One of the best!

From time to time we all receive those scam spam emails where someone pleads with us to help them to solve their rather large money problems. Rarely however, are the scam emails as topical as this one. Somebody was really quick off the mark to produce this:

"Dearest,

Peace be onto you and your family,

I am Mrs. Safia Gadhafi the wife of Muammar Gadhafi of Libya. I am presently in Algeria with my daughter Aisha and my sons.

I am sure you knows all about my family presently, I am contacting you for urgent help to secure in the name of investment in your country my family fund which NATO, UN and the Libyan transitional council have not seen. The amount involve is $80M.

Note; we are not interested on what you are going to do with this money or profit you will make from this fund rather my interest is to have the money back on demand.

If you are interested in assisting us, Your full assistance is highly needed in all participation.

Note also that your percentage for this help could be discuss.

Please forward the following information to this email address. safiagedhafi@xxxxx.xxx 

(address removed!)

Full name:

Address: 

Tel:/fax:

Copy of ID: 

Finally don’t forget that it is a top secret therefore only email correspondence for security reasons.

Thanks for your support in advance

Mrs. Safia Gedhafi"

My reply to this cry for help?

Dear "Safia",

The next time you try to scam someone, you might like to at least check that you spell your own name consistently.

Regards,

S 

A Summer of Reading

This year, instead of our usual tour around Spain, we've stayed "at home" in south west Germany. Circumstances have not allowed us to travel. When it dawned on me that I would have a lot of time to read, I decided to buy a Kindle rather than use up my luggage allowance with paperbacks before coming over from the UK.

I've been asked by a couple of people for recommended reads, so here is my Top Ten. These are not in any particular order!


1. "The Dying Light" by Henry Porter. This is a story set in the very near future and is all about surveillance - in my opinion a "must-read"! It's a direct descendent of 1984 by George Orwell.

2.  "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. If The Dying Light is a descendent, then "We" is the father of both Brave New World and 1984. A classic dystopian novel, written I believe in 1927. It's a translation from the Russian and although I found it a little strange to read at first, the style of writing absolutely suits the story. It helps to know that Zamyatin may have had synesthesia as he gave letters and sounds qualities :-)

 3. "Moon Tiger" by Penelope Lively. A Booker Prize Winner from 1987, this is a superb book. About the life of a woman dying in hospital, the narrative is sometimes written from her point of view, but sometimes from those of the other people in her life. A poignant tale of life, memory, love and loss.

4. "The Novel in the Viola" by Natasha Solomons. This beautifully written second novel from Natasha Solomons, whose first was "Mr Rosenbloom's List", is set in Dorset and tells the story of a young Austrian Jew from a wealthy family who flees her home country shortly before the start of WW2. She goes to work as a maid in a country home and it tells of how she adapts to her new life. A moving story with wonderful descriptions of English country life in the 1930s.

5. "Before I go to Sleep" by SJ Watson. A great pyschological thriller - a "page turner" about a woman suffering from amnesia. She loses her memory again every time she goes to sleep. On the suggestion of a therapist, she starts to keep a journal and finds that all is not what it seems.

6. "Great House" by Nicole Krauss. A neural network of episodes, neither linear nor parallel, but all connected. A book about memories and a desk. Hard to get into but so glad I persisted. Beautifully written.

7. "Chickens Mules and Two Old Fools" by Victoria Twead. A light and lovely read about Victoria and her husband 's move to a little village in the mountains in Andalucia. If you need something that will make you chuckle, as well as green with envy for the life she now leads, this is the book for you!

8. "Brandenburg" by Henry Porter. The second Henry Porter book I read this year, and I will probably go on to read others. This one is a spy thriller set in and around Berlin, shortly before the Wall came down. Great story telling from Porter again.

9. "Never Let me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. A film of this book was released several months ago. Great story set in a parallel version of England. I don't want to give too much away, so when I am asked what it was about, I say "free range chickens". It's not, but when you've read it, you'll know what I mean! One of these days I'll get around to seeing the film.

10. "The Warsaw Anagrams" by Richard Zimler. I've read all of Zimler's books. This one is set in the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2 and is a murder mystery. I always really enjoy anything this author writes!


Honorable Mentions

Other books I have read recently:

"Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell

"Life Blood" by Thomas Hoover

"Truth Dare Kill" by Gordon Ferris

"The Hare with Amber Eyes" by Edmund de Waal

"War on the Margins" by Libby Cone

"Guerra" by Jason Webster

"Bloody Foreigners" by Robert Winder. This is a history of immigration in England. Everybody in the UK should read this! A compelling and surprisingly easy read. Very interesting!

Rubbish!

I am a frequent visitor to south-west Germany and have always been very impressed by the cleanliness of German streets and towns. One of the places I am seeing a lot of at the moment is a suburb of Karlsruhe, called Waldstadt. Faced with a post-war housing shortage, with thousands of people, including many refugees from the GDR needing homes, the mayor of Karlsruhe, Günther Klotz, came up with the idea of building a new suburb in the Hardwaldt, north of the city centre. Work started in 1957 to build large apartment blocks and houses, providing accommodation for a wide range of income groups.
The whole suburb is inside the forest, and with each apartment block surrounded by taller trees, it is difficult to see directly from one block to another. All are linked by a network of footpaths through the forest. It seems a very pleasant place to live.

Arriving there on Tuesday morning, I noticed large piles of discarded furniture, placed near the refuse collection points, at the ends of the paths, next to the street. I was told that there are occasional collections of these large items that people no longer need. An impressive service, I thought. At home in England I would have to ring the council and pay for the collection of something big like an old sofa or wardrobe that I no longer needed.

Imagine my horror when I walked along the same street a few hours later and witnessed these scenes...






It seems that the refuse collectors decided that some of what they found didn't come under the heading of "large items" and deliberately threw the smaller items around the grassed areas, paths and parking spaces, breaking glass and mirrors, discarding the drawers from inside a freezer, taking the rings off a curtain pole etc etc. I find this sort of petty minded, "jobsworth" attitude totally despicable! What if an elderly person, of whom there are many living in this area, had tripped and fallen on the strewn rubbish? Who would be held responsible for their injury? Do the local "Stadtverwaltung" actually believe that they cannot be held to account?

I somehow think that these refuse collectors would not have dared leave such a mess outside privately owned homes!

TV debut

In another post to this blog a couple of years ago, I wrote about my father's films. They have now been "discovered" and a few snippets were used in a BBC Four documentary which was part of their "Sea Fever" season, called "The Joy of the Sea". First broadcast on Tuesday 11th May, it can still be seen on iPlayer until the beginning of June. I also make an appearance, being interviewed about them.

It seems it has been decided by the surfing historian, Roger Mansfield (author of The Surfing Tribe), that my Dad was the first person to a) experiment using a long-board to surf in Europe, and b) to film himself using it.

My father would be most bemused that he is now beng considered a pioneer. However, he was always proud of the fact that he'd not only made this surf board, but also that he'd made a waterproof casing for his camera, strapping it to the board, to film it skimming through the water :-)

The silver lining?

So here I am...stuck in Germany. Well, not really stuck, since I know when I am going to return to the UK. A few days ago Iceland decided to cough (as an acquintance of mine put it!) and spluttered volcanic ash all over Europe. Flights were cancelled and the world was/is in chaos. We heard a comment on German radio the other day, which roughly translated said,"First they burn our money, then they send us the ashes!"

When Ryanair announced last Friday that there would be no flights to and from the UK until at least Monday lunchtime, I thought I should make some alternative arrangements, bearing in mind I was supposed to be back at work on Monday. I tried in vain to get through to Ryanair to re-book my flight. This, with hindsight, was a truly Good Thing, because I probably wouldn't have been back in the UK before May Bank Holiday the way things are going. The alternative options open to me were firstly the train, which I decided was a) too expensive, and b) the thought of lugging bags on and off trains and luggage racks while my back is still in recovery (a few months and several chiropractic sessions later) did not exactly enthrall me. Second option was to take a bus to Victoria. After some online investigation and a trip to a local travel agency, I was able to book onto the first available bus, which leaves Heidelberg tomorrow at midnight. This gets me into London late morning on Thursday.

The media is full of tales of people's long and arduous journeys across Europe to reach the Channel ports, hiring cars and taxis at inflated prices or having to stay on camp beds in airports or at expensive hotels while they wait for the skies to clear. Dan Snow, the historian and BBC presenter, even took a flotilla of inflatable boats across the channel at the weekend to pick up stranded Brits ("Ye Olde Dunkirk Spirit"). He was stopped in his tracks at Calais, although I do believe he took a few back. I do consider myself one of the lucky ones, having somewhere safe and comfortable to wait, and feel really sorry for those without money and nowhere to go.

Meanwhile the airlines are whinging that it's all taking too long and they're losing money, and let's ignore the fact that the volcanic ash damaged the engines of some f-16s. Lufthansa sent some planes from Munich to Frankfurt, which the BBC decided was evidence that they were 'test flights'. In fact, they were sent there to have them ready for when the planes were ready to really carry passengers. The BBC claimed that they flew "at altitudes of up to 8000m." What they didn't say was that most of the way they were travelling at 3000m, well below normal flying altitude. The time they spent at 8000m must have been barely a few minutes, considering the short flight time between the two cities. Other airlines are also sending test flights and claiming no damage to engines. What if the effects are cumulative? I'm not sure I would want to be in one of the first flights going back!

Testing Testing

A new widget from Blurb to promote my book.

A Portrait of the Alhambra by Sue Clamp

A Portrait of The Alhambra

The making of a book

Finally I have both copies of the book "A Portrait of the Alhambra", that I made both in Apple's Aperture and in Blurb's Booksmart. The results are very interesting. Firstly the Aperture version is slightly larger at 28cm x 21.6cm, compared to the Blurb version which is 24.1cm x 20.3cm. I ordered the Blurb book in their "Premium paper", which is noticeably thicker than the Apple version. The Apple paper is still good though and both cover and pages have a nice silky finish while the Blurb book has a glossy cover and silky pages.

The slightly bigger Apple version


The quality of the actual printing is very similar, and apart from one rather important difference, may simply be a matter of personal preference. I found the Apple photo prints to have slightly more reddish/yellowish tones, which on most of the photos gave quite a pleasing effect.

Pages from the Apple version


Pages from the Blurb version

However, on the one black and white photo in the book, this was not what I wanted and in this respect the rendition of colours in the Blurb book is much better. The other photo that also gave a very different result in the Apple book, was one of the Alhambra at night, where the sky has a brownish tone, whereas in the Blurb book it is completely black. I personally think that the Apple version is perhaps closer to my original photo, but the Blurb print is far more pleasing.

So which one is better? Overall, I think I prefer the Blurb book, even though there are some aspects of the Apple book that I really like. What makes the decision easy in the end is the difference in price, the Apple book being considerably more expensive.



The whole Blurb book can be previewed and purchased here.