Language, books and weather.

Someone in one of the newspapers online was talking about people's tendency to confide in strangers, quite often the person sitting next to you on a plane. Such a person is, of course, a captive audience. He cannot even get up and find another seat or even stand at the other end of the transport, as he could on a bus. "Ask around," the journalist wrote, "and you’ll discover a mysterious truth about travelling on planes and trains: almost everyone can recall being stuck next to a stranger who wouldn’t stop boring on about his health, job or marriage, yet almost nobody will admit to being that seatmate themselves." 

So that's why so many people tell me all sorts of rubbish on the bus when I am travelling around, is it? Maybe so. And I thought it was just that I have the kind of reassuring face that people feel they can talk to. Note the use of language: "a stranger who wouldn't stop boring on..." I know that things can be "boring" and that you can say that someone is "boring you" but is it possible to use it in that way: "boring on about something"? The English language is odd in that way. 

I have just read that George RR Martin's "The Winds of Winter", sixth novel in the "Game of Thrones" series, is not to be published in 2015. Three earlier novellas, set in the fantasy world of Westeros are to be published, with beautiful illustrations, according to the source of the information. Personally I don't necessarily want novellas about knightly deeds of derring-do. And I don't need illustrations to make it all come to life for me. Illustrations are all very fine but not really necessary. I can visualise stuff quite well for myself. However, I would just like to know what happens to the characters I have followed through the earlier books. I suspect the author is too busy with the TV series. The books need a lot of work and thought but so does the TV series, which has subtle differences, inevitably, from the novels. Will the sixth book reflect more the events of the original books or the events of the TV series? 

 That is quite an important question. We have been watching the wonderful TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies". The whole thing is very well done. I find myself tempted to say it is sumptuous. Some scenes look like paintings from the period. The clothes and settings are tremendous. And the faces of the actors are quite perfect. I occasionally wonder, as I often do when I watch the dramatisation of a book I know well, how much those who have NOT read the books actually understand. And then I have a sneaky feeling of superiority. Anyway, what I was getting around to is that Hilary Mantel is also writing a further novel in her series. On one of those TV arts discussion programmes someone suggested that Hilary Mantel might be influenced in her writing by the "life " given to her Thomas Cromwell by the actor Mark Rylance. The general response was that Hilary Mantel was undoubtedly well above such things. 

I wait quite impatiently for both of these books. In the case of George RR Martin, who is quite ill, according to something I heard, I hope he manages to complete it before he gets too ill to write. My inner selfish child is coming out! 

Weather report: the snow stopped falling some time in the night. The day began very dull and cloudy but by early afternoon had become clear and sunny but still cold: that combination of snow and blue sky. The weekend is forecast to be very cold indeed. Here are some pictures of the snow and the blue sky.