Category Random thoughts

A Bookish Crossword Puzzle for You

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

I have no idea how this will work, or if you will enjoy doing it. It’s pretty easy, so I hope you have fun. Let me know. I’ll post the answers next week. I wonder if AI can do this?

Enjoy!

PUZZLE blankDownload

Here are the clues. Most of them work. 4 down is a fudge.

AcrossDown
1 (5)Silence of the …2 (6)Dr Seuss’ Xmas thief
2 (7)LOTR Wizard3 (3)Plus
5 (4)Dorothy’s little dog4 (4, 1, 6)Erica Jong classic, almost
7 (5)Not the Odyssey5 (6, 5)Author of Jude the Obscure
9 (3)Not in6 (4)See 5 across
10 (5)Key somewhere beachy?8 (5)Goes with Prejudice
12 (5)Kazua —-guro10 (5)Nabokov’s best-known novel
13 (5)Goes with Pride11 (4)Runners look forward to it
17 (3)A person from Hooville13 (6)Harry?
19 (3)Estimated Time of Arrival14 (4) To mock
20 (3)It’s for its own sake15 (2) —  Profundis – Oscar Wilde
21 (5)Mr Pratchett16 (2)California
24 (2)Mother18 (2)Either?
26 (3)A thing cast22 (3)It’s Adam’s
27 (4)Awful thing to do to a mockingbird23 (3)The only answer
28 (5)Long flowing garments24 (3)Mixed Integer Programming
30 (2)Life of …3.14?25 (5)She was in Wonderland
32 (3)Alice met one from Cheshire29 (3)Australia’s tallest bird
33 (3, 7)Thank you Cervantes31 (2)Has been

That’s Nice: a very special gin

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

I’m off the booze at the moment, but still half a bottle of gin tempts me. It lurks in the cupboard daring me to fancy alcohol again. And I will, but not yet. Instead I’ll write about That’s Nice, the special bottle of gin that keeps calling to me. It’s home made you see.

A dear friend organised a gin making workshop for us late last year. It’s a thing these days, a byproduct of the fad for boutique gins and beers. High ticket workshops are a revenue generator and there’s also the chance of additional sales to a captive audience. In our workshop at the Greensand Ridge Distillery near Tonbridge in Kent, there were four people and only one of us (me of course) shelled out for additional booze. The apple brandy tasted amazing at the time, but that was probably the juniper effect.

To make gin, you start of with 400 ml of duty paid grain alcohol, 600 ml of water and botanicals. At our workshop we selected from a rather tired looking array of possibilities stored in large mason jars on shelves. We could choose from such additions as hops, but the ones on display were from the last millenium. Fortunately my hop-growing friend had brought her own. Other possibilities were aniseed, peppers, mint, juniper berries, antediluvial chocolate chips, coriander seeds, lemon, lime and orange peels and many more for adding to the grain alcohol. Ideally all the ingredients should be fresh and of the best quality, but you probably wouldn’t notice if they were not. Gin for its fans, is very seductive especially if you have made it yourself, so who would notice if the lime peel’s a bit tired?

Bottles of Greensand Ridge Distillery gin displayed against a textured background with the distillery's logo.

You boil 400ml of ethanol in a little munchkin sized still with the botanicals added in carefully measured proportions. We chose lemon peel, lime peel, fresh hops, juniper, pink peppercorns, coriander, cubeb (a type of pepper), angelica and liquorice root. You’re essentially redistilling the grain alcohol with the selected flavourings, so how much of each you add is important for the end result. And botantical quantities are an important trade secret. Naturally I forgot to write down our proportions, but we were juniper berry heavy as I remember.

In years gone by, gin was a mixture rather than a distillation of grain alcohol and botanicals. Mixtures were probably tasty but would’ve lacked subtlety and depth. The method we used in the workshop was redistillation (hence the name distilled gin) rather than mixing. We wanted our gin to be juniper heavy because we wanted something that tasted of gin and not just our own personal magic, which might’ve been yuck. We definitely did not want something that smacked of tinned fruit cocktail on the turn. 

The booze boils in its little receptable and a condensing unit slowly shifts the steam into another container. The condensing unit is kept cool with the addition of water to its external surface. This is important because if you let the temperature or the pressure get too high, you risk botanical collapse which potentially creates harmful stuff out of the oils as they break down. This you do not want, so you have to go slow.

As the alcohol (75% proof) and the added botanicals boil, the steam rises and condenses into the main body of the still, from which you sample the booze from time to time. You can buy the little stills which are made by Al Ambiq and are available for beer as well as gin making. The still isn’t so much the challenge as getting the ethanol is as it’s controlled, but you can still buy it.

Once all the alcohol has wended its way through the condenser, the next step is to water it down with pure water so as not to mess up the flavours. You also have to keep tasting it to be sure it tastes as you want it, as if it might not. And you measure the alcohol content and add water until it’s at am acceptable level. We stopped adding water at around 45% proof. Actually that’s a distraction. You add water until the volume is no more than 400ml. This is the cut-off point. Duty apparently has to be paid on alcohol volumes of more than 400ml. Our host had already paid duty for the original ethanol, so no sense in running the risk of a double charge.

We had a lovely time tasting our gin, having previously been sipping at what was supposed to be a tonic and ice mix, with added berries and bay leaves. But it left us slightly warm and a little giggly and wondering when and where we would be having our lunch. Having slowly driven away from Greensand Ridge, we found a farm gate off of a quiet lane which we duly blocked. Sitting silent and content with our sandwiches, we understood that there is nothing quite like the scent of juniper on the breath of a Saturday morning. 

PS If you want to know how gin is made in oceanic quantities, check this out: https://www.bostonapothecary.com/distillery-practice-gin/

Sing me all your memories (from Oscar Wilde’s poem The Sphinx)

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

We’re supposed to be going to Paris again in April. Work related and for an entire week’s worth of meetings. It’s like any other week of uninspiring meetings and yet, it’s Paris so it won’t be like any other meeting week. Going back to Paris is a chance to revisit old memories, search out the traces of old friends and maybe even to explore beyond the Périférique, that 35 km of noisy and chaotic ring road that mostly seems to get you to where you need to be. That’s part of the beauty of Paris though, at least for me: it somehow always delivers, always gets you someplace unexpected, but where it turns out you want to be. It’s a city you know you will always return to and if you don’t manage the return, you know you always will want to. Unless there is something profoundly wrong with you. Paris is like a lover from years gone by, full of promise and shot through with the tantalising scent of maybe, the enticing edginess of the unknown. Images of lovers known in Paris are obscured by images of the city. They get lost in the city stink, a blend of burnt cheese from the streetside crêpe sellers, the fading fumes of cars and lorries and the unexpected wafts of human scents, some lovely and some not so much.

Top of the list of my fave places is the Gare du Nord immense with memories of arrivals and departures, loaded with the possibility of the improbable. Right down to not being able to get the metro you want because they’ve closed some station or another. You raise your eyes in disbelief to an open vault of fake, glazed sky. The Gare du Nord’s roof shines light and bright and so far up that even tall people are impressed. The metro isn’t my favourite place to be, not in London and not in Paris. The noise has always been faint inducing, and the sudden gusts of train driven breezes always make me feel as if I am somehow on a path to somewhere otherworldly. But what gives the Paris metro the edge over the world’s other metros is the thrill of getting a train with the little handle you have to lift to open the doors. It requires a slightly silly little movement and for people with small hands the handles are the perfect size. For people with normal sized hands the little handles are probably annoying. I hope there are still trains like that when we go.

The metro is an easy way to reach the Père-Lachaise cemetery located in a scruffy bit of Paris where the traffic runs around the cemetery in what feels like a constant state of screaming hysteria. Hardly restful for the resident corpses. It’s where, along with other notables, Oscar Wilde rests. His friend and executor Robbie Ross moved Oscar’s remains to Père-Lachaise from Bagneux some fourteen kilometres away, in 1909. Myth has it that after nine years at Bagneux he was basically intact and that he had grown a beard. Hardly likely since he had been covered in quicklime as an aid to decomposition. Apparently it preserved him instead. It’s hard to think of what bodily remains of Oscar’s lie there under all that deco limestone. It’s sculpted into a flying angel by Jacob Epstein who said it’s “a vast, winged figure … the conception of poet as messenger”. It’s wonderful entertainment to watch the parade of tourists coming to visit Oscar, most of them because he is on a list of some sort. Box tickers. Or maybe it’s just about the selfies and they know only that Oscar is infamous and nothing of his work or his infamy. He’d love that, that unqualified, nonjudgemental homage, those marvellous pointless vanities.

Last time I was in Paris, en route to visit friends somewhere near Le Mans, I went to the studio of an artist I had come across. Frédéric Belaubre has a working and living space in Montmartre that is smaller than our kitchen (granted it is a biggish kitchen). Canvasses stacked above and at the foot of a double bed and alongside the walls where there was a small kitchen set up, or an intimate dining space. Guitars and violins hanging in the spaces between his canvasses on the walls. A violin on the wall with broken strings looks a little horsefaced, like him. He only has a few horsey pictures and those have limited movement. But they are lovely, sometimes hostile, violent, especially the ones with people in. The people are usually being bucked off. Does he take commissions? Only if he’s inspired. Oh dear. I like the horse pictures, but no one else seems to. Maybe they aren’t all that good.

After the artistic interlude, smug and clutching my new pictures, I went to the nearest place I could find for something to eat. This is the other thing about Paris, rarely is a place disappointing although it can happen. Maybe that rarity is another reason to always want to go back. Onion soup and cheese and thick bread and water and quiet in the noise of Montmartre. And of people smiling, polite, local.

If you’ve been going to a city for decades it is tempting to think it has nothing much more to show you. You’ve been there, done it all before and you know how to get about. So much blah blah. But that is how old people think and behave, so do not fall into that laziness, don’t think old.  Just like Paris, everywhere is constantly changing, fomenting some new concoction of something unforeseeable and intriguing. And that’s why I am excited to be going back to Paris, again.

Hip op post chirurghiam (what a lovely word) or Life after total hip replacement

Laurel Lindström 4 Comments

It’s week five following total hip replacement surgery and no one told me how much it would still hurt. That said I’ve ditched the crutches and the painkillers and am doing my utmost to be normal instead of drifting about like an invalid. Why should that matter to you? Good point. If you’re in line for this operation, be warned. If not, be sympathetic and send me more chocolates.

The other thing I’ve learned thanks to the hip thing is the value of a functioning health service. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been fantastic, from start to finish in this process. I’ve even got an appointment to check out a dodgy knee to see how its coping with the strain. Free crutches, free medication, free physio, world leading surgical competence. We don’t know how lucky we are, so thank you NHS.

And if you think you might be in line for a new hip, don’t leave it too long before you do something about it. Get yourself on the list as soon as possible, because leaving it leads to pain, misery and depression. I knew I should get something done about my hip when we were tackling the steps and alleyways of Hydra some three years ago. Lying flat and stretching out the stiffness caused a noisy crackling in the hip and it felt easier, so I thought it was fine. Big mistake. All that happened was that I didn’t notice the pain as much. By the time it was clear that the joint was knackered, I had to wait several agonising months for an appointment for surgery. Those months were grim and characterised by bad-temperedness, impatience and a subtle brain signal blocking activies that involved any stress to the hip, which was everything. Think a reluctance to walk anywhere, avoiding hills and trying to not drive. Pathetic.

Until about six weeks before the surgeon let loose with saw, hammer and drill I was still riding. But finally the leg swing had swung its last so I had to stop. I did keep up with the weight and strength training as much as possible, right to the day before and this was definitely a good move. The recovery exercises and the process of working the new hip and leg bone has been much easier because of core and leg strength.

It’s going to take a while before my confidence comes back. This is another legacy of having left it too long. All those unnecessary months of pain have left me anxious and nervous, with a brain that says, ooh no, don’t do that, ask Paul to help. This is so annoying because it implies some sort of weird change in my character. And it makes me lazy about appreciating the incredible support Paul has given me, from looking after the animals to being patient with my irritability and bossiness. The sense that my character is somehow changing is reinforced by an almost total lack of appetite. Even chocolate is being chomped in way less quantities than before and I haven’t had an alcoholic beverage since New Year’s Eve. Perhaps that isn’t so bad. 

Maybe the other benefits will soon make themselves felt: no stabbing needles jabbing into the hip bone, no solid aching pain reaching all the way to the ankle joint, no need to lift by hand the dodgy leg to get into bed or car, or onto the sofa. And being able to dance wild and crazy again without the risk of falling over! Soon.

This is a bit of a rant, but I guess one that was much needed. Thanks for reading.

A Christmas message

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

I It’s Christmastime and here we are

Each alone and yet in shared space

We’re secret and shared, random, but gathered in

We watch as one sips wine or waves across the room

We see another pick stray hairs from a dear one’s shoulder

We wonder at their constance, what they love and hold dear

We think of late night trains and sunken lanes in darkness still

And we know we don’t stand alone.

II It’s Christmastime and here we are 

Sharing spaces, affirmations, discourse and shapes

We are the passion, the remembered yet unspoken lusts

We watch for unknown moments, desires and secrets, none quite the same

We see memories lost in eyes at once remembered, that may never have been

We wonder at friends, at skies rent with lightning, at moments of awe

We think of instruments whispering somewhere far away

Pound’s petals on a wet, black bough

III It’s Christmastime and here we are 

Beyond our walls, new connections, the spit and echoes of ancient stories

We are each others’ lost memories quick silver dulled

We watch and set the lenses straight for what we’ve found

We see beyond the blah blah getting in the way 

We wonder at common memories, yet yearn for what’s missing

We think can we embrace unseen shadows, and then we do

A whistle’s echo hovers, and flutters leaves on the branches

IV It’s Christmastime and here we are 

We tell our stories of connections, of being kind, of patience with fools

We’re the keepers of tales, of the how, the who, of what we love 

We hear of families, horses and hounds, kittens, goldfish, the books, the music, all the others 

We listen to sounding angers, loss, the chaos of joy, calamity’s descent

We catch each others’ sounds and see and we are present

We hear harmonies, coherence conjoined

And how we come together is mysterious and wonderful

And as you are mine I am yours, we are ours

We are companions all, in these our endless moments.

© Laurel Lindstrom 2025

Eddie, see you soon

Laurel Lindström 3 Comments

That sounds like we’re about to meet up. We’re not as far as I know, and yet I’m sure I’ll see Eddie in moments yet to come.

Somehow it’s easier to write a eulogy for someone you didn’t know very well (Geoff Gudgion), than it is for someone you did. Even if you didn’t really know him all that well or see him regularly. Following a fierce battle with Alzheimer’s and cancer, our dear friend Eddie Orf has gone. Eddie leaves brothers, sons, grandchildren, his wife, Debbie, plus countless others who knew and loved him. Debbie nursed him with profound dedication and love, right up until the moment when neither love nor dedication could make any difference. And then beyond.

We met Eddie at the Stationers’ Hall in London in March 2014. It was an ISO committee event to celebrate some committee member’s retirement. Eddie was wearing a dark green wooly jumper and had a look in his eye that was at once appraising of the august surroundings and making a shrewd observation of the people. These were all people he didn’t know: Debbie’s work colleagues, me, Paul and various anonymous hangers on. He was in a seriously posh location surrounded by conversations at once impenetrable and irrelevant to him. And yet he had an air of authority, of cool, like he was the one in control and that he was only there to make sure the event went as planned. He brought that air of quiet dignity to everything he did, calm, even tempered, kind and empathetic. And always so very generous with his gentle spirit.

It’s been over 11 years since that first meeting when we four hung out at our respective flats, somewhere in Canary Wharf. Back then posh unsold flats were the cheapest place to stay in that part of town. The developers couldn’t sell the places and wisely rented them out. You could get a luxuriously appointed two bedroomed flat for a week for the same price as one night in a local hotel. The rest of the US delegation stayed in some dogbox in Beckenham or in overpriced Marriots on the other side of town. For Eddie the oddness of the accommodation was just something to take in stride. He did the same a couple of years ago when he and Debbie once again stayed in London. By then the Alzheimer’s was kicking in so Eddie carried a card from the hotel whenever he went out to conquer the city. He could be anywhere, but he understood that all he had to do was hand a taxi driver the card and ask them to take him home. He and Debbie stayed with us for a few days before they went up to town and it was clear that the memory thing was heading downhill. We just had no idea how quickly it was going. Or perhaps we did but preferred to pretend it wasn’t so bad.

A couple of years after that first meeting we spent a week in Italy with Debbie and Ed, somewhere in the vacinity of Bologna. Eddie wanted to see where his Italian forebears had come from. No one was very sure if they had come from somewhere in the vacinity of Bologna or not, but they were Italian so they might have done. It rained pretty much every day and we cooked together, drank together and took long and winding excursions to places like Modena and maybe Vignola. We went to a Lambrusco winery and brought home a case of the stuff convinced that it was wonderful. It was wonderful in the winery, but it was less wonderful out of the winery. Why do things go that way? The next day, a Thursday, Paul and Eddie ventured out into the rain in search of comestibles. Wisely Debbie and I stayed indoors. Over the course of the afternoon we polished off most of the Lambrusco, along with a more than ample tray of olives and bread and Parmesan. She and I had long talked of doing this, but had expected to be quaffing and nibbling on a terrace overlooking exotic foliage and sundrenched views. We drank our fizzy red wine and ate our tidbits in front of a roaring fire instead, listening to the rain and rising winds. We had prepared the fire, food and wine to share with our men who had gone out for what we all expected was a brief excursion, but they did not return until it was almost dark. Eddie and Paul on the loose and roaming the wide and hilly bounds of Emilia Romagna. In the rain. Not a word of Italian between them. And really not much of idea where they were. And the temptation of village bars and bakeries. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out the thing that went wrong was the fact that it was a Thursday. All the local shops had agreed amongst themselves to shut on Thursday afternoons, because it was high season and there were so very many tourists. They were tired you see, so needed that extra bit of time off. I cannot remember – thank you Lambrusco – how cross our returning men were that we had eaten most of the food and drunk most of the wine. This was probably especially tricky because all the shops for miles around had been shut. But Lambrusco or no, I am sure Eddie just smiled and suggested we talk about where to go on Friday. He wanted to go and look at the Mediterranean which he had never seen. This we did a few days later, once we had recovered from the trials of Thursday. Instead we went in search of a restaurant for a special Friday night dinner. We ventured out into the wet and booked a place that we’d passed many times and that looked promising. The views across the towered valley were spectacular and the car park was always full.

But the man at the desk, rather oddly we thought, was reluctant to give us a reservation without a lot of chat none of which any of us could follow. Not even Eddie who was Italian. Fair enough he didn’t speak Italian, but the rest of us were hoping there might have been some sort of inherited, genetic, memory. But no. Eventually the man at the desk stopped explaining whatever it was that was so important and sighed a big sigh. He took the reservation only after his colleague had explained to us the incomprehensible caveat of Tutti Fritti. Si we said, clueless. We thought the explanation might be something to do with Fridays (and yes fritti Fridays was a thing). We trundled home happy that we had a slap up meal to look forward to that evening.

And we did have a slap up meal, a slap up meal that consisted of about eight courses, all of which were fried dishes. All of them. Deep Fried dishes, even the dessert. Fritti. This was actually the Italy Eddie had wanted to see, particularly the copious quantities of wine they included with all the Fritti. We too appreciated the wine, as it had just the right amount of bite to cut through the relentless Fritti grease. It’s quite a thing to have a slap up meal with eight courses that all taste basically the same. It’s traditional apparently. Once we recovered from the short and twisty drive home we were feeling content but still slightly sick; I think we all slept well that night. But that might have been the night Debbie and Eddie hit the Grappa, and maybe didn’t expect to sleep well until it was all gone.

Then came the next excursion, when after two hours slog in the rain negotiating many complicated and dangerous bends we could finally show Eddie the Mediterranean. We passed Lucca and for some reason made for Viareggio, south of La Spezia, probably because the road to it followed the coast. You see there wasn’t much of a plan. Paul made straight for the water under a persistent rain with Eddie not moving to follow. He quite sensibly pointed out that the weather wasn’t really right for sea swimming. So we watched Paul brave the waves and scurry shivering back to us and then we headed back towards wherever it was we were staying, stopping for food and wine on the way. 

This is just one little snapshot of time spent with Eddie, time spent with a man whose kindness and gentleness cannot be compared. There are many more and the reminders are frequent, those moments that don’t end and that happen when you least expect it. Eddie was Paul’s best friend and the four of us became solid, unbreachable, forever friends. And now Eddie’s gone and the gap is colossal and as unsurmountable as the walls of our friendship. Time and disease have stolen one of the world’s bestest people. Eddie leaves a massive gap in the lives of his friends and family. But he also leaves a light of goodness and joy that won’t ever go out and for this we thank him. I am honoured to have known the man and cherish the hours we spent in his company. And I’ll cherish forever the last thing he said to me a couple of months before he died: “I don’t know who you are darlin’, but I do know that I love you”. Love you back Ed.

A thoughtful man with gray hair and glasses, resting his chin on his hand, appears deep in contemplation in an outdoor setting with brick architecture in the background.

Apologies for absence

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

We’ve lost a wonderful colleague and friend, the author Geoff Gudgion. He was lost to a devastating disease that took a mere few weeks to claim him. So how do we say we miss you? How do we say we’re so sorry to his family, when we don’t know them? How do we accept that we didn’t really know you Geoff? We are missing you, but only that part of you that you shared with us. 

I can share what we do know and maybe that small sliver reflects Geoff more broadly. Geoff was always impeccably dressed carrying himself and his lovely clothes with a subtle blend of playfulness and dignity. At Authors’ Club events he sometimes looked like he was on his way to a wedding or to meet royalty, such was his bearing and carriage. A published author Geoff wrote ghost stories, historical fantasy, novellas and short stories. His writing world was peppered with the supernatural and fantastic characters like Adelais, his cross-dressing warrior nun. Not the sort of thing I read much, but very popular. Geoff had a solid and reliable market of happy readers and enviable sales.

We met at our publisher’s offices where we had been invited to learn more about something social media related. A sort of workshop it was. Sitting in my first fiction publisher’s office to talk about my first novel, I was so very over excited, so early and so feeling like I was on my way as a fiction writer (I wasn’t). The books lining the publisher’s office walls, the little kitchen area, the serious faces of the people going to and fro, talking is low tones about books and writing. The smell of books and print and the door leading to what were surely hallowed spaces beyond the lobby area. We would soon be part of that sacred space having sacred conversations about writing and the sacred publishing process. It was all so grown up. 

As the minutes oozed slowly by I was watching my hands, even shakier than usual. And in swans Geoff Gudgion. This man so tall, so straight and confident, so in control. I thought he must be something military and later found out that he had been in the Royal Navy for many years. That day when we met, he was wearing a short cut leather jacket and chinos, with seriously smart shoes and bright blue socks. The bright blue was picked up in a navy blue shirt open at the neck and patterned with little dots or were they diamonds? Attractive, smart and elegant, with just a hint of teasing flirtatiousness.

He sat down next to me super cool, urbane. Geoff just as excited as me but without the fidgeting. Geoff was not a debut author, which for me gave him considerable writerly authority. We chatted about how we each came to be with the publisher, what we expected in the workshop, what our books were about. And walking back to the tube he said he’d love to be part of the Authors’ Club. That was the beginning of what might otherwise have been nothing more than a brief moment of shared experience. I am very glad that it wasn’t.

Over the few years since that initial meeting we, along with other Authors’ Club members, met often. Soon Geoff joined the Authors’ Club Executive Committee and took on the Treasurer’s duties. He was supportive of writers as much as readers. Besides doing the financial work superbly, Geoff was an especially committed reader for the Best First Novel Award and he attended pretty much all the Authors’ Club monthly lunches. At our James Bond dinner in 2023 to celebrate Casino Royale’s seventieth birthday, Geoff channelled Bond to perfection. He was immaculate in black tie, complete with white dress scarf. 007 personified Geoff swanned about, martini in hand, working the room and in command.

But these little moments shared at Authors’ Club events were all we really have of the man. The rest of his life belonged to his family and many friends and colleagues. We knew he was his wife’s carer and support. We knew he had a son in Australia who came to visit. We knew he organised a local meet and greet event with thriller writer Frederick Forsyth. We knew he was a keen horseman and we knew of his 17 year old warmblood Elsa’s gifted performance in the dressage arena. (I think it’s Elsa.) He loved telling tales of her misdemeanors and brilliance. Elsa’s apparently got a habit of jumping out of dressage arenas to bog off somewhere more interesting. Telling me about such moments I had the impressionn that Geoff was less cross than thrilled. An unexpected jaunt through the woods is far more interesting than halting at X or cantering a 15 metre circle. Geoff struggled with this because he had one leg longer than the other. A special shoe compensated for this on the ground. But wasn’t much good when he was riding, so he had to sit very straight to stop the circle becoming a spiral. What a strange thing to know about a man.

Geoff was also a keen shot and chef. Annoying pigeons on his front lawn were regularly dispatched, especially when Geoff was expecting people for lunch. To my look of horror at this information, Geoff told me his guests very much enjoyed home made pigeon pie (with home made pigeons) in burgundy gravy, served with mashed potatoes and peas. 

Fragments, little pieces of a life. We have these and the sense that we might have meant something to the man. We might have added a dimension to his world that he valued and enjoyed. He gave us so much of his grace and charm, his wit and insightfulness and his patience. A military man to the end even in such terrible and sudden ill-health. He was charming, stoic, diplomatic and above all kind. I am glad to have shared a small sliver of his world. 

When last we met at the Authors’ Club summer drinks, we chose wine number 007 from the National Liberal Club wine list. It’s Pommery Brut Royale BV Champagne described as “harmonious and never grows tiresome”. Much like Geoff really, a champagne of a man. We and many others will miss you very much.

A man gently holds the reins of a black horse while standing in a stable. The man smiles warmly, wearing a light blue shirt, with a relaxed and friendly demeanor.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – a book review

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Published in 1945, Cannery Row breaks with Steinbeck’s earlier models in that it is a series of sometimes disconnected stories, rather than a cohesive narrative with an obvious story arc. At first glance it appears to be a very dense novel of allegory and tenderness, looking like another story of a dissolute group of men. They’re slightly devious, definitely unreliable  and all of them victims of something: a physically abusive wife, frustrated ambitions, laziness and alcohol. Cannery Row looks like it’s a tale of male friendship and yet it is not. The women have their own cohorts: the women working for Dora the local madam and the middle class busy bodies who try to exert power over the bars and brothel. As with Tortilla Flat the author is showing us an Arthurian allegory, based on life in a particular locale. He presents the bit of Monterey, California where the daily sardine catches are processed and canned in dedicated canning factories. This part of Monterey is long since gone: Cannery Row drifted into redundancy due to overfishing and now it’s a tourist destination.

The Cannery Row of 1943 as John Steinbeck tells it, is home to a group of apparently decadent characters: “the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junkheaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses”. In his novel’s first paragraph John Steinbeck tells us what to expect of his novel. In telling us this, Steinbeck’s opening paragraphs are reminiscent of Shakespeare’s prologues to Romeo and Juliet and Henry V. We’re told the set up.

Steinbeck’s story progresses slowly and he explores his themes through different narratives. Money is a big deal. And death and rebirth. Then there is love and kindness and of course human frailty. In a letter to his friend Carlton A. Sheffield in September 1944 just after Steinbeck had finished Cannery Row, he says he wrote the book with four levels. Tantalisingly he doesn’t say what those levels are, but I think he means as a simple set of stories, as an allegory, as a picture of Cannery Row and as an antedote to war. Despite its creation date (he began the book in 1943), there are no references to World War II at all in Cannery Row. The only military reference is the dawn walk of a pair of soldiers with their girlfriends, welcoming the rising sun: “… and the men lay down and put their heads in the girls’ laps and looked up into their faces. And they smiled at each other, a tired and peaceful and wonderful secret.” Beauty not destruction, even though the men are soldiers.

So what is this short novel about? First of all money. When Mack and the boys embark on an expedition to collect a few hundred frogs that Doc, owner of the marine biology lab, will sell on, they have no money for fuel. Nor do they have a vehicle. They persuade local grocer Lee Chong to let them take his derelict car which he got in return for clearing a groceries debt. The truck doesn’t go and of course it has no fuel. Doc arranges for fuel and the boys fix the truck up well enough to get to the place where there are lots of frogs. Except the truck’s frailties are such that it can only get up hills, if it is in reverse. After several mishaps, including one of the boys ending up in jail, they have their frogs. They return triumphant to Cannery Row and throw a party for Doc in his lab. Doc arrives home long after his party is over, his lab trashed and the frogs escaped to local culverts, ponds and streams. But in between the boys arriving home triumphant with their frogs and the ill-fated party, the frogs have become a trading currency in the neighbourhood. No winners where financial greed is concerned. The boys throw another party for Doc and this one he does make and enjoy, despite the second party ending up much like the first.

And then there’s death. No Steinbeck story would be complete without a violent death. In Cannery Row it comes early with the suicide of a local man indebted to Lee Chong. By handing over an abandoned building he owns in Cannery Row before blowing his brains out, the man settles his debt to the grocer. The boys suggest that the building is in need of protection from vandals and fire, so they should stay there for a nominal rent. This is never paid, but the boys move in and turn the old fishmeal store into a home they call the Palace Flophouse. Death and rebirth.

A little glimpse into the life of a gopher flips this around. A whole chapter is dedicated to a gopher, sleek and handsome and in the prime of life. He diligently builds a home for his mate who never materialises, even though his burrow “was a place where he could settle down and raise any number of families and the burrow could increase in all directions”. Eventually he gives up, abandons his lofty palace and moves to a nearby garden known for putting out lethal gopher traps. Death finds us all. Doc exploring Pacific tide pools discovers the body of a lovely young woman “wedged between two rocks”. He chooses to not claim the bounty: “will you report it? I’m not feeling well,” he tells another man on the beach.

Love and kindness are common themes in the work of John Steinbeck and in Cannery Row it’s part of almost every subplot. Lee Chong is generous and patient with people he knows are out to rip him off or steal from him. When he’s persuaded to lend the Mack and the boys his truck: “Lee was worried but couldn’t see any way out. The dangers were there and Lee knew all of them. ‘Okay, ’ said Lee”. Doc’s endless patience with the boys even though he knows there’s an agenda somewhere. Between shifts, the women of the Bear Flag brothel take soup out to local people ill with the ’flu. Despite the exhuberant trashing of his lab, Doc helps cure Mack’s puppy of distemper. Having noticed that he only has a grubby blanket for his bed, the whores sew a quilt for Doc’s birthday. The cruelties in the book, such as the likely fate of Frankie, a mentally frail young boy, are necessary counterpoints to these and many other expressions of love.

Human frailty and agency in all their manifestations permeate Steinbeck’s work and especially Cannery Row. Every decision we make or avoid has consequences, from drinking too much to not drinking enough. In Cannery Row, everyone’s choices are resolved one way or another, from Lee Chong’s greed and willingness to accept frogs as money, through to Frankie’s theft of a $50 clock and subsequent arrest. 

In less than 40,000 words of dazzling prose there is all this and much more. Cannery Row is short but it’s extremely dense, and that’s the novel’s power. Brevity masks the hugeness of story telling that makes Cannery Row an intensely powerful novel, both in its own time and for our own.

Too lazy to work out how to email you

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

It’s beyond my patience threshold to work out how to email subscribers to a WordPress site. But WordPress subscribers get an automatic email when you post a blog which is great. So instead of only subscribers getting this news, everyone will. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The news is that I have managed to sell, yes sell for actual money (not much), a piece of narrative fiction/travel writing! It’s here: https://theglobalvoyagers.com/destination-insights/hydra-greek-islands/laurellindstrom/hydra-small-island-big-impressions/ I hope you enjoy the article and support the site.

Enjoy!

-Laurel.

Byebye blurbs

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Once upon a time a blurb was a short description of a book on the flyleaf or the back that told you what the book was about. Over the years the blurb has turned into something much less helpful. What passes for blurbs today are short endorsements of a title, usually by other authors. They often include words like “brilliant” or “heartfelt” or “tour de force”. Nowadays gushing single-sentence guff counts as a blurb.

But modern blurbs are a waste of space, time, energy, eyetime. I’ve thought this for a long time and have mourned the loss of proper back-of-the-book summaries of stories. Now in a move author James Folta describes as “dazzling” publisher Simon & Schuster is dropping the requirement for authors to provide blurbs.

You’ll see at least one blurb on most books, but some have many, many supposedly authorative people offering effusive praise for a title. I managed one blurb for The Draftsman (thank you John Walsh), a debut novel. But successful authors are pushed to come up with as many as possible from names as lofty as possible. Why? Do readers really care if someone thinks a book is written in “effervescent” prose, or if it’s just “impossible to put down”? Or if the author has created a “tour de force”? It might as well be a tour de france or a divinely juicy sandwich you can’t stop chomping on. And should prose be effervescent at all? A nonsense all of it.

What authors want is readers and what readers want is a short summary of what the book’s about. How hard is that to get? What’s maybe more interesting is why publishers think that a bunch of mostly meaningless peer comments are of interest to readers. Is there a belief that if Salman Rushdie or JK Rowling has been arsed to supply a blurb for a book, that potential readers will be induced to cough up and buy the thing? Actually maybe that’s it. Perhaps publishers believe that readers are sheep, inclined to follow the lead of authors they respect. And that’s just silly. So many of the multiple blurbs splattering today’s fiction and nonfiction are written by people most readers have never heard of, because they are produced by the cognescenti of the book scene. It’s another example of the cosy closed world of friends of friends of agents or of colleagues in publishing who might be flattered to be asked. Or who are helping out as insurance for the future. Maybe it’s about protecting the exclusive inner shrine that is is today’s publishing business.

Harvesting blurbs is a soul destroying task for authors and their lexical supply chains. Far better to spend the time on more imaginative forms of promotion, working with alternative distribution channels, massaging the egos of booksellers and librarians and the trade press. Even writing the next book. Anything has to be more rewarding than blurb collecting.

Simon & Schuster’s “dazzling” move is a first, at least a first by a big name publisher. Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher wrote in Publishers Weekly he’s “decided that beginning in 2025, the Simon & Schuster flagship imprint will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books.” He also said that “this kind of favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent”. This is spot on for an industry that trades on its history as nurturers of the contemporary socio-political et al voice. It’s all very precious, a cosy, protected space. 

More likely Mr Manning has made his decision because he recognises that it’s a waste of salaried peoples’ time collecting blurbs and that they really make little difference to potential buyers. He surely also understands that in today’s oversaturated market, publishers don’t need such unreliable tools to sell books. And besides AI can generate all the tempting whimsy you could possibly want, along with all manner of fictitious author identities, life stories and of course books. And who amongst readers will really care if the next Jilly Cooper title was AI generated. Jilly might but I bet her fans would be thrilled to get the next Rivals, say Rivals II or maybe Rivals: next generation? They’d buy it blurb or no blurb. And as to the AI thing, they just won’t care.