dovegreyreader scribbles

How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup ~ J.L.Carr

'Book writing can be a tedious job needing some incentive to keep one at it. The impulse here was 'can this unbelievable feat be made to sound like the truth, even though it didn't happen? 

So I stacked the cards - a foreigner with remarkable theories. two young men with good reasons for having quit top class football, a Chairman of Napoleonic ability.

Then I dredged up memories of 1930 when I was an unqualified teacher, 18 years old and playing that single season for South Milford White Rose when we won a final which never ended (Pitch invasion and furious fights are not new things.) I learnt much of rural life during that long-gone autumn and early spring...

But is this story believable? Ah, it all depends upon whether you want to believe it.

J.L.Carr 1992

A  notoriously mysterious and private man, this is about as much information about How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup as can be expected from the writer who burned all his diaries in his final years, shunned publicity, would dissemble if journalists came too close, but was not averse to playing the system if he had a new book to sell via the publishing company he ran from his spare bedroom. I have been dipping into The Last Englishman - The Life of J.L. Carr  and finding out a fraction more about the enigma that was J.L.Carr

....the most English of Englishmen: headmaster of a Northamptonshire school, cricket enthusiast and campaigner for the conservation of country churches. But he was also the author of half a dozen utterly unique novels, including his masterpiece, A Month in the Country, and a publisher of some of the most eccentric and smallest books ever printed.

Byron Rogers' acclaimed biography reveals an elusive, quixotic and civic-minded individual with an unswerving sympathy for the underdog, who led his schoolchildren through the streets to hymn the beauty of the cherry trees and paved his garden path with the printing plates for his hand-drawn maps, and whose fiction is quite remarkably autobiographical. Much more than the life of a thoroughly decent man, The Last Englishman is a comic and touching anatomy of the best kind of Englishness.'

At heart, I am as proud to be English as the Scots, Irish and Welsh are of their countries, and so a fictional journey to Steeple Sinderby, the fenland (perhaps) village created by J.L.Carr, was something of a self-indulgent and welcome treat. Perhaps best known for that book of all books, A Month in the Country and there's the rub I suppose, for any author who writes such a stellar book, and one so close to my heart, well...would it be worth reading anything else they have written. Except the book group theme was Sport and How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup beckoned.

Firstly to explain for those who might now know...the FA Cup is the annual tussle for the top football trophy in England played between the league clubs that turn out every week across the country. It's a knock-out competition and it can get quite exciting when a lowly club (like Plymouth Argyle) gets a bit of a cup run and advances through the early stages. The random draw often pits the top clubs against the lesser ones, and the mighty do occasionally fall when faced with tiny stadiums and the partisan enthusiasm of local supporters.

And it's all here in spades, in this 120 page novel published in 1975. Remembering that England had won the World Cup in 1966 and we still thought we were quite good at football in 1975, quite expected that we would win it again very soon, so a book like this that raises the underdogs to the heights of champions must have been as much of a delight then as it is now...fifty three years since that victory and still we wait.

With some clever tactics inspired by the postulations on the Art of the Possible from a local businessman, the village football team start to rethink their approach, first turning their attentions to the goalkeeper...

' a very good goalkeeper is a team's most valuable asset. Almost alone he can thwart superior opponents.

A goalkeeper does not need to be an accomplished footballer. He needs qualifications similar to a good cabinet-maker or bus driver - distinguishing instantly what will or will not fit a space. To this must be allied outstanding agility and courage.'

Indeed, when I thought about it, how true. The goal keeper doesn't need to be that good at football. he just needs to be able to kick the ball a long way, fill that space between the posts and catch the ball when it heads his way.'

Son of a trapeze artist 'Monkey' Tonks fits the bill. He didn't 'climb trees, he ran up them' hence the nickname, climbed the church steeple to straighten out the weather vane, and though his ball skills were limited (non-existent) this milkman quickly embraced the whole idea of stopping such a thing getting past him.

I'm writing this and laughing all over again at how funny this was in the book, and how ridiculous it sounds in explanation. Suffice to say J.L.Carr weaves the words like magic as the team use every advantage at their disposal  to play their way to the final at Wembley.

There were some little observations that had me smiling too...

'The English are properly honoured amongst Europeans for their protestations of uprightness whilst preparing the destruction of their enemies...'

And so it was in Steeple Sinderby. Using the examples of Bannockburn's battlefield pocked with hidden pits, along with Wellington's cunning ruse to make the French 'play uphill at the Battle of Waterloo, and so the search is on for the most unsuitable piece of land in the parish for the siting of a pitch to flummox the 'enemy.' 

'There's an old spring deeper 'n any drain and you'll find falling balls won't bounce and running balls'll dra-a-ag.' He then added unnecessarily, 'There'll be no need to record what I've said in the minutes, Mr Gidner.'

Honestly I laughed like that proverbial drain, and some, and thought what a wonderful book this is for the now, for the moment. I smiled at seeing how the success of the underdogs can lift a nation's spirits...

'...here was this Real Life Success Story of a Lifetime of people just like them. And these poor souls felt, 'This could happen to me. To me! If these poor country folk can do great memorable deeds, then so can I. Given the chance. 

So what was happening in Steeple Sinderby breathed hope back into hearts withered, rotted and stunted by what life had done to them, and what they'd done with life...and each saw out story as it suited him.'

This was 1975, of course times have changed but some sentiments never do. There is comedy balanced with melancholy here too and I felt the full gamut of emotions whilst thinking maybe we need a J.L.Carr writing now...

Do we have one I wonder...

Anyway, if you are in need of a smile read How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup and I promise you will...even if you don't really like football.

And have you read any more of J.L.Carr's books...

 

 

 

The Franchise Affair ~ Josephine Tey

I was struck, when reading about the life of novelist Josephine Tey, by the similarities in her life to that of Nan Shepherd of The Living Mountain. Both women born in Scotland just three years apart in the 1890s, both writers, both reticent about publicity and both committed to caring for elderly parents, perhaps sacrificing some of their own personal ambitions in the process. I wonder if they ever met.

Born in Inverness, Josephine Tey (the pen name of Elizabeth Mackintosh), like Nan Shepherd, would receive a solid education that enabled her to qualify as a physical training teacher and led to employment in schools in Liverpool, Oban, Eastbourne and Tunbridge Wells before finally having to return home in 1923 to care first for her dying mother and then to keep house for her father. Josephine would outlive her father by a mere two years, dying at the age of fifty-six, but in that time she wrote some splendid novels and several plays (under the pen name Gordon Daviot)  and I can hardly believe that I have only just discovered them.

Sir John Gielgud, who would act in several of the plays, became a life-long friend of Josephine's saying this of her 

'...an elusive character who shunned photographers and publicity of all kinds and who gave no interviews to the press, was deeply reserved, and was 'proud without being arrogant, and obstinate, though not conceited'...'

Many of you will be way ahead of me on this one so please do add your thoughts in comments, but having plumped for The Franchise Affair when faced with a shelf-full in Waterstones the other day, I quickly ordered another three once I had finished it. 

When local solicitor Robert Blair is called in to represent a mother and daughter accused of the abduction and beating of a young girl, Betty Kane, in order to make her work as their maid, a deep sense of mystery and intrigue surrounds their house, Franchise, and the town of  Milford. The Sharpes live on the outskirts of the town in  their dilapidated and secretive house, inherited without the means to maintain it and, thanks to high walls and solid gates, visible only from the top deck of a bus. Yet Betty Kane, having apparently made her escape and with the bruises and a convincing account of her treatment, seems to know every detail of the house, the interior, the attic in which she has been imprisoned, its contents and more. The situation predictably runs out of control once the national press get their teeth into it and suddenly everyone has an opinion and becomes judge and jury.

Having eschewed contemporary fiction for a while for all its ticking of the PC boxes, it is serves me well to remember that fiction has done this since forever, maybe its purpose, amongst many others, is to immortalise the now for the future. Meanwhile The Franchise Affair, published in 1947, laments the single letter of five thousand written to Scotland Yard that might be worthy of police attention...

'Letter writing is the natural outlet of the "odds". The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties -...also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet... they can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it...But I do remind you that the ordinary intelligent citizen writes only one time in five thousand.'

Likewise the press come under equal scrutiny, and when the word  'FASCISTS' is painted in large capitals along Franchise's wall, and bricks are lobbed through the windows...well this could have been one of many moments in recent history.

The story cracks along apace as Robert Blair, beguiled by the younger Miss Sharpe steps well beyond his brief in support of the women, and in an effort to prove their innocence...or are they guilty. Josephine Tey cleverly kept me guessing. I really couldn't predict which rabbit was going to be pulled out of the hat, and without giving anything away it is an irony that the newspaper much maligned will feature large in this final courtroom conjuring trick.

The Franchise Affair felt like a book that has stood the test of time despite its occasional non-2019 attitudes leaving me keen to read the rest of Josephine Tey's novels, except I'm now stuck for choice as to which of these to pick up next. They seem to have had a very favourable make-over, with delectably subtle covers and floppy pages and binding which are my new best friend. All suggestions gratefully received and now over to the Josephine Tey fan club which I'm sure is out there amongst you and itching to confirm in comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We need to talk about.... Trousers

You know what it’s like by now. Something comes into my head and we just have to have a conversation about it. Mostly walking trousers today, but also trousers in general, how I hate shopping for them. It’s the standing in front of the mirror and seeing the new bulges,

...or the skin tight legs that won’t go above the knees, and this whole ‘sits comfortably below the hips’ thing...does anything ‘sit comfortably below the hips’  and not sap a mature woman’s confidence.

Or the shops who have the sizing or the shape ALL WRONG....it’s not me obviously. 

Nor do I like to think of myself as a ‘label’ snob, but honestly, once you’ve shopped for outdoor clothes in New Zealand, in shops where it takes you hours to walk to the other end and where the brands are of the highest quality and the sales are legendary, well, shopping for the same here in the U.K. is a bit of a let-down. 

Meanwhile my legs were freezing. This was because I had spent last summer in communications with Rohan about the very expensive fleece-lined ‘Winter Roamers’ and the broken leg pocket zips on both pairs. Already replaced and broken again it was clear we were going to have to call it a day. To be more precise it was the very delicate-looking zip tag that had snapped in the washing machine, rendering the most useful pocket absolutely useless. Now these hadn’t been cheap. I’d seen them as a good investment based on ‘you get what you pay for’ in terms of quality and longevity. I have Rohan skirts that are now coming of age at eighteen after all. Summer after summer I heave a sigh that they still fit, having worn and washed them endlessly and having no trouble with the exact same zip tags. The joke was that my Walking Friend had bought a pair of walking trousers in Lidl for £9 and the zips on those were fine.

Eventually Rohan and I came to a satisfactory arrangement and I got a full refund on two pairs of trousers, plus, after a bit of persuasion, a £30 gift voucher for having to part with my beloved trousers in which I had climbed ‘mountains’ in New Zealand. 

And yes, I am in the picture twice, Clever eh, but I deserved to be after climbing the Bealey Spur track for that view.

As is the way of these things the money disappeared into central funds and now I haven’t got any winter trousers for walking out on Dartmoor, or wearing on very cold days, so Bookhound and I went to Plymouth in search of a pair.

’I am not buying Peter Storm,’ I warned him as he steered me towards Millets.

For those who might not know, Peter Storm is a brand at the budget end of the outdoor clothing market. Perfectly adequate but absolutely not for me. I’d look at Rab, Craghoppers (maybe though they are an odd fit on me), Berghaus...all very acceptable. We did Cotswold Outdoor and found zilch and so Bookhound redoubled his efforts regarding Millets.

’I am NOT buying cheap and cheerful Peter Storm,’ I muttered as I skulked my way down to the shop.

Maybe you can see where this is headed...

The racks in Millets were laden with all sorts of fleece-lined trousers.

I started with the Brashers and had the same problem as the Craghoppers. Some too low on the hips, others too high on the waist; some skin tight, some way too baggy in the leg; mostly sludge-coloured which depresses me no end. Eventually Bookhound (bravely I have to say given my mood) handed me a pair of black Peter Storm Soft Shell Fleece Lined Trousers...sound dreadful don’t they.

You’d imagine something tracksuity and...well just awful.

’Alright,’ I sighed, ‘I’ll try them on, but for £26 (Rohan were £90) they can’t be any good.’

After a session of pulling and heaving on all manner of unsuitables (I’m a UK 14 it shouldn’t be that difficult) I wasn’t hopeful. Except they slipped on easily, zipped up nicely, sat perfectly on my waist, not too baggy, not too tight. In fact they were a really nice shape, warm, comfortable, the only drawback being the words Peter Storm embroidered on the leg. No way could I pass these off as anything more exclusive.

’I’ll have two pairs,’ I said, swallowing my pride and bedecked with hubris, as I emerged from the cubicle to the shocked faces of Bookhound and the shop assistant who had obviously picked up my mood. Here’s the thing though, these shops now only stock a single pair of anything and are restocked one-for-one so I had to make do with a single pair. 

‘Probably sensible,’ I said on the way home, ‘there must be something wrong with them, probably not breathable, I’ll overheat and need an ambulance.’

Anyway all I need to do is give them a new name, so how I love my beautiful Meps Rotter (Anagram of Peter Storm obvs and we’ve decided exclusive Finnish outdoor wear) and what a lesson it all was.

Do you have this problem with trousers...

Am I the only label snob in the world...

Meanwhile, have you tried to buy a pair of jeans in M&S lately...you'll need a degree and a bucket-load of patience. If it's any help, after wading through about thirty racks  I found ankle grazers in a nice, not too tight style which I just bought in Long so they grazed my foot instead.

 

 

And the winners are...

Thank you for entering everyone. A copy of Frost Fair by Carol Ann Duffy will be skating its merry way to the ten lucky winners who should all have received an email by now. If you send your addresses at warp speed Picador will post the books out in good time for Christmas.

Advent Sunday Prize Draw : Frost Fair ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Advent Sunday is here, we can sing Hills of the North (and South) Rejoice and say the word Christmas at last. We’ll be bringing in our bough for the kitchen today and will start decorating it having decided that we will enjoy a full season of Christmas cheer this year, especially given the skies are grey and the rest etc. This will involve a trip up into the loft to find the deccies and yes, it doesn’t seem like five minutes since Offspringette helped me to pack them away before she flew back to New Zealand last year. 

And if it’s Advent Sunday then it’s time for another scribbles tradition too. The prize draw for a copy of Carol Ann Duffy’s annual Christmas offering very kindly offered by Picador. Every year I ask and every year (except last year, there wasn’t one) they say ‘Christmas wouldn’t be right without it.’ 

And then there were ten, so this year ten copies of Frost Fair to be won.

 

It is a snowy London day in The Great Winter of 1683. We follow our bold narrator as she explores ‘the town on the Thames’, a thousand tents and dancing fires lit on the frozen water with jubilant residents and lively festive revelry. All is a fete upon the ice as she sees jugglers, dancing bears, palm readers and even a merry wedding. Her journey leads her to meet many new companions with whom to spend a starry night upon the river, where they sleep with no inkling of who will be looking down on them in the morning light . . .

Carol Ann Duffy's new Christmas poem, Frost Fair is inspired by the fairs held on the River Thames in London as it froze over in the uncommonly cold winters of the Little Ice Age. This delightful, moving new poem captures the inventiveness of a great city and the drama of winter. Beautifully illustrated by David De Las Heras, Frost Fair is an irresistible read for our festive season.

If you would like to be in it to win it, (and these can go worldwide), please do leave a comment on this post and Magnus will engage his Choosing Paw dreckly.

Incidentally Magnus has declared winter, and after a bit of sign language we finally realised it was Basket on the Kitchen Windowsill Season. No fool that cat when the Aga cranks up.

 

Footnote: comments are now closed and Magnus is doing his choosing.

Olive Kitteridge ~ Elizabeth Strout

It has taken me no less than ten years to make the acquaintance of Olive Kitteridge.

I bought the paperback in good faith backalong even though I loathed the cover. It stayed on the shelf until I read My Name is Lucy Barton and realised I had to fill in the gaps. Elizabeth Strout's writing first came onto my radar with Abide With Me in 2006 and I was an instant fan. Having overcome the cover  in 2016 I then started to read Olive Kitteridge only to find the font was miniscule along with the line spacing and I gave up, three years on and it seemed even smaller. It's happening more and more often so perhaps it's my eyes, but once you've relaxed into adjustable font Kindle reading it's hard to struggle on...

Except Kindle books, unless bought via the Daily Deal, are no longer as economical as they were and upwards of £5.99 seems a lot to pay for a book I already own. But it was late one night, I'd read the sample and realised how a great writer draws their reader in very fast. These were interesting people and I absolutely had to read the rest.

So that is the story of how I have finally met the amazing Olive Kitteridge in 2019.

Olive the maths teacher is married to Henry the pharmacist, they have one son, Christopher and all is not sweetness and light. Olive speaks her mind and seems to dominate, Henry seems meek and hen-pecked, while Christopher is just plain awkward and ungrateful. The action rapidly jumps ahead by twenty years and my curiosity about what may have happened in the interim was insatiable. It is through a series of stories, in which Olive and Henry make sometimes fleeting cameo appearances, that the events of their lives unfold. It is beyond clever and beyond compelling as Elizabeth Strout creates a huge web of interconnected lives, shedding light on the couple's place in the community as those lives overlap, revealing what the community thinks about them via these different perspectives. With Olive as the common denominator there will be loves and cruelties, dramas and disappointments and through it all stomps Olive...by all accounts larger than life, big, tall, heavy, outspoken, assertive, knowingly flawed (aren't we all) but with limited insight or self-awareness into the effect she has on others. It is through the eyes of those around her that the reader is privy to much that Olive is not. 

From that description you might think there is everything to dislike and nothing to laud about Olive but I loved her. The moment when she lays on the bed in Christopher's house, after his marriage to a woman he had known only a few weeks, the house that Henry and Olive have had built for him, and Olive is overcome by heaven knows what and does something vengeful and churlish to vent her feelings. So many moments when somehow Elizabeth Strout allows something unexpected to shine through and illuminate. 

I spent a happy hour in Waterstones in Truro (very nice cafe) recently, browsing the Elizabeth Strout shelf, sympathising with another browser at the same shelf with the same tiny font issues and the same Kindle solution. It seemed we both wanted to check the books for real because they have been revamped in simple but very appropriate covers. I had got a refund on my lovely signed copy of Olive, Again  (back to my Kindle) having failed to check the font/line spacing issue in Waterstones in Plymouth and now settled on a copy of The Burgess Boys as a replacement (font etc fine) just so that I have a real book to show for this renewed flurry of Elizabeth Strout reading.

If you have read Olive Kitteridge I would love to know your thoughts, and about any other of Elizabeth Strout's books too...

Have you watched the film version...should I...

I wonder too if you have books like this which for reasons various you have resisted reading. I have another, it's The Go Between by L.P. Hartley in the New York Review of Books edition and another cover I can't abide. I'm being ridiculous I know.

And the font/line-spacing thing...is it just me...

 

 

 

My Name is Lucy Barton ~ Elizabeth Strout (redux)

Having finally succeeded with Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (it's a long story) I had a delve in the scribbles basement to remind myself about My Name is Lucy Barton and to revisit what had so enamoured me with Elizabeth Strout's writing at the time. I plan to read it again but thought it was worth sharing those thoughts again before Olive bursts onto the scribbles stage later this week....

This was from February 2016...

Hospitalised for nine weeks following complications post-appendicectomy, married mother of two Lucy Barton is surprised to wake and find her mother sitting by her bed. Surprised because Lucy has been estranged from her parents for many years, and in any case her mother is not renowned for the sympathetic or caring gesture. For five days the two re-explore and re-kindle their mother-daughter relationship before Lucy's mother abruptly departs at a crucial moment never to be seen or heard of again.

It is no spoiler to reveal this plot line because My Name is Lucy Barton is one of those tantalising novels where the future is openly revealed before being given any context or reason. In fact ultimately a reason may or may not be given, leaving the reader to forage for clues and hints which I think I found but of course won't reveal.

And it all raised so many interesting questions as I read..

What are the roots of inferiority...

Is it deeply embedded in childhood deprivation or can it be overcome...

Is self-esteem and confidence set in tablets of stone early in life or can it be found later on...

By her own admission Lucy might be an unreliable narrator...

'This must be the way most of us manoeuvre through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can't possibly be true....so much of life seems speculation.''

She is hospitalised and unwell (though it would seem to be an illness of unknown origin) perhaps making her observations and perceptions of her childhood all the more distorted, whilst the presence of her mother and their conversations shed new light for both on long-held certainties. As a reader I hovered around the edge of the family secrets half-expecting and hoping for a clear disclosure given that Elizabeth Strout reveals so much about the future.

Did I pick up on one (or two)...well I couldn't possibly say.

But it all made me think about the intricately woven book, the phrase bandied around and often hard to explain. It is as if Elizabeth Strout has started weaving from a different side with My Name is Lucy Barton because suddenly the book turns in on itself as Lucy attends a writing class where the tutor gives an appraisal of the book I am reading.

It all took me somewhere different and unexpected...

'This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. But if you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this : You are not doing it right.'

Amongst the paeans of praise always littered around a proof copy is one from the Literary Review concerning Elizabeth Strout's ability to home in on the dropped stitch of the family fabric. It is a wonderful and apt analogy...some unravelling required but with it comes the ability to pick up the stitch, repair the hole and knit on. Lucy's life knits on with some shaping and decreasing and increasing of stitches. The chapters are measured and short, the book flows and having been sent this copy by a friend in with a Christmas card I started reading it at the kitchen table and was instantly engrossed.

It's what I want from a novel these days...draw me in and I will stay; sadly piles of books seem to be falling at this first hurdle these days.

I am streets behind with my reading of the novels of Elizabeth Strout having loved Abide With Me and for some reason dipping out on Amy and Isabelle, Olive Kitteridge and more recently The Burgess Boys (which several people have recommended highly) so I am looking forward to a bit of a reading retrospective.

Meanwhile any more Elizabeth Strout fans out there...

And what about the book that intentionally telegraphs what is ahead...do they work for you...

And do you persevere with a book if those first twenty pages don't pull you in... how long do you give a book to impress.