KEV67

Thanks Brian, I shall give that a go. Still working through Over Fields of Fire. Anna Timofeeva-Egorova was very respectful and kind about her comrade pilots and the mechanic who fixed up her plane. There are a number of photos at the back of very handsome pilots who all died in action. She is not so nice about the Germans, understandably enough. She calls them Hitlerites and scum. She is flying Il-2 Sturmoviks now. The were ground attack planes, the most produced aircraft in WW2. Anna is piling up awards while living a charmed life. So far she has not mentioned her gunner. I wonder why not. Edit: it was because she was flying one of the earlier single-seat Il-2 Sturmoviks. She was allocated a two-seater later. First she had a young male gunner, then a female gunner.

I sometimes envy Welsh and Scots who can speak Welsh and Gaelic as their mother tongue. I cannot remember hearing people speak Welsh except in tannoy announcements at Cardiff Railway Station. I have heard some people speaking Gaelic. I walked into a pub in Stornoway in Lewis and there were people speaking Gaelic. I walked straight out again. Then on the west coast of Scotland I heard some people speaking it. All the same, I think I understand why Welsh used to be discouraged in Welsh schools. Being only able to speak Welsh or Gaelic would be very limiting career wise. It does take an awful lot of effort to learn to understand, speak, read and write a language. Remember all the time in primary school when you seemed to be doing the same thing again and again. I have been trying to learn Latin for two or three years now, and I still struggle to say or write down anything. My cousins in Ireland has to study Irish for years at school, but I do not think many of them are fluent. That is why I think the people trying to resurrect Cornish will have a hard time. It is difficult to find anyone to have a conversation with in Cornish. Unless you speak it at home then if you have children they will not learn it as a mother tongue. It would be difficult to perfect your Cornish because you would not have an expert to correct you when you go wrong. With Cornish I doubt they know exactly how it was pronounced as the original Cornish speakers died out centuries ago. Still, that said, I have a Dutch friend who learnt Dutch, French, German and English at school. She said she had to read Schiller in German and Shakespeare in English. I cannot understand Shakespeare unless I read a book that explains what he means. She says all the reading she had to do at school put her off reading. There are some Dutch who speak Frisian. I do not know how they find the time. However, there are a lot of native French, German and English speakers they can talk to and a lot of resources in those languages.

I like them. I have quite a few of them. The covers were designed by Coralie-Bickford Smith, who I was delighted to learn learnt her craft at Reading University. There was an issue with the patterns on the covers wearing off, but on the whole I do not mind that. When you read a book you damage it. They are more expensive than paperbacks, but they are generally long books. If you taken into account how long they take to read, and how pretty they look on your shelf, I think they are quite good value. On YouTube I have heard vloggers criticise the quality of the paper and the bindings. I suppose that is fair enough. I suppose that depends a bit on whether you consider the artefact to be worth a greater proportion of the art it contains. Personally, I only have a certain amount of money, which is more than I had when I was young, when I thought hardbacks were a waste of money. I like that Penguin keep bringing out new clothbound classics. I was not bothered about the 20th-century classics they brought out last year, but I noticed this year they have brought out The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy, and I still want to buy Paradise Lost, possibly The Mayor of Casterbridge, Les Miserables, and maybe Villette.

I went to another Methodist Church this morning in Caversham, which is north of the river. The congregation was fairly elderly. The pastor said that Adam was Hebrew for man and Eve was Hebrew for woman. He said the story of the Garden of Eden was not literally true but in another sense was. Methodists win for hymns.

I read one of her other books, The Fountainhead. Her hero was an architect who designed well thought out, functional buildings, but without any frilly bits. He would absolutely refuse to design Doric columns, or arches or leaded windows. He did not have any friends, although he had a mentor. I think he did cop off with some blonde beauty, almost as uncompromising as himself.

Actually, I am wondering whether the book has started to find its subject. Framley Parsonage centred around a man who was not bad, but weak. This book, possibly centres around a man who is neither weak, nor bad, but vacillating, self-centred and shallow. I sort of feel for him. I did not like him, but since the author has started to report things from his point of view, I have started to sympathise.

I saw Atilla the Stockbroker tonight. There was some sort of left wing march through town today. I was reflecting that he had not changed much in the 30 years I had first seen him. He is still a very left-wing firebrand. One thing that cheered me is that his new stuff is still good.

I can imagine Timothy West narrating well. He does not stumble.

I do not think the book is brilliantly written, but what a story she had to tell! To start with she was flying these Po-2, which she calls U-2 biplanes. They were useful for delivering mail, delivering important messages, delivering radios and other important packages, extracting injured servicemen, taxiing important people, etc. My favourite story so far is her escaping four Messerschmitt fighters by flying as close to a river as she could and following it around. I suppose it was a river with steep valley sides that meandered around. She would not have escaped any Messerschmitts flying down the River Thames. In the last chapter she had had to navigate in white-out conditions, sometimes having to find her airfield in the dark. I made a model of a Po-2, but the paint job is not very good. It is too glossy.

I am not sure I rate Anthony Trollope in all honesty. The Way We Live Now was a good book. I think The Warden, the first in the Barchester Chronicles, had the merit of being different. Church politics does not come up that much in literature. The Little House at Allington strikes me as a C19th airport book.

Apparently John Major's favourite book, at least at one time. I am still not quite half way through. I was about 1% concerned that the most likeable characters in the book would end up marrying the wrong people, but I very much doubt Anthony Trollope would allow that to happen. Attitudes to marriage were much stricter in them days, particularly among the upper and middle classes. You could not mess people about.

This is published by Hard Case Crime. I was attracted by the lurid cover. It was pretty good. Not quite as good as all the endorsements on the cover would have it. Still, it was readable enough, and it was a bit different for crime fiction. It was part crime fiction, part war story, part love story.

I do like the man, but it's alright. Someone else can have it.

Very nice, but I already have a copy.

I like real books. I don't hold with them electronic reading devices.

I did make it to the Church of England (Continuing) evening service at 6:30. Only about 7 people in the congregation, which is thinning fast. The minister was away, but his deputy was standing in. He had a bit of a dig at the bishops, which did my heart good. After the service I talked briefly to a woman called Eileen. She said the congregation had been thinning out fast. I mentioned that in the notices that there was a christening the following Saturday. She said that was the minister's granddaughter. As I suspected, one of the hot women in the congregation was the minister's daughter, while the woman who usually hands out the prayer books is his wife. The daughter who had the baby in one of twins, apparently. It was the other one who was at the service. I do not know who the other hottie was. Anyway, all that is interesting, but not much good to me now. Interestingly, Eileen said that there had been a minister at the church whom they did not like, and whom I suppose they had forced out, That is interesting to me: about ten years ago, after my father died, I went to this church on Father's Day, and there was a different minister to whom there is now. His sermon was about publicans, not republicans, but people who run pubs, at least that what I understood. My father was a son of a publican, as well as an atheist.

I am irritated with myself because I did not get to the Unitarian meeting. I was busy faking my timesheet for work. I thought the Unitarian meeting would be 3:30, but it was 2:30. If you are interested, this is the Unitarians' alternative Lord's Prayer. Alternative Lord’s Prayer Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere, May we be aware of your presence in our lives. May our world be blessed. May our daily needs be met, And may our shortcomings be forgiven, As we forgive those of others. Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing, The inspiration and guidance to do right, And the wisdom to know the difference. We are your hands in the world; help us to grow. May we have compassion for all living beings, And receive whatever life brings, With courage and trust. Amen

Nice to meet you. What sort of books do you like?

I have started reading Anna Timofeeva-Egorova's war memoirs. She flew Polikarpov Po-2 light bombers and Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft during WW2. In Britain women were allowed to deliver military aircraft to their bases, and perform various non-combat roles, but in the Soviet Union women were combatants. There were a number of female, Soviet snipers, which is a concept I find chilling. Anna was a combat pilot. If she flew those Po-2 biplanes, she presumably was one of those Nachthexen that bombed the German troops in their sleep. Sturmoviks were the most greatly manufactured aircraft in WW2, and probably the most shot down. So far, I have only got as far as her first flying lesson. It is not extremely well written, but it is quite interesting already. She was really keen. She left home, which was some small town in the countryside, to go to Moscow and started working on the Moscow metro system, not project managing, but hard, manual work. She loved it. Communist ideology was such that all sorts of opportunities were open to Soviet women, which were not in the west. However, the thing that surprised me most is that the Soviets replaced the seven day week with a five day week. Do they still keep to five day weeks?

I went to my first Methodist church this morning. I was annoyed with myself for arriving three minutes late. I was not the last, though. Lots of people snuck in after me. It is partly because it annoys me so much when people keep coming in late that I am annoyed with myself when I am late, although I am habitually late for everything. It was quite a nice church. It had wooden pews, an upstairs gallery and some stain glass windows, which is not typical for Non-Conformist churches. Someone played an organ, also not typical for the Non-Conformists. The theme was on goodness. Some children had written a sketch which explored the theme of goodness. Later on a woman gave a sermon on goodness, how it is sometimes even used as an insult, such as goodie-goody. In between, a thin, old man who looked like Bertrand Russell got up and directed things. I liked the hymns, except for the modern hymn. In the evening I went back to St Mary's on Castle Street. The sermon was a slightly odd one. St Paul had addressed a church who were riven by disunity, as well as sexual impropriety. Someone had been sleeping with his father's wife. The vicar said it made no difference whether it was with his mother or stepmother, as both actions were prohibited. I would have thought it mattered quite a bit. He then went on to attack Church of England clergy who did not hold to the Thirty-Nine Articles, which personally I suspect is nearly all of them. He said it was not just a Anglicanism thing. There were Lutherans who did not adhere to their declaration. Same with Presbyterians, and Congregationalists who did not hold to the Savoy Declaration. The Congregationalists do not exist under that name any more in England. They united with the Presbyterians to become the United Reform Church. It seems to me the URC are pretty much the same as the Baptists in their actual services. I have a sneaky suspicion that many would struggle to point out the differences in doctrine between them.

Went to Bury St Edmunds this week to visit my mother, who is 80 this week. Ended up going to the cathedral there with her. Proper high church with incense, a decent organist and a choir with 24 singers. There were screens hanging around everywhere and there must have been three or four cameras. The hymns were proper hymns. Reading does not have a cathedral, although it had an abbey and a friary. The nearest we have is a minster.

I went to another United Reform Church this morning, Grange United Reform Church. I was slightly irritated with myself, because despite getting up in plenty of time, I mistimed things and left late. The rain was chucking down. I arrived six minutes late. No projector screen this time, so it was as well I brought my specs. The congregation were pretty elderly. I was possibly the youngest one there. They were quite a friendly bunch. The preacher accompanied the hymns with his electric guitar. A lay reader read a passage from the Old Testament, but no one could hear him. So he had to read it again, while we followed in our bibles. The sermon was based on Jesus' baptism by St John the Baptist. Afterwards I had a cup of coffee with them. The secretary (well ex-secretary), who used to be a phlebotonist, said she and her husband had lived in the same house in Reading for sixty years. Only now her husband is failing fast. He is in his early nineties. She said his mother lived to 110! I went back to St Mary's on Castle Street in the evening. Only seven present in total. The sermon covered quite a bit of ground. At one point he mentioned a story in Ezekiel in which an army of bones became skeletons, which reminded me of that scene from Sinbad the Sailor. Then the skeletons became covered in sinew and skin. I wondered what happened after the battle. Did they turn back into bones again? Another bit was a story in the New Testament where the friends of a paralysed man lower him through the ceiling of a house Jesus was preaching in, because they could not get him past the crowds. I don't suppose the home owner was very happy about that, but presumably they repaired the roof afterwards. At one point the vicar said although we were few in number we were the happiest people on earth. "Really?" I thought. I did not feel particularly happy, about 4 out of ten. It was because we knew we were saved. This was after he said most people these days assume Christians must be dim or mentally defective in some way. How dare they? I passed all my O levels first time. I got 3 As, 2 Bs and 3 Cs.

Come to think of it, Ubik by Phillip K Dick was a hell of a book. It was sort of science fiction, so put it under genre.

Still reading the Famine Inquiry Commission's report. They pinned the blame on the provincial government of Bengal. They tried price controls, which did not work, and then they tried lifting all the controls, which did not work neither. There was a lot of hoarding by producers and profiteering by traders. The provincial government failed to gain control of stocks and institute rationing. Still not sure that gets Churchill off the hook. Power had been devolved to Indian regions provinces by the Labour government in the 30s, which Churchill had opposed. However, in an emergency such as was happening, I expect emergency legislation could have been enacted to take control back, at least temporarily. There was too much drift.

I went on holiday last week. I very rarely fly anywhere, so I was interested to see what the airport books were like. I was disappointed. I thought there would be much more choice. Quite a few were written by celebs. I was puzzled why so many books were physically larger than normal, as if they were large print. I bought a Jack Reacher book called Past Tense, which was a good choice.