Second Library Book Photo for May....in June

Hooray to the lovely library people who found my 15 books in the mobile depot, labelled them up, sent them via the delivery van to Stowmarket, where they duly arrived on Tuesday and I got an email to pick them up ASAP. So I did.

I'm really grateful to them because they might have said "wait until the next visit".

There are so many that it needed two photos to fit them all in.

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As usual most are crime fiction and some are by authors I know, but more are new-to-me authors, so that will be interesting to see what they are like. I'm puzzled by the Katie Fford labelled as Thriller - think that might be wrong as they are usually quite lightish fiction which I read now and again for a change. The book by Kate Morton, an author I know of but haven't read looks rather large - which always puts me off.

Now which to read first?........................... but what a lovely dilemma to have!

These are what I collected four weeks ago. I read seven.  Info of those I read are on the Books Read 2025 page.

Back Soon .

Chaffinch

 I was standing talking to BiL in his back garden recently when a bird started shouting loudly from one of the shrubs. It flew out so I could see it was a chaffinch which made me realise how rarely they are seen now. I've never seen any on the feeders here. BiL's garden backs onto fields and although he only feeds birds with sunflower seed hearts he gets more variety on the feeder than I do here.

In the book 'An Illustrated Country Year' by Celia Lewis it says they are common and they are common in many parts of the country. I remember them hopping around the table when we were having coffee and cake outside at a café in Cornwall or Devon many years ago, like sparrows would have done in Suffolk, now sparrows and chaffinches are both harder to spot .

Then by a weird coincidence at Bank Holiday Sunday's car-boot sale I spotted this and picked it up to look at the base and yes it was another Beswick bird, question was, was the lady selling a dealer and would want a few £ or just someone clearing out? So I asked how much and when she said 50p it had to be bought!

Oh dear, I did say there would be no more but I now have 3 Beswick birds, that's almost a collection. The Wren and Blue tit will come out of the box for spring and the Chaffinch will be for Summer, that way they won't be dust collectors and I won't get fed up with them.

June on the bookshelf looks like this..........

The piece of Poole pottery shaped like a buoy (it's a small bell) was found in a Charity shop in Ipswich in 2022 , it hasn't been out on display before because it got wrapped up and tucked in a corner of the box that I keep all the bits in and kept getting missed . I had a sort out a few weeks ago and found it. About time it was out of the box!

Back Soon

A Very Rare Film Review

 Not a rare film, but a rare review as I hadn't been to the cinema for ages. I discovered the Regal in Stowmarket were having a morning showing of 'The Salt Path' yesterday. All the other times were afternoons and evenings (watching tennis times!)

As most people reading this will already know the film is based on the book Raynor Winn wrote about the 600 mile walk  on the South West Coast Path that she and her husband Moth did after losing their home and their money and at the same time Moth's diagnosis with a rare brain disease - Corticobasal Degeneration.

They had invested money in a friends business and when the business failed leaving huge debts they were taken to court by their friend, battled for 3 years but eventually losing and had to forfeit their home which was a B&B business in Wales and all their money. They decided that the only way to cope was to pack a few belongings, tent and sleeping bags and to start walking.

Walking seemed to help with Moth's condition despite the extremes of weather they encountered on the way. Luckily a friend offered them accommodation of a shed for the winter in return for turning the shed into a holiday let.

The film starring Gillian Anderson as Raynor and Jason Issacs as Moth has gorgeous views of the wild lands, wildlife and coasts of that part of Great Britain, which for me was one of the best parts.

Their walk was in 2013 and the book published in 2019, which was when I read it and was soon a best seller. The film wasn't as tear jerky as I thought it was going to be thank goodness and  there were only 4 other people in the audience.

12 years on from his diagnosis Moth is still alive and Raynor is still walking and writing. Since the first book there have been two more, The Wild Silence and Landlines and another due to be published in October.

Raynor Winn is not the first person to write about this walk - I read "Five Hundred Mile Walkies" by Mark Wallington way back in the late 1980's.