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Well, whoopdedodahday… I’ve managed to jettison the sling and the big bandage, and now it’s just a small dressing covering the stitches on my right hand. I can use the mouse with my right hand again, but I can’t ride my bike, drive, or lift anything with that hand for a few weeks or get the dressing wet.

I’ve had a lot of time to sit and read over the past few days, and so here’s a couple of reviews for the books I’ve read recently to pass the time:

Take the Gun, Leave the Cannoli, by Mark Seal:

Mark Seal has written a wonderfully researched book here about the making of ‘The Godfather’, the most successful film of all time (and my favourite film too). Within a month of its premiere it was making 1 million dollars per day, leaving movie-goers stunned after watching it for nearly 3 hours.

But the beginnings back in 1971 were less than successful. New director Francis Ford Coppola’s ideas for the film were ridiculed to the extent where he thought he’d be fired. Al Pacino, not known at the time, was so nervous being around greats such as Marlon Brando that he couldn’t think straight and thought he’d be fired as well. Diane Keaton had no idea why she had been cast as Kay. All the while dark shadows of Mafia henchmen loomed over the set (some had bit parts in the film), making sure nobody uttered the word ‘Mafia’ at all throughout the whole film!

We learn of Brando’s transformation to Don Corleone via the application of padding around his washboard figure, a mouthpiece to make his jaw jut forwards, and 10lb weights on his feet to make him walk slower.  We’re told of James Caan’s terror at being fitted with stunt explosives for his death scene. We’re told a lot, lot more.  The detail in this book is tremendous, and it’s a must for all Godfather fans.

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LIVE AND LET, by Judith Barrow.

Judith Barrow and her husband turned part of their Pembrokeshire home into a holiday apartment back in the 1970s.  This delightful but short book (that I read in one sitting) consists of some amusing stories about several people who rented it.  There were the two elderly sisters who blocked the sewage pipes with something unusual, the hippies with their free-loading friends, the naturists, the Bingo players, and the philandering TV reporter to name but a few.   Reading this, it made me rather relieved that I only let my caravan out to people I know!

The Barrows stopped letting out the apartment after some years, and Judith’s Aunt Olive moved in.  Aunt Olive’s slide into dementia and eventually into a care home is described in the book, which also gave Judith the inspiration to write another story, ‘The Memory’, which was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2021.  She has also added a short story regarding dementia and poem to ‘Live and Let’.