Today is Tuesday Review Day, and we are really pleased to share our appreciation for Alex Craigie’s ( or Trish as we all know her) new book, The Rat in the Python. As I read this book, I relived so many memories, some I didn’t even know I remembered. It was good to actually see some of them again, as there are many illustrations. Memory Lane, big time!

If you haven’t heard of a liberty bodice, believe that half-a-crown is something to do with impoverished royalty and never had the experience of slapping a television to stop the grainy black and white picture from rolling, then this series might not be for you. Please give it a go, though – I suspect that most of it will still resonate no matter where you were brought up!

The Rat in the Python is about Baby Boomers who, in the stability following the Second World War, formed a statistical bulge in the population Python. It is a personal snapshot of a time that is as mystifying to my children as the Jurassic Era – and just as unrecognisable.

My intention is to nudge some long-forgotten memories to the surface, test your own recollections and provide information and statistics to put it all in context.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I’ll begin…

Alex Craigie

Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.

Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.

When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.

Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.

Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.

Book lovers are welcome to contact her on alexcraigie@aol.com

Our Review

Not exactly sure of the significance of the title, but reading this story really took me back to the golden years, for despite how difficult they were at the time, they still evoke such happy moments.

My first washing machine was a Hotpoint (as shown in the book) with a mangle on the top. I can’t tell you how often those rubber rollers used to grab my fingers!

I loved my whistling kettle, too, right up to the day I let it boil dry, and the bottom fell out. And as for that special kitchen drawer, the one that contained everything that didn’t belong anywhere else, I still have one of those.

Things that I still miss?

Good old-fashioned pillow ticking, these days, nothing stops those feathers from poking you in the eye. Pears soap, I loved the smell.

And my Cannon gas stove with the eye-level grill. These days I must bend double to make cheese on toast.

Those were the days?

Maybe, but I am so grateful the toilet paper improved!