Then we had a leisurely picnic before our next session - so leisurely that we mistook the time and were actually late for Marcus Brigstocke and team who were doing a comedy review of the daily papers. It was OK but a bit of a mixed bag. M.B. is obviously very talented and genuinely funny but the rest of the team were a bit hit and miss.

Our evening session was Mark Lawson talking to David Simon. A great session - David Simon is really perceptive and interesting to listen to. He signed my copy of Homicide with great charm (even though he was probably exhausted - it was a huge queue) and had time to chat about some of the characters in The Wire.

On Sunday we went to hear Kate Summerscale talk about The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Rosie Boycott chaired the session with effortless skill and anyone who had not read the book must have been enthused to go out and buy it. I wanted my copy signed but suspected there would be a huge queue and we had another session starting soon. So Bill nipped out a few minutes from the end and was third in line - the two ahead of him had not been to the session. She seemed genuinely pleased when I told her I had chosen the book for my reading group.

Vince Cable was, as expected, very good - he was greeted as a conquering hero by a rapturous audience! John Harris was a superb chair - though I felt he was reining himself in a bit.....

We were really looking forward to the final act of the festival - Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden. Oh dear, quite a disappointment. "I wonder who the third chair is for?" said I - but my heart sank when Carrie Quinlan walked out onto the stage. We had seen her with Marcus B and we were not impressed. She appeared to have done no preparation and did not seem to have a clue how to act as the chair - and neither Barry Cryer nor Graeme Garden seemed inclined to help her. There were some embarrassing silences and it took about twenty minutes before it really got going.

Nonetheless Hay Festival continues to go from strength to strength.

Spring in the garden

Well, spring has really sprung and the garden is looking very lush. Bluebells, daffs and hellebores have all been lovely. The shreddings from the trees we had cut down in autumn are being used all over the garden (although the pile doesn't seem to be getting any smaller. I wonder is neighbours are sneaking in at night and adding to it....)
Some good news on the wildlife front. We have seen no squirrels recently but have heard that a neighbour is trapping and killing them. So well done to her - she deserves a medal.
I have started growing some veg from seed but am pretty relaxed about it. If they grow, they grow and if they don't I will go to Sainsburys. Gone are the days when I actually wept when my carrots were all demolished overnight by slugs. Life is too short to worry about garden pests.
So roll on the summer!

Carry on Kerala!

This blog is going to look as if I went from Thailand to India. Not true! I went home for a week in between.

All is going well here on Kovalam beach. Our hotel is fairly basic but very clean. Only problem is the frequent power cuts.... these happen at least once a day and can last up to an hour. The beach is long and sandy and there are excellent waves. They hire out body boards and I have seen a couple of surfboards. Sundown is a great time to watch the locals come down to go in the sea. The young men strip off to their shorts but the girls and women go in the sea in their saris - but seem to really enjoy themselves.

They have a very strange attitude to alcohol here. Beer can be bought at government shops but restaurants are not supposed to sell it so it is not on the menu. However they all sell it. But you are given a pottery mug to drink out of and the bottle has to be kept on the floor in case the police walk past. Strangely this doesn't apply to wine which is served in the normal way.

India is just as I remember it - colourful and chaotic.... I have been trying to photograph the colourful lorries they use here with religious murals painted all over them.

My friend Val knows lots of people in the area (through her earlier visits and her charity work). One friend took us out to his house a few miles inland. His village consists of a small cluster of very simple houses. Local children came to look at us and we took their photos. One girl of about ten brought a little sister who took one look at me and burst into tears and had to be hurried away! Scary white people!

Some friends of Val came to visit her here at Kovalam. They used to run a children's home for Global Care. I joined them at a local restaurant and soon after introductions and a few social pleasantries the husband said to me: "And do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?" My philosophical answer was clearly beyond his knowledge of English and the point was not pursued.

We went on an organised tour last week and when we stopped in the local town Trivandrum we saw about 150 women sitting on both sides of the road cooking up a sort of porridge in a pot balance on three bricks with a wood fire underneath. Each woman had her own pot and her own fire. This was a practice day for a huge Hindu festival that is going on today. 2.5 million (yes, 2.5 million!) women are gathered in the town today to cook this special porridge and make an offering at the temple. With all the smoke and chaos I think it is a good idea to stay away from the town today. But you can see the festival on http://www.attukal.org/

On Sunday I went on a trip inland to see a Temple Elephant Festival. No-one seemed able to quite explain the religious significance but I this it is a dedication of the elephants to the temple god. The elephants (about forty of them) were all resplendent in their decorations and were preceded through the streets but very energetic drummers. It was really great to watch. At one point an elephants seemed to want to go in the wrong direction and all the people standing nearby fled! Apparently sometimes an elephant runs amok and people get killed. We were watching from a rooftop so felt fairly safe.

A message to the Reading Group: I finished The Golden Notebook yesterday. Wow, what a slog! Will have lots to say about it when we meet........