Walking: the Oxford Canal and Stratfield Brake

We had a longer walk planned for today, but then the weather forecast changed and instead of the temperatures dropping to the mid-20s it's supposed to get up to 30 degrees again, and walking thirteen and a half miles in 30-degree heat didn't sound either fun or particualarly sensible, so instead we just walked to Sainsbury's via the canal towpath and nature reserve.



Even at 10am the heat was a bit much, though there was plenty of shade along the route which meant it didn't feel too bad. We decided not to walk back home after doing our shopping, as that's mostly along roads and paths through the housing estates, with a lot less shade. I am a bit sad not to have got one last long walk in before we head up to Scotland on Wednesday, but we have done plenty of walking this summer (we clocked up nearly 100 miles in July) and I don't think heat exhaustion is actually good preparation for a 78-mile, 6-day walk.

Reading: The Planet Dweller

I can't remember now exactly where or when I picked up a copy of Jane Palmer's 1985 debut, The Planet Dweller, but I think it's been in the TBR pile for at least a couple of years. I bought it mostly because I always buy books in the Women's Press's SF imprint, which ran from the mid 80s to early 90s, when I find them in charity shops and secondhand bookshops; I vaguely remembered at least coming across a copy in my teens, probably in the local library, but although I certainly remembered the opening (which involves the middle-aged heroine, Diana, trying to persuade her doctor to prescribe HRT and coming away with a prescription for tranquilisers instead) I don't think I actually read the whole thing, as none of the rest of it seemed at all familiar.

The Planet Dweller is SF with a comic tone that reminded me a bit of Douglas Adams. Despite being a very short book (just under 150 pages), Palmer manages to squeeze in several distinct plot threads. One concerns menopausal Diana, who is concerned that she appears to be hearing voices, and her neighbour Yuri, a refugee Russian scientist whose astronomical observations reveal disturbing alignments in the asteroid belt. Somewhere across the galaxy, three engineers from a race of unpleasant aliens are working for the Mott, an even more unpleasant race of aliens, to find a way of dislodging the ancient entities which inhabit certain planets, in order for the Mott to colonise their worlds, opposed by two hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who are currently occupying the bodies of members of a race who, if the cover illustratration is anything to go by (and it is by the author) more or less resemble giant cocker spaniels walking on their hind legs. Unfortunately, saving the planet-dwelling entity currently targeted by the Mott would result in the Earth's destruction, and it's up to Diana and Yuri to save the planet.

I'm not sure the plot of The Planet Dweller quite worked. There was an awful lot going on in not much space, and a final resolution that was literally deus ex machina and which required surprisingly little actual action on the part of the human protagonists. However, I rather liked the characters and their interactions, and it's always nice to read SF with middle-aged women in the foreground. It wasn't laugh-out-loud funny, but it was definitely entertaining, and all in all I think I quite enjoyed it as a lighthearted diversion.