We busked for 24 hours, raised £750, one Stroud pound, one euro, a bag of mushrooms, a bunch of carrots and some hot apple cider.

We played our own songs, sang songs by everyone from Neil Young to George Michael to Cyndi Lauper to Daft Punk, and we were joined by some special guests who eased the strain on our vocals. Special mention goes to Wallis Bird who was with us Friday evening and all day Saturday and made the whole thing 100 times more enjoyable with her incredible energy, mad guitar skillz and rousing renditions of Eddi Reader’s Per-er-er-er-er-er-fect.

We were also asked to do a last minute interview and song with Paul Moss on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, which you can listen to here for the next few days, and we’ll be appearing in the newspaper Stroud Life next week.

Phew! Thanks to everyone who helped and donated, there are some great snaps up on our facebook page, and remember, if you donated you get to have your name in the album credits – if you didn’t manage to give us your name, please email heronstheband@gmail.com.

Update: Thanks to our ‘Donate’ button, we’re now on £800!! This is amazing, thanks again.

Join the facebook event here.

Hello there, how are you?

Herons! is an independent band. We’re not signed, we have no manager or publisher or any type of investment, but we don’t see that as a bad thing. There’s a lot of work involved in managing our own band, but it also means that we have complete freedom and control.

We released our first album earlier this year and it’s already paid for itself (pretty much). However, because it was entirely self-funded it took a long time to release. We recorded it in 2008, mastered it in 2009, and had to wait another year before we had saved up enough to print it. We now have enough new material for a second album and we’re incredibly excited to start recording at the end of December. This time however, we don’t want to have to wait three years to be able to put a copy in the hands of anyone who wants one, and that’s why we’ve decided to ask YOU for help.

We’ve estimated that the first stage of recording is going to cost us about £1000. So we decided to see if we could raise this money all in one go, using our musical skills and the generosity of the good people of Stroud (where we live) and beyond.

So, we’ve organised a 24 HOUR BUSKING BONANZA!!! to happen this coming weekend, the 2nd and 3rd of December (and we might possibly spill on to the Sunday if we don’t meet our 24 hour target over the first two days). Our singer and guitarist Ben Kritikos has a bit of a reputation as a human jukebox, after years of making a living by busking on the streets of Dublin. We will happily take song requests during the weekend, and we’d be thrilled if any other passing musicians want to come and join in.

We’re creating a schedule (as I write) of the locations in which we will be playing over the weekend, but we can confirm they they will include a pitch at the Stroud Goodwill Evening, The Stroud Farmers’ Market sessions in Emmaus in Nailsworth, Strangeness and Charm Vintage Boutique, The Crown and Sceptre and The Prince Albert pub in Rodborough.

Please come along, bring an instrument, have fun and give what you can. Any person who makes a donation — whether it’s pennies or big bucks — will also have the chance to be personally thanked in the album sleeve notes; just remember to give us your name on the day. Or, if you can’t make it on the day, click the ‘donate’ button at the bottom of the post and make a contribution now!

Thanks for reading,

Herons!

After trading the crushing monotony of London for a life resembling real life in Gloucestershire, Anna and I have finally settled in.  The Stroud area, where we’ve made our home, is an old industrial hub of the Cotswolds, making it less posh than other Cotswold towns, and also quite a bit more gritty and interesting.  Its 40,000 (or so) inhabitants are as varied as any city I’ve been to; so as well as Wurzels and Fred Wests, you also find coffee experts, brilliant anarchist letter-press artists and poets, dozens of young bands, old beardy legends, my favourite brewery in the Cotswolds — and the greatest farmers’ market that just about takes over the entire pedestrian-friendly town every Saturday.

When we first arrived, I was skint and in need of a beer.  Hence, I arrived at The Prince Albert pub, on Rodborough Hill.  From experience, I’ve learned that playing music is the best way to make friends, and if you’re skint it’s also a good way to get people to buy you beers.  When I rocked up to the Albert’s open mic night, I killed a few birds with one stone.  Between songs, I admitted to the audience my need of work; when I got off stage, three people offered.

The Prince Albert has become a kind of Mecca for other London expats seeking clean air and cheaper rent in the area.  Herons! have been lucky enough to collaborate with some amazing musicians who’ve found themselves situated cosily in the Five Valleys.  Last weekend, we performed at our beloved Albert with cellist and producer/arranger extraordinaire Jo Silverston.  Emily Barker also graced us with her dulcet tones, when she, Anna and I brought the set to a finish with a cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” — not without trepidation!  As an encore, special guests Vena Portae (Emily Barker & Dom Coyote), joined us on stage to sing “The Old Triangle”, which sounded great with Dom’s wonderful bass harmony.

In other news, I was lucky enough to work with actor Jack Tarlton and director Simon Usher on a short theatre piece entitled Making The Sound Of Loneliness, which explored the work of American poet, playwright and actor Sam Shepard, set to music that I composed for the piece.  The performance used extracts from a large cross-section of Shepard’s prose, and was performed by Jack Tarlton and David Beames.  The performance took place at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston on the 22nd of September as part of the Side Orders festival, courtesy of Actors Touring Company.

Making The Sound Of Loneliness counts as my first musical foray into theatre, and I hope it won’t be the last.  The experience was doubly rewarding for me, as I’d never really heard of Sam Shepard (besides as Patti Smith’s ex-boyfriend); I spent the whole workshopping week being blown away by this great American writer whose whole body of work I can look forward to reading.  Luckily, there is a possibility of Making The Sound Of Loneliness getting a full run in the New Year, so watch this space for more info.

Until next time, keep your chins up this autumn.  Port and Stilton help.

What on earth is Folk in a Box? Some of you may ask. Well, it’s probably best described as ‘Britain’s smallest music venue’ (if not the world’s). It’s one performer, one audience member, one song, all in a box about the size of a luxury shed. Possibly the most intimate performance you could ever experience!

Herons! will be joining forces with Folk in a Box veteran Emily Barker, plus the excellent Johnny Barlow, (no relation of Gary, sadly) Tom Jacob out of hermes, and a couple of ‘celebrity guests’, plus more acts to be announced. We’ll all be buzzing about the box in Stroud on Saturday the 3rd of September at the Shambles Market, between 10:00 and 15:00; and Sunday the 4th of September at the Cornhill market place, between 13:00 and 17:00. We’ll be serving tea and coffee and wearing silly hats and ‘the craic will be mighty’ as they say.

See you there!

In other news, we now have a facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/heronstheband

Please ‘like’ us. Oh please oh please oh please! We ‘like’ you!

Anna and I are Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fans — big time.  We can watch a whole series (or more) of River Cottage on 4od in one sitting.  It’s embarrassing.  We often refer to the man behind River Cottage on a first name basis, as though we share saucepans with him:

“What shall we have for dinner tonight?”

“How about Hugh’s nettle gnocchi?”

Or:

“How do you reckon I should cook this saddle of venison?”

“I don’t know, check with Hugh.”

So you can imagine the heart palpitations and buckets of anxious sweat when Anna told me that the River Cottage team tweeted for bands to play at their River Cottage Canteen in Axminster.  Anna responded in a flash, and a date was set. Having followed the progress of the River Cottage project from the beginning, a trip to the River Cottage Canteen promised to be a kind of pilgrimage for us.

The River Cottage Canteen in Axminster

Suz, the general manager of the River Cottage Canteen, did nothing to stifle our fervour when she informed us that the Canteen’s head chef Tim Maddams planned to challenge people’s reliance on meat-as-a-meal with a seasonal and local Veggie Feast.  We were to provide the soundtrack to this evening of vegetable delights.

While Anna and I are both carnivores, that’s never stopped us from serious vegetable adoration; and, as two minds set to sustainability, we’re always eager to try new and exciting veggie dishes to cut down on more carbon-intensive meaty meals.  So, our liaison with the River Cottage Canteen seemed to promise not only the fulfillment of a musical dream for us, but also a culinary one.

The experience did not disappoint.  We were greeted warmly, and no sooner than we unloaded our gear did we peep through the service station to the kitchen and spot the man of the evening himself, Tim Maddams — mutton chops and all!  Anna and I both froze: we were totally star struck!

Suz saw the hunger in our faces before we even played.  She laid out a snack for us, in the form of the best pork pie I’ve ever had (though Herons! all agree that pork pies would be equally good, if not better, without jelly), a surprisingly savoury and tangy red cabbage salad, and a crispy spinach and nettle tart — kind of like a hedgerow pizza.

I only have pies for you.

Our audience were very sympathetic to a bunch of strangers interrupting their meal with music.  We made several friends after the set, over shared bottles of River Cottage’s own Stinger, a real ale brewed with nettles that surely would have made it to my list of Top Five Beers, had I known about it last year.

The Veggie Feast consisted of four courses, and we were lucky enough to partake of two of them.  The first was a nettle soup, served with a chive cream, a drip of hemp oil, all topped with a perfectly poached egg.  If any of you doubt the culinary potential of nettles, I advise you to get your foraging gloves on and go picking!  This soup was a vivid spring green colour, with a nutty and floral aroma that is the trademark beauty of the prickly nettle.  Not a Heron! missed meat in this dish, believe you me.

I'd be nettled if we'd missed this.

Second came a pattie of deep-fried goat’s cheese, served with hazelnut and parsley pesto (PHOAR, as my mate Aoife would say) accompanied by April’s A-list celebrity vegetable — asparagus.  The tender spears of asparagus were marinated and grilled, and they burst with flavour in your mouth.  All together, it was like harnessing the flavour of spring and serving it up so well you could cry.  There’s no photo because we scoffed it pretty much as soon as the plate hit the table.

I’ve heard some people say that a meal isn’t a meal without meat; they often say that without meat, they simply don’t feel full, or like there’s something missing.  I think that’s foolishness.  Anna made a good point: “Have these people never eaten risotto?  I’d like to see them eat a whole plate of creamy wild mushroom risotto — and then eat a steak!”*

At the end of the meal (and our performance), Tim asked the crowd to raise their hands if their dinner left them missing meat.  Only a handful of people felt that their inner carnivore couldn’t be quieted with the well-prepared treasures of the vegetable kingdom.

I think that Tim proved an important point: while I wouldn’t want to go through life never again enjoying a bacon sandwich or a roast chicken, it’s not just possible but pleasurable to eat regular meat-free meals without feeling like there’s something missing.

Musketeers or Stooges? I like the tall one on the right.

The River Cottage Canteen’s Vegetable Feast inspired Anna and I so much, that the very next day we went out with our neighbour and her three little girls, foraging along the riverside here in Stroud.  We gathered a whole cloth shopping bag full of young nettles, and another of wild garlic (leaves, stems, flowers and bulbs), and brought them all back to our kitchen.

A few weeks ago, Anna and I were given the gift of Darina Allen‘s Forgotten Skills Of Cooking by our dear friend Aoife Mc, the culinary blog whiz behind I Can Has Cook.  We used one of these Forgotten Skills to make wild garlic pesto; it’s a skill I don’t plan on forgetting any time soon!

Meanwhile, Anna and the kids blanched the nettles, mixed them with three egg yolks, parmesan and ricotta cheeses, seasoned them and worked them into a dough.  The dough needs about an hour in the fridge to set firm; then, with two spoons, Anna and I turned this cheesy prickly dough into one of my favourite Italian dishes: gnocchi.

The little dumplings of gnocchi can be laid out on a large dish (baking dishes do the trick) dusted with flour, while a pot of lightly salted water is brought to the boil.  The gnocchi need to be boiled about six at a time (don’t crowd them), for about two to three minutes, or until they begin floating at the surface.  We ate them with butter, grated parmesan and a twist of ground black pepper.

*Our drummer James could probably do this.

For those of you who were planning on coming to the Beatroot gig on Tuesday, the 26th of April, please be aware that it has been moved to an all-day fundraiser for Pepe on the day before — so please come to this special event on Monday, the 25th of April, beginning at 13:00.  Herons! will be performing at this event (as will a bunch of others, including our best buddies Aidan and Jenny Lindfors) at 17:00.  Please check our gigs page for times, addresses and other details.

Do check out the gig on Monday night, as your support for Pepe would be tremendously appreciated!  Sorry for any inconvenience caused by this last-minute announcement.

-Ben

Winters are pretty tough for me. I’ve never been a winter person. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of light or the lack or warmth, or the combination of the two, but it gets grim and feeling like it’ll never end. The damp winds blow right through all the layers of clothes and my big navy P-coat and my longjohns, and all I can think of doing is curling up by an open fire and sleeping until the snowdrops and crocuses pop up their little heads to announce with a chorus of whispering the arrival of spring.

But, of course, come hell, high water, weather or winter, everybody’s got to put their shoulders to the wheel. Luckily for me, the wheel was spinning in Dalkey, south of Dublin City on the bay that was once referred to as “The British Bay of Naples”. Now, I’ve never been to Naples or its bay, and Ireland isn’t part of Britain anymore, but I think I get the gist. You would, too, if you saw Dalkey: they’ve got one of the best vistas in all the-world-that’s-known-to-me.

Down at Bullock harbour, you can visit the seals, who always pop their noses up hoping that a friendly reveller will throw them something by way of comestibles. Up the road was Vico Road, one of the most beautiful agglomeration of extravagant housing a person could hope to see without being stared at strangely for being there. It’s a rich area, but I get the feeling that because it’s so nice to look at, nobody there really blames you for gawping.

If you follow that road, you can get yourself to Killiney Hill, a place where you could imagine fairy tales taking place — if you ever read that kind of thing when you were a kid like I did. Standing on top of Killiney Hill looking North, you can see all of Dublin Bay in all its crystalline cerulean glory. If you look west, the city spreads out before you, full of promise and grit and sob-stories and laughter.

It’s the kind of place I could never afford to live if J. hadn’t invited A. and me to stay for a few months to write and rehearse music together. Her parents live in a converted church that was always warm, unlike my cold little place in town with big, draughty windows (I loved the light but not the draughts) which I could never afford to heat properly. What a windfall!

It was in this warm little den of musical contentment that I hunkered down from January until March in an attempt to take myself seriously as a musician. I’d been at it for about four years already, gigging, busking, making friends, playing in other people’s bands, starting bands, losing bands, getting some session work here and there — but feeling, after all, like a bit of a fuck-up, like all the music I’d written so far was crap. The more I worked at the practical side of things, the less I seemed to get inspired to write music. It was all so — blah.

Panic gripped me: what if I was finished as a songwriter — finished before I’d even got started?

J. assured me if I just let it happen, it would. Time away from the norm, with nothing to do but play music all day would do the trick, she thought. A. agreed, and promptly locked himself in a room for three months to create a multi-lingual musical Parthenon, only emerging bleary-eyed for quick cups of tea or the occasional snack.

I tried to put the panic aside and work. Lots of ideas came, but they were shit, frankly! I’d start on something and drop it before it even developed — because I could tell it was rubbish. Nevertheless, I came up with hundreds of ideas, some of which found their way into songs I still play. But it’s not easy keeping busy while waiting for inspiration at the same time.

For rent payment and sustenance, I worked one day a week in an organic market in Dalkey village, earning both wages and groceries in the process. I did some busking and gigging to make the other ends meet. When you get good at living frugally, it’s nothing like a sacrifice — it feels good, you feel lean, lithe and living.

January came and went. The days were dark and dreary, and the weather was especially drab and biting. Taking long walks along the seaside helped, and so did J.’s company (and A.’s too, but like I said, he was mostly locked away, working on his magnum opus). I had two or three good ideas on the burner, but couldn’t seem to get them off the ground, or anything like a coherent song.

At beginning of February, I took a trip to the UK to visit my father. He wasn’t doing too well. We went to a pub somewhere in Surrey, where most everything is the same as everything else, a big cacophony of bland inoffensiveness. He’d been living there for almost 15 years, driving a mini-cab. We ordered drinks at the bar, me an ale, and he a lager. “I hate the way the English drink ale — why is it never cold?” he complained. Then he answered himself: “Because they’re greedy and they don’t want to pay to refrigerate it.”

We sat down and he heaved a long sigh. He struggled through some pleasantries then burst into tears. “I can’t take it anymore — I’m sorry.” I tried to comfort him, but he covered his face with one hand, the other locked tightly around his torso. “I want to kill myself.”

Now, my father and I have never been too close. Neither of us is easy to get along with, and I imagine orneriness doesn’t improve with age. All the same, I’ve a soft spot for people who have the guts to crumble in front of another person. It’s not alway weakness, sometimes it’s courage. Sometimes, when things are desperate, what else can you do?

But I didn’t know what to say, and it kind of caught me out that if my own father didn’t know how to pull himself up out of the doldrums, what chance did I have? It was kind of depressing. I tried to formulate some positive sentences, but just ended up commiserating. He wanted a boost, all I could do was silently agree: “Yep, it’s a hard old world, alright!”

I freely admit, a selfish thought crossed my mind at this moment, for which I’ve never completed forgiven myself: I thought, “Is this me in the future? No more songs left, driving a taxi, crying into my beer, asking my own progeny what to do about my feelings of utter despair?” The poor guy, all I could do was mutter stock comforts, which, in my experience, just make stark the gap between yourself and the world from whence you feel cut off.

That night, I stayed over at my most talented friends’ house in a London suburb. The bunch of them had this band and a house where they all lived and played music, and they were just about making a living from their music. People love their music, as they should, because it’s amazing. They’re all so bloody talented that it can be intimidating at the best of times, and after my father’s desperate outburst, on top of the writer’s block, it was both wonderful and dreadful to see them.

I watched them jamming in their living room with a mix of longing and awe. How the hell do people get so good? What’s more, how can they be so NICE, too? I felt like a nothing — even worse than nothing, a bitter nothing, like a bad smell in a nice room.

W., the most talented one of the unbelievably talented bunch, jammed a guitar in my hand and said, “give us a song!” I couldn’t have felt less like playing at that moment. My whole body recoiled from the very thought of having to subject myself to my peers’ completely friendly, non-judging, terribly talented and crushingly enthusiastic appraisal. I sat down with her guitar and practically winced. I could feel my heart trying to crawl back into itself.

And then, I croaked out a sound. It just came out. It was practically inaudible, and my fingers barely brushed the coarse surface of the steel strings, but it came out alright. The whole rest of me was crushing itself backwards, trying to slink away, and this little melody came out like a shy little thing suddenly revealed. It was basically the bit that became the chorus of “Scorched Earth”.

I played it over and over. Even when I got back to Dalkey, I’d sit in my bedroom for hours, playing this little bit over and over. “Why don’t you come out / and see the savage world / through my window?” I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Who am I even asking?

February in Dalkey produced more agony and less music. Every time I got totally frustrated and felt like “that’s it, I’m finished”, I played that little bit about the “savage world” — and I kind of felt better. The cold days bit less hard, the damp seemed to stop somewhere at my longjohns, and the sea air smelled faintly invigorating.

On the second day of March, it came time to leave Dalkey and commit myself once again to the cold confines of my draughty flat. Luckily, the weather was beautiful. Undeniably spring. At long last, the sky was blue and the air was mild.

I had lots and lots of stuff with me. The journey took about 40 minutes on the DART (the Dublin commuter train) and I sat staring out the window as seaside town after seaside town whizzed past, and the bay chucked itself against the side of walls people had erected to separate themselves from Nature’s jolly but persistent disobedience. Nature’s jolly but persistent disobedience seemed pointedly welcome at that moment.

BANG! The first verse and verse melody to “Scorched Earth” came to me in a flash, all at once, without warning — and I didn’t have a pen or paper on me. I had to walk a mile and a half with all my bags and instruments hanging all over me, and the warm weather made a mockery of my longjohns and P-coat, which served to create tropical micro-climates in the nooks and crannies of my struggling body.

I lugged my load desperately down the Grand Canal towards Rathmines, where I prayed I’d reach a writing implement before the inspiration evaporated into thin air, leaving me nothing more than sweaty and songless in a “savage world”, looking and feeling like a twat.

Tumbling through the door, extricating myself from my worldly possessions like so many anchors and chains, I threw myself at my typewriter and knocked out “Scorched Earth” in about 15 minutes. I guess the dam just broke. I guess J. was right: you can’t push it, you’ve just got to make sure you’ve got a pencil and paper when the inspiration comes around, because it may come around while you’re on a train.

Four years to the day, I still think “Scorched Earth” is one of the best things I’ve ever written (though I do say so myself), maybe because I still associate it with that feeling of release, like a good cry when you’ve been holding it in for a long time and you just can’t hold it in anymore.

Listen to or download ”Scorched Earth”

I get out of bed, Rainer, and notice the grumbling of cars and lorries, early-rising people on their way to whatever it is they do. One morning is no different than another — but for each person shifting hours in this pool of half-light, the morning is broken into pieces — and to each their own.

To each their own — did you understand that all too well, Rainer? Did you find yourself with a shard of morning, sharp and broken like a little protest, glinting in the half-light in your palms? Maybe that did it. Maybe the jagged edge cut you — maybe your hands formed a network of scars, telephone wires zig-zagging, a map showing the way from one morning to the next, a network of duck eggs, isolate, electric, like a soft fleshy thing cocooned in a bedroom at dawn, its face lit by a sickly glowing pool that reflects what happens outside.

And outside, all the while, was the morning, pale but unbroken, where flying dinosaurs screech with the ecstasy of flight, and lorrie-drivers whistle between deliveries, and children sleep, dreaming of the internet, and the blood comes flooding back into my arms like a riot of pins and needles, an unbearable reminder of how long one part of myself lay buried under the unconscious rest of me — cut off, and then suddenly awake. Pins and needles, Rainer, that make moving and sitting equally unbearable. An absence that is painfully present.

Hello there, gorgeous!

Ben and I have recently been feeding our obsessive man crush on the one and only Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or Huge Furry-Witty-Man as my Dad has hilariously christened him).

So along with cooking droolsome food, being gorgeous and lovely and clever and oh, bloody hell we just love him so much – he’s been taking on the dumbass EU fishing laws which mean that idiotic quantities of beautiful delicious fish is being thrown back into the sea dead instead of feeding the world. Watch the excellent series of three programmes he’s made here.

I don’t have a television.  There are so few programmes I would be interested in watching, it simply wouldn’t be worth the license fees. However, I’m glad iPlayer and 4od came along so I can enjoy programmes like this from time to time on me ‘aul MacBook. This is what the power of television should be used for in my opinion – making positive changes and educating ig’nant people like me. Not endless D-list Celebrity Come Eat Kangaroo Eyelids In The Jungle Whilst Jigging With The Stars or whatever series they’re on at the moment.

I’ve just signed the Fish Fight petition and I suggest you do too. You can find it here.

So don’t flounder about, you sprat, sign now! Convincing you to sign up is my sole porpoise in writing this blog, you won’t find any red herrings here, I cod you not.

Enough fish puns for ya? I’ll stop carping on now and let you mussel in and sign the petition.

What a lovely pair.

A year ago, I made a resolution to read only women authors.  The thinking behind this act of positive discrimination was that I’d read far fewer books by women than by men, and I felt like I was missing out.  While I knew there were shitloads of excellent books written by women, I somehow managed to pass 30 years without reading very many.  The year 2010 was my chance to redress the imbalance.

Boy, am I glad I did.  I’ve spent a good deal of this past year catching up with the millions of people who read and loved the Harry Potter books — for which I was mercilessly teased by haters.  That always happens to great works that happen to garner popularity, though; even Ovid‘s Metamorphoses had its haters.

Of course, most people who actively voice a dislike for Harry Potter have never read the books, but only seen the films (or sometimes not even that).  I thought the films were rubbish — but hating on these books means you should pre-book a room in an old people’s home … No, I take that back.  Old people are not, generally, as embittered and old-at-heart as you; and we wouldn’t want to upset them.  Go read Ivanhoe or Dan Brown or whatever it is you like, and leave the rest of us alone.

I noted a distinct lack of something whilst renouncing male authors all year: it was navel-gazing.  Male novelists do navel-gazing — sometimes really well, but often to the exclusion of all else.  While some see this as a negative, I derive no greater pleasure than reading and re-reading the panoply of 20th century bildungsroman like The Catcher In The Rye, or novels that weave a mythical web from the raw materials of their authors’ lives, like Tropic Of Cancer or Ulysses.  Still – I’m glad I had a break.

In fact, the last book I read in 2010 was Dodie Smith‘s I Capture The Castle, which is easily my new favourite book.  It’s like Catcher In The Rye meets Cold Comfort Farm, and certainly the book I’d have on my person were I going to shoot a public figure.  I Capture The Castle does all the things my other favourite books do, but has the added bonus of being from a 17 year old girl’s perspective.  To tell you the truth, I couldn’t help but fall a bit in love with Cassandra.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that the works I read by women authors tended not to be quite as ambitious in scope as their male counterparts — which is probably a good thing.  Didn’t some one call Finnegans Wake a most interesting cul-de-sac on the great road of literature?  That said, re-visiting Arundhati Roy‘s The God Of Small Things stands in my mind as one of the finest examples of a healthy use of the English language, and a challenging story of intricate beauty; no doubt thanks to the uniqueness of Roy’s vision, and Asia’s place in the Anglophonic world as something of an outsider.

Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Poisonwood Bible also took the cake and threw it in poplit’s face, as far as I’m concerned.  Talk about ambitious — and down to earth at the same time.  Also, Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid’s Tale gave me nightmares for weeks; I was in Greece, white-knuckling my way through slaughterous amounts of red tape to get my passport, and this firecracker of a novel was not exactly a source of rest and relaxation.

Another holiday this year saw me hiding from the sun  in order to sink my teeth into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s searingly brilliant story of the Biafran War, Half Of A Yellow Sun. When I finally put the book down, the pleasure of sitting on a beach or eating a hearty meal, even the (relative) lack of military presence gave me a sense of enormous gratitude to chance.  Not letting myself off the hook, I moved on to re-reading To Kill A Mockingbird, which is the first book I can remember reading and being seriously moved by.  It was better than I remembered it.

All in all, the books I’ve read this year have thrilled and challenged me as much as any I’ve ever read.  The added bonus has been a heightened awareness of women’s issues; I found myself particularly pleased yesterday upon hearing of Miriam O’Reilly’s court victory over the BBC for their blatant sexist and ageist discrimination.  Upon hearing that a verdict of sexism wasn’t brought against the Beeb, I issued an unusually brusque snort of derision.  Things have changed in the small world of Ben Kritikos.

While I’ve missed Ted Hughes‘ Tales From Ovid, my perennial companion Leaves Of Grass, and the essays of George Orwell, I don’t feel as though I’ve missed much.  The Spirit Level was given to me as a birthday present, with the ready-made excuse that it’s co-authored by a woman; but I’ve been adamant.  The benefits are clear to me: I feel I’ve achieved a much more balanced view of what is perhaps the most important escape route in my life; a door that affords me respite from the muddled onslaught of everyday life; that is to say, the world of books.

If I hadn’t actively sought out some of these titans of literature, I may have gone through life a much poorer, uninspired and spiritually bereft man for it.  That’s a comment on myself, my own lazy narrowness, and the dogged rigidity of a patriarchal society.  Let me suggest to anyone who cares to hear it: spend a year reading women authors only.  You’ll be doing nobody but yourself a favour.