In the course of the last few years I have read an awful lot of what a friend of mine calls “crime novels”, in other words, murder mysteries or detective novels, as I suppose you might call them. The Italians call them “gialli” - yellow books - because such fiction is generally printed with yellow covers. I’ve also watched a lot of TV detective series in a variety of languages and set in a variety of countries. A person could grow very pessimistic about where it is even remote safe to live. There are some towns and regions you should avoid like the plague, judging by the numbers of murders that take place there.
However, it seems to be safer to live in the UK than in the USA, where one set of statistics show they have 18 times more murders than we do. Granted, there are a lot more people living in the USA than in the UK but if you compare the numbers of murders per million people (UK 11.68 and USA 42.01) it’s still 4 times more than in the UK. Are Americans more volatile [all those Mediterranean immigrants!) than the British or is there some other factor at play? Hmm! I wonder!
Perhaps it’s time I sought out some other reading matter. In fact, I do read a variety of stuff but in the process of sorting through our vast collection of books (incomplete task) I keep coming across collections of novels by crime writers, some of which I have never read. And all the reading and re-reading turns into a distraction activity, further slowing down my sort-out! It’s a hard life!
I’ve commented quite a lot recently about how the various berry-producing plants seem to have got going early. Looking back at old photos I find I may be kidding myself; photos from this time last year show bowls of blackberries, fruit of my foraging, and of apple and blackberry pies. However, this article suggests that maybe I am not totally mistaken. They promise us a bumper crop this year. Apparently the sunshine earlier in the year was good for flowers and pollination, all the rain has made the fruit grow nicely and the mild (well, they say warm) conditions lately have been good for ripening. Maybe I should go out foraging again this weekend.
I still think that when they talk about warm weather they mean in the South of the country. Here in the Northwest, while it has not been what you would call cold, neither has it been especially warm. Last night when I went to bed (late, having sat up watching yet another Italian detective series!) the rain was hammering down on the roof. The sound of gentle rainfall is supposed to help you sleep but this was hardly gentle. Between noisy rain and rather cold feet I found it quite hard to drop off. This morning has been dry so far but hardly sunny enough yet to dry the grass sufficiently for Phil to finish the mowing he started, and abandoned, several days ago.
Granddaughter Number Two plans to go into Manchester to see the Pride Procession. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on their parade!
As regards the North-South weather divide, we’ll test it for ourselves when we go to visit the Southern branch of the family in the middle of next week. We finally got round to renewing our senior rail cards so that we could have a discount on train fares to London.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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