Asylum seekers - resources relating to them

If your question is related to asking how you could help asylum seekers,maybe you could ask at your local Mairie or local charity.

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At first glance, I thought there was a pile of coke and a card to chop it out🙂

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My elder daughter was in negotiation with Barbara Cartland’s son to locate her archives to her (daughters) Uni, unfortunately it didn’t work out though she has informed me she did get Shirley Conrad’s archive (no idea who that is). I seem to recall she got to visit her (Barbara’s) house


On seeing your photo of the books she said - “wow, this is a good haul, I would totally take these if the asylum seekers wouldn’t !” So you have a sale @George1 - if you can hold onto them for a few years while we figure a way to reunite them with an aficionado :slight_smile: (FYI she is a specialist in ‘romantic literature’ - but not, at the moment, an asylum seeker).

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Shirley Conrad: “life’s too short to stuff a mushroom”. Or something along those lines.

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Sorry Helen, thanks, though I’m still non plussed. I suppose I should google, but hey ‘life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’ ! :slight_smile:

Shirley CONRAN - wife of Terence CONRAN. Wrote “Superwoman” and made the life of women my age impossible, because the implication was we could do anything and everything. :roll_eyes:

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Ah, my mistake mesdames, desoles. My daughter did type Conran, My typing incorrect. Sue, your comment indicates I must research why the Shirley Conrad archive was treasured. I shall investigate further and report back to you. Best regards.

Not be confused with, and no relation to that other writer, Joseph Conran


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The heart of darkness lies at the centre of the universe (or at least there’s one in our galaxy) - @ChrisMann - Chris will undoubtedly photograph it with a long enough exposure


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Right ‘nuff. Is that nice Conran shop still there in Paris? Not far from Bon MarchĂ©?

Never got round to reading Joseph Conrad. Rider Haggard was on the syllabus at school but my only memory is all the tittering on a Friday afternoon when the teacher made us take it in turn to read aloud and we were trying to work out which poor sod was going to have to utter the words “Sheba’s Breasts”.

“She” was one of my favourite books as a child. And I still remember it.

I can try, but black holes are notoriously difficult to photograph, on account of their blackness. :smiley:

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It would be rather nice to reunite a specialist in romantic literature with some of La Cartland’s finest works. If your daughter would think it worthwhile to arrange a relais type collection/delivery, I could wrap them up in a box. There are about 18-20 of them, weighing about 140g each (we weighed a similar type of paperback this am, and counted the visible books in the photo). Probably cost about €7-9 (weighing about 3-4kg incl a box), plus hopefully a small donation to the association that runs the clothes bank, Caravelles. They would charge 20 centimes per book! Let me know if her love of La Cartland encourages her towards the delivery option.No offence will be taken at all if she doesn’t fancy it. I hadn’t previously envisaged converting the clothes bank into an online bookstore - Amazon beware!

The Heart of Darkness is in Slough, where all hope goes to die.

I like Conrad very much, there’s a nice little nod to him in Alien (the first one) where the spaceship is the Nostromo, I think Ridley Scott must be a fan too.

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Yes, the nostromo will contribute to the film’s atmosphere better than ‘the Nellie’, or even ‘the African Queen’. :slight_smile:

I wonder, did the steamer on the river in Conrad’s book ever get named - possibly the king of Belgium?

No probs, I’ll communicate the offer and good to support the clothes bank!

I think it’s something like Roi de Belges.

The novel’s relationship to contemporary real life events, such as the timeline of its publication and the revelation of the scandal of King Leopolds’s secret kingdom are interestingly complex and I wish I could recall more from Packenham’s classic account, The Scramble for Africa which I still have, but last read twenty or so years ago.

So many books that should be re-read 


Just to update everyone, my daughter is very happy to take up George’s kind offer. My Christmas present sorted! I’ll be in touch George, many thanks.

So, my daughter informs me Shirley Conran wrote ‘Lace’, she says probably the biggest bonkbuster of all. I recall it now, I think I saw a copy lying somewhere around


She sent me a link to her new book, ‘The Bonkbuster’. An excerpt from the description:

“The bonkbuster was an explosively popular form of women’s popular fiction in the long 1980s. Authors like Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz exemplified this genre, selling massive numbers of books over the course of their careers. However, where concurrent forms in media like soap opera and the romance novel have received critical attention, the bonkbuster has been mostly ignored by scholarship. The Bonkbuster: Women’s Popular Reading in the Long 1980s engages with these texts, their contexts, and their readers in order to explore the nature, impact, and history of the bonkbuster, offering the first in-depth critical definition of the genre.

And, @SuePJ , sure enough, one of the chapters is entitled ‘Myth of the Superwoman’.

Merry xmas to all, and special thoughts for toryroo.

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Check OFII, France Terre d’Asile, or La Cimade for education and training support for asylum seekers in France.