Overloaded Ark

My first books were nature books graduating from Ladybird to Observer's pocket series to the mighty Reader's Digest Book of British Birds. But it was Kirkby Library that first gave me the bug to read about people interacting with animals in a factual or fictional context. My Family and Other Animals (including the TV series based on it) gives a flavour of adventure in hot climates with sticky people and beasts. Overloaded Ark, about collecting in West Africa, was the one it started it for Gerald and started it for me. My grandparents took me to his Jersey Zoo as part of a Channel Islands holiday as a child. Writing is how Gerald financed his pioneering conservation work. Never let anyone tell you a zoo is cruel. Individual cages can be (particularly for bigger animals) but it's down to poor design. We all know this feeling now when you can be stuck in a high rise flat with limited open space (or lucky enough to have access to a park or countryside).

Dig Pie Eye released as ebook

Dig Pie Eye is now available as an ebook to purchase and download from:

Lulu http://www.lulu.com/shop/ade-annabel/dig-pie-eye/ebook/product-24155221.html

Apple https://books.apple.com/gb/book/dig-pie-eye/id1470632702

Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dig-Pie-Eye-Ade-Annabel-ebook/dp/B07V5P9722/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1563359547&refinements=p_27%3AAde+Annabel&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Ade+Annabel

Barnes and Noble Nook https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dig-pie-eye-ade-annabel/1129823324?ean=9780995592216

Rakuten Kobo https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/dig-pie-eye

Dig Pie Eye by Ade Annabel

Based in Port Isaac, Cornwall, the client for designing and building a new Seaside garden is a retired British star of Navy war films, Johnny Stern, who thinks he is far more famous and important than is good for him. 

The gardeners stumble across a store used by a gang of modern smugglers (of exotic, illegal and dangerous pets) when exploring some old mines and caves. Maya, who wants to find out more about local superstitions and mythology, studies a female saint, St. Endellienta, who went around caring for animals until being cruelly set upon by one of the farmers. Needless to say she finds herself emulating the saint’s story. 

As the date of the Village Flower Show approaches the vicar’s increasingly irrational and irritable behaviour causes concern. It transpires he is using an old mine underneath his allotment to gain access to vandalise his neighbour’s carrots. He enlists some small boys to reach the narrower openings in the mine workings. The boys’ parents, neighbours and friends become concerned as threats, accusations and blackmail lead to both comic and real-life conflict.

Available at all usual outlets (Print 2017; ebook due for release 2019).

Amazon:
US/Global:

https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Pie-Eye-Ade-Annabel/dp/0995592209

or for the UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dig-Pie-Eye-Ade-Annabel/dp/0995592209/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550699389&sr=1-1

Blackwell's
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9780995592209

Book Depository:
https://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780995592209

Google (NB. not available on Google Books):
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dig_Pie_Eye.html?id=NF7TvQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/ade-annabel/dig-pie-eye/paperback/product-23467862.html

Stream of conciousness

I love chalkstreams. They are so clear that you can see every fish, every plant, every movement and eddy of aquatic life. They are the nearest you can get in the great outdoors to staring at a tropical fish tank.

Until I read Simon Cooper's Life of a Chalkstream I didn't realise how lucky I was to live in such a rare environment (they are confined to a small corner of where I currently live in England plus a few in Normandy and one, as far as I can tell unsubstantiated report, in New Zealand. Please put me right if this isn't the case as it would be nice to find out they are more common.

Cooper's account is also gin-clear in its prose and evocation of this landscape, steeped in deep and intimate knowledge of its annual ecosystem. It probably helps to read this book if you like fly fishing (by the fictional JR Hartley or anyone else). But I'm no angler, and have no desire to become one. I just appreciate the tranquil flow of the river in quiet contemplation of a more relaxing pace of life. Then the sudden splash of ducks landing, the alarm of a coot dispute, or the gentle gnawing of a grassy snack by a water vole or, very occasionally, the brilliant flash of a kingfisher adds to the sparkle of the sun reflecting on the crystal water and my day is complete.

Oh you brute!

I'm not sure whether to start this with a Frankie Howard style paraphrase of 'Et Tu Brute?' or Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The Greeks gave us democracy and the Romans gave us Dictatorship.

Of course that isn't really true as many Romans struggled to keep the Senate functioning and resist tyrants like Caesar.

Robert Harris' excellent trilogy on Cicero ending with Dictator is a racy novelisation of history. He portrays the vanity and flaws of his hero but also the bravery and stubborn principles on which political life should be based. He also doesn't shirk from the role that colonisation and conflict played in financing an Empire that we call civilisation.

The big problem with democracy is that it's run by the people for the people and what the people really want, when it comes down to it, is cash for food and entertainment. If anyone can provide that they can subvert the democratic process. Why is it - cue age old rhetorical question - that we never learn from history? Coz we never read abaht it I s'pose!

Memories are real

Philip K Dick is a smart sassy writer and his short stories are ideal for film. But book versus film is always going to be a futile question. They are different. Get over it. They can both be great. Both be bad. One great and one bad.
What interests me is how your anticipation or retrospective memory are slightly different for each of these forms. How we feel about the experience is important to whether we react positively or not. It is the same with memories. If we had a bad experience with something we are unlikely to want to repeat it and yet the facts of the experience may or may not support whether it was good or not. So, TripAdvisors, how do you rate your trip to Mars? Was it a good holiday, a nightmare or a bit of both? Can you trust your memory? Are you Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Farrell? Are you both and someone has tampered with your memory? We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

The war is over but the battle repeats

HG Wells' stories continue to inspire film, theatre, music and art high and low.

It's not hard to work out why as he was a rattling good story teller. He had imaginative plots, lots of action and some good twists. Whether you get to know the characters in depth and can overcome some of the jarring historical references (servants and stuff) is another matter.

Some of his tales, and War of the Worlds is definitely one of them, do fare better with reinterpretation and I'm not talking Tom Cruise here. Still it's refreshing now and then to get back to the source.