Missed one - Losing track of tracking

Extraordinarily one of the books I forgot in my New Year roundup (I’ve amended this now) was one of my very favourites. This is for 2 reasons – the first is it’s a library book and has gone back, and the other is that although I dearly love a spreadsheet 2024 was the year I got fed up of them.

For example, at some point in 2023 I had thought it might be fun to map my food shopping against the WW2 rations. I was already doing a 66 clothes coupons challenge online, and it had made me much more aware of, and therefore better at, buying things that fit me and would last, and with consideration that I already had, for example, over 20 tops and who knows how many socks.

Food rationing though was much more work. Even though I gave myself a certain amount of leeway - partly because as I don’t eat meat I was already restricted and partly because I belong to another challenge about grocery spending, which I expected to align with rationing (more ingredients and fewer packets) but found only sometimes did. Again the budget I have for food is reasonably generous, so none of this should have been hard to do. 

At first some stuff worked really well – I realised there was no point in my buying semi skimmed milk as I merely used more of it, and I was encouraged to cut down on confectionary (or at least keep it within reasonable bounds, by adding my confectionary and sugar ration and reasoning that I could count confectionary against both) and made me realise I’m probably not eating enough eggs (and that may contribute to the fact I have recently been iron deficient.   I’ve also since found out from someone doing something similar (but more strictly) that I needn’t have counted marmite in my tins and things.

I think I’ve also mentioned that I was decluttering 52 net items last year – more stuff out than in. That sounds easy, and again is great in some ways – it really does discourage buying things that are neither use not ornament (not my saying).

But it wasn't the doing that was the problem - I wasn't too rigid on any of it. It was the logging it all that became a pain.

Plus I keep a budget and I log walks (copied from my fitbit stats when I wear it, which isn’t always, and estimated on the old 20 minutes = 1 mile rule). 

And of course there's the little widget on this blog for books I enjoyed (not the same as everything actually read).

Anyway sometime last autumn food ration logging started to become a chore and went to the wall. Logging of books read and those enjoyed slid, I overspent on my clothes coupons (although I did hold back on buying some new boots until the New Year when they reset), threw some food spends in the Christmas budget to make things add up, and on the whole I felt all this gave me a bit of balance and chance to consider what, if any, of this I want to continue:

• A budget – yes, definitely. Recording my projected spend and what goes in and out is useful and allows me to save. 
• Clothes rationing – yes, I like the group I belong to and there are sound environmental reasons for buying fewer, better, clothes. I can also still buy secondhand.
• Decluttering. Yes. It will be one in one out though, which will make it easier to keep a tally without having to log everything. Again the group is nice, and there’s no judgement.
• Spending on food – within reason. I may go over on occasion and that’s fine.
• Food rationing – hard no. It was an interesting intellectual exercise but I should have stopped way before I did.
• Books – yes. Again if I miss the odd one that’s fine.
• Walking. Probably not. Given the purpose is to walk more I've decided it’s more effective to plan some walks (which I have done. I'm restarting my Grand Union canal walk in February). 
• Books enjoyed. I’ll get back to you. I may take out the months and just make it ‘books I really enjoyed’ and only include things I really, really did.

And if I decide it's still too much like hard work I can pare back down again. 

Happy New Year 2025

As usual, here is a round up of the books I read this year. I did slightly lose track in November, but I think I've got them all.

Accident by Design - E C R Lorac

There's a Porpoise Close Behind Us - Noel Langley

We Had to Take Down This Post - Hanna Bervoets

Murder in Vienna - E C R Lorac

Marple - Various

The Green Mirror - Hugh Walpole

No Time Like the Future - Michael J Fox

Death Came Softly - E C R Lorac

A Time in Rome - Elizabeth Bowen

Around the World in 80 Trains - Monisha Rajesh

Spoon Fed - Tim Spector

Shroud of Darkness - E C R Lorac

Ropes End, Rogues End - E C R Lorac

The Moon and Sixpence - W S Maugham

The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey

No Signposts in the Sea - Vita Sackville West

A House Unlocked - Penelope Lively

The Last Escape - E C R Lorac

London Particular - Christianna Brand

Shroud for a Nightingale - P D James

The Christmas Guest - Peter Swanson

Letters of Travel - Rudyard Kipling

Bandits in a Landscape - William Gaunt

Last Will and Testament - Elizabeth Ferrars

Frog in the Throat - Elizabeth Ferrars

Beware of the Dog - Elizabeth Ferrars

Witness Before the Fact - Elizabeth Ferrars

Skeleton Staff - Elizabeth Ferrars

Death Mask - Ellis Peters

The Sentimental Novelist -  Ophan Pamuk

The Death of Mr Dodsley - John Ferguson

Thinner than Water - E X Ferrars

No Rest for the Wicked - E X Ferrars

The Killing Pool - Ross MacDonald

Less - Patrick Grant

Case in the Clinic - E C R  Lorac

The Arvon Book of Crime Writing - Various

The Island of Sheep - John Buchan

Strange Waters - Jackie Taylor

A Breeze of Morning - Charles Morgan

Space Invaders - Nina Fernandez

The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

Pure Joy - Danielle Steel

A Spot of Folly - Ruth Rendell

Fly Country - Anthony Lang

Full Dark House - Christopher Fowler

Banking on Death - Emma Lathem

Marple - Anne Hart

Death in Fancy Dress - Anthony Gilbert

Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio - Amara Lakhous

The Small World of Murder - Elizabeth Ferrars

The Bother At the Barbican - Guy Cullingford

N is for Noose - Sue Grafton

L'art de la Simplicite - Dominique Loreau

Phantoms on the Bookshelves - Jacques Bonnet

Other People's Shoes - Harriet Walter

Alive, Alive Oh - Diana Athill

Towards Zero - Agatha Christie

Death Goes on Skis - Nancy Spain

Tour de Force - Christianna Brand

The Dressing Room Murder - J S Fletcher

Dead Man's Folly - Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot's Christmas - Agatha Christie

The Belting Inheritance - Julian Symons

On the Other Side - Mathilde Wolff-Monckberg

The Water Room - Christopher Fowler

Deep Waters - Various

Call for the Dead - John LeCarre

Dramatic Murder - Elizabeth Anthony

The Secret History of Our Streets - Joseph Buleman

Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christic

Murder After Christmas - Rupert Latimer

Strange Tide - Christopher Fowler

Who Killed Father Christmas? - Various

Lots of Crime as always, and a brief dip into spy stories. Of the crime stories I read Christopher Fowler and Richard Osman for the first time, and can see what the fuss is about. I also read some British Library Crime books of short stories that went largely in one eye and other the other, and some longer ones which again varied. 

Stand out books were Around the World in 80 Trains - I now want to read Rajesh' other book (I think there's only one as yet) - and The Island of Sheep, which shouldn't have been my sort of thing at all but was just so well written it pulled me in anyway. 

I started but didn't finish a blog post entitled 'Please Call Scotland Yard' after reading The Dressing Room Murder because the incompetence of the police officers in that case was so completely maddening. 

Some totals: I read three books in translation, 58 fiction titles and 18 non fiction. I'm not going to beat myself up, but that's less non-fiction than I'd like, or is usual, so my very relaxed reading challenge to myself is read more non fiction in 2025. 

Apart from books I'm not sure what to say about 2024. I had some good holidays, did quite a lot of walking (a rough average of 28 miles per week, although that average is very rough and it was nowhere near evenly spread) decluttered 52 things more than I acquired (this probably sounds mad, but this is a very small flat and is pretty full. I do need to keep an eye on the flow of 'stuff') and am neither sorry nor pleased to see the back of it. 

Happy New Year all. 

Cornwall

 

This is not mainly a walking blog - part 2

One of the things about doing a walking challenge – and particularly a walking challenge involving hills - is it does improve your level of fitness, even if, like me, you still come out of it in your early 50s and overweight.

How to retain that level of fitness is the next question – and the answer is clearly to keep walking (no problem, I like a good walk), and to continue to incorporate hills in that walking.

So with that loose plan in mind and no real schedule this is some of the walking I've been doing this summer. 

Early June: I revisited the last bit of the South Downs Way (Alfriston to Eastbourne) with the aunt who wasn't feeling up to the charity walk. Definitely more able to appreciate the views when I wasn't so exhausted. 

9th June I did a very familiar part of the capital ring - Streatham Common through Crystal Palace (another hill) and Grove Park. No photos from that though, it's too familiar.

I did take some nice pictures later in the month while on holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in a place called Cardignan Woods and got to Heligan and the Eden Project and Fowey.

Shortly after that I had an eye operation (all went well and my eyesight is hugely improved) and then was dog sitting. 

4th August I had a very loose plan take the tube to Camden, have a quick look in the market (I enjoy the vibe but also enjoy getting out again, the crowds are crazy at the weekend) then walk up to Archway, take the hill up to to Highgate and the ridge across to Alexandra Palace and back. 

Somehow though after a bit of meandering I found myself at Chalk Farm and decided to head up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead instead. A hill is a hill. 

Past the ponds on Hampstead and a zigzag towards Highgate (I had to use google maps for this bit, I'm not that familiar with Highgate).

Then at Highgate I picked up the parkland walk to Crouch End. This follows an abandoned railway line, and the pictures below are of the old station.

By that time I was quite tired so I picked up a bus to the nearest tube and came home. 

The week after was far less hilly. I started in Poplar and walked up the river Lea from Bow Creek nature reserve. 

My aunt’s response to this picture was that Poplar had changed. well some of it has, and a lot is still changing. In ten years it will be different again.

     

That was a very hot day - we seem to have had the odd really hot day or two this summer, but nothing consistent. Near this spot I found a community garden, a public toilet and a small cafe where they also did bottles of frozen water, which was very welcome. 

and then along the River Lea and up the canal to Stratford where I ended up outside the Abba Experience just as it was turning out. I'd seen it advertised but had no idea where it was. People looked like they'd had a great time. 

I've left some things out - a trip to Box Hill, definitely, a wander around Borough and to Elephant and Castle after meeting friends and taking in some tourist bits (the monument and something called the Southwark Needle that I must have walked past a dozen times and never noticed) a canal walk from Byfleet to Ripley, a river walk from Richmond to Kingston - I've no pictures and these weren't 'big' walks. 

The next proper walk though was Leith Hill last week. I last went up Leith Hill in March when I was 'in training' and took the longer, slower path from Dorking (incidentally I just checked google maps for the date – 9^th March - and google thinks I took a ferry to Dorking on that occasion. It occasionally has these blips. It's like a strange parallel universe.)

This time I went from Ockley, which is the steeper side. There is a footpath from the station to Ockley itself,  but you have to know it and my over-reliance on IT sent me down the road. People were very good about pulling around me and slowing down, but I did have to stop a few times or step up on a high bank. Next time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar I'll have to research it better. 

Anyway I got up the hill - quite breathless (I used the route on Fancy Free Walks, which I like because they don't try to make you install an app as so many of the sites do) - stopped for chocolate fridge cake and coffee from the small cafe (it's really just a hatch in the bottom of the tower) and then went up the tower. 

and down again. 

So that was my summer. It's feeling quite autumnal out now but I'm in Cornwall again next week, which will definitely involve some coastal walking. The plan is to get up St Michael's Mount (either the day I arrive or if I check in too late the next day) and then down to Mousehole where I haven’t been since a teenager and have an explore and a cream tea. 

Then I head across to Tintagel (taking the only sensible public transport route and arriving at 6.20 in the afternoon) visit Tintagel next day, do some more walking, and then go down to Truro for the last two days. 

I have some contingency plans around museums and galleries if the heavens open (especially in Truro, where I’ve never been and which looks rich in history) but at the moment the forecast is patchy, which is good enough. I'm never going to be too far from a cafe or a pub if I have to bail out. 

This does not seem to be mostly a walking blog... pt 1

 ..I have no idea at what point I added that subheading as I've become very bad at blogging about walks. Possibly when I was taking the Grand Union in stages over 10 years ago (a walk I should revisit actually). 

I do quite a lot of walking, some by myself, some usually with one of my aunts and occasionally with my brother - here in London, out in the Midlands, on holiday abroad. This year was my first charity walk though - I did the Royal Marsden South Downs Challenge, which included a lot of hills so was the first walk I've actually done training for. Pasted below is my high tec training schedule. Essentially dates and weeks around the outside, the hills I wanted to do in the space in the bottom left hand corner, then walks/hills done and planned under each week. You can probably tell it's just a page from a maths exercise book and was knocked up in my break at work - I use cheap exercise books at work because I don't feel precious about them and can tear pages out if I need a sign in sheet or they have random personal things like this. 

Exercise books are also good for shopping lists, library lists, bits of short story or drawing if you're bored, 

and using as a coaster (I love my fancy notebooks as well, but sometimes you just need something you can trash). 

The walk itself was glorious if utterly exhausting by the end. I didn't take that many pictures, but here are a few:

 

As you can see we had gloriously sunny weather - early in May, much sunnier than expected.

People have asked me if I'd do it again? I'm not sure. Perhaps I'll feel differently in six months, but at the moment I'd do 15/16 miles of it happily, but it really is very hilly and 26 miles is a little too far.   

Elizabeth Ferrars and others...

One of the hazards of reading any sort of 'older' fiction - and especially something like detective fiction where there may be recurring and quite interesting characters, but the books themselves are written not as a series but a set of nice neat packages with defined beginnings and endings - is that you can find an author you like, republished or epublished, read two or three books, get interested in how things are developing, and then find the next in the series is, for whatever reason, not available from the same source. 

This recently happened to me with Elizabeth (otherwise E X) Ferrars. Intrigued by the odd dynamic between separated-but-never-got-round-to-the-divorce couple Virginia and Felix Freer, who clearly still care a lot about each other, I found that number three was not available as an ebook and have had to order a secondhand hardback for about four times the price - at least it's available as a hardback though. It would be maddening to not be able to get my hands on it. 

Of course I'm also in the fortunate position of access to the British Library if I were really desperate, but I've actually not been into the reading rooms since the cyber attack (for those who don't know: the BL was the victim of an attack late last year and has since put a number of measures in place, but the advice is still to ring up to check whether materials are available). I don't have a pressing need for anything specific, so am happy to wait for now. 

Elizabeth Ferrars had a good long career in writing - roughly 60 years, starting in what would later be called the Golden Age of detective fiction, and finishing up in the 90s. Virginia and Felix come into the late 70s, having separated because (and when) Virginia realised Felix was a crook - a light fingered compulsive liar with a lot of charm and a plausible face who genuinely doesn't understand why it upset Virginia so much to realise all the nice presents he got her were almost certainly stolen. 

On the other hand his moral code around such things as murder and blackmail is pretty strong. What is fascinating about the books I've read so far (which are written from Virginia's point of view) is you can see why Virginia was absolutely right to leave him, and not go back to him - and at the same time why she still cares about him enough not to sling him out when he turns up, and he still cares enough about her that when things turn nasty, it's the impact on her he focusses on.

The mysteries on the the other hand are interesting enough to hang a book on but would probably be quite disappointing to a purist. The puzzling and cluing is not precisely absent but... it definitely feels like Felix is more of the 'because I know how people's minds work' detective than the 'rock solid case' one. 

Anyway I'm enjoying them. 

Other recent secondhand purchases are Ellis Peters' Death Mask and Holiday with Violence. Death Mask I don't think I ever read before - despite binging Ellis Peters in the 90s. She has a tendency, in my opinion, to sometimes have characters read each other's motives so accurately it amounts to telepathy. She does that here, and it shakes my belief a little. No-one is that perceptive about someone they just met.  

Whereas Holiday with Violence is set on a backpacking holiday in Italy and was probably my favourite Ellis Peters when I first read it, which is why I absolutely read my copy to bits. I'm very glad to get a nice intact paperback that I'll hang onto - and the descriptions of place have made me want to go to Italy all over again, which luckily I am doing in October.  

I also read London Particular by Christianna Brand, and Shroud for a Nightingale by P D James. In the latter I kept thinking 'does Adam Dalgleish not know he can call for back-up?' Although he does feel moved at one point to suggest a member of his team should quit the job if he ever finds he enjoys being cruel, so perhaps you don't want back-up from people like that. It's very '70s, in the best of ways - realistic about the fallout of murder and how life goes on for some people while others never recover. 

London Particular was good - Brand is consistently so - but there's an unpleasant flavour of internalised misogyny that I don't remember in Green for Danger or Death in High Heels, although Death of Jezebel which I read last year had a bit of it too. Men in these books are apparently allowed to do all kinds of stupid things and be forgiven or at least sympathised with, but let a woman (or in this case little more than a girl) be a bit unpleasant or 'loose' and she gets what she deserves, apparently.  The use of the fog was excellent though. Very atmospheric, and the slightly mad household the story revolves around definitely kept me guessing to the end. 

Death of Mr Dodsley by John Ferguson was, I'm sorry, rather more dry. It begins and ends well but the middle bit dragged. Perhaps I was expecting too much - the idea of a murder in a Charing Cross bookshop sounded so enticing. I was also infuriated by incorrect information about concussion - which I've had and can confirm absolutely does mean losing a period before and after the event and having perfectly normal recall outside it, which even in the 30s I'm sure was known. 

Some more short crime (and spy) fiction reviews

 Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto

This is one of those timetable mysteries. I couldn’t warm to it for that reason, and although I wouldn’t mind getting hold of an earlier translation and seeing if that feels a bit more atmospheric, I probably won’t.

The central theme, that the deaths aren’t investigated as they should be because they look like a ‘love suicide’ (ie a pact) and the idea that a civil servant would commit such a suicide to avoid bringing shame on his employers probably comes over more strongly in the original cultural context (Japan in the early 50s) but it’s very well explained, as is the corruption element, and I did warm to the two police officers most involved and was happy to follow them to the end. 

However I still felt the alibi would be broken and I didn’t much care how. Fans of this kind of transport timetable howdunnit will get a lot more out of it than me. 

 

Game Without Rules – Michael Gilbert

This is a collection of short stories featuring Mr Calder and Mr Behrens, two middle aged agents who vaguely reminded me of those tv shows in the 60s and 70s where a mysterious ‘M’ or ‘Mother’ sends agents out on various jobs. In this case though the boss has a name, and also manages the London and Midland bank as well as being the head of a small extra secret section of the intelligence service.

It’s also not glam like those shows often were, and its not any more dramatic than it needs to be to get the job done. Despite the lack of sexual tension, dry martinis and fast cars though, I was impressed with how diverse these stories were. I’ve read the last one of these before in anthologies but it works much better as part of the series because of course you care more about the characters.

Gilbert also wrote Smallbone Deceased in 1950, which has recently been republished by the British library classics and which I really enjoyed but don’t think I reviewed. That is much more your murder mystery than spy story.

 

The Fashion in Shrouds – Margery Allingham

Campion has a sister called Valentine. Who knew? 

Normally I either really like or really don't like an Allingham, but I'm on the fence about this one.

The relationships are a smidge odd. Lukewarm. There's the least romantic proposal ever (although at least the chap is upfront that he will expect his wife to drop her career when they're married. I'd be interested to know how many men who married in the 30s just assumed this and didn't mention the fact until it was a done deal.)   

Whereas Angela first blindsides Campion by pretending they are engaged (there are reasons) and at the end rejecting ‘cake-love’ - her name for precisely the kind of 'love is blind' mentality of the other couple. Campion is cheered by the fact. 

Lastly the relationship between Campion and his sister is.. analytical. They don't so much relate as theorise about each other, at each other.  What went on in their family I can't imagine, but apparently they only really talk to one another now. It might be better for them both if they stopped doing that as well. 

The mystery felt as messy as the relationships. Skeletons and aeroplanes and blackmail and long lost relations. Too much going on, I never quite believed in the motive. Readable, but already fading.

Murder in Vienna - E C R Lorac

McDonald is on holiday. Of course this is like Poirot going on holiday, a body is bound to turn up. 

If I'm honest I enjoyed this much more for the setting and the friends Macdonald was joining and and the logistics of taking a plane to Austria in the 50s than I did the actual crime. There was some clever stuff around a head injury, and double crossing, and a photographer who keeps popping up and skirts a nice line between garrulous nuisance and entertaining character. 

Of the four I've reviewed this is the one I will probably read again.