Another year's reading and exploring with Hugh: mark 2023, part 1

Happy New Year, everybody!

Happy 2023 reading thread. I look forward to more pictures, book reviews, and lessons on botany, zoology, geology and history, as well as general conversation and piffling.

Too close to year's end to note in the previous thread, which was getting too long anyway, I finished Sani Pass: Revealing its secrets.
Sani Pass is the only lawful vehicle route between Lesotho and Kwazulu-Natal; the other route is a pedestrian footpath. Even Sani Pass is strictly 4x4 only, and terrifying if you're not hidden in mist. I gather from the book (and personal observation) that these days most of the traffic on the pass is tourists, but over most of the pass's history it was the main (except for light aircraft) way of getting goods of all kinds up to the village of Mokhotlong ("place of the bald ibis"), surely one of the world's most remote administrative outposts. Just imagine transporting EVERYTHING needed to build a house up a pass with a gradient of 1 in 3 in a short-wheelbase Landrover, the only vehicle that could handle the track in the 1950s; or rather don't imagine it, that's how the early buildings were made. The author is a Brit who spent some time working in at trading post up there; he then transferred to the MMT (Mokhotlong Mountain Transport) HQ at the foot of the pass. The biography in the back-cover blurb records that his wife grew up on the farm next door to the MMT base -- the ultimate Girl Next Door! Considering that the publisher is so minor that the book is almost self-published, it is remarkably well written and produced; it is informative and brings back happy memories of holidays in some of the most scenic mountains I know.

Would I read another by James Colman? I doubt very much if there is one. ETA: The James Barry Colman known to LT is a different person, very different and apparently unrelated to this author)
Would I recommend this book? I hesitate to do so, because I doubt if any Dragoneers would ever find a copy. But yes, if you ever do.
To whom: Firstly and obviously, to anyone going up Sani Pass. Next to those who like reading about cold, high (the pub at Sani Top claims to be the highest of its kind in Africa, at 9480 ft asl. The surrounding countryside is higher, and Thabana Ntlenyana (cute little hill) at 11425 ft is the highest point in Africa south of Kilimanjaro.)

>2 pgmcc: Thank you, Peter! Your wish is my command. Here are TWO of Sani Pass for you.

First, from near the foot. The pass goes up to the break in the clouds.


Next, a fairly typical stretch near the top, as it was in 2009. (Somebody has breathed a sacrilegious plan to TAR the road ALL THE WAY UP! Shock Horror!)

Fortunately in this one you can't see the 600 ft drop behind the camera and the 1000 ft drop at the next hairpin bend.

Happy New Year, and happy new thread, Hugh! I hope your year is a healthy book-filled one. Love the photos. That first one looks very Middle-Earthy.

Let me echo clamairy and wish you a happy new year! You add so much to this group with these photos and glimpses into a part of the world most of us simply don't know enough about. I'd never heard about the Sani Pass and you share the most interesting bits!!

Happy New Year and happy reading!

Happy New Year and happy new thread! Thanks for sharing with us.

Echoing everybody above me: happy new year and happy new thread. And what a terrifying road!

Happy reading in 2023!

Happy New Year!!

As far as that road: terrifying!!

I so appreciate your participation in the Green Dragon, and all the help you have offered, as well as encouragement to me personally. Looking forward to another year of meeting in the pub!

>12 MrsLee: Awwwww! Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

>2 pgmcc: You did ask for more pictures, didn't you!

It's just dawned on me, right at the end of the appropriate day, that today is celebrated as Tweede Nuwejaar (second of New Year) in Cape Town, with a jollification that goes back to about 1830. I don't have a picture, so I grabbed this one from Wikimedia, with this CC notice: By South African Tourism from South Africa - Minstrels - South Africa, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67603232



There's a fuller description here.

Happy new year! I'm looking forward to more of your photos and book reviews!

>4 hfglen: Yikes! That looks even narrower than some of the roads I've been on in the Himalayas.

>15 hfglen:
I am glad you are not disappointing me. :-)

Thank you for the pictures.

>16 Sakerfalcon: And at that it's been widened and eased since it was opened in the 1950s. Transport companies can now use 4x4 5-ton trucks, which they couldn't at first.

>15 hfglen: That's really quite interesting. I'd no idea that it was part of the cultural landscape.

Stopping in just a little late to wish you well in the new year, reading-wise and otherwise.

The Tower at Stony Wood. I can only agree with BookstoogeLT's review here on LT. This is a good example of Patricia McKillip's storytelling: dreamlike, with bits of thread that don't quite mesh or are only seen out of the tail of your eye, and only make sense later. Unlike some LT reviewers, I liked it a lot.

Would I read another by this author? Yes!
Would I recommend this book? Yes.
To whom: Dragoneers who like the author's style and haven't read this one. for a start.

>21 hfglen: I know I read this one although I don't remember it as clearly as some of her other books. Now I want to go rummage about my shelves to retrieve it and see if a re-read might be in order.

Still following, with good wishes for a great year.

>23 Meredy: Thank you! And many thanks to everybody else for their good wishes and kind words.

For Who the Bell Tolls. How to write so as not to look like an eejit or worse. David Marsh has one inestimable attribute that few if any of the English teachers I had at school could remotely claim, namely a sense of humour. Possibly the editor of the KZN Railway History Society Chronicle (guess who!) should read this one every quarter, while checking the next issue, before sending it off for reproduction. It's a remarkably good read.

Would I read another by this author? Yes, and there's one I want as a reference book.
Would I recommend this book? Yes
To whom: Anyone who writes for more than private consumption. Anyone who cares about good English, and possibly some who don't but should.

The Re-Origin of Species. A difficult book, not because of the writing but because of the ideas in it, and their implications. What if someone brings mammoths back to life and releases a herd in Siberia? The effect on minimising global warming should be excellent, but could it be a disaster? What can we learn from human experience? She cites European swallows in USA (a disaster) and Asian parasitic fungi in American chestnut trees (another), which set me thinking of Indian Mynahs here (another disaster) and grey squirrels in Cape Town and UK (ahem). Yet Cape Nature has managed to get rid of Rhodes's Himalayan Tahrs, and much of the pine plantation, on Table Mountain before they destroyed the place totally. And SANParks's Bontebok and Cape Mountain Zebras are a thoroughgoing success story. So there is no straightforward answer.

Would I read another by Torill Kornfeldt? Possibly, if one is translated into English (she writes in Swedish).
Would I recommend this book? Yes.
To whom? Sadly, the fanatical bunny-huggers who need to take this information on board won't read it because the author does her best to be fair and find facts, rather than simply trumpet a fashionable Party Line.

This week, an old picture I found while looking for something else.



Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden from near the top of Nursery Ravine, Table Mountain. January 1983.

>26 hfglen: … rabbits in Australia (a disaster) … No bunny huggers there, mate.

>25 hfglen: That looks interesting.

>28 haydninvienna: I should think not! But I'd not be in the least surprised to find the same (creative=sinful) mindset.

Almost Human: the astonishing Tale of Homo naledi. Who needs detective fiction when you have, or have access to, stories like this? OK, a cast of, if not thousands then well over 100, all credited in the book, rather than the lone Poirot unravelling the mystery by himself. But then, there appear to have been several Australopithecus sediba fossils all together at Malapa and a whole tribe of Homo naledi just down the road at Rising Star. This large team was kept more than busy for, remarkably, a total of some two months, extracting more than 1000 fossils from the Rising Star cave, and about half that many from Malapa (one gathers that's more hominin fossils than all the rest of Africa put together), then describing and interpreting them. It is even possible to argue from the way the naledi fossils lay, and the absence of any other species mixed in with them, that these were possibly the first hominins to bury their dead.

Both these sites are part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site north of Krugersdorp. This was a good afternoon's outing when I "wur a lad"; only Sterkfontein Caves were open then. Way back then tourists carried carbide (acetylene) lamps in the usually vain hope of seeing anything: the reflectors were filthy, covered in soot, and so one hardly noticed the difference in illumination when the gas jet went out, as it often did. Berger's team had phones, laptops, electric lights, laser scanners and more, by comparison. They needed all they had.

Berger and Hawks are strong believers in open access to data and publications, and so, although the conservation and descriptive work took two years before publication, the scientific publications were instant best-sellers, and one is given to understand that the data files allowing anyone with a 3D printer to make replicas of the bones are just as popular. This is, of course, helped considerably by Berger's limpidly clear and engaging storytelling style. I find the thought that there are still at least as many important unanswered questions now as when they started, positively exciting. What else is waiting to be discovered under the apparently bleak and dull Highveld?

Would I read another by Lee Berger? Can't wait to see what the next discovery is!
Would I recommend this book? Unreservedly, yes!
To whom? Lovers of detective stories; lovers of any other good stories; anybody interested in the world we live in.

>21 hfglen: Bullet taken, gladly. It's going on my OverDrive Wishlist. Thank you.

(Boy, the reviews are all over the place for this one!)

>31 hfglen: this one sounds fascinating! I just downloaded the audio book. I’ll listen to it on my way to work and on my walks.

>25 hfglen:, >26 hfglen:, >31 hfglen: - Your aim is deadly, I'm adding to my wishlist - all of these sound great.

>31 hfglen: This is a subject area that my husband particularly enjoys so I'll have to see if I can lay hands on it for him.

>35 jillmwo:
Interesting. We recently saw Sakerfalcon transferring a book bullet to her work place, and now we witness Jill deflecting a book bullet into her husband.

>36 pgmcc: It's those Wonder Woman wristlets that I'm wearing that allow me to manage this kind of thing...

>35 jillmwo: It's co-published by National Geographic, so should be fairly easy to find.

Edited to fix number error caused by plaited-finger syndrome.

Song for the Basilisk. Vintage McKillip indeed. Lyrical writing, though possibly not as lyrical as Od Magic, interesting characters, and a plot well enough described that one accepts any improbabilities. It would be interesting to meet some of them, such as Magister Giulia, Julian or Reve Iridia; it would be at least as good to avoid the driven Hexel Barr and the brainless fashion butterfly Damiet Pellior.

A somewhat unexpected animal for you this week.



A jellyfish in Saldanha Bay harbour, Western Cape, 2014. Saldanha Bay is our main iron-ore export terminal.

Jellies are neat!

And happy birthday for tomorrow, Hugh!

>40 hfglen: That is neat, I've only seen them in aquariums.

Have a great birthday, Hugh! I hope special celebrations have been arranged.

Once again, bewildered by where the global date line falls, I am here to wish you a happy birthday yesterday, today and tomorrow. I'm sure that one of those MUST be right! :>)

>40 hfglen: cool picture! And I echo what Jill said. Happy birthday, whenever it actually occurs.

Happy birthday!

>25 hfglen: You winged me with that one, Hugh. And >31 hfglen: too.

>40 hfglen: The jellyfish picture: growing up on the coast of Massachusetts, I sometimes stepped barefoot on those guys beached after a storm, and more than once I put my hand through one while swimming. The word for that is eww. They do make interesting photo subjects, though.

>48 Meredy: At least it was only eww! Some of the blighters deliver a sting that can be life-threatening.

Hippo bird day! :)

I hope you're having a fantastic one.

>43 Karlstar: >44 pgmcc: >45 jillmwo: >46 Jim53: >47 Karlstar: >50 libraryperilous: Thank you all very much!

>45 jillmwo: >46 Jim53: Here we're two hours ahead of GMT, and don't have different summer and winter times. LT time appears to be about 5 hours behind GMT, give or take summer time.

Now I am confused, but I hope you're birthday doesn't lack luster because of that. Many happy returns of the day to you.

Happy birthday!

BTW, I’ve been listening to Almost Human. It’s been fascinating! I wouldn’t be thrilled to go through those caves, though. I’m about halfway through it.

Happy birthday, whenever it is! I just picked up an interlibrary loan of Almost Human, and am looking forward to it.

>49 hfglen: Oh, we screamed and ran/paddled away for the fun of it, but the dangerous stinging ones never came around there.

>49 hfglen: As you know, in Australia everything is trying to kill you: https://www.traveller.com.au/jellyfish-and-stingers-in-queensland-during-summer-...

>53 catzteach: You're safe! Both Malapa and Rising Star are off-limits for the general public. And Last time I went to Sterkfontein (decades ago) it had electric light, and they have dug out the former "lumbago alley", so most of us don't have to crouch to get through it. The Maropeng visitor centre only opened after we moved away from Gauteng.

>53 catzteach: >54 NorthernStar: Enjoy the story! Better Half has now annexed the copy I got from the library, and is fascinated. There's a New Scientist presentation on YouTube by the man himself, that is just as good and shares many of the pictures in the book. A later YouTube video suggests that Homo naledi had cooked meals (on fires made on purpose inside the cave) some 250 000 years ago! Rather necessary on a Highveld winter night; it doesn't snow there because it's too dry rather than too warm in winter.

>56 haydninvienna: Indeed. We share the Indian Ocean with Western Australia, and so KZN jellyfish are the stinging kind, but AFAIK not quite as vicious as Queensland's box jellyfish.

>58 hfglen: I sometimes wonder how 26 million or so people manage to live in comfort and safety in a continent that has 11 out of 14 of the world’s most venomous snakes, the world’s most venomous spiders, the sea is home to the world’s most venomous jellyfish …

>59 haydninvienna: And fresh-/salt-water crocodiles, and and and ... Not too many mammalian predators, though. I gather a significant number of would-be poachers in the Kruger Park get eaten before they get caught by humans.

>60 hfglen: Fair point. All in all, one sometimes wonders how the bunny-huggers (your term) regard Nature as being essentially benign.

>61 haydninvienna: By refusing to accept uncomfortable facts, and by not thinking, hmmm?

Happy (belated?) birthday Hugh! I wish you a predator-free year!

>62 hfglen: Not going to disagree.

>57 hfglen: I was wondering if there were pictures in the book. Hmm, I may have to check out the hard copy so I can see pics. Or I’ll watch that YouTube video. :)

>65 catzteach: there are pictures.

Happy belated birthday! We sure have a lot of January birthdays in the pub :)

Thank you, Gale! We do indeed. I thought briefly of posting a picture taken in a brewpub this week by way of happy-birthday-everybody, but decided against it as the name of the brewery is prominently displayed and could be construed as advertising. The name of the place is, er, open to misinterpretation: Darling Brewery (named after the town it's in).

And so the picture I chose, which sits at the opposite end of birding from Bookmarque's.



Red Bishop Bird, Langvlei near Wilderness, Western Cape, 2017. Langvlei is part of the Garden Route National Park -- a change from my usual Kruger pictures! Red Bishop birds are among the commonest of our wetland birds.

I love all the weaver birds. Gorgeous photo!

>69 hfglen: Remarkable and very noticeable plumage. I'm beginning to have serious envy of those living in the Southern hemisphere. So many of your birds are colorful and around here one gets tired of the ordinary brown sparrow.

>71 jillmwo: Don't kid yourself! We have plenty of LBJs as well. I just don't take pictures of them, for fairly obvious reasons.

Plus sharks. Always a bloody shark!

>69 hfglen: So bright and beautiful! I am with >71 jillmwo: on the envy bit. My brother calls our plain birds LBBs.

Happy Belated Birthday, Hugh!

>69 hfglen: How gorgeous. Thank you for this!

>69 hfglen: What a great photo of a neat little bird :)

>69 hfglen: What a beautiful little fellow!

>71 jillmwo: PS, after consultation with DD, the family bird expert.
But don't you have red cardinals, blue jays, hummingbirds and (at least in the Old World) the, ahem, blue tit? Or is the last only seen outdoors in winter?

>78 hfglen:
Tut! Tut!

>78 hfglen: Of course, we do. But at least out here on the East Coast, blue jays are pretty much a dime a dozen. The cardinals are visible mostly in the spring and only the male is a bright red. The female cardinal is much more muted in tone. (It's how you can tell them apart at the bird feeder.) But I fell in love with the Red Bishop name as much as with the feathery appearance. (Jays and cardinals don't look light and feathery like the bird in your photo. Their feathers are flatter and are folded more closely to the body. I'm sure there's a technical ornothological word for that.)

>80 jillmwo: Red Bishops are dirt-common in wetlands here, and as in many species, the females are small and brown to the point of near invisibility. Rather surprisingly, I seem not to have a picture to hand of any of the five-or-so dirt-common kinds of yellow weaver that also live in wetlands, usually together with the Red Bishops.

This past Thursday I went to a World Ship Society meeting at the Royal Natal Yacht Club. Their view across Durban Bay (harbour) is remarkable, though I still wonder how to make the most of it.



This is Africa's busiest port, but still manages to be scenic IMHO.

>78 hfglen: We do, but we really don't have many birds as colorful as that one, and certainly nothing like some of the even more striking tropical birds.

>82 hfglen: Nice picture!

>82 hfglen: I still wonder how to make the most of it.
do you mean from a photo standpoint? the lighting might be the key; what direction is the sunset? I like the contrast of green against the water. are those cranes and barges in the distance?

>84 Darth-Heather: Yes, the "killer" photo that says 'this scene is to die for'. And yes, a sunny day would help. Will have to take my camera to the next WSS meeting and try again. That view is facing roughly south-east; the sun rises over the harbour entrance, and the view towards sunset would show the sugar terminal, which is less than exciting. Cranes and a huge container ship. The eagle-eyed may also spot an oil terminal.

>85 hfglen: Any time I see a photo of palm trees and water a bit of my Winter doldrums dissipates... sun or no sun! Thank you for this.

>82 hfglen: and >86 clamairy: I agree with Clam, any pic like that lifts my winter blahs a bit. I felt the tension release just looking at it. :)

>82 hfglen: Very relaxing.

>82 hfglen: For a busy port that view is very serene!

>82 hfglen: >89 Sakerfalcon: Bit like a swan gliding serenely over a lake: all calm on the surface, paddling away furiously underneath.
I’m not surprised at all that most of my favourite cities are ports: Sydney, Vancouver, Helsinki… and after my all-too-brief visit with Hugh a few years ago, Durban.

>82 hfglen: Is the Natal in "Royal Natal Yacht Club" a reference to a particular birth event, a place name, or a typo? (Serious question, as it seems there ought to be a good story or interesting/exotic tidbit of information there...)

>91 jillmwo: Easy-peasy. For a long time it was held that Vasco da Gama, the first European to navigate this coast, anchored in Durban Bay on Christmas Day (Dia do Natal in Portuguese) 1498. More recent research suggests he actually spent the day at Port St. Johns on the Wild Coast. Anyway, the coast either side of Durban acquired the name of Natal, and the original name of the bay was Port Natal. So indirectly, a particular birth event, and in memory of the Portuguese name we pronounce the geographical term with the stress on the second syllable.

Took a direct hit from MrsLee with The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, which, it turns out, is borrowable from Internet Archive. Duly read and much enjoyed. I can only agree with what MrsLee said in her review; if we're not in Kansas then we're also not in the Natal (nudges jillmwo) Midlands either. One could imagine wishing to meet Dag and Spark; now that I think of it, there's a couple I see at church most weeks who share the size disparity but not the age gap.

My twenty-five years in Provence. A retrospective look at his life in Provence by Peter Mayle, published in the year he died. This is sad, as it means we can no longer look forward to more of the warm, gentle, cosy humour with which he looks at life in the Luberon. But that doesn't stop this book being eminently readable, and filled with enough stand-out characters to populate a Russian novel (or quite a large town).

>93 hfglen: Glad you enjoyed it!

>94 hfglen: I may have that one, I grab his books whenever I see them for an affordable price. You reminded me of another author I can reliably turn to for comfort. I may be visiting one of his books sooner than later.

MrsLee scored a ricochet, in that one could hardly leave Dag and Fawn hanging at the end of the first book in the series. So yesterday I finished the next, The Sharing Knife: Legacy. Definitely a second-book-in-the-series, mainly concerned with setting up the third. Dag's family and community are even less charmed with him and Fawn than Fawn's were. Add the usual alarums and excursions and 'nuff said. Still compelling reading; enough so that I have started the third (of four), Passage. (Where Fawn's family turn out to be quite accepting, after all.)

... and here are the mangosteens I mention in Pete's thread. As I recall, this lot lasted only a minute or two after being photographed -- they were far too good to waste!



And that reminds me of Pau Amma in the Just So Stories, as it ought to remind you:

China-going P. & O.s pass Pau Amma's playground close,
And his Pusat Tasek lies near the track of most B.I.'s
N.Y.K. and N.D.L. know Pau Amma's home as well
As the Fisher of the Sea knows, "Bens", M.M.s and Rubattinos.
But (and this is rather queer) A.T.L.s can not come here;
O. and O. and D.O.A. must go round another way.
Orient, Anchor, Bibby, Hall never go that way at all.
U.C.S. would have a fit if it found itself on it.
And if "Beavers" took their cargoes to Penang instead of Lagos,
Or a fat Shaw-Savill bore passengers to Singapore,
Or a White Star were to try a little trip to Surabaya,
Or a B.S.A. went on past Natal to Cheribon,
Then great Mr Lloyd's would come with a wire and drag them home!

You'll know what my riddle means when you've eaten mangosteens.

Or not in this degenerate age; now you'd need to be a historian.

>97 hfglen: With great respect, Hugh, the ones I remember from Doha were a thick brown shell with a white blob of juicy pulp inside (like Les Murray's line I quoted about "hot mangosteen eyes"). I believe that there is another fruit in the same family called an achacha, which is now being grown in Australia, that looks like your picture.

And yes, I do indeed remember Pau Amma.

>97 hfglen: Ah! With great respect right back, that's Garcinia mangostana, the (cultivated) mangosteen, which I've only ever seen once. Mind you, the local wild one in the picture isn't exactly dirt-common, either. I gather they're all delicious, though I never plucked up enough daring to sample the G. xanthochymus in Durban Bot. Garden. That one is the source of the artists' pigment Gamboge Yellow, and I didn't fancy the probability of indelible yellow stains all over everything. And the pong of the windfalls was pretty heavy, too, though the bees loved them.

>96 hfglen: Now you can notch up a bullet for the third in the series. Although, it will be delayed, I have a lot of other books to read before I go buying any more. :P

>97 hfglen: They look appealing. They also look smallish. Unless those leaves are huge.

>101 clamairy: Food of the gods! They're about the size of a small plum (a damson, perhaps?). The Asian ones (gamboge and cultivated-mangosteen) are each about the size of a smallish apple.

Wineries of the Cape. Coffee-table book detailing the most expensive wineries between the Hottentots Holland mountains (first ridge inland) and the sea. The idea that the world ends at this range (part of which is called Limietberg = limit mountain) is a very common Capetonian delusion. This book gives the impression that the authors would rather die than mention that oceans of affordable, delightful wines come from the other side of the mountains!

Would I read another by these authors: There isn't one, which might be a good thing.
Would I recommend this book? Not if there's a copy of even an elderly edition of Platter's Guide around.
Am I inspired to do anything as a result: only growl to myself about the Insular Peninsula.

>99 hfglen: The one grown in Oz is Garcinia humilis, according to Wikipedia, and apparently they are in season right now.

I also remember encountering something in Doha that was labelled, IIRC, “dried Garcinia fruit”. It was ‘orrible.

>98 haydninvienna: and >99 hfglen: I can remember eating mangosteens (the cultivated variety) when I was a girl and we lived in Bangkok. You can't get them in the United States for whatever reason, so years later, I was thrilled to see them brought to the table at a dinner during a business trip to Amsterdam. They're wonderful. (The Dutch bring such a variety of good things to the table. Dutch coffee is absolutely fabulous, as well.)

>105 jillmwo: I didn't know you lived in Bangkok as a girl. I want to hear that story. How long? What were your impressions? What else are you not telling us?

>106 MrsLee: At the risk of hijacking hfglen's thread, the story is that, being born to parents in the military, I grew up all over the place. My dad was stationed in Bangkok in 1964-66 so I still remember it. I can still count to twenty in Thai and one of my notable achievements in science fiction fandom is being able to correctly pronounce the name of author Somtow Sucharitkul (otherwise/currently known as S.P. Somtow). And I *think* I recall correctly that mangosteens may not be shipped in to the United States because of some worry about an invasive pest of some sort.

I have lived a life "fraught with incident".

>107 jillmwo: "hijacking ...
That's what threads are for, innit? You're more than welcome; please continue.

But not the sort of hijacking that just happened.

The Sharing Knife: Passage A more distant ricochet from MrsLee, but then you can't stop halfway in a good series, can you? In this one Dag and Fawn join a river boat at Pearl Riffle for the journey downstream to Greymouth. On the way they gather up various waifs and strays (including two deserting Lakewalkers), and by the time they get where they're going, the participants have become more a family than a team. Instead of the usual Malice there's a gang of thieves led by a Lakewalker-gone-bad. What to read next? Why the fourth and last part (Horizon), of course.

Am I inspired? Yes, with much gratitude to MrsLee.

I have just heard Blow the Wind Southerly sung in Russian on BBC3 Breakfast. A truly strange sound.

111> So what is it called when one hasn't even read the books, but inspires others to read them? A book virus? An infection? LOL

>113 MrsLee: Perhaps a contagion?

>114 jillmwo: Maybe ground-reinforcement? (Read particularly The Sharing Knife: Passage to see what I'm thinking.)

Waah! I read the whole of Horizon in two days, as expected, and now there's no more of that particular story. In this instalment, Dag and Fawn get home from Greymouth in one piece, and Fawn has her firstborn in the north. Not without adventure, needless to say. That includes not one but two Malices, reshaping a sharing knife into a desperately needed crossbow bolt, another Malice kill by a "farmer" (not a Lakewalker), and more. They set out from Greymouth just the two of them, and find someone who can train Dag's emerging maker powers. When they get thrown out of Dag's trainer's camp, they join a small group heading northwards. Soon the teacher joins them, and so the group grows, at one point numbering well over a score of assorted Lakewalkers, farmers, merchants and halfbreeds. Eventually it seems that Dag's aim of building bridges between Lakewalkers and farmers is coming unstoppably if slowly. All loose ends are satisfactorily tied up, which may be a pity (no more sequels, unless you count Knife Children, about which the LT review is so off-putting as to leave no space in which to regret its local unavailability).

I could imagine wanting to visit Dag-and-Fawn's world and thoroughly enjoying meeting them.

Found a secondhand copy of Railways: Nation, Network and People at a meeting this morning, and bought it for Railwaysoc's library. So I can hardly not read it before passing it on, now can I? Totally different to the Sharing Knife world but well written and interesting, even though I'm only about 20 pages in.

>117 hfglen: But will you feel railroaded by the ending?

>116 hfglen: I liked Knife Children. Nice to revisit that world. Are you not able to find an ecopy?

Only about three weeks late, here is a view of Durban Bay looking roughly westwards.



>84 Darth-Heather: is partly right in that if one were around at sunset (thus incurring horrible traffic on the way home) it might improve matters.

So what can we see here? The remains of the mangrove swamp that once girdled the bay is hidden behind the ship on the left; the industrial area behind that is called Congella, from the isiZulu kangela = to watch; 200 years ago it was a relatively hidden place from which Shaka's impis could watch the mad whites on the bay. The arched building just to the left of the left-most palm tree is the sugar terminal, where bulk sugar for export awaits shipping. When it was built it won a prize (IIRC), which may not say much for the architectural prizes. In Queen Victoria's Glorious Days the mudflat in front was Durban Beach, and what is now the beachfront (open to the Indian Ocean) was called the Back Beach; a few elderly residents can still remember their grandparents using that terminology. The flats (US: apartments) on the right were once among the most desirable addresses in all of Durban. Now they are "nice from far but far from nice", indeed becoming slummy.

>120 hfglen: I had to go look up the word impis. As always, you put me in the situation of learning more. Question -- when was the bulk sugar terminal built? Perhaps that has a bearing on why it won a prize at the time?

>121 jillmwo: Do I detect another instance of the "two nations divided by a common language" phenomenon? Though I suspect that we both need to describe things unknown to speakers of the original version in its home territory.

IIRC the sugar terminal is late 50s -- early 60s. If you desperately need more precision I could ask around or look it up.

Maggie: the first lady I was seconded to Kew for a while in Mrs Thatcher's first term, so I remember some of the history here as more-or-less first hand. The story is well written, well thought out and AFAIK (or any other layperson does) accurate. The pictures are well reproduced and relevant. So what more should one want? Good question, but I'm left glad that there was a conceptual gulf between Kew and Whitehall, as well as about a dozen stops on the Tube. I think I'm glad I never met the subject of this biography! (Even where one's outlook might have coincided with hers; she comes across as a fire-breathing dragon.) Lyzzybee's LT review is recommended, being fair and considerably longer than this note.

Would I read another by this author? Possibly, but I probably wouldn't actively seek one out.
Would I recommend this book? Probably not yet; the story needs time to mature.
To whom? I have no idea.

The number of the previous post reminds me of a long-dead column by Martin Gardner in an issue of Scientific American yonks ago, concerning a highly mathematical (fictional) family. They had an ancient Native American retainer called Ree, who had lost all his teeth except one. So the kids called him 'One-tooth Ree'. (*runs from torrent of rotten tomatoes*)

And yes, I am flinging a good pound of rotten tomatoes at you for that last!!

>124 hfglen: Haha! That one may find a happy home on the Bad Joke of the Day thread. ;)

>124 hfglen: Wish I could remember the doctor’s name … all I’m sure of is that it wasn’t Doctor Strabismus of Utrecht (Whom God Preserve) …

ETA Of course, it was Doctor Matrix.

>127 haydninvienna: Indeed. Dr Iva Jay Matrix, which might precipitate another volley from jillmwo.

The Vicar of Nibbleswicke. Caught fair and square by a BB from Clam (#41 in the Roald Dahl thread). A brief read, being only 48 pages long (found on Internet Archive). Otherwise, all Clam says in that post is true.

What does this inspire me to do? Listen to Clam's recommendations with rapt, indeed gift-rapt, attention. Unfortunately I doubt whether our local rector has the sense of humour to make it worthwhile to recommend this one to him.

>129 hfglen: I wonder if my description took some of the fun out of reading it for yourself.

>130 clamairy: Not at all! Indeed I'd not have known about it, but for your delightful description, which inspired me to search the book out.

(By the way, does anybody know why LT swallowed my first response to Clam without trace?)

>131 hfglen: I'm glad! I hope more people read this one. Although I imagine it would present a problem when read aloud to a bunch of youngsters.

Perhaps you tapped on Post message while there was a pause in your internet connection. I've lost a quite a few that way.

>129 hfglen: "Gift-rapt" is brilliant. The look in my grandkids' eyes when they see the pile under the tree on Christmas morning.

>133 Jim53: Thank you!

>132 clamairy: Entirely possible. Our internet is often flaky (so is the electricity, but the outages are longer.)

ETA: With which, the internet went down for the rest of the day. This @#$%&y third-world country!!

And, eventually, a picture for this week. It's the Durban harbour tug Indlazi on its way into the roadstead to fetch an incoming ship (turned out to be a Chinese ore carrier).



We went to a World Ship Society coffee morning at a place called On Point, which is (ahem) as close as one can legally get to the seaward tip of Durban Point. The hill behind the tug is the Bluff, which has probably stayed forested because it's been a military reserve "since always". The flat bit is historic for train buffs, because it marks the end of a wooden trackway built c. 1856 by the then harbourmaster, a man called Milne, to carry rock from a quarry on the Bluff to his attempt to build what is now the South Pier and so try to scour out the bar across the entrance to the bay. (And so the very first attempt at a railway in Africa south of the Sahara.)

Lovely shot. Especially with that green hill for a background.

Now you are near the green Bluff, whereas I live in Red Bluff.

Louis and Victoria. Biography of a key couple in the history of the Battenberg / Mountbatten family. Evidently definitive, as the author acknowledges the help of essentially all surviving members of the Mountbatten family and their relatives -- which includes essentially all European royals who lived through WW1 or shortly after and were still around in the '70s. The author also appears to have gone through all relevant family archives with the proverbial fine-tooth comb, and (next cliché) left no stone unturned. This could have resulted in a deadly dull book, but in fact it is a lively, engaging read, with loose ends satisfactorily tied up. Fans of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series may be mildly disappointed that there is no mention of cake.

Would I read another by Richard Hough? Yes, though I might not specifically seek any out.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, if relevant.
To whom? I have no idea.

Edited to correct Ms. Next's name.

>138 MrsLee: I was when taking the picture. An hour or so later I was back home. ;-P

>139 hfglen: “no mention of cake”: groan.

IIRC Hough’s main interest was in naval history, which of course includes Lord Louis M.

Quick side note to catzteach and NorthernStar . Back up there around January 14-18, you both mentioned Almost Human. I got it for my husband and he thoroughly enjoyed it. i am sure that others here in the Pub read it as well and echoed the positive reviews so thank you to everyone!

>142 jillmwo: I'm claiming that as a successful BB firing! Hope you enjoyed it as well.

>138 MrsLee: More of our green Bluff for you this week.



Against the Bluff is the "cargo" side of Durban harbour. You can see coal, oil and grain terminals if you look closely.
>137 clamairy: The other side of the Bluff looks out into the Indian Ocean (next stop Pert, Australia) and is home to a couple of Durban's more crowded suburbs.

>144 hfglen: Very nice. :)

>144 hfglen: Thanks for the pictures.

Hugh, I hope it's ok that you have a mention in my family recipe book. I wanted to share how to make persimmon brandy and you are the one who taught me that.

Great pictures, Hugh. Thank you!

>147 MrsLee: *bows with a flourish* Not just ok. I'm honoured!

>145 MrsLee: >146 Karlstar: >148 pgmcc: Thank you, all!

>144 hfglen: That looks like a very pleasant spot for lunch!

>151 Sakerfalcon: There are indeed several stalls a hop step and jump off the picture to the right that will sell you lunch for horrendous prices (though the coffee stall's prices aren't bad). I was amused that one offers "angry curry" with a variety of different proteins.

ETA However, you would not want to sit out there without shade in summer. Especially you, Claire, coming from London, would be burnt to a crisp within minutes.

>152 hfglen: Oh yes, I'd be heading for the shade!

Time for a new thread, before the pictures mess the spacing and "jump to first unread" up unbearably. See you-all there.