The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman

 

I loved  this novel! It's a beautifully written romantic story that has so much more to it.

Nina is a young woman from a rich family who chooses to teach as a way of giving something back to society. She doesn't feel as though she's a good teacher and struggles with her classes. Meanwhile she meets Colin, a college drop out who is a brilliant artist, painting theatre scenery and making temporary art by drawing in chalk.

Twins Aidan and Diana are students at the school where Nina teaches. Aidan used to be a top student but is being drawn increasingly into the world of computer games, particularly by Daphne a woman he meets online in one of his games.

The characters are very well drawn, the reader feels really engaged by each of the characters' dilemmas and also sucked into the game world that is so addictive to Aidan. The novel also dissects the world of computer games very well, addressing concerns about gaming addiction without condemning gaming itself. It also gives interesting insights into teaching literature, which I found particularly interesting as a creative writing tutor.

Can the real world compete with the carefully contrived, beautifully imagined virtual world?

The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman, published 2017 by Atlantic Books 

Hungry Sea

The sea is hungry -
her appetite growing in the unnatural heat
she rises with the moon
to gorge on soft sandy cliffs,
sneaks into coastal marshes
to steal the mud
leaving behind her calling card
in traces of brine
at high tide


Originally written for Poetry Thursday - theme - be inspired by the newspaper.

I wrote this poem in response to the headline - Living on the Edge, Guardian, 9 October 2006 - article about coastal erosion and its relationship with global climate change and it remains all too relevant 12 years later.

Saughton Park will reopen soon!

Saughton Park, one of Edinburgh's many beautiful parks has been shut to the public for a couple of years know while it has been upgraded and restored to it's former glory. Crafty Green Boyfriend and I went along today to a sneak preview guided tour of the park. It's looking lovely and will reopen later this month (though some elements will not open until later).

The famous bandstand has at last been refurbished and put in the centre of the park.

The bandstand had been removed from the park in the 1980s and had become lost in the system and it was apparently a real piece of detective work to find it again! It had been placed in council storage in Granton and then in Penicuik and then somewhere else! Finally it was brought back to the park and has been lovingly restored

the work has even been approved by the local otters

 You might be able to see the whole row of otter paw prints in the photo below

The greenhouses are currently being renovated

and will when complete be planted with a selection of temperate plants from across the world.

The wildflower area is thriving

as are the more formal flower beds

 though these are often less fully formal than they would originally have been, which is probably better for wildlife

Saughton Park has always been a lovely place to visit and now even more so, with a cafe to open next Spring!

The Time Between Summer and Autumn

It's that lovely time when summer is still hanging round but there's a definite autumnal chill in the air.

A time for seeing the last butterflies of the year like this lovely speckled wood

and the last hoverflies of the year too like these Platycheirus granditarsus & Eupeodes latifasciatus (thanks to the UK Hoverfly Facebook group for identifying these for me)

 There were also literally hundreds of birds at Musselburgh today. I loved watching wave after wave of oystercatchers flying overhead, their white and black plumage glinting in the sunlight and hundreds of velvet scoters quite far out on the water too. Luckily one of these wonderfully odd looking ducks came close enough for me to get a really good view though not in close enough range for my camera! 

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to another website where you can learn more.

Sunshine after the Rain

 After a day of rain and a misty start to the day today has turned out beautifully sunny, though there's a wee chill to the air. It was a lovely day to do my voluntary patrol along the Water of Leith.

I shared a photo the other day of a grey squirrel in a hawthorn tree, well here are a couple of close ups of the hawthorn berries and surrounding lichens (a different tree though)

These berries are a real sign of autumn, as are the tar spots on the sycamore leaves

these are caused by a fungus and apparently don't harm the tree.

There are fungi all year round but we always seem to associate them with autumn, here's a lovely tiny fungus I found today(I'll try to identify the species when I have the time, but if you know what it is, you can let me know in the comments)

The poppies looked lovely with the raindrops all glittering on their petals

The End of My Tether by Neil Astley

 

Neil Astley, as editor of Bloodaxe Books, has edited all my favourite poetry anthologies, but until recently I had missed the fact that he had written a novel (in fact I just found out he's written two!). The End of My Tether is a big, sometimes brilliant and sometimes downright weird novel.


The plot centres on the murder of Bernard Tench, a whistleblowing scientist who knew too much about BSE. Kernan uses songs and folklore for guidance and brings on board allies both animal and supernatural against the sinister Superintendent Goodman to uncover all that's rotten in the state of England.

The cast includes characters who are reincarnations or have been alive for hundreds of years either in human form or in the higher state of being that is a Zen-like farmland cow or sheep. The book weaves in loads of references to folk tales and environmental issues and is complex and engaging until it all becomes too much and starts to fall apart a bit with a lot of disjointed ideas. Some of these ideas are brilliant like the image of Hell as an enternal supermarket queue and others are less so, such as the woman giving birth to a wash basin....

It's a thought provoking read for anyone interested in how we treat animals but possibly an annoying one for those who prefer their crime novels to focus on the crime in question! (I'm not a crime fiction fan by the way and didn't read this novel for the crime!)

The End of My Tether by Neil Astley published by Scribner.

Along the Canal

We went for a short walk along the canal today. The hawthorn berries are looking lovely and this grey squirrel was making the most of them

There were quite a few large spiders around, in their impressively large webs

The flower beds in Harrison Park near the canal still look lovely

though there were only a few hoverflies around including this Syrphus sp

This female mallard posed for us to show off the blue speculum in her wing (this is what distinguishes the female mallard from the similar brown females of several other species of ducks, which have different coloured specula)

for Saturday's Critters.