dovegreyreader scribbles

The Splash of Words - Believing in Poetry ~ Mark Oakley

'Some writers have the gift of simply letting you know you can trust them, Mark Oakley has this gift in abundance...' 
Rowan Williams

Mark Oakley winged his way onto my radar via Bel Mooney.

Having shared my enthusiasm for Brian Doyle and One Long River of Song - Notes on Wonder, Bel had recommended Mark Oakley. Previously Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Mark Oakley is now the Dean of St John's College Cambridge and has written a series of books. Brian Doyle was a very successful chapter-a-day read through May and I quite surprised myself with how much I was enjoying a bit of ...dare I say...meditative reading and directed thinking.

Having been a devout C of E attendee for many years I'm now a bit lapsed, none of which ever stops me from loving the liturgy and the presence and availability of the buildings (and missing them hugely during recent months)  but I proceeded with my usual caution over any religious writing.  I downloaded a Kindle sample of  My Sour Sweet Days - George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul by Mark Oakley and decided it was all a bit too much for the current state of my soul (which felt reasonably calm and OK ) and maybe I wasn't ready for the depths of George Herbert.

In the meantime I had a complete reorganise of the poetry shelves one day because I had nothing else pressing to do. The diary was an empty void and suddenly I needed to carry books halfway round the house to new homes.

I know for sure it isn't just me that does this...

Own up now all you book movers...

It was so good to see all the poetry books again and get them all into order and sit and browse a few, pull a few old friends and new-to-me poets off the shelf for a closer look, and how thankful I was that I had stocked up backalong in case of a future dearth. A charity shop in town had taken in a huge collection of as new contemporary poetry books and was selling them for 50p each, thus swelling my shelves by a quarter as much again.  Doubly pleased too that I'd rescued them because some weeks later the shop and it's entire stock was destroyed in a flood (floor mop jammed down a toilet in the flat above).

And then Bel recommended The Splash of Words -Believing in Poetry also by Mark Oakley,

'This beautiful and wise meditation centred around the soul language of poetry opens new windows in the shared house of both poetry and belief". 
Carol Ann Duffy

...and this time the Kindle sample was enough to convince me very quickly to splash out on the book (sorry).

'The phrase 'splash of words' is a good description of poetry. When you read a poem there is an initial splash like a pebble thrown into a lake. The words disturb your surface and have their impact...' says Mark Oakley in his introduction.

Yes, I could identify with that, so far so good...

'Then, as the poem begins to do its work, the ripples of meaning head out towards your shore, often slowly but relentlessly, and you realise that these words are shifting your perceptions...'

Yes I could see that too...still so far so good

'...and consequently even transforming who you are and how you understand.'

Whoa, steady on, lets wait and see.

There is a month's worth of a poem-a-day here with a commentary to accompany which, whilst obviously it does have a religious theme, doesn't beat you over the head with it...consequently twelve days in, at the time of writing this, I am coping and really enjoying the selection. Though I might not always segue neatly with Mark Oakley's spiritual stance or interpretation I think that's entirely Normal For Poetry, so we are having a jolly good to and fro about it all.

But there is another huge advantage to a book like this for someone who has just reorganised the poetry shelves. Each poem sends me there to see if I have said poet in a collection and so far I'm doing pretty well.

Jo Shapcott, W.H.Auden, U.A.Fanthorpe, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, Liz Berry, Mary Oliver, Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Fiona Benson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, R.S. Thomas, Carol Ann Duffy...

It also demanded a new poetry notebook. The last one full to the brim with notes I’ll probably never look at again, but it’s somehow nice to have a record of meandering thoughts and brief quotes...

That picture of the shards we've dug up in our garden over the years feels like a perfect picture for those fragments of thought that occur as I read.

But likewise Mark Oakley is finding new poets for me too, and I was so spellbound by Jen Hadfield's Paternoster that I immediately ordered her collection Nigh-No-Place .

Mark Oakley starts his book with Paternoster and that feels entirely right. It is a poem that cannot be rushed...in other words sets a reader's pace for what is to come, holding the steady rhythm of the plough horse, the swaying of the head, the sounds, the time honoured labour of man and horse. I don't even like horses that much, but I love this one a great deal. It brought to mind that other plough-horse related poem by Edward Thomas, As the Team's Headbrass. I've read Paternoster over and again and feel as I've ploughed the equivalent of Long Acre in front of the house in the process...

This on Jen Hadfield, who now lives in Shetland, from The Poetry Archive...

'Her poetry is found where the secular and non-secular converge: ‘Paternoster’ is the Lord’s Prayer as uttered by a draft horse, and one can almost smell the mix of grass and mash on its breath as it repeats the words “it is on earth as it is in heaven”.

And here the opening lines...

Paternoster. Paternoster
Hallowed be dy mane.
Dy kingdom come.
Dy draftwork be done.
Still plough the day
And give out daily bray
Thought heart stiffen in the harness.

'The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper,' said Bertrand Russell...

'Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret' said the Persian poet Hafiz (another of the choices in The Splash of Words) but like many I sometimes struggle to find it, or to sharpen my wits, so I am really enjoying Mark Oakley's light shining a deeper understanding over these gems.

Oh...right...

'...and consequently even transforming.... how you understand.'

Meanwhile, any new poetry discoveries to report...

Any favourite collections jumping off the shelves at you lately...

Moved any books around the home from A to B to C, and those that were at C to A,  and those that were are B to C recently...

 

 

 

 

Hair today & gone on July 27th...

Have you all had the phone call...

The one we’ve all been waiting for, at least here in the UK...

Did you trip over on the way to pick up the phone because you couldn’t see where you were going...

’Hi Lynne...it’s Ed...’

’EEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDD’

Ed is my hairdresser. He’s a good friend of the Kayaker and I had sent a nice message along the lines of  ‘tell him to ring your mother.’

I’ve been through the rumpled messy Carol ‘Gardener’s World' Klein look and am now heading for the full 1970’s page boy. it was almost time to get out the flares and the platform clogs. 

1975 I think. I'd just won a goldfish at a fair on Hampstead Heath, for which I bought a tank and luxury fixtures and fittings only for it to die a week later. Please note the Felicity Kendall 'The Good Life' dungarees and the 6" turned up hems, but also the page boy haircut. We used to go to the Jingles Hairdresser Training School, where their apprentices would practise on you for £1. I'd had the ignominious honour of being 'evicted' from the seat because a page boy was 'too ordinary and boring' for the up and coming student stylist.

Anyway, nothing fancy ever required for my hair these days. No colour, no foils, no highlights (age seems to be providing those without help) Just chop it to above my ears, sweep it sideways, don’t layer it to much or I look like a hedgehog, no thank you to the hairspray, quick ruffle with the dryer and off I go. 

As luck would have it I’d had my hair cut shorter than usual in early March thinking I would be going to New Zealand, and which was sure to involve some wilderness camping. Last time I went to New Zealand I made this amazing discovery at Cascade Creek that my hair could be washed (without shampoo) in a stream and would dry by itself without a hairdryer.

And again at Lake Hawea..

A skill once learned that I readily transferred to Dartmoor

Extraordinary.

As it is we seem to have been on a different ‘wilderness’ experience this last few months and although the fringe goes sideways it still has the power to annoy me when it grows too long,  but years ago someone taught me a cutting trick that never fails...

You carefully separate off whatever constitutes fringe, gather it together, twist it and twist it into a tight bundle and just chop off the end. Hey presto. you can see where you’re going again and it annoys you slightly less.

Someone said at the beginning of all this that after six weeks people would realise there is no such thing as natural beauty. Now being a person who worries more about my dahlias than my eyebrows I wasn’t too worried, but I suspect plenty of people have quite enjoyed a rest from the treadmill, maybe rediscovered something that had been lost in a sea of habit, even found a new style, who knows.

But hasn’t the unruly, over-long hair also become a badge of Lockdown Survival. We’re seeing it left and right on the TV (no names, no pack drill) and as Bookhound approaches the moment when he might need a pony tail it’s all become quite hilarious here.

Anyway, I’ve got my appointment, how about you...

How are your lockdown locks doing...

Anything else that you surrendered graciously and may never bother with again...

Anything that has driven you crazy and you are first in the queue...

 

Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) - A memoir of love, exile and crosswords ~ Sandy Balfour

'Like a crossword clue, history never makes sense at first reading. The surface is plausible, but discordant. We need a second reading to impose order.'

I honestly don't know what I'd do without you all.

How would I find books like this if one of you didn't email and suggest I read it.

It was one of those mornings when I was in need of 'different' then in whizzed an email from one of you suggesting I read Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) - A memoir of love, exile and crosswords by Sandy Balfour. It took me less than a nano-second to be convinced and order a copy...perhaps a sort of reverse version of what I do to some of you sometimes...maybe.

Here's the blurb...

Half a million people a day do it in the Telegraph. The Times claims almost as many, and the Guardian 300,000. Most people remember their first time, and everyone has a favourite. You can do it in bed, standing up, or on a train. You can do it alone, with a loved one or in groups. The Queen does it in the bath. It is not illegal, immoral or fattening. In fact it tops the Home Office list of approved entertainments for prison inmates. Crosswords are a very British obsession.

Crosswords are a very British obsession. Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose is a personal reminiscence and a guide to solving crossword puzzles. But it is much, much more than a 'how-to' book. Each chapter starts with a clue, and uses anecdote, history and autobiography to solve it, in the process describing something of what it means to love England. In the process, we encounter The Best Crossword Clue Ever, The Most Beautiful Clue in the World 'Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose' and the eccentric personalities behind such legendary compilers as the Guardian's Araucaria and The Times'Ximenes.

The Queen does the crossword in the bath??

I can't pretend to be an expert, nor obsessed, but crosswords do fascinate me whilst also making me feel that there's a whole world of knowing that I am excluded from. It is this knowing when you are looking at an anagram, when you are not, when the word is hidden in plain sight in the clue, or when you've got to really stand on your head and turn your logical and ordered world a little upside-down, and think way beyond the box. Sometimes I get into the mindset, sometimes I don't, so it was good to read that it took Sandy Balfour years and years before he felt at ease in the world of the crossword.

I hadn't realised how traditional the whole thing is either. Famous compilers who garner a reputation and a following, one of  earliest of whom was the nature writer Adrian Bell (Corduroy, Silver Ley, The Cherry Tree, Men and the Fields)

One of the lasting memories I have of sitting as an observer in a workshop on memoir writing with Julia Blackburn and Penelope Lively, was their suggestion that all memoir needs a scaffolding. Once you've found it the book takes shape around it and Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose is that clever memoir that has used its scaffolding well. 

Born and raised in South Africa Sandy Balfour's journey begins in 1983 when he and his girlfriend leave Cape Town, avoiding army conscription and apartheid, and with a plan to hitchhike to London. The journey takes him around the world but effectively into exile, in search of a place he can belong and which he would like to call home...

'I have only a desire to be on the move. I have cut myself off from friends and family. I have discarded my past. It feels like a kind of death. All that is left is myself.
I am not sure that is enough.'

Weaving through the quest are the crosswords, a quest in themselves, and if I could remember all the details I think I could probably smash out the Times crossword in hours rather than the days it would take me if I stuck at it, rather than surrendering. It felt as if I'd stumbled into a new world that has always been a mystery to me...

That each newspaper has its own style...

This whole network of compilers who go by pseudonyms like Rufus, Araucaria (a Monkey Puzzle tree) Bunthorne, Hendra, Custos, Logodaedulus. Gemini, Quantum...

That the editor has the final say if they feel a clue doesn't play by the unspoken rules...if it isn't 'cricket'...

And that cricket itself is a compilers dream providing a plethora of clues and solutions...

Sandy Balfour's journey woven around the crossword clues, of which there are plenty to solve, was indeed a great read and highly recommended if you fancy not only a  life-journey but also a glimpse into this mysterious world of wordplay.

So tell me...are you a crossword guru who knows all the tricks...

Or, like me, have you spent your life in the half-light not quite understanding the rules of the game...

Do you ever cheat and look up the answers online...

 

PS Thank you again to the recommender and what about the answer to the clue which is the title of the book... shall I spoil it...no maybe not just yet...

And what about these...

'The real reason for the meeting of Volkswagen and Daimler (6, 6)'

And this apparently one of the best clues ever set...

'Amundsen's forwarding address (4)'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

handiwork ~ Sara Baume

"In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaimed writer Sara Baume charts the daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. Elegantly encompassing images and in itself a significant artefact, handiwork offers observations that are at once gentle and devastating on the nature of art, grief and a life lived well."

What a beautiful and thoughtful book this was. Sent as a gift from a friend via Much Ado Books in Alfriston, Sussex, and arriving gift-wrapped and clearly much-loved before it even fell into my hands. I read a few pages a day through May, feeling not only the creativity and that flow which comes with an engrossing and all-consuming craft project, but woven in alongside was Sara Baume's grief at the death of her father. It inevitably reminded me of that summer after the Tinker journeyed on, the six weeks I spent finishing a quilt whose making had spanned some twenty years. I'd started it soon after we moved here, three children living here, my mum and dad regular visitors. Somehow it joined up all the dots that I held dear and needed to stitch into one. I took that quilt to New Zealand and gave it to our farthest-flung family member to somehow bridge the miles and keep the dots joined up.

There is much to cheer here. Sara Baume quoting Stephen Knott for example...

'Modellers often have a variety of different projects that are left half-finished or are completed at different speeds: it is not always a case of finishing one thing and going onto the next...'

'Oh good' I wrote in the margin.

There was so much that I understood and acknowledged about handiwork (the lower case is deliberate) and the book jogged many lovely memories too...

'What we all shared - me, my dad, his dad - was a suspicion of modern life, a loathing of fashion, a disappointment with the new technologies and a preference for the ad-hoc contraptions of the past - anything that can be disassembled and reassembled with hands and tools, based upon the principles of common sense.

Each in our own time, we lived and live in consonance with nostalgia for a former one...'

The importance of, and inspiration from a book like this for me, whilst acknowledging the author's life as portrayed, is also its ability to segue into my own memories and experience. I think that's true for just about every book I read, and this one was no exception.

One memory in particular about the Tinker's dad, my granddad...there's me in the smocked frock sitting on the wall with him, my brother too and my dad (in his reindeer jumper).

My granddad joined the police force after the First World War until eventually, retiring from a life doing point duty on Tooting Broadway in the mid 1950s, he and my grandmother moved from the London suburbs to a cottage built into the hillside in a little village just outside Crediton in Devon. The stairs were carved out of the rock and there was no mains drainage or indoor facilities. it was jugs and ewers and an Elsan up the garden. Milk had to be collected in a jug from the local farm... everyone thought they were crazy. But they loved it and so did we.

We would all travel on the steam train to Bow for our own  'fortnight in September' where we would be met by the Austin A30 and don't ask me how we all fitted in. I'd sit on my dad's lap in the front seat and 'do' the indicators (the switch on the dashboard that sent the little pointed arm out of the side of the car). It would be a very sedate drive because my grandfather was of the opinion that anything over 30mph and you were aiming a car, not driving it. We'd all settle in, visit the Elsan up the garden, smell the familiar scent of the geraniums in the conservatory and then head to my granddad's workshop to look at the brass microscope in the wooden box (I have it now) and where he'd always be making something out of something else. It was at this point that I obviously told him that the latest school craze was the hula hoop but I didn't have one. 'Hang on a minute,' he said, and before you knew it he'd found and coiled a piece of polythene pipe into a circle, joined it with a wooden stopper and I spent the next two weeks doing nothing else but hula hooping.

I was also extremely disappointed not to be allowed to take it home with me on the train. I couldn't see what the problem was.

Sara Baume's memories are intertwined with the making of a series of carved and painted birds and I used the book like a journal, writing in my own thoughts and recollections, prompted by Sara's, through that strange and surreal month of May 2020 that we have all just travelled through. The book is beautifully sized at 5" x 7" and well-spaced, often just a paragraph on a single page, almost begging me to add something of my own while giving me permission to use that blank space to think.

If you have read handiwork please do share your thoughts in comments..

And now I'm reminded of The Repair Shop...does anyone else watch it...and think the chap who does the clocks is a dead ringer for Steve Redgrave...

And though I understand it might not have been the case for everyone, I hope plenty of you have good memories of granddads too...please do share them.

 

 

Hamnet ~ Maggie O'Farrell

Did anyone else 'do' any of the Hay Festival online a few weeks ago?

I booked a few things though wasn't really sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised at how lovely it was not to have to drive 185 miles, try and park the car, find the venue, queue, pile in, try and stay awake in a hot and crowded tent after lunch, fight my way out and drive home again and take days to recover.

I caught an interesting talk by Rhidian Brook about his book Godbothering, a compilation of his Thought for the Day broadcasts on Radio 4, and was impressed with his combination of assurance and humility as he talked about his faith, about what mattered to him and to the many millions who must have listened to him over the years. I knew the name rang a bell, I wrote about Rhidian's novel The Aftermath back in 2013.

And I also 'went' to Maggie O'Farrell's event.

I know, I know, it's all about being sociable and being there and soaking up the atmosphere, but as I sat on my sofa listening I'm afraid I realised that this is the litfest of the future for me. You know, that falling asleep thing in the midst of the crowd...where you allow yourself a very long blink...just the one and before you know it your head slumps forward and you wake with a jump and hope no one has noticed. Well I sat on my sofa, may have closed my eyes as I listened, but Maggie O'Farrell's warm and engaging voice was all enough to confirm what my partial listening of Hamnet had already confirmed, that here was a book I needed in my hand.

I 'visited' the bookshop and the book arrived the next day.

It is 1596 and while the reader is never told this is Shakespeare's family, and the playwright is never named, it is quite clear that here is an aspect of his life told from an entirely different angle and giving centre stage to Anne, or Agnes as she is named in the book, and their children, Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Given that we were also mid-plague it was fascinating to read of the bubonic version arriving in Stratford and its detailed journey there via a single flea.

Family relationships are fraught and complex in the feverish atmosphere of Stratford and there is only one way that the couple know they will get permission to marry. Months later their first child Susanna is born, followed in a few years by the twins. There will be a terrible death that leaves Agnes undone, unravelled, dismantled and utterly changed and the book gives an incredibly moving account of the impact of that grief. The burial is both powerful and visceral while the aftermath sees the couple take diverging paths, thinking that neither really understands how the other is feeling. It is the writing and production of Hamlet the play that holds the key, and has the power to bridge the couple's divide, the question is will they meet in the middle and understand.

Expect more tears...

In fact maybe expect to feel like a wrung-out dishcloth by the time you turn the final page, but in the best possible way.

Along the way I was regularly stopped in my tracks by the imagery, and it was listening to the audio that made me realise I needed to read the words and let that happen...

'The fireplace, which is filled only with ashes, held in the fragile shape of the log they once were...'

Taken out of context that line may not seem particularly powerful, read in the narrative moment for which Maggie O' Farrell intended it and my breath was well and truly taken away.

And also perhaps expect to have your interest in Hamlet revived a little. If it is a play you know you might find that Maggie O'Farrell has invested it with a new significance, around themes of eternal life and remembrance. If it is a play you are less familiar with you might at least feel tempted to explore it with Hamnet in mind.

If you have read Hamnet please do add your thoughts in comments.

And talking of Shakespeare does anyone have a favourite play...

It is a long time since I have read any, probably too much studying and essay-writing in a previous life, but I do feel the urge to go back, and there are plenty of the plays that I don't know at all.

And other fiction based on Shakespeare plays...heavens there must be hundreds..

 

 

 

 

 

Hamnet alert...

A post coming up about Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell in a few days' time, but a heads up that it is 99p on Kindle today, and I'd hate you to miss it if it's a book you've been thinking about reading.

Books & Friendship...

Now don’t get me wrong...Bookhound has been wonderful company through these weeks of staying out of the way and not becoming a liability to the NHS or our family. We’ve rubbed along well enough for over forty-five years so that’s plenty of time for our annoying habits to be acknowledged and then ignored (if only he could hang a towel up after he’s used it, not leave his wellies in the doorway where I trip over them..if only I could shut the kitchen door...major issues I’m sure you will agree) but I have to say I have really missed my friends.

We’ve talked and emailed and kept in touch but nothing beats a face-to-face gathering, and once the guidance allowed for garden gatherings I was in contact with the Happy Campers like a shot. We have met for coffee together every few weeks for years now and it turns out that they had missed our meet-ups too. And so on a rather damp and chilly day they arrived in separate cars (despite living a few hundred yards from each other in town) bearing their own food and drink, anoraks, blankets and with special instructions to bring their own scissors if they wanted a bunch of sweet peas.

After a quick walk around the fields so that we could then justify sitting down, we each collected our gravity recliner from the summer house and set ourselves up two metres apart, swaddled like patients in a TB sanitarium, and proceeded to talk. Five hours later we’d just about covered all the ground we’d missed, eaten our own food, managed to safely share a full box of Lindor, they picked their flowers and I waved them off. Despite the near Arctic temperatures (felt like) our first socially-distanced gathering felt like a huge and normalising success. I actually felt as if I’d done something that I used to do but took for granted in that previous life.

One of our topics for discussion was obviously books and one of our number had come with a list of books that had felt important at seminal moments in her life. We all threw out author names from the past...Jean Plaidy, Norah Lofts, Anya Seton and what on earth had become of Susan Howatch we wondered. Cashelmara, Penmarric. The joys of the internet in the hand meant we could find out immediately and I recalled reading  The Wheel of Fortune back in September 1985. I know it was then because I’d bought it as my book to read whilst languishing in the local maternity home for ten days having giving birth to the baby Gamekeeper (weren’t those the days).  I’d thought it would be a good idea to make a start before I went into labour but hadn’t bargained on him being two weeks late, or the book being so compelling that I must have let a four-year old and a two-year old do their own thing while I sat and read. I’d finished the book long before the first contraction. The copy long gone but suddenly we all had the urge to read it...

"Robert Godwin's tumultuous ride on the Wheel of Fortune begins with his passion for his sensual cousin Ginevra, as they waltz to "The Blue Danube" beneath the chandeliers at Oxmoon, his beloved family home in Wales. As Robert discovers, his rational, well-ordered mind will be forever altered by his obsession for Ginevra, and his destiny will be forever linked to Oxmoon by the skeletons that lurk in the family closet.
For fifty years, from the sinister summer afternoon of 1913 to the 1960s, the Godwin family is sucked into a maelstrom of passion, disorder, madness, and murder. Fortunes rise and fall in this sweeping, compulsive tale, until the Wheel of Fortune finally comes full circle."

This, however, was the theme that I had no knowledge of back in 1985...

"Susan Howatch acknowledges that this novel is in fact a re-creation in a modern form of the story of the Plantagenet family of Edward III of England, the modern characters being created from those of his eldest son Edward of Woodstock (The Black Prince) and his wife Joan of Kent, John of Gaunt and his mistress, later wife, Katherine Swynford, Richard II (son of Edward of Woodstock), Henry IV (son of John of Gaunt) and Henry IV's eldest son King Henry V."

Anyway by the miraculous powers of 4G we were able to find three cheap copies on eBay which were duly purchased from our reclining pose, and we are all looking forward to jumping back into to this whopping great big book. I'm fortunate that I will be reading alongside two Plantagenet experts because it might still pass me by thirty-five years later. Incidentally I did eventually give birth to my whopping-est baby at 8lbs 6ozs, sans pain relief and about two hours after consuming a huge hospital dinner and a Mars bar. You get the hang of it by number three, but I have always associated The Wheel of Fortune with that moment in my life.

In other news, I found Avalon by Anya Seton for £2.99 on Kindle so I made a start. Could I ever have known, back when I was reading it as a fifteen-year old, that the action and the plot would walk right past my front door fifty plus years later.  

I’m wondering if you have books that hold similar memories for you...

A memorable book from a memorable life-moment...

And were you a Susan Howatch fan...did anyone read the Glittering Images and the rest of the Starbridge series... I'm really hoping these books stand the test of time

Allegation ~ R.G.Adams

A few books find their way onto my Kindle via Netgalley, a site where publishers make titles available pre-publication for reviewers. I particularly enjoy page-turning crime and thrillers on Kindle so I always have a handy supply ready, either via Netgalley or the 99p Daily Deal. It was whilst the nights seemed rather long, in the early days of the pandemic, that I started Allegation by R.G.Adams published by Quercus and found myself quite pleased that I was awake at 4am.

Kit Goddard is a rookie social worker nursing her own experiences of the care system, and  freshly principled in a way that can often fade as the rigours of the work take their toll. When allegations of historic sexual abuse of  young teenagers are made against Matthew Cooper, a pillar of the local community and the father of three children, one of them disabled , the family is allocated to Kit to investigate. 

I slotted right back into this scenario as a professional. It's one of the worst dilemmas imaginable (and one I was occasionally involved in as a health visitor in that previous life ) and whoever R.G.Adams is they really know their stuff

Some of you might recall how I berated (something I so rarely do on here that it might have been a once in fourteen years one-off) a certain famous children's author on her first foray into adult fiction...for slack research, and for misrepresenting professionals and the difficult work they do, well top marks to R.G.Adams because Allegation was factually accurate to the nth degree. I know it's fiction, and they 'make it up' but there's really no excuse for a 'casual' approach to research. 

Here is someone who truly understands the stomach-churning meetings and the high profile case,

The well-to-do parents and the threats they make...

The potential for false compliance...

The doubt and uncertainty that pervade and challenge the professional instinct...

The fear of misreading it, of missing the obvious, those home visits and the antennae waving...

The fear of being on what the legal advisers used to warn us was a 'frolic of your own'...

The paradigm shift from proactive to reactive practice where you decide you have to cover your back..

The antagonistic new manager full of ambition for spicing up their CV who swoops in and changes everything before moving on and up the pay scale...

And throughout all this the anxiety like a knot in your stomach that never quite goes away, pops back into your thinking at the weekends or the evenings.

Kit goes through all of this and more as she tests the limits of the system and her own expertise.

I tell you it takes nerves of steel to do it and R.G.Adams has either done it themselves, or knows someone else who has, because Allegation is gripping, well-researched and well worth a read if you fancy a jolly good page-turner. I think publication of the hardback edition may have been held over until next year, but the Kindle edition seems to be available this month and my hope is that this may be the first of a series. Kit is an endearing and interesting character and it would be a shame to lose such a promising theme.

Meanwhile your suggestions for page-turners if you have any...

I'm sure they will have helped some of you through recent months too...

And while we're on the subject of series, any suggestions about those too...

 

And if you have half a day spare here's a link to the one of the few public book beratings I think I have ever done on here. I've quite amused myself reading it again...it was eight years ago, I was very cross and I did go on a bit (apologies). Ah, our younger passionate selves.

Footnote : In case you look for anything connected to dovegreyreader on Twitter this is to let you know that I have deactivated my account on there as of this week. Though I had 5500 followers built up over thirteen years, and who I valued enormously, I’m afraid it is not the place it once was. It is now a forum I no longer wish dovegreyreader to be a part of, it is not a place I wish to look at, or where I want my writing to be featured or linked. 

 

A Reading Gallimaufry

While I seem to be in a happy reading groove now things were all over the shop backalong, but I did manage to finish a disparate range of books and here's a selection...

The Comforts of Home ~ Susan Hill

I do enjoy the Simon Serailler series (especially as I'm in one of them...number six I think) but had fallen behind with the life and times of our erstwhile hero and his detecting life, so it was good to catch up with the eleventyfourth (I'm losing count)one. There is some cold case crime to be resolved as well as a bit of drama on the Hebridean island that our man has travelled to in order to escape the stresses and strains of ...well 'that' accident of which I can say no more for fear of spoiling. Good plotting, involving characters and their lives as always, and lo and behold I have another one waiting in the wings.

 

 

 

 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ~ C.S. Lewis

I first read this aged about seven or eight on a holiday in Tintagel, staying with one of those aunts and uncles based on friendships your parents had made during the war. Tintagel had one gift shop and empty beaches, Uncle Bill ran a market garden, Auntie Pam was a teacher at Delabole Primary School, there was always a pile of children's books by the bed and this was one of them. I was transfixed all over again. Back in the day us children (Auntie Pam had three boys) were ushered out of the door and sent off to explore, and well I remember walking to St Nectan's Glen and imagining here could be Narnia.

Of course the religious allegory had by-passed my completely back then, but it jumped off the page this time around.

The question is...I don't recall ever reading any of the other Narnia books...should I, and if so which ones.

 

Officers and Gentleman ~ Evelyn Waugh

I mentioned my stately progress through the Sword of Honour trilogy a while back. It's all thanks in large part to a beautifully tactile, floppy, new Penguin Modern Classics edition that is everything you want the book in your hand to be. There is no wrestling the spine into submission to keep the book open, the paper is soft, the font is large enough and with the 1.5 line spacing I'm in reading heaven. 

Having finished Book Two Officers and Gentlemen I remain constantly amazed at Evelyn Waugh's ability to find humour in the midst of war. The invasion and eventual retreat from Crete was horrific and yet still he spots the risible and the ridiculous amid the bureaucracy, and the rigid adherence to protocol and orders even in the face of danger and defeat. 

It's also a very small world, this world of conflict. Everyone seems to know everyone else and old friends or foes suddenly find themselves flung together again. Old misdemeanours follow them around like a bad smell and it comes as little surprise when they carry on where they left off. And in the midst of it all Guy Crouchback  seems to be doing his honourable best  to preserve every else's honour and reputation as well as his own.

I'm saving the final book, Unconditional Surrender for exactly the right reading moment.

Meanwhile, as always please do share your recent reading successes...

 

 

 

 

 

Cyanotype Sunday (and Monday)

Goodness me, June already. Didn't that predicted twelve weeks seem half a lifetime away when this all began in early March, and yet here we are. Summer has been upon us for weeks in the UK and what a blessing it has been. The garden is looking wild and very lovely, I'll take you on a walk round soon.

Last year I had a magnificent summer of indigo dyeing. So much so that I still haven’t used up all the fabric that resulted, but it’s a well known fact that blue is my favourite colour, so when the Kayaker sent me everything I would need to try cyanotype I couldn’t wait to have a go.

The process of exposing treated paper to sunlight dates from 1842, just three years after the first daguerreotype processes were described. It involves a bit of alchemy in the form of two chemicals which when mixed and applied to paper (or fabric) can then be used to create an image.

I did the mixing and painted some paper and fabrics and then read the next bit which involved allowing everything to dry in a dark place to stop it changing colour. Had I read that properly beforehand I would then not have been panicking and had to put it all in the larder. Once dry you expose the paper to the sun with whatever you wish to ‘take a picture of’ resting on top.

The paper instantly turns from lime green to grey and then a deep bronze colour and the magic starts to happen until eventually, after washing, the end result is the most perfect shade of Prussian Blue.

I quite like the in-between stages too so I need to experiment with exposure times.

There’s no arguing with Prussian Blue is there, really there can be no better colour and it deserves to be in capitals. 

I then got fairly ambitious. This is called running before you can walk, and not helped by sitting to watch the SpaceX dock with the International Space Station and forgetting all about my cluttered masterpiece roasting away in the sun. 

We had watched the SpaceX launch the day before with great excitement, all a wonderful reminder of that childhood Apollo addiction, so it had seemed only right to see Dragon crew safely there. By this time I was using a piece of glass on top of the cyanotype to hold everything in place, and this was all fair done to a crisp by the time I remembered it  

 
The Before Washing (below) was actually quite interesting too, so I really need to experiment some more...

As luck would have it, earlier in the week I had spent a day clearing out my potting shed and now realised it would make the perfect ‘dark room’, so I have painted up another batch of fabric, now drying in said 'dark room', because of course there's a quilt begging to be made (along with the others shouting to be finished). I'm thinking leaves and plants from around the garden...ivy, honesty, lady's mantle, so many lovely shapes to choose from, so that's me sorted for this week.

Update : I’ve had another day of experimenting...some metal stencils and leaves various...

 

But how about you...

Setting aside the things we all miss, have you also found yourself adapting...

Have any new crafts or hobbies jumped up and bitten you with a bout of enthusiasm...

Or have you sensibly done what I said I would do (but haven't) and completed the Great Unfinished...

 

 

 

 

 

Jean Becomes a Nurse ~ Yvonne Trewin SRN

I’m not sure why I picked this up. Maybe it was all the news about Nightingale Hospitals, but anyway there it was.

I have a shelf full of these because I lapped them up as a girl who was always going to be a nurse (blame my mum, the uniform was the only thing in the dressing up box) and I think the SRN was about giving this novel for girls a bit of credibility as in...here is someone who knows their stuff. And I have to say, written as it was in 1961, only eleven years before I would start my training, things hadn't changed much by the time I started in PTS (Preliminary Training School) at Gt Ormond Street.

Putting on the uniform for the first time and feeling a bit of a fraud whilst hoping no one would collapse in front of you. I wasn't there but one of our set witnessed someone jumping under a tube train and the crowd on the platform parting like the Red Sea at the sight of her nurse's uniform that shed only been wearing for a matter of days. The motto behind this was to do up all the buttons on your hospital issue gaberdine raincoat when travelling.

Then there was the good old fashioned discipline, the Sisters you loved, the Sisters you didn't, the tutors who understood us and those who seemed more remote. My encounters with The Big Bruiser (as we fondly named her) still give me nightmares.

And then all the doubts and fears amongst the intake. Those of us who felt fairly sure we'd done the right thing, those who were plagued by doubt and would either put shoulder to the wheel or leave. We all learned quite quickly that getting emotional at the work wasn't going to help us at all, we'd need a teflon coating to survive, and those who stayed became a supportive and close-knit community, someone's door was always open, the kettle was always on somewhere.

Going home with friends for days off. My roommate's family lived in Heptonstall, her father's chauffeur would meet us at Manchester station and drive us there. When she came to stay with me my dad would meet us in the Vauxhall Viva. When Diana goes home with Jean she is mightily impressed by the dove-grey walls glowing softly in the sunlight, the curtains and chair coverings in cretonne with a pink and wine flowery design and the black carpet.

Jean is struck down by appendicitis which we can all see coming (except Jean) and she is whisked off to sick bay. I had to go to sick bay in a taxi in the middle of the night from our PTS home in Belsize Park. I know exactly which Chinese restaurant in Hampstead gave me food poisoning, but I'd better not mention it as a quick google check and I see it's still there. But heavens was I ill. They kept me in for days and I was like bambi when I finally emerged.

It's all captured in Yvonne Trewin's surprisingly readable book and I have to say I had a good old wallow whilst conveniently forgetting all the terrible times.

And I'm really sorry but I had to smile over this picture, the frontispiece to Jean Becomes a Nurse...

I mean...what exact bit of Jean is the doctor looking at in making his assessment that "She'll make an excellent nurse." How times and attitudes have changed.

And I'm thinking that there must have been other books trying to steer young girls into particular professions but I can't think of any now, can you...

And as always please do share your memories of these books, or their ilk, were they your childhood reading fare too.

 

The Luminaries

It seemed to appear out of nowhere, because I'm not really sure I knew it was even being filmed, but the six-part series of The Luminaries is coming to BBC One very soon.

It was all enough to make me drag the book from the shelf only to discover that it is five years since I read it, and that was before I had ever visited New Zealand. or done the entire Luminaries Trail around South Island.

We first drove from Christchurch to Clyde and cycled a hundred miles or so across the gold fields of Otago and the Maniototo, following the old railway line to Middlemarch...

It was dramatic, very hot and shadeless and no, I hadn't ridden a bike for about thirty years, and no I hadn't trained in the slightest despite saying I would, and yes I did wear padded shorts, and yes I absolutely did plead for an electric bike on the second day. And I got one and sailed around the rest like a pro.

But the scenery was magnificent and just to be there, 11,000 miles from home felt extraordinary ...especially now when I can't envisage even going into Plymouth just twenty miles away...no scrap that, into Tavistock a mere six miles away.

Having wild camped our way across to the much damper and cooler Westland, and made the acquaintance of those innocent little black dots called sand flies that give you the worst bite ever (and in quantity), Offspringette and I spent a day in Hokitika following the Luminaries trail. New Zealand is really good at the small museums in small places that do these wonderful tableaux reconstructions of What Life Was Like and I really enjoyed every one that I found. They are scattered around the old gold field sites and are chock full of artefacts and information, enough to give an impression of life for the early prospectors..

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that it was all a bit moving to find myself standing on the grass, on top of the gold fields, alongside Lake Kaniere (pronounced 'canary') and feeling quite emotional. I can completely understand why people love to come to the UK and follow in the footsteps of James Herriot, or travel on the railway to Hogwarts, in order to bring the books they have loved to life. 

And then looking at the photograph again this week, and then at my feet now, to see that I'm still wearing the same shoes four plus years on ( bought in a sale in Christchurch the week before we set off) this very minute. If that's not a good advert for Keen Targhee III trainers I don't know what is, even if they are now in a bit of a sorry state and I have some replacements to wear in. 

But they won't be the same because they haven't actually set foot there if you see what I mean (this might just be me, getting sentimental of course). Offspringette bought me a pounamu in Hokitika, a 'koru' spiral which I love and have worn every day since. And every morning, when I put it on again, I remember her and that day, and the fact that to be given one means you will go back again....or so the Kiwi working in a shop in Plymouth, who saw it, told me one day.

Anyway, with fondest memories of Hokitika I settled myself momentarily in the Sunny Chair at about 10.30 on Monday morning to read the first chapter of The Luminaries again. This felt highly illegal (surely morning reading must be non-fiction, learned and improving, to be legitimate) but was unanimously approved as permissible, and before I knew it I was back on South Island and the gold fields, but another interesting thing happened too.

Looking back I see that I found the book mystifying when I read it in 2015 and had to ask for your help in deciphering and persevering, and I'm not really sure I had completely grasped those nuances by the end either, (I'll dig out the original post for redux) and yet here I am 200 pages in and sailing through with ease and clarity. I'm sure having walked those shores helps no end because I have images in my mind.

And with that another connection landed plop into my mind too. Adele Geras kindly sent me something in the post recently and included this postcard of Lucy Boston's High Magic patchwork quilt. The card now sits on my desk...

Is this not The Luminaries in fabric...

And I'm transported back to that wonderful day at Hemingford Grey when Diana Boston gave Bookhound and I a tour and showed us the quilts.

Isn't it amazing where imagination and memories and a book can take you.

Meanwhile have you read The Luminaries and will you be watching...

And what about literary or artistic trails and travels...are there any you have done or would like to...

Anyone's footsteps you would love to follow...

Incidentally...

The best concoction known to mankind for repelling sandflies, and invented by the Christchurch cohort, is a mixture of baby oil and Dettol. Nothing and no one else will come near you either.

Robin & Heather Tanner

Early on in ‘proceedings’ I and two of my group of  friends, who meet several times a year from around the country, decided that in the absence of our traditional summer gathering perhaps we would read a book together.  The three of us settled on Wiltshire Village by Heather and Robin Tanner.

There followed the whole business of ordering a copy of the now out-of-print book online and awaiting its arrival. Mine was the last to arrive and I was about ready to mug the postman on each successive day that he drove straight past. This whole ‘waiting for the post’ has only got a whole lot worse because I’m not sure any of us could have imagined the reading trails that one small book, published in 1939, would open up for us....and the subsequent books we would be ‘forced’ to buy.

Robin and Heather were an arts and crafts couple. True to their values both spiritually and aesthetically, and kindred spirits from the day they first met as teenagers in Chippenham at the end of the First World War, forging a creative life together that makes for the most fulfilling exploration all these years on

Robin trained as a teacher, became a schools inspector but was also an artist of prodigious talent, specialising in etching, whilst Heather, with her First Class degree in English Literature, could provide the written word to accompany his work. Wiltshire Village was their first collaboration and is a fresh and vibrant now as the day it was first published. Recording what, even then, was a vanishing way of life, I have revelled in a book whose traces still echo today in the countryside here. Along with the village buildings and crafts there are beautiful accounts of the village year and the people, all accompanied by Robin's etchings. 

There was much discussion here over coffee one day about the Wiltshire hoop-raved wagon. How practical it was, the width of the wheel base to fit the ruts in the track, the outward tilt of the wheels and how these wagons would doubtless have been trundling up and down the lanes around us here....and how the carved decoration and chamfering was about removing as much unnecessary wood as possible to lighten the weight of the whole.

At a time when life has felt a little as if it has stepped back more than a few decades it’s been good to be reminded of how things used to be...

’There was no room for petty selfishness in true craftsmanship; whoever found a new way or improved on an old one shared the discovery and it became part of the tradition followed by all the fellow craftsman who came after him...’

And I find myself relating that to the now and the worldwide collaboration in science and research as we seek ways to treat and improve life chances with the latest affliction. New advances are shared and publicised and we can only hope that, whilst a vaccine may be a long way off, if it does happen its discovery and production will be a worldwide endeavour.

Talking of the postman, or in this case post mistress, she gets a mention in Wiltshire Village (based on Robin and Heather's home village of Kington Langley) along with the complexities of delivering letters to a scattered community many of whom may have the same surname. We love our postie and hats off to him for the round that he has to do. 

It reminded me of my early days as a twenty-four-year old rookie rural health visitor. Finding my way around the byways of West Devon and Dartmoor and being paid for it (and with car provided) was quite the novelty in 1978. However, when the only address I had was a cottage name and the village, with no postcode or satnav to guide me, my arrival was often a lengthy process. I would be wholly reliant on the older health visitors who would give me instructions that invariably started with ‘Turn left/right/go straight at Pridham’s Garage...’ The Garage is still there albeit under a different name, and we still direct people to our house by the same method..turn left at the garage, turn right after a hundred yards, go straight for two miles, only house you come to on the right. 

I wonder if many of you have recently reconnected with that sense of community that was a given in the days of Wiltshire Village. For most of us our radius from home had shrunk to about a two miles, and it was the introduction to another book, The Open Air - An Anthology of English Country Life by Adrian Bell that made me think...

’Another form of isolation has been brought by motors into country districts. ones circle of friends is no longer the circle of a ten mile radius ...one friend is forty miles in one direction, another twenty-five miles in another, half a dozen are in London...thus people living in a place may have no part in that place fundamentally, or in any place.

I hadn’t really given this much thought ...the advent of the car and what it must have meant...

’Whereas in the old days whoever lived round about you, unless they were extremely difficult, you fitted into your circle of friendship. The more socially gifted thus helped out the less, and the whole was leavened. Now, by more peremptory standards we choose only those with whom we are ‘in sympathy’, the spontaneous functions of local life consequently decay and the number of lonely old people must be legion.’

First published in 1936 The Open Air is, as Adrian Bell suggests, ‘an attempt to catch some glint of the genius of the country in an oblique, perhaps the only way.’ The world order was shifting and I’m grateful that visionaries like Adrian Bell, and  Robin and Heather Tanner, captured it and pinned it down before it was lost.

The three of us have exchanged almost daily emails and Wiltshire Village has led naturally along the Robin Tanner trail to his book of letters From Old Chapel Field and his autobiography Double Harness (more work for the postman) both of which are (or were) readily available at You Know Where and reveal more about this astonishing man.

Robin was a gentle soul, kind and caring, loved his friends and treasured their friendships, but was also an inspired and intuitive educationalist with connections to Dartington Hall and courses there in the 1960s along with countless other artists and crafts people. Every page offers up another name to be researched, another trail to follow...I’m currently happily diverted into the world of 1930’s textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher (even more work for the postman) and their indigo vat and block printed fabrics.

It's been such an inspirational journey so far and there is a way to go yet.

Meanwhile I'd be interested to know if any of you have heard of Robin Tanner....read his books or seen his etchings (maybe even own one)...

Or whether you too have found some inspirational reading trails to follow in recent weeks...

And how about that sense of community...has it flourished were you are...

Our village has established a weekly Covid Chronicle. We all submit our copy and can't wait for each edition to arrive by e mail....there have been walking treasure hunts, photography competitions, someone's created a socially distanced five hole golf course on one of their fields, there are offers to shop and collect prescriptions, there's a plant swap in the church porch and generally everyone is getting to know each other in a way that they might not have done before.

We are all very excited about the party that we will have eventually.

Footnote...

Incidentally the senior health visitors were much better at directions than doctors. The ‘next left’ on one set of definitive instructions from a GP turned out to be a dried up river bed and there was quite a lot of bother and much hilarity extricating myself....'Oh, I didn’t mean ‘that’ left,’ he said when I finally got back.

Morabor ut in cochlea pace

I know there must be gazillions of people struggling with all this but is anyone else finding their lives  are morabor ut in cochlea pace ...slowing down to snail's pace (thank you google translator ...high risk strategy and I'll await corrections from the classicists out there).

And, setting all the worries and anxieties aside (and I no way diminish these, we all have them) perhaps not really minding that it has for a while...

In fact I'm almost taking advantage of permission to do so before we all have to return to civilisation and full diaries, and feeling that we must get out and about, and visit places and worry about R being above one (new language) and wearing masks (new fashion) ...and...and..

Botanical wanderings have been a real exercise for me in looking closely, and I see from your comments the other day for many of you too, and I am really grateful to Marilyn,a reader of the scribbles in the U.S., who wrote to tell me about the late Brian Doyle and a book of his collected essays One Long River of Song - Notes on Wonder. I downloaded a sample to my Kindle and realised very quickly that here was more writing for the now, and a book that I needed in my hand, one I could slot into the Read-a-Chapter-Daily category. I have rather too many of those at the moment, but all up-lifting in the face of so much that can be down-casting; books I will treasure in the years ahead as saviours when I look back on this time. I must confess I sometimes find books like this can be a bit sentimental and schmaltzy, a bit too pseudo-spiritual for this lapsed Anglican, and dare I say embarrassing, but nothing could be wider of that mark than Brian Doyle's writing...

"When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.

At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary...."

Here's Brian remembering a moment when he looked at shrew...

Looked very closely...

'But there was something beyond curiosity or the startle of astonishment. For just an instant I paid attention with every shard and iota of my being. Maybe we couldn't survive if we were like that all the time, I don't know. But when it happens we see that which none of us can find words for. Sometimes we are starving to see every bit of what is right in front of us.'

Well I looked at the hawthorn flowers the other day...really closely and for a long time because I didn't have to be anywhere else, or do anything else because I have all the time in the world to do things right now...and had I ever noticed the pink bits before...

Cast not a clout ‘til May is out. Richard Mabey confirms it is the Hawthorn or May Tree blossom not the month that sees us putting away the thermals. The blossom banished from houses and that apparently has the ‘smell of the Great Plague.’

Since this all began I've been thinking I MUST keep a diary, must write it all down, but write what down. It wasn't until April 23rd, St George's Day, that I found a new A4 notebook and the right mood and actually wanted to start...and then it would be nothing about the Big Thing but it would be all the little tiny things.

The new flowers I'd seen...

The goldfinch that sat on the branch and sang for me...

The little patch of Lady's Smock right at the far end on the left of Hill Long Acre and discovering that the Orange Tip butterflies feed on it.

The nature reference books piled up on the computer-less writing desk in the book room...

Incidentally I spent about two hours sorting this desk....

Polishing it, finding 'things' for the windowsill, creating a nice place to sit and write and think and look things up in books rather than google..

Finding out all there is to know about sycamore trees because I walk to this one every day. Introduced to England in 16th century, naturalised since the 1630s, and might it be so ancient that it is approaching the 400 year limit of its life...

It would be a sad day.

And discovering that the leaves from Germander Speedwell, currently creating little lakes of blue in the hedgerows, were used in tea as a treatment of gout. Years ago I bought a copy of Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, a charity shop find, and it is invaluable for diagnosing and explaining my field discoveries.

And then a good close stare at some lichen before realising I didn’t really know much about that either..

Lichen experts out there...might it Parmotrema perlatum...suddenly I need to know the right names.

Finally looking up which butterflies hibernate... Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral and Brimstone and keeping an eye out, even following a few in the hope they will settle for my camera.. 

Then I needed to know the meaning of 'purlieu' ,because I am also reading a letter a day from The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White, first published in 1789 (when that sycamore tree might already have staked its claim on that corner of Bramble Park). Finding no copy on the shelf I treated myself to the edition from Little Toller Books with engravings by Eric Ravilious. Little Toller a small publisher I really don't want to lose through this and so doing my tiny bit to support them. The book arrived post free within days and with some lovely postcards included.

Purlieu : Originally land severed from an English royal forest by perambulation of an adjacent landowner's boundaries, but it can also mean a frequently visited place, a haunt. That might mean my desk too, because having prettified it I might then have spent another two hours sitting at it and staring out of the window.

I really am living the poem and I doubt I'm the only one who is purposely creating a little holiday from their day to day life as a way of managing the bigger picture. The W.H.Davies lines might be a bit hackneyed and cliched from overuse these days, but they are nevertheless still true...

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

I know the worries for many of you may still be huge, but I hope you are all finding time to stand and stare too.

And do you have any more Chapter-a-Day reading suggestions...

 

 

Florence Nightingale's 200th anniversary & No Place for Ladies ~ Helen Rappaport

It was March 20th 2007 when I wrote about Helen Rappaport's first book, No Place For Ladies - The untold story of women in the Crimean War and here we are thirteen years later, Helen and I firm friends and how delighted I am that the book has been reprinted for the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. 

Not only do we have the Nightingale Hospitals, raised within days as our insurance against an NHS overwhelmed (beds thankfully not needed in quantity, but not yet decommissioned) but the arrival of Covid 19 has seen the nation pull together in many similar ways to the Victorians, though faced with a war on a different front. It would seem that the human instinct to support, to raise funds, to help and be useful, and to make things that will help those who are fighting on the front line remains undiminished by time, change and progress. Substitute scrubs for muffattees and there you have it.

And so in honour of the book's reincarnation I have dusted off that original post from the scribbles basement along with a comment that Helen left at the time. 50% of the royalties from any sales of the book will go to St Thomas's Hospital where the Nightingale nurse training school was established in 1860.

 

If a book can help me chip into a new seam of reading then it's worth its weight in gold and No Place For Ladies by Helen Rappaport has done exactly that. I've hit the mother-lode with this one and am now a mine of information on all things interesting about the Crimean War. I can bore the muffatees off anyone so here's a selection of my Crimean Cameos pronounced over kitchen table coffee at the weekend...

"Did you know that Queen Victoria asked Lord Rokeby to take a break from military duties and go out and pick her a nosegay of flowers in the Crimea and he did? It was sent back to England and is preserved at Windsor Castle to this very day"

"Do you know one nurse assisted at 56 amputations in 30 hours...or was it 30 in 56?"

"Do you know Prince Albert designed the Victoria Cross and they are all made from the metal of the guns?"
"Everyone knows that and they're running out"
"So where were the guns captured then?" Silence..."Ah see, Sebastopol"

"Do you know the soldiers dug up Crimean snowdrop bulbs and sent them home?"

I won't tell you anymore but rest assured there is plenty more in this extremely readable account of the role of the women at the Front and one that you desperately want to talk about afterwards, especially if like me you have a bit of a gap in your Crimean War knowledge

.
Florence Nightingale was busy trying to keep order and discipline in the nursing world, Mary Seacole was out there as the hostess with the mostest providing food and supplies as well as her vast array of very effective alternative remedies.Wherever there was a need Mary Seacole seemed to be the one to anticipate and fulfill it, red tape was there to be ignored.

Meanwhile the army wives, who were allowed to travel in small numbers with each regiment, seemed to struggle to find a role for themselves beyond attempting to care for their husbands and living in utter squalor and poverty as it became clear the army could barely look after itself, let alone its women.
Whenever I lay hands on a book like this I turn first to the bibliography to see what else might be worth reading.Helen Rappaport's research is formidable and there is a wealth of other reading to choose from and one book in particular that you will certainly want to read It's the day to day events that are so fascinating and if it hadn't been for Mrs Fanny Duberley's diary I suspect a great deal of this would remain a mystery. Fanny was the army wife with a difference and her diary a superb primary source.

Helen left this comment on that post back in 2007...

'I'm so glad you enjoyed the book Lynne. For me as a social historian it was a joy digging out the small but forgotten anecdotes about the war - such as the knitting instructions for mittens published in the Patriotic Journal or seeing the nosegay of Crimean flowers so lovingly preserved in the queen's album at Windsor, or the descriptions of Queen Victoria's solicitous sending of false teeth and prosthetic limbs to the wounded whom she visited. There was one aspect of the war I never quite found a way of working into the story though - and that was one or two Crimean 'romances', including the racy story of an English officer's wife who disappeared one day and weeks later was spotted shacked up with a French officer over in the French camp. So many wonderful stories that give a much more rounded view of ordinary people enduring a totally senseless war that take the story beyond all the tedious military strategy and the fighting. I really didn't want to get to the end of it! And still feel bereft ... but then, I have about six great big fat files full of research on Mary Seacole .... there's a lot more to her story yet to be told.'

I know Helen is currently writing a book about the White Russian emigrées in Paris before and after the Russian revolution, but who knows perhaps one day we'll get her definitive biography of Mary Seacole. 

Meanwhile a casualty in the current situation has been the Florence Nightingale Museum, at St Thomas's Hospital in London, who were preparing to stage an exhibition to celebrate the bi-centenary and of course are now closed.  The exhibition can be viewed online and having had a browse I can confirm that a virtual visit will keep you nicely occupied for an afternoon. Then maybe add them to your list of places to be supported and visited once London reopens....it would be very sad indeed to lose some of these collections.

Thank you...and tomorrow...

I wanted to say a huge thank you to all who left a comment on the VE Day post.

I'm still replying to each of you, and I will reply to everyone, but one of the highlights of the whole emotional day was reading those stories here and from people across my social media places, about their parents' and friends' wartime experiences. It made me realise how so many of us treasure those memories with so much love and pride and so the flame of gratitude burns on from one generation to the next.

It was a remarkable day and one you all contributed to in comments and I am so grateful.

I'm just dropping by today to let you know we have another 'celebration' on here tomorrow.

It will be the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale and Helen Rappaport will be dropping in an out of comments during the day to answer any questions you might have for her. Not only about No Place For Ladies...Helen's book about the women of the Crimean War, and which is being republished this week, but I'm sure she will happily talk about  her other books too. There will be a post about No Place For Ladies appearing tomorrow morning and where you can leave any questions for Helen in comments.

Helen's other books include her Romanov titles ... Ekaterinberg, Four Sisters  and The Race to Save the Romanovs as well as Magnificent Obsession about Victoria and Albert, along with Beautiful Forever - Madame Rachel of Bond Street Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer.

And if we're lucky Helen might also tell us a little bit about the book that she is working on at the moment.

Please do stop by.

 

We’ll Meet Again...

It’s is the seventy-fifty anniversary of Victory in Europe today. A day that marked the end of World War Two in the West at least, after almost six long years of conflict. Perhaps some people are thinking it’s time to let it go, move on, except we're far from thinking that. The lane is dressed overall and we are ready...

My dad always said he could never fully share the elation of VE Day, having just been posted to a ship that would be heading to the Far East where the war was still be decided...and they had been prepared and trained for serious fighting. The Tinker (Len) was under no illusion that this could be to the death. In the end events took a different turn in August 1945 and his ship was tasked with bringing the survivors home from the POW camps in Singapore...something he never forgot.

Having recently put those hundreds of letters that Len write to my mum (Vera) away for now I took out a few dated May 1945 just to get a feel for the mood of the moment. They have known each other about a year. things have been a bit on and off but there is talk of 'getting engaged' though Len isn't quite sure what he's supposed to do because he's never been 'engaged' before...does he have to ask someone...how can they buy a ring if he's miles away...is it fair on Vera if he's going to be away for several years which seems likely.

Len is now in the fighting ranks of the Royal Marines (rather than a bugler) on board a new ship in Portsmouth waiting to sail and has watched a training film entitled ‘Existence in the Jungle’...‘Hopeful isn’t it’ he writes to Vera. That same week he goes ashore and sees Flanagan and Allan in Dreaming which was ‘alright’ followed by White Cliffs of Dover which made him ‘ a bit on the sad side’

...which he didn’t need because he was feeling sad enough at what was ahead, and being parted from the love of his life for goodness knows how long. 

Then I read this, and remembering Len was a mere twenty years old...

'I expect by the time you get this the war in Germany will be all over and you will be getting back to peace routine again. It’s wonderful to think that all the danger to folks back home is over and you haven’t got to worry about bombs, doodle-bugs and rockets. You might think I’m soft but I’m going to church on Sunday to offer a few prayers of thanks for seeing my family, your family and a lot of other people’s families safely through the night. I think it’s about the second time I’ve ever been to church willingly, the other time was when I was christened, but I’m sure He will forgive me for that....’

Incidentally given that he had left school at fourteen I am very impressed with my dad's spelling, not a single correction required.

Then something that made me smile...

’Mum says that they have taken down the shelter in the back room and are decorating with big Victory ribbons...’

My grandparents, eschewing the discomforts of a cold damp air raid shelter in the garden, had built theirs in the dining room right in front of the fire, and kitted it out with all mod cons.

Len goes on to say...

'I think I have forgotten what a street fully lit and all the other things that go with peace look like...'

He's also been reading in the press about how many medals he will get...he thinks five. There then follows a bit of a diatribe about Hitler having taken his own life when it’s clear Vera and Len had a few choice things lined up for the man who had stolen their teenage years ...‘It’s not fair is it’ says Len, and I found myself agreeing. I think they were entitled to those feelings, but I also found myself understanding the importance and sheer enormity of the moment. The relief and the nation's need to rejoice and celebrate must have been profound. 

We might all be stuck at home but we’re safe enough where we are right now. For six years no one had felt safe anywhere and certainly not in their homes. No wonder they kicked up their heels and let rip and it sounds like they do certainly did...

'I have had a letter from home and it seems like they celebrated with a vengeance. They all had a tea party in the road and once the children had finished the grown ups sat down to tea, cleared away and everybody had their wirelesses out in the street and they danced until four in the morning. How I wish I could have been there...’

This picture of my grandparents says it all I think, whether it was taken on VE day or not they certainly loved to dance.

My poor dad missing out on all the fun at home, though it seems there was a bit of a knees up on the ship after all...

'I am only just beginning to recover from the VE celebrations. Oh boy!! What a week, we've had to stop as the flowing bowl floweth no longer...we had a victory march through the town yesterday and as you can guess it ended up in the rain...but there was much merry-making.

The night finished off with fireworks and bonfires. Some of the bonfires weren't satisfied with stopping at bonfires, they burnt a few houses down in the end I'm afraid, much to the enjoyment of the people watching, except the people in the house! I think they were in the state where you get past worrying about such petty things.

I bet London had a real crazy night though, I wish we could have been there...I can just imagine what Piccadilly and Oxford Circus were like that night. I bet it was bedlam and some fat heads next morning too'

So anyway, in solidarity and with remembrance and thanks, that’s why we’ve draped the hedge in bunting today and hung out the Union Jack. We'll be getting as near as we can to the village for our daily excursion, this to coincide with a socially distanced national minute's silence at 11am where we have been asked as a nation to remember, but also to think of those who have lost their lives in recent months too. There will be the playing of Last Post and Reveille and we’ll be having a jolly good Victory Tea Party of our own when we get home.

We’ll be singing We’ll Meet Again from afar, with the rest of the nation, and we’ll raise a cup of tea (or a glass of ginger beer) to all of you too, wherever you are and to absent family and friends as well...
 
Meanwhile, here's Flanagan and Allen singing Dreaming (to a horse it seems) from the film that my dad thought was 'alright'. 

As his letters show, he and my mum were doing a lot of dreaming in those years they were apart... my dad has heard there will be 100,000 prefabs built...maybe they could get one (they didn't)...lets think about curtains and carpet he suggests. If only they could have known then that they would eventually be together for over fifty years.

Botanical wanderings...

I bet I’m not the only one out there who spends a moment or three each day finding the positives in our Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives life. In the words of Terry Waite, a man who knows plenty about isolation, we’re not stuck at home, we’re safe at home, and no matter the hardships people are living through, and I know they are manifold, I have been quietly amazed at the ingenuity and spirit that is fuelling this strange time for so many. In our little corner of the world I have a regular marvel at wildflowers and I know I’m not alone.

One of the interesting things about our little corner at the moment is that, though it is usually very quiet even on a busy day, now we are blessed with walkers and we are really happy about that. People have discovered our beautiful lane and they are happy to stop and talk. We lost count of the number who stopped at the gate for a  socially distanced conversation on Sunday and quite a few were carrying armfuls of wildflowers. Now I know, I know, you’re really not supposed to pick them but we have to cut ourselves some slack right now and I think the hedgerows can cope. Besides which we have no access to any other flowers for vases and is there anything lovelier than a profusion of wildness on the kitchen table. 

I had thought I was a reasonably observant wild flower wanderer until all this happened. I’ve started slow-walking around a few fields that have been left alone for a couple of years and have been amazed at what I have noticed beyond the obvious. We’re in that happy colour phase of red, white, blue and yellow as the red campion, stitchwort, bluebell and buttercup light the way. Waiting in the wings are the foxgloves, and the woodbine (wild honeysuckle) and meadowsweet will soon be dousing the lane with their scent, but look closer and I have found all sorts of unknowns.

This week’s mystifying plant has been a strange yellow one. Pictures were duly dispatched to Fran H-B and Carol and discussion, and much poring over the books, followed. Meanwhile Bookhound Googled ‘Yellow plant bit like a brassica’ and beat us to it with confirmation that it was Yellow Rocket or Wintercress. 

Fran also confirmed Bush Vetch which I had never really noticed before and now see everywhere. 

I unearthed my I-Spy Wild Flowers because this school prize for 'Effort and Progress' when I was about seven is definitely where it all began, along with the cards we used to collect from the packets of PG Tips tea leaves. No such thing a teabags back in our day...how on earth did that whole thing happen. and to the extent that they have almost eclipsed loose tea.

It has been a resplendent year for buttercups too, the fields are gleaming...

 

The violets are almost done but I found a few lingering in the shade..

And the cow parsley is doing much prettifying of the hedgerows too...

More buttercups just because...

And now I'm thinking that you might all have been noticing things you might have missed before and not necessarily wildflowers. Please do share in comments...

Family Matters and Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract...

Everyone’s family is extraordinary in its own way. This much and more I discovered in all those years of listening to family histories as a health visitor. It was important to get a feel for where a family had come from, the experience, the highs the lows, the tensions, the ‘issues’ and it wouldn’t take more than a few open questions and saying yes to a cup of tea to learn more. I look on it as one of the privileges of the job, and it was one of the aspects I loved the most and found so fascinating. People’s stories shared and respected.

Translate that love into books and it is understandable that I am always drawn to the family memoirs. The secret to success is for the writer to make their own extraordinary family seem likewise for me the reader to whom they might otherwise be ordinary...if that makes sense, and it wasn’t hard to wander around my shelves and find a selection of those I have enjoyed most in recent years. I think I have written about all of these in the past so please do follow the links if you want to know more about each one..

Hancox - Charlotte Moore

The Baroness - Hannah Rothschild 

and an interview with Hannah at Port Eliot Festival here

The Valley - Richard Benson and an interview with him at Port Eliot Festival including sight of the knitted farm knitsuke 

The Great Western Beach - Emma Smith

On Chapel Sands - Laura Cumming...how did I not write about this? It was one of my best reads of 2019...

The Three of Us - Julia Blackburn 

The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal who I was also lucky enough to interview at Port Eliot Festival...happy days

Forty Autumns - Nina Willner

And then there was the astonishing and very beautiful book American Style and Spirit by Jane Bradbury about her Aunt Augusta and the Roddis family, their lives, their fortunes and their clothes. A picture of Augusta sits on the shelf above my desk and you might remember Jane  very kindly sent me a bunch of flowers as thanks for that post. The hydrangeas in the vase lasted so long they eventually put out roots and I was able to nurture a plant. Augusta’s Hydrangea has been through a few torrid times...I planted it out too soon and almost lost it...this year it dried out in the cold frame and I almost lost it again but, like Augusta's clothes, the plant has survived and is thriving again, and I am mightily relieved because it felt like a challenge at which I mustn’t fail.

It was the arrival of another book to add to this selection that made me think more carefully about their attraction. Perhaps, at the moment, it’s about immersing myself in someone else’s life and history instead of my own. It’s quite hard not to overthink all this, especially when the diary is empty and the next thing to get excited about it is the entire nation singing We’ll Meet Again together from their lockdown homes on VE Day. Actually, I am quite excited about this, because any sense of togetherness doesn’t go amiss right now. 

Richard Atkinson contacted me to ask if I might be interested in seeing a copy of his book Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract - The Story of a Tangled Inheritance. Published very recently this one of those books that could so easily be consigned to the wilderness in the midst of the current situation, and that has to be heartbreaking for any author who has committed a huge part of their life to writing it. In Richard’s case ten years or so, having found a box of old family letters...

'Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded – the age at which his father died – when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard.

This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica.

Richard’s searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a brilliant but flawed West India merchant who had shipped all the British army’s supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. ‘Rum’ Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy....'

I'm about a hundred pages in and both intrigued and engrossed. So many of these writers have no choice but to address the 'something nasty in the woodshed' and Richard's family is no exception. He will have to confront involvement in slavery, but his ancestors were also witness to a backdrop of some of the most momentous times in history and I am re-visiting so much that I once knew. The Treaty of Paris...who knew the barest shreds of that were still lodged in my memory.

Meanwhile there must be scores of family memoirs deserving of a mention and already I realise I have forgotten to include Elisabeth's Lists by Lulah Ellender...

Lulah Ellender quotes Hilary Mantel...

'What is to be done with the lost, the dead, but write them into being?'

And I was reminded of an evening spent listening to Hilary Mantel. I hunted out my notes and here's what I jotted down...

'...As soon as somebody dies they become fictional, they become a narrative construction, preserved in memory but in a sense you are not dead if someone still talks about you. The thought hollows you out with a sense of waste and loss for those not known...my greatest joy is to take a name and give them person-hood... a particle of being... doing honour to what is lost...'

I am sure you have plenty more suggestions to share..

 

Greenery - Journeys in Springtime ~ Tim Dee

Every year we make a note of the date. Not the date when someone else sees a swallow in the village, but when our first one arrives and heads into the veranda knowing they are home. Variously April 28th, 15th, 17th, last year the 20th and this year Easter Sunday morning, April 12th but so far just the one. 

We thought he/she had been here before because there's a little perch they have made their own. It's a tangled up bit of electric cable that we always meant to wire up to an outside light but never did and there it sits. A complete eyesore if you look up and to the right of the front door but of course now we daren't change a thing about it. And so our single swallow arrived and there he has been sleeping for the past weeks waiting for the rest of the nest building team, and I'm wondering whether he is one of these. Last year's fledglings on the day they moved from nest to rafter with their first flight. 

Alongside the annual conflict is gathering. The wrens, who have been with us all winter, purloin a vacant swallow's nest and start loading it with mossy furnishings of their own, claiming squatter's rights, and there's nothing we can do about what happens next. It will be Armageddon out there because for all its diminutive size, Troglodytes troglodytes has the voice of a klaxon and will make its displeasure known when the Hirundo rustica mount their invasion and reclaim their property. It's usually a day to go out and leave them to it. We'll go for a walk instead and come home to a pile of moss on the deck, wrens in retreat back to their hedgerow nests and swallows back and forth with their preferred decor of mud, grass and white feathers.

 

This all brings me back to where I meant to start which was with Tim Dee's new book Greenery - Journeys in Springtime recently published by Jonathan Cape. I'm afraid I bought my copy from You Know Where to be sure it arrived soonest. My need for the real book in hand was yesterday once I'd read the Kindle sample.... 

'One December, in midsummer South Africa, Tim Dee was watching swallows. They were at home there, but the same birds would soon begin journeying north to Europe, where their arrival marks the beginning of spring.

Between the winter and the summer solstice in Europe, spring moves north at about the speed of swallow flight. That is also close to human walking pace. In the light of these happy coincidences, Greenery recounts how Tim Dee tries to travel with the season and its migratory birds, making remarkable journeys to keep in step with the very best days of the year, the time of buds and blossoms and leafing, the time of song and nests and eggs. After South Africa, we follow European migrants staging in Chad and Ethiopia, and on across the colossal and incomprehensible Sahara. We accompany storks venturing the Straits of Gibraltar, honey buzzards dodging Sicilian hunters, and tiny landbirds finding haven on the curious island of Heligoland. A diary of the spring spreading through Britain with a magic trinity of oak-tree-loving birds interleaves the continental greening. We read of other determined spring-seekers: D. H. Lawrence and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We hear from a Sámi reindeer herder, a barn-dwelling swallow-devotee, an Egyptian taxi driver, a chronobiologist in arctic Norway. There are bears and boars and bog-bodies too.'

 

So many books must be slipping into obscurity before they've even taken their first breath at the moment, and I can't quite imagine how the publishing world will regroup and get back on track after this, but it would be a real shame if this happened to Greenery because it is becoming, for me, the iconic book of this moment in my life. That sounds a bit dramatic but something similar happened with Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, which I read through my dad's last few weeks. Looking back I see I wrote one post here knowing my dad would be reading it, and mentioned it in another here, a couple of months later knowing sadly he would not.

Arctic Dreams was a book that took me somewhere else, to another place that I didn't even realise I wanted to visit, but the memory of it, and the state of grace it created, has stayed with me...and I think Greenery will do likewise. Tim Dee's writing is bringing perspective, focusing my wandering attention and extending my horizons, and all at a time when the natural world has been giving some space to rest and breath.

I didn't know I wanted to go to the Sahara Desert but now I'm there, trailing the swallows as they travel north. 'We all, more or less, must be vernalised - and go through dark times in order to be born into light' suggests Tim Dee of our transition from winter mood to spring mood, but perhaps the same applies to moments like now. I think we'll all grow and change through this, in small ways, maybe in much deeper ways, the world will be different, no question....but some things won't change, like swallows migrating and barn owls nesting (deo volente).

I mentioned when 'our' swallow arrived 'home', but as Tim Dee points out with migratory birds, who do they belong to and where is home...

'Where are they at home? Whose swallows are they? Can anyone, in any case, lay claim to a bird?'

We talk of 'our barn owls' whilst knowing they are no such thing.

Greenery is punctuated with literary and poetic references that have thus far sent me scurrying in search of W.S. Merwin and Elizabeth Bishop, Shakespeare and Nadine Gordimer, Wordsworth and The Odyssey, and I'm only on page fifty six. The margins are unashamedly littered with pencilled thoughts as they flash into my mind. 

Meanwhile,  whilst I have discovered another book to add to the 'of the moment' reads in my life I'm thinking some of you might  have discovered yours too. And if not books for the now just yet, perhaps books from life-moments past whose power and effect has stayed with you.

Please do share them in comments...

And perhaps this beautiful film from New Zealand will help too. I would just have arrived home now, struggling with jet lag, but I'll be back there again one day....in the meantime Papatūānuku is breathing...

 

Leonard and Hungry Paul ~ Ronan Hession

It seems like some sort of minor miracle that I have finished a novel, a newish one at that.

Back in early March a parcel of lockdown books arrived from Susan Hill, and Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession was included. Susan has always been a very reliable source of reading recommendations, with her finger on the pulse of the publishing world, what's current and what is worth reading....mostly. We might have disagreed about Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser- Akner last year, but it does't happen very often. 

It was a while before I opened it, (March 24th, I've written the date inside, it seems oddly important to do so at the moment) but as soon as I did, and had read the first paragraph, I knew I'd have to be rationing Leonard and Hungry Paul to a chapter a day...

'Leonard was raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty, his father having died tragically during childbirth. Though she was not by nature the soldiering type, she taught him to look at life as a daisy chain of small events, each of which could be made manageable in its own way. She was a person for whom kindness was a very ordinary thing, who believed that the only acceptable excuse for not having a bird feeder in the back garden was that you had one in the front garden.'

Consequently it was April 19th before I finally allowed myself to finish Leonard and Hungry Paul, and I think I could probably start over and read it again just for the book's gentle humility and the innate goodness of those who see life through a different lens; people who have different expectations and reactions to the norm. It's a book to make a reader question 'the norm' and who decides 'the norm' anyway. I've often wondered and suspect many of us, in our different ways, are doing some, if not a lot of that right now.

Leonard and Hungry Paul, both mature men are good friends. Leonard's mother has recently died leaving him alone in the house and the life they happily shared, whilst Hungry Paul (I could only assume this was probably a name given to him as a ravenous baby) still lives with his parents nearby.  There are simple certainties to the lives herein. Both Leonard and Hungry Paul work, they meet regularly to play board games, Hungry Paul's more worldly sister Grace is planning her wedding, people buy books in shops, meet for lunch...normal (well, the Old Normal) things happen and yet underpinning the whole book is a sense of goodness that I find it hard to describe.

Given how suspiciously minds are often encouraged to work today it would be so easy to jump to conclusions about both men... the mummy's boys, does the 'friendship' conceal something more, ultimately place them both on the autistic spectrum, job done, Sorted, pigeon-holed, move along, and yet Rónán Hession challenges assumptions and prejudices at every turn, denies a reader their judgements and I emerged from the final page completely grateful to have read this book. It's not slushy or sentimental but it made me question so much about myself, and at a time when we're all questioning so many other certainties too.

I'm bringing you news of this one this minute because it is a mere £1.89 on Kindle at the moment. Now I know (as a reading friend pointed out the other day) that some of us are currently racking up Kindle spending on a par with the GDP of a small nation, and that there will be a reckoning, so perhaps download the sample first and read the first chapter before you commit. And even if you do commit and then don't like, you can always return a Kindle purchase for a refund if done within a certain time frame. 

But I don't think you will be disappointed.

Meanwhile, as we all chug along in our respective restricted worlds, please do share any other good Kindle or otherwise reads that you have discovered.

 

 

 

 

Confessions...

Honestly, here we all are trying to read good books...books that I can hold my head up and be proud to say I've read through these challenging times, and then what happens...

This...

The trouble was that in an effort to avoid switching on the lunchtime news one day I persuaded Bookhound that now was a good time for me to see just one episode of Malory Towers. The BBC have generously made all episodes available at once. I loaded it with caveats...I'll watch the rest on my iPad.... it will probably be awful... you'll hate it but you mustn't mock.... 

And so we watched the first episode...

The next day we watched the second episode...

On the third day Bookhound says 'Is it time for lunch and 'your' serial...'

Note the 'your'...

And so it has carried on and Bookhound will possibly slaughter me for revealing this...but he gets as excited as I do about the lacrosse match, and the Open Day...and what will happen to nasty Gwendoline next...and who will Darrell lose her temper with now...and there you have it. It's a whole new world for a man raised on Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings and the world of Biggles, but it's a return to a familiar world for me as life at Malory Towers, the Cornish clifftop school, unfolds.

First Term at Malory Towers was published in 1946, and the series has never been out of print since, I'm now wondering if there is some sort of theory about the penchant for books about girl's boarding schools in the period immediately after a war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This occurred to me having recently read Erica Wins Through by Josephine Elder published in the 1920s. Maybe its about security and safety and re-establishing the order...perhaps creating a new version. I'm sure someone has written a PhD on the subject. Various new themes have been introduced to the Malory Towers TV series, including a back story for Darrell and a bit of scandal at a previous school. And whilst pranks prevail discipline is still paramount (and matron is vile) but girls are encouraged and praised for standing up for what is right and fair in the finest traditions of boarding school stories.

Reading very lightly around the subject  I was interested to find a piece, in a collection of essays on the subject of  school stories, by Rosemary Auchmuty outlining the undreamt-of educational opportunities that these schools represented for girls...

'a chance to study seriously, perhaps to aim for university or a career, which in turn offered an alternative to marriage and money of one's own. Games brought girls the comradeship of the team and new physical freedoms. It is easy to underestimate how revolutionary all this was in the 1920s when only a quarter of all girls enjoyed a secondary education.'

Girls could be successful because all things were possible within the all-female educational environment, and the scope of a girl's ambition (or lack of it) is a contrast neatly played out between Darrell and Gwendoline in the TV series.

For whatever reason the indoor scenes were filmed in Toronto whilst the outdoor scenes were filmed at Hartland Abbey in North Devon, and the setting is pitch perfect having also been used for the upcoming film of Rebecca, Sense and Sensibility, The Night Manager and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

It's all a right old wallow I can tell you, smart uniforms, predictable plots, midnight feasts, wandering ghosts and happy outcomes but entirely enjoyable.

I read the books over and again as a child, copies long gone, but for old time's sake I downloaded a sample to my Kindle, started reading and before I knew it I'd found a bargain box set on eBay and couldn't stop myself. Six in the series written by Enid Blyton and another six sequels added at a later date. Enid Blyton was forbidden reading at my state primary school, considered to be a 'poor writer' by the headteacher, though fortunately my parents saw it differently, and the library had an endless supply. It was much later in my life that my dad confessed that he had read them all while I was asleep so that he could join in the conversation with me...and that he had loved them all too. Needless to say our own children were suitably inducted into the world of Enid, both books and videos, because shouldn't all children experience that sense of freedom and adventure so beloved by the Famous Five.

I smiled when I read this recently in the monthly Letter sent out a by 'a publisher'...

'And we were SO surprised when a very very intellectual friend of mine said she was hugely enjoying Anne of Green Gables on Netflix....'

Don't be in the least bit surprised I say. Firstly Anne is the absolute heroine and aren't we all Kindred Spirits right now, and even the 'very very' intellectual need something that offers consolation and safety and certainty. Malory Towers is proving to be our unashamedly nostalgic antidote to so much else at the moment and I'm wondering if you have found your antidotes too...

In that little book of essays on school stories there is a delightful one by Adele Geras. Adele has this to say about the pleasure of reading books like this...

'I do not think it's possible to over-emphasise the pleasure - sometimes a rather guilty pleasure - of having no roughage at all to chew on in a book ..it's just like eating meringues all day long...the last thing we liked was the distinct possibility that we ourselves would end up in a school just like Malory Towers...'

Sadly Adele's re-reading of In the Fifth at Malory Towers as an adult found them distinctly lacking, and she suggests they are best left behind in childhood...too late, I've bought them now, but maybe Adele didn't have a plague in progress, and after all the charity shops will be open again and in need one day. I'll have a go.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine to confess your secret antidotes here because I'd love some more suggestions...

 

Stitching a path through...

I hope you all had a good weekend and thank you for all your lovely Easter greetings, and for emails from those saying how pleased you are the scribbles is here. Can I just add how thankful I am that all of you are out there too, keeping our worldwide conversation going, and keeping each other on an even keel when any one of us has a wobble. I had a bit of a moment on the evening of Easter Saturday. The sudden thought that we wouldn’t be seeing the family for heaven knows how long and Easter egg hunts of the past just washed over me unexpectedly and in a flash. 

I doubt I’m alone with these moments.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided the only way up was quilting. I’ve run out of fabric for The Knot Garden so that is stuck on my sticky fleece wall and on hold..

And I’d been reluctant to start anything new fearing it might always have plague associations...but then quilting is all about stitching whatever is happening in your life into what you are making, so I decided I needed to just woman up, eat chocolate for breakfast as per Easter Sunday tradition, and get on with it.

And so I tasked myself to get properly into Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt.  This is Jen’s version...

It’s fiendishly complicated as you can see.

I had bought the pattern book ages ago and made a half-hearted start before realising that this thing needed planning, uninterrupted time and masses of concentration.

Then I thought I’d join one of the regular online groups that start in January and make this quilt to a monthly schedule through the year. 

That didn’t happen either.

Well I have no excuses now and by the end of Easter Sunday I’d had lovely chats with our three chicks, all fine in their various worlds, apologised that the Easter Bunny hadn’t quite made it round to all of them (even though they are all in their thirties) and I was soon in the flow with the cutting and piecing. Having added more to my half-hearted beginnings of backalong I’m now well on my way.

I have amassed a good selection of indigo and Japanese fabrics and decided to use these in various permutations...

...and it’s all quite pleasing. Reds, blues and yellow ochres play right into my happy colours so this is feeding good things into my soul.

Meanwhile I hope perhaps some creative projects have seeped into your life, though only if you find them helpful... they are definitely not compulsory.

Or maybe the elusive reading concentration has crept back...

Or perhaps something entirely new and unexpected has helped...

Apparently jigsaw puzzles are in huge demand and we have a 1000 piecer  saved for an emergency moment. 

PS Our first swallow has arrived. Just the one, the advance party, sitting on the wire. He’s sleeping on his own in the verandah waiting for the rest of the team.

 

 

Mr & Mrs Ravilious

The poster from the exhibition is framed and on the wall because Bookhound called into the Fry Art Gallery at Saffron Walden, when he was up that way backalong, and had a wonderful browse. Mr & Mrs Ravilious proved to be a real treat with so much of Eric and Tirzah’s work on display.

Along with catalogues various my best gift was this. A tea towel far too lovely to use, so instead it is pinned up in my sewing room as reminder that a mere ten yards away is the barn owl nest box with sleeping owls within. This an Edward Bawden illustration.

I’m finding there is much to commend Eric and Tirzah’s work at the moment. They both encapsulate something about a firm foundation to a way of life that we’ve seen temporarily turned upside down. There’s a certainty about it.

Children will walk to school again...

The White Horse won’t have galloped off...

Cuckmere Haven will still be there for the looking at...

The lighthouses will carry on shining..

Our barn owls have been much quieter in the evenings than last year, but apparently this is probably because our pair are already happily matched and there is no need for too much of the mating game to be played. No week-long relentless calls from the nest box as one of them tries to attract another one, that bit’s all done and dusted and with any luck, as long as they both survive, our pair will stay put in their known residence and hunting grounds year on year. They will also want to keep their nest off the radar of any predators so silence is an intentional phase. 

We've been mastering the art of the new digital Wi-fi night vision binoculars, my Mothering Sunday gift, and can now watch what is happening on my iPad screen and take pictures. The quality will improve once we dispense with the window and set up outside, currently the glass blurs the image slightly, but we are still mesmerised at the sight of this...

And watching the owls walk along their newly repaired platforms is a huge relief after last year’s balancing act on a few dilapidated and decidedly precarious broken remains. Ten years-worth of storms had taken their toll so Rick and Mateo from the Barn Owl Trust came to install a new platform back in January. 

But just how long could we go on saying ‘That’s the male ...’ or ‘ Is that the female.’ We’d resisted naming them last year because it felt a bit possessive and, well somehow not right. But we have relented this year, and it was the exhibition poster and the consolation of the art right now that clinched it.

Meet Eric and Tirzah, Mr & Mrs Ravilious (last year’s picture).

Meanwhile I’m wondering whether art or perhaps music is working positively for you right now. 

Please do share in comments, and let us know how you are too...

Erica Wins Through ~ Josephine Elder

I doubt I’m the only one who has sat down with a pile of books recently, searching for the right one to read, only to find they are all probably the right books, just at the wrong time. In fact quite a lot of my projects seem to be wrong for the moment so there’s been a lot of juggling here.

You might recall I was very excited to settle down and start reading my Dad’s wartime letters to my Mum a while back, having been inspired by Gillian Tindall's The Pulse Glass . The path of true love did not run smooth in the early days of 1944, and things were very on-off-on and off again. My mum was in Liverpool, my dad was doing gunnery training in Kent and it was all quite intriguing (and largely unknown to me). I was also busy investigating what life might have been like for my mum in wartime Liverpool, had made contact with her old school and was really enjoying the whole thing. Then all ‘this’ happened and out of the blue and unexpectedly (though hardly surprisingly) it all made me very emotional. That is the very last thing my parents would have wanted for me...I could just imagine them telling me to ‘put them away’ and so I have. There will be a right moment but again, it isn’t now.

I had somehow thought that every available ounce of emotional energy was needed for the present rather than the past, none of which explains why the shelf that eventually won me over was my modest Girls Gone By collection. Republished girls’ fiction and I settled on Erica Wins Through by Josephine Elder written in 1924, because it sounded as if Erica, the semi-feral child from Dartmoor, is going to have a baptism of fire at her new boarding school but will emerge triumphant.

It's a theme I am assiduously applying to the here and now... that we will get through this 'thing'.

She really only has herself to blame, because Erica has basically gone on strike since being left at home with a governess, this after her brother John is sent off the boarding school. A bit of a protest ensues which culminates in Erica cutting off her long hair , at which point her despairing father relents and off she goes. There doesn’t seem to be a mother, which is an interesting angle left unexplored by Josephine Elder but open to all sorts of musings for the reader.

On arrival at boarding school all does not run smoothly as you might expect, but it does end happily, as you might also expect from the title. There will be a lot of beastliness towards Erica, who again doesn’t make life any easier for herself by being a bit of an enigma, as well as streets ahead in Latin, but ultimately this is a book about friendship and compromise and meeting friends half way. I'm thinking friendships are more precious than ever in people's lives right now and perhaps some of yours, like mine, do go back to school days.

When class horribles Betty and Joan go to Head of House Margaret to tell tales about Erica there is a moment of pure deliciousness as Margaret challenges them mercilessly. Margaret, who apparently plays hockey like a whirlwind and tennis like a daffodil fairy, is also very fair-minded and will have none of it, dismantling the flimsy evidence and sending the pair off with fleas in their respective ears. Sustained by Margaret's wise counsel Erica makes two very good friends in Pen and Evelyn and suddenly life improves. Whilst the story does descend into some jolly japes towards the end it really didn’t matter. I can only begin to imagine how cheering books like this must have been for young girls who were emerging from the devastation wrought by the First World War, and Josephine Elder is certainly instilling a bit of gumption and ambition into their lives. 

There is also a wonderful hockey match which took me right back to my days as Centre Forward and sometime Captain of the First XI. I really can't believe how much I loved running up and down in a gym skirt in the freezing cold, pelted with rain, splattered with mud and nursing bruised shins. Orange boats at half time and tea afterwards with chocolate swiss roll. We'd play against all the local schools, Tiffins, Rosebery, Wimbledon High, James Allen's, City of London Freemen's, Sutton High, St Philomena's Convent, Wallington Girls, and us Nonsuch Girls were fearsome opponents. If any of you went to one of those maybe we first met on the hockey pitch, in which case I'll apologise now for that clout around the ankles. 

With so much happening it's taken me an age to read this single book, but it's also been a wonderful retreat into a bygone era. I am unashamed to admit that its been a pleasant escape and I'll be doing more of it.

Meanwhile, if you have scored any reading or audio book successes please do share them in comments..

And were you a hockey fiend too...

Or netball, or gymnastics, or tennis, or athletics or anything else... 

Or was hiding in the cloakroom more your thing (I've done that too).

 

 

 

Public Service Announcement Three - Routine

Someone sent me a lovely message saying ‘Have a good weekend’ and I thought ...weekend??

Is it the weekend??

in fact it is Mothering Sunday today and many of us won’t be able to hug or see our children, or our mums, but I’m sending a bunch of primrose everyone’s way because I refuse to leave anyone out. We all ‘mother’ in one way or another, especially at the moment.

But isn’t it strange that I barely know what day it is and am wondering if you are finding the same. Suddenly all the weekly markers have disappeared beyond the bin men on a Wednesday, and it was at this moment that we realised we needed a bit more of a routine...because suddenly time doesn’t matter really and it’s easy to slip into an existence.

I’m sure you will all have lots of tips and advice about what is working for you, so please do share in comments. There are no rights or wrongs but it might help others to know. 

I think there has been so much news to absorb and so much certainty removed from our daily lives on a worldwide basis, that it has the potential to create a state of shock from which we need to quickly contain anxieties if we can, regroup and reorganise. Perhaps control the things we can and acknowledge and somehow let go of the things we can’t. 

We are making sure we get out for a good, long,slow walk each day and are finding ways to extend it beyond the usual basically because we are not rushing back in order to be somewhere else. We don’t see another soul but I am very aware that some of you may be more confined to barracks by circumstances than we are, so please do share any tips about how you are dealing with that if you want to.

And then there’s the news....

From being a Fear of Missing Out person embracing everything on every channel and in every newspaper, I have become a much more discerning reader of the news so we have now created a cut off point for ourselves if possible of no news after the 6pm bulletin. We are trying to watch a good engrossing box set or recent series (The Split at the moment) each evening, or Bookhound and I migrate to our working corners and read etc. Again what is working for you...please do share, especially suggestions of good TV series to watch. We do have Netflix which would be great if our broadband was full speed but currently it is snail’s pace. 

I’ll be honest, reading hasn’t been easy, concentrating seems quite difficult at the moment but I feel sure this will settle down. Right now keeping in touch with family and friends in ways various is proving essential...it will all balance out soon I’m sure.

This brings me onto sleep.

If you are still managing your nightly average that is brilliant, if you are not it can be really hard. Waking in the night with that darkest hour just before dawn, fretting about family and friends, or ourselves, or have we got enough dog food, or OMG I’ve forgotten to get any disinfectant ( I really had). Sleep experts out there will know much more than me but isn’t it about thirty minutes or so before your circadian rhythms come around again and you feel sleepy. Kindle reading or drifting off to an audio book helps, even putting out a post among my circle of Facebook friends to see if anyone else is awake has worked this week. And it is an amazing comfort to know you are not the only one. 

And maybe you have more tips for sleep or night-waking so please do share them. We have become advocates of the Anytime Nap. If Bookhound or I feel overwhelmingly sleepy at any moment during the day, we don’t fight it, we slink off for a quick power snooze and wake up refreshed and recovered. This might not be for everyone but we are working to different rules for different times.

Meanwhile I hope you are all managing to cope with this new normal and please don’t be afraid to say if you feel you are not. It’s entirely understandable and I’m sure there will be lots of help and support and suggestions here that may help. Those that feel able please do respond to others in comments if you want to and I’ll be in there as usual.

And here’s a thing....

I’m rightly proud of my NHS career and will admit that I am really feeling the pinch now, because every instinct tells my generation to get out there and man the pumps in times of crisis, and yet the best help we can be is to stay out of the way and not become a liability. There are other ways to help and the next generation have taken over. I’ll bet quite a few of you have family or friends on the front line ( and not just in the NHS) and are feeling immense pride mingled with fears for them. The daughter of one of our ‘godmothers’ decided to change career a few years ago and do her nurse training, she qualified last year and chose to head into a career in intensive care, (good idea I said at the time, they’ll want you anywhere in the world) and here she is at the pointy end at Derriford in Plymouth.

Rosie is the pint-sized one holding the words ‘stay home’ 

She sent me a message, ‘You have put enough time in, stay home, stay safe

Bless all of them and here’s a lovely rainbow, guarding the sleeping barn owls, just because...

All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and fingers crossed for the return of the swallows soon and owlets to come.

The Simon & Garfunkel Story

A musical diversion today, in fact an outing, and please stand up and take a bow Andrea Hoile (in fact have a medal too) because I have you to thank for this...

Andrea mentioned, on the post celebrating the fiftieth birthday of Bridge Over Troubled Water, that the stage show The Simon & Garfunkel Story was playing for one night only at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth on Sunday March 1st. We're quite fond of the place but had lapsed recently and not checked the programme, and so dashing on line instantly to find it was all but sold out was a bit of a moment. Hardly any seats together, just two which we put our mark on and then went to pay...

Panic verging on hyperventilation when the card wouldn't go through (me)

'I HAVE TO BE THERE...'

Measured refreshing of screen and starting again (Bookhound)

And breath.

We quite thought they'd be the worst seats in the house, behind a pillar, partial view of the stage, something like that, but at least they were in the Circle, rather than the Upper Circle which is so vertiginous in the Theatre Royal that I feel one forward tilt of more than five degrees and I'd be falling over the edge. Imagine our surprise when we eventually sat down to find the seats were so good we'd actually book them again. Oh alright...I'll tell you because we won't be going that often ...F3 & F4.

On the drive into Plymouth we bet serious pretend money on how the show would open. Mine was on a darkened stage and a solo voice singing 'Hello darkness my old friend'.

I won.

The funny thing was that the place was packed and heaving with clones of us. All our age, our era, all silently lip synching and word perfect and such a wonderful atmosphere, as if we were all old friends. Talking to the person next to you about your Simon & Garfunkel life. The woman next to me had been bought tickets by her daughter as a present. The poor daughter was there and hadn't the first clue about the music, thought she might recognise some of the later songs...her mother and I looked on in pity at a life devoid of The Sound of Silence and Homeward Bound and Kathy's Song...just imagine the levels of deprivation. The mother agreed she'd failed to convert her to the cause, unlike our three exposed in utero and ever thereafter, poor things.

The two performers had the duo down to a tee, clothes, mannerisms, pitch of voices and arrangements were as as close as could be, with occasional added zing from backing musicians and a commentary from the two about their life from the 1960s through to the 1981 reunion concert in Central Park. That bit was clever because we were made to feel part of that 500,000 strong event. Meanwhile, in 1981, I was completing Offspringette's in utero and post-natal indoctrination of the best music she'd ever hear and how grateful she would be to me...maybe.

Several songs stick in my mind as the stand out moments of the evening

Kathy's Song was sublime, always one of the simplest and most beautiful, and how many of us wanted to be 'Kathy' and have Paul Simon sing that to us and about us when we were sixteen...

Oh just me maybe.

For Emily Whenever I May Find Her, and I think originally a tribute to Emily Dickinson, but unaccompanied and in perfect tune sung by 'Art'.

Old Friends and there were Bookhound and I and  'it's terribly strange to be seventy' and thinking did we ever imagine that we'd be three years off  seventy (him three, me four) and I'd first learned to play those chords at seventeen, five years before I had even met him. I might have had a tear in my eye.

The Only Living Boy in New York  it was explained, was written by Paul Simon when Art Garfunkel left him to go and make a film in Mexico. 'Tom' was Art's name when they first set up as the duo Tom and Jerry. It was wistful and melancholy and the words and chords ebbed and flowed around the theatre. It lives on in my mind and now in the car, because Bookhound bought me the CD of the show and we now singalong as we drive.

And then of course there was Bridge Over Troubled Water. I actually went and found Dominic Potts, who was playing Art Garfunkel and signing programmes in the foyer afterwards, to tell him that I'd heard Art Garfunkel sing that live at the Albert Hall in April 1970 and he had matched it note for note and to perfection.

It was standing ovation time by the end, and the friendly atmosphere spilled over into the queue at the ticket machine in the  car park. I think we all had a bit of a funny feeling that this might be one of our last crowded space gatherings for a while, but hey ho, we will always have the songs.

If you have seen it too please do share your thoughts in comments...

And do you have a favourite Simon & Garfunkel song, or a moment that a song reminds you of..

And how about this from the Central Park concert of 1981 because I suspect a lot of people are Homeward Bound right now...

The Mirror & the Light...

Firstly, thank you so much for all your wonderful and very kind comments on the dovegreyreader scribbles fourteenth birthday. Bookhound has done the washing up and flicked the Dyson round, so all is calm again.

And no, don’t panic, I haven’t finished it, but have just put The Mirror & the Light down for a rest at the one hundred page mark having suddenly wondered what it must be like for an author to know that thousands, even tens of thousands, of people are reading your book at the same time...over a wet and windy weekend in March.

The thought has a certain power to it and one I’m sure Hilary Mantel must be aware of.

I’ve heard that her event at the Southbank Centre was nothing short of magnificent, and I’m sure many of you watched the TV programme on BBC 2 on Saturday evening which was equally so.

Meanwhile I now have the book in triplicate, hardback, Kindle and audio.

The ‘fetch’ from the bookshop in Plymouth was as exciting as collecting any book you’ve waited years for could be. I’d preordered and thus supposedly saved £7, except we drove an eighty mile round trip to get it, got stuck in a slow traffic jam for half and hour with the engine running, had to pay £2.80 to park the car, ended up needing sustenance in the M&S cafe and so I think came out of it in financial deficit. 

But at least I can say I was there on the dawning of the day.

The book sat there all day but the Kayaker called in briefly after nine weeks in Africa so I had to do the good mother thing, plus with extremely poor timing it was the day the sour dough starter was ready and I had to make my first loaf...what was I thinking...

I was thinking this will be a Good Thing but holy moley what a palaver of feeding the starter, and stirring and dividing and feeding some more, and now that I’ve given it life it seems to be like having a baby in the fridge that I must nourish every five days. If I’m honest I think I might have skimped on the kneading and knocking back phases because I was busy talking and hearing about the nine weeks in Africa. It was 9pm before it had risen twice and gone in the oven. Suffice to say, flavour delicious, texture needs a considerable amount of work.

Talking of babies, weighing in at 2lbs 13ozs, The Mirror & the Light is a good sized premature one at odds with the book’s gestational age of several years, and I’ve had to arrange book pillows etc to avoid tendinitis of the the wrist or compromising the blood supply to my feet. Anyway I finally settled down and managed twenty pages before I fell asleep...but what a first twenty pages it was. 

I had thought to have another book on the go at the same time (Women in Black by Madeleine St John has arrived, thank you for the recommend) for some respite, but it soon became clear that I was in this one book for the duration and with no wish to leave 1536 for sunnier climes.

So that’s me, anyone else out there reading...

Bring Up the Bodies ~ Hilary Mantel

Continuing with Hilary Week as we move towards our Hilary Day Party on Thursday. It is July 2012 and I am (eventually) breathlessly excited about Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel...

 

There were several false starts. Sixty or so pages in (for the second time) I had mistakenly transported Bring Up the Bodies to Orkney and back thinking it would be great holiday reading, except on this occasion I was wrong. Clearly my book brain does what I need it to and switches off dramatically when I am on holiday to allow my looking brain to take over for a while. 150 pages in and perhaps I could have taken the book anywhere and managed, as I had discovered with Wolf Hall (will I never learn).

The reader is the interloper here, the 'foreigner' whose initial presence raises suspicions, conversations might be a little guarded, information cloaked in secrecy, and the reader will need their wits about them if they are to immerse themselves invisibly into the day to day flow of things, which barely seem to have missed a stride to let them in the door. Then the task is to blend in seamlessly as part of Hilary Mantel's Tudor fabrics and furnishings, and with eyes in the back of the head just watch and listen and figure it all out as the conspiracy. the plotting and the intrigue and the fear gathers pace around them.

The secret of success, I have discovered, is to relax into the book, to feel and smell and hear it, something which Hilary Mantel makes incredibly easy as her brush moves effortlessly back and forth from the particular to the general. This world so familiar to its inhabitants must be made likewise for the reader, and once I spotted the little whispers of inclusion that were offered I was in...

...heard the rustle of the satin sleeves,

...noticed the way someone's status, upwardly mobile, is denoted by their clothing as it moves from canvas to worsted to damask,

...tasted the food... the lemon cakes flavoured with lavender, the elderflowers simmered in sugar syrup and poured over halved strawberries...noticed the primrose petal on the cheese cake.

...wandered through the noisy St George's Day celebrations with the cloth and paper dragons swaying through the streets.

...spectated and gasped as the jousting unseats yet another who has failed to break his instinct, because given a chance the that instinct will always be to swerve at the last minute.

...looked on as that minxy Anne Boleyn falls out of favour,



...and meek Jane Seymour waits patiently in the wings.

So I have now finished the book after reading the first sixty pages three times, but on the third occasion I had cleared the reading decks properly, only allowing interventions that offered respite, as I made my way back in time and back into the heart and mind of Thomas Cromwell, Crumb to his friends, Cremuel to those for whom English is not their first language, and me stepping nervously towards the end of the book. I could hardly bear to imagine how Hilary Mantel, no slouch when it comes to writing up a bit of eviscerating blood and gore, would deal with all this... i.e. the be-heading bit, to the point where I had to make sure I timed this right. For example I suspected it wouldn't do to read the final fifty pages last thing at night and then expect to sleep any time soon.

I was right.

Of course we all know the outcome in general terms but quite how the story of Henry and Anne happens day to day has to be up for discussion and some surmising, something which Hilary Mantel elaborates on in an author's note at the end of the book...

'The circumstances surrounding the fall of Anne Boleyn have been controversial for centuries. The evidence is complex and sometimes contradictory; the sources are often dubious, tainted and after-the-fact. There is no official transcript of her trial, and we can reconstruct her last days only in fragments, with the help of contemporaries who may be inaccurate, biased, forgetful, elsewhere at the time, or hiding under a pseudonym...'

And what of Cromwell himself..

'Where to begin with Cromwell? Some start with his sharp little eyes, some start with his hat...wherever they begin, the final impact is the same: if he had a grievance against you, you wouldn't like to meet him at the dark of the moon...'

And I am instantly reminded of the man so well established in my mind from Wolf Hall, and now from Bring Up the Bodies, with the most wonderful and evocative opening to a book imaginable, reminding me of those significant life events that may (just may) have made Cromwell into the man he has become. As he watches 'the girls'... the hawks soaring and swooping, birds of prey out on the hunting grounds, on a day...

'so clear you can see into Heaven and spy on what the saints are doing.'

and the birds become a transmigration of the souls of his dead wife and daughters, Cromwell's grief is writ large and I imagine it like sign-writing in the sky that is going to hover over everything he thinks and does in the next 400 pages.

This is what I love about writing like this, a catalyst that allows my imagination to soar off on a frolic of its own, and I was gone a while, because though it may have been an invention of my own I then constantly envisaged Cromwell as a hawk too. A man of prey with that hawk's-eye view overseeing everything, missing nothing, pouncing and swooping on his own victims when they came within his reach and his need.... and I quickly diverted to Ted Hughes's poem from The Hawk in the Rain... Hawk Roosting..

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. 
Inaction, no falsifying dream 
Between my hooked head and hooked feet: 
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. 

The convenience of the high trees! 
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray 
Are of advantage to me; 
And the earth's face upward for my inspection....

Much later in the book Hilary Mantel confirms what I think I already know...

'He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your rib cage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.'

This, like so many points in the book, a moment when I had to close it and think about what I had just read carefully, dwell a while on the implications, though truth be told I was also procrastinating about finally finishing a book that I didn't want to end...perhaps because I knew the axe thing was coming...but also because I almost can't bear the wait for the final book of the trilogy. 

The end when it does come is mercifully swift for both Anne and the reader and involves a well-concealed four-foot long sword rather an axe, whilst the plotting and machinations to achieve it all are breathtaking in the extreme. Cromwell, doing Henry's dirty work for him is quietly terrifying and if ever there was a book that ensured you feel the fear of those that come under his gaze... well this is it.

It all sent me back to Ted Hughes and the final stanza of Hawk Roosting... 

The sun is behind me. 
Nothing has changed since I began. 
My eye has permitted no change. 
I am going to keep things like this.

And, whilst Cromwell may well yearn for the day (to borrow from Ted Hughes) that his 'eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this' we all know there may be trouble ahead. Cromwell may be the master at keeping one step ahead (sorry) of the game when he sits on top of the world, but has already admitted that his head feels a little wobbly on his neck. Thomas Cromwell of all people knows how precarious and potentially untenable his position may become, so I am impatiently and deliciously intrigued to see how Hilary Mantel will ultimately present his downfall.

 

Wolf Hall ~ Hilary Mantel

Well the day has almost dawned.

The day I have been waiting for since I wrote this first post on here about Wolf Hall back in July 2009, and I think the only thing to do is work towards Hilary Day on Thursday March 5th with a revisiting of my un-contained, unbridled excitement  of eleven years ago, at having read the first of what was to become a trilogy.

March 5th also happens to be the dovegreyreader scribbles fourteenth birthday so I think we should have a virtual party don't you...a double celebration with a jolly big urn of tea, Cromwell Cakes and Dove Doughnuts or something. You're all invited of course, and we can all sit and stroke our copies of The Mirror and the Light. Forget the party games of old, we're all grown ups now, we'll hive off into our corners and start reading.

And so here it is. Me and Wolf Hall July 2009...

 

 

No apologies for a post about as long as the reign of Henry VIII because this is a vast book and I don't seem able to do it justice on the turn of a groat. 

In the end there was only one reading method that seemed to suit Wolf Hall. Sitting on the bed with the book well-propped and a plate of bacon toasted lark's tongue sandwiches and a pot of tea to hand, which is why, after 650 pages I might have been the size of Henry VIII but for that fact this has taken weeks of reading, so I've done a lot of other things in between.

In fact the whole process has been not unlike a Tudor royal progress, timely and measured with lots of treats and stop-overs along the way.

But how pleased am I with myself for turning the final page when in the early days I quite thought my lack of Tudor insider info was going to be my downfall. Much of what I thought I knew can only have come from the pen of Jean Plaidy about forty years ago. I wanted to be a nurse, this didn't seem important, but take heart any fellow history lesson slackers, you'll have it all at your gem-encrusted fingertips by the end.

Once I got a grip and waded in it was like visiting a house full of semi-strangers. After a few days you start to get to know them, know what happens at the dinner table and about the washing up, whose turn it is to use the shower and by the end you're pledging to meet up every year.
In fact Henry gets to use the shower first, but 300 pages in I suddenly realised I had become part of the furniture, I knew everyone, knew which house I was walking into and who might be there, knew who to trust and who not, the first half slotted into place perfectly and I wanted to strangle Anne Boleyn but probably won't have to (sorry spoiler).

I also understood Henry VIII in a way that I hadn't before having previously picked up all the gouty off-with-her-head myth and mystery down the years, but perhaps not the true desperation and turmoil of the inner man.

The cast is vast, almost one hundred characters and if Hilary Mantel used Post-it notes for plotting their whereabouts then I hope she has shares, because Wolf Hall feels like an awesome accomplishment, a feat of huge narrative daring and complexity. There is word alchemy and rare sleight of pen afoot here because it's beyond me to describe how it's done, but to make a reader feel like a participant in this emerging social world, a world still trying to find its feet and know its direction, feels like true writerly, spell-weaving magic to me.

I shouldn't even really try and pronounce on events of which I know so little but it would seem England and Agincourt are history, the glory days are done and not for the first time before or since has the country sunk into something of an embarrassing and parlous state.

None of this helped by Henry's desperation for a son and heir and his slithery wriggling out of the marriage to Katharine of Aragon with some very devious manoeuvring, thence to pick up with Ann Boleyn, the tease of the century. After six years of waiting (might be seven) Henry like a slavering dog by the time Ann is finally installed on the throne and into the Royal bed.

When the baby arrives and it's a Princess, Henry does at least shout call it Elizabeth and asks if she's healthy before heading off hunting or jousting or something.

Meanwhile in the background, easing whoever needs to be eased, plotting the downfall of those who stand in the King's way, oiling whichever wheels seem to fit the courtly bicycle (and I thought about that analogy) at any given moment, Thomas Cromwell.

Don't for goodness' sake ask a history klutz like me to be able to have honestly known the difference between Thomas and Oliver Cromwell if you'd asked me to explain. I'd have waffled on about Roundheads, warts and the Civil War for one and known nothing of the other.
Thomas Cromwell, sometime Henry's right hand Mr Fix-It, apparently much-maligned by history but re-visited by Hilary Mantel as a man with a heart and soul, borne of an abusive childhood, stalked by tragedy, yet a caring father-figure to his children and countless other waifs and strays. Always with an eye for the shrewd move around Court, the blacksmith's son who does indeed 'make his own tools', it is Thomas whose life is central to this book, a man whose perception of self seems greatly at odds with how others see him, his dismay is unwritten but evident when his son confirms that he does indeed look like a murderer. 

'A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face.It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.'

Always Hilary Mantel seems to offer perfectly good and logical reasons for Cromwell's behaviour, often episodes from his past,

'One fear creates a dereliction, the offence brings on a greater fear, and there comes a point when the fear is too great and the human spirit just gives up and a child wanders off numb and directionless and ends up following a crowd and watching a killing.'

I was verging on tears towards the end as Thomas Cromwell searches in vain to find an honourable way out for the incarcerated Thomas More, a principled but cruel and deeply flawed man, hell-bent on heaven but overtly terrified about quite what variety of punitive death will transport him there. No matter who's about to be thwarted in love or political ambition, char-grilled or parted from their innards, the light and the shadows always reflect well on Thomas Cromwell and, even in the final analysis, the light falls favourably on those like More who it's hard not to have loathed from the off.

Hilary Mantel makes quite sure we understand why, often by saying very little indeed.

That apart there is so much more to say it could take me the reign of Elizabeth I too, but this being me, I loved the costumes and the textures of the fabrics and those discreetly conjured up wardrobe details offering something quite sumptuous and special.
Someone walks into a room, hops onto a barge or heads for front-row seats at the disembowelling in suitable raiment; a Lemster wool jacket or sable trimmings, gowns of figured damask, a black wool cape with lambskin lining (I want one) and then Hilary Mantel adds in a snippet of crimson velvet or some tawny silk to assuage my need to feel a book like this between my fingers.
Picture Lord Rochford doing this and be there,

...what fascinates him is the flame-coloured satin that is pulled through his slashed velvet over-sleeve. He keeps coaxing little puffs of fabric with a fingertip, pleating and nudging them to grow bigger, so that he looks like one of those jugglers who runs balls down their arms.'

Other characters gained momentum as I came to know them, the blustering Duke of Norfolk could always be relied on for some brash abrasiveness, almost a comic character, then Thomas Wriothesley, known throughout as Call-Me-Risley and I was there and basking in this entire Tudor innovation, because this book is history made fresh, both renewed and different. Sequels are promised and we can but keep calm and wait patiently when really I feel like jumping up and down and wanting the next book yesterday.

A Buyer’s Market ~ Anthony Powell ( A Dance to the Music of Time - Book Two)

First things first, Happy Leap Year, and if you’ve decided to propose to anyone I do hope they’ve said yes.

The opening sequence to A Buyer’s Market, the sale room, somehow epitomised for me what these books are about. Disparate, unconnected objects united by their presence in the same room and under the same roof, all seemed like an analogy with the people various gathered within Anthony Powell’s extraordinary novels.

‘The odds and ends harmonise quietly with each other.’

And yet a funny thing happens when I am reading A Dance to the Music of Time.

I read for a while, a few pages maybe, and I blink and think, and wonder what have I just read...

Somehow something tells me it hasn’t sunk in..

I soldier on thinking I’m feeling my way in a place I really don’t know, and who on earth are all these people anyway and was this really a good idea. I gave myself a prod and say ‘Concentrate’ and read on. Nothing distracts me, but is it really making sense.

But then an even funnier thing happens.

Several hours later the whole thing is absolutely crystal clear in my mind. 

If you asked me how Anthony Powell, with his often fairly convoluted sentences detailing the minutiae of life, manages to achieve this, I’m not sure I could tell you. What sleight of pen is at work here remains a mystery which perhaps one of you has unlocked. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

This month A Buyer's Market and take as an example the party at Mrs Andriardis'. It reminded me of heady days in London in the 1970s and I wonder if this sort of thing still happens. There you are standing in the street having been to one bash and someone you know comes along and invites you to another one and you think ‘oh why not.

And so, several hours after I’d read through the party, there it was crystal clear in my head. The place, the house full of people; downstairs, on the stairs, up the stairs, people everywhere, mingling, talking and then the extremely drunk person (Stringer) coming up with a completely ludicrous idea and making an idiot of themselves.

i think it might be how my student nurse roommate and I ended up travelling back to Bloomsbury at some ungodly hour, in our Laura Ashley frocks, with our umbrellas up, sitting on the tube train. It’s not worth me even trying to remember why, or how, but it was 1973, we’d definitely been to a party in Hampstead and must have been compus mentus enough to at least realise we had to go to on duty the next day. Amazing how safe we felt in London back in those days...whether we actually were on not is an entirely different matter, we were young and invincible.

Go on...tell all. I bet you did something mysteriously daft too. You can tell us, what’s said on the scribbles stays on the scribbles...we won’t let on and it was ages ago anyway...

I loved the coincidences that Antony Powell concocts too. They are often scorned as too contrived in fiction. I mean what were the chances of Jenkins bumping into Stringer like that when they hadn’t seen each other for so long. What were the chances that they’d both be on that London Street at that exact moment..

Except it happens. Many years ago Bookhound and I were in London, walking across a crowded Trafalgar Square when who should walk around the corner by St Martin-in-the-Fields than our friends from the village who we hadn’t seen in ages. We roared at the idea that we hadn't  bumped into them down here in ages and yet there we were in the middle of London. A similar occurrence a few years later as I turned the corner from Marylebone High Street into Oxford Street and actually physically bumped into another very good local friend. 

Dear Widmerpool pops up again and then there's Gypsy Jones. In case you missed Anna's comment. on the A Question of Upbringing post I will mention it here. There is a real danger in doing what we had both done and looked up a bit more information on Gypsy in Hilary Spurling's Invitation to the Dance.

Beware, there be spoilers.

Enough thoughts fro me, I'm wondering how anyone else is doing...

Do you have any reading tips to share...

I'm finding I need to get into the groove, get a few pages under my belt, this is definitely not start-stop reading but onwards to The Acceptance World. I’m a little ahead of myself with Book Three, and if anyone was having doubts about whether to continue with this read I would say stick with it because I think suddenly Anthony Powell gets into his stride. I’m loving it and can’t wait to pick it up each time.

Meanwhile, if you are still there please do declare...

 

 

 

 

Business As Usual ~ Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford

The arrival of the post can sometimes only add to my reading dilemmas, though in the nicest possible way. Either I have ordered a book from somewhere, or a publisher has very kindly sent me one. I have, over the years, managed to cut down the number of books that arrive (it was once up to fifty a week) and rarely ask for them now, preferring the freedom of making my own choices, but I do make exceptions.

I’m not sure Handheld Press were entirely on my radar. They may have emailed before but that whole inbox thing runs away with me sometimes too, but anyway I noticed the most recent message and I would urge you to check them out, because Handheld definitely publish our sort of books. The book in question they were promoting was a novel, Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford.

The description was enough to draw me in...

‘Business as Usual is a charming 1933 novel about the Selfridges book department and its library. An illustrated novel in letters, it tells the story of Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl fresh out of university who is determined to support herself by herself by her own earnings in London for a year, despite the resentment of her surgeon fiance. After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings shrink, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of Everyman's (a very thin disguise for Selfridges). Through luck and an inability to type well she rises rapidly through the ranks to work in the library, where she has to enforce modernising systems on her entrenched and frosty colleagues.’

Anyway, I requested a copy of Business As Usual and was delighted when it arrived tissue-wrapped to reveal that delightful cover. It was one of those to open at the breakfast table, start reading and carry on.

Hilary Fane is quietly determined to fill the year between leaving university and marrying her surgeon fiancée with a bout of financial independence and so heads from Edinburgh to London in search of work. Written in the form of letters (and the format works like a dream) Basil is unimpressed and this much becomes apparent from Hilary’s letters to him. Finding employment for women in the early 1930s was nigh on impossible and, passed from one interview to another, Hilary finally ends up at Everyman’s department store as a stand in for someone who has succumbed to appendicitis. Her first job will be completing address labels for the books being sent out from the store...for nine hours a day, for week after week and all for the princely sum of £2:10:0 a week. Promotion based on her failings eventually comes Heather’s way and she is soon working in the store’s library.

If you enjoyed books like High Wages by Dorothy Whipple or Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola (follow the links to my thoughts on here) then you will certainly enjoy Business As Usual, not only for its wonderful insights into life in a London department store but also for insights into women’s lives in the 1930s. The men rule the roost in the store and below them the spinsters who have been in post since Jurassic times, all with their set ways and mysterious and inexplicable systems. Hilary has a wry eye for the amusing and her comments in her letters to Basil and her family are a delight to read. Budgeting to the nearest halfpenny whilst knowing that, though her life wasn’t going to depend on it forever, that was certainly not the case for the women she worked with, Hilary creates a moving and believable image of the lives of these lone women holding body and soul together for year on year. This the generation affected by deprivations of the First World War and the shortage of men. 

And now of course it feels as if the department store in 2020 might be doomed, they no longer seem to be the bustling and essential places they once were, making books like Business As Usual an important part of their history. 

And alongside all this two prolific authors who I had never heard of. Kate Macdonald’s introduction reveals all. Meticulous research has unearthed a wealth of information about the lives and writing of Jane Oliver (Helen Rees nee Evans) and Ann Stafford (Anne Pedler). 

I have almost finished Business As Usual and will be sad when I turn the final page. Sometimes, when the weather’s awful and the world seems in turmoil, it pays to fill the hot water bottle and head for the sofa with a book like this. I’ll call it comfort reading for now, though that does Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford a disservice. The issues they raise under the guise of humour deserve much closer scrutiny, making this a great basis for a book group discussion. 

So how about your comfort reads...

And books about shops and shopping...there must be more...

 

 

 

A Reading Situation...

Truth be told I’ve been a bit ill-disciplined with my reading of late and have created a bit of a reading situation here. Bright sparkly new books appear, I open them and then have a terrible job putting them down. The upshot is I end up reading too many good books at once, and it occurred to me to ask whether you are a 'One Book at a Time' reader or a 'Several on the Go at Once' reader like me. I used to work on the principle of something old, something new, something borrowed (library) something true (non-fiction) back in the days when I was very organised. Now it's all a lot more hit and miss, though reading themes and trails still emerge.

I’m not sure if I mentioned some time ago that I was going to tackle the Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh. I read Men at Arms last summer, and now that I’m reading The Letters it’s rekindled my appetite for a bit more background to World War Two, especially the ridiculously bureaucratic aspects which I know my Dad also encountered, and as I am discovering in his letters to my Mum. There’s a particularly amusing account of his twenty-four hour training exercise... being dropped off in the middle of nowhere, navigating to a spot six miles away that turned out to be a farm. Instructions there were to do two hours work for the farmer and get a note confirming it had been done before heading off to another location a further six miles away to camp for the night. The task was stacking bales and by that night my Dad is itching all over, doesn’t sleep a wink and to cap it all they have to be back on the parade ground in full uniform ready for inspection by the adjutant at 9am. Clearly all good preparation for warfare (maybe) whilst including some free labour to appease the locals. Evelyn Waugh recounts this world exactly so I’m really enjoying the second book Officers and Gentleman. 

It's an incredibly readable book. Funny whilst highlighting so many of the follies of wartime, my Dad would have loved it. It is also huge but thankfully the sort of book that copes well with intermittent reading, goes back on the shelf and can be picked up again for another foray a few weeks later. This surely a testament to the quality of the writing, that the characters are so well established in my mind it is like meeting up with old friends again.

But why does it feel a like like a heinous crime to pick up a book and read it in this seemingly disjointed  way. I'm not sure, but sometimes, with some books, it absolutely works. In the end I stopped fretting and they've both gone onto the Slow Reading section over here >>> along with They Were Counted, the first in the Miklos Banffy Transylvanian Trilogy...another very easy book to jump back into. I will definitely finish them both, I'm just not quite sure when.

As if this wasn’t all enough I had added in a preview copy  from NetGalley (on my Kindle) of Square Haunting by Francesca Wade because I kept hearing good things about it. Mecklenburgh Square was a stone’s throw from Great Ormond Street and so this is my familiar corner of London. Guilford Street gets a few early mentions and I spent four years walking along there and slipping into the door of the nurses's home, which connected to the hospital, to go on duty. Taking the lives of five women who lived in Mecklenburgh Square, Francesca Wade explores life in this part of London in the first half of the twentieth century, the need for a 'room of one's own' and its impact on the women and their work.

It's a great read, or will be at the right moment which turns out not to be now. Anyway, I have invested in the actual book and it will have its turn.

Meanwhile how about you...are you a One Book at a Time Finisher or a Several Books on the Go at Oncer...

Can you even bear to think about putting a half-read chunkster back on the shelf and 'resting' it for a few weeks...

 

 

 

 

Flora of the Silk Road

Having walked the Hindu Kush with Eric Newby I decided to stay put and travel the Silk Road with Colin Thubron.

Firstly can I say that 'walk' and 'short' are the ultimate and intentional irony in Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (which means Indian Killer apparently) because Eric and Hugh climb, scramble, limp, hobble and generally stagger their way around and I was quite relieved to be sitting in an armchair.

It was a short hop for me to hit the Silk Road, something that has always held huge and mysterious fascination, and especially since reading Peter Frankopan's book a few years ago.

I wasn't sure how ready I was for back-to-back reading journeys but never fear, Colin Thubron and Shadow of the Silk Road put me at my ease and I settled in immediately. History alternated with reality as we wandered around our starting point, Xian in China, visited the terracotta armies and met with the locals. It's a blend that feels well-balanced and works perfectly.

But it all reminded of a talk I went to on my last trip to New Zealand and an evening meeting of the New Zealand Alpine Gardening Society.

When I mentioned on here years ago that Offspringette was moving to Christchurch I had an email from a reader saying she lived there and to tell Offpringette to get in touch if she wanted to. Hilary lives and works in Christchurch, Offspringette did get in touch, firm friendships were made and it was Hilary who took me along as a guest to a talk on The Flora of the Silk Road given by Christopher Gardner (really) and his wife Basak. 

I had planned to take notes and got as far as 'Four main genus, Iris, Fritillary, Tulip...' before they switched the lights out for the slides and I couldn't see to write, but I've never forgotten the talk, or the evening.

150 plus people all devoted to and knowledgeable about their plants

A display table where people exhibited their plants for some competitive judging...

A seed sale..

A request for pollen from auricula for cross-pollinating...

Planned trips up into the Southern Alps to see the plants...

I'd just flown over those mountains and now I could add plants into the picture...

A supper of cups of tea and the best egg sandwiches ever... 

And then there was the scent as we walked in the room. Astonishing, delicate and the most beautiful plants. I’ve never seen or smelt anything quite like it before or since.

Thinking about our own planting plans for this year had heightened my awareness, so I have been on the alert for mentions of plants and trees as I have been reading. Eric Newby had spotted primula, potentilla, blue nepeta, golden ranunculus, hollyhocks, wormwood,  juniper, flowering tamarisk and willows along with a healthy array of pollinators, butterflies and bees as he walked through the mountains of Nuristan. 

Meanwhile, feeling a bit nostalgic for that experience, and those colours and scents, I ordered Christopher and Basak Gardner's book The Flora of the Silk Road from Devon Libraries. With apologies to whoever had to heave it off the shelf and get it across the county, I had no idea it weighed that much and wished I'd taken a wheelbarrow with me to get it to the car. But I'm having a wonderful wallow in its pages and now I’ve moved onto a book that has been on my shelf awaiting its moment...

Primrose by Elizabeth Lawson is sorting out all my primrose, cowslip, oxlip , polyanthus confusions and is enthralling with its tales of the plant hunters heading into Central Asia in search of rare species. I’m seeing them with new eyes, so with the primroses just starting to appear along the lane you can be sure I’ll be back with pictures of my own and much more about this beautiful book soon.

Meanwhile I hope the weather is being kinder to you wherever you are, I’m loath to tempt fate and say we still have a greenhouse because I feel sure there is more to come, but I hope you too are safe from anything it’s throwing at us right now ( and sorry to go on about it, but we are British after all, it’s what we do). The flooding around the country looks awful and hearts go out to anyone affected by it. Please do report in. 

And any more Silk Road reading recommendations gratefully received along with news of any green shoots to cheer... our daffodils are on the brink, the next warm sunny day should do it.

Footnote : We have had ongoing phone and broadband issues since a bit of an encounter with a bolt of lightning a few weeks ago, so my apologies for any spacing glitches with this post and delayed replies to your comments. We’re getting to know the repair men quite well and we are winning. 

Starve Acre ~ Andrew Michael Hurley

Bookhound had been out shopping and as he came in the door said...

'I've just been listening to the most amazing book on the radio, think you'd love it. Something about a strange tree and a dead hare...'

It didn't take me too long to find out that the book was Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley, one that had been bleeping away on my radar after a few interesting mentions on Twitter. Adele Geras in particular had rated the book for its unsettling spooky scare factor, and David  Parks' puff  likewise,

'a story that shivers itself deeply into the consciousness.' 

I was in.

I have to say too, that this is a book that might have sold itself to me thanks to Joe McLaren's cover alone. Distinctive, compelling and instantly recognisable on my shelves.

I often check the name of the cover artist but following up on Joe McLaren led me to a post on Spitalfield's Life about his work. If you don't know of Spitalfield's Life hie thee there forthwith because The Gentle Author offers a daily glimpse into London life and you won't be disappointed. I met said Gentle Author at Port Eliot Festival, and knowing they prefer anonymity I will say no more, but  it is a wonderful glimpse into a life fast disappearing. Thank you to whoever sent me a link there because I was enthralled by a series of images from inside the now empty London Hospital building. I shared it around all my student nursing colleagues who had done a stint there with me in the 1970s and we had a good old nostalge about Cavell Home, the 'Big End' and the day Evel Knievel's Wembley jump went wrong and there he was in casualty.

It's now about like three hours since I started this post what with all the diversions (I've had lunch and sorted the washing too) but back to Starve Acre. 

Robert and Juliet Willoughby have moved back to live in Richard's family home at Starve Acre where they are now trying to come to terms with the tragic loss of their five year old son Ewan. Opposite the house is a field where Richard, on bereavement leave from his teaching job, is conducting some mysterious digging works inside a pitched tent. It transpires he is searching for the roots of  the Stythwaite Oak, a long-lost tree, and, despite veiled warnings from neighbours about not meddling, he continues relentlessly with his quest under the guise of academic research. When Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare things start to take a bit of a turn for the considerably worse. 

Honestly you won't believe what happens next...but in the context of the book you absolutely will. Andrew Michael Hurley makes the impossible and fantastical quite plausible.

Slowly the back-story of Ewan emerges; once a normal happy little boy who loved playing in the field but who suddenly turns into the devil incarnate, capable of extreme cruelty and the oddest behaviour. Countless appointments with the child psychologists offer no explanations or diagnosis.

And these two strands of the story weave in and out before eventually merging into the most macabre and ultimately shocking story imaginable, so of course I can't tell you much more about it. When a grieving Juliette calls in a group called The Beacons, and their medium Mrs Forde, prepare for an unusual twist. Starve Acre is all things malevolent, sinister, gripping and tense, and at its centre the traditional symbolism of my beloved hare is maxed out on every level by Andrew Michael Hurley...fertility, rebirth, rejuvenation, resurrection, intuition, life through death, crafty wisdom ...oh my word it is all in there.

I was reminded of several other books too, especially Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel and Lanny by Max Porter, but also Masquerade by Kit Williams with its buried hare, but ultimately this is a unique book, and one in a league of its own for the final denouement. DO NOT READ THE LAST LINE UNTIL YOU GET THERE...DO NOT ...but brace yourself and prepare to put the book the book down and think 'What the *^&%$' .Starve Acre is one of those books that leaves you with an after story to be resolved too, because all I could do was sit there and wonder how on earth this was going to sort out.

If you have read Starve Acre I would love to know your thoughts sans spoilers. I should have added it to my Top Shelf Best Reads of 2019 but it was by my desk waiting for this to be written. Now I've written it I want to read the book again and that so rarely happens.

And any other macabre reading suggestions...

Books that really pull it off...

I read Don't Look Now for our Daphne Du Maurier book group theme last month and there's another one that absolutely nails it too.

 

 

 

 

Miklós Bánffy

A huge great big enormous thank you to those of you who sang the praises of Miklós Bánffy in comments a while ago.

I had never heard of him, let alone the Transylvanian Trilogy, but I know your judgement out there is impeccable and so on the strength of it I ordered Book One, They Were Counted.  Published in 1934, this huge tome arrived and my heart sank a little, only a little, and very briefly when I saw the size of it, along with the thought that there are two more. I added the Kindle version for £1.99 and that has been a blessing on trips out....because I don't want to stop reading.

But let the size of this not deter any potential readers of dear Miklós Bánffy because I have warmed to him as a writer and a person (he had the most unusually soulful eyes) and very quickly become embedded in the dying days of the Habsburg empire (of which I don't know a lot) and the lives of Count Balint Abady and his cousin Count Laszlo Gyeroffy.

I didn't know a thing about Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz (30 December 1873 — 5 June 1950) either, but discover (thank you internet) that he was a Hungarian nobleman, liberal politician, and historical novelist living in a very nice castle indeed until the political situation took a turn for the worse in the Second World War...

Miklós Bánffy populates They Were Counted with alacrity, almost to a point where I felt overwhelmed, but it was a party, it was inevitable and all added to that sense of walking into a crowded room of people, all of whom know each other...but you know none of them. I quickly realised that there was no point in a nicely drawn genogram, it would take me forever, so I have relied on the author's skill in guiding me through the voices and personalities and he does it to perfection. Mild confusions are rapidly ironed out and the most wonderful panorama of a story starts to emerge.

Someone suggested gliding through the politics and enjoying the rest, and to some extent I have done that, though a bit of me would like to understand all this better. Better than 'what' I don't know, because I have no base line for Transylvania and Hungary in 1904, so I am learning new things. In a strange way it segues with my Silk Road reading for all the genetic mixes that the trading route created across the steppes of Asia and into the far reaches of Europe. It is also only a short thirty-five year hop in time, and a slight drift east, to the world of Olivia Manning and The Balkan Trilogy.

Whilst I realise the country was sliced up again after the First World War, the 1922 Bartholomew atlas has come in handy again too and confirms the presence of Banffy...

I would love an audio version of this but to date I don't think there is one, please let me know if you find one, but in the meantime I am wallowing in the book and its world.

Now then is it just me, living down here in the back of beyond, who hadn't heard of Miklós Bánffy or does his name trip off your tongue every time someone asks for a good book recommend...

And thinking along Austro-Hungarian empire lines, does anyone have any more reading suggestions while I'm holed up in this part of the world..

I suppose I really should read Dracula again...

And there's always Joseph Roth's Radetzky March...

But there must be more, and maybe some travel writing too.

 

 

 

 

 

A Question of Upbringing ~ Anthony Powell ( A Dance to the Music of Time - Book One)

‘It doesn’t do to read too much,’ Widmerpool said. ‘You get to look at life with a false perspective. By all means have some familiarity with the standard authors ...but it is no good clogging your mind with a lot of trash from modern novels.”

 

Bless Widmerpool for this and I'm wondering whether anyone else has had any luck with Book One of A Dance to the Music of Time...

If not take heart because it was fourth time lucky for me so this might just not be the 'right' moment for you. It was with some determination that I sat down on New Year’s Eve with A Question of Upbringing (1951) and told myself this just had to be read if I was going to set up this wonderful book-a-month project to launch a new decade of reading. Previous fails saw me no further than page twenty or so and even picking up the book gave me heart sink.

Isn’t it amazing what a different copy can do....and also a pledge to come back here and write about it at the end of the month. Good  font, line spacing and the much-loved no-tussle floppy pages in this newly-jacketed edition from Arrow Books.

I will add that, as usual, a read like this often takes me off in one direction and it is that trail I will share here each month. If you are reading along you may have taken an entirely different path, seen completely different things (in fact I hope you have) and that is absolutely fine and how this works best. Nothing 'gospel' or erudite about my pronouncements, just a starter for ten, so please do add your own thoughts and trails in comments if you want to.

I’m a bit of a genogram person, even with the most straightforward of books, so I was in my element with Nicholas Jenkins, his slowly-expanding social circles and my new Muji notebook with its beautifully smooth paper.

First at boarding school, thence to France and then to university. I'm always mildly amused by all this ‘going up’ and ‘going down’ and ‘sent down’ university lingo, but I’ve also enjoyed being a bystander to Jenkins’ life, and those invisible power struggles in a room full of people. The verbal slings and arrows now observed by a mature Nicholas Jenkins, but largely unnoticed or interpreted differently by his younger self. All those competing personalities vying for attention and the little glimpses of reality...why has 'Quiggins' hirsute leg' stuck in my mind....I've no idea.

And then some really sensitive observations of friendships and how they end..

'One of these parting of the ways that happen through life.'

'Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.'

Maybe it was this that made me sit down and write (with pen and ink and paper) a long letter to a 'friend' of many years ago whose Christmas letter seemed replete with anxiety about a terrible year past and uncertainty about what the future may hold. Ours a friendship that saw us through some interesting years in our young lives but suddenly the ties felt tenuous and I didn't want to let them unravel. Whether she will feel the same who can know. I said please don't feel obliged to reply, and if she doesn't we'll just stick to Christmas cards and carry on regardless. 

And then there are the vagaries of public school life for boys in that immediate period after the First World War.

What had gone before seemed to take the shape of the 'unsayable' in A Question of Upbringing, mentioned at a slant, but I sensed it somehow, especially in that scene in the school chapel, and felt it even more keenly when they sang a verse from one of my favourite hymns...

As o'er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away. 

Whilst all eyes are on the return of Le Bas mine were casting a much wider net, for the place and the atmosphere, to the gentle tones of  The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended with a descant provided by a group of boys sitting behind.

I was there.

Just thinking about the number who had died in the Great War, the heroic mantle bestowed on the dead, and quite how that legacy of sorrow impacted on the life of the school and those that would have to follow them, led me to another book on my shelves. Public Schools and the Great War - The Generation Lost by Anthony Seldon and David Walsh offers fascinating insights into an aspect of the war that has been the subject of much debate...

'The Great War is deeply imprinted on the sense of history and identity of every public school, its inescapable presence felt in the many familiar places which commemorate it - memorial chapels and halls, plaques, photographs and statues...'

and this...

'The public schools have not emerged well in the representations of the Great War, the predominant impression being one of callous staff officers who operated a long way behind the lines, and bumbling junior officers.'

Now I think about it, this has almost become the received opinion and this book works hard to reappraise these perceptions, exploring the 'codes of service, courage and loyalty, meriting our respect rather than our derision.' There are a few telling and relevant observations which I connected to A Question of Upbringing, especially this...

'Several headmasters and housemasters were broken by the losses of so many of their young men,'

And that had me wondering about Le Bas, the draconian housemaster...

'He merely seemed to Stringham and myself a dangerous lunatic, to be humoured and out-witted...'

We know little about Le Bas's history but...well maybe I'm investing too much in it. we'll see.

Anthony Seldon and David Walsh go on to explore the impressions of the officers in the Great War shaped by media productions such as Oh! What a Lovely War and the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth, outlining the various portrayals of men 'lacking brains, leadership or courage'.  They step in with a timely comparison to Journey's End, the play by  R.C.Sherriff written in 1927.

And perhaps this, another observation, holds true for Jenkins' school...

Exhausted and traumatised by over four years of war, the schools returned to a curriculum and way of life that was reassuringly familiar.

And of course Antony Powell is writing in the 1950s, well-removed from those early days, but, broader perspectives aside, I surprised myself (based on previous attempts) and enjoyed honing in on this world through the eyes of a single narrator in A Question of Upbringing. I feel myself well-launched onto the eleven remaining and am really looking forward to Book Two A Buyer's Market.

If anyone else is reading along with A Dance to the Music of Time 2020 please do share your thoughts, and even if you are not reading along but have read this far (thank you) all comments are most welcome. 

 

 

Bridge is Fifty Years Old...

Forget that it is forty-five years ago this weekend since I met Bookhound...no, the really important anniversary of the weekend is this...

It was fifty years ago today, January 26th 1970, that Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel hit the record shops.

I bought my copy for 25/- from my Mum’s Trafford’s catalogue and paid it back at 2/6d a week from my wages as a Saturday girl in Woolworth’s on Wallington High Street. I still have the LP (of course I do, this is me)

...though I doubt much sound comes out of it these days because I played it into oblivion, but no matter because I’m probably still word perfect on every song and Bookhound and I have now decided we really should treat ourselves to a record deck and play some of these LPs again.

‘El Condor Pasa’ .. of course I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail, who wouldn’t..

‘The Boxer,’ the poor boy whose story’s seldom told.

Who can forget ‘ So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ ...so long who? We’d never heard of him, and what’s all this harmonising ‘til dawn. Architects may indeed come and go but Frank has stayed lodged in my consciousness forever thanks to that song.

‘Cecilia’ and my mum frowning ever so slightly at the rather risqué lyrics.

I’d get in from school, my mum would be there, we’d have a cup of tea and sit on the settee together, put the LP on the radiogram and have a listen.

And that beautiful ‘Song for the Asking’ and the wistful moment when it ended and I would turn the record over and start it all again.

Nor will I ever forget spending an entire DAY dialling (on an old telephone with the circular number dial) the Albert Hall in London to get tickets for the Simon & Garfunkel concert there in a April that year. My friend June and I had seats in the choir, overlooking the stage and Art Garfunkel sang the most perfect version of Bridge Over Troubled Water that I would ever here.

How sad that it all ended in jealousy and acrimony, and mostly over that very song. I choose to ignore that bit though, Bridge Over Troubled Water mains one of the theme tunes to my life. Another one would of course by Blue by Joni.

Anyone else have a Bridge memory...

 

Full Tilt ~ Dervla Murphy

You could be forgiven for thinking I’ve just been sat here staring out at the rain and gloomy grey skies all winter, but no, indeed very much no.... I’ve been cycling from Dublin to India with Dervla Murphy, and I didn't even know I wanted to go. Admittedly Dervla’s been doing all the pedalling but I’ve been cheering her on from the safety of my armchair. Truth be told, though I've stopped short of donning the padded shorts, I have fallen back on memories of my hundred miles along the Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand back in 2016.

Full Tilt - Ireland to India with a Bicycle was a chance encounter. Eland travel books are not such an easy find in the bookshops down here, (though Exeter Waterstones are increasing their stock) so when I came across this one and saw the cover I was intrigued. It reminded me of the Kayaker’s pictures taken in the NW of India. 

Both images lure me in. I want to travel that road.

I didn’t know much about Dervla Murphy but there seem to be so few journey books like this by women in the past that I decided it was worth pumping up the tyres and setting off. Dervla set off in January 1963, in the midst of Britain’s coldest winter in recent times. It snowed on Boxing Day and we didn’t emerge the other end until a March thaw as I recall. I was nine and heaven knows how we kept the house and us warm. Arriving at school with frozen feet in wellies and knee high socks comes to mind as well as ice inside the windows and the purchase of an extra blanket (very jazzy Aztec)  each for my brother and I which I still have and use.

I'm sure you will have your own memories too...

But how unusual was it for a woman to embark on a journey like this in the 1960s; cycling alone across Europe before heading out across Persia (as it was then, now Iran) Afghanistan and onward to Delhi. And what a character and wonderful travelling companion Dervla turned out to be. Born in 1931 and raised in Lismore in Ireland, Dervla was given a bicycle and an atlas for her tenth birthday. She left school at the age of fourteen to care for her mother (this seems to be a recurring theme for so many women of this era I’ve read about lately) but she would regularly manage cycling trips around the U.K. and Europe. When both her parents died Dervla found herself a free agent and set off on this the first of many journeys around the world.

Self-effacing and modest, resilient and resourceful, courageous and long-suffering, I quickly grew to like Dervla. I’d say the perfect travelling companion but I’d probably have got on her nerves because show me a hill and a bike and I immediately require a battery, and I suspect Dervla much prefers her own company anyway. A woman uniquely aware of her own limitations but prepared to push them to the limits and able to cope with extremes... unlike me who’d be asking ‘Are we there yet?’ And needing another ‘rest’ under the guise of ‘admiring the view.’

I was reminded slightly of A Time of Gifts and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s walk through countries in the 1930s, now much-changed by war and circumstances. Persia and Afghanistan, the places and the people, viewed through Dervla’s eyes in the 1960s came to life in the most extraordinary way. Dervla has that happy knack of countering anything that could be seen as a criticism, or even remotely judgemental, by layering it with gratitude and understanding. The smelliest, filthiest people (and there were a lot of unwashed of long-standing) are the kindest and most welcoming, though tactics various for declining food were a must.

It was as I settled into the journey, the places and the people, and thanks to Dervla’s beautifully descriptive writing that I realised it was segueing with another image in my mind. On my last trip to New Zealand I had timed my return flights to come back into daylight; this having made the night flight into darkness mistake once before. As the plane flew towards the Caspian Sea I had the most breathtaking view of this vast and desolate territory

I hadn’t quite realised how that landscape had seared indelibly into my imagination until I started to read Dervla’s account. Her descriptions brought my mental image into being...

'...This stretch is just about the most beautiful part of the Hindu Kush I have seen. The glory of those mountains makes one feel that it must all be a dream. Every peak and slope and outcrop is different in shape, texture and colour, the rock and shale and clay shaded purple, rose, green, ochre, black, pale grey, dark grey, brown, navy and off-white...'

What a palette, what a place.

About half way through Full Tilt I realised my need was great for an old atlas, and by some miracle Bookhound found an old Bartholomew tome dated 1922 on his shelves. The maps are sheer, old-fashioned perfection...

Tiny print, and I need a magnifying glass, but it made a huge difference as I started to follow the trail across great salt deserts and mountain passes, whilst giving myself a much-needed geography lesson at the same time. I now have the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayas perfectly aligned in my head. 

I’m all about the Hindu Kush now and my next journey has set off with Eric Newby and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. For some reason I (and it would seem others) have always had this down as a serious book, one of those venerable reads that will 'do me good.' It's certainly doing me good but mainly because I am laughing so much, I had no idea Eric Newby was so funny. I will follow this with Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road. There is something about these travellers, setting out in the days before the internet and mobile phones and GPS,  that I am finding very engaging. Proper job explorers these. 

 

So that's me and my travels from the armchair...

I'd love to know if you have read any of these, Dervla, Eric or Colin, and who else you might add to the pre-cheating days of travel writing. People who had to use a map, write letters, send telegrams and generally think on their feet rather than send a text message.

And then there was the winter of '63... were your feet cold in wellies too...

 

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.

 

 

 

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.