Moments to remember

Sometimes we look back on moments and think if only we'd savoured the experience more, if only we'd remembered it a little more clearly.

Sunlight spangling through turquoise seas. Patterns dancing on a turtle shell.  My son's squeals of delight as tropical fish glided past his fingertips.

Our last night in Barbados.  I swam under the Caribbean moon with the tree frogs singing around me.  I watched a star fall through the sky and felt truly blessed.

Diversionary tactics

I really shouldn't be here.  I should be packing.  Laying out our things on the bed, counting the days per outfit, selecting those useful 'go with everything' items the glossy magazines tell you about.  I will never be the person to leave the country armed only with a passport, bikini, sarong and a lip gloss.  Every possible scenario is thought of and then multiplied.  What if it snows?  What if my son has a nosebleed before breakfast? What if there isn't a shop for thirty miles?  The bag is almost packed two days before, comfortably full, and then crammed with last minute items 'just in case.'  Then disaster strikes.  The case is too small for my son's cricket bat (a must-take item).  Once I've retrieved the larger suitcase from the loft,  the extra space allows for so many more packing opportunities.

I shall be glad when we finally leave the house (after brief paranoia about security, central heating and the contents of the fridge).  Until then, my suitcase sits and nags.

So, as I said, I really shouldn't be here at all.  Instead, I shall go and compile my holiday reading list.

And leave the packing until tomorrow.

So, how do you choose a book?

Sometimes I walk into Waterstones like a woman on a mission.  I know exactly what I want.  More often than not though, I want to be tempted.  I want to treat myself.  Cheaper than Monsoon, less vain than a lipstick, books are the one thing I never begrudge buying.  So how do I choose?  Will I  be seduced by those tables heaped with best sellers and three for twos?  Or will I refuse to succumb to the marketing machine and make my own decisions?

I try not to judge a book by its cover.  I avoid the blurb that sounds as though it should be read in a deep voice by that guy who does the trailers for blockbuster movies.  Reading the blurb is a little like deciphering estate agent speak.  For 'original' read weird, for 'complex' read incomprehensible.  I am swayed by reviews, but only from my approved list of newspapers and critics.  Some people read the first page, but for some reason this never occurs to me in a bookshop. In the end I take a risk, bite the bullet.

Of course, I don't always make a good choice.  My bookshelf holds many half-read books, with tell-tale bookmarks protruding.  In all probability, if a book makes it back onto my book shelf half-read, then it will remain that way.  For years.  Suddenly, in a fit of a decluttering, it will be culled and sent to the Oxfam bookshop.  Until then it sits there, accusing.  We need to talk about Kevin, for example, will have to go.  I just haven't got the stomach for it.

Choosing books for our bookgroup is an even greater challenge.  Although some of us are well read, we are as far as bookgroups go, literary lightweights.  Discussion is easily diverted onto general chat amongst friends  who don't see each other as often as they should.  Some books, though, have sparked great debate.  The Life of Pi, Obama's biography, The Help and Lionel Shriver's latest book got us all talking way past ten o'clock.  We're very rock and roll.

It's a delicate issue recommending books.  No-one wants to seem too pushy.  M is still smarting from her first recommendation of Joanne Harris' Holy Fools.  In turn, I haven't quite forgiven her for heaping insults on Silas Marner.  Last night I took a gamble and proposed Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman.  I didn't expect it to be taken up with such enthusiasm.  Perhaps it was my preface, 'I'm not sure if this is a good idea', that clinched it.  I have warned J about the bad language and advised her against the chapter on abortion.  Ask me again in September how it went.

In the meantime, how do you choose what to read?  What would you recommend to our book group?  Dare you risk the disapprobation of a group of middle-aged Lancashire ladies?

Every street tells a story

Walking through the streets of Lancaster I feel history oozing from the walls around me.

The Pendle witches were tried at Lancaster castle and hanged on the outskirts of the city at Golgotha.

Many of the city's fine Georgian buildings were constructed with the proceeds of the slave trade.  The quayside once bustled with ships unloading sugar and mahogany, wealth from the Indies.  The ropemakers stood on Cable Street, now the site of Sainsburys.  The sailors drank away their wages in the local taverns and the prostitutes plied their trade in Swap Cunt Alley (now renamed Bashful Alley).

My morbid curiosity is aroused by the house on Dalton Square where Dr Buck Ruxton murdered his wife and her maid and then dismembered their bodies in the bath.

I imagine the houses rocked by the explosion at  White Lund ammunitions factory and brave Mary Wilkinson blown off her bike as she raced to her post at the local telephone exchange.

As the local industries declined, the city reinvented itself and now the streets are filled with students. The emos hang out on the museum steps.  Couples meet on Horseshoe Corner, but men can no longer sell their wives there.

So many stories to be told.

Too early for the emos....

Creatures of habit

I've just come back from another good evening with an old friend.  We met ten years ago when she was my boss at the chicken factory. Ever since we've been great friends and spent many a good evening arguing over a rum and coke or two.  We argue over politics (strongly disagree), religion (agree), capital punishment (disagree, but I think I'm winning her round).  On paper we have nothing in common, yet we always get on.  Her optimism and sense of humour never fail to inspire me.  Every time we meet we go to the same pub, followed by the same restaurant and we're never bored by it.  Infected with alcohol-induced enthusiasm, we hatch plans for trips to Berlin, documentary making in Cuba and a dozen ways to make our fortune.