It is what it is

‘Well?’  She asked, rising to her feet.

‘The usual.’  He draped his coat over the back of a kitchen chair.  ‘Cut back on the sugar and salt.  Get some exercise, lose some weight.’

‘And what about ...?’

‘He’s sending me for some tests.  A specialist he recommends.’

‘When?’

‘Wednesday afternoon.’

‘Wednesday.  So it’s ... you know?’

‘That’s what the tests are for.  Probably.  Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.’

‘That’s what my father said and ...’

‘Look, health care’s improved since then; they can treat almost anything these days.’

‘But ...’

‘But nothing.  It is what it is.  Life goes on.’


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words

A limited haul from Edinburgh

I was going to post a review of David Downey's Silesian Station today.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet got round to writing it yet; a task for the weekend.  I was busy in Edinburgh and I'm now at another conference.  I also didn't manage to get myself to a bookshop in the city, but I did manage to pick up The Barbed Wire University: The Real Lives of POWs in the Second World War in the airport.  It's author is Midge Gillies, married to crime author Jim Kelly.  Looking forward to reading this one in due course.

Review of The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming (2011, Harper)

Dr Sam Gaddis is a senior lecturer in Russian history at UCL, an expert on Sergei Platov, ex-KGB member turned politician, who has become the most powerful person in post-Soviet Russia.  Recently divorced with child maintenance bills, and being chased by the tax man for payments Gaddis can’t meet, he desperately needs an advance for a book that could be a bestseller.  With good timing, a young woman turns up at the launch of his latest book and offers him her mother’s collection of material about Platov and the KBG; she was working on an book, but has recently died and the daughter would like the project finished.  In addition, his friend, journalist Charlotte Berg, might also have a lead for such a book - she’s been contacted by Thomas Neane, who claims to be friends with the long rumoured but unnamed sixth Cambridge Russian spy.  Edward Crane ‘died’ in the early 1990s, only to be spirited away to a new life by British intelligence, worried about how his exposure would further tarnish their reputation as a compromised organisation.  It’s a potential explosive story and would solve Gaddis’ money problems.  Before he can start work on the new book though, Charlotte dies suddenly.  Gaddis resolves to continue her investigation, but it soon becomes clear that there are forces at work who would much prefer he let the matter drop.  However, with the bit between his teeth, Gaddis needs to uncover the truth.

At the heart of The Trinity Six are two compelling premises: that there was a sixth Cambridge-recruited Russian spy working at the heart of British intelligence, and that Platov (a thinly disguised Putin) has a dark secret that would topple him and which needs protecting at any cost.  The plot cleverly twists these in and around each other, providing a compelling reason for the danger in Gaddis’ investigation.  The novel unfolds as a pretty conventional spy thriller (including Gaddis bedding a much younger woman that seems to be a staple trope of the genre), told in fairly workmanlike prose, unlike the more understated and literary spy stories of Le Carre or Furst.  The result is a page-turner, with a number of feints, twists and turns, and a nice building of intrigue and tension.  The characterization is nicely observed, if a little clichéd, and Gaddis makes a decent lead as man increasingly out of his depth, trying to use spy tricks picked up from research and popular culture to take on professional spooks.  Overall, an entertaining read, with a well constructed plot.

June reviews

June proved to a great month of reading - one 5 star review and three 4.5 star reviews.  Book of the month was Resistance by Matthew Cobb, fiction book of the month A Lily of the Field by John Lawton.  Both great reads.

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill ****.5
Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy ****
A Lily of the Field by John Lawton ****.5
The Black House by Peter May ***
The Pistol Poets by Victor Gischler ****.5
The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey ***
Resistance by Matthew Cobb *****
Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst ****
The Shark Infested Custard by Charles Willeford ***

Lazy Sunday Service

I've had my head down most of the week trying to make progress on the Oxford Dictionary of Human Geography.  I've now drafted 649 of my 685 entries.  So, I'm nearing the finish line, but unfortunately I have seven 300 words entries and twenty nine 750 word entries to write and a month to complete them.  Going to be a busy month!  I went to the local bookshop yesterday seeking a book set in Edinburgh (where I'm heading to tomorrow), but instead came away with Black Skies by Arnaldur Indradason and Disgrace by Jussi Adler-Olsen.  Hopefully will get to both shortly.


My posts this week:
House prices stabilising
Review of Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy
Partial quoting
Data visualization of CSO's residential property price index
Review of Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill
Census 2011: Education, post-15, broad trends
Census 2011: Socio-economic group and class
People in blue houses are apparently the most successful
A long, lonely night in the desert

A long, lonely night in the desert

The back room of the bar smelt of damp dogs and stale beer with a hint of cinnamon. 

‘You got the money?’

‘Right, here.’  Mike tapped the bag, tried not to look nervous.

There were shots out front, then shouting.

‘Fuck!’ The courier bolted for the door, bursting out into an unlit back lot, heading for a battered four-by-four.

Mike followed, but dashed for the scrub of the desert.

The jeep roared into life, but had barely moved before bullets pinged from its shell.

The darkness of the wilderness swallowed him; taunts, shots and whoops of bravado in quick pursuit.



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words

People in blue houses are apparently the most successful

We need to re-paint the outside of the house and we're having difficulty finding the same colour paint.  We've been scouting around online and came across this article from The Telegraph from 2009, which argues that people living in blue houses are much more successful than those living in homes painted any other colour.  Here's some of findings:

The average professional living in a blue-painted house earns an impressive £38,000-a year and drives an Audi TT to work. They take 27 days annual leave a year and treat themselves to at least two holidays abroad to exotic locations such as Barbados or the Maldives.  23 per cent of people in blue houses have already worked their way up to Director level at work.  A further 31 per cent are proud to call themselves 'manager' or a job title of similar status. And most of these professionals have at least three members of staff working beneath them.  Blue home owners will have already achieved two significant promotions to date in their high-flying career.  And if they haven't chosen the legal route, 11 per cent are likely to work in the health service or nine per cent in education.  In addition to maintaining a successful career, people living in a blue house even do well on a personal level.  The average blue homeowner is in a long-term relationship, has two children and four really close friends. 

Well, there you have it.  Scientific proof that house colour reflects the success of their occupant.  And does it relate to our blue house?  Partially.  I am a director and have more than three staff working in the institute.  However, we don't do exotic holidays and I drive a Ford Focus.

Here are the annual earnings of those occupying other house colours.  Do people really paint their houses orange or purple?

Blue £38,000
Red £23,500
White £23,400
Magnolia £23,100
Beige £20,800
Orange £20,000
Purple £19,600
Grey £19,000
Yellow £18,500
Brown £18,400
Pink £14,500
Green £13,100

How about you?  Your house colour reflect your success?

Review of Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill (2009, Harper Collins)

My review of Midnight Fugue by Reg Hill is up on the Celebrating Reg Hill site. 

In Mid-Yorkshire, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel is not quite himself, still easing himself back into work after being hospitalised by a terrorist bomb.  His Monday morning starts badly when, seemingly late for work, he discovers that it’s actually Sunday.  To make matters worse he’s been followed by a woman chasing a ghost – her former copper husband who disappeared seven years previously after the death of their daughter and accusations he was on the take.  She in turn is being followed by a sister and brother pairing, sent to dispose of the rogue cop before he turns against the criminal he served.  That criminal is Goldie Gidman, who started running rackets, progressed into the money markets of London’s square mile, and is now a major conservative party funder.  His son is a MP and a rising star of the party.  Both are being hounded by a tabloid journalist, the nephew of a cop who failed to corner Gidman for the murder of a local Polish businessman.  A recent picture of the rogue cop, taken in Yorkshire, has been sent to his former wife and she wants Dalziel to help find him so she can get divorced and marry one of his former colleagues, one of Dalziel’s old copper mates.  So starts a sixteen hour swirl of drama and farce.


Midnight Fugue is the twenty-second Dalziel and Pascoe book.  The series has lost none of freshness, wit and verve.  The story starts at a brisk pace and never lets up to the end.  There are three main strengths to the book.  First, the characterisation is excellent, and despite there being a large cast, each character is fully fleshed out and realised.  Dalziel is a wonderful creation, possessing a number of negative traits, yet the reader can’t help but warm to his political incorrectness and bullying manner due to his generally good disposition.  Second, the plotting, whilst quite complex and intricate, involving the intersection of several subplots, is very well done.  Hill weaves the various strands together, whilst making sure the reader never gets lost, and there are two nice climaxes to the tale.  It’s always difficult to avoid plot devices and the only let down to the telling were the use of two weak ones – both involving laptops and neither likely.  Third, the storytelling and prose has verve and style.  Hill manages to blend a serious crime story with farce, balancing seriousness with wit.  It’s a difficult trick and he manages to pull it off with aplomb.  And whilst the telling is so rich in detail and the plot reasonably complex, this is no doorstop of a book, and yet it does not seem rushed.  The overall effect is a very enjoyable police procedural written by an author at the top of his game.

Partial quoting

Monday was a busy day.  The latest house price index was released in the morning and a story broke about an apartment complex on a ghost estate being demolished.  I ended up spending part of the afternoon being filmed for the RTE evening news and then doing interviews on two of the national radio stations (Last Word on Today FM and Drivetime on RTE).  I also swapped email with a couple of journalists.  Yesterday I was quoted in one of the papers with respect to the house price data.  My first thought on reading the quote was, 'I'm not sure that's quite right'.  I was fairly sure I did say the quote, but something didn't sit well.  Here's what the paper said:

Professor of Geography in NUI Maynooth, Rob Kitchin, said there was tentative evidence the property market was bottoming out.

"We are at the bottom and we are bumping along the bottom and hopefully things will begin to rise again very slowly," he said.

He said it appeared that property prices in Dublin were stabilising, but we would need at least six months of prices either remaining flat or rising before we can be sure we have hit the bottom of the market nationally.

But prices outside of Dublin would keep falling, because there were so many vacant properties.

I had feeling the quote was taken from the Drivetime radio interview, so I went back and listened (starts 01.11.00 in, quote at 01.11.40).  Here's what I said.  I've also included the question asked and the preceding and following sentences to give the context.

Int: Should we be excited by these figures? Even just a little bit?

Me: Well, it's a very small increase, 0.2 percent, the first time [rise] in five years.  I would be relatively cautious, in the sense that we really need to have a time-series of data.  So if it levels out, or starts to slowly go up over 6 to 9 months then I think we can start to suggest that we might be or we're at the bottom and we are bumping along the bottom and hopefully things will begin to rise again very slowly. But on the way down we've had periods where its kind of slowed down and its almost looked as if its levelling off then its fallen again, and then it slowed down and fallen again. So it might be a tiny little blip, or it might be the start of something else.  And its probably different for Dublin than elsewhere.  This is now three months in a row for Dublin where house prices haven't fallen, though its fallen for apartments but not for houses, which suggests we might be seeing some levelling off for houses."

So, the paper was kind of right with the last two sentences, but the quote was a little misleading in that the 'we are at the bottom' statement is lifted out of context.  C'est la vie.  Here's the analysis I provided on the other blog I contribute to.

Review of Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy (Viking 1976)

Since Euro 2012 is taking place, I thought I’d read Eamon Dunphy’s footballer's diary concerning the 1973-4 season.  Dunphy is well established as one of Ireland’s top football pundits, as well as all-round journalist.  Even back when he was playing he wrote a weekly column for a local paper and appeared on radio shows as a pundit.  In 1973, he was 28 years old and an established first team player for Second Division team, Millwall, as well as an Irish international with 25 caps.  Only a Game? charts from August to the end of November of that season, when he was sold to Charlton.  The book is written as a diary, detailing the workings of the club, the camaraderie, rivalry and jealousy between players, the tensions between players and the coaching staff, the external pressures exerted on the manager and team, and the psychology of playing in matches and how they unfold. 

The real strengths of the book are the level of reflexivity and that Dunphy doesn’t pull any punches.  The narrative does more than describe a season, but tries to explain and to provide a real insight into the mind and life of a player and a club.  Moreover, Dunphy tells it exactly how he sees it and he doesn’t spare the blushes of players or coaches.  He is scathing about the professionalism of the coaching routines, the facilities, the manager’s decisions, how the game was being run by chairmen and directors, players who he felt were not being ‘true’ pros, and forensically picks apart the strengths and weaknesses of opposition teams.  He’s equally open about his own performances and shortcomings, including his emotion turmoil at being dropped and his frank exchanges with his manager.  There are some silences - he never really discusses the role of his family and friends, barely discusses journalists and the role of the media, or the fans.  Instead the book very much focuses on the players and coaching staff.  Having now read the book, it is easy to see how he sided with Roy Keane in the Saipan affair - Only a Game? details the same frustrations Dunphy had whilst at Millwall as Keane had for the Irish international set-up; and like Keane, Dunphy was obsessed with professionalism.  Overall, an interesting book that gives real insight into the beautiful game.

Lazy Sunday Service

It has been a really hectic week between interview panels, talks, media work and the day-to-day stuff. One thing we have to do for our six monthly reports to government on the work of the institute I run is to give details on media coverage.  We thus have to track all the stories and appearances.  Hence I know that this week I passed the 500 threshold with respect to coverage of my own work/analysis broken down as follows: 11 TV appearances, 58 radio interviews, 127 stories in international newspapers, 147 stories in national Irish papers, and 165 stories in local Irish newspapers.  Nearly all of this has been in the last two and a half years.  Strange how it slowly accummulates and ebbs and flows.  I never anticipated the coverage or doing media work, so it's been an interesting time. 


My posts this week

Review of The Lily of the Field by John Lawton
What are the real household charge numbers?
Scattered to the four winds
Cantemir Prize
Fast Car
Mortgage crisis overstated?

Fast Car

She stared across at the convenience store, lit with garish neon.  The engine was gently ticking over, the radio playing Tracy Chapman.

‘You got a fast car. But is it fast enough so we can fly away ...’

He should have returned by now, clutching a bag of cash.

There was a shot, followed by two more.

Kenny appeared in the doorway, his white t-shirt stained red.  He tried to smile, then dropped to the ground.

‘We gotta make a decision.  We leave tonight or live and die this way.’

She sped from the parking lot, tears making her half-blind.


 
A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words

Cantemir Prize

We got a nice email at the weekend informing us that we had won the Berendel Foundation's 2012 Cantemir Prize for our book The Map Reader.  We're due to collect the award from HRH Prince Radu of Romania at a conference in Oxford University in September.  Looking forward to the trip over to Morse country.

Scattered to the Four Winds

Here's a short yarn submitted to a story competition run in conjunction with Power's Whiskey.  Had to be less than 450 words and on the theme of 'Celebrating what truly matters'.


Last through the front door, Conor caught Jack and Siobhan sneaking hand-in-hand up the stairs.

‘Hey, where’d do you think you two are going?  Front room for a nightcap.  We’ll be scattered to the four winds from tomorrow.’  He looked at his watch.  ‘Today.’

The two lovebirds descended reluctantly and ducked into the lounge.  The other five house mates were already slouched on the two tatty sofas and two threadbare armchairs.

‘Sarah, see if you can find some candles, will you?’ Conor instructed a waif-like young woman dressed from head-to-toe in white.

‘What for?’ she answered, half-heartedly.

‘Atmosphere.  With this lighting we could be sitting in a supermarket.  I’ll get the drinks.’

He disappeared through a door into a messy kitchen.

‘Put some toast on, while you’re in there,’ Sean shouted through. 

‘You’re like an empty pit,’ Jack said, dropping two slices of thick white bread into the toaster.  He retrieved a tray from on top of the kitchen presses and on it placed an odd assortment of glasses.

Back in the lounge the lights were off, the room lit by four candles.  Somebody had put on some trance-like, electronic mood music.

Conor slid the tray onto a coffee table, nudging a pile of magazines to the floor.  He reached in behind the television and withdrew a bottle.

‘Whiskey?’ Jack said.

‘Powers.  Gold label.  I’ve been saving it.’

‘You bought it last week!’

‘As I said, I’ve been saving it.’

‘Come-on, Conor, how old are we?’ Charlie asked.  ‘Sixty?  Sitting around supping whiskey like we’re auld fellas.’

‘For god’s sake, Charlie, you don’t have to be an auld wan to enjoy a drop of the golden elixir.  And sitting round swapping stories, taking a wee drop, is part of our DNA.  What makes us, us.’

‘You’re a sentimental fool, Conor,’ Aine said.

‘Look, this is our last day together.  Jack and Siobhan are heading to Sydney tomorrow night.  Brenda’s heading over to London next week.  Charlie and Sean are off to Alberta in a month’s time.  This is last time we’ll be together in a long while.  That deserves a toast and the telling of yarns.’

‘Toast?  My flippin’ toast!’ Sean dug himself out of the armchair and headed for the kitchen.

‘Sean, forget the toast!  Get back here.’

‘Just give me a minute.  We’ve got the rest of the night, haven’t we?  Besides, it’s not good to drink on an empty stomach.’

They waited in silence until the big man returned, Conor passing out the glasses.

‘Right then,’ Conor raised his tumbler.  ‘To us, to supping whiskey and telling yarns, to the four winds and the future.’

‘To us,’ the others chorused, clinking glasses.

Review of The Lily of the Field by John Lawton (Grove Press, 2011)

Vienna, 1934, and ten year old Meret Voytek, a talented young cellist, becomes a pupil of the concert pianist/cellist Viktor Rosen.  A Jew, Rosen has fled Germany after a stint in a camp, but the political climate in Austria is deteriorating and he knows that he’ll shortly have to move on.  1940 and Meret is playing in the Vienna Youth Orchestra, shorn of its Jewish players, and Rosen has been detained in London and interned on the Isle of Man, along with an assortment of other European émigrés, including Rod Troy and Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist.  Whilst some internees stay in Britain, others are sent overseas,  Szabo put on a boat to Canada.  A couple of months later he is recruited to work on the Manhattan Project.  1944 and Meret is in Auschwitz, trying to survive, playing in the women’s orchestra that greets new arrivals and waltzes them to the gas chambers.  Szabo is in Los Alamos, helping to build the atomic bomb and Rosen is delighting audiences at concerts.  1948 and a man is killed on a London Underground platform, shot in the back.  A man known to Rosen, who is now reunited with his protege, Meret.  Inspector Freddie Troy, brother to MP and government minister, Rod Troy, is put in charge of the case.  It doesn’t take him long to realise that there is more to the killing than it would first appear.  He’s been warned in no uncertain terms to stay away from anything involving spooks, but Freddie’s always had a problem following commands and it always drops him in hot water.

A Lily of the Field consists of two distinct parts.  The first part charts the various strands of Meret, Victor and Szabo from 1934 to 1948, putting in place the contextual back story.  The second covers Troy’s investigation into the underground station murder.  There’s a distinct contrast in styles between the two parts.  The first is light, quick, short scenes that provide insight into key moments and give good, strong pen pictures of the characters.  The writing is expressive and Lawton delivers an expansive story, covering a number of characters, places and times, in a relatively short amount of space.  The material is also historically rich, detailing key events over a 14 year period without it seeming as if things were skipped over or them dominating the narrative.  It is a really skilful and engaging piece of writing.  Really top-draw stuff.  The second half, the pace drops and the writing becomes a little more leaden, and characters from the first half all but disappear for extended passages.  At times, it is seems to become more about Troy and his family than the story.  It’s still very good, but it lacks the sparkle and dash of the first part.  Even so, the plotting is excellent and there is a satisfying resolution to the story.  Overall, a shame that the second half did not have the verve of the first, but nonetheless a well crafted and very enjoyable read that is a cut above normal fare.