{"id":1764,"date":"2007-01-04T20:18:07","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T20:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2007\/01\/a_conversation\/"},"modified":"2007-01-04T20:18:07","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T20:18:07","slug":"a_conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/a_conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

My parents have read a couple of books by someone who they said was quite good. I was curious to find out more, so I asked:
\nMe: “Who’s the author?”
\nThem: “We can’t remember.”
\nMe: “What’s the name of one of the books he wrote?”
\nThem: “We can’t remember.”
\nMe: “Can you tell me anything about the book? What genre was it?”
\nThem: “Some of it was set in Chile.”
\nMe: “Isabelle Allende?”
\nThem: “No. It’s a man. And they’ve got a British sounding name.”
\nMe: “Can you tell me anything else about his books?”
\nThem: “No. But he’s a lecturer at UCL.”
\nMe: “!”
\nThem: “And he teaches Development Studies.”
\nMe: “How can you remember detail like this, yet not remember either his name or the title of one of his books?”
\nThem: “He does the same subject as your sister. One of the books had ‘Silver’ in the title.”
\nAt this point, I go away and do a lot of Googling with the limited information that I have. I draw a blank. There are an awful lot of books with ‘Silver’ in the title.
\nMy parents inform me that next time they’re in the library they’ll try to find one of his books and make a note.
\nThe next day, I get a call from dad:
\nDad: “He wrote for Spooks.”
\nMe: “David Wolstencroft?”
\nDad: “No.”
\nMe: “How do you know he wrote for Spooks?”
\nDad: “I remember reading his biography at the back.”
\nMe: “Hang on.”
\nI do a quick IMDB search on Spooks to get a list of writers<\/a>. I know that Howard Brenton of Romans in Britain fame is also a writer, but don’t know many others.
\nMe: “Ben Richards?”
\nDad: “Yes!”
\nI do an Amazon search of Ben Richards.
\nMe: “The Silver River?”
\nDad: “That’s the one. There’s another set in Chile.”
\nMe: “The Mermaind and the Drunks.”
\nDad: “That’s it!”
\nI go away contented and in the knowledge that I have many many unread books at home, couldn’t resist popping into Waterstones yesterday and availing myself of their current 3 for 2 offer, and have many more titles I still want to read. Oh well. Ben Richards may well be joining the pile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My parents have read a couple of books by someone who they said was quite good. I was curious to find out more, so I asked: Me: “Who’s the author?” Them: “We can’t remember.” Me: “What’s the name of one of the books he wrote?” Them: “We can’t remember.” Me: “Can you tell me anything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}