I give away books my way

On return home from Malta on Wednesday, we found much of the region enveloped in a huge area of high pressure. My barograph has read 30.6-7" since then. But while these conditions often come with cloudy skies, we have enjoyed several periods of bright, if cool sunshine.

My most vivid memories of Malta remain:
1) the amazing Hypogeum, aptly named as its wonders are buried a full 9 metres below street level: a wonderfully pristine neolithic work of funeral art, discovered some 70 years ago almost in the heart of Valletta.
More than 5000 years ago men dug out these extraordinary chambers from the living rock, with their elegant curves and pathways carved into the limestone bedrock. All this with only flint tools to work with. It retains its potent sombre atmosphere even after this enormous interval of time.
2) My other prominent memory is of seeing a vast queue of migrant workers, hundred and hundreds of them, waiting to board a 747 bound for Dubai and away from a country in terrifying turmoil. I thought the men, they were all men, looked Philippino, but my wife spotted that several of them were holding Thai passports. These things are hard to determine. But I did ask one where he was from, and he confirmed that most of them were escaping the oil wells in the central Libyan desert. I can't say I blame them...

Tonight I played my own miniscule part in "World Book Night", giving out a total of 36 books (my titles: "Beloved", by Toni Morrison and "Dissolution", by C. J. Sanson)
But naughty me! Our local book-crossing whiz, namely Cassiopaea, wanted everyone to make the recipients fully aware of all the book-crossing data at the back of the book and be sure they understood how to log on to the website to enable the book to be "tracked". But I felt differently. I didn't want to get into this earwigging session with everyone; if they're the motivated type they'll come to that and do it if they wish. My job, as I saw it, was to get the books out there. I have a slightly nagging feeling anyway about the whole "give away a million books in a night" thing that is "World Book Night". The fact is it is being sponsored by a consortium of publishers whose underlying motivation is not exactly mysterious. However, it gets a lot of free books out for people to enjoy, and that is a good thing. I just hope I didn't upset Cassiopaea too much: she's a very precious being.

TELEVISION REVIEW:

THE PROMISE (2010) W-D- Peter Kosminsky. With Clair Foy as Erin

Last Wednesday we caught up with the last episode of Channel $'s brilliant mini-series. It is a tale told in 2 time zones: present day Israel and the occupied territories, and likewise, but in 1948, at a time when the British were being driven out of Palestine by an increasingly powerful and aggressive Jewish militia. A young woman travels there from Britain to find out the truth about what happened to her father 60 years before when he was a sergeant in the British Army. With very high production values, very strong acting and some first class writing, one becomes totally involved with Erin's voyage into the dark, infinitely complex clash of ideolgies into which she plunges herself as she searches out the truth.
Excellent television: a class act all the way.