Family Life and The Sunday Salon

Good morning, I hope your Sunday morning is going well mine is not! Away in a dream (since you ask, some film noir version of my childhood no doubt triggered off by last nights 50 word story**) until jolted out of it by a pre 7am phone call. Naturally, deaths of family households or the need to make one King of England as half of the UK has just…well you get the picture… sprang to mind. Wife went into confused polite mode and I groped around to find watch and glasses and the flee the country overnight bag. It was a friend of the Wife wanting to know if she could come to lunch (the Wife, not friend to us…I think). I got the stare when I dared to mutter a faint protest so out of bed, made a cup of tea and decided time to do the Sunday Saloon blog…shush, wife’s gently shouting for tea, need to whisper as wife-blogging is forbidden, something about you talk to strangers but not to me followed by door slamming, way over my head).

Anyway, another mixed reading week, as I have failed yet again to start Yellow Fever by Steffan Piper although a review calls. I also now have the latest Librarything Early review, The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov on the must read list. Naturally, I get distracted so instead I am reading Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark but have only read tools 1 to 4 which of course you have noticed applied in this post. All about use and order of verbs so far, and apparently dear reader Ian Fleming has this sorted so buy a James Bond novel and gasp in amazement. Added to the enjoyment of reading, I have just started to do meme’s (didn’t even know what the word meant at the beginning of May!) I did posts for Booking through Thursday, Tuesday Thingers and Weekly Geeks.

I have read The Pirates! in an adventure with Whaling by Gideon Defoewhich was a fun short read but not as good as The pirates! : in an adventure with scientists. My main read of the week was Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore , which is a brilliant reconstruction of the early years of Stalin which challenges a whole range of myths of a man you would be foolish to have irritated. Strangely, I was reminded of man who I worked with once…charming, paranoid, bully and vindictive who sacked or exiled any one( I was exiled) who was a rival or failed to deliver that day’s “the thing that must be done”. Any problem was always down to poor quality workers never the vision or leadership. Irritatingly, down to the last two chapters and the book went missing somewhere between Bristol and London so had to buy a replacement.

I have a heavy workload next week so although having hours on trains I also have to do a lot of writing and workshop design for work so unsure, what reading will be done so...Oh My God. Guess what, just turned round and finally noticed something odd about my home made bricks and floorboard bookshelf. Its collapsed and yet been reassembled with books stacked rather then racked and the surplus piled on the floor. It appears, after a frank and open exchange with the teenage Son, that it’s my fault and that he has helped me by exposing flaws and showing what improvements needed…sigh. Time for more tea, opening the book and listening to Wife and teenage Son doing Bob Dylan duets and so dear reader, another Sunday gets underway.

PS well almost, it appears that none of my Hyperlinks worked but for the one below so I had to remove them so just look at the label lists if you want...mutters, and scratches head.

** I try to write a Random Short Stories with a picture to illustrate it inspired by the daily post on First 50.