Scarlet Feather III

Simon and Maud are nervy and odd children, having been brought up so badly by their parents. Cathy feels that Neil is wrong to believe that they would be better off with their own family, as they were clearly improving under the guidance of Muttie and Lizzie. She is starting to get a bit fed up with Neil's concentration on his left wing social causes and feels that he does not really understand people very well and cares more for "the underdog" than for his own family. He also throwns 2 bits of news at her, which upset her very much. One is that he doesn't want children. He thinks they are too busy to look after a family, and that he prefers to devote his time to his work. Cathy is very worried as she has a suspicion that she might be pregnant. He also tells her that he has been considered for a job with an international organisation to help refugees and might be working in Brussels or Africa. The twins ask Cathy if they can do some work for her, to earn a bit more pocket money. She is not sure they will be much good but lets them work at polishing up her silverware. They are thrilled, and are keen to tell their brother Walter all about it. He is rather sneery about them doing anything.. or getting a job from Cathy, whom he regards as little more than a waitress. But he then realises that the naive children might do him a good turn. He needles them and they tell him that Cathy has a lot of valuable stuff in her kitchen and she has a security system for keeping it safe. He prods them into letting him know how to get past the security... Meanwhile, Muttie goes to see the kids at their home, and their father is snobby and does not want him calling. Walter decides to go to Cathy's business kitchen and steal anything valuable as he has gambling and other debts. When he gets in, using the passwords, he finds that Tom and Cathy don't really have much that is valuable but he needs money badly so he decides to take whatever he can sell. In his anger that the kitchen silverware is not worth very much, he breaks many of the other things like plates and glassware and leaves a horrible mess. Then he makes off with the silver stuff. Cathy is distraught when she sees that her kitchen has been virtually destroyed, and she and Tom find that it will take a lot of money to replace everything that was stolen or broken. However, when she looks into claiming on the insurance, she finds that the police think it might be an inside job and therefore the insurance company may not pay up. She and Tom start to work incredibly hard, working in a small kitchen and taking any job they can find. She can't understand how the police think its an inside job but they point out that there was no sign of forced entry.

James Joyce

I'm reading about James Joyce, who is Ireland's premier novelist. He was born to a middle class Irish Catholic family, in 1882. He was sent to a good school, but his father was very bad at making a living and their finances were very uncertain. Joyce loved and hated Dublin. He found late Victorian Ireland stifling, and narrow, especially because of the influence of the Catholic Church, which he rejected. He wanted to write modernist fiction, and to live a free life. He was aware of technological developments which changed life for most people. He was also interested in pscychology which was a new discipline at the time. His novel Ulysses is written in a stream of consciousness format, following the internal monologue of the main character, a Dublin Jew called Leopold Bloom. Other novelists also wrote in this format at the time including Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. Joyce met a girl called Nora Barnacle, in Dublin, on 16th June, 1904. She was a simple country girl working as a maid. He fell in love with her and they became sexually involved. He did not want to marry; he wanted to live a freer life than was possible at the time.. in a conservative provincial city like Dublin. To live with a lover was difficult in England and impossible in Ireland. The couple left Ireland and went to live in Europe, in different countries, where Joyce taught English and did clerical jobs, to make a living and worked at his great novel, Ulysses. Nora understood very little of his writing.

Scarlet Feather II

Just when Cathy and Tom are getting a kitchen to work from and starting off the business, Cathy gets some financial backing from her aunt Geraldine. Geraldine is her mother's sister, who has gotten out of poverty and set up her own business. She is single and has a lot of admirers. Then, Neil's family have a crisis. Jock Mitchell, Neil's father, has a brother (Walter's father) who is a failure at business and always in financial trouble. His wife Kay is very neurotic and she drinks. The couple have two other children who are a lot younger than Walter. Simon and Maud are twins and still school children. Kay is a neglectful mother because of her "nerves" and drinking. Kenneth, the father is not much better. Kay ends up in hospital because of her drinking, and the children are sent to Jock Mitchell's house as there's noone to look after them. They are rather bratty because their parents have never cared much for them. Hannah Mitchell has them to stay for a couple of days and they steal food and leave a bath running so that the ceiling collapses. She is not particularly maternal so she passes the kids on to Cathy. Cathy tries to look after them but she is very busy, and her parents Maurice and Lizzie Scarlet offer to help. Strangely, the children in spite of their bad behaviour, take a liking to the older Scarlets, and begin to improve...Muttie (Maurice) tells them about betting on the horses, which is his passion. But he insists they do their homework and help in the house. Cathy can see that they are improving, and is pleased and begins to like them. She can see that their parents are terrible and have let them grow up wild. But Neil feels as a lawyer with left wing views, that children should be with their blood parents. He tries to work at getting Kenneth and Kay to take on their responsibilities and look after Simon and Maud. After a couple of months, he succeeds in working out a new arrangement with the parents, but Cathy does not believe they will stick to their promises to provide the kids with pocket money, feed them properly, and let them go to see Muttie and Lizzie once a week. Simon and Maud are upset at being moved back home, and have little faith in their parents. They are also afraid that they have done something wrong to upset Muttie and Lizzie, and that the Scarlets no longer like them or want them to visit.

Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy

I just came across a copy of Maeve Binchy's last full scale novel, the other day. The title refers to the surnames of the lead characters, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather. They are both chefs and have just started to run a catering business in Dublin. Cathy's family are not well off. Her father is a bit of a lazy chap who has rarely worked, due to a "bad back". He likes to gamble. Her mother is a shy woman who has worked as a cleaner all her life, to bring in an income. She feels inferior to the families she works for. Lizzie, the mother, has worked for many years for the parents of Neil, and Hannah, Neil's mother is a bully and a snob and treats her badly. To make matters worse, Neil, who is a young barrister, falls in love with Cathy and they plan to marry. He is passionate about helping the underdog and fighting for human rights. Cathy wants to run her own business. They get married and Hannah is absolutely furious at her son marrying her maid's daughter. She thinks that Cathy is marrying him for his money and puts her down all the time. Cathy pairs up with Tom, another catering student, who is in love with Marcella, a beauty therapist who wants to be a model. They start the business, doing a party for Hannah and Neil's father Jock. Walter, Neil's brother occasionally works for them as a waiter but he is lazy and dubiously honest and Cathy wishes she could get rid of him. End Part I.

Shel Silverstein

Having learned of the death of Dennis Locorriere, a few months ago, I find myself remembering the songs of Shel Silverstein. He was a comedy genius, who wrote sentimental stories for children... and also wrote racy and suggestive lyrics for songs and was a friend of Hugh Hefner. Dr Hook started off by performing a lot of his songs and it was only later that they began to do love ballads which were more commercially successful. Shel did an album of his own comedy songs, with Dr Hook backing him. One of my favourites is "Polly in a Porny", about a man who takes out a girl who is very prim and proper. Then he goes to a porn cinema to watch a movie.. and he sees Polly, taking part in the film with a pony. Another is called "Stacy Brown got two".. about a man with 2 penises. Another is titled, "Ever since my Masochistic baby went and left me, I got nothing to hit but the wall". Shel's most famous comic song is probably the Johnny Cash hit, A Boy named Sue. Shel wrote it as a poem and Johnny liked it, so he told his band, at a concert that he was going to sing it and they should follow his tune. He didnd't even know the words, but he had a great hit with it. Its about a young man whose father "went and named me Sue" so he was teased all through his childhood. He goes in search of him, and finds him at a bar dealing stud, and challenges him. They have a fight, but his father tells him that he only named him Sue because he wanted to make him tough... and all ends happily. Another very popular song was Freaking at the Freakers Ball", which is about a dance for sexually weird people. The FBI attend and are dancing with the junkies, gay men and lesbians boogie together, sadists and masochists do the same...singing "Please hit me, and I'll hit you."

Henry James

Im hoping to read some more American classic novels, some of which I have not looked at for years. One of the best known American authors is Henry James who was born in New York in 1843. His family were very rich on both sides, and his father was a gentleman of leisure. They were of Scottish and Irish descent. The family travelled to Europe when Henry was a child and he was educated by a tutor. They returned to America, but Henry had a bad back which meant he was unfit for service in the American Civil war. He studied law for a time but his chief interest was in literature and he mixed with writers and artists. His brother William studied medicine and became a psychologist. Henry went to Paris in the 1870s and stayed in Europe for most of the next 30 years. He spent time in England where he made friends and wrote his first novels. Now settled in Europe he was influenced by French writers such as Zola. His books tended to be about the conflict between the naive and innocent Americans, and the more subtle and often decadent Europeans. The Portrait of a Lady is about a naive American girl Isabel, who marries a European nobleman and finds that he does not love her. More Will Follow.

K names

K is not the most popular letter for names, though there are many names that are spelled with a C or a K. Katherine is one of them. Another is Kara/Cara. There are a few Bible names, such as Keziah. It means Cassia, the name of a tree and was the name of a daughter of Job. It was popiular in the Puritan era as it was a bible name. Two names have become very popular in the later 20th century, Kelly and Kerry. Both can be used for boys or girls but are more popular now as girls names. Kerry is a place name in Ireland. Kevin is a very popular name not just in Ireland. It means handsome or fair. Kelvin is the name of a Scottish river. It was taken as a title by a 19th century scientist and became quite popular as a given name. Kimberley is also a title in the British nobility and has been very popular as a name for girls. It has also been used for boys. Karen is also a very popular name, it is a Danish version of Katherine, and became well liked in the USA from the 1940's. It is also popular in England.