In bed with Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

I spent last night in bed with Bill Bryson's At Home. My friend Kate Toullis loaned me this excellent compendious (483pp) book, and it is a real page-turner. Bryson never dwells too long on any one topic, but on every page he makes discoveries. The conceit is that it's all about houses, but radiating out from that theme are many far-reaching tentacles. He explains how one thing leads to another, altering the layout and use of a house, including how long it took us to get cosy and comfortable at home. That rang a real bell with me. Proper central heating is a comparatively recent phenomenon in Britain. There was no central heating upstairs in our house as a child, or in my boarding house at school aged 7-14, or in my student lodgings in the 1960's or in the house where I boarded in Cardiff, working as a trainee journalist on the Evening Echo. I stayed cold when I moved to London to flat-share. It was only when I married, in 1969, that I was able to install central heating in every room of our house with a big enough boiler to cope. Do read this book - it is endlessly fascinating.

In bed with Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's passport photo

Ford Madox Ford, in Paris at the same time

I get ill - in American 'sick'  - a couple of times a year, always with the same old thing. I'm sick (we  would say 'ill') now. I couldn't read for a couple of days but now I'm on the mend I'm reading 'A Moveable Feast' by Ernest Hemingway. I commend it to you. Did you notice, I'm doing a bit of a Hemingway thing there?

There's a french horn thing going on

Perfect reading to go with Kate Toullis's exhibition at the Moffat Gallery

Kate Toullis's exhibition of bright, beautiful paintings at The Moffat Gallery, 21 Well Road, Moffat, DG10 9AR, has a musical theme and within that theme french horns figure - should that be 'loom'? - large. This is no accident. Kate's husband Tony is a professional french horn player, and she plays along with him to keep him company. They make a superb sound in the closed acoustic of the gallery so try walking by one day - you may hear something surprisingly tuneful. Needless to say, the pictures are the main thing, though, and are extraordinarily brilliant. At the end of the first afternoon, many Moffatonians had crossed the threshold to enjoy the paintings, and Kate had received a commission. Well done Kate! Meanwhile, I am enjoying 'I Found My Horn' by Jasper Rees, loaned to me for the duration by Mr & Mrs T.

hobby

More than meets the eye

This famous photograph by Man Ray of a French music hall artist is a multiple verbal and visual joke. In French, the translation of the word for a 'hobby' is violin d'Ingres - because the painter Ingres' hobby was playing the violin. Hence, if (say) you were a French lawyer by profession whose hobby was gardening, you might say: 'cultiver mon jardin -c'est mon violin d'Ingres'. OK? Clear now?

Fifty years on

My issue of the monthly 'Novy Mir' for November 1962 containing the original publication of 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'

 The contents page: Solzhenitsyn and Hemingway

It is 50 years since 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was published in the literary journal 'Novy Mir' (New World). I had not noticed until now that there was a short story by Ernest Hemingway in the same issue. I will spend the day reading/re-reading them both. I am indebted to my tutor Evgeny Lampert for urging me to subscribe to the journal. I started my degree course in Russian Language and Literature that same term (autumn 1962) so this may have been the very first issue I received. It has travelled with me for fifty years, from the Banbury Road in Oxford to north Kent to London,  Stoke on Trent, and London again (where it survived a fire in our drawing room) before coming to rest in the best- ever bookcase in the best -ever house, in Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The modern bi-lingual version seen lying flat in front of the original is one of several copies sent by the All-Union State Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow as part of our partnership agreement. Thanks, guys. NB To hear Solzhenitsyn reading the story, go to: http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru/upload/audio/01/0001.mp3

An artist, writer and illustrator

'HORN' by Kate Toullis

Kate Toullis is a Glasgow School of Art-educated artist, writer and illustrator. After 30 years in exile in the far west of Ireland, she and her husband have come to live in lucky Moffat. An exhibition of Kate's wonderfully life-enhancing, colourful paintings will be opening at The Moffat Gallery next Sunday Nov 25. Readings from her three beautiful children's story books will follow in due course.

Apple

Russian 'stakan'

The last apple

I had enough apples from my two new apple trees to make a big apple crumble. Here is the last apple of the season, a mysterious, damaged but somehow beautiful fruit. It smells of childhood. Russians drink their tea black, sometimes with a slice of apple in the glass. In Russia, you drink tea by the glass, in a 'stakan', not by the cup. The glass comes with a removable holder, beautifully wrought with a handle so you don't burn your fingers.