IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF JOHN CALCOTT HORSLEY OF TORQUAY - IN 1843
HE PRINTED THE FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD, AND HERE AM I, 164 YEARS LATER TRYING TO GET THIS YEAR'S BATCH IN THE POST ASAP.





READING:

Minette Walters is one of Britain’s best-selling crime/thriller writers, and I have enjoyed several of her books. They all fall into the psychological thriller genre, and The Chameleon’s Shadow is her most recent book, having been published in October this year, so it is not yet available in paperback.

It was rather coincidental that I picked this up at the library, just after having ranted in my last blog post about injured servicemen being abused at a local leisure centre. The main character in the book is a young army officer who has just been serving in Iraq. Lieutenant Charles Acland has survived a bomb on the road between Baghdad and Basra, the two soldiers under his command who were with him were not so fortunate; however Acland has been horribly injured, and therein lies the plot. From the moment he comes to consciousness in a British Military hospital it seems as if what has happened to him has changed his personality dramatically, and his behaviour becomes increasingly violent, anti-social and unpredictable particularly towards women.

Meanwhile, in London there have been a series of brutal murders. Several men have been violently battered to death, and the police are baffled. When Acland is eventually released from hospital, and is discharged from the army on the grounds of his disabilities, he gravitates to London where he eventually comes to the notice of the police and is linked with the latest in this series of killings following a violent altercation with a man in a pub. Could he have committed the murders ? can he control the rage boiling up inside him? I don’t want to give any spoilers here, suffice to say that the plot becomes increasingly complex and twisted, and the reader is never quite sure where it will go next.

What I found particularly interesting about this book was the first part when Acland is still in the hospital and having many sessions with the resident psychiatrist. Walters really makes the reader think about what can happen to young men (and women) who go to war, and how, if a career in the army (or any other of the forces) has been your life plan it is totally devastating when, in addition to disfiguring and handicapping injuries, that is taken away from you. Reading this I could see how it happens that many of the homeless people on the streets of Britain are ex-military.

Rated: 3.5*

RANTING:

Bear with me whilst I have a little rant about rape. Rape is a nasty word, a nasty word for a nasty deed. I can remember, as a girl, hearing it referred to as “a fate worse than death”, and maybe for some women that seems to be true. In real life, death is the only final fate, and therefore there can never be a fate that is ‘worse’ than death. But I digress….

The reason I want to rant about rape is because the government, in the person of the Solicitor General, Vera Baird, announced a week ago that they were not satisfied with the rate of convictions for rape in the UK and therefore they planned to implement certain measures to increase the conviction rate.

When first I read this proposal I thought ‘fine, ok, that seems sensible’; but then I started thinking about what was really being said.

In this country a person is innocent of a charge brought against him/her until they are PROVED guilty beyond doubt. So in the case of rape and the conviction rates, is the Government saying that they KNOW that all persons accused of this heinous crime are actually guilty but are not being convicted by the courts? Because that is the implication of their recent statements –which goes against everything that the law in this country has stood for – namely, presumption of innocence.

Of course I realise that to prove a case of rape is never easy. Usually it is the word of one person against another with no witnesses. So it is likely that there are cases where rapists manage to get themselves acquitted, and that is horrible. Horrible for the person who was raped, and potentially horrible for others who may then suffer the same fate if the rapist strikes again.

Never-the-less, we change the law at our peril.

The Government is concerned about the number of reported rapes which fail to lead to a conviction. This means that a low number of allegations of rape made to and recorded by the police actually end up with the rapist being found guilty in a court of law. This is not because the courts are any softer on alleged rapists than they ever were, but because many of the reported rapes never make it to court at all. Of those that do, the conviction rate is nothing like as low.

I suspect that these proposed changes are due to three things: (1) Emotion – rape is a very emotive issue; (2) Government obsession with ‘targets’ in all aspects of national life, and 3. a huge widening of the definition of rape in Britain.

It is true that most women who are raped (and it is usually women) are raped by someone they know, a friend, a family member, a work colleague, a neighbour. Or a woman may well be raped by her own husband.
But I have grave concerns about the new view that someone who goes out and gets themselves totally legless, so that they cannot recall whether or not they consented to sexual intercourse, should be able to then cry ‘rape’. They must carry some responsibility for what occurred, even if in retrospect they are shocked, appalled, ashamed or concerned.

RECIPE:

My DD is the muffin maker in our family, and has a huge repertoire of delicious muffin recipes; but from time to time I do venture into her territory, and last week when I had to take a contribution to a morning get-together I decided to try something new so made a batch of these. All I can say is that they vanished off the plate so fast I had hardly sipped my cappuccino before they were gone!

TOFFEE-APPLE MUFFINS

Makes 12

350g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground mixed spice (or cinnamon)
240g golden caster sugar
3 dessert apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
3 large eggs, beaten
120ml vegetable oil
100ml milk
150g SOFT toffees, chopped into small pieces - it is essential to use soft toffees as hard ones take forever to chop up.

1 Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper cases. Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice into a large bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the dry ingredients.

2 Add the chopped apples,toffee pieces, eggs, oil and milk in the middle of the well, and fold the mixture together with a large metal spoon, using as few strokes as possible. Don’t worry if the mixture is lumpy, the trick behind the lightest muffins is not to overwork the batter.

3 Fill the paper cases with the mixture, then bake for 25-30 minutes or until the muffins are well risen and golden.

TODAY IS ARMISTICE DAY, and at 11am I kept the two minute silence, while standing alone in our kitchen. I thought of my Great Grandmother who lost two sons in the First World War, and of my own paternal Grandfather, who was shipwrecked in January 1916. On a life raft with two other men, he was the sole survivor after being adrift for three days in the North Sea.


READING:
Thousands of books have been written about war, remembering war, set in a war. As it is Armistice Day I thought, that rather than blog about what I am reading at the moment, I would list some of the books I have read over the years which deal with war and conflict.

WW1:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hašek
August 1914 by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
And Quiet Flows the Don by M. A. Sholokov

Spanish Civil War:

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

WW2:

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
Most Secret by Neville Shute
The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair McLean
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat
That Summer by Andrew Greig
The Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
The Seige by Helen Dunmore
How Sleep the Brave by H.E. Bates
Enigma by Robert Harris

The Gulf War:

Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNabb

RANTING:

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Yet again a group of PC people are trying to get people to stop wearing red poppies as a sign of remembrance, It makes me livid.
Poppies have been a symbol of death and sleep since the time of the ancient Greeks so it is entirely appropriate that they have become synonymous with remembrance of all the servicemen and women who died in the First World War and all subsequent wars. The poppies are red. They are red because they are a certain type of poppy – popaver rhoeas – which grows naturally in conditions of disturbed earth, and can be found growing all over Western Europe. During the Napoleonic wars of the early 19^th century battlefields became fields of blood red poppies growing up around the bodies of fallen soldiers. During the First World War which raged through northern France and Belgium, the heavy shelling and trench warfare ripped open the landscape, and once again large numbers of poppies began to appear. None of them were white.

From time to time some group, or person, tries to say that we should be wearing white poppies for peace. This seems to imply that those who wear red poppies are against peace and are glorifying war. They seem to think they have commanded the moral high ground. What offensive, patronizing rubbish. To wear a poppy does not say that the wearer is either for or against war, just that they remember those who have died in war. In fact I can’t imagine that anyone in their right mind would be in favour of war per se. War brings fear, danger, cruelty, death, destruction and poverty in its wake; The price paid by individuals and families is often very high. To remember the dead, and to honour them, is to remind oneself that as nations we should be extremely wary of threatening , declaring or initiating war, or of becoming embroiled in other people’s wars, If there is a way of maintaining peace that is honourable, just and equitable we should always espouse it.

I , like millions of my fellow citizens, am entirely opposed to this bloody business in Iraq, and am equally opposed to our position in Afghanistan, but nonetheless I will be wearing my poppy and remembering that men and women are dying in war, yet again.

As someone wrote today -"The money from red poppies goes to help ex-servicemen; the money from white poppies goes to subsidise people spouting their opinions. "

RECIPE:

Whilst reading the controversy about poppies in the press , wearing a poppy myself, and writing my rather mild little rant above, I suddenly remembered a recipe for muffins I have made a few times and it seemed appropriate to post it here today. They are yummy when still warm accompanied by a mug of really good coffee. Enjoy!

LEMON POPPY SEED MUFFINS

Makes approx 1 dozen

280g plain flour
15 ml baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g caster sugar
1 egg
240 ml milk
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind
90 ml vegetable oil OR 85 g butter, melted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Preheat oven 190°C

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Stir in the sugar and poppy seeds.
In a separate bowl, beat egg with a fork. Stir in milk,
followed by grated lemon rind and oil/butter.
Add lemon juice.
Pour all of liquid ingredients into dry mixture. Stir just until
combined. Batter will be lumpy but no dry flour should be visible.

Spoon into muffin cases – they should be ¾ full.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until tops are
lightly browned and spring back when pressed gently.

If you want to make them extra special and very lemony, you can mix 3 tablespoons of icing sugar with one tablespoon lemon juice to make a glaze, and drizzle it over the tops of the muffins whilst they are still hot.
Cool on rack before serving