Reading Habits 2025

 

Sue's Reviews > None of This Is True

None of This Is True
by 

Lisa Jewell (Goodreads Author)

Sue's review 

Crikey! Unputdownable, I read it in twelve hours, with a few hours of sleep in the somewhere. What happened? I still don't quite know... Five stars anyway.

*****

For Earth Day 22 April 2025 - a poem

 Passenger Pigeon

You dwelt in the vastness of the sky

with no fear of the hungry eagle

he couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You swarmed across the wild prairies

with no fear of the mighty bison

those couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  soared over the Rocky Mountains

with no fear of the grey wolf packs

they couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  nested in the red oak trees

with no fear of the long-legged bobcat,

she couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flapped above people’s villages

with no fear of the families in their tepees,

these couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flocked above the steaming railroads

with no fear of the well-armed hunter

he destroyed you, all of your millions.

*

The Passenger pigeon was once thought to be the most numerous bird on earth. The last one of their species died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1912.  Humans had named her Martha.

All About the Dogs - my latest short story

 (set on't Yorkshire Moors, with a hint of Royston Vasey)

Eight years being the time since my partner, Geoffrey, vanished, I’ve decided to have him declared dead. I’m told you can do it, as nobody’s heard from him for more than seven years.

Three weeks after his vanishing, I’d been to police and reported him missing, because I were worried. I weren’t actually much worried about Geoffrey. I were more concerned for the dogs, all three being a bit under the weather after something they’d eaten up on the moor and I weren’t sure how much the vet’s bill would be.

Me and Geoffrey had chosen the three dogs for their wild looks. Mackeson's a brownish border collier crossed with god knows what, he's powerful jaws for a collie. Spitz is a big boy, looking like a huge, grey, shaggy bear with great long legs and a curling tail. Geoffrey said he could be a shih tzu great Dane cross, but I think he were joking. I always reckoned that would be physically impossible, Spitz must be something like a wolfhound and mountain dog cross. The third dog, Delilah, has massive black curls and fetches half the moorland home tangled in them. She's possibly a giant cockapoo, if you look at her through squinting eyes.

They were all rescues, of course, Spitz being the oldest. The vet reckons he’s now about eleven, which he says is a good age for such a large dog. The others were half-grown pups when we got them a year or so before Geoffrey's disappearance. We’d agreed Spitz needed company especially as we were both out working, he’d been a bit destructive, demolishing shoes, doors, two sofas and a stray cat, we’d found that half eaten in the front garden. Of course Geoffrey were soft on dogs, he insisted on blaming foxes. Some people might have believed him, but I knew who’d come in with cat’s tail in his mouth.

Geoffrey loved to walk with all three dogs on his free days. Summer or winter, they’d all ramble for miles on the moors and if we were lucky, Geoffrey would come home with a few rabbits or game birds in his kitbag. Once he arrived with a lamb in the bag, he said Spitz had only spooked it and made it run, he wasn’t deliberately hunting it. Geoffrey was in denial.

The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

 

The Taxidermist's Daughter
by 

Kate Mosse

Sue's review on Goodreads

bookshelves: mystery, novels, thrillers, whodunnit

This is  a beautifully written historic mystery in a Gothic style, although the word Gothic has been so much abused and mixed with slasher/zombie/vampire tales that it almost demeans the quality of this story. 

I loved it, gripping storytelling, great characters and hugely atmospheric. The Taxidermist's Daughter kept me busy, calm and suitably distracted during a very long and tense day sitting in hospital waiting rooms. For that reason, as well as the great writing, it deserves five stars.

I've not read anything by Kate Mosse before, possibly due to an unconscious and obviously irrelevant association with the fashion industry. I stopped being interested in the fashion industry when I was about 17. I will read more books by Kare Mosse.

My Inheritance Tracks

On BBC Radio four every weekend is a one-hour show named Saturday Live. It's basically a live chat show with content suitable for an intelligent daytime audience, with one or two pre-recorded slots. One of these is Inheritance Tracks, where somebody you may, or may not have heard of, gets a few moments to talk about a musical track that they cherish from early in their lives and another track that they would like to pass on to future generations. So far so simple.

But when it comes to choosing my own inheritance tracks, so much harder. Not that I've been invited onto Radio 4 yet, but in the unlikely event that I am, I will be ready!

When I was small, I listened to the radio and the LP records my parents played on the radiogram. Some of their records were by smooth solo singers like Sinatra and Nat King Cole, which bored me. They were also into musicals and often went to see the newest movie or the occasional West End show. Some shows they had records of are now quite obscure, Irma la Douce and Kismet for example. 

Kismet had the most dramatic and. to my very young mind the scariest cover. The tunes were beautiful, remarkable and I always notice when I hear a snatch of them, not surprising when you know they were by Borodin. I didn't when I was seven.

But it wasn't a show tune or a great classical track that made the most impression on me. When we lived in England we had a big radiogram but sometimes we weren't in the UK. Father was a British Army doctor so we moved home a lot, the most far-flung place we lived was Aden. There we had a smaller portable record player. Some records came with us and we accumulated more, from the NAAFI, from Bhicajee Cowasgee which was the biggest department store in town and from passing ships, which included American warships. Aden was a very important international harbour in those days.

One day in Aden my dad came home with ‘Big Bill’s Blues’, an album of Big Bill Broonzy’s songs. I wasn't aware of the blues before, but Big Bill's rhythmic guitar playing and his straight forward lyrics, along with the great tunes appealed to me. One song stood out and I was just about old enough to understand. It was the beginning of my awareness of what was happening in the world outside my own nine-year-old bubble, and not just in my surroundings in Aden, but also across the world. 

‘Black, Brown and White’ is Big Bill Broonzy singing, in a very deliberately calm, laid back way, about his experience of racism;

"They says if you was white, should be all right,

If you was brown, stick around,

But as you're black, m-mm brother, get back get back get back."

                            *

I've never forgotten those lyrics or the impact they had on me. Big Bill Broonzy's Black, Brown and White'  (or Get Back, as it's also known) is my first inheritance track, it changed my view of life. I became aware that things weren't fair, even out there in the world of the grown-ups. 

Black, Brown and White has to be my first Inheritance Track and I'm in no doubt that my second has to be another song with a powerful message. I've always thought the words are more important than the tune, it's why I'm a writer. Much as I can enjoy music, I've never been musical. 

I've been thinking a lot about my favourite singers, bands and songs. The Beatles also have a song called Get Back, but that's a story rather than a specific message. The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction is a message of defiance, so is Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well. Leonard Cohen has wonderful, meaningful lyrics which feel too intimate, too personal to pass on as my choice. Bob Dylan has plenty of messages, but somehow songs like Masters of War and Blowin' in the Wind are too pessimistic for me to want to pass them on. 

Then I realised I was going back to where I was, when I began choosing my own music. Not the Beatles but to John Lennon and his song, Imagine. Yes this song has been derided, even despised for its idealistic, hippie message, but the lyric is more concise and powerful than the Beatles biggest message, All You Need is Love, which was always, to me, a bit simplistic, 

"Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too."

  *

Those lines resonate more as the 21st century progresses and the human race doesn't. 

Imagine says things that I believe. 

So yes, I'm an old hippie, is that a bad thing? 

*

Kismet Album Cover art by Al Hirschfeld

Broonzy photo from Frank Driggs Collection/© Archive Photos. Photographer unnamed.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band Imagine cover by Apple

Hastings Book Festival, my Prizewinning short story

 I entered two stories in the Hastings Book Festival short story competition. My story, 'Once Upon a Time in Bulverhythe' came third in the overall competition, and won the Sussex Prize for stories by local writers. I'm very chuffed, it's the first time I've won anything for my fiction. My story is set on Bulverhythe beach where I often walk.

The judging was very kind and very flattering, I was told my story was, 'beautifully crafted with brilliant characterisation and a real sense of place. We fell in love with both Ted the dog and Ted the man.'  Lovely to have such praise. Link to the event -  Facebook

I want to say thank you so much to the short story judge VG Lee, the Book Festival organisers and to New Writing South for collaborating to create the Sussex Prize. 

The story is in my post below.

Once Upon a Time in Bulverhythe - short story

Ted McBain kept a tide chart sellotaped to his fridge door, so he could set his day around the low tide times. The dog had a very long stride and loved to stretch its legs on the wide, flat sand, but at high tide there were only pebbles. Ted liked the beach at any time, it was why he’d moved to Bulverhythe when he retired, but low tide suited him so he went with the dog’s preference.

By coincidence the dog was also called Ted, its racing name had been Teddington Court. Ted the man had acquired Ted the dog because he had decided that he wanted to adopt a greyhound. He’d always bet on the dogs, ever since his dad had taken him to Catford Greyhound Stadium in his teens.

When he first retired to the house on Bulverhythe Road, he’d owned a short haired, brindle dog called Dougie, whose breed was possibly cairn terrier but mostly uncertain. Dougie had been older than Ted, in dog years and after Dougie died, Ted had walked down the road to the Bull Inn for a consolatory pint. Dougie was missed there too, Claudia behind the bar always kept bowls for special canine customers like Dougie, who had enjoyed his terrier sized pint.

Conversation around the bar turned to dog breeds and which sort of dog Ted should get next. There was no thought that he might not want another dog, so Ted kept quiet and let them all get on with it. When the talk turned to greyhounds, he’d begun to listen and was horrified to hear that after their racing careers were over, many dogs were discarded, shot or put to sleep.

‘I’ve always felt sorry for them poor things,’ Claudia had said, ‘it’s just awful them being stuffed into those tiny boxes then forced to chase a hare that isn’t even real and have you seen the bloke who walks five lovely old greyhounds in Alexandra Park, I chatted with him a while back and one’s called Lulu and there’s Sandy and Dusty after all them singers and he obviously cares for his old racing dogs, now they got lovely lives…”

Ted had switched off Claudia’s chatter, but that had been the day he decided to adopt a greyhound. After some research, he took a train to London then the tube to some kennels at Wimbledon and was disappointed to be told he couldn’t take a dog home straight away. He was expecting to do paperwork and pay a fee, however the woman was very apologetic, but she couldn’t let him take the dog on the tube to Charing Cross then the train to St Leonards, it wasn’t suitable transport for highly strung dogs.

Ted had been allowed to meet several dogs in case he liked any of them, and he decided it had to be the dog called Teddington Court. Quite apart from his name, he had a dark grey, slightly brindled coat and a white chest and throat, very like Dougie’s, and at the sound of Ted’s voice his tail had wagged vociferously and his huge, dark eyes looked joyful.

Ted managed to persuade his niece, Mandy, to help him collect the greyhound in her car, in return later for a slap-up meal at La Bella Vista, which made him wince as he put it on his credit card. He had spent all his spare cash on fees and extras for the dog.

The kennel had sold him a dietary chart, several boxes of particular greyhound food and they even persuaded him he must buy one of their special harnesses for Teddington Court, who they said had a narrow head, even for a greyhound so would slip the smart, black collar Ted had bought specially. They even tried to sell him a tartan overcoat for the dog, but there Ted put his foot down. He said he would get a coat for the dog in the autumn, when it actually needed one, not in summer when it didn’t.

Now, in February, Ted the dog owned two coats, which had cost Ted the man less than half the cost of the one that the kennels had proffered. The early rain had stopped at just the right time for the tides, so Ted waved the brown woolly coat at his dog, who stood up from the blanket among the cushions on the sofa, tail wagging. The cold, damp wind called for the waterproof coat over the woollen one, which was a struggle on the excited dog. Finally successful, Ted pulled on his own parka and opened the door. He had long since realised that his greyhound was perfectly calm and needed neither harness nor lead to keep him under control, though Ted kept a lead in his pocket, just in case. Teddington was very content to walk close to his side unless Ted gave the word, then the dog could go from stationary to full speed in the blink of an eye.

They walked along the residential streets and past the small industrial units to Bridge Way. Next came the only part of the walk that the dog disliked, this was the crossing of the railway line running alongside the beach, which meant ascending the metal stairway up the footbridge. The noise of its toenails, as Teddington clattered across the metal, combined with the ringing of the whole structure as Ted’s heavier tread set it in motion, scared the dog every time. The first few times Ted had almost had to carry the dog up the steps. However once Teddington had discovered that, on the other side of this terrible bridge lay the delights of the beach, the dog became less contrary.

But today suddenly became one of his contrary days. Just as they were about to set foot on the bridge an early train from Eastbourne rattled and clattered underneath, it was a small train, only two carriages but enough to panic the dog. He cowered behind Ted and no amount of urging would make him move. In the end Ted lifted him up awkwardly, feeling the trembling body through his own coat. The dog’s long front legs trailed over Ted’s shoulder and it's head pressed against Ted’s neck. With his arms around the animal’s hindquarters Ted struggled up the harsh metal steps before disembarking him with huge relief onto the top step.

Urging the dog on, Ted crossed the bridge and descended to the wooden platform on the other side, the dog never gave any trouble going down. The tide was far out, sand gleaming silver under a bright grey sky and the dog’s ears pricked up, the perils of the bridge forgotten. The beach looked empty, it was still early and anyway the biting wind would keep most people away.

Once on the sand Ted gave the signal that the now prancing dog was waiting for, just a simple flick of his right hand and Teddington Court was off like a cheetah chasing a gazelle, although he needed nothing to chase, he ran for the sheer joy of it. Ted watched and admired as he paced himself along the shining sand, there was no way he could compete and anyway, his back was protesting after his efforts on the bridge. Greyhounds are large dogs, despite their slender appearance.

Teddington Court was now a dot in the distance, Ted had come to rely on the animal to return to him. But for the first time, it didn’t. Cursing aloud, Ted trudged off in slow pursuit. Inwardly he felt he was sinking, perhaps the dog wanted to leave him, or worse still was taken by somebody. Thoughts of ‘what if…” clouded his mind as he trudged, eyes scanning the beach and the path that ran beside the rail track.

In the distance he could see a long, dark rock on the beach, near the water’s edge. He didn’t remember seeing it before, the tide must be even lower than usual. Then he heard barking, Ted the dog never barked, so now he was fearful that his shy greyhound was being attacked by another dog. As he neared the rock, he realised what he was hearing was his dog, who was running in circles around the rock and barking with excitement.

He called out, “Ted, come here! Come, boy!”

The dog stopped running, but continued to bark, more quietly now while staring at the rock, his head lowered. As Ted walked around the rock to reach his dog, he realised there was a rotting smell, must be some dead fish somewhere, quite a lot of them. Then he saw the eye, grey, sunken and oddly small, in the side of the dark rock. It was a whale.

Ted waved his hand in front of the sad, grey eye, but there was no response. He stood and watched the leviathan, in case there were any other signs of life. He was standing on the windward side now, but then he remembered the rotting smell. It was definitely dead.

The greyhound had stopped barking and was looking at him, tail wagging expectantly. But what should he do? Nothing in his former life, as a London fireman and later a leisure centre caretaker in Catford, had presented him with a dilemma like this. The closest had been rescuing a retired brewery horse from a ditch behind some stables. That had been hard enough, involving block and tackle and a tractor but the whale would weigh many times more than even the largest dray horse.

With a struggle, Ted fished his small mobile phone from his inside jacket pocket and stared at the thing. He hardly used it, had only bought it for emergencies, did a dead whale count as an emergency? It seemed unlikely, but who should he report it to? Then it came to him and he switched on the phone.

‘Good morning, emergency services. Which service do you require?’

‘Coastguards,’ Ted replied firmly. They should know about whales if anybody did, and if they didn’t deal with dead whales, they’d know who did.

By the middle of the afternoon the beach was awash with reporters and spectators and the two Teds were celebrities. The Bulverhythe Whale was on TV and Ted the dog famed as its discoverer. The fact that dog and dog owner had the same name added to the reporters’ delight. Ted the man was interviewed by the BBC News and was able to put in a small plug for adopting greyhounds.

‘Couldn’t be a more peaceful dog to have in the house,’ he told them.

When Ted and the greyhound entered the Bull Inn the following lunch time, they received a small round of applause. He was offered a free pint and Claudia had a special present for Teddington Court. Ted had always been careful over the dog’s diet and he was slightly dismayed to see the present was a large pork pie. He couldn’t refuse the wretched thing, but said he would take it home for later, if the dog ate it all at once he might be sick. Claudia understood, she had a shih tzu that was always throwing up, she wrapped the pie in a plastic bag. Ted stuffed it into the largest pocket of his parka and accepted another free pint.

Back home, his elderly neighbour collared him and said there were two ruddy great parcels and where had he been she’d had to take them in and the delivery man disturbed her TV show and frightened the cats and it was a ruddy nuisance blocking her hall and blah blah blah. Ted retrieved the parcels, apologised to her and asked her in for a cup of tea. She eyed the dog, who stood placidly at Ted’s side, and departed, slamming her own front door.

The first of the parcels contained several packets of dried dog food, courtesy of a local pet shop, with a note praising, ‘Teddington our Hero’. Ted had a feeling the dog would probably prefer the pork pie, he took it out of his coat and put on a plate. He made a mug of tea before opening the second, larger parcel, which seemed to be anonymous. It contained a brown, padded dog bed, with raised edges and smart corduroy lining. The dog ignored the bed until Ted scattered a few pieces of the dried food into it.

Teddington actually seemed to like these treats, he sniffed them all out and they crunched satisfactorily. He then went purposefully around the house collecting up all his possessions, three half-eaten chews, a tennis ball, punctured beachball, large blue teddy – a present from Mandy - fluffy cushion, squeaky crocodile – a present from Claudia - a knucklebone, two chunks of well-chewed driftwood and Ted the man’s old trainers. The dog carefully deposited all these beloved things into their safe, new, corduroy home, he then climbed up onto his blanket on the sofa and fell asleep.

Ted sat with his mug of tea and ate a slice of the pork pie. He’d watched his dog doing its housework and almost laughed as it climbed onto the sofa, leaving the collection in the new dog bed. Ted switched on the TV to catch the local news. He and the dog were no longer headliners, but the whale was still a star. It had been identified as a fin whale, the same species as had washed up at Normans’ Bay a hundred years ago and was now in the Cambridge University Museum. The University had also claimed this whale, they would run tests and experiments. It offered a great opportunity to progress modern ecological sciences, apparently.

As Ted was washing up, the phone in the hall rang.

‘Good evening, Mr McBain! What a lovely day it’s been!’ It was the woman from the greyhound kennels. Ted greeted her before she continued to the point. ‘I do hope that Teddington Court is enjoying his new bed. It’s just a little thank you present to him for being such a wonderful ambassador for our greyhounds. Please don’t worry about the cost to our charity, it’s surplus in the shop. We had six and I have to confess they weren’t selling too well, not a fashionable colour, brown. Anyhow I’m sure that you will be pleased to know that we have had had six new enquiries from potential adopters since Teddington Courts’ lovely appearance on the BBC.’

Ted thanked them for the beautiful brown bed and wished them luck with the new adoptions. He didn’t tell them that Teddington was fast asleep on the sofa, not in his new bed or that he would be getting pork pie for his tea.

 

                                                            *