feathered enemies (Thursday September 2nd, 2004 - 00:42)

category: mmhuh?

Bit of a slow down in my reading lately, changing from book to book when I’m half way through, so I picked up Patrick Neate‘s The London Pigeon Wars which I bought a few months back, read a few pages of and cast aside due to a lack of time to concentrate.

This time the first 10 pages had me a little concerned again. Was this whole novel written from a pigeon’s eye view in pigeon-style english (as opposed to pidgin-english)? The next chapter switched over to human characters which I felt more comfortable with but then the pigeons began to invade again.

After my initial sense of confusion I was hooked in to the whole story – humans and pigeons alike all dealing with their physical and mental wars that forcefully collide bringing the two major inhabitants of London together. Well developed characters and plot reminded me why I was so keen to pick the novel up when I saw it in the shop recently. The flaw I find is that it has a serious focus on the London suburbs and relies somewhat on an understanding of location – I know my way around the town so I could picture the scenery but it could be a little hard to swallow for a non-visitor. Regardless, stunning writing and I wish I’d delved on with it straight away and not let it sit about so long.

Oddly when adding the book in to words I looked back for when I read Neate’s 12 Bar Blues. I was certain it was earlier this year or late last year. Checking the entry I’d noted that I finished reading it in July 2002. Impossible! I found my copy in my book piles (book shelves are still lacking in my apartment) and I’d left the receipt in the book – July 2002 indeed.

Apart from dreaming of pigeons and watching the feathered creatures closely, I’ve also become a little skittish of birds – I jumped out of the way of one last weekend on Crown Street that appeared to be flying straight at me. Strange what books can do to you.

Other things.. the style sheets on this site seem to have a few glitches to straighten out on the weekend.

A friend of my brother’s kindly provided an invitation to me for a Google gmail account but usernames have to be 6 or more characters in length so I had to do a little thinking on that front. So far so good with it but a little more usage required before proper commentary.

And my darling little Kimi won a very tough (and exciting) race at Spa on the weekend while I wore my cap in pride and perched myself on the edge of my couch for the numerous re-starts from behind safety cars. Well done!