The Sin of Father Mouret

Zut alors! The fifth book in Zola's Rougon Macquart series achieved the remarkable feet of being completely mad, but also incredibly dull. The plot is straightforward enough: a fanatical priest has a nervous breakdown, gets sent to a remote country house to recuperate, falls in love with a 16-year-old girl, gets her up the duff, returns to the priesthood and drives her to suicide. That will save you from ever having to read the book.

For a so-called realist, Zola seems to have been under the influence of something when he wrote this book, with its interminable descriptions of plants and the crude metaphors for the fecundity of nature. The result reads like Gardeners World meets Debbie Does Dallas (not that I've ever watched Gardeners World, you understand), but is considerably less entertaining.

It's strange how such a great writer can be so erratic. I could understand if he was an enfant terrible who went off the boil or, conversely, got better with each work. But with the Rougon Macquart novels, the quality varies dramatically from book to book.

I'm now reading the sixth book, His Excellency Eugene Rougon and although the jury's still out, it's a definite improvement on its predecessor, thank God. Once that's finished I can reward myself with the first of Zola's great novels, L'assamoir. I can't wait.

Not how I meant it to sound...

A DVD-sized package lands on our doormat.

'What's this?' asks my wife, who remembers that I promised to stop buying DVDs.

'Er...it's a pirate copy of a film Jenny Agutter made when she was 15'

It is only when I see my wife's arched eyebrows that I realise how this sounds. She knows that like most men of my age I have a thing about Jenny Agutter, but has it reached the point where I'm buying dodgy DVDs of films she made when she was underage?

I try to explain the plot of the film, saying that she plays a schoolgirl but I realise that I'm digging deeper. Admittedly the sight of Jenny Agutter in school uniform appealed to me when I first saw the film, but in mitigation I was a schoolboy at the time. What impressed me most was the ordinariness of the setting and Agutter's brilliant performance and I have wanted to see the film again for years, but it has never been released on DVD.

I convince my wife that if she watches the film with me, she'll understand its appeal. She is still not convinced but agrees to see the beginning with me. Ten hours later we are sitting on the sofa watching the film and within minutes my wife agrees that it is brilliant.


I Start Counting was filmed in 1968 and is set in an anonymous new town in the south of England. The film is ostensibly a murder mystery, but the thriller element is incidental as the real theme of the movie is change and growth. We see Jenny Agutter's character changing from a child into an adult against a backdrop of a town where old buildings and a traditional way of life are being destroyed to make way for the new. As for Agutter's acting, it was one of the best things I've ever seen.

It's a mystery why this wonderful film hasn't been commercially released when so much rubbish is available on DVD. I would have thought that Agutter's name alone would guarantee commercial success. There are some decent pirate copies available on Ebay and until the film's owners have the good sense to make it available to the public, I'd strongly recommend buying one.

Brief encounter

I'm standing on the platform at Clapham Junction waiting for the doors of the train to open. Through the glass I can see a huge black man who looks as if he could beat up Mr T with his little finger. He has no discernible neck and seems to consist of pure muscle. During the five seconds that it takes for the doors to open, I have already managed to imagine a whole life for him and wonder what it must be like to know that you could beat the crap out of anyone you liked. What would I do with that power?

The doors open and I notice that he's holding a paperback in his right hand. A novel. As we pass each other I quickly look down to see what the book is. If I was locked in a room for a month, I would never guess the answer.


He's reading Catherine Cookson.

What do these two pictures have in common?

What's the common thread linking the items in these photos, which include a first edition hardback of Thomas Harris's novel Hannibal, a boxed VHS set of Sex in the City, videos of David Attenborough's documentary The Blue Planet and paperback copies of The Da Vinci Code and The Lovely Bones?

The answer is that they are all rubbish. Literally. Every item would have been dumped in a landfill site if the staff at the local refuse and recycling centre hadn't rescued them from people's dustbin bags. This is the room where all of the retrieved items are kept. There are CDs, picture frames, a bird cage, a four-volume Cassell History of England and, for some unknown reason, hundreds of golf balls.


I realise that VHS cassettes are now obsolete, although I would have thought that there are enough people with VCRs who would happily pay a nominal sum for many of these titles. It is appalling to think that they are probably going to end up buried in the ground, poisoning the soil.

But what really hurt was the books. I can't bring myself to throw any books away, not because I think they're sacred (I've worked too long in the book trade for that) but because I know that there are people out there who will read them. The books in the photo included novels by Stephen King, John Grisham, Peter Robinson, Josephine Cox, Michael Crichton and James Patterson - all bestselling authors. I'm sure that if these books' owners had bothered donating them to the local charity shop then they would have sold.

I visited this dump earlier today and deliberately took my son with me, as he's going through a very materialistic phase and spends most of his spare time pouring through the Argos catalogue. So far I've failed to win him over and when, last week, I spent ten minutes explaining clearly and concisely why money doesn't bring happiness he replied 'Dad, that's the most stupid argument I've ever heard.'

However today I think I made an impression. He seemed genuinely shocked by the piles of discarded computer monitors, televisions and electrical goods and when we entered the hut with the books, I saw a look of dismay and incredulity. We walked back to the car in silence as if we were leaving a burial. I wondered what the world would be like for my son's generation and whether we would be able to change things before it was too late, then he looked at me and said 'Dad, can I buy a fish tank?'