Advent Thought 1

These are very nice pieces of glass. They are not unlike Nailsea Glass but pre-date our arrival in Nailsea and are from Gozo.

They hide in the corner of our bathroom and are a daily reminder of a place we love very much and always look forward to revisiting.

Advent is about waiting, hoping, resting and praying. We recall that these are good things in their own right, not simply the difficulty to be endured before the fun.

I like this glass and yet don't care for many other examples of the type. I like to look at it. It is ornamental, not functional. So it points to a positive future experience but can be enjoyed for what it is, now.

During Advent 2018 I will post a daily glimpse into the hidden images of my life and home and ask the questions each time - what are they for and to what do they point?

Journey with me.

Call the Maltese

After a number of years visiting Malta and Gozo I have a pretty clear idea of the unique skills package Maltese workers can offer. So when should you call the Maltese in?

1. You need a crane to get an RSJ up to the fifth floor of a twin house only accessible by a narrow alley. Impossible? No. Two Maltese can erect a crane overnight in a gap as long as there is 0.001mm clearance either side. Furthermore the whole job will be finished and the crane moved to the next job before most ordinary people have finished their breakfast. If they haven't finished breakfast they can still take the crane out through a crowded cafe bar without anyone moving or ducking.

2. Awkward little job involving road maintenance? Maybe a bulb has gone in a motorway barrier light? No need to stop the traffic. Jason and Gorge will don their flip-flops, run into a gap in the traffic waving a yellow flag and get the job done in seconds.

3. You have a small business opportunity but nowhere to site it. No problem. After abseiling down a cliff with a rucksack containing your lunch and reading matter to access a quiet sandy bay you will be greeted by a Maltese bartender offering drinks and his brother who will hire you a sunbed and umbrella. Nowhere is too remote to put a selling station.

4. You like the noise of fireworks but feel all those light-effects are a bit unnecessary. Don't panic. Wait until the Sun is directly overhead and the temperature at 30 degrees. Then the Gozitan Firework Company will put on a show that is all smoke and bang with none of that distracting prettiness.

Que Sera Sera

Guess what happened to the priest?

Gozo feels more like a building site than usual this year. For reasons best known only to the gods of local planning, three major development projects are taking place in three of the largest towns - Rabat, Nadur and Xaghra - simultaneously. These are three centres where a pavement cafe and a people-watch has always been a lovely way to pass a morning.

But the thing I really like about the island, and always have, is the sense of inevitability. Fatalism almost. Faced with a bit of a problem - a blocked road, a broken down car, a weather phenomenon - the average Gozitan will have a ten second rant, wave arms around a bit, and then work out how to make things better for everyone. There are no recriminations here. 'You drove down a one-way street. What the hell. OK. I will move my car. Keep coming.'

Here health and safety has not gone mad. It hasn't even visited the mental counselling team. It is not unusual to have to swerve in the street to avoid a builder in flip-flops up an unfooted ladder wiring up the Festa illuminations. Indeed this is probably an important initiation rite for trainee electricians. The hard hat is mainly used as an ashtray.

So we are not disheartened by the builders and have been back a couple of times to a super restaurant at the far end of the island which we often miss out of our tour. Every cloud.

I discussed this with a local a few years back. There was a news story about injuries to a young apprentice builder who had failed to walk around the top of the walls of a newly-completed house as challenged by his seniors. He said, and it has stuck with me:

'Last week a priest fell down a hole; what can you do?'

If even the priests (and this is place is incredibly Catholic) fall down holes, what indeed can you do?

He didn't know I was a priest. I hope they pulled him out.

Risk

Although I have no recollection of ever meeting anyone who actually had somebody's eye out with that, I recall being warned about the possibility on several occasions. Raspberry canes, in the wrong hands, must be the world's deadliest anti-ocular device.

Lectures about risk were regular. Walk downstairs properly not on the outside of the bannisters. Don't run with a drink in your hand. Don't hit your sister with that whatever was to hand.

In fact I paid little attention to those rules and the only occasion in my childhood I can recall attending Selly Oak Accident Hospital was preceded by the statement 'Mum I dug up an old light bulb.' I still have the scar in the palm of my left hand. Don't run excitedly to your mother with an old light bulb in your hand. Good advice that but I had never been given it.

In fact my parents had a strange attitude to risk. Living in a massive old Victorian house, much of which had fallen into disrepair, was a permanent adventure and we were allowed to play with things we found. Hide and seek could include an oily inspection pit in the garage. Building games took place with old bits of rough wood leading to splinters. Many of the planks we found had nails sticking out of them but nobody seemed to mind as long as we had a tetanus jab from time to time and always cleaned any wounds with Dettol.

The one thing that was an absolute no was playing in the front. In the street. This was not, as far as I could tell, because of the risk of abduction. Such things were not heard of in the early sixties and even the Moors murders failed to make a mark since the moors were in the north and it was well known that northern murderers never came south of Derby.

Neither was it a risk of car accident. Oakfield Road is a long straight suburban road where you could see and hear a car approaching easily and if you couldn't the gene pool would surely find other ways of removing you. In fact Oakfield Road was used by a local garage as a brake-testing strip in the days when that was done by mechanics not computers. It was a long, straight road with a thirty mile an hour limit where many drivers were expecting to jam on their brakes at some point. I doubt if there was a safer street in Brum.

No. The problem with playing out was that it was common. The sort of thing the people in Croydon and Luton Road did. And my mother required me, if going down to the shops, not to walk down Croydon Road for fear that I might catch working-classness.

I thought about this afresh today having observed a couple of builders place their ladder in the road on a busy blind corner. Then they proceeded to remove a piece of rotten wood and replace it with a stone lintel. Gloves to protect from splinters? Pah. Eye protection and face masks from the brick dust and chips? No way. Protective footwear? One had bare feet and the other wore flip-flops.

Discussing Gozitans' maniacal approach to risk - apprentice builders have to walk round the top of an uncompleted house wall before the roof is in place to show they are made of the right stuff - I recall the words of a travel rep some years back, 'Last week a priest fell down a hole; what can you do?'

Respect

When visiting a Catholic Church on Gozo male tourists in shorts are often turned away because to show that much leg (hairy or otherwise) is deemed disrespectful. Women, likewise, are required to borrow a shawl to cover those shoulders and a wrap to cover their knees.

But at weddings, one of which we watched today from the safety of a piazza cafe, whilst the men all turn up in sharp suits, and even the local farmers wear what is probably their only tie, the younger women turn up in vertiginous heels, bare shoulders and tight dresses which barely cover their knickers if pulled down with that little shimmy movement women in too-short skirts often manoeuvre through. Not that I stare.

I'd post a photo or two but I swear the porn filters would reject them.

Maybe the priests need something to look at through a wedding, especially on a Sunday with four masses to do as well.

Anyway the country that rips you off with Catholic tat has got a strange line on respect. Churches are the only place on the Maltese Islands we have ever been treated badly.

I'm sitting here waiting for the fashion show to come out of church again. It was all the wife's idea. I'm just a reluctant conscript. She took a photo of the bride getting out of the car.

Deadlines

I know this will feel a bit rich coming from someone just half way through a very enjoyable sixteen day holiday, but the end of a holiday can loom at you like a deadline. I am pretty sure that by the end of this week I will be looking forward to coming home (I usually do). There will be things about being away that bug me - hot nights, cheap sheets, noisy dogs, fireworks and church bells are the Gozo distraction - but I wish there wasn't a definite flight to catch and an end point. If there wasn't it may well be that I'd be home earlier than expected. It is the fixed point I don't like. My whole life runs by appointments. I don't want my holiday to end with one.

Same way I don't want my shower to end when the water stops because you haven't pressed one of those annoying buttons to keep it flowing. I want to decide.

OK. I'll get back to relaxing now. Just a control freak on vacation I guess.

Holiday Reading

There is an old joke about the couple who couldn't decide on a holiday. He wanted to cruise; she wanted to go skiing. So they went water-skiing and both hated it.

In fact you need to deconstruct the holiday requirements. She wants activity, hates water but doesn't care about temperature. He wants sun, hates ice but doesn't care what they do. You don't compromise, you reconcile. Water skiing gives them both what they don't want. They go on safari and are both happy.

So Mrs T wants sun and I want to be able to read in peace. We go some-where hot each year with a promise of shade for me. In the picture you can see my shady spot beyond the pool.

Which is a long way round to saying we are just back from our tenth trip to Gozo and here is my reading list. Some brilliant recommendations this year, three of which will be worth a review of their own. The score is nothing to do with qualities of literature or value but simply a measure of how much I enjoyed reading each book at the time.

Mark Radcliffe
Reelin' in the Years
The DJ and presenter chooses a record from every year of his life and uses each to tell his story in his inimitable way. Funny as ever but quietly illuminating and humble too, rare qualities in a celebrity. (6/10)

Steven Hall
The Raw Shark Texts
Not the world's greatest prose but this first novel, a psycho-thriller, is a huge step of imagination. Described, not unfairly, as Jaws meets The Matrix this is that rare thing, an intellectually satisfying page-turner. What Dan Browne should be like. Longer review will follow. (7/10)

Kate Atkinson
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Aware that I might have been asleep the year everyone seemed to be reading this, and also that I don't read enough female writers, I took it to see what all the fuss had been about. Very enjoyable and well constructed as the different branches and ages of a family tree are pulled together. (7/10)

Jon McGregor
Even the Dogs
Fast becoming one of my favourite authors for his ability to lead you at a pace through the everyday and mundane, this is the story of the death of someone at the edge of society. A no-hoper is found dead from poor lifestyle choices at an early age but his life is gradually set out through the voices of those who knew him (but don't normally get listened to) and the post-mortem. Short and brilliant. (8/10)

Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
In Nazi Germany pre and during-war a little girl grows up to survive by stealing food and self-educate by stealing books. Take a morality check. Her delight and curiosity keep us entranced while the horrors of war and holocaust destroy her world. One of the five best books I've ever read. Magnificent. Longer review will follow. (10/10)

Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep
One of my personal delights is to take on holiday a classic book I know enough about to discuss but have actually never read. Chandler's booze-fuelled private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a missing person. Cue the bodies. (6/10)

Bill Bryson
At Home
In A Short History of Nearly Everything Bryson brought his considerable wit and curiosity to how the world is and works. Someone has suggested this should be called A Short History of Everything Else. Discovering a secret door in his Victorian Rectory home Bryson embarks on a quest to understand everything domestic. Why do we have salt and pepper on the table? What did Victorians use to keep things cold? Clean? Why did someone once build a hotel of 300 rooms with only 6 bathrooms (true)? I grew up in a Victorian house so this took me back some. Delightful, fascinating and yet leaving a sense of delight not to have been alive at any other time. (8/10)

Peter Carey
Parrot and Olivier in America
Peter Carey nearly always delights. His wonderful prose never gets in the way of what is possibly the greatest literary imagination at work today. He lists 300 works he read to study for this novel, set in the early eighteenth century at the dawn of democracy. Longer review will follow. (9/10)

Saints Days

Our first year ever in Gozo co-incided with the feast of St Peter and St Paul, the patronal festival of the village we were staying in, Nadur. Festa time.

I recall everyone getting very excited because a relic of St Paul's wrist bone had been loaned by a Maltese mainland church and was being paraded around along with some alabaster saints. I apologise if I run out of catholic language high-church chums; I've never been fluent.

This particular day also happened to be the semi-final of Euro 2000 and Italy, I think, were playing. The game went to extra time and then penalties.

There was one bar in Nadur showing the footie. In the square there were brass bands and elsewhere fireworks.

Excitement reached a fever pitch and so the procession did what all sensible processions should do in such cucumstances. They dropped the saints, the relics and the brass instruments in the street and crowded round the bar window to watch the footie. T-shirts and robes mixed.

Gozitans cheer for:

1. England
2. Italy
3. France
...

N. Malta.

Italy won, setting up a final against France.

The drunkest man I have ever seen went back to his taxi as he had a fare.

The procession continued.

It was a wonderful night. But not as good as the final. We got there early to get a seat in the bar and found that, due to the cheapness of Cisk, the local ale, for the only time in my life I was able to buy a round for the whole pub.

Xewkija Festa

The expression, 'You had to be there' is not one I reach for that often. I prefer to attempt to rise to the challenge of description. This may be a tricky one. I'm going to tell you what we experienced last Thursday evening.

We were on holiday on the beautiful Maltese island of Gozo, a favourite haunt of ours and one with which we thought we were familiar.

To get the pronunciation over with, X = Z and J = Y; thus Xewkija is Zewkiya (zoo key er).

Gozo is almost entirely Roman Catholic. Every Gozitan village has a church with a patron saint and the saint's day is celebrated in the whole village, not just the church. This is called a festa.

Xewkija's church is dedicated to St John the Baptist (June 24th).

We have visited villages on festa night before and it is a mixture of relic-parading processions with robed clerics and acolytes, brass bands, fireworks, cheap fairground sidestalls selling toys that break the second the not-yet-disappointed child opens the packet, fast food outlets and a family re-union. All the bars in the village square spread outside and a bit more beer than usual is consumed, mainly Cisk (pronounced chisk). Cisk is brilliant when absolutely chilled but has a quality-lasting time once opened and warming of about three seconds. Buy a small bottle and neck it.

We have never stayed near the centre of a village in pre-festa week before. The excitement is racked up as more and more street decorations are displayed, louder and louder evening discos take place around the town and the church bells are rung increasingly randomly. Think of a wedding peel remixed by German prog-rockers Can and you get a little of the flavour. The time between the bongs was the sort of gap you'd get if someone had to run cautiously across a church roof in the gloom and tell a mate, 'Now'.

The biggest church dome in Europe is St Peter's Rome, followed by St Paul's Cathedral, London. Third biggest is St John's Xewkija. They get a bit competitive in the old church-building stakes in Gozo. When the people of Xewkija realised their church was comparatively small they built another one over it (the old church became a chapel). During festa week its silhouette is picked out in fairy lights.

So we have a party atmosphere cranking up and our next door neighbour tells us that Thursday night there is a big party in the square. Along we go.

The square is pretty full but mainly with family groups and big screen footie Germany v Portugal just finished. Not hugely interesting. We become aware that along the main road to the harbour, about half a mile of which is still technically in Xewkija, there is more activity and we walk towards it. It gets more crowded the further we go and some sort of procession is coming towards us. Very slowly mind. It moves about three yards then stops again.

Those who live along the way put chairs on the porch to watch. Some have strung nets of balloons across the street.

We go right up to the front and then stand aside to experience it passing us by. Here goes.

Four uniformed police are in the front, chatting amiably with the crowd and each other and, apparently, setting the pace. You need to bear this in mind because it helps you to understand that what we saw next was perfectly normal, no threat to society and condoned by the law.

Let's begin with the chariot. That's right. A wheeled chariot painted red and yellow was being pushed and pulled along. Three youths sat on board. One controlled a device for blasting silver and gold foil ticker tape into the night sky. One controlled a device for showering the following group with cold water. One controlled the other two. The front of the chariot bore an image of St John as St George. Here was the baptist as warrior.

Following the chariot were about 100 young lads aged 13-15. They wore this year's festa shirts, red and yellow with that same image of St John. Think of a more flamboyant competitor at the world darts championships and you won't go far wrong. One or two wore what were clearly last season's shirts but we had no way of telling if this was through irony, poverty or forgetfulness.

Here's the thing. They were all, almost without exception, out of their skulls on cheap alcohol. They were staying in a block and staying in the street behind the chariot but they were completely and utterly blodgered.

As the chariot went under a net of balloons it was released leading to a frenzy of popping and bursting, expulsions of water and foil and a trip to the following cart for more supplies of whatever it was they were drinking.

Following this group, with no sign anything untoward was going on ahead, was a uniformed brass band playing festa classics (everyone knew some bits of the tunes and clapped or shouted out at odd, but identical times).

There was a letter in the Maltese Times a few days prior to this from a bishop complaining that devotion of the saints had degenerated into fighting, drinking and loud music.

My best guess as to what we witnessed was a right-of-passage. It probably (make that certainly) wouldn't work in the UK but we saw an organised drunking (like a churching only with alcohol). Allow the young people, in safe surroundings, to get completely rat-arsed and experience the joy of their first hangover in the company of friends and family in order to moderate their future behaviour. That may not have been the point but Gozo is a safe island where people, leave their cars and houses unlocked and there is little drunkenness. This was an all-age occasion with the elderly sitting watching. There were push-chairs in the procession.

The disco (at which no-one seemed to dance but the soundtrack behaved as if it wasn't bothered it was enjoying itself) finished about 1.30 a.m. We listened to Faithless close the show as we read our books in bed.

The next day, as if to taunt the adolescent bedheads, 8.00 a.m, was announced with eight enormous firecrackers and ten minutes of manic bell-ringing. Poor mites. We imagined 100 simultanous Gozitan cries of 'That's the last time I'm doing that.'

Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Alarm Calls

Our corner of Nailsea is so peaceful I run quiet days at home on week days. It's pretty silent here too but this morning before 9.00 a.m. we had a crazy dog barking in the street, a helicopter hovering over the village, a low flying passenger jet, a noisy refuse cart (they collect the rubbish in the cool of the day here), a pneumatic drill in the road and something that sounded like a drive-by Muslim worship-leader.

All quiet again by breakfast and the hole in the road was filled in again. I could live here. I could.

Arcadia

Sitting in an internet cafe in a shopping centre in Rabat (Victoria) the capital of Gozo. Regular readers will know this is our holiday haunt notwithstanding the news that Gary Neville has joined the ranks of holiday home owners here. Haven't seen him yet, but it is a small island.

What news? Well the spacebar has to be hit with some violence, the @ is in a strange place (for me, it's above the 2) and there is some serious grime between the keys. Liz has gone to find a bookshop having read everything. At breakfast today she was reading the bottom of saucepans.

It has been very hot but our farmhouse has a nice breeze across the patio and seafront restaurants in the evening become just divine. I have OD'd on pasta marinara.

Yesterday we took our little car (I have been driving it for ten days and still have no idea what make it is) to the more obscure parts of the coast. We drove along rutted cart tracks to the top of some breath-taking cliffs. We found a place which appears to be only occupied during the migratory bird season when the locals lure the little creatures on to baited stone platforms and then shoot them from hides. Needless to say this is illegal but not any easy place to get a cop car to.

Oh no the secret's out

Sam on The Archers. Where's he going for his holiday? Only Gozo, that's where.

'Where's Gozo?' ask the cast.

'It's an island next to Malta,' says Sam.

Next year it'll be worse than Tuscany, full of Radio 4 types discovering Marsalform Pinot Grigio, Xlendi Tourist Services and Ramla Bay. I'm going to call the sun bed attendant right now and tell him to prepare a price hike.

Now we'll have to find another island no-one's heard of.

By the way I never listen to The Archers so someone told me this.

Gozo/Malta written driving examination

1. What action should one take on approaching a marked pedestrian crossing area?

Keep a look out as you may have to swerve to avoid pedestrians

2. Which side of the road should you drive in Malta/Gozo?

The best side

3. What does it mean when the car in front is indicating to the left?

It will shortly carry out any one of many possible manoeuvres none of which involves the left in any way

4. What does it mean when the car in front is indicating by hand signal to the right?

The driver has a sweaty hand and is cooling it in the breeze

5. Where can you park in Gozo?

Anywhere provided passing vehicles can still fit through the gap with 0.001 of a millimetre of space either side

6. What does the 'no overtaking' sign indicate?

Look out for oncoming vehicles on your side of the road

7. How do you fry an egg in Gozo?

On returning to your car from the shops with a box of eggs break one onto the dashboard and eat 30 seconds later.

8. What action should you take in the event of a minor accident?

Leave the vehicles where they are, no matter how inconvenient this is to the rest of the islands' motorists, until someone from the accident department has visited to measure the scene.

9. What should one do in the event of being caught in a minor traffic jam?

Shout and gesticulate out of the window for a few seconds, then sound your horn for several minutes, then overtake the whole queue and make matters far more congested by ending up facing a similarly frustrated motorist coming in the other direction

10. What is the national speed limit?

Imaginary.

Citadels

The citadel in the centre of Rabat is an awesome place. The highest point of the island it is amazing to imagine the conditions faced by an attcking army, having attached three scaling ladders to each other and discovered they still don't reach. From here you can take in a view of the whole island and all its villages and even see across to Comino and Malta.

The knights of St John in the seventeenth century built most of the citadel. The heat in which they laboured would have been tremendous. The insects bite cruelly and the stones they carried were huge. Respect.

Rabat

All my travelling friends and family seem to do it so I thought I'd join the internet cafe bloggers co-operative. This machine has the world's stiffest shift key. Have sent Lizzie off round a department store (one of two here but this one has a shoe department - bound to be purchases) while I have a go at distance-blogging.

Our fifth visit to the island of Gozo in seven years and this time we are investigating purchasing property here. May have to become Roman Catholic as even our marital bed in a rented farmhouse is overlooked by a colourfully-painted crucifix. The blood drips as we read novels in bed.

England's victory over Ecuador was enjoyed in St Lawrence church hall overlooked by two unidentified saints - if one was St Lawro himself perhaps the other was St Hanson.

Most Gozitans are either England or Italy fans. Judging by the noise which greeted the Italians late winner yesterday I think our corner of Gozo is markedly Latin. I watched it on Rai-uno which means I had the advantage of an Italian commentator. Positione illegare.

We are enjoying some serious heat here but have a nice pool to cool off in. Good job because the locals say it is the worst year for jellyfish in living memory so we will be avoiding the sea. The sparrows drink pool water and then kill their chicks with it. We know this because the nest is in the roof of our house and the dead chicks are dropped outside our back door. Four so far. Dragonflies (fantastic red ones here) by day and small bats at dusk feed over the pool.

Festa season is getting going and St Peter and St Paul at Nadur on Thursday should be good. Last time we were there they borrowed St Paul's wrist-bone (yeah right) from a church in Sicily and paraded it, stopping only for a Euro 2000 penalty shoot out.

So greetings from this sun-washed island where all the drivers are crazy (surviving a Maltese taxi journey gives you a tremendous appreciation of the smaller luxuries in life such as standing on the pavement), all the scaffolders die young, the fish jump straight on to your plate to cut out the middle man and tomatoes taste of tomato.

This was fun. May do it again.

Holidays

This is Xlendi Bay, Gozo where we have spent the last week, after a couple of nights in Valetta. Our apartment, which had a view of the bay, is just out of picture in the top right hand corner. It is a deep-water harbour, safe for swimming, snorkelling and scuba diving, apart from when it fills up with deadly jelly fish just after a storm as it did last Friday and Saturday. Liz and I sat reading in the sun whilst a succession of Germans, rather than wondering why no-one was swimming, jumped in, got stung, swore and got out again. I think scheister is a bit rude but I can't spell it.

The rocks around the bay fall hundreds of sheer feet, at the waters edge resembling heaps of grey sugar-icing, chunks removed by the bite of a giant sea-monster.

Xlendi (pronounced shlendy or jlendy) has lovely harbour front restaurants and bars doing great fresh fish, local gozo cheese pasta, huge pizzas and Cisk (pronounced shisk) which is a beer best served frozen.

We walked round Valetta's Grand Harbour and got the ferry back across. It is one of the great sights in our limited experience of the world.

September in Malta/Gozo is still hot but not deadly burn-your-feet-on-the-patio hot and I only scored seven mossie bites, six of which were on the same evening when I forgot to put any repellent on. See. I'm not repellent. As usual Liz got no bites, her best ploy to avoid them being to take me on holiday with her, which should keep our marriage going as long as she remains a sun-worshipper.

Things I learned on holiday:

1. To make a coffee filter use a funnel (always available in holiday flats), filter papers and the top of a plastic water bottle cut to fit over a mug.
2. I look like a Maltese TV presenter called Ray. Have decided to assume he is suave and good looking rather than make any effort to find out.
3. My Big Fat Greek Wedding in Italian is Il Mio Grosso Grasso Matrimonio Greco.
4. Two hours of prime-time Maltese TV was devoted to a demonstration of knots, global positioning and distress signals. The names of the knots were all in English.
5. It is no good trying to speak Maltese to Gozitans. It is like trying to speak BBC English ordering a pie at the Gallowgate End.
6. 'The culprit, who belonged to a group of youths being chaperoned by Joey, supposedly had been diagnosed with chronic attention deficit disorder. Oddly, the young man's capacity for concentration was not so diminished that he'd failed to focus on a genuine Prada handbag amid the heaving throngs of tourists. Nor had his focus wavered even slightly as he stalked his elderly victim from the Giant Anteater exhibit all the way to Dinoland, where he'd made the snatch ... While holding him for Disney security officers, she'd shaken from his pockets a Gucci key chain and a Tiffany cigarette lighter, casting further doubt on the nature of his disabiity.' (Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen. Baby - read it and weep.)
7. Straw Dogs by John Gray. Compulsory reading for all who count themselves members of the human race. Re-assess any faith you have in the light of this book. 'Which untruths might we be rid of?'