Katie Butcher

I bought this book by Jeffrey Eugenides mainly on the strength of the raving reviews for it on Amazon. Well, either my copy was different than everybody elses or I’m just didn’t ‘get’ this book because I *really* didn’t like it. I find it much easier to appreciate works of fiction that actually have a plot. I just cannot work out what all these Amazon reviewers saw in this book that I didn’t.

I hate to just say something is ‘rubbish’ and not justify it. But I’m afraid with this I do just think it was ‘rubbish’, full stop. And I don’t want to say any more about it as this book has wasted enough of my time already!

‘The Secret River’ by Kate Grenville is about a young man from London, who, at the beginning of the 19th century is transported to Australia. It tells of him, along with his wife and young children, and their struggle to build a new life for themselves in a dangerous and completely unfamiliar environment.

I think the subject matter for this story had potential to be very engaging and interesting, but, for me, the author failed in making it so. I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately I found it dull. I just could not get interested in it. I forced myself to finish it to see if it might pick up, but in the end couldn’t wait for the end so I could start a new book. I didn’t like the characters nor the writing style. Speech wasn’t put in speech marks, it was just italicised – why? That was irritating.

I guess if you’re interested in Australian history you may find this book better, but I’m afraid it didn’t do much for me. Sorry.

At the moment we don’t have a living room. On Saturday, Nigel took the old sofa down to the YMCA charity shop and we cleared out the rest of the furniture. We’ve stripped the wallpaper, disposed of the carpet, and the room is now bare, ready to be decorated. But I’m panicking because when we ordered the new sofas, M&S told us it would be 6-8 weeks, but they called yesterday asking if they can deliver. It’s only been 4 weeks! We’re waiting for the new fire and haven’t even ordered a carpet yet. I’ve managed to put M&S off for a couple of weeks, but they’ll want to charge us £20 a week storage if it’s too much longer. Aaaghh!

Last week was a mixed week. On Monday I had my bag stolen from my office. I had popped out of the office with my arms full of laptops to set-up a training course, and meanwhile a bloke who’d sneaked in the building after someone vacated it snatched my bag. There wasn’t much money in my purse, perhaps £15, it was more the loss of all my keys and bank cards that was a greater concern. Nigel had to change the lock on the front door and order a new car key, and I also had to ask the caretaker to change my office locks. I’ve lost the phone numbers that were on my phone which is a bit of a pain. The police were surprisingly helpful and I’ve given them the CCTV footage of the culprit. I’m not holding my breath that anything will come of it though.

So after that event I felt quite down on Tuesday, but by Wednesday my mood picked up a bit. Now all my replacement cards have finally come through in the post, I’ve bought a new purse and bag, and I’ve ordered a new phone and driving licence.

The week ended much better as on Sunday we had a successful car boot sale. We’d been thinking about having a car boot sale for ages but never quite got round to it. With encouragement from Nigel’s sister, a few weeks ago we finally set a date to have a car boot sale and then spent the next few weekends clearing out the loft. We loaded up the van on Saturday afternoon and got down to the car boot sale at Yeadon for about 5am on Sunday morning. We got rid of loads of stuff and made around £300. I’d been dreading it a bit as I’d not really been to a car boot sale before, but it was actually sort of fun in the end. We were lucky with the weather all morning, but it started raining just before midday so that’s when we started packing up.

Okay so it was my first car boot sale experience, but here are my top Car Boot Sale Tips:

• Take some kind of table to lay your wares on – we took an old plastic patio table, a paste table and two tressels and a board
• For larger items take a groundsheet or some bin bags to lay on the ground and place items on
• If you’ve any clothing, if possible, take some kind of rail on which you can hang them
• Stick prices on as many things as you can beforehand – it makes it so much easier when you’re there
• Take a flask and some sandwiches – it’ll be a long morning
• Take some change – we took £20 made up of various coins
• Take loads of carrier bags – a lot of people want bags to put their 20p purchase in
• Girls take some loo roll – those ‘Portaloos’ aren’t usually the nicest
• Never assume an item isn’t good enough to go in the sale – I was utterly amazed at the complete rubbish people were buying – in fact the more rubbish things sold better than the more decent stuff
• Get there early – I mean *really* early (before 5am) to get a good pitch

My sister Claire was quite busy snapping away with her camera ‘phone while we were staying at mum and dad’s. I took one or two pictures on my film camera, but will have to wait another year until I finish the film and get around to getting it printed. Claire kindly emailed me all her pictures, and I’ve put them here. As they’re taken on a ‘phone they’re not fantastic quality, but they’ll do.

Spain Pictures

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6263690.stm

I think we really need to shift focus away from this ‘climate change’ argument because it’s not really getting us anywhere. With two opposite camps seemingly getting completely wrapped up bickering about whether climate change is due to human activity or not, I question whether it actually matters *that* much. Surely, irrespective of global warming, we should simply just be doing what we can to be ‘green’ as a matter of course? The last I heard, Earth didn’t have an endless supply of oil, we don’t have limitless amount of space for dumping our rubbish, and pollution benefits nobody. Why can’t people just do things like sort their rubbish, or walk (instead of drive) to the newsagent for their cigarettes, anyway? There is a lot of us crammed onto this planet, and I firmly believe everybody should do their small bit to make it a better place to live for everybody. Climate change is *not* the only environmental issue.

Personally, I struggle to comprehend how people can be so arrogant to think that everything we pump into the atmosphere isn’t affecting the weather/climate in some way. But even if it’s not affecting climate, releasing emissions into the air can’t be good thing by any logic. Yes, there are natural changes in climate, but I strongly doubt that the climate weirdness I’ve experienced in even my short lifetime is entirely natural. But whether or not we can now change ‘climate change’ is entirely another question.

Ultimately, the thing about us killing the planet isn’t strictly true. We’re not really killing the planet, we’re just making it less habitable for ourselves. I believe that ‘Mother Nature’ is more powerful than us and ultimately will win. When she can’t take it any more, the human race will either be wiped out or dramatically reduced, and Planet Earth will begin her recovery.