dovegreyreader scribbles

Almost Gone With the Wind...

We have been almost gone with the wind this last few weeks, with the greenhouse bandaged up against a succession of storms and trees down in neighbouring villages. Such an event brings out an acute case of Log Covetousness in Bookhound who, despite a nicely full woodshed of his own, can never resist the thought of squeezing in a few more. He dreams of someone ringing up and saying' Come and help yourself,' which of course doesn't happen because every storm-gained log is accounted for in these parts, but he slows the car down to 5mph as we drive past in order to pay his respects to the glorious vision.

I think it's a Man Thing.

Mary Azarian understands..

Mary Azarian kindly gave permission for me to use some of her images here in the early days of the scribbles and I have loved them since the day I discovered them, they never lose their appeal. I hope the season is being kinder to you now wherever you are...not long until that February day when the light floods back in.

I recommend plenty of this until that day...

Meanwhile I have made a start on The Letters and came across this...

'Went to the cinema to see "Buffalo Bill" the other day and it was very good too, but I would have enjoyed it much better if you had been with me. I hope to see "Gone With the Wind" tomorrow, I've seen it once but I must see it again.'

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to read that. A letter from my Dad to my Mum, and written on June 9th 1944. He's had to leave his happy ship King George V, and my Mum, behind in Liverpool where they've met a few months previously, and is now stationed with the Royal Marines at Portsmouth where he's doing more training (bugle replaced by guns now) in readiness for a posting to a new ship which will be heading to the Eastern Front.

My Dad also comments on the big events of the week... 

'What do you think of the news about the second front, wonderful isn't it. I hope the boys go right through now...'

D Day has happened and perhaps the tide will turn on a war that he's been on active service with since the age of fourteen in 1939, but he's now nineteen and he's off to see Gone With the Wind again, isn't that wonderful. Now quite what my Mum would have thought of a cinema outing to see Buffalo Bill I can't imagine, but she loved Gone With the Wind and I think he knows that, and that the barest mention will win him points. It's the thought that counts.

I was thrilled because by coincidence I had started to re-read Gone With the Wind over Christmas, and Helen Taylor is to blame for me picking the book up again after a gap of fifty years or so. First time around a single paperback copy did the rounds of Form 4C at Nonsuch Girls, and it seemed the whole class was smitten. But in December I had started on Why Women Read Fiction - The Stories of Our Lives, Helen Taylor's new book (and for which I am very honoured to have done an interview) and in the first few pages of the book Gone With the Wind gets much attention...

'Since the novel (1936) and then film (1939) came out around the start of the Second World War (when families were torn apart and homes and lives destroyed), women of a certain age found it comforting and inspirational...they said they had learned from this book (and later the film) about love, loss, and courage...'

In researching a previous book, Scarlett's Women : Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans, Helen had discovered a legion of women for whom Margaret Mitchell's tome was a very special book.

Helen argues that women, whilst questioning the 'reactionary racial agendas' and rejecting the 'rosy picture of American slavery and the Civil War', were able to identify with Scarlett as a feisty feminist, and also with other 'fresh female role models and new ways of thinking about masculinity and romantic love.'  Helen also points out that whilst men may have seen the film, fewer of them have read the book. Given that I doubt my Dad would have wanted to be seen reading Gone With the Wind in the rufty-tufty environment of a wartime military barracks, he was by now madly in love with my Mum so who can know what he took away from the film. He was more of an Ashley than a Rhett, but perhaps he was becoming a hybrid of the strengths and finer points of both of them now I think about it.

Anyway I was immediately enthused to revisit and settled down with Gone With the Wind on my Kindle, my Mum's weighty copy nearby, and whisked through the first 500 pages in no time...and then the prevailing wind died down (sorry) and I ran out of steam. Christmas and New Year were done, the decorations were packed away, Scarlett has arrived back at Tara and found it standing but only just, and I decided to stop for now and make it a book of two volumes.

I will read the second half when the mood comes around again, but meanwhile I'm wondering if Gone With The Wind holds a special place in your life too...

If so can you remember when you read it and what you thought...

Or maybe not...maybe there's a different book that fills that space..

Please do leave a comment because I'm sure Helen Taylor will be interested too, and I'd love to know your thoughts if you read Why Women Read Fiction . I'll have much more to say about it through the year I'm sure.

 

The Horseman ~ Tim Pears

Apart from the fact that I always get the author Tim Pears confused with the author Iain Pears, I had wondered where Tim and his books had been all my life and so I made a start. Well, this was back in 2018 and a summoning up of any draft posts behind the scenes revealed this written in July 2018, when the sun was shining. It seemed a shame to waste it, and I reckoned a memory of summer would be just the ticket for those of us in the midst of a Northern Hemisphere January, so eighteen months later herewith...

The Horseman, the first in Tim Pears's Westcountry Trilogy had been on my radar for a long time. Words like 'hypnotic' and 'pastoral' and 'bucolic' were floating around in my consciousness, and several of you emailed or mentioned the book in comments for which I thank you because I got there in the end.

'1911. In a forgotten valley on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, Leo dreams of a job on the estate's stud farm. He is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger's hat, he discovers Miss Charlotte, the Master's daughter. And so begins a friendship between the children, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.'

This is definitely a book to read slowly, at the pace of life at the time in which it is set. I read it in short instalments over several weeks and was actually reading one day sitting up behind the summerhouse.

It was surprisingly 'noisy' for our little corner. One tractor was baling up the hay in Outer Down and another was ploughing up Long Acre. Two men, two tractors, one afternoon doing a job that would have taken who knows how long and how many men back in 1911. If you missed the video over on Instagram you can watch it here.

Nowadays, with a subject such as this...farming in the early twentieth century, how easy it is to extract the poetic... the beauty and the scenery and the seemingly leisurely pace of life, whilst ignoring the realities. None of the realities are lost in The Horseman so brace for some early scenes that might make you wince a little, but you will be quickly disabused of any notions of sentimentality and can proceed with the rest of the book under no illusions about the hardships of the life. 

We often think about it around us here. We watch the hedge trimmer flail and smash its way along the lane in a day, doing the work that would have taken countless men countless days...

Indeed, during the winter we can still see that careful hedge-laying handiwork of the past...

We also know that the 'carters' from the farm lived in our cottages ( we were once two but are now one) and it was a bit of a revelation for me to find out what being a 'carter' really involved, along with the profound and crucial importance of the horses in their work ploughing and harvesting. The horses needed people who understood them too so I will be intrigued to follow the life of Leopold Sercombe in the next two volumes of this trilogy

There are several deeply poignant undercurrents flowing through The Horseman and I am intrigued to see how these will play out in The Wanderers and The Redeemed which I have yet to read. Whilst mechanisation is starting to arrive in 1911, and with it the requirement for a smaller workforce, we know that the workforce is about to be decimated by World War One. And not only that but the horses will be taken too.

I was reminded of a beautiful picture we saw at Torre Abbey a while ago..

The explanatory notes alongside had been helpfully corrected by someone who obviously knew their ploughshare from their harvester, 

...but there is an undeniable sadness in the innocence of this idyllic scene, during the summer before the war, saying so much of the unsayable and the unknowable at the time. And of course, we know what lies ahead.

I know quite a few of you have read The Horseman so please do share your thoughts in comments...

And also the next two books, I really am way behind so this is a series I must catch up with.

 

 

The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts ~ Gillian Tindall

‘The cycle from prized object to discarded one to rubbish, and then to extinction is a well-established one...’

Firstly my thanks to Avis who emailed a while back about The Pulse Glass thinking I might enjoy it. With a healthy accumulation of spendable points burning a hole in my Waterstones loyalty card, I wandered in for a browse while Bookhound was enjoying his birthday treat with the menfolk watching Pymouth Argyle lose at football (again). There was a long story to this New Year’s Day involving a lot of walking, no buses, sausage sandwiches, Plymouth rain, a taxi, a Park & Ride bus full to the brim with football supporters topping out at 8mph and me very grateful for a hot bath when we finally arrived home.

But I won’t go into all that, just the happy outcome from Waterstones which was a copy of The Pulse Glass  and the Beat of Other Hearts by Gillian Tindall. I should add that it is always worth checking the Waterstones App because the book was half price to order online but not in the shop, and of course they honoured that at the till.

Taking a series of disparate objects Gillian Tindall builds a changing picture that I suspect most readers will be able to fit into some aspect of their lives. Whether it be the childhood toy, the old letters and diaries, the unnamed photographs, an old map; whatever it is it holds a story for the person who 'knows' it which may remain lost unless told. Gillian Tindall broadens the scope of each object by weaving in history around it.

And nor did I now what a pulse glass was.

It is a tiny hourglass, about the size of a stick of chalk but 'an exact half minute glass' designed for taking a patient’s pulse, and from the days when pocket watches didn't have a second-hand.

Starting and ending with the sudden death of her brother, small details emerge of their lives and family throughout the book, culminating in a searingly honest account of events in the final chapter. For Gillian Tindall this must have been both harrowing and cathartic, the stark revelations, the admission of true feelings about cataclysmic childhood events and those who instigated them. Nevertheless, in the context of what has gone before, it was somehow uplifting to read... to have the courage to face the truth and the realities, rather than be beguiled into false sentiment by the objects. As I turned the final page I knew I had discovered my first Best Read of the 2020 with my very first book; onto the Top Shelf it goes.

The Pulse Glass is a book that consistently allows for reader involvement at a personal level. I doubt many will read it without either scurrying up into the loft to find things, or wonder where things have gone, or look at known objects and suddenly see them in a new light. Ultimately the hidden story of the object remains just that unless told, or shared, or written about.  Someone has to want to know that story and to want to keep that object. Likewise the box of unlabelled photographs that I'll bet many of us have stashed somewhere could ultimately become meaningless bonfire fodder to future generations unless properly marked.

Now you know me by now. Nothing knowingly discarded if it holds a story and I am ably abetted by a very large and accessible loft...or perhaps it's a hindrance...perhaps it would be easier not to have kept all this stuff.  Anyway as the Christmas decorations went back up I had asked Bookhound if he could find the box of letters that my Dad wrote to my Mum (I'll call them Len and Vera for a minute) from when they met in early 1944 to their marriage in 1947.

'How much do you really want these found and brought down?' said Bookhound as he donned the head torch and prepared his ascent. I think he was hoping for a 'No don't worry now,' response but all he got was a look. There was a lot of rummaging and shifting of boxes until he finally emerged triumphant with these...

Hundred of letters posted to Vera, living in Liverpool, from Len as he sailed all over the world.

My Mum had died and my Dad ( I couldn’t keep it up for long) had given them to me long before he moved into Tinker's Cott with us here. I had picked out a few and read them before making a conscious decision not to read any more while he was still alive. Then of course you can't bear to look at them and so ten years or more has passed. I think it felt intrusive at the time and we never talked about them again, but inevitably I'm pondering that decision now because I have a growing list of questions after only twenty letters to which I may never get an answer. 

And what happened to my Mum's letters...

He would never have thrown them away, but was keeping hundreds of letters in the confined space of a ship just too difficult...

Were they in the shed and did the mice eat them as happened to Bookhound's fishing journals...

And did I ever know some of the things that I am now discovering.

Gillian Tindall talks about notions of memory...

'Memory, and in particular the fallibility of memory, has today become something of a fashionable subject. One has to agree that memory is obviously selective, that much is readily transposed, simplified or recalled over time with altered emphasis - which is not to say  that the reworked memory is necessarily a less valid version of what originally happened than the immediate memory was. Sometimes it can turn out more essentially focused...'

This was all food for much thought for me, a caveat to my assumption that I was remembering everything correctly. And so an inspiring book has led from one thing to another and here I have sat for the past week or so making some semblance of order of everything I have about Vera Griffiths and Len Chester. Photos, cards, certificates, school exercise books and I've started reading the letters. Already there is a story to be told, and if I don't sort this out for our children (who tell me they want it) no one else can. 

And so after five hours one afternoon the letters are now in date order, let the mission commence.

This is all Gillan Tindall's fault so beware, if you read The Pulse Glass you may be overcome with a similar situation.

Meanwhile, has anyone else read The Pulse Glass...

Does anyone else have a stash of old family stuff that needs sorting...

If so do you have plans for it...

Or maybe you have already done it...

Maybe you decided to get rid of it. There's no right or wrong here, just what feels best at any given time.

I took a great deal of trouble to sort out all our family photographs of the children before we moved here. Remember the 1980s when we all sent them off to Truprint and accumulated masses. All beautifully ordered and catalogued by year and as the removal man carried the box out to the van the bottom fell out and there were hundreds of photographs strewn across the Old Launceston Road. I haven't had the heart to go back and re-sort them in twenty-five years...until now.

Bonfires were mentioned in Gillian Tindall's book, conducted by well-intentioned people to whom the 'stuff' holds no meaning, tells no story, or perhaps tells a story they feel is best left alone. 

I think that word 'bonfire' might be what has spurred me on.

 

 

 

2019 Listening Gallimaufry...

Some of you might recall (because I have mentioned it before) that among the first declarations to Bookhound,  as we were walking back to the car park at Heathrow, after my first flight back from New Zealand were the words, said with much emphasis..

'I'm never doing that again without noise-cancelling headphones.'

You had all told me as much when I asked, but I thought I'd get away with the £20 Sony things and how wrong could I be.

So before the next flight we took a trip down to Curry's in Plymouth where they have a fine display of headphones located underneath a speaker that simulates the noise of an aeroplane. I'd actually set my heart on a pair of Bose, because they're a bit on trend aren't they but, when it came to the testing, the beautifully crafted Bose might have made me look the bees knees but they weren't a patch on the Sony. This was going to amount to about three birthdays and two Christmas presents combined, but Bookhound persuaded me to buy the Sony MDR 1000X  and I have to say two years on they have been the best investment ever. Not only do they block out all noises, engines and people, on a plane, they also block out the drone of a sewing machine when I'm back on the ground...

...as well as the sound of  Bookhound coming in the door to tell me there's a cup of tea and scaring the living daylights out of me.

I now announce that I'm going into 'headphones' so he knows.

But this all means I can listen to audio books while I sew and I  notched up 100 hrs-worth last year, not all of which may have been mentioned here but even so all worthy of a mention as Good Listens. For many of you the library will be the perfect place to borrow audio books for free. My problem is having to return them after three weeks so I subscribe to Audible on and off and keep my library nicely topped up. Audible also let you return a book for any reason which helps because I've had a few turkeys...

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Jane can do no wrong in my eyes. I have loved each of her three books, set in Australia and as a listen they are atmospheric, gripping and well-plotted.

"He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron's mind when he was alive, he didn't look peaceful in death.

Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other's nearest neighbour, their homes hours apart.

They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish...."

Pompeii by Robert Harris

One of you recommended this and though I obviously knew the outcome, I didn't know the route Robert Harris might be taking to get us there.

"A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? All along the coast, the Roman Empire's richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world's largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii. Only one man is worried.

The engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct which brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. His predecessor has disappeared. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta's sixty-mile main line - somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius..."

 

Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh

This was recommended as a good read by the Village Book Group but, like many psychological thriller / crime novels, it works brilliantly on audio too.

"The police say it was suicide. Anna says it was murder. They're both wrong.

One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life - a shocking suicide carefully played out to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with her parents' deaths ever since.

Now with a young baby herself, Anna feels her mother's presence keenly and is determined to find out what really happened. But as she looks for answers, someone is trying to stop her. By digging up the past, she'll set in motion something that can't be stopped and will soon discover that sometimes it's safer to let things lie...."

Erebus by Michael Palin

One of you recommended this one too and it was superb. I had several weeks of excursions to Antarctica and then the  Arctic on the Franklin Expedition and would emerge from each session with much to tell Bookhound about. Lots of 'Did you know....' and 'You'll never guess what...' going on and all read in Michael Palin's warm smiley voice...you know the one where he's seen the funny/odd/eccentric side of something and hopes you see it too in the inflection. He will always be Monty Python to me and has never lost that cheekiness.

"In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half. Its name was HMS Erebus.

Now Michael Palin - former Monty Python stalwart and much-loved television globetrotter - brings this extraordinary ship back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. He explores the intertwined careers of the men who shared its journeys: the dashing James Clark Ross who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier' and oversaw some of the earliest scientific experiments to be conducted there; and the troubled John Franklin, who at the age of 60 and after a chequered career, commanded the ship on its final, disastrous expedition. And he vividly recounts the experiences of the men who first stepped ashore on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic wastes as rescue missions desperately tried to reach them."

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

I've listened to rather than read all the Jackson Brodie books and without exception all have been fine listens, this one included.

"Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It's a picturesque setting, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network - and back into the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect..."

 

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

My dad was a huge Tolkien fan; read Lord of the Rings every year, listened to the book every year on a set of cassettes that we had bought him and so embarking on a listen was quite the nostalgia trip. I almost think better listening than reading with the beautiful singing of the songs by narrator  Rob Inglis. Tom Bombadil comes to life in a way he never quite did in the book for me and I can see exactly why he was my dad's favourite character.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I'm listening to this while I stitch the Knot Garden quilt as revision before the third and final part The Mirror and the Light is published on March 5th 2020. I'm about half way and am finding so much to notice that I feel sure may be relevant in that final book. It's also good to be reminded (as if I needed it) what a meticulous and thorough writer Hilary Mantel is.

 

Hours of very enjoyable listening and who knew I'd done that much sewing. If you have listened to any of these please do share your thoughts...

And please do recommend any more audio books that you have enjoyed and that will see me through more sewing marathons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Australia...

I’m doing another shout out to you because things don’t look any better since the last time I asked. I’ve been following the news and also fundraising updates via the amazing Celeste Barber’s Instagram posts. Celeste has raised an astonishing amount of money very quickly, but the situation looks precarious and very frightening, so our thoughts are with you.

Please stay safe and do let us know how you are if you can.

Let’s face the music and dance...

'Let’s Face the Music and Dance' is actually one of the book group’s themes for a book choice this year and I haven’t yet decided what my choice might be, but in searching for a title for a scribbles post here I’ve happily mangled up the words for a reading choice that I have made through 2020.

Before I progress I have to be allowed a brief diversion to say that Let’s Face the Music and Dance always but always reminds me of Torvill and Dean and that wonderful 1994 Lillehammer Olympic ice dance comeback, when 23 million people sat gripped, only to watch them slip into Bronze medal position. The skating duo went on tour that summer and a twelve-year-old Offspringette and I trekked off to see them at Wembley (I think). We were die-hard fans and I still get a bit of a shiver when I see them dance. Lasting memories of Offspringette’s precious programme slipping down underneath the tiered seating never to be retrieved (there were tears) and Bookhound ringing later that evening to tell us that our offer on this house had been accepted. I bought another programme and we moved in here two months later. 

Anyway, now to the book. I don’t announce this sort of reading thing quite so often these days because I can end up tying myself down to a book I may not necessarily enjoy, and then the reading becomes a chore, not a pleasure except I’ve already told you all I’m reading it, and some of you join in. To that end I’m really sorry about The Magic Mountain. I just got stuck half way up and lost my reading pitons. However I have been promising myself a read of Anthony Powell’s twelve volume masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time for years now, having started and stopped the first volume A Question of Upbringing three times. Each time I kept asking myself was I really interested in this paean to the lives of men, but it was a chance remark from a friend (thank you Peter if you are reading this) who commented at a Christmas social event (Peter and Margaret’s Kitchen Warming, thank you again, it was lovely and so is the kitchen) that I don’t read many books by men. I had a think and a check back and have to admit that the percentages are indeed somewhat disproportionate, so twelve volumes of this should sort that one out.

I decided to first read A Question of Upbringing beyond page thirty before declaring and committing to another eleven volumes because it’s apparently the trickiest one to get into, but A Dance to the Music of Time is a series that begs to be read at a book a month starting in January, and there were some very encouraging noises when I tentatively mentioned it on Twitter. Bless Adele Geras who rates it so highly and whose approval was enough to spur me on. I also invested in the newly re-jacketed ‘floppy’ edition as an added attraction, and hey presto I was through and into the world of Nicholas Jenkins. The consensus is that these are books about human behaviour and it's taken me a while to sit back and watch, but in the words of Anthony Powell...

'The narrator Nicholas Jenkins, is merely a vehicle for expressing how people and happenings struck him during a period of some sixty years...'

Likewise he readily acknowledges the role of the reader in potentially making a different judgement to that of the narrator so there's another trick to look out for.

I had also invested (first attempt around) in Hilary Spurling’s handbook to the series, Invitation to the Dance which is a sort of vade mecum who’s who of every character, and which acts a handy reminder of their origins when they crop up again several volumes apart. And I have ordered a copy of Hilary Spurling's biography of Anthony Powell because nothing she writes disappoints. 

So I am hoping to read a book every month through 2020 and report back here at the end of each month which would allow for discussion in comments. But be warned, if we've started with a Torvill & Dean digression there are bound to be plenty more extraneous trails to pursue because who knows where the narrative will lead me....remembering with fondness our previous shared year-long reads of  Middlemarch, Ulysses and War & Peace.

Meanwhile, if on reading this you fancied joining me in this particular dance you would be a very welcome partner. 

Sunrise on a New Year...

I'm sure for many, if not most of us, it might have been a year of mixed blessings and 'bumps' as Her Majesty said on Christmas Day, is any year any different ... and who can know what next year holds, but be sure whatever happens (DV) we'll all be here sharing books, reading, life and the rest on the scribbles.

I've timed this post for 08.18 on January 1, the exact moment the sun rises here, so from us to you, wishing you all a quiet sunrise on a gentle and peaceful New Year.

The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.