To Ely for Fforde

Having finished listening to Jane Eyre¹ I realised that I'd got nowhere with Stephen Baxter's Flood which was my "currently reading" fiction book. It's hard to say why but it didn't really grab me. I think part of it was that I didn't believe the world Baxter had created but it was also just the style of it, which was strangely lacking.

These days I'm pretty brutal with books: if it doesn't grab me fairly fast I put it to one side and it goes to the next charity shop so that's where Flood is going.

Which leads me to today's trip to Ely. I like Ely and it was the farmers' market today² so I pottered up there and wandered around the market, the cathedral close and the charity shops.

I bought a couple of haslets from Edis of Ely to go in the freezer, and they also sold me a sausage roll to nibble as I wandered around, and a pork and onion pasty for later. North's Bakery provided me with something disgustingly chocolately which I think they said was called "fridge cake" and at the cathedral café I had a pot of tea and one of the best chunks of bread pudding I've had in a long time. So a thoroughly indulgent morning - but as my weight hit a new low of 16st 9.2lb (or 233.2lb) this morning I thought I deserved a treat.

And talking of indulging myself I was looking out for books I'd like to read and the Oxfam shop yielded a copy of The Fourth Bear and the delightful Topping Books sold me a copy of Lost in a Good Book, both by Jasper Fforde.

I discovered Fforde by chance last year when I bought First Among Sequels in Tesco. It's book five in the "Thursday Next" series and I loved it so that lead me on to read The Eyre Affair which is the first book in that series³.

Fforde is a delight to read. His alternative universe is so nicely contrived, his verbal puns and in jokes make careful reading a pleasure and it's full of little snippets like this one from The Fourth Bear which I giggled at on the journey back:

At the end of the Humpty affair she had met the man who was now her husband. He was seven foot three and she was six foot two and a quarter. It was a match made perhaps not in heaven, but certainly nearer the ceiling.

That's very fine at several levels at once: the hint that she knows her own height to within a quarter of an inch with the implication of her sensitivity about that, and the second sentence which you can read both as a joke and as praise for the quality of their marriage.

And I love the names of Fforde's characters. Ranging from simple jokes like having a retired DCI called Friedland Chymes (as in Fforde's universe the name has no other significance) to the psychiatrist Professor Frank Strait who appears to be so named simply so that Fforde can slip this into the narrative:

"I'll be frank with you Frank," replied the Gingerbreadman, adding hastily: "May I call you Frank?"
"I'd prefer Professor Strait."
"Very well, I'll be straight with you Strait. I wasn't that impressed."

I imagine this is the sort of thing that some people would hate but I find it delightful and amusing so I'm looking forward to working my way through both of these books over the next few days.

1. A book I confess I have rather mixed feelings about, but that's something for another day.
2. The Ely farmers' market takes place on the second and fourth Saturdays in the month.
3. And this in turn is why I've just completed Jane Eyre, something I should really have done first, as the plot of The Eyre Affair revolves around Jane Eyre. Don't let this put you off by the way: you don't need to have read Jane Eyre in order to enjoy The Eyre Affair.