The Big Read

It is proving more and more difficult to emerge from a world in which all ladies seem to have small pearl handled guns in their reticules and where the drinking of whiskey is obligatory to take away the pain of being smacked across the face by some ignorant policeman. In short the world of Raymond Chandler.



Seventeen hundred large print pages have been eagerly consumed by me and I merely worry that there will too little time to finish this book before the dreaded start of term.


The weather also seems to be taking a turn for the ironic with our “suffering” the two hottest days of the summer at this late stage in the dying days of August as a cruel reminder that the summer does not necessarily end when the teachers go back to school!


I only hope that the pool retains its heat to allow a swim in the evening when I come back from school. This year, as I am never slow to repeat, the leisurely fortnight of half days before the advent of the kids has been telescoped into a week of full time grind with an extra week with the students to make up for the lost time! A bum deal, as I am sure Chandler might have said if his legendary black humour could not supply a cutting remark sufficient suitably to attack a management who consider this a good idea.


The garden is something which has suddenly got a raised profile as Toni has “Ideas”. This usually means that I have to try and destroy the tree stumps again.


These stumps are the remains of trees which were decreed doomed and where chain sawed by myself as part of the destruction process. I have also strewn rock salt in the ground around the stumps and filled bore holes with salt as well. The result is that they sprout shoots of luxuriant growth all the time.


I have cut off the shoots for the last time. I will refresh the salt and add bleach for good measure and, if they grow again then I will regard it as an off-shoot of the tree of life and I will try to destroy it no longer, and probably install a suitably world weary snake to live among its everlasting branches!

I have bought some new solar lights as my contribution to the new look garden. They look much more modern and give little light – who could ask for more; decorative and practically useless. I`m sure there is a moral there somewhere.