Sunday, 3rd July …..

It’s a quiet, wet day here in Dilston – a time for quiet reflection and catching up on some of the chores around the house. Marilyn has a folding clothes dryer in front of the heater covered with yesterday’s washing which is not quite dry. About 10 minutes ago, the thing collapsed in a heap – damp sheets and socks, and lots of white plastic rods. I’ve just managed to join all the bits together; it looks the same but I just hope it will hold together. I’ve suggested to Marilyn that she avoids putting heavy things on the extremities of the contraption as I suspect that’s what caused it to collapse.

I spent half an hour this morning downloading and sorting out a few more ebooks for my collection. When I bought the new reader in December, I decided to start a new collection. There were over 1000 books in the previous library but they were mostly text files or in the Microsoft LIT format. The Sony prefers the ePub format which is becoming the industry standard. It’s a big job to convert files so I thought I would start again. Nowadays each download includes a number of formats: ePub, pdf, mobi, txt, etc so I’ve got a backup if I have to choose another reader. At last count I had 607 books in my new library. It’s mad, I couldn’t hope to read all of those in my lifetime and I’m still downloading. In the first 3 days of July, I’ve already downloaded 19, including some authors I’ve never hear of: Dana Stabenow, for example, and Boris Starling. Who knows what they’ll be like if I ever get around to reading them.

One thing that struck me when I was thinking about the books I like is the number of series which are based around British policemen, and especially the number of Inspectors. There’s Inspector Frost, Rebus, Thorne, Lynley, Japp, Pascoe, Morse, Taggart, and Rutledge; not to mention Chief Inspectors Barnaby, Wexford and Dalziel. That’s just off the top of my head – the list goes on.

One book I have read recently which is not in that genre is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer. This was recommended to me by friends Jim and Di and, even though the cover would normally have had me hurrying in another direction, I enjoyed it enormously. It’s written as a series of letters between the various characters and in that way reminded me of 84 Charing Cross Road which I read years ago and was later made into a film and a stage play. It’s an easy read with a soft-hearted finish and I recommend it. Apparently, the author sent the book off to the publisher and then was too ill to complete some major rewrites. She asked her niece, Annie Barrows, to become involved so she is named as co-writer.

Another author I'm really enjoying is Jo Nesbo who is Norwegian and is being called the next Stieg Larsson. I suppose that's inevitable but his books are really gritty with a flawed but likeable lead character with the wonderful name of Harry Hole. I've only read one so far but there's another 5 or 6 to go.

Marilyn has just started lunch so that’s a good excuse to leave this episode for now. Perhaps I’ll come back to it this afternoon.

And I did. Last night was the Changeover Dinner for the Deloraine Rotary Club. It was quite a big night held in a Reception Centre owned by a couple of our members. Pat is a teacher and Geoff a retired journalist and their home in Deloraine is run as a B&B. Attached to the house they have a very large room which can seat up to 100 for dinner. Unfortunately, the Council won’t give them a licence to serve alcohol, so it’s not used as often as it should be. We had a very good meal with a choice of 4 main courses and we brought our own wine. It wasn’t a late night and we were home and in bed by 11.30.