Red_Cat

I'll be there, just got to prise myself away from the Olympics...

Hello Pia, Yes you're very welcome to join, our next meeting is this Tuesday at House of Tippler on Lordship Lane about 8 O'clockish, we generally sit through the back on the left. Hope to see you then. Cat

Am planning on going tonight but just wanted to check if anyone else is?

There's a flipping sofa dumped there now as well - I honestly don't understand where this constant stream of cruddy old furniture comes from! I will write to L&Q too, will also suggest cctv as not sure what else will deter people

Am intending on being there, see you later!

Not sure if I'm going to make it or not, still stuck at work 😞 if I do get there it will be late, by which time you may have gone anyway...

Sorry am also unlikely to make it due to still at work and no finish in sight! I'll try and pm my vote

The palm tree does look good! Hope it does the trick, we'll see.

So sorry but I'm not going to be able to make it tonight. Holly am going to try and pm you my vote!

Thanks Renata, would be really good to get this issue resolved

I've emailed the council about this problem in the past and although they sometimes argue that it might be private land and therefore not their problem, they do come and remove it, or at least I assume it is the council that removes it, somebody does anyway. However, it is no sooner gone than overnight more rubbish appears, and this is not general household rubbish either I've seen old sofas, mattresses, office furniture etc. all sorts of stuff deposited there that somebody must be bringing in from somewhere. Anyway, my point is that contacting the council, even if they do come and remove it, does not seem to solve the problem, it just clears the space for whoever it is to dump more stuff there. I'm not sure what the answer is.

Sorry I'm not going to make it tonight. Am happy to read any of the books for next month from the list, I couldn't choose between them!

Next month's choices, some spooky stories... The Turn of the Screw by Henry James A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls...But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them. Affinity by Sarah Waters An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women?s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London?s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank?s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by one apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes Selina was imprisoned after a s?ance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina?s gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina?s freedom, and her own. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe The grandmaster stylist of macabre storytelling; the dean of American literary terror. Edgar Allan Poe?s tales of brooding fear, haunting mystery, and horrifying madness are flawless gems of dark imagination. This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates his intense interest in aesthetic issues, and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. These works display Poe's startling ability to build suspense with almost nightmarish intensity. 'And much of Madness and more of Sin And Horror the Soul of the Plot' The Shining by Stephen King Danny was only five years old but in the words of old Mr Halloran he was a 'shiner', aglow with psychic voltage. When his father became caretaker of the Overlook Hotel his visions grew frighteningly out of control. As winter closed in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seemed to develop a life of its own. It was meant to be empty, but who was the lady in Room 217, and who were the masked guests going up and down in the elevator? And why did the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive? Somewhere, somehow there was an evil force in the hotel - and that too had begun to shine... The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white.' The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror story?centered on the birth of a baby who seems less than human?probes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutality. Harriet and David Lovatt, parents of four children, have created an idyll of domestic bliss in defiance of the social trends of late 1960s England. While around them crime and unrest surge, the Lovatts are certain that their old-fashioned contentment can protect them from the world outside?until the birth of their fifth baby. Gruesomely goblin-like in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong and violent, Ben has nothing innocent or infant-like about him. As he grows older and more terrifying, Harriet finds she cannot love him, David cannot bring himself to touch him, and their four older children are afraid of him. Understanding that he will never be accepted anywhere, Harriet and David are torn between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable child whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.

Will be there and will bring next months list with me, I'll try and post on here beforehand, hopefully, if get time. Theme:Halloween

Sorry not going to make it again tonight - Got too much work to do grr! Enjoy your bakes!

I'm watching too, am a bit worried for Nadiya, she's being very ambitious now - hope it comes off!!

Hi Holly, I'm planning on coming too, can you just pm me your address. Thanks. Am a very last minute type person therefore still haven't decided what I'm baking...

Ooh we didn't think of that did we, our second choice seems to be not available at the moment either, I think that's been the problem previously on choosing books from that list. It's okay by me as we still have 3 weeks to read it so should be alright if everyone else is ok with it.

I'm at Palmerston

Yes please, I like these polls.

Sorry not sure if I'm going to make it or not either as stuck at work not sure when I'll get off. Enjoyed room with a view.

I once had a car parked directly outside my house for 9 months, then another one for 18 months, apparently the owner was in prison. Legal or not you just get sick of the sight of them.

Details of the list or next month: The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self- reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him through a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fiction making and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers to empathise with him even as his actions defy all moral standards. The novel begins with a play on James's The Ambassadors. Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends all moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs. Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit: a cool little classic of its kind. Death in Venice and Other Stories, Thomas Mann Death in Venice is a story of obsession. Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but ageing writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel. Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumours that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city. One of the great European writers of the twentieth century, Thomas Mann is one of those figures who still looms large over literature. 'Death in Venice' is regarded as one of his finest works, forming an appropriate ending to this collection, but many of the other stories in this volume are also excellent and worthy of any thoughtful reader's time. Bread and Wine, by Barry Menikoff, Ignazio Silone, Eric Mosbacher Bread and Wine is an anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist novel written by Ignazio Silone. It was finished while the author was in exile from Benito Mussolini's Italy and first published in 1936. The book chronicles the return of the main character, Pietro Spina, to Italy, disguised as a priest. Spina's hope is to restore the socialist revolution while in hiding, but learns the importance of other simpler ways of life. He is sent to a small, remote mountain village to recuperate from an illness and, while there, gains and understanding of the simple ways of the peasant folk. These people are not interested in "idealogical" revolution but know only about waking up and putting a long hard day in at the fields and returning home and going to bed...only to get up and do it all over again. Bread and wine is their sustenance. Religious symbolism is abundant in this novel which is basically about the rebirth of Pietro Spina into "true" Christianity/Religion /Manliness. The relationships that he develops are beautifully and simply written in the novel. A Room With A View, E.M. Forster A ROOM WITH A VIEW is one of the finest "novels of manners" ever written, a hilarious satire of the excessive propriety and mannerisms of the English in an age of repression. It is also the love story of a young woman stuck in this repressive English culture who is transformed by romantic Italy and awakened to love when she meets the true love of her life there without even knowing it... but will she realize this before it's too late? Miss Garnet?s Angel, Salley Vickers There is something very old-fashioned and reassuring about Sally Vickers' novel Miss Garnet's Angel. The themes, self-discovery and redemption have the air of a bygone age, despite the novel being set in contemporary Venice in a world of holiday apartment lets and Pizza Express-funded restoration works. Julia Garnet is a middle-aged woman who has been practising economies of the spirit for years. Hers is a closed-in world, dusty with Marx's theories and when her friend and flatmate of 30 years dies Julia decides to spend the six winter months in Venice to recuperate from her loss. Miss Garnet is a dignified, brusque heroine and Sally Vickers' prose is likewise unruffled and controlled. Miss Garnet's epiphanies are as quiet and subtle as the "oro pallido" (pale gold) light in early Italian Art because, of course, art plays a part in this Venetian tale of emotional reawakening. Julia is moved by the depiction of Raphael in Guardis Tobias and the Angel: "something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet as she stood absorbing the vivid dewy painting and the unmistakable compassion in the angel's bright glance." She falls in love with Carlo, an art historian with crinkly eyes, white hair and a moustache. There are trials and tribulations to be undergone, Julia must unlearn all her old regimented ways of life, and this brings about heart ache and hurt. However, Vickers handles this with delicate sympathy, giving Julia Garnet a new sensitive view of the world, and the reader a resonant story of transformation. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo) chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. The novel is the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, a 19th-century Sicilian nobleman caught in the midst of civil war and revolution. As a result of political upheaval, the prince's position in the island's class system is eroded by newly moneyed peasants and "shabby minor gentry." As the novel progresses, the Prince is forced to choose between upholding the continuity of upper class values, and breaking tradition to secure continuity of his (nephew's) family's influence ("everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same"). A central theme of the story is the struggle between mortality and decay (death, fading of beauty, fading of memories, change of political system, false relics etc.), and abstraction and eternity (the prince's love for the stars and calculations, continuity and resilience to change of the Sicilian people). In a letter to a friend, the author notes: "Be careful: the dog Bendic?, is a very important character and is almost the key to the novel". This heraldic emblem is the key to destruction, in the sense that ruin comes even to the dog.

Hi all, Well the theme I've come up with for our next book is inspired by my recent hols, as I couldn't think of anything better they're all books related to Italy. I'll post the details tomorrow or bring with me to the meeting as it's too late and I'm too tired to do it now, but this is the list, if you want to look any of them up you can also follow the amazon link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/3KCOZZVWZBAFL 1. Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann 2. Bread and Wine by Barry Menikoff et al 3. A Room With a View by E M Forster 4. Miss Garnett's Angel by Salley Vickers 5. The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa 6. the Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith For any new people coming we will vote for our favourite from the list at the meeting to choose our book for next month, hope that makes sense. See you all tomorrow, Cat x