pumpkinstrokemarrow

Now polished off the last of the Agatha Christie's acquired from the Oxfam Shop in Ewell, this one a very late Poirot called the Hallowe'en party, published some 6 or 7 years before she died. Quite long at 336 easy on the eyes paperback pages and I found it quite hard to get into although the story gripped well enough once one had, despite the silly plot. Rather like the television versions in that regard. The word meretricious cropped up at least twice, an unusually unusual word for AC and, while I had the vague idea that it meant false I did go so far as to look it up to find that it has the same root as merit, from the Latin for to earn own's keep. But it comes from us via ladies who earn their keep horizontally and who are apt to dress in the flashy, vulgar way which has come to be known as meretricious. Entirely different from the mendacious with which I had muddled it up. Not sure what prompted AC to drag the word into her usually easy going prose where at least one of the two uses did not seem appropriate at all.

Interested to see how she gives us the story from various points of view, without needing to go in for the flash backs which I have always found rather tiresome, especially in film. Accomplished by telling the bulk of the story as we might see it as flies on the wall, but then having Poirot discuss the case so that we see it from another, preferably privileged, point of view. In this case he has both a crime writer (to the character of which she can, of course, bring a bit of inside knowledge) and an ex-policeman to discuss with, in addition to the wrap up lecture at the end. But a device which makes the whole a bit more lively than it might otherwise be. Plus I am not going to spot many of the clues without a bit of help from these discussions on the side.

Interested also to see how Poirot has been allowed to age over the forty odd years she was writing his stories. How many of her readers grew up and grew old, as it were, both with her and her creation? Because I think she is showing her age too, with the preoccupations of people of her age and generation being allowed plenty of air time. Far too many lunatics running around who ought to be in asylums. Far too many criminals being let off too lightly for a promise to behave better in the future. Far too many young girls being slaughtered down shady lanes by sex perverts. She is also harder on Poirot than the TV. She makes him a bit of a prat about his moustache, his patent leather shoes and his dress generally, while on the box these traits have been cuddlerised. All part of what makes us love him. Perhaps that is a necessary part of the transition to the small screen.

And having pondered before on how much plotting is done before one actually starts writing proper, I now wonder whether this story could not simply have been written out, without having any clear idea of how it was going to end until she got to the end. One lets the thing unfold, sprinkling complications about and then one just lets the appropriate one select itself as the vehicle for the denouement. Let that come to one in one's sleep, as the solutions to so many other problems do. Perhaps this will work well enough with experience. As a beginner one might need to go back over what one has written and do a little touching up to bring the beginning into line with the end.

Now starting to worry about the new Logitech mouse I picked up outside the Prince of Wales (on the evening before New Year'e Eve. See post 31/12. Blog search still working for me). I have connected this uncertified piece of equipment to a PC without virus protection. It seems to me, having done this, that it would be entirely possible to load something into whatever chip one finds inside a mouse which could dig in through the USB port and do something frightful. Given that you can connect more or less anything to the port, it must have a fairly powerful interface. Certainly powerful enough to load up and execute code resident on data sticks because I have one which appears to generate exactly that result. So all I need to do is infiltrate what I imagine to be a fairly low-security mouse operation and away I go. People who go around scraping mice off the pavement beware!

The good news is that the mouse itself is, on balance, an improvement on the Kensington mouse it replaces. Apart from not having an elasticated cord, the thing fits the palm better and the keys have a more positive touch. Nice clean click. The only bad point is that the scroll roller on the centre line is too sensitive, sometimes resulting in the screen jumping a line or two when you do not particularly want it to.