After a trawl through the stash of new books we bought during our recent foray back into the UK, I settled on ‘The Forgotten Legion’ by Ben Kane. Tesco were doing a deal whereby you bought two books for £7 or something, added to which if you bought the new Kane book then you got ‘The Forgotten Legion’ free. That made 3 books for £7 so it seemed a good deal.
Unfortunately, it has to be said that ‘Legion’ isn’t very good. I was hoping for Bernard Cornwall but got Bernard St Austell instead…
The characters are a bit too heavily drawn and Kane seems determined to impress with his use of Latin terms so that the pages are littered with them. OK, the ‘gladius’ was the sword of choice for the Romans, but to keep on calling it a ‘gladius’ and not just a ‘sword’ seems excessive.
I also found some of the modern terms a bit obtrusive. One of the characters is depicted thinking about wolves and the ‘alpha male’ in particular. ‘Pack leader’ would have done fine.
However, the book is still readable, in spite of the somewhat turgid style, and demands very little concentration in this heat – good holiday reading.
Anyway, I was sitting outside reading ‘Legion’ this morning and heard a strange metallic rattle. I looked up and, to my surprise, saw a young Green Woodpecker perching on the folded up clothes drier.
I’ve never seen one quite that close – it must have been about 5 yards away. I called Mrs Shark as quietly as I could, but it flew off before she got outside. Luckily, it landed in the plum tree and we saw it fly out of there and away over the fields to a nearby stand of trees.
Maybe it thought our drier was a tree – good job it didn’t try to bore a hole in the aluminium – or perhaps it was the only retarded woodpecker in these parts…
Whatever, it was a unique experience for us to see one quite so close up, and one of the small but frequent delights of rural life here.
I used to be interested in wildlife and stuff when I was a kid and I guess that life here must have reawakened that interest. I saw a Jersey Tiger Moth yesterday, which was a first for me and I felt positively chuffed!
Filed under: books, Ex-pat Life, Flora and fauna, France, Literature, Personal stuff, Science, Stuff which makes me happy, wild life
I just spat gin and tonic on my keyboard…Bernard St Austell!!
Haven’t seen a Green Woodpecker since I lived in London. We get plenty of Great Spotted Woodies though.
We get the Green and Lesser Spotted here – both spectacular birds.
I used to get woodpeckers in my garden at Bourne End – an absolute joy to see. Is the wildlife as wild as the indigenous population as MK was?
Meant ‘of MK was?’. Obviously!
Roman adventures seem to be the latest fad.
There’s at least two films in production about the Ninth Legion disappearance, and this just popped up on the Trailer Addict site.
Stevius Sharkus – Give me back my legion!