The Chalfont St Giles and Jordans Literary Festival by Denise Beddows

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Margaret Graham

The theme of this year’s exciting Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival (10-22 May) is ‘Lives in Words’. Sharing their insights into their own or others’ lives will be a stellar line-up of guest speakers.

Participants will include Professor (Sir) Robert Winston, examining ways in which science may increase our happiness, and diplomat Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, sharing his experiences as a British Ambassador.

Anna Jacobs outlines the background to her best-selling novels, whilst poetry lovers will be well served by the wit of award-winning poet Wendy Cope. American poet Robert Frost will be the subject of a discussion led by Gabriel Woolf and Linda Hart, and Claire de Carle and Dr Sarah Rutherford will discuss Capability Brown.

Ffion Hague examines the relationship between Robert Walpole and poet Thomas Gray, and Vernon Bogdanor describes the constitutional crisis of 1936 caused by Edward VIII’s relationship with American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

In a joint presentation entitled Spooks & Spooks, Denise Beddows, aka author DJ Kelly, explores our county’s 600 year history of spooks of the spy variety, as featured in her book Buckinghamshire Spies & Subversives; Catriona Troth describes the inspiration for her book Ghost Town and the way The Specials’ chart-topping song of that name eerily reflected the 1980’s urban decay, unemployment and racial violence, and Margaret Whittock recounts the spooky circumstances leading to her discovering the Gallipoli graves of her two great uncles and to her novel Ghost of Gallipoli.

With coffees, teas, homemade cakes and books on sale, readers and budding writers are invited to pop in to browse books and seek writing and publishing tips from 8 published authors at the Writers’ Café and Pop-up Book Shop (10-1pm Sat 21^stMay in The Reading Room, High Street, Chalfont St Giles – admission free). See:www.chalfontstgilesliteraryfestival.org.uk

My Bangkok Nature Challenge by Alex Bannard – Thailand correspondent

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Challenged by a friend on Facebook to photograph something natural and post it everyday for a week turned into a beautiful journey.

Recently I was tagged on Facebook to complete a nature challenge and I was filled with dread. We all know the feeling – one’s to do list already seems over-burdened or the challenge seems simply not possible. It’s almost like the 21st century chain-letter – if you don’t forward to 20 people within an hour your life will implode, you will grow an extra nose and you certainly won’t ever attain riches beyond your wildest dreams.

OK so I over-exaggerate a little but this photo challenge involved posting daily for a week a photograph of nature and nominating one of your friends daily to accept the same gauntlet. I balked. And procrastinated and thought ‘But I live in a city’ and dreaded burdening other friends and and and…

Well, of course I did the ostrich thing for three days and eventually ventured out with the dog for her morning walk around our Moobaan, armed with my phone. I don’t usually take my phone as I believe the walk is more mindful without it. I focus on the bird sounds (the for-real bird, the one who squawks ‘for-real-for-real’) and try to allow my thoughts to drift across my mind like clouds in the blue sky. And all of that dippy hippy stuff.

It was a revelation: I discovered beautiful flowers hanging from trees, bushes or in potted plants. I absolutely love the frangipani flower which we all regularly see on the ground in Thailand and decorating our plates but this time I noticed some that hadn’t quite opened in the morning sun’s warmth. But the frangipani wasn’t the only one, because I realised that there are many other spectacularly beautiful flowers if only one looks.

My friend’s housekeeper later told me that one bloom is collected by the locals to cook in oyster sauce, and that’s obviously what the stout old lady was doing one morning as her maid obediently following behind carrying handfuls of these flowers.

I looked more closely at the bark of the trees the dog sniffs around every day. I noticed the different textures in the different grasses at our feet. I looked upwards and discovered papayas, pomegranates and bananas hanging off neighbour’s trees.

I am sure the security and gardeners wondered what that mad Farang was doing, one foot on the dog’s lead, kneeling down with her phone trying to get the perfect shot of a dead flower on the ground. To be honest I didn’t care because I was in that all important flow state where time flies by and nothing else matters other than what you are doing. Kids are naturally in this state and it is somehow conditioned out of us as we grow up but it is so therapeutic and extremely good for you.

But best of all I was totally mindful of my surroundings, seeing things I hadn’t noticed before and appreciating once again how very lucky we are to live in this vibrant, bustling, busy city of Bangkok. You just have to open your eyes and slow down to appreciate its nature and beauty and I realised then I can never have enough of frangipani.

So thank you for the challenge, and I hope those I nominated also found it to be a time of similar revelation and calm.

And another lesson…if I had allowed my initial reaction to this challenge to dominate I would never have experienced these revelations and therein lies another revelation: don’t judge, stay curious and open because there is so much more to life if you do.

Alex has lived the nomadic life of an expat for over a decad living in the Middle East, Istanbul, Germany and recently settling with her family in Thailand. She teaches yoga in Bangkok and when not on her yoga mat, waxes lyrical about her oversea adventures. Contactable via: masteryoga@elbolivng.com

Surrealism, Me And Rene Magritte By Wendy Breckon

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Picture the scene. Beaming toddler leaps down the path clutching a painting. Circles, squiggles, and wavy lines in bright zany colours. Mum or Dad sweep up the impressive piece of artwork, pinning it on to the fridge for all to admire. Could this be the start of a burgeoning art career, the beginnings of a future Monet or Picasso? In the same way, when a little child kicks a ball around with some nifty footwork in the park, the idea of a famous footballer such as Lionel Messi in the family remains a fascinating thought. The answer is you won’t know yet, but there’s always a possibility.

I loved art and wielding a paint brush from an early age. Once, there was a zealous moment at the age of four, when our black farm cat burst out in oversized orange spots. Well… er… with some help from me as I pursued him round the garden.

Our secondary school in Ireland was hot on literature and culture. Yippee! Sandwiched between the intricacies of science and the sheer terror of Maths, was the History of Art with a superb teacher. I soaked it all up. Lowry, Matisse and Constable, with their fascinating lives and influences.

Rene Magritte has always been one of my favourite artists. Born in 1898, he lived most of his life in Belgium. He shunned the intellectual and artistic life of the capital, preferring to live with an unassuming identity. For him, the art of painting was a means of knowing life better and at the same time, liberating things from their familiar roles in everyday life. We are used to the images of birds in cages or apples on trees. Our interest is awakened more readily if the bird is replaced by a fish or a shoe. As a surrealist painter, Magritte had the knack of showing both the absurdity and contradiction in reality.

He has been described as a, ‘painterly Lewis Carroll’, who created a wonderland for children in his book, Alice in Wonderland, with the tales of the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit. Maybe this is why I remain fascinated by Magritte, as this story was my favourite as a child. I spent a lot of time turning the pages and imagining I was Alice.

To look at a Magritte painting is to see through the barrier of time. His vision of the world, was one in which the people and things around him, could quite easily turn into something else. Bowler hatted commuters hung in the clear skies like April showers and express trains rushed out of open fire places.

The ultimate experience for an art lover, was a visit to the Rene Magritte Museum three years ago with my son. This building on the Place Royale, in a neoclassical hotel, houses a collection of original sculptures and drawings, in addition to the two hundred paintings. As I hovered in front of the artist, who I’d admired so much as a teenager, I was able to appreciate for the first time all his wonderful work, in the moody, half lit interior… the perfect setting. I will never own one of Magritte’s paintings, but the close proximity to this master of fantastic art was an experience to remember.

Greta Stoddart and White Space by Maya Pieris

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Greta Stoddart makes very good chocolate biscuits. She is also an award-winning poet, been a performer, teaches creative writing and lives with her family, including Juno the “liquorice allsorts” dog, in Devon, down a steep track with a huge view across the Axe Valley.

Over tea and biscuits we talked about words and silence, 2 big elements in her creative life. Words, she said, were an early love, her first “self-published” poetry anthology written aged 9 and illustrated by her sister but not she said like Jane Austen or the Brontes.

The collection, which included “Master Crash It All” about a particularly clumsy boy, “ was a bit tumpty, tumpty” – her description – but lines would arrive in her head as she awoke and wanted to be written down. The book happened just before a major riding accident which saw her spend 3 months in hospital and then several more on the sofa reading or looking out the window, in retrospect an excellent nursery for a fledgling poet who turned from a “an outgoing child into a more reflective one”.

Her road to physical recovery turned out, however, to be through ballet, almost on doctor’s orders, this leading to the other passion-dance and then theatre. Eventually after reading drama at Manchester Greta went to study with the Jacques Lecoq school of physical theatre in Paris specialising in clown skills. 2 years on found her and 2 female friends touring Europe with Brouhaha, their mime theatre company, which lasted for 5 busy years.

She says the experience “taught me to respect silence- which poetry also values in the white space around the text”, a “pressured silence, to not speak unless you really need to”. Space in both words and performance is certainly central to her writing and her teaching- her workshops are always measured, calm situations where listening is of the essence. It was while on tour in Belfast that the writing bug began to go viral in the form of “lines in my head” which insisted on being written down, as in childhood.

She took a year out of acting and never went back. Her timing was stage perfect- she booked onto an Arvon writing course led by Simon Armitage in the company of other then aspiring poets such as Kate Clanchy and moved on to be tutored by Michael Donaghy. She took to poetry like a duck to water and found an audience in sympathy with her work resulting in her first collection, At Home in the Dark, which received the 2001 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She claims “it was a bit of luck” but was actually the result of 7 years work.

She has since written 2 further collections appearing in a fairy tale way around every 7 years. Her latest, Alive, Alive O, published last year deals with death, a subject which has interested her since childhood and which came about after a series of personal bereavements. It is, however, not a depressing collection- sad, thoughtful, painful and also positive as she attempts to cover the complexities of this subject.

So with 3 books completed she is in quiet contemplation of her next writing challenge so we await with interest What Greta Did Next.

Books available at all independent and chain book stores.

The European Startup Revolution Book Review

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Margaret Graham

The European Startup Revolution is a book of interviews with leading European entrepreneurs and investors.

This is a book for the entrepreneurs amongst you, and perhaps those who are not yet, but hope to be.

Ivo Spigel, co-founding editor of the technology blog www.Tech.eu has interviewed 28 European startup founders and investors over a period of 6 years for his book, “The European Startup Revolution“.

The European startup and technology ecosystem has changed dramatically over the past 6 years, as it recovers from the 2008 financial crisis. No longer content to take the back seat, founders of European startups have been busy creating global winners, particularly in areas such as fintech (TransferWise), music (SoundCloud, Deezer) and gaming (Supercell, Nordeus, Playfish).

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Ivo Spigel has interviewed many of Europe’s most successful startup founders, from Spain to Finland and from Britain to Hungary. In the 28 chapters of The European Startup Revolution, the author takes an intimate look into the company with the founders to explore their early days, the critical steps to the evolution of their companies and how they developed over time.

Each chapter has a ‘before’ and ‘after’ part, speaking to the entrepreneurs first in 2010 – 2011 and then revisiting them 4-5 years later to learn what has become of their ventures. Most have been very successful, but there are valuable lessons to be learned from those who have not.

The companies covered are many, and include Zemanta, the venture funds Atlas, as well as Skimlinks, Playfish, Last.fm, Rebate Networks, Dailymotion, PriceMinister, Getjar, Index Ventures, Supercell, and others.

“The European tech landscape is changing“ commented author Ivo Spigel “and there is a need to report on these dynamic developments. Europe has nurtured some amazing companies that have not always had the media attention they deserve. I’ve written this book as an exploration and a celebration of European entrepreneurship.“

The book, is available at www.europeanstartuprevolution.com and www.Tech.eu, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Apple Books and Kobo.

The London Fire Brigade has appointed their first-ever Young Fire Safety Officer

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Such a great story has reached Frost Magazine:

The London Fire Brigade has appointed their first-ever Young Fire Safety Officer, 7 year old Archie Cosaitis, to head up the PLAYMOBIL 150th anniversary firefighter crew

Archie is a lifelong fan of the Fire Brigade, and will be launching 65 collaborative open days across the capital throughout this 150^th anniversary year, to get the essential message across about fire safety in the home.

Limited-edition London Fire Brigade versions of popular PLAYMOBIL Fire Brigade sets have also been created for little ones to learn through play at home. 10% of proceeds will be donated to the Brigade’s charities of choice, with toys available from April to purchase at the open days and from PLAYMOBILE customer services.

Archie was inspired by the PLAYMOBIL crew’s catchy sing-a-long video already being used by London Firefighters and the Brigade’s Education team as part of their fire prevention outreach work. It shows children how London Fire Brigade fights more than just house fires and highlights how much they do for the community.

Duties in his new role include blowing out the candles of a birthday cake made by Great British Bake Off star Firefighter Mat Riley, giving fire safety advice to his classmates and testing out PLAYMOBIL’s latest Fire Brigade vehicles.

The anniversary open days will be perfect for anyone who’s ever fancied playing firefighter for a day. These will take place across London from April through to December. Children big and small can meet real firefighters and life-sized PLAYMOBIL ones, plus enjoy toys and activities galore.

Jamie Dickinson, Marketing Manager of PLAYMOBIL UK, commented, “Archie is doing a sterling job so far in bringing the fun factor to learning about fire safety. He’ll have me out of a job if I’m not careful!”

London Fire Commissioner Ron Dobson said, “The 65 open days across the capital are a great opportunity for people to celebrate our birthday and interact with firefighters who do so much work protecting London every day. Our Education Team does a great job instilling fun into our fire safety advice and Archie is an important ambassador for the work we do.”

Click here to see all 65 anniversary open day dates and locations: http://bit.ly/PLAYMOBIL_LondonFireBrigade

Watch the all-singing, all-dancing video here:

http://bit.ly/PLAYMOBIL_LondonFireBrigade_Video

A Girl’s Guide to Moving On by Debbie Macomber Reviewed by Jan Speedie

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Margaret Graham

Leanne and her daughter-in-Law Nichole are both coping with the aftermath of divorce and decide to compile a guide to help them move on. Two years on both Leanne and Nichole have pushed forward with their careers and have found new relationships. Just as they feel life is good, people from their past try to spoil their new happiness and bring difficult family challenges which they must overcome to secure their bright future.

Debbie Macomber is a bestselling author in the USA with over 200 million copies of her books in print worldwide. It is said she is a master of feel good stories, ones which raise the spirits of those dealing with relationship problems.

So how much of a master is she?

A Girl’s Guide to Moving On is easy reading and it certainly does bring raise the spirits in our hum drum world, especially as we wait for spring to be sprung.

The pace is brisk, the emotive thrust draws us in, and it is one of there rare things these days, a wholesome and satisfying read.

Another few million sales on the way it would seem. Great stuff.

Debbie lives with her husband, Wayne in Port Orchard, Washington. As well as her best selling fiction Debbie has published two cookbooks, numerous non-fiction works and two children books. Debbie is a devoted grandmother and works for several charities. Debbie and Wayne spend their winters in Florida.

Published by Arrow in paperback on 10th March 2016 at £5.99

The Last Thing I Remember by Deborah Bee Reviewed by Frances Colville

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Margaret Graham

One of the launch titles for Twenty7 books, an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction, The Last Thing I Remember by Deborah Bee is a gripping read. Sarah is in an induced coma after a mugging, unable to move, see or communicate or to remember anything about herself and her past life. She is, however, able to listen in to conversations going on around her. Can she make sense of what has happened to her, remember who she is and alert the medical team to the fact that she is not brain dead? Kelly is a stroppy yet sensitive and intelligent teenager who spends a great deal of time at Sarah’s bedside. What part does she play in all this and can she help Sarah recover? And who is the man who appears at Sarah’s bedside when no-one else is around and whom no-one knows?

Deborah Bee keeps the tension high and the reader guessing until the very last page. I couldn’t put it down. If you’re a fan of Gone Girl, or The Girl on the Train or any of Sophie Hannah’s psychological thrillers, this is a book for you. Just one word of warning, if you object to very frequent (albeit integral to the story) use of the f-word then it might not suit you.

The Last Thing I Remember (Twenty7 books) is available as an Ebook from 3 March 2016 and in paperback from 28 July 2016.

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