#doggers tale

[toglietemituttomanonimieilibri1]

👀 non fate i dispetti a Flavia. Ha 11 anni ma sa già usare l’acido. 👉🏻 #flaviadeluceeildelittonelcampodeicetrioli Vol. 1 #flaviadeluce Flavia è stata legata e chiusa nell'armadio in soffitta ma per lei è un gioco da ragazzi liberarsi. Sono state le sue sorelle a farle quello e presto riceveranno la sua vendetta. Un giorno, sulla porta di casa, trova un uccello morto con un francobollo nel becco. Ciò destabilizza il padre, ha colto un messaggio nascosto? Quella stessa notte, Flavia sente il padre litigare con qualcuno a proposito di un tale che hanno ucciso. Il mattino dopo, alle prime luci dell'alba, mentre esce, Flavia inciampa letteralmente su un corpo. L'uomo fa giusto in tempo a sussurrarle "Vale" e poi muore. Flavia è su di giri, è la cosa più eccitante che le sia mai capitata. Chiama la polizia ma omettendo alcuni particolari. Poi prende la sua bicicletta e parte ad indagare. 👍🏻 Flavia ha undici anni, riesce a scassinare le serrature, sciogliere nodi che la tengono prigioniera e ha un laboratorio di chimica. Ultimo ma non meno importante: sa vendicarsi meglio di chiunque altro ... per esempio, ha sciolto le perle della sorella nell'acido. Flavia è una chimica eccezionale, i veleni sono la sua passione. 👍🏻 Flavia mi piace molto perché è tosta e vendicativa con le persone malevoli ma gentile e premurosa con chi è buono. Lei è un peperino, dice all'ispettore che è stato devastante trovare il cadavere ma in realtà è super emozionata. 👍🏻 Altro personaggio interessante è Dogger, il tuttofare. Di lui si dice che sia sopravvissuto due anni in un campo di prigionia giapponese e a tredici mesi di torture, fame e lavori forzati. A volte ha degli attacchi, visioni legate ai quei tempi. 👍🏻 Grande attenzione viene data ai dettagli. Il caso è intrigante soprattutto per il suo legame con il passato e con il padre di Flavia. 👍🏻 Un giallo reso affascinante dalla sua piccola ma brillante protagonista. ❓Vi piacciono i gialli dove ad indagare sono i bambini? #giallimondadori #librigialli #antrodilibri #bibliophilelegentibus #amicandito #ilclubdeilettorifelici #storiebookite1 https://www.instagram.com/p/CjVrAMBMP3w/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#flaviadeluceeildelittonelcampodeicetrioli #flaviadeluce #giallimondadori #librigialli #antrodilibri #bibliophilelegentibus #amicandito #ilclubdeilettorifelici #storiebookite1

[thedarkperidot]

A butterfly greets Cymber the Husky 🦋 -Fluffy husky tales-

#cymber the husky #fluffy husky tales #huskies #husky #dog #butterfly #butterflies #doggo #dogger #good dog #good doggo #the goodest boy #woofer #puppo #pupper doggo #dogblr #doglover #dogsofinstagram #dogstagram #butterfly love #insects #animals #animal #animal lover #animalblr

[stealikeanartist]

I bet that Asgore has an entire closet dedicated to all of the mugs he collects. 

Tales Through the Door

-previous | next-

#the more i think about asgore the more i identify with him #tori isn't the only one who can scary #and asgore can do it in a snail shirt #papyrus and dogger meet again #undertale #undertale comic #sans #papyrus #asgore #annoying dog #tttd #tales through the door

[damonalbarn]

Major Reviews of ‘Merrie Land’

MOJO:  "A pagan dance around a dense core of Albarn's observations and some explicit politics."  4 / 5 ★ 

Q Magazine: “To call Merrie Land Albarn's Brexit album might sound reductive, but this is a record deeply informed by his dismay with where he sees the country heading.” 4 / 5 ★ 

The Sunday Times: “The album finds Albarn returning to the whimsical, jaundiced patriotism of Parklife, and the lulling, vaudevillian textures of This Is a Low and To the End. Vocally, he has never sounded so lovely, or so sad”. ALBUM OF THE YEAR 

Hot Press: "Ribbons is such a pretty song, I demand it be played at my funeral. If buckets of tears aren’t shed there’ll be trouble." 7 / 10 ★ 

UNCUT: "The state [Merrie Land] depicts is both imaginary and recognisably real – as Albarn sees it, not so much a case of England’s dreaming, as the sad unfolding of an engineered nightmare."  7 / 10 ★

God is in the TV:  “The music and words of Merrie Land hit so many targets, and with such precision, by turns grotesque and horribly emotionally exposed, that it’s never less than utterly compelling.” 9 / 10 ★

The Line of Best Fit: “Whether you voted to Leave or Remain is immaterial here. Albarn achieves his mission, which is not to cast doubt on the process itself, but more the situation that led to it. He posits that the United Kingdom is doomed because we have lost sight of who we are, and where we want to be going. With material this strong, and a vision this clear, it’s hard to argue with him.” 8 / 10 ★

Sound of Violence: "Merrie Land is that sad tale that England is likely to experience next year. The four members of The Good, The Bad And The Queen illustrate it perfectly in less than forty minutes. This new record is a nice snub to this disaster in the making. Perfect to end the year, this album could become a true classic of the genre.”  5 / 5 ★

The Clash Magazine: “Albarn on Britain is a proven formula, but Simonon, Allen and Simon Tong combine to craft curious twenty-first century folk about curious twenty-first century folk”.  8 / 10 ★   

Loud and Quiet: “As a mirror held up to the country at a time of crisis by one of its sharpest observers, though, it’s a record of note, full of intrigue, intimacy and calmly assertive, greatly needed dissent”. 8 / 10 ★ 

The Independent: Surely there won’t be an album that captures our unsettled times more sublimely.  4 / 5 ★

Mondo Sonoro: “The essence of The Good, The Bad & The Queen continues intact in a delivery that does nothing but vindicate exponentially to each new chapter”.  8 / 10 ★

Drowned in Sound:  "Rich and accomplished; beautifully played and immaculately conceptualised, Albarn’s latest trip from FitzRoy to Faeroes and back, via Dogger and Dover, is a drizzle-soaked deep-dive into a fractured land and fractured people. One of the quiet highlights of the year."  8 / 10 ★

The Scotman: “Merrie Land is a deep, enigmatic addition to that conversation, but one that is destined to resonate beyond the borderlands of the Brexit blues”.

Manchester's Piccadilly Records: “With ‘Merrie Land’, the band taps into a creative symbiosis of past and future, drawing inspiration from their shared glittering musical histories and wrapping the hybrid results in a brilliantly postmodern yet thoroughly British package.”

GQ Magazine: “Because, as with Parklife, when Albarn writes about England something magical happens, even when there's very little magic to be found.”

Louder Than War:  5 / 5 ★

The Perfect Tempo:  5 / 5 ★

Musik Express:  5 / 5 ★

The Guardian:  3 / 5 ★

Consequence of Sound: + B

The Times:   4 / 5 ★

The Irish Times:  4 / 5 ★

XSNoize:  8 / 10 ★

Secret Meeting:  84 / 100 ★

#merrie land #tgtbtq #the good the bad and the queen #the good the bad & the queen #damon albarn #simon tong #tony allen #paul simonon #review #reviews

[sebastianevans]

85 Questions

I was tagged by @if-n0t-l8ter-when ❤

Last?

1. Drink : Diet Coke

2. Phone call: my mom

3. Text message: my bestie

4. Song you listened to: Honest by Shawn Mendes 

5. Time you cried: last month probably????

Ever?

6. dated some one twice: I haven’t even dated someone once lmao

7. Kisses someone and regretted it: I’ve never kissed anyone. 

8. Been cheated on: Nope.

9. Lost someone special: Unfortunately.

10. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Nope.

faves color?

11. Oxblood

12. Rose gold

13. Black

in the last year have you?

14. Made new friends : Yes! Met all my thirsty hoes ❤️❤️

15. Fallen out love: Nope  

16. Laughed until you cry: Always 

17. Found out someone was talking about you: Yes.

18. Met someone who changed you: not really? I’m pretty much what you see is what you get.

19. Found out who your friends are: Absolutely  

20. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Again, never kissed anyone.

21. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: All of them. 

22. Do you have any pets: 2 pupper doggers 

23. Do you want to change your name: Nope.

24. What did you do for your last birthday: I turned 21 in July and I went to dinner with my family and watched AMATW. Afterwards we came to my house for drinks. 

25. What time did you wake up today: 12:45pm.

26. What were you doing last night at midnight: Scrolling though Sephora. 

27. What is something you can’t wait for: My career bc school sucks ass. 

28. What are you listening to right now: 3AM by You Me At Six

29. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Nope.

30. Something that gets in your nerves: When people smack when they eat, hearing obnoxious chewing drives me nuts. 

31. Most visited website: Tumblr.

32. Hair color: Naturally, Brown but right now, Copper. 

33. Long or short hair: Long.

34. What do you like about yourself: I’m loyal, funny, and I take care of my friends and family. 

35. Want any piercings: Just my cartilage in my ear. 

36. Blood type: A+ 

37. Nicknames: Sav, Savy. 

38. Relationship status : Single.

39. Zodiac sign: Cancer.

40. Pronouns: She/her.

41. Fave tv shows: OITNB, The Good Place, B99, Bob’s Burgers, Queer Eye, The Bold Type, The Handmaids Tale.

42. Tattoos: I had one but it’s been removed. 

43. Right or left handed: Lefty.

44. Ever had surgery: Nope.

45. Piercings: Just my ear lobes.

46. Sports: MMA sometimes???

47. Vacation: Scotland or Hawaii. 

48. Trainers: Nike??? 

49. Eating: Nothing atm. 

50. Drinking: Diet Coke.

51. I’m about to watch: Whatever is on TV. 

52. Waiting for: School to start. 

53. Want: Happiness, a good career I love.

54. Get married: Yes. 

55. Career: I’m a student atm.

56. Hugs or kisses: Both is good.

57. Lips or eyes: Eyes.

58. Shorter: Im pretty short but I gravitate to taller guys.

59. Older or younger: Older, my friends shame my daddy kink smh.

60. Nice arms or stomach: Arms. 

61. Hookup or relationship: Relationship.

62. Troublemaker or hesitant: I’m a healthy mix of both.

have you ever?

63. Kissed a stranger: Again, I’ve not kissed anyone. 

64. Drank liquor: Yes.

65. Lost your glasses: I don’t wear glasses. 

66. Turned someone down: Yes. 

67. Sex on first date: No.

68. Broken someone’s heart: Not on purpose.

69. Had your heart broken: Yes. 

70. Been arrested: Nope.

71. Cried when someone died: Definitely.

72. Fallen for a friend: Yes, a big mistake. 

do you believe?

73. Yourself: I do more now that I’m learning. 

74. Miracles: Yes.

75. Love at first sight: Yes but it hasn’t happened to me. 

76. Kiss on the first date: Maybe on the cheek or something but not the lips. 

77. … there’s no question 😂

other?

78. Best friend’s name: Jackie

79. Eye color: Blue.

80. Fave movie: The Green Mile, Gifted. 

81. Favorite actor: Sebastian Stan. 

82. Favorite food: Pizza,

83. Extrovert or introvert: Introvert until you get to know me then I don’t stfu.

84. Favorite flower: Peonies.

85. Favorite hello kitty character: idek

I tag: @nomadevans, @crimsonash330, @sergeant-barnes, @stanning-seb, @stilesbansheequeen and anyone else who wants to participate!

[raekerrangatang]

Search Me

What does my search history say about me?

Certain aspects of my life require me to Google some pretty unsavory stuff: in a teaching capacity, I have found myself searching for far right extremist groups, trans hate groups, most sexualised video games, racist adverts, peadophile front pages, legal highs, TikTok Rape Day, Only Fans scams, 5G conspiracy theories and perhaps most controversially of all, international day of balloon sculpture.

Recently I worked with a graphic designer on fivrr to create book jackets for my novels. This involved sending him Google images of various elements to work from. Hands down the weirdest thing I have probably ever searched for is, ‘guy impaled on long spike’ (the deuteragonist of my coming of age novella meets his end harpooned by a narwhal statue’s tusk). Believe it or not, Google actually delivered a pretty accurate depiction of how I envisaged this picture. When I asked for a simple ‘school kid tie round head’, well, apparently this is like the most obscure idea ever. What I got was lots and lots of school children wearing ties. In the intended way: neatly around their necks. I tried ‘school tie head band’ and got every single colour and stripe of headband under the sun: silk ones, lace ones, gingham ones by the dozen, bow-on-top ones, polka dotted ones, tartan ones, velvet ones, Pudsey Bear ones, ones with face masks attached (because, let’s face it, post Covid, you can’t search anything without a face mask getting a cameo appearance). Maybe that had something to do with the fact that in my head, school ties actually need to be tied, when in reality, the modern variant clips on – and therefore cannot be worn around the head to signify a Lord Of The Flies style revolt.

So, I suppose if I disappeared or died in suspicious circumstances tomorrow and my laptop got siezed by detectives (pause while I savour this post-mortem-imaginary attention) they would find these searches pretty eccentric and maybe conclude that I had some ‘issues’ that needed working out.

But it’s thinking about the searches I undertake when actually writing my fiction content that really makes me uneasy. And I know it’s just for the book! Recently I watched a John Irving documentary on YouTube, in which he spoke about visiting prostitutes in Amsterdam as part of the research stage of his novel, ‘A Widow For One Year’ (which, by the way you should totally read). He took his wife along, so you know, it couldn’t have been more respectable. I can only dream of one day having the luxury to conduct actual field trips in the name of fiction (pause while I ponder writing these off as expenses on my tax returns). For us writers struggling in the garret of our two bed end terrace, it’s Google journalism, not Gonzo journalism that informs our prose.

So, today I had taken the dog and my laptop to my parents’ house for the day because I’m having work done on the house; downstairs is basically a building site and the bedroom is packed with boxes of books and DVD’s, so it’s like I’ve barricaded myself into the 1980’s. And yes, I know that retrospectively we all heart the 80’s: in meme form, or an ironic leg warmer, maybe we’ll crimp our hair for that reunion thing. But when you are physically surrounded by obsolete artifacts that are materially all you have to show for three decades work - NOT so bodacious. Totally not bodacious at all. I had to get out of there; to get off the anxiety cycle that goes something like this: I’ll just bin all the DVD’s – but, no, wait, they’ll end up in landfill; I’ll take them to a charity shop – but that’s a lot of cycle rides (how many rucksacks does it take to move an entire film collection?); I’ll flog them online – but that would mean typing in every title (and then deliberating over it); do I know anyone who car boots? Does anyone still car boot? How much would anyone pay for a DVD? And then I look at the sheer amount of them and the space they take up and I contemplate the last time I even watched one, and the likelihood of me ever watching one again. I weigh all this up against the comforting familiarity of them sitting on the shelf. And what else would I fill the shelves with? Is it any less indulgent to hoard hundreds of film titles, just to look at, just to reflect my values, my identity and my cultural capital, than it would be to display a collection of ceramic frogs or superhero figures or framed photos?

Anyway, I digressed. And then I digressed some more. Back to searching. So today, while other members of my family were passing a regular Sunday afternoon eating lunch, drinking wine, watching sport on TV, napping in front of sport on TV, complaining about the weather, I was tackling a ‘difficult chapter’. I knew this episode had to feature somewhere in the tale I have to tell. I’ve known for some time. And today, I could put it off no longer. It was time to get on the adults only train to porno-ville. Full disclosure: yes I have; once; it confirmed to me that I am indeed asexual. No, I’m not answering that.

Today was the first time I had ‘done it in public’. Lots of writers do, don’t they? The Potter series was famously penned in Edinburgh coffee shops (or is that just part of the myth?) Imagine E.L. James knocking out a sex scene in a Tesco café; mind you, erotic fiction writers surely must be the doggers of the trade. These public spaces still offer anonymity though; I was sitting feet away from my Mum and Dad and constructing a narrative thread based on the porn habits of a church congregation. And my parents are born again Christians! Every time Dad approached the dining table where I’d set up my work space, I quickly shut down the last page I visited: ‘first online porn sites’, ‘pervert synonyms’, ‘stages of sex addiction’, ‘proper name for crabs’, chlamydia (that was just for the spelling).

The protagonist of my soon-to-be-published Kindle book, ‘Post Midnight Blues’, writes a ‘poem’ entitled: ‘An Ode To Porn In The Hedgerow’, recalling more innocent days, when a lorry driver might pull over on the hard shoulder for a quick wank and toss his used copy of Razzle into the bushes for teenage lads to find and take back to their hide-outs. I can’t help thinking a writing must have been simpler then too.

If you like this blog - please check out more on my website, here https://www.raetoonery.com 

#writing #blog #1980s #filmcollector #selfpublishing

[okb-hpolitburo]

The Flag Of Dogeland, a sovereign island nation in the North Sea. Its coastline exactly follows the rough geographical outline of the real world underwater feature known as Dogger Bank, which is all that is left of the ancient land of Doggerland, which connected the British Isles to Mainland Europe before the last Ice Age. https://www.deviantart.com/okb-h/art/Kingdom-Of-Dogeland-Flag-861331252 Visit this page for a detailed history on Dogeland, its people, history, government, military and industries. Plus, learn of the surprising tale of how a Scottish Nun came to convert a Viking warband to Christianity, then go on to become the Island’s patron Saint. #dogeland #fictionalcountry #fictionalhistory #worldbuilding #doggerbank #fictionalflags #nordiccross #celticcross #staliceofdogeland https://www.instagram.com/p/CHrpKTZneUg/?igshid=53pmqdy8xh78

#dogeland #fictionalcountry #fictionalhistory #worldbuilding #doggerbank #fictionalflags #nordiccross #celticcross #staliceofdogeland

[papaculture]

Shirley Hughes

When it comes to bedtime (and morning and afternoon) reading, I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed sharing any author’s work more than Shirley Hughes. Undoubtedly, part of this is due to nostalgia on my part. Her Dogger was probably the book I read more than any other as a child and one of the first books I bought as a parent. The nostalgia here is twofold — for the remembered pleasure of discovering her books, but more so for the seemingly lost world they depict.

It’s a cliched lament for parents to yearn for the apparent simplicity of their own childhood, but I get a real pang looking at the screen-free days, large backyards, intimate neighbours and kerbside games on show in books such as Moving Molly and Alfie Lends A Hand. If Hughes’s time machine has a particular power, that’s largely due to how vivid and real her work seems. Part of that is down to her illustration style. At a glance it might almost be called unpretty, but there is something unusually tactile to her slightly scruffy figures and the furiously detailed backgrounds. Her characters and settings almost feel more familiar than those from my own memories of childhood.

While I often transposed myself into the characters of books I read as a child, I don’t think I ever felt that books were about me in quite the same way as I felt Dogger was about me. That wasn’t entirely because protagonist Dave is a good spit for my four-year-old self. It was because Hughes conjures an emotional life for her child characters that is almost unparalleled in the world of picture books. The dramas here are perfectly sized. There’s terror as Alfie accidentally locks himself in the house with Mum on the street, or grief as he loses his pet stone, or excitement when the roof leaks while he’s at home with a babysitter. Molly comes to terms with an unfamiliar environment. Carlos wishes for a new bike, but finds joy in not getting what he wants. Dave, of course, is heartbroken when he thinks his lost toy dog is gone forever.

I’ve seen both our kids connect with these simple dramas and the complex emotions they elicit. It’s easy to underestimate the trauma wrought on young minds by apparently trivial upsets, but Hughes has an extraordinary empathy for the children she writes and draws so beautifully. Everything is an adventure, everything matters, and everything can be dealt with – by determination, negotiation, patience or resilience.

Dogger

This was a – if not THE – formative book for me (like myself, it has recently celebrated its 40th birthday). I suspect it still informs my worldview in ways I can’t entirely pinpoint. It’s a story about loss that ends up not quite being a story about loss. When collecting his older sister Bella from school, Dave loses his favourite toy and best friend — the eponymous Dogger. Mum and Dad search everywhere, but Dogger is nowhere to be seen. At the school fair on the weekend, Dogger turns up on one of the toy stalls, but Dave doesn’t have enough money to buy him back. He runs to Bella for help, but not before Dogger has been bought by somebody else.

This book is such a rollercoaster of emotions. Indeed, so profound was its effect on my young heart, that I had misremembered it as a tragedy. While the (spoiler) happy ending brings a sense of great relief, the gutpunch moment is the display of sibling love on the part of Bella, who sacrifices a toy of her own to save Dave’s Dogger. This is all the more moving as it follows a bout of resentment on Dave’s behalf towards Bella, as she is having a much better day than he is. There’s such a closely observed honesty to the line: “At that moment he didn’t like Bella much either because she kept on winning things.”

Hughes was apparently inspired to write Dogger out of fear one of her children would lose their most precious toy (Dogger actually existed, but was never lost). It’s a recurring nightmare for this parent too. Child Two has gone through half a dozen foxes (we prepared for this eventuality), whereas Child One was once briefly separated from her Pooh Bear (who has no understudy). When that happened, I oddly found myself more worried about the Bear than the child. We could have persuaded her to accept a substitute, but I’m not sure I could have lived comfortably with the knowledge that the original bear was out there, wondering why his best friend had never come back for him.

Moving Molly

This was a recent, timely discovery. We had to move twice in the space of 12 months, which was a bit traumatic for all of us, not least Child One. This book was a salve for her feelings of dislocation and uncertainty. Molly’s family leave behind a basement flat in the city for a large house in the middle of nowhere. While she likes having her own room, she misses the busyness of the city and her neighbourhood friends. Left to her own devices (a luxury children had in the 1980s), she discovers an overgrown garden next door (hints of The Secret Garden) and conjures up a raft of solitary adventures. It’s a simple tale that acknowledges loneliness and boredom, while assuring the reader they already possess the equipment to overcome. Life doesn’t stand still for long; it’s up to us to make what we can of it. I particularly enjoy the double-page spread (not pictured) in which Molly’s reality is paired with a number of imagined adventures.

Trotter Street

This anthology series follows the exploits of a group of kids from a London street. While Hughes generally seems to focus on white, probably middle class characters (I hasten to add that her illustrations and supporting characters always depict a multicultural Britain), here she broadens her scope somewhat. Characters such as Carlos – who lives in a council house with his brother and single, working mother – are from more diverse backgrounds.

Actually, it’s worth noting that all her books depict a reasonable array of different sorts of families. While the mother is usually the primary caregiver, I never had a sense of her worlds being afflicted by rigid gender roles. I’ve only tracked down four books in this series, but suspect the original intent was to explore the sort of characters and situations that often exist at the periphery of her stories. As it is, these are great tales, possibly aimed at a slightly older audience than Dogger and Alfie, but nonetheless devoured by our (then) three-year-old. She was particularly inspired by Angel Mae, who enjoys her stage debut in the school nativity play as the “Angel Gave-You.”

Alfie

These are such a rich collection of stories. It’s a treat to be able to see Alfie grow and his relationships with friends (notably bad boy Bernard) develop. Likewise, sister Annie Rose goes from being a bit part baby to an involved and troublesome toddler. It’s probably Hughes’s most elaborate world, with the neighbours portrayed as vividly as Alfie and co (one of the stories deals rather beautifully with the death of a neighbour’s much loved moggy).

What I think I like most about these tales is the focus on relationships — friends, siblings, parents, friends of parents, neighbours. In Alfie Lends A Hand, Alfie has to negotiate his own unease at going to a party without Mum, while balancing the conflicting needs of two of his friends. In helping others, he learns something of his own strength. I never tire of reading these stories, although I’m grateful for the audiobook collection (read delightfully by Roger Allam, with music and sound effects) as the children’s enthusiasm for them exceeds even my own.

Age and stage: 2+

Gender stuff: Pretty great, really. While you could argue that most of the protagonists are male, there are some really well-crafted and atypical female characters throughout her work. Take Bella, for example. Athletic and pragmatic, where Dave is dreamy and sensitive. Likewise, male characters like Alfie resist the usual rough-and-tumble stereotype. Both Alfie and Dave are pictured crying without this being a reflection on the state of their masculinity.

Drama: realist, very child-centred, usually resolved without trauma.

Outdated bits: I’m really reluctant to pick out the old-fashioned bits, because many of those are my favourite bits. You could argue that the Britain pictured looks a bit monocultural by 21st century standards, but Hughes does a much better job at representation than almost any other picture book writer of her time.

Themes: kindness, resilience, bravery, compassion, disappointment, change, love, loss, friendship, community, stuffed animals.

#shirley hughes #books #books for kids

[almoststardust]

Jeanette Winterson on the wild beauty of Britain's lighthouses

Most days I listen to the Shipping Forecast. It’s a poem disguised as a weather report – so much so that Carol Ann Duffy fixed it into her poem, “Prayer”:

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer – 
 Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Finisterre means “the end of the earth”. Most of us remember the awful moment in 2002 when the Met Office changed the name to FitzRoy because the Spanish use Finisterre to describe a different body of water.

When I was staying on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel a couple of years ago I listened to the Shipping Forecast four times a day. It was winter and I was living in a lighthouse keeper’s cottage, unable to leave the island in Gale Force 7. I have never tried to live in such weather before or since. The racket of rain. The swell of the wind. Rattle of glass. Groan of timber. Fire smoking from down-draught. Nothing dry. The romance of lighthouse keeping – the fantasy of being alone with a good book and your own thoughts – is in practice a permanent engagement with nature at her most fierce and fearsome. Above all, around all, everywhere, is the noise – the constant noise of the sea. Lighthouse keeping is not a quiet life.

Lighthouse keepers stationed offshore could not go out in storms – they would be swept away. Often the waves engulfed the entire tower. In Sentinels of the Sea, a new book tracing the history of lighthouses, there are wonderful accounts of men (and women, in America, where the widow often took over her husband’s job), imprisoned by storms in their Rapunzel-like fortress without relief or rescue, sometimes for weeks.

Now that nearly all lighthouses are automated, the keepers and their stories are gone. There will be no more tales of two-ton blocks of granite picked up like pebbles and hurled back into the sea; no more like the lighthouse keeper’s daughter Grace Darling, bravely rowing from Northumberland’s Longstone lighthouse in 1838 to rescue wrecked passengers clinging to the rocks.

Perhaps the strangest feature of those tall, offshore lighthouses is illustrated in the beautiful sectional diagrams in the new book. Outside, the column rears up, vertical – but to be inside is to live in the round. Each floor is circular; even the beds are curved. The drawings here look more like mandalas than engineering notes. These solitary towers staring out to sea are more than their function; they stand as landmarks of human endurance, endeavour and ingenuity.

#Lighthouse #jeanette winterson #articles #sea #carol ann duffy #uk

[list-of-literature]

25/03/2016

The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe The Jolly Postman or Other Peoples Letters, Janet & Allan Ahlberg The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken The Wanderer, Alain-Fournier Commedia, Dante Alighieri Skellig, David Almond The President, Miguel Angel Asturias Alcools, Guillaume Apollinaire It's Not About The Bike - My Journey Back to Life, Lance Armstrong Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin The Ghost Road, Pat Barker Carrie's War, Nina Bawden Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow G, John Berger Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman Mister Magnolia, Quentin Blake Forever, Judy Blume The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton Five On A Treasure Island, Enid Blyton The Enchanted Wood, Enid Blyton A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne The Snowman, Raymond Briggs Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown Gorilla, Anthony Browne The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess Junk, Melvin Burgess Would You Rather?, John Burningham The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler Possession, A.S. Byatt The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino The Stranger, Albert Camus Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter Looking For JJ, Anne Cassidy Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang Papillon, Henri Charriere The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer "Clarice Bean, That's Me", Lauren Child I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, Lauren Child Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M Coetzee Princess Smartypants, Babette Cole Nostromo, Joseph Conrad The Public Burning, Robert Coover Millions, Frank Cottrell Boyce The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay That Rabbit Belongs To Emily Brown, Cressida Cowell House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski The Black Sheep, Honoré de Balzac Old Man Goriot, Honoré de Balzac The Second Sex, Simone de Beavoir The Story of Babar, Jean De Brunhoff The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery White Noise, Don DeLillo Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion Sybil, Benjamin Disraeli Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, Lynley Dodd The 42nd Parallel, John Dos Passos The Brothers Karamzov, Fyodor Dostoevsky An American Tragedy, Theodore Drieser The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco My Naughty Little Sister, Dorothy Edwards Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans The Siege of Krishnapur, J.G Farrell The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner "Absalom, Absalom!", William Faulkner Light in August, William Faulkner Take it or Leave It, Raymond Federman Magician, Raymond E. Feist Flour Babies, Anne Fine Madam Bovary, Gustav Flaubert A Passage to India, E. M. Forster The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank Cross Stitch,  Diana Gabaldon That Awful Mess on the Via Merulala, Carlo Emilio Gadda JR, William Gaddis The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner The Owl Service, Alan Garner In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories, William H. Gass Coram Boy, Jamila Gavin Once, Morris Gleitzman The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer Asterix The Gaul, Rene Goscinny The Tin Drum, Günter Grass Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, Emily Gravett Lanark, Alasdair Gray The Quiet American, Graham Greene Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Mark Haddon Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway The Blue Lotus, Hergé The Adventures Of Tintin, Hergé The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse Where's Spot?, Eric Hill The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett The Odyssey, Homer High Fidelity, Nick Hornby Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz Dogger, Shirley Hughes Journey To The River Sea, Eva Ibbotson Little House In The Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James The Ambassadors, Henry James Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson Lost and Found, Oliver Jeffers The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Judith Kerr One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury It, Stephen King The Queen's Nose, Dick King-Smith The Sheep-Pig, Dick King-Smith Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney Kim, Rudyard Kipling I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook, Joyce Lankerster Brisley Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E Lawrence A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren The Call of the Wild, Jack London Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer Man's Fate, Andre Malraux The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel The Road, Cormac McCarthy The Kite Rider, Geraldine McCaughrean The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers "Not Now, Bernard", David McKee Tent Boxing: An Australian Journey, Wayne McLennan No One Sleeps in Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdel Meguid A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo Beloved, Toni Morrison Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami Under the Net, Iris Murdoch The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov A Bend in the River, V.S Naipaul Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness The Knife Of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness The Borrowers, Mary Norton Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake Night Watch, Terry Pratchett The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett The Truth, Terry Pratchett Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett Truckers, Terry Pratchett Life: An Exploded Diagram, Mal Prett Paroles, Jacques Prévert The Shipping News, Annie Proulx In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust The Ruby In The Smoke, Philip Pullman Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon Live and Remember, Valentin Rasputin Witch Child, Celia Rees Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff I Want My Potty!, Tony Ross Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie Holes, Louis Sachar Blindness, Jose Saramango Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald Revolver, Marcus Sedgwick Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier Katherine, Anya Seton Come over to My House, Dr Seuss Daisy-Head Mayzie, Dr Seuss Great Day for Up!, Dr Seuss Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, Dr Seuss Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, Dr Seuss Hunches in Bunches, Dr Seuss I Am NOT Going to Get Up Today!, Dr Seuss I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories, Dr Seuss I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Dr Seuss My Book about ME, Dr Seuss My Many Colored Days, Dr Seuss "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!", Dr Seuss On Beyond Zebra!, Dr Seuss The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, Dr Seuss The Butter Battle Book, Dr Seuss The Cat's Quizzer, Dr Seuss The Pocket Book of Boners, Dr Seuss The Seven Lady Godivas, Dr Seuss The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, Dr Seuss What Pet Should I Get?, Dr Seuss You're Only Old Once!, Dr Seuss Dr Seuss's Book of Bedtime Stories, Dr Seuss Special shapes: A flip-the-flap book, Dr Seuss Dizzy days: A flip-the-flap book, Dr Seuss The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Memento Mori, Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark Heidi, Johanna Spyri The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", Laurence Sterne Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia, Chris Stewart Goosebumps, R.L. Stine Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore The Arrival, Shaun Tan The Secret History, Donna Tartt The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain Froth on the Daydream, Boris Vian Creation, Gore Vidal Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut The Color Purple, Alice Walker Scoop, Evelyn Waugh The War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells The Time Machine, H.G Wells The Once And Future King, T.H. White Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse Native Son, Richard Wright Going Native, Stephen Wright The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham The Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin Red Sorghum: A Novel of China, Mo Yan Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates We, Yevgeny Zamyatin Germinal, Emile Zola Amazing Grace, Mary Hoffman & Caroline Binch Horrid Henry, Francesca Simon & Tony Ross Meg And Mog, Helen Nicholls & Jan Pienkowski Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Mem Fox & Helen Oxenbury The Elephant And The Bad Baby, Elfrida Vipont & Raymond Briggs The True Story Of The Three Little Pigs, Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith