KEV67

I tried reading the page without showing it and he still walked across the room. He definitely remembers the words. Maybe he does not understand what they all mean, but he remembers them. In another Sue Hendra / Paul Linnet book, Nobot the Robot with no Bottom, there was a page in which Bear says he could not use Bernard the robot's bottom in his drum kit, because it made a funny noise. I used to look at Adrian and say, 'Does your bottom make a funny noise?' First, he laughed, which made me wonder how much he understood. Lately, he looks at me at me in a funny way when we get to that page. So far, the best clues I have of Adrian understanding any language is his sense of humour. I have been resisting buying any of the Supertato books by Hendra and Linnet. But since I am having difficulty getting Adrian to eat any fruit and vegetables, I bought one.

Barry, the Fish with Fingers, is another book by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. Adrian makes me laugh, because the other fish ask Barry what he can do with his fingers. While Barry explains he can cut paper chains, knit and play with finger puppets, Adrian has taken to walking across the room, because the next page says 'tickling'. This makes me think Adrian has started to recognise words, but it is possible he recognised the picture.

I was not aware you had had a child. Belated congratulations.

Yes, it is good. I have only read two Stephen King books: Holly and Joy Land. I do not think Stephen King writes straight crime novels. He usually includes elements of the supernatural or the macabre. Holly does not have any supernatural elements, just the macabre, but other books in which the protagonist (Holly Gibney) appears do have supernatural elements. As it was a book about crime with an element of the supernatural, it made me think of G.B.H. by Ted Lewis, and compared to that, Holly is not as good. Holly Gibney is a good character. She is a middle-aged female detective, who prays every night, and frets about things and who is very conscientious. That actually made the final confrontation a little contrived and unbelievable to me, but then the premise is fairly implausible and this is not true crime.

I finished Holly. It was a page turner.

Little Adrian's favourite book so far is Where the Wild Things Are. He likes Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet's books. These are very silly. I have bought three of them: No-bot, the Robot with No Bottom; Barry, the Fish with Fingers, and Norman, the Slug with the Silly Shell. Hendra and Linnet wrote the Supertato books, which have been turned into children's TV cartoons. Adrian likes Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's books. I have read him The Scarecrows' Wedding, The Gruffalo, and another one about a penguin called Jonty Gentoo, who escapes from a zoo and swims to the South Pole. I think Julia Donaldson's rhyming is very good, although I am not sure how much of these books Adrian understands. The Gruffalo has a good plot, but I doubt Adrian is old enough to appreciate it yet. I think he understands quite a bit of Where the Wild Things Are, because he does not have to understand the words to understand the story.

I have ordered a copy. I have a few other books on my TBR, so it will take me several months to get to. If I like it I will probably tell you, but if I don't I will probably keep quiet.

I went back to the United Reformed Church in Bury St Edmunds. It seems like URC churches are not named after saints. We had another female pastor this time. She appeared interested in wars around the world and social justice issues. I brought Adrian. He was quite noisy, but they told me afterwards he was not bother. However one of the elders recalled there was a couple that came to the church because they were put off by the children in the church they used to attend. This made me wonder. The congregation is very elderly, so one would think they would want some children so that the church did not die out. But perhaps what happens is that most their recruits are elderly to start with. I was talking to one of the regulars and said I was interested in having Adrian christened. He said he'd talk to one of the elders. Yesterday I took Adrian to an Epic Dad event (carpet bowls and mini golf). Epic Dad is a charity which helps single fathers. I told the organiser I took Adrian to church, but that they had no child provision. He said he went to the Beacon Church, also in Bury St Edmunds, which does. This puts me in a bit of a quandary. Personally I am not into happy clappy, very child-oriented churches, but I suspect Adrian would prefer them when he gets a bit older. He would probably prefer them to listening to someone drone on about why the tax collector's prayer found favour and the Pharisee's did not. The poor old Pharisees could never do anything right, while the Samaritans could never do anything wrong.

I went back to the United Reformed Church in Bury St Edmunds. It seems like URC churches are not named after saints. We had another female pastor this time. She appeared interested in wars around the world and social justice issues. I brought Adrian. He was quite noisy, but they told me afterwards he was not bother.

I am only on Chapter 11. It will be December before I finish it. So far, so good. What a silly old fool the old man was!

I started reading The Old Curiosity Shop. It starts with a gentleman walking the streets of London at night. That's what Dickens used to do himself, wasn't it. I was wondering if it were televised who they would cast as Quilp. He's a malignant dwarf. Peter Dinklage comes to mind. I wonder if he can do 19th Century London accents. Another good thing is the chapters are short, which means I can get through one at bedtime.

That was quick.

One thing that is amusing me is that Holly is a lot about writers. It is not much of a spoiler to say the baddies are an academic couple, one of whom worked in the English faculty. Another member of the faculty was an author of one successful novel. Yet another was a renowned poet. Another character in the book is an aspiring poet. Of course, Stephen King is a multi-bestseller, although I would say he was more on the entertainment end of the literature spectrum. Not entirely, though. In the latest chapter, the aspiring poet meets the renowned poet to show her her poems. They have a discussion of poetry. Stephen King had to write the character a bit of poetry to present and discuss. Personally, I could not tell the difference between a good poem and a bad one, unless it's very bad. Much like my knowledge of fine wine. The renowned poet thinks the aspiring poet's poems are good. I wondered how much time Stephen King spent composing this poem, considering that it was supposed to be good, and the pace at which he writes. Stephen King writing about these semi- and not very successful writers strikes as being similar to a retired international football player turned pundit commentating on lower league football games to spectators who know from quite-a-bit to next-to-nothing about the game.

I took Little Adrian to the local United Reform Church. It was a different pastor this time. They seem to have a rota of pastors at this church. I was a little concerned Adrian might be disruptive to proceedings. I gave him a bottle of milk, which kept him quiet for the first half of the service. I gave him vegetable straws and other snacks after that, although that did not prevent him giving a running commentary on the service. There were two visitors from the Anglican cathedral on some sort of inter-church thing. The pastor reminded them that the Congregationalist Church, as it was before they united with the Presbyterian Church, had their first female leader in 1916. He asked whether anyone understood what 'Ecclesia semper reformanda est' meant. One old lady at the back said, 'The church should always change.' She must have paid attention in school. Then a woman from the congregation read a passage from the bible, but it was the wrong passage. So then she read the right passage, which was about a Pharisee who prayed that he was glad he was not a wrongdoer like the tax collector next to him. The tax collector prayed for forgiveness. Jesus commended the tax collector and censured the Pharisee. I was not surprised. Jesus had a real problem with Pharisees. After the service I went for tea and biscuits with the others. They all said they liked Adrian being there and did not mind his childish noise.

Never heard of him. The Nobel Prize for literature seems a bit dodgy to me, almost as dodgy as the peace prize. Bob Dylan won it once, and sure he's written a lot of good songs, but did he deserve the preeminent prize for literature? Winston Churchill won the literature prize once. I am a big fan of Churchill and I suspect his history books were pretty good. I expect there were better history books published in his time, and really he is known for his other achievements.