dovegreyreader scribbles

In Pursuit of Spring ~ Edward Thomas redux

For anyone in need of a bit of escapism, maybe a nice journey in search of spring (with apologies to the Southern Hemisphere), this year I'm giving you advance warning that tomorrow is March 21st, the day that Edward Thomas set off In Pursuit of Spring, travelling from the London suburbs, through Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire towards the Somerset coast.

The Vernal Equinox  for the Northern Hemisphere (should all these things have capitals...I like to think so)  is actually today, March 20th. The sun will pass north through the Earth's equator at 21.58 and will be ours again. Thank you Southern Hemisphere, we'll take care of it until it's yours again but now we can all heave a sigh and say that's it, we're there.

I read the Little Toller edition of In Pursuit of  Spring  last year, day by day, in tandem with Edward Thomas on his bicycle, enjoyed all his photographs along the way, wrote about it afterwards but wished that I had flagged it up to you all beforehand, so this year I am.

I wrote this on April 9th last year..

In Pursuit of Spring and Edward Thomas and I reached the last stage of our journey on March 31st having set off on March 21st...

Edward and his bicycle actually arrived in the Quantocks of Somerset on March 28 1913, but I was lagging behind a bit (puffing up those hills behind him). It all seemed like double-quick time to me and made me think what a joy the arrival and ready availability of a bicycle must have been in 1913. Few cars passed us on the road and I suppose the only other means of transport to cover this route would have been by horse or on foot. We did cross a few railway lines but most of the journey has been off the beaten track.

I have found so much to love about this book, especially the descriptions of landscape and place. enough to make me think that plenty of people have surely followed in Edward's cycle trail and repeated this journey (if there isn't a book on it there really should be) though I suspect they might have paid more than four shillings a night for board and lodging.

The book oozes with primary source social and cultural history too, gathered in that year as the storm clouds of the First World War were amassing. I was struck by all the pub names and started  listing them as Edward passed them, even looked a few up to find they were still in evidence. Many now Michelin starred restaurants...would Edward ever have imagined that.

I'm going to tag along with Edward again this year. It's been such a discombobulating few weeks that I think I nice ride on a pillion, and to be taken on a journey, will be just the ticket.

And does anyone have any other suggestions for good spring reading...

I would welcome more.

Meanwhile, as if proof were needed that the season hath sprung. We un-bandaged the greenhouse today and would you just look at my 'Solstice' variety sweet peas. I pinched them out back in December and I think they were grateful. Apparently less dependent on hours of daylight they might flower earlier than others. 

Wouldn't that be a fine thing...

 

 

 

Pleasings...in a week when I think we'll need them.

Thank you for all those wonderful comments on my last scribble and doesn't the world work in such mysterious ways...that I had written and pre-scheduled those thoughts on Skybound and South Island on the very day that the world's heart and mind was taken there as of one, in solidarity with New Zealand and Christchurch. My feeling and real hope, and I have to be optimistic in the face of such carnage, is that perhaps this might just be a turning point. Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, has impressed me and many with her genuine compassion and determination to deal with the issues; no scripted sound bites or platitudes, she speaks sincerely and from the heart and it shows. Like many I am keeping the families affected by this tragedy, and that amazing country and its people in my thoughts.

Meanwhile, here at home in the UK, I think we really are in need of Pleasings because while Rome burns Vesuvius erupts I have been shut away in my sewing room listening to Pompeii by Robert Harris (excellent, thank you for the recommendation everyone) and making clothes for a stuffed rabbit.

I hope you will agree this is a really sensible arrangement given that I can't really influence constitutional events (please let's not talk about it) and nor can I be of any assistance in domestic events, which this week have involved the installation of a new boiler and water cylinder. It was time for the dearly beloved twenty-five-year-old work horse to be pensioned off (the boiler not me obvs.) and a bright, young, energy-efficient, all-singing-all-dancing replacement to take its place. And so it has. This of course would be best done on a week when we have torrential rain, gale force winds and Storm Gareth, so I won't elaborate beyond the fact that depriving me of hot water and heating, whilst every door in the house seems to be open at once, and inaccessible lofts have to be accessed etc. is not conducive to much beyond an ongoing and worsening state of dishevelment and shutting myself away and being creative in here...

The Summer Challenge for my quilt group is to make 'something/ anything' out of a piece of 'ugly' material. I'm going to be busy in the summer, especially once the Tinker's Cott visitors arrive, and the garden wakes up, so I thought it would be a good use of this time to make a start at least. The fabrics were all wrapped and distributed at the last meeting and some poor souls really did draw very short straws indeed, whilst I think I might have been one of the very lucky ones. I actually like this.

I set to with Luna Lapin and Friends and made Wilhelmina Woodmouse as my apprentice piece before the creation of Luna Lapin. 

A complete change. I had seen someone making these and suddenly fancied the idea of some felt stitching and some miniature dress-making projects, because it's Great British Sewing Bee time again, and as usual my fingers itch to get going on facings and sleeves and collars and things.

If you are watching the GBSB I hope you're enjoying it as much as we are. Some incredibly talented stitchers making some amazing garments.

Anyway I have had a wonderful time, deep in The Flow, making clothes for Luna from the patterns in Sarah Peel's book.

The Wrap-Around Dress...

Which I lined in a nice bright accent...

Then I had a go at the coat...

With its tiny collar...

There is something very mindful about this sort of sewing in miniature, and then clothing something that gains a soul the minute you stitch some buttons on for the eyes...

I will now fess up to the deliberate error...the ears are on the wrong sides and I haven't quite perfected my whisker technique, but Wilhemina doesn't seem to mind.

I'm now onto Luna the rabbit who will be dressed in all this for the Summer Challenge competition and how quietly satisfying it all was whilst listening to the grandees of Pompeii get their come-uppance. A few tricky moments when slaves were fed to the eels but generally a great listen. I've moved onto C.J.Sansom's Tombland .I'm still a little unsure about it, we'll see.

Other Pleasings include...

...the imminence of the Belle Epoque tulips

...a tray full of sprouting dahlia seeds in the greenhouse

... the almost completion of Couch to 5k. Just two more runs in Week Nine to do (it's been too stormy to run this week) though I can't see me managing more than my current two miles in thirty minutes. No matter, I'm just happy to be out there and doing it.

Meanwhile, over to you for more Pleasings, and remember we need plenty of them to get us through the trials of the coming week (especially here in the UK) so if you haven't commented before today might be the day.

On your marks...

 

Get set

 

GO...

PS And please excuse me while I go off and figure out the timer on the new boiler. I have been tasked with learning how it works.

 

 

Skybound - a Journey in Flight ~ Rebecca Loncraine

'The loveliest places of all
are those that look as if
there's nothing there
to those still learning to look'

'Deserts for Instance' - Brian Turner (Elemental - Central Otago Poems)

Choosing another book from the shelf of Journeys that I plan to do from my armchair this year, and 'learning to look' at new places is becoming a real treat. I'd no sooner travelled back in deep time searching for Doggerland with Julia Blackburn and Time Song than I decided I was ready for a bit of vast open sky and my hand settled on a proof copy of Skybound A Journey in Flight by Rebecca Loncraine, published by Picador and sent to me aeons ago.

I knew a little about Rebecca ...that she had taken up gliding when she was at a crossroads in her life...the end of a relationship combined with  surgery and treatment for breast cancer and finding herself living back with her parents on the family farm in Wales. It is here, where the love of her family holds her secure through all the gruelling treatment, that Rebecca decides to replace the narrative of battle, fight and conquest and all its associations of violence, with one of surrender, gentleness and vulnerability. 'A quiet attentiveness to the present moment and an intense intimacy with the world' gave Rebecca what she needed, a toughness and the strength to endure.

There are no rights of wrongs about this and one of the things I learned, when I managed the Cancer and Serious Illness forum for an online parenting website, was that finding the way that works for any individual is what matters.

In recovery and  finding a connection with a nearby gliding club Rebecca decides to give it a go and learn to fly...

'Where the ground has a tendency to close me down, to fence off my emotions, the space up here gives me room to breathe. The sky is big enough to hold any amount of grief...'

Assuaging the grief of her diagnosis, and with it perhaps all those thoughts that her life could still be cut short, and seeing her home territory with new eyes, offers Rebecca new perspectives. There is a sense of freedom and achievement, a fillip to self-esteem and confidence, plus distractions and diversions from the travails, along with opportunities for travel and adventure that will eventually see her set off for four months in New Zealand gliding over the Southern Alps.

I think you probably know what's coming don't you, because I don't think I have ever forgotten the emotion of my first visit to Offspringette in New Zealand in 2016, and my first view of the Southern Alps with tears streaming down my face and more uncontained excitement than was good for me (or the person sitting next to me).

My attention was first snagged by Rebecca's single quote from the poetry of Brian Turner (above and I have added more of my own choosing to this post) which could only intensify my enjoyment of Skybound,  because, whilst in New Zealand in 2016 and cycling the Otago Rail Trail (yes me, really) we had stopped at a remote village store in Oterehua. Happy to dismount for a while we were having a browse when I spotted Elemental - Central Otago Poems by Brian Turner. The book weighed a ton (or so it seemed) but persuaded to buy it by Offspringette it went into my bike pannier and did the rest of the trail with me. I'd read it each night as we moved along the trail and think about the place, the actual very same place where I was, and know that whenever I picked the book up again in years to come it would remind me of that amazing visit. 

'Once in a while
you may come across a place
where everything
is as close to perfection
as you will ever need.'

'Place' - Brian Turner  (Elemental - Central Otago Poems)

I'd like to think that Rebecca also read Elemental and felt some of this joy and peace too. I found much perfection during this my first visit, not least the full moon over Kaikoura...



Based at Omarama (we went through there too) Rebecca slowly gains confidence in her flying ability in an upper atmosphere made unique by the mountains and proximity of the sea. I can't pretend to understand the technicalities of gliding beyond being awestruck at how it is even possible to get up there and stay up there, but I really enjoyed reading about it with its moments of elation and some of acute fear verging on terror..

'Learning to fly is like asking the universe a question: asking it to let me go into the world to live and soar with joy and the possibility of death. It is to ask to be graced with grace, filled with emptiness, to arrive and never arrive...'

And as Rebecca flew so I (at a different time I think) had walked or driven or cycled, because she mentions so many of the places that we passed or wandered through, her seeing them from above, me from below...

Aoraki (Mt Cook)

'On the slow wing beat
of a curious falcon
my wishes belonged
I rose and spiralled
on thermals
and the mountains smiled all afternoon.'

'Flight' - Brian Turner ((Elemental - Central Otago Poems)

Lake Hawea...

Lake Tekapo...

The Franz Josef Glacier...

...where I left this tiny cairn for my Mum, my Dad and my brother...

It is whilst talking to a flying colleague in New Zealand, who has lost his daughter to breast cancer, that Rebecca (despite having been given the all clear from her last scans) senses and is confronted with the potential impact of her own death on those nearest to her..

'There was no escaping the soul-wrenching loss; all he could do was learn to live inside it...'you line it with flowers so you can visit there...'

And all I can hope and pray is that her parents Trisha and Tony have been able to line that place with flowers too, because sadly on her return to the UK Rebecca's cancer metastasised and, following more gruelling rounds of treatment, she died peacefully on September 17th 2016. It is to her parent's credit that they fulfilled their daughter's final wishes and brought Skybound to publication...

'She leaves all those who knew her run through with legacies of grief, but her legacy is such that she would be pleased...'

And how pleased I am to have read this book. It brings with it, as books like this, read at this time of year, are bound to, a deeper understanding of my own parents' grief at the death of my brother and also perhaps some insights into his thinking throughout his eighteen months of treatment for leukaemia. He would die on March 15th 1975 and yes, his place is now 'lined with flowers' and I will be thinking of him today as every day.

Perhaps the final word should rest with Brian Turner, whose book Elemental I have revisited alongside Skybound with the balance of some very happy South Island memories. I'm so pleased that I decided to buy it and carry that extra 1lb 4ozs along with me, and also that I have read Rebecca Loncraine's beautiful and lasting paean to the skies and a life fulfilled ...

'Maybe heaven is a place
in the hearts of those
who respected and honestly
liked you a lot,
an earthly place
with brightness behind you,
surreal skies above
lighting the best way home.'

'Heaven' Brian Turner (Elemental - Central Otago Poems)

 

 

A Reading Gallimaufry

I've had some reading disappointments in recent weeks, books that have started well and lost my interest after about seventy pages, but plenty more that have keep me going to the last page and given me much to think about beyond. Here are three of them.

Travelling in a Strange Land ~ David Park (Bloomsbury 165 pages)

David Park has been on the edge of my reading radar for years, though never quite made it into the mix until now and this book. 

Tom and Lorna's son Luke is studying at Sunderland University when he is taken ill a few days before Christmas and the weather takes a turn for the worse too. Heavy snow shuts down airports and Tom makes the decision to drive from the family home in Dublin to pick him up. As always the snow does its job, muffling, disrupting and cloaking secrets.

Something awful has happened in the past but the question is what.

Plagued by the past and by his undisclosed actions Tom sets off on the drive to the ferry and then across the north of England with his guilt, worry and anxiety swirling around in the car to the backdrop of his chosen music...Neil Young, Van Morrison et al. The reveal is slow and gradual. To the fore is the helplessness of the parent in the face of the child who won't be helped, Tom desperate to please, clutching at any straw, knowing he could blow any chance he might have with his over-enthusiasm. 

...and I won't breath another word for fear of spoiling, but a book that has levered me nicely into David Park's writing and I shall be reading more.

A Perfect Explanation ~ Eleanor Anstruther (Salt Publishing 300 pages)

There’s nothing quite so delicious as a book that delves into the foibles of the aristocracy, especially when it is by a member of the family and I revelled heartily in this one. In her debut novel Eleanor Anstruther addresses what might best be described as the skeleton in the family closet as she explores the life of Enid Campbell, granddaughter of the 8th Duke of Argyll. As primogeniture shifts Enid's family ever further from the family seat it is a very tangled web that will lead Enid to sell her son to her sister for £500.

The book is both a revelation but also deeply poignant as mental illness estranges Enid and her options narrow, 

'She tried to mother, she really did, but it always felt like she was stabbing at something she couldn't fully see...'

Using letters and archival evidence, and acknowledging her debt to her father 'for giving me this story in the first place', Eleanor Anstruther has explored her subject with objectivity laced with compassion. It's hard not to feel desperate sorrow for Enid, and for a family floundering in the face of something they couldn't bring themselves to accept nor understand. 

Cove ~ Cynan Jones (Granta 95 pages)

I like Cynan Jones, he writes excellent, concise, to-the-point books that punch well above their weight. No chance of putting this one down once I had started it. I read it in one breathless go...breathless because it was so tense I don't think I breathed throughout the ninety-five pages.

A pregnant woman walks on a beach and finds a doll...

A boat pulls up on the shore looking for a missing child...

A man sets off in a kayak with his father's ashes on board to scatter at sea. He has not told his pregnant wife he is going, and when he is struck by lightning far out to see and loses both his memory and his paddle it's clear he's in trouble. 

Short paragraphs of intense economic prose. Not a wasted word, events like saline, distilled to its essence, moments arcing across to each other, glimmers of connections and always within tantalising sight of land.

And then there's the ending..

Not a word more but I am still thinking about it. Some books, for all their brevity, leave a very deep footprint in the imagination and this is absolutely one of them.

So that's me, how about you...

What are you reading now...

Any good reads to report since the last time...

We all have notebooks at the ready...

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

You may remember a while back that, having been invited to be a member of the Walter Scott Prize Academy, we all contributed to a list of suggestions for submissions for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

The long list was revealed this week and a very exciting one it is too...

Little by Edward Carey (Gallic Books) *

A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey (Faber) *

After The Party by Cressida Connolly (Viking) *

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail) *

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape) *

Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry (riverrun)

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (Sceptre) *

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape) *

The Wanderers by Tim Pears (Bloomsbury) *

The Long Take by Robin Robertson  (Picador) *

All The Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (Maclehose Press)

Tombland by C J Sansom (Mantle)

I've added links to those I have written about on here (and a star for those on my shelves or Kindle unread) but also checked our comments on that post back in December and find that the judges are in agreement with seven of  our suggestions, and an eighth (The Long Take) which I didn't suggest but should have done because I loved it. Now I don't know about you but I rarely concur so wholeheartedly with prize list selections, so well done us. I am optimistic and will be seeking out some of those I haven't read.

And maybe this is a good moment to ask the C.J.Sansom - Shardlake experts out there..

Why have I struggled time and again to get into Dissolution ..

I must have read the beginning about four times and each time I drift away to something else. Is it possible to jump right in and read Tombland as a stand-alone book or do I need to have read the series in order (something I usually prefer to do it possible). 

And here's a great idea that perhaps other prizes could emulate, because how often do we wonder what might just have missed the cut...

"We are also delighted to unveil the Academy’s ‘recommended’ list, offering readers a further selection of twenty superb novels from the UK, Africa, Australia and beyond.  The Walter Scott Prize Academy, expanded this year to include book bloggers and international book festival directors, is playing an important role in bringing superlative historical fiction from further afield to public attention, as well as recognizing  home grown talent.”

 

The Academy Recommends List is:

Love Is Blind by William Boyd (Viking)

The Prince Of Mirrors by Alan Robert Clark (Fairlight Books)

The Making Of Martin Sparrow by Peter Cochrane (Viking Australia)

So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernieres (Harvill Secker)

All Among The Barley by Melissa Harrison (Bloomsbury)

The Hundred Wells Of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah (Cassava Republic)

Only Killers And Thieves by Paul Howarth (Pushkin Press)

Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly (Unbound)

The Black Earth by Philip Kazan (Allison & Busby)

The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson (Two Roads)

Mad Blood Stirring by Simon Mayo (Doubleday)

As The Women Lay Dreaming by Donald S Murray (Saraband)

Kintu by Jennifer Nansubaga Makumbi (Oneworld)

The Angel’s Mark by S W Perry (Corvus)

A View Of The Empire At Sunset by Caryl Phillips (Vintage)

Painter To The King by Amy Sackville (Granta)

A Treachery Of Spies by Manda Scott (Bantam Press)

The Tristan Chord by Glenn Skwerer (Unbound)

Never Anyone But You by Rupert Thomson (Corsair)

The Madonna Of The Mountains by Elise Valmorbida (Faber)

 

Well that should keep us all busy with reading suggestions for a while and if you have read any of these please do add your thoughts in comments. Meanwhile thank you for joining in with the Academy book-sharing joy and  now I'm wondering which books will make the shortlist. 

A Plodcast...

I was persuaded by my media savvy offspring to record a podcast.

'What for?' I said, 'no one has time to listen to me rabbiting on, and in any case how on earth do I do it?'

Feeling like a luddite off I went on a walk up four fields to the woods on New Year's Eve with the dogs, just to see how it felt to walk and talk to myself, because if I was going to try this then perhaps it would mean I could take you all on a few of my favourite walks around the Tamar Valley.

I'd call them 'plodcasts' and though I know they are not for everyone (in which case please ignore) but if you fancy a stroll through the Devon countryside please do click on the link on the sidebar over here >>>>> or here and come for a walk with us.

If I do another one I thought we might walk across to the village church.

(PS Apologies, I might have had my hand over the microphone at one point at the top of the green lane.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now we are a teenager...

Thirteen years ago today I started writing dovegreyreader scribbles and whilst I think it’s a nice little something to celebrate, Magnus, as you can see, is very unimpressed..

Heading for four million hits on over 4500 scribbles (if each one is approx 1000 words...er...) all I can say is thank you for your continued support and donations, and for reading and commenting and chatting to each other in comments as you do, especially given that I was only going to do it for a week. We might be properly almost grown up now, having weathered the slings and arrows of the early days and stayed the course. It’s hard to believe how unhappy and often scathing the literary critics were back then, really they had nothing to worry about, but whilst the world has rotated just a little bit, not much has really changed here, though I have learned a huge amount in that time. And I have met lots of you too and that has been a joy; virtual friends have become real-time friends.

The layout and font of lowercase dovegreyreader scribbles remains unchanged from Day One, because I'm far too scared to go in and do anything in case I press the wrong button and it all disappears.

And I still only write my entirely subjective thoughts (not reviews) about books I have loved, books I would want to press on you if we met in the street, so should I bump into you today I would be saying ' You MUST/ HAVE TO read Forty Autumns by Nina Willner and then can we meet and talk about it.'

One of the many Pleasings of the scribbles became apparent a few days ago when a book group in Newbury very kindly sent me a copy of Forty Autumns, a book they had all loved. I opened it to read the first few pages at breakfast time and before I knew it it was lunch time. Much more about this superb and moving account of the human, social and political impact of life in East Germany after the war very soon. How little I really knew and how prescient it remains as a warning of the threats and dangers of extremism, misuse of power and unchallengeable control in our own time.

Talking of reading groups, we are starting to get enquiries for small groups of reading friends for Tinker's Cott (minimum three night stay,for more details you can click on the image in the sidebar >>>>  or please do email us at dovegreyretreats@gmail.com ) and included will be plenty of time to discuss a shared read together if wanted. I have added several books to the list of possibles that I think would work especially A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr and Mistress of the Arts by Rachel Trethewey ( Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford and the building of nearby Endsleigh) , but I would love some more suggestions.

If you were off on a reading retreat in the Shire which books might you like to read and talk about with others...

And while you're cogitating on that please do help yourself to a piece of birthday cake (image shamelessly 'borrowed' from the internet, if you made this then I think you are very clever and thank you).