Radar Love

University, 1977 - 1980.  What did I listen to?   

Promotional(?) pic of Golden Earring

Radar Love, by Golden Earring was one of my favourites.  Edgy, sexy, lots of tight trousers and long hair (and that was just me).  Yummy.  But did you know they were Dutch? And have you ever listened to their 1969 smash hit 'dong-dong-diki-digi-dong'?  No?  Well!  Get ready.  Go!

Golden Earring before Radar Love

Now, just in case, like me, you prefer Radar Love, here it is:

Radar Love (with psychedelic special effects)

When I hear this one I think of beer, boys drinking beer, spilled beer, beer bottles... you guessed it - the Students' Union bar.  There it was.  The already out-of-date jukebox with its eclectic selection of music that could brand a person with just one slip of the finger.  Rock chick and cider drinker, blond hair and size 11 jeans (yes, there were in-between sizes in those days), I wouldn't be seen dead listening to David Soul or The Jackson 5.  Oh, no!  I was so cool I almost melted.  (My words, not anyone else's.) 

These days, having donned my sports bra and trainers, I start up a selection of music on my mp3 player that I use for jogging round the garden (every other day - I'm not a fanatic).  Radar Love is for when I've survived the first ten minutes and want to up the ante and do a few random moves to startle my husband (he's usually up to his eyes in JAVA or C++ and not expecting my graceful form to hove into view).  Then I go on to something like Madonna (I favour the William Orbit productions), The Black-eyed Peas (I Gotta Feeling), or Frankie Goes to Hollywood (Relax - of course).  But I digress.

Just in case you were wondering whether Frans Krassenburg's hands are still 'wet on the wheel', I looked  up what claims to be a recent picture for you: 

 I think that's Frans on the left.

And if that's not enough, you can find a complete history of this most wonderful of bands here:

Golden Earring for people much more interested than I am...

I had fun.  Hope you did, too.

Until the next time...

Novels by B. A. Spicer

I have written a number of novels, all of which are character-driven and involve intricate plots that will keep you guessing.  I believe that the writing itself should be a major part of a book's appeal.


My latest release is Locked Away.  A quick, tense read.

Ellie wakes to find herself in darkness, lying on bare earth with her mouth taped and her hands tied. After the panic subsides, she endeavours to learn as much as she can about her elusive captor, in a bid to outwit him.

But this is no ordinary abduction and it requires the services of no ordinary detective. 

Cue DCI Alice Candy – she has a reputation for getting her man. Her methods might be unorthodox, her rumoured extrasensory perception might be scoffed at, but with DS Will Brady at her side, there is no better chance for the young woman who is locked away. 

This is the first book in the DCI Alice Candy series.  The second will be available early in 2018.

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My Grandfather's Eyes is my first published novel, although it was not the first I wrote.
I tend to enjoy creating flawed characters, and Alex is probably one of my most complex.  There isn't much to like about her, it's true, but she does have some serious issues to deal with.  Her single-minded approach to investigating the past so that she can move on with her life often has shocking consequences.  What has she done and what will she do next?  These are the questions that drive the story forward.
You can download a free sample of My Grandfather's Eyes to find out whether Alex is the type of character you might enjoy.  Just click on the link below:

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A Good Day for Jumping follows the lives of Stephen Firth, a handsome, rich, promiscuous young man and Joyce Shackleton, a deeply surprising middle-aged woman. (No, they are not going to have a torrid affair - sorry to disappoint!  Their stories are linked in a much more subtle and interesting way.)

Set in Greece, where I lived for two years, there is a many-layered plot involving characters whose worlds collide in the most disturbing ways.  

There are characters you can really care about and others you may despise.  The world is not full of perfect people, after all.

Follow the link below and look inside - you will find yourself in the small town of Rethymnon on the island of Crete, where Stephen Firth is considering his options.

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A Life Lived Twice is quite different in format to my first two novels, with shorter chapters and rather more well-balanced characters, who lead normal lives and whose interactions do not always lead to disaster!  However, there are the usual scandals associated with a close-knit society and there is also Claude Cousteau (the undertaker's son) to add a touch of evil that will undermine the pleasant comings and goings in the small French village of St. Martin le Vieux, where our heroine, Martha Burton, has bought a traditional Charentaise house, and has attracted the attentions of her handsome neighbour.

 

Follow the link and download a free sample to find out how the idyll of everyday life in a French setting has no bearing on a man who has grown up in an altogether more disturbing environment.

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What I Did Not Say is my most recent novel.  Jessica Morley is on her way to meet with a man she hasn't seen for fifteen years.  In her bag there is a package she must deliver.  As she travels south, she remembers Jack Banford, a boy who captured her imagination as a child and made her believe in a fure that could never happen.  Now it is time for her to set the record straight and finally pu the past behind her.  If you like a good courtroom drama, you'll love part two of this well-received story of love and cruelty in all its forms.

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My latest read: Crash by J G Ballard

J G certainly divides the camp with 'Crash'.  Released in 1973, the reviews were uncompromising: ‘Crash is, hands down, the most repulsive book I’ve yet to come across.’ New York Times, Sept. 1973 (the ambiguity of the phrasal verb is almost unbearable).  Martin Amis, Observer, July 1973 wrote: ‘Ballard has a brilliant reputation but this novel’s obsession with sado-masochism via deliberate car-crashing is repellent.’ 

Ballard himself says in his introduction: ‘...the ultimate role of Crash is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscapes.’  That got me.

I read on and discovered that Crash is undoubtedly explicitly pornographic, but there have been many novels that have crossed boundaries and appalled (or delighted) readers in the past.  Crash gets into a territory that is so new that I had to keep reading despite the natural revulsion I felt for some of the most deviant imagery I have ever experienced.  The intimate and devastating bringing together of automobile parts and human anatomy, where gauges and gear sticks leave scars that inspire the ‘nightmare angel of the expressways’, Dr. Robert Vaughan  to perform sex acts recreated from accidents he has witnessed had me squirming and yet...

...I went along with it, in some reassuring way, holding the hand of the narrator, who, although enjoying the kind of sexual freedoms that inhabit the most creative of imaginations, seemed at the same time, recognisably human - he cared about his wife, his friends, but, like me, was intrigued and wanted to know more about the decadent and highly charismatic Vaughn’s nightmare obsessions with the motor car and those injured or killed in crashes happening almost on a daily basis on the highway.

The thesis is extreme: that we are living on the edge of a cataclysmic event in which we will all be consumed.  Technology, and the dreams it ensnares us with, will destroy us.  In the process, it will continue to de-humanise us.

The impacts between metal, glass and upholstery and the human body seemed to blur the differences between what is animate and inanimate, but more than that, I felt that there was an element of sacrificial inevitability.  The many human fluids mentioned that appeared to decorate and mingle with the excretions of the motor car did not detract from this.

Crash caught me up and carried me into a startlingly new domain, which both horrified and fascinated me.  At no point did I doubt the wider aims of the author, who asserts that Crash ‘is an extreme metaphor for an extreme situation, a kit of desperate measures only for use in an extreme crisis.’  Elsewhere he states that Crash is a ‘psychopathic hymn which has a point.’

The descriptions are unswervingly detailed, the images deeply disturbing, the repetition of death and injury on the highways and flyovers relentless.  It’s worse than any bad dream you could imagine.

Am I glad I read it?  You bet.