dovegreyreader scribbles

Now we are a teenager...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Lanny ~ Max Porter

I seem to recall I made some pronouncement (an observation rather than a criticism) somewhere back in 2016 about how much I struggled with this...

Not with the book, though I was so slow to realise that Grief is the Thing With Feathers was a novel and not a memoir, that it took hearing Max Porter talk about the book at Port Eliot Festival for the penny to drop. I had an odd few days afterwards trying to square it all in my head...no it was the paperback cover that I had a bit of an issue with.

Whilst fully understanding the need to make a book leap off the sales table and into someone's hands, and to make the most of the accolades it has received makes perfect commercial sense, but the cover in this case turned Max Porter's first novel, Grief is the Thing With Feathers, into a mountain of insurmountable unattainable brilliance in my mind giving it a very high fence to jump. I can only apologise because 'hoisted by my own petard'  I realise I'm not exactly backward in coming forward about the odd book or two that I love on here either, and brace because I'm about to do it again. 

Lanny has a cover so simple and unadorned and yet so complex once I had finished the book, that I have invested more time interpreting its meaning than can be good for me, none of which I can share without spoiling the book for anyone who might read it. Add in the lichen encrusted end papers enclosing the whole and my imagination was off on a frolic of its own with the significance. Maybe this is all just a blank canvas for the paperback and the paeons of praise that I suspect are about to be heaped on Lanny published this week by Faber.

On the surface Lanny is the story of a young, middle-class couple and their son who move to a village about an hour's commute from London; she a crime thriller writer, he something in finance and their young and unusual child Lanny...

'You seem to me a child of the old times, a proper human child...'

One of those villages that transport has made accessible for the city worker, and with it comes the merging of the old and the new, the past and the present in a rural setting  What quickly becomes apparent is that other forces are at work, subverting any notions of the rural idyll, because Dead Papa Toothwort 'has woken from his slumber in the woods' and he is listening to them all, but especially to Lanny, the child in tune with the natural world.

Think Green Man...here's the last one we saw a few years ago at Buckland Abbey...

The Green Man much in evidence here in the South West with carved heads in churches various; heads and mouths surrounded by leaves and connections made with death, rebirth and life, and I am very grateful to Douglas of  DevonChurchLand (Instagram) who willingly shared some of his green man church roof bosses from around the Shire to post here...

I think you might agree not altogether benevolent or comforting. Throw in some May Day relevance and fertility rites, along with themes of  spring and resurrection, and I think that's just about every base covered for an enigmatic and uncertain spirit being emanating from the woodland. By way of further explanation, Charles Causley wrote Green Man in The Garden, a quietly powerful poem on the subject, and with a presence that segues well with events in Lanny...

Green man in the garden
Staring from the tree,
Why do you look so long and hard
Through the pane at me?


Your eyes are dark as holly,
Of sycamore your horns,
Your bones are made of elder-branch,
Your teeth are made of thorns.


Your hat is made of ivy-leaf,
Of bark your dancing shoes,
And evergreen and green and green
Your jacket and shirt and trews.


"Leave your house and leave your land
And throw away the key, 

And never look behind," he creaked,
"And come and live with me." 


I bolted up the window,
I bolted up the door,
I drew the blind that I should find
The green man never more. 


But when I softly turned the stair
As I went up to bed,
I saw the green man standing there.
"Sleep well, my friend," he said.

The all-seeing, all-knowing Dead Papa Toothwort doesn't miss a trick, and this is where Max Porter's book goes strangely yet brilliantly off-piste as the disconnected overheard words of the villagers float across the page.

Now I'll own up that I often sigh at this sort of thing...

A bit of an attention-seeking conceit perhaps as the eye wanders away from the lines and has to catch these airborne drifts of words. But in Lanny's case it works like a dream because it's up to the canny reader (who definitely doesn't want to miss the gossip) to pin the words down, work out who might have said what and about who. It's eavesdropping par excellence, and once I had gone with the flow these, along with a series of untethered, unattributed conversations (about a serious incident), became one of my favourite aspects of the book. I was reminded, in the best possible way, of Alice Oswald's poem The Village (Falling Awake) where the poet hears those voices too.

Themes of the loosening grip of rural life, tradition and folk-lore versus the newbies predominate, and if the book started out very Alice Oswald in my mind it soon morphed into Ted Hughes's Wodwo... the half-man half animal creature, woken from its hibernation and on the prowl.

Moving to the village has not been as straightforward as Lanny's parents imagined and I really don't want to say anymore because the cover info gives very little away and with good reason. Lanny needs to be left to spring its own surprises, which it most certainly does. The writing is unique, the rhythm often poetic (read it aloud) the plot compelling, driving on towards a denouement that left me with a seriously pounding heart and requiring the occasional reminder to breath.

In the end I took Lanny up to the woods with me because it seemed like a book that needed to be thirled, as in 'bound with ties of affection and sentiment', to its most right and best place. This in the same way that I often have Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain in my rucksack when I'm walking on Dartmoor, or Alice Oswald's Dart when I walk out to East Dart Head,

Whenever he is collecting logs with the Gamekeeper, Bookhound, will always leave in place the branches rooted to the ground by ivy, the ones that resist, this I'm told is out of respect. "For the Green Man," they both chime, before moving on to the wood that is more willingly given. Strange it may all seem, but read Lanny (and please do because I would love to know your thoughts) and maybe such sentiments are not quite so out of place after all, it doesn't do to disturb the Green Man.

 

 

 

Feed the birds...

 

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul's
The little old bird woman comes
In her own special way to the people she calls
Come, buy my bags full of crumbs

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry
Their nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you

 

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
"Feed the birds, " that's what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies...

 

Oh isn't that lovely. Remember Mary Poppins the first time round and Jane and Michael feeding the birds.

 

Tuppence... TUPPENCE??

 

I think we might have spent more on bird food than our own food this winter. In fact we've turned from 'everyday' bird feeders into 'fanatical' bird feeders who think nothing of carting home 150 fat balls and a sack of nyjer seed.

 

'Oooh, our goldfinches will love those...'

 

Our delight at a box of lard-filled coconut shells is beyond compare..

 

The discovery of suet rolls second only to finding the holders on special offer...

 

'Bet that'll get the woodpecker in...'

 

And it did.

 

 

And what a delight and a therapy watching the birds has become through the winter months, when it's so easy to think all is grey and dismal out there and there's nothing to look at.

 

It was the Gamekeeper who started it back in the summer. Always a keen birdwatcher he scaled up his feeders to industrial proportions when he was incapacitated with the broken leg. He is of course an expert on 'feeding birds' and his cottage is in an ideal location overlooking the Tavy-Tamar estuary, so we all sat back and spent many a happy hour enjoying the views and watching hundreds of birds flock in. He bought me feeders and a stock of bird food for my birthday last September and we haven't looked back since. Eschewing the usual arrangements Bookhound created an 'installation' from a branch in front of the kitchen window...

 

 

While I adorned  the viburnum tree in the back garden, and the jury's still out as to whose arrangement gets the most hits. There is some inter-family competition too, so images like this are regularly sent via WhatsApp to the Gamekeeper...

 

 

And I gave him some suet-filled coconuts for Christmas. He was delighted.

 

Charm after charm of goldfinches, our great spotted woodpecker, sparrows, dunnocks, blue tits, coal tits, long-tailed tits, pied wagtails, robins, blackbirds and most recently (and very appropriately) a pair of grey collared doves. Stray pheasants wander on and off stage left too.

 

Essential to the smooth-running of the operation is to turf Magnus out at night as usual to wear himself out chasing things in the dark. Welcoming him back with a huge plate of delectable food in the morning and then easing his path to his fleece-lined-draught-proof-cushioned-prince-and-the-pea basket on the sunny kitchen windowsill, ensures he's out for the count until dusk. It all goes wrong if for any reason he sneaks a night indoors thus turning his feline circadian rhythms into turmoil and he's on the look out under the bird feeders all day.

 

Meanwhile I'm sure we're not the only ones feeding the birds are we..

 

Anything unusual to report over your way...

 

Do you get as much pleasure from it as we do...

 

Any tips...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the winners are...

Thank you to everyone for all those wonderful comments on Last Train to Hilversum and for entering the prize draw.

Bookhound and Magnus have just done the draw and here are the winners who have all been notified by email, so please check your inboxes if you think it might be you....

Last Train to Hilversum - A journey in search of the magic of radio ~ Charlie Connelly

The minute I heard about this book I knew I had to read it, and I am very grateful to Bloomsbury for sending along a copy of Last Train to Hilversum - A journey in search of the magic of radio by  Charlie Connelly pronto to assuage the need.

It was the word 'Hilversum' that did it, twanging a chord that echoed back into the deepest early memories of my childhood. We were definitely a radio family, the image of the enormous brown box so ingrained in my mind that I had no trouble locating it online.

Some of my clearest childhood memories are of that radio, it's tactile beige-gold fabric and the dials with the red back-lit line crossing the mysterious names, Luxembourg, Vienna, Prague (Prag-yew to me) and of course Hilversum. My mum and I would sing along to the Light Programme, Catch a Falling Star and Que Sera while she did the chores and I probably played with my Fuzzy Felt or something. My mum, I now realise, had grown up with the radio too. I still have her Ovaltiney's bookmark found in the Knitting Nancy box of all things...

Not mentioned in the book so I'll add a note here. The Ovaltineys broadcast on a Sunday from 5.30pm to 6pm on Radio Luxembourg in 1935 and spawning a club which had five million members by 1939, one of which was my mum. 

I was deeply envious (I now realise) of my comic-swapping friend Ann (me Judy, she Bunty) because Ann and her sister Christine shared a bedroom and had a radio like ours between their beds. Imagine the joy of lying in bed and drifting off to sleep with a radio on. We didn't stretch to bedroom radios in our house, it was a luxury I didn't have until my thirteenth birthday when my brother bought me a transistor, and that was me sorted and forever spending my pocket money on new batteries. 

One of the earliest surprises on reading Charlie Connelly's book was the fact that despite changing habits in every walk of life, plus the allure of social media, listening to the radio remains as popular as ever: 90% of the adult population listen to the radio at some time every week. The history of the early development of radio broadcasting was hazy to me, as were the roles of several women who forged a path as announcers for the BBC at its inception in the 1920s. It was a generally held belief that women didn't posses the gravitas with which to be radio announcers, but Sheila Borret was allowed to have a go and quickly dispelled that myth. Surprising then that the majority of complaints came from women, and though Sheila's career with the BBC was curtailed in the face of that opposition she was an indomitable character who forged a career in entertainment for many years afterwards.

But this book is full of lovely surprises, too many to mention but here's a few...

I still haven't read Attention all Shipping, Charlie Connelly's trip around the shipping forecast locations but to hear the names is always enough...Fair Isle, Rockall, Malin,, Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire. Broadcast daily at 00.48 and 05.20 on Radio 4 Long Wave and FM an again at 12.01 and 17.54 on Long Wave only.

And then I am reminded of Carol Ann Duffy's poem  Prayer...

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.  

The reading of the football results brought back particular memories. Now read by Charlotte Green, for many years James Alexander Gordon was the 'voice' on a Saturday afternoon and I'll bet we weren't the only ones to play Win/Lose/Draw which involved declaring the result from the clearly defined intonation and voice inflection during the briefest of pauses before the actual score was announced. And of course who ever forgets the days when we were blessed with a classic. Forfar 5 ...East Fife 4

I knew nothing of the radio SOS messages either....

'Would Miss Joyce Wilsher, currently on holiday in Carlisle, please go to 2 Wicklow Street, Old Basford, Nottingham, where her fiance Raymond Holmes is dangerously ill (15 November 1952)

Broadcast regularly until they 'slipped gradually away into radio history' Charlie Connolly explores the people and the stories behind some of the messages often with quite unexpected results..

I mean I was definitely intrigued to discover more about this ...

'Will anyone in London or the south Midland area who on Saturday 19th December supplied a man with sandwiches containing sausage meat...communicate immediately with the chief constable of Oxford...the man was probably riding a bicycle. (20 December 1931)

I wonder if any of you have ever sent a request into a radio station...

My mum's sister and her son both had a 'thing' about the singer Malcolm Roberts and would be forever sending in requests for each other to the Jimmy Young programme.

'Oh not again!' my mum would exclaim, faintly embarrassed at their adulation.

Mind you I can't talk. I once emailed Simon Bates on Classic FM because, as he was playing  'Venus' from Holst's Planets, I watched a barn owl swoop and circle and rise and fall, cresting and diving in exact time to the music. He then read it out and I cringed ever so slightly.

So it's alright, you can own up here.

Bookhound and I have had a lovely nostalge (my word) about Last Train to Hilversum, and spent a happy ten minutes remembering and singing our favourite songs from Children's Favourites on a Saturday morning with Uncle Mac. Uncle Mac heralded the freedoms of Saturday over breakfast, and before I went out to 'play' with instructions to be back when the Mitcham Town Hall clock said 1pm. We are embarrassingly word perfect on Tubby the Tuba, Sparky's Magic Piano, Nelly the Elephant, Little White Bull and The Ugly Duckling.

And in the same way Sing Something Simple on a Sunday evening meant the weekend was over and it was back to school. I was thrilled to read that Corrie Corfield also recorded the Top 40 afterwards, trying not to include the voice-overs. Everyone in our house had to be silent too.

And there you have it. So much more to this treasure of a book than I have had space to include so don't miss it if you're in the mood for an escape and some magic, and please do share your radio memories in comments on this post.

Meanwhile I don't know about you but maybe a little bit of oompah-pah wouldn't go amiss this week either, and then scroll down for gifts

Prize Draw ~ Last Train to Hilversum - a journey in search of the magic of radio ~ Charlie Connelly

Magnus here and it's been a while chums, I hope you are all tickety-boo. I'm splendid and when I'm not viewing the world from my basket...

I am feigning delight over the new wheelbarrow...

What on earth is so exciting about it?

But listen chums, I come bearing gifts. My thanks to Bloomsbury for sharing the love here with six copies of Last Train to Hilversum - A journey in search of the magic of radio by Charlie Connelly for you, and these can go worldwide, so please do add a comment to this post and the draw will happen dreckly, as in eventually as usual.

 

Couch (Potato) to 5K (Paula Radcliffe) update.

I don’t want to shout too loud because I’m not at the end yet, but for anyone who might be missing the copious updates on social media and elsewhere, you ALL need to know that I am now into week eight of nine of Couch to 5k. This the NHS app that talks you from running for a minute and thinking you’re going to die, should never have started this and ha ha if anyone thinks you could possibly EVER run for thirty minutes, to being declared a RUNNER at the end of Week Six. 

WEEK SIX???

I’m sorry for all the shouty capitals but she said it, honestly she did, ‘Well done, you can call yourself a runner now.’

And now I’ve finished WEEK SEVEN so this week I have run for twenty-five minutes three times, a mile and half on each run (according to this Strava app which measures the distance.)

For those who missed the beginnings of this, Offspringette got me started on Couch to 5k while she was home at Christmas, took me out and bought me a pair of very comfortable running shoes (my comfy old trainers apparently not up to the task) and I promised that I’d keep going, if not to the end, then I’d reside in the world of Week Three or Four maybe. I never expected to get as far as Week Eight. I feel like one of those contestants on Strictly who ‘never expected to get to Blackpool.’

Clearly whoever thought up this programme knew what they were doing because I’m now running for twenty-five minutes non-stop, I’m not breathless and my legs still work. I go out onto the lane at 8.30am, start the run, start the music or an audio book and just get on with it. I’ll admit my legs didn’t feel like mine after each session to begin with, but slowly they have remembered what they used to be really quite good at and are fine now. 

I can’t quite believe that I can now ’run’ let alone that I actually look forward to it. Granted the weather on alternate days has been surprisingly clement, only a couple of wet days, and I was grounded for a few days by the ice and snow, but otherwise there’s the sun peeking over the hedgerows and off I go. I’m up and down up and down, on the lane in front of the house, and back indoors before Mike the Postman sees me and gets a fright.

For anyone who might have thought about doing Couch to 5K and still wants to, but can’t quite muster up the courage, or feels sure they would feel too stupid or self-conscious or be doomed to fail,  I have to be the living (so far) proof that it is possible. Personally I have realised I am a solitary runner. I don’t need a group or a running buddy or a park run at this stage, I just like to get out there and do it, but I’m sure if you decide to have a go there would a group nearby that would help you, it’s hugely popular now. Maybe check with your GP first if you have any doubts about any bits of you that might fall off or stop working...I had a second steroid injection in my knee last autumn, and I’m keeping a watchful eye out for twinges, but the programme gives you a rest day inbetween and I find that, and a knee support are all I need. The benefits so far are vastly improved stamina and a sense of self-esteem and pride that I’ve managed it.

What happens at the end I’m not quite sure....

Do I just keep running for half an hour and get faster...

Do I run further and for longer...

All I know is I shall try to keep this going somehow, all advice and shared experiences welcome.

 

 

Sea Room ~ Adam Nicolson

'I have stolen 
some of the light which drenches you this midnight  
to wish you all the islands in the world 
and every one a different kind of peace."

These lines from Northern Lights by Jo Shapcott have been among my most treasured poetry quotes since the day I first read them and which I'd written on the flyleaf of Sea Room by Adam Nicolson. I've used the words so many times in so many books about islands, jotted them in notebooks, sent them as a sort of blessing to friends. I'm not sure when I first embarked on the Sea Room journey to the Shiants all those years ago either, before realising I didn't actually want to go there at that precise reading moment. Maybe because we were doing island visiting of our own to Orkney for several years, but scouring my shelves for some armchair journeys for 2019 I had added this one to the pile.

No problems this time, I was up for the voyage, this story of one man, three islands and half a million puffins.

Once 'owned' by Compton Mackenzie, Adam Nicolson soon makes it clear that 'owning' islands' is not as straightforward as it might seem. Yes, his father Nigel Nicolson, son of Vita Sackville-West, bought the Shiants, five miles off shore from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, for £1400 inherited from his grandmother. Nigel was an undergraduate at the time, it was 1937 and £1400 would have bought a great deal more for his money, investments that would have been worth far more than the islands are today, but really that wasn't the point. 

'Islands feed an appetite for the absolute. They are removed from the human world, from its business and noise.'

...and as Adam Nicolson explains, young Nigel felt 'enlarged and excited' by the ownership, happy to find a place of solitude and the wherewithal to see nature in close-up and the sea so huge. But 'ownership' of an island is a tricky cultural business to square in a place where attitudes towards absent English landlords are less than friendly or understanding. History does them no favours, but then it would seem the local Clan Stewart were equally to be feared in terms of dominance and brutality. The islands, traditionally for two generations of Nicolsons now, are handed over to the eldest son at the age of twenty-one; Nigel to Adam, and Adam now to his son Tom. The question of 'ownership' is one that Adam Nicolson sensibly addresses in the first chapter before going on to explain the family's policy of allowing open access to the Shiants, thus denouncing any charge of exclusive rights.

'Land - particularly land that is out on the edge of things, and particularly land that is a rich concentration of the marvels of the natural world - is to be shared.'

If you can get there you are allowed stay there.

And meanwhile Sea Room, first published in 2001, 'is an attempt to share the Shiants.'

Consider it done, because I've had the most wonderful journey and sojourn over the first few weeks of the year alongside virtual puffins, gannets, shags. I've explored the three islands, Garbh Eilean, Eilean an Targhe and Eilean Mhuire for days on end, navigated my way around the rocky shores, investigated caves and beaches, found relics and delved into the history of this amazing place, wished I'd had Magnus along to deal with the rats and understand more about islands than I ever thought.

Why had it never occurred to me that in the 1600s these islands might  have been relatively safe places to live, perhaps much safer from marauders than on the mainland. That's not to deny how tough it must have been because when the weather hits it takes no prisoners to say nothing of being self-sufficient.

And culturally how the concept of the 'island' has shifted from a place of imprisonment (think Robinson Crusoe) to the magical places espoused by Gaugin and Rousseau.

On the subject of Rattus rattus and an island overrun with them in their tens of thousands, a four year project to eradicate them has been declared a success, which must be a relief to all who land there. They were very familiar creatures not averse to sharing a pillow.

And there is much investigation of who may have lived on the islands in centuries past. I sensed Adam Nicolson's infectious joy at re-imagining the various pasts. When the evidence may be as extensive but as limited as a midden containing more than a hundred thousand limpet shells who can know the reasons for their consumption, but let's imagine, and I did.

'The Shiants are a place where the deepest past seems more nakedly present than any other I know.'

On the way I've had some fun with the Leuchtterm1917 (dotted) and the washi tape, alongside maps and pictures and a glue stick, because I'm using it as a Travel Journal for the year (that mostly stays at home) and writing about and around each journey-book I read. 

Look stranger, as this island now...
Stand stable here
And silent be
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.

W.H.Auden

Meanwhile, if you have read Sea Room please do share your thoughts in comments...

And while we’re abiut it any other ‘island’ reading suggestions.

And I'll bet someone somewhere out there has been to The Shiants...

 

A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seed ~ James Fenton

I'm sitting here at my desk staring out at this...

The greenhouse swaddled and bandaged up in a valiant attempt to protect it from Storm Erik and any more Big Freezes, us having been a little too late to defend against the ravages of Storm Whatever-The-Last-One-Was. The door shunted ajar and the gale took out several of the back windows, now repaired. It's not so much the repairing, nuisance though it is, it's more the equation of number of pieces of glass x distance travelled across the grass = infinity. 'Someone' puts the gloves on and goes over it with a fine tooth comb and a bin liner whilst thinking about the twelve paws that live here and the vet's bill for their repair.

Anyway, before this late night bandaging session I sensibly nipped in and watered my sweet peas, sown in October because they are streaking away...

I've discovered something called a Solstice variety, apparently less reliant on hours of daylight before they will flower so I'm hoping for some early joy. I'm a martyr to them mind you, pinching out, staking, covering with thermal fleece and generally cossetting them along into spring. But it will be worth it won't it...

A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seeds by James Fenton, and published by Notting Hill Editions in one of their beautiful linen-bound pocket-sized books, arrived at exactly the right moment and I am very grateful to them for sending it along for my perusal.

Do you know the moment...

The one when your mind suddenly starts thinking about garden plans for the coming year. 

Whilst the perennials are doing nicely and plenty is now self-seeding I have a long herbaceous border to fill and there's nothing like a few annuals.

Remember my endeavours to persuade Aquilegia to like it here. Almost at weed-proportions in the cottage garden we left behind to move here twenty-five years ago, but somehow a little reluctant to set down roots again. My diligence paid off, in fact James Fenton may have hit the nail on the proverbial with this...

'What really gets a regular garden going is not so much a plan as a craze, or a series of overlapping crazes. And when we are in the grips of a craze, we want to know everything there is to be known about a plant...'

You have all been at the mercy of my flower crazes over the years... Chrysanthemums, Marigolds, Poppies, Sunflowers, Sweet Peas,  and I am grateful for the indulgence and the advice, as well as the seeds that arrive in the post (thank you Lesley for the dahlia seeds recently).

Last year saw my love affair with dahlias and which I fancy is not yet spent should the Peter Nyssen catalogue arrive in the post. The dahlia bed, established by the Tinker, is currently swathed in a very thick layer of mulch and we hope enjoying the rest. This Arbatex won a first in the Village Show, we have standards to maintain.

The Aquilegia are now hither and yon, though as predicted some of the special varieties ( a result of the craze) have morphed into also-rans, But they are still the prettiest flower and a joy to see in April and May.

Likewise Honesty which flatly refused to do anything where I sowed the seeds, but mysteriously appeared across the other side of the garden, around the steps to the summer house, where I hadn't sown any at all, and then colonised with no help whatsoever... 

Incidentally, the summer house (and the breathtaking views from same) will be available for our Tinker's Cott guests to use. It's an idyllic spot with a seating area behind and uninterrupted views of the Tamar Valley, and it would be sad not to share it. 

And so I settled down with A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seeds and started making lists. Nodding my head sagely in agreement with James Fenton at the plants I recognised and had grown...

No 71 : P.somniferum, which comes in so many forms, single and double. 'Black Peony' is the one I would choose...'

Maybe you remember that single packet of  'Black Peony' seed I bought at the Lost Gardens of Heligan a few years ago...

They were bloomin' marvellous. The best thing was watching them unfurl from their buds each day. I collected seeds from the dried heads, shared them around with friends in their Christmas cards that year, but sadly my sowings came to nought the next year. I'm going to try again because I discovered a better method with poppies last year. Seeds randomly strewn around the garden as usual, but I also grew some in pots and planted them out. A good slosh of water in the hole first and they all thrived.

Forget "bones". Forget "structure". Forget trees, shrubs and perennials.' says James Fenton.

'This is not a book about big projects. It is about thinking your way towards an essential flower garden, by the most traditional of routes : planting some seeds and seeing how they grow.'

As well as the hundred seed suggestions, there is much to hearten here...

'A garden is not a canvas...'

'Design has become a terrible, stupid and expensive tyrant. The emphasis here is all on content. Such a flower garden should have the same beauty as an allotment. It says : This is what I feel like having this year.'

Excellent, if you come to visit us expect to see 'what I feel like having this year' along the borders.

On my list of seeds from Ben Ranyard at Higgledy Gardens will be the Earthwalker sunflowers (yes I'm going to be fighting the slugs and snails again), Cosmos in all varieties because they were stellar last year and I'd like to see drifts of blue Cornflowers too. And I’ve just sent for Ben’s Bee-Friendly Wild Flower Meadow mix (£15 post free until Sunday) because I have a hankering to create one again. 

Any more suggestions very welcome... 

And one more thing while I am on the subject of Notting Hill Editions...

Am I the only person not to have discovered their notebooks...

Linen-bound, ribbon marker, pocket-sized, a lined page opposite a plain page with an occasional literary quote to suit the theme of each book, because they come with a stamped cover too ...'Voyage', 'Nostalgia' or 'Epiphany'.

But back to flowering annuals...what do you recommend...

 

 

Munich ~ Robert Harris

When the Gamekeeper broke his leg back-along, and was eventually whisked off to the operating theatre for some running repairs requiring the contents of the Screwfix catalogue, I nipped into Plymouth for a book browse...as you do whilst under duress. I chose a couple of what I would call Easy Readers, which is not to demean the quality, but I reckoned I needed page turners, and one of them was Munich, the other was Force of Nature by Jane Harper. As it happens, what followed, in terms of support, keeping company (we did a lot of summer bird watching, happy days) and six x dog walking x twice a day, didn't leave much time for reading, so I have only just read Robert Harris's book.

I was an early adopter of Robert Harris, reading Fatherland on publication back in 1992 (how long ago?? Only twenty-seven years) and swooping on Enigma and Archangel in 1995 and 1998. I was back on full time case-load health visiting, work and family meant limited reading time, but I remember all three as being excellent reads that did the rounds of the community nursing office, so can recommend them if Robert Harris is new to you.

Then everything went Roman in Harris-World and I lapsed... and you are all now going to tell me to read them I just know it.. Pompeii, Imperium, Lustrum, Dictator anyone...

I caught up last year with the audio version of Conclave a terrific listen, about the choosing of a new Pope, and which I see is the Number One Best Seller in the 'Catholic Popes' category on You Know Where...

'They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.'

and goodness me did they,

But, though I still have a few gaps, I'm now up to the minute with Robert Harris and Munich.

I relish a fiction read that takes a known historical event and giving an imaginative but entirely plausible outing for what might have been happening behind the scenes. I enjoyed Every Man for Himself recently, Beryl Bainbridge's fictional insights on the sinking of the Titanic, and in the case of Munich, Neville Chamberlain's negotiations with Hitler in September 1938. Two former friends, old university acquaintances, Legat and Hartmann are supposedly batting for opposite teams in their respective diplomatic entourages, except one of them knows much more than he should, and the consequences of sharing that information could change the course of history. 

Meanwhile Neville Chamberlain is portrayed in a certain sympathetic light too, which I don't think has generally been the case (certainly not in the recent film Darkest Hour), though historians out there please correct me if I'm wrong. It's at moments like this (among many) when I miss being able to nip into the Tinker and ask my primary source for his considered opinion.

A Prime Minister stuck between a rock and a hard place...

Neville Chamberlain doing his level best to avoid the carnage of another conflagration, though sadly it seems he misread Hitler's appetite for exactly that, whilst failing to see that the Fuhrer wasn't a man of his word either.

There is much tension and intrigue until a quietly triumphant and trusting Chamberlain returns, waving what proved to be a meaningless piece of paper with the famous words...

"Peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”

 Czechoslovakia has been sold down the river and Hitler has plans for Europe, so we all know what the next sentence might be if there was another chapter in the book,

Churchill's legendary riposte...

"You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

It seems harsh now that I have a different perspective on Chamberlain, but that's politics for you, little room for sympathy.

Along the way plenty of intrigue and tension and I particularly liked the insights (fictional or otherwise) into Mrs Chamberlain, clearly a source of great support to her husband. So a book that started its life here on the scribbles as part of the regular Reading Gallimaufry round-up of recent good reads, and ended up demanding a post of its own.

If you have read Munich, or Conclave or any of the others mentioned I would love to know your thoughts...

And there's the Roman trilogy...should I go there when I am currently holed up in Greece with The Iliad . Lordy lordy, you did warn me, the killing and many ways of... entrails all over the place...

 

We need to talk about... Journals

...journals / diaries, I'm not sure when one word became more fashionable than the other, and now there's something called 'bullet journaling' which is very big business. I'm envious of those who sketch each day or event (and here are some brilliant ones on Instagram) or create beautifully artistic entries. It isn't quite what I strive or have the time for, though I have now succumbed to the joys of washi tape for a bit of added interest.

But hold on, I'm feeling a bit smug because 2018 was the first full and complete year that I have EVER written a journal entry every single day.

2004 /2005 don't really count. They were the as-and-when years, but both include everything I read alongside life events, and I note there was a lot of testing of fountain pens and inks various (Diamine a disaster of bleeding through Moleskine pages). There are pictures of afternoon tea in the Pump Room in Bath, a visit to Sylvia Plath's grave in Heptonstall, I was on Open Book talking to Mariella about fiction written by and for women of a certain age (it was all very controversial at the time) , Newbooksmag published a piece I had written on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and all of this I would have forgotten.

Then of course 2006, dovegreyreader scribbles happened and things seemed to end up on a screen, not handwritten on the page, and before I knew it another eleven years had flown by with a succession of failed journal attempts. I've had some help this last year mind you, in the form of Robert Macfarlane's Word of the Day over on Twitter.

7am on the dot there it is, a new word with its meaning, source, application and variable contexts and an image to illustrate, and the 'likes' rack up with astonishing speed. It would seem I am not alone in grasping the word and applying it to my day, or a moment I have known. Tweeters various and many will add their own understanding or experience of the 'word' and fascinating threads will follow, often with images from their own lives. 

Lacking the early-morning wherewithal to know quite how to start my daily diary entry...

'It's a bit gloomy outside...'

'Really nice sunrise...'

Or the discipline to return to it at night with a report on the day, I started to use of the Word of the Day as my first entry, pondered it, often found a memory surfacing, or stumbled across an example of the word through the day, or threw it into a sentence and realised I now had the spring board from which to build the sort of things I wanted my daily journal to be for. 

Nor are the words all 'primroses and otters' , no indeed, there is plenty of meat on the word bone to stop any downward descent into sentimentalism or nostalgia. Many in recent weeks have been extremely pertinent to the political treacle through which we are wading; a word will often tell it slant, reflecting an event or a moment, and the inference is never missed over on the twitter-sphere.

That said I've pulled out a word from last year because it demonstrates perfectly what so often happens..

"kusumashayaripaatin" I don't actually think I've quoted this Word of the Day since April 5th 2018, but I well remember they day and the image that flew unbidden into my mind...

It was the Tinker's birthday and I thought of this...

And then that sun halo happened...

And I noticed it because I was looking, and maybe because I was looking for meaning and signs too. I went for a wander across to the village church and noticed a whole lot more along the way. I think what I'm trying to say is that the 7am diary entry habit, and the thinking that follows, has all made me more perceptive and in unexpected ways.

Of course it could all have gone off the rails each time Robert Macfarlane took a well-earned Twitter break, but on those occasions, minus my prop, I realise that by now I have trained myself well and used my own Memory of the Day instead and have quite surprised myself with the innovation.

All this might seem like terribly over-wrought and introspective angst about something that should be so simple, I mean Virginia Woolf made it look so easy and so fascinating, whilst I have long struggled with the spectre of the Deadly Boring Diary which might be why I have lapsed repeatedly. The crunch comes now, sitting here at my desk and daring to read back through 2018, and I am pleasantly surprised to find how much more attentive and observant something so easy as thinking about a single word has made me.

There are quotes from poetry I've enjoyed, a lot of Mary Oliver, RIP Mary, how thrilled I am to have found you...

Details about books read or in progress until I decided to ship that all across to a Reading Journal...

Details about flowers, arriving swallows, walks on Dartmoor, walks to the woods, amazing skies, moments, events, occurrences, but all bolstered by that daily word.

I know we've talked about this before but please do share your journalising (made up word) tendencies if you want to...

And which journal do you use ...I still use the small, lined Moleskine for day-to-day even though the paper quality seems to be deteriorating. The Kayaker bought me my current bright yellow one for my birthday, for winter cheer. A large page requires large thoughts and that phases me a little too much, but I'm on the brink of going across to the plain version. I have suddenly discovered the unfettered joy of the plain page.

 

 

 

 

Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women ~ Rachel Trethewey

First things first, I must now confess to a complete blank on the lineage of the House of Windsor.

What a disgrace.

Well, the early days of the House of Windsor that is, created in 1917 to break with any prior associations with Germany... but who exactly were the brothers and sisters, the children of King George V and Queen Mary?

I've sorted it out now but I can't believe I had never really paid attention and understood the place of Dukes of Gloucester and Kent in the grand Windsor scheme of things. To save anyone else the embarrassment, though I feel sure you all know this, here it is ...

The Major Players...

Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (known as David) born in 1894, the eldest son and heir to the throne. Edward VIII and the one who would abdicate.

Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George born in 1895, known as Bertie, second in line. The man who would be King George VI after the abdication.

The Minor Players...

Mary, the Princess Royal, born in 1897 

Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester born in 1900.

Prince George, (how confusing) Duke of Kent born in 1902.

Prince John, born in 1905 and died in 1919. The 'afflicted' prince and the subject of that brilliant 2003 TV drama, The Lost Prince, by Stephen Poliakoff

Right, so having sorted that out, we can now proceed to Rachel Trethewey's latest and excellent book, Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women. 

From knowing so little beyond Wallis Simpson - divorcee - abdication - bad news, I now know it all thanks to Rachel Trethewey's meticulous but accessible research presented in this completely absorbing read. 

 At just 5ft 7ins tall and weighing nine stone the Prince must have cut an almost diminutive figure but the women of the land fell over themselves to be in the same room as him and he was never short of a mistress or three it would seem. Freda Dudley-Ward and Thelma Furness, along with the lovely Rosemary Leveson-Gower, are the three women whose lives Rachel Trethewey examines in detail and I was fascinated by each one.

But what a sad sort of jack-the-lad Edward was. In the words of his private secretary Tommy Lascelles, who knew him well...

'Edward was so isolated in the world of his own desires that he never felt ' absolute objective affection' for anyone, even his lovers or family.' 

And me, well, I'm in the mood to blame the parents...

Childcare delegated to a nanny who cared obsessively (never taking a day off) for the young prince for the first three years of his life but was revealed to be a cruel and spiteful abuser. Covered in bruises it was discovered that the young prince was pinched mercilessly to make him cry whenever he was taken to see his parents so that he would seem to need his nanny. And who can know what else may have been inflicted on him at such a crucial stage in his life.

And then, when the one and first love of his life, Rosemary Leveson-Gower seems on the brink of accepting a marriage proposal, she is deemed unsuitable because of a taint of unsavoury behaviour and perhaps mental instability within her family (the Duke of Sutherland of Dunrobin Castle) and the King and Queen forbid the match.

Rosemary, a front-line nurse during the First World War. Level-headed and a stabilising influence on the wayward Prince, who can know how different his life might have been had the marriage been approved?

Rosemary would eventually marry Lord Ednam, but how tragic her ultimate demise. Jettisoned into an orchard in the village of Meopham in Kent in 1930 when the plane in which she was travelling home from France disintegrated in mid-air, her pearls poignantly strewn across the ground. Ironically Rosemary had been heading back for a meeting with the architect who was designing the memorial garden for her child Jeremy, who had been killed in a road accident . Reading of such tragedy stayed with me for days, along with all the what-might-have-beens of her life and ultimately the House of Windsor. Rosemary was buried alongside her son at the family home, Himley Hall in Dudley near Birmingham.

Now an events venue I wonder if anyone knows whether the graves are still there somewhere...

Freda, married but frequently conducting a troika of relationships at any one time and definitely the one holding the reins. She would become more of a counsellor and confidante to the Prince as the years progressed and marriage seemed increasingly unlikely, but would be dropped like a stone when Wallis came on the scene.

Thelma, perhaps the most superficial of the mistresses in the Prince's eyes, with limited intelligent conversation but clearly plenty of other desirable attributes. One half of the American Morgan twins, the other, Gloria, would become a Vanderbilt and therein probably exists another complete book.

I was so riveted I didn't take detailed notes, but the narrative ranges far and wide and fascinatingly across 1920's and 30's life for the upper echelons with plenty of intriguing connections of which I knew a little, but not, for example, of the Prince's involvement with the African Happy Valley set. The book's focus is not on Wallis Simpson or the abdication but on the years, the women, and the choices that led up to it and indeed sheds some light on the three women in their own right.

Highly recommended if like me you have a bit of a lacuna about all this, and for those who follow it all in every detail plenty more to discover. 

Meanwhile, I wonder if there is still the appetite out there for reading around the Royals ...

I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself a fan of anything about them from the twentieth, or heaven forfend the twenty-first century so this has been a pleasant surprise, and now I hear mutterings of a good book about Queen Mary...what say you...

 

 

Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell ~ David Yaffe

My love for all things Joni has been well-documented on here down the years so I couldn't think how on earth I had missed Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe, published in October 2017, 

And then I knew exactly how, because I had been here with my lovely and completely un-reckless but very adventurous daughter...

I had spent October 2017 in New Zealand with Offspringette, and missed all the articles and publicity. By the time I arrived home it was all about Philip Pullman and The Book of Dust, and it was La Belle Sauvage that would see me through those weeks of jet-lag and the pain of saying au revoir, not Joni. On reflection this is probably a 'good thing' because I was emotional enough at 3am back then without the added layer of listening to Blue.

This time though, Offspringette was here and we had a shared Joni-fest as we sat curled up in the Book Room reading and chatting in the evenings over Christmas and New Year. I'd share some golden nugget about Joni and we'd work our way through some of our favourite tracks.

Born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7th 1943, Joni has ten years on me, and it was this I kept in mind as I re-envisaged my own life in comparison to hers. Ten years my senior, so when I was seventeen and wallowing in Blue, having been desperate for the long straight blond hair, the peachy skin, the voice and the guitar skills, Joni was already twenty seven and had seen plenty of life.

Famed for her legendary open tunings on the guitar (where the guitar is already tuned to a chord) I had no idea this had its origins in Joni's childhood brush with polio. Hospitalised for a year, and visited by her mother only once, the consequences emotionally must have been huge, whilst physically it placed some limitations on her ability to hold down complex guitar chords.

Joni's circle of influence was vast and came as something of a revelation to me, judged, as it would have been at the time (and was) with rather a critical eye and accusations of 'getting around a bit.' How times and attitudes have changed...now I hope we'd be much more inclined to point out that it takes two, so Joni certainly wasn't the only one 'getting around.' Relationships with Leonard Cohen, Dave Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, Jackson Brown and then we get to Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty....

Didn't we all think at the time that Carly Simon wrote You're so Vain about Warren Beatty?

It was the world's worst kept secret, hints at the truth finally revealed by Carly Simon in her memoir Boys in the Trees (which I have borrowed from the library for a different perspective on these years) and also about Joni's relationship with Carly's then-husband James Taylor...

'...he told Joni, " You shouldn't call here anymore." Yes, I was relieved that his relationship with Joni, his most recent love before me, was over, but at the same time, how could anyone ever be "over" Joni Mitchell? Joni was brilliant and enchanting...'

It is clear that Carly Simon idolised her new husband but also clear that many women saw Joni as a threat. There were famously prickly encounters with Joan Baez and others, but Joni as brilliant and enchanting is exactly what shines off the pages in this book, though I'll confess I'm too far gone with my lifelong adulation to be objective about this.

But back to Warren and Jack, both tried to woo Joni, both apparently failed.

Reading of Joni's romantic, cultural and musical collaborations was however like reading a catalogue of the music and musicians of my own lifetime...

Bob Dylan...

Eric Clapton...

Mama Cass...

Jose Feliciano..

Joan Baez...

Judy Collins...

Gordon Lightfoot...

and later...

Jimi Hendrix...

Paul Macartney...

Prince...

The list is endless, the connections forming a matrix of mid-to-late twentieth century music with Joni, the 'reckless daughter', at its centre.

As Joni's life is recounted so each album features along with its background story, and this I loved. I have them all, every one, from Song to a Seagull in 1968 to Shine in 2007 and more recently Love Has Many Faces and how good it was to revisit certain tracks.

I Had a King (Song to a Seagull and written about Joni's brief marriage to Chuck Mitchell)

A Case of You (Blue and written with Leonard Cohen in mind)

And of course Little Green (Blue) written about the baby born to Joni and her lover Brad McMath in 1965, and eventually given up for adoption when she realised her lifestyle precluded any pretence at motherhood. This story has an interesting sequel because eventually the 'baby', Kilauren Gibb, would be joyously reunited with her birth mother, though sadly the euphoria of that honeymoon period would fade into disharmony. But Blue remains top of my list of all time favourites. One copy (not mine) did the rounds of the sixth form common room in 1971 and forty-eight years later I still never tire of listening to it.

On that subject...did anyone else hear the programme about River, the track from Blue, on BBC Radio 4 before Christmas...

Perhaps my slight parting of the ways with Joni comes after Hejira.

Maybe I didn't feel quite so in tune with her music after that 1976 album, and for reasons unknown until I read this book. Joni deserts the stage minutes into an 18,000 ticket concert suffering a sort of breakdown, but more of a confrontation with her own dysfunctional self, taking to road trips and anonymity whilst coming to terms with what her life had become. Along the way she tries to resolve her growing drug addiction and turns to a form of Buddhism. Hejira was the result and with its meaning  'escape with honour' seems entirely appropriate. Nothing however would stop Joni's smoking habit of four packets a day, leading to the inevitable alterations in her voice and the loss of several octaves, none of which went unnoticed by the critics.

What emerges is a woman redoubling her efforts, taking no nonsense or direction from anyone, often difficult to work with but forging her own path into the future. There would be more collaborations with the likes of Lionel Richie, Billy Idol, Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel, Sinead O'Connor and Bryan Adams, and tours with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Financial worries, a devastating miscarriage, and to some extent what has been revealed as a penchant for reinventing her history in her own eyes would follow, often to the detriment of others along with the onset of mysterious illnesses, all of which David Yaffe attempts to address with a range of interviews in what was for me a fascinating read.

Most recently, and perhaps the most distressing news as time and life march on, was to read that in 2015 Joni had  suffered a brain aneurysm and was discovered unconscious on her kitchen floor, where she had been lying for three days before she was found. After an intense treatment and recovery period  it would seem there have been some improvements but it was all a terrible shock to our systems...to those of us who believe Joni will live for ever.

But as David Yaffe points out in the final paragraph of Reckless Daughter...

'We're captive to the carousel of time,
We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came.'

All Joni fans...you've waited long enough since the last time I asked you, time to declare yourselves once more, and of course your favourite memory, track, album...

 

 

 

Journeys...

Thank you for all the kind and encouraging comments about the Tinker's Cott / dovegreyretreats endeavour...we already have some bookings which is very exciting, and we are really looking forward to our season. Included in any visit is some time to chat about books (and quilts) with me should anyone want to do so (and so far it seems they would like that) and as a separate venture I am hoping to offer a few 'dovegreydays' for small groups in the future.

I envisage a day spent in and around chez dovegrey, with bookish chat in the Book Room, walks along the lane and around some of the places that I have been writing about on here for so long...to the woods for the bluebells, across to the village church for bells of a different sort, down to the Tamar. Maybe an afternoon pot of tea in the summerhouse and a Show & Tell of quilts... just a chance to get away from it all, escape the world and recharge the batteries. Hopefully we will have a very simple website up and running dreckly with more details, but if you think a dovegreyday might be in order please do make contact with us on dovegreyretreats at gmail.com and we will be in touch once we have firmed up plans and dates.

Meanwhile more reading journeys beckon for 2019 and with two completed already I thought I would share those trips I have booked from the armchair.

January has seen me head underground with an advance reading copy of Underland by Robert Macfarlane. The book is under strict review embargo until April 30th but suffice to say I think the world is about to be stunned by the heft and power of this book. When we heard him speak at the North Cornwall Book Festival, Horatio Clare suggested that Underland had the potential to be a latter-day equivalent to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and I am looking forward to hearing Horatio interview Robert at Hay Festival in May. I have Team Underland out here busy reading the book too, so we are going to gather in a cave somewhere for our discussions and will report back.

I surfaced for some fresh air and sky and puffins, yet still beguiled by an acute awareness of what lay beneath, and with my Sea Bands in place set sail for the Shiants with Adam Nicolson and Sea Room (more of which dreckly). I have had a wonderful time there.

Incidentally, do Sea Bands really work?

Feeling hopelessly sick over Moscow on one of my return flights from New Zealand, the very kind woman in the seat next to me said ' Try these,' and immediately slipped them on my wrists. Was it my imagination or did the nausea slowly subside. Anyway, I now wear them as a matter of course, even if it's all in the mind, because I can think of nothing worse than being as sick as on a long haul flight.

My first February journey is Last Train to Hilversum - a journey in search of the magic of radio by Charlie Connelly and published by Bloomsbury. 

'Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It's a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we have the radio on in the kitchen as we make the tea, it's on at our workplaces and in our cars. From Listen With Mother to the illicit thrill of tuning into pirate stations like Radio Caroline; from receiving a musical education from John Peel or having our imagination unlocked by Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; from school-free summers played out against a soundtrack of Radio One and Test Match Special to more grown-up soundtracks of the Today programme on Radio 4 and the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast - in many ways, our lives can be measured in kilohertz...

Part nostalgic eulogy, part social history, part travelogue, Last Train To Hilversum is Connelly's love letter to radio, exploring our relationship with the medium from its earliest days to the present in an attempt to recreate and revisit the world he entered on his childhood evenings on the dial as he set out on the radio journey of a lifetime.'

I bet I'm not the only one who can instantly conjure up the sight of the huge wooden box with the mesh of very tactile golden beige fabric on the front, the crackle and glow, the dials and the little red line that twiddled along the strip of light across the bottom, past all those mysterious words and places, Light Service, Home Service and I'm sure you could go to places like Reykjavik (Rakejarvik to 6 year old me) Warsaw and Prague (Pragyew to six-year-old me) too and of course Luxembourg. Doubtless there will be  reminders of Billy Cotton's Band Show while the Sunday roast was being served, Two Way Family Favourites with Cliff and Jean, and then Sing Something Simple on a Sunday evening with the Cliff Adams Singers (I didn't even have to look that up), the melancholy moment when you knew the weekend was almost over and school beckoned again.

And despite best intentions, nor did I ever get around to reading Attention All Shipping - A journey around the shipping forecast by Charlie Connelly, so what do you think...on with the Sea Bands and set sail on that one too?

 

 

Normal People ~ Sally Rooney

I'll be honest and say that I was all set not to like this book....

Don't ask me to explain it beyond the hype, the wall-to-wall adulation everywhere, the 'new voice for the millenials' tag lines (which frankly made me feel a bit ancient and out of touch) and the fact that my Reading Friend and I had set against it from the off. In her defence I have to say Sally Rooney always sounds slightly bemused by it all when interviewed, maybe even faintly uncomfortable and embarrassed by what (to me) must feel like an enormous burden of responsibility when you're just out there writing books and trying to write another one.

Call us open-minded readers? 

Well we are, and game for a read of anything before we cement the opinions, so, having grimaced and acknowledged our ambivalence, my Reading Friend and I agreed at our last meet-up that we would both read Normal People by Sally Rooney. We don't communicate in-between so I won't know her thoughts for another few weeks, but for what it's worth here are mine.

I started it that same afternoon, this for about the third time having previously baled out over the present tense of the first few pages...'he says'....'she turns'...you know the sort of thing that really annoys us avoiders of present tense fiction unless written by Hilary Mantel, but of course I'm sure you all know what happens next. 

I couldn't put it down, read late into the night, finished it the next day and it's going up on my top shelf as my first Best Book of 2019.

I was subtly and very cleverly drawn into the lives of 'posh' Marianne Sheridan, the studious outsider and 'non-posh' Connell Waldron, the insider, child of a very down-to-earth single mum who cleans for Marianne's family. As Connell arrives at the house to collect his mum so he and Marianne start to talk and the relationship blossoms, though very much in secret. Marianne is the oddball at school, attracting ridicule and a victim of bullying, and Connell must wrestle with his own sense of embarrassment (verging on shame)  at their romantic association. 

Everything is exaggerated by the insecurities of adolescence, the self consciousness, the self-constructed person waiting for the confident adult to emerge, along with that  inbuilt sense of inferiority to peers, all seep through into an addictive and compelling narrative arc that jumps ahead and then fills in what has happened. The time lapse may be four weeks, it may be two days, it may be five minutes but all enough to have me second guessing and keeping me hooked, whilst making the use of present tense both valid and essential (permission granted). It is all so artfully constructed and executed that is seems quite simple, but I doubt it was so simple in the making and ultimately it is beyond clever, because Normal People very quickly insists on reader investment along with the desperate need to know what will happen, how will life treat this young couple so compelled to be together in the mind of the reader, if not themselves.

And the cover image resonated in my mind too...the pair of them scrunched up in a sardine tin, claustrophobic, compressed, concealed, the lid peeled back to reveal two lives being lived.

Yet when you boil the book down to its plot essence maybe not a lot happens.

Boy meets girl...

Opposite side of the tracks...

Relationship begins...

They go through school and exams...

Move onto university and the next stage of their lives...

Meet new people...

Go in different directions...

Of course Sally Rooney adds more detail, and aspects of Marianne's life especially have the power to both disturb and explain, whilst Connell's struggles with the emotions of his emerging masculinity make for enlightening reading. Yet interestingly, when I thought about this afterwards, I had formed only a scant visual image of Marianne and Connell. No composite picture in my imagination of what they looked like (though I'm sure Sally Rooney must have laid it all down), yet I could (and still can) hear their voices and see their actions with crystal clarity. Dialogue, superbly well-written, rendered any attempts to create an image unnecessary. I even think I know how their minds work, which to me seems like a major accomplishment for any work of fiction, especially for someone like me who is always busy on the visuals, and for a book I had to be dragged screaming and kicking to read.

So there you have it, eating a big slice of reading humble pie and I would be very interested to know what others who had read Normal People think...

Has the hype been the book's demise for you to...

Or did you leap on it with gusto...

If you haven't read it and hadn't planned to might you give it a go now...

Do you find yourself setting against a book for no good reason...

Also, I baled out on Sally Rooney's first novel Conversations With Friends so I think I'd better revisit that one too, and of course I will now read anything else that she writes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Week in the Country?

Reading A Month in the Country and then watching the film a while back, and in particular the book jacket that could have been painted from our kitchen window, and then I mentioned that Bookhound and I wouldn't be travelling far this summer because we had projects nearer home, and it didn't go unnoticed by the observant audience that you are...

Well, a month might be too long, but if you are planning A Week in the Country maybe think about coming to stay in Tinker's Cott this summer...

Digging around in the scribbles basement under the tag Family & Friends was a bit like reading the diary that I never wrote. Things I had forgotten all recorded here, including a post back in 2012 about our nest being empty at last and the plans we had for creating a holiday cottage here, here's what I wrote at the time...

'I don't want to say it too loudly but we think our nest might finally be empty and it could be time to get on with the next bit of our lives. We have had some very exciting plans in the offing for quite a while, and though we still have a lot of work to do we are hoping they can now come to fruition...remember the extension that Bookhound was building??

And I never actually said what it was for... well it will be a very nice kitchen ...another one, so watch this space and think..Holiday Cottage.'

Ha ha ha I laughed to myself as I thought about the intervening seven years.

Of course the joy of it all was that The Tinker took one look at that wonderful new kitchen, moved in and lived with us for his final years and very happy we all were too. Tinker's Cott did indeed become a beautiful, self-contained little two-bedroom (double and twin) cottage in its own right, with its own front door, private garden ( including the dahlia bed) and those stunning views very much-loved by all of us.

And somehow it's taken Bookhound and I a while to figure out What to Do Next.

But here we are, still here, still so happy in the Tamar Valley after twenty-five years, but the house is big and we rattle around in it, and so we are going back to that original plan, to make Tinker's Cott (the half of the house to the right of the main chimney above and left of the main chimney below) available as a holiday let for a few summer weeks (May to September) this year. With splendid views from the south-facing bedrooms..

And surroundings largely unchanged since the days of the 1851 Tithe Map

We have redecorated and refurnished Tinker's Cott and can promise you comfort, privacy, peace and quiet, hundreds of books, wonderful walking (we are on the Tamar Valley Trail) Dartmoor over yonder (cuckoos and bluebells in May) our nearest market town of Tavistock six miles away for some meandering and mooching around, Cowslip Workshops at Launceston just across into Cornwall, Hotel Endsleigh five minutes away (they do the best afternoon tea ever) and plenty of National Trust properties within easy reach, whilst the beaches of North Cornwall are just 45 minutes away....the joys are endless.

To say nothing of all the summer events happening around us..

Ways With Words Literary Festival at Dartington is a spectacular forty-five minute drive away across High Dartmoor...

The Exon Singers Festival in Tavistock's beautiful Parish Church,where you can sit and stare at the William Morris stained glass window...

The English Country Garden Festival at Combe Trenchard (15 mins drive) 

Port Eliot Festival just up and over that hill and along a bit...(40 mins drive)

The Dartmoor Walking Festival which runs a week of guided walks across Dartmoor and have taken me to Cranmere Pool twice...

These to name but a few.

Or maybe you are writer working on the magnum opus and in need of some time without distractions to make progress...

Perhaps you are a small group of friends who fancy a bit of a retreat with your sewing, knitting or books..

Maybe you just need to recharge the batteries and fancy heading out of the gate and going walking (or running) along the miles and miles of Devon lanes each day...

And if you are a cyclist we are within easy reach of plenty of established cycle trails.

For more details please do contact Bookhound who is in charge of all this at, dovegreyretreats at gmail dot com but suffice to say if you fancy a week in the country (really in the country...minimal traffic, fields etc) then you would be most welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

Kings of the Yukon - An Alaskan River Journey ~ Adam Weymouth

I spent the last few weeks of 2018 paddling along the Yukon and the best thing was I didn't even know I wanted to go. Hadn't planned it in the diary, no travel insurance, no fretting about getting there. The canoe held up after a few  dicey moments over some rapids, and the grizzlies spared us. I've stopped off hither and yon and learned a lot about Alaska, a country that is the size of France, Germany, Italy and the British Isles combined (population 277 million) and yet is home to just 741,894 people...and 400,000 of those live around Anchorage, leaving an awful lot of square-mile-per-person to go round the remainder. 

I am armed with enough Did-You-Know facts to keep me going for years...

That the best way to make money in remotest Alaska now is to star in a reality TV show like Life Below Zero...

That grizzly bears are moving further north and mating with polar bears. The world now has pizzlies. In my mind I'm imagining something a bit zebra-patterned but I could be wrong. I'm not even going to 'google' it.

I know that the Pacific salmon are also migrating further north and adapting genetically. They could one day meet up with the Atlantic salmon via the North West passage and heaven knows what will happen then. It is between twenty and fifty million years since their common ancestor was separated by the 'Miocene cooling of the Arctic Ocean' making the water too cold to cross. The prediction is that inevitably a single net will one day catch both species.

I can report that Bookhound visibly paled at the potential for the gene pool dilution of his beloved Atlantics.

At this point maybe I should insert this helpful guide to the life cycle of the salmon, I do appreciate that not everyone lives with a man who knows it all and shares it willingly with his dozing attentive wife. 

This new-found knowledge is all thanks to Adam Weymouth's book Kings of the Yukon - An Alaskan River Journey . The book is a wondrous mix of the journey through wilderness country, meeting fascinating people along the way (it's a bit sparsely populated, Adam does well to find anyone), looking at the landscape and the impact of the twenty-first century on resources and so much more. Presenting a land that is a microcosm of a natural world and humanity under pressure, the observations increasing as the journey progresses, and Adam Weymouth finds himself increasingly in tune with the country and its people and their generous and welcoming hospitality. Sufficient enough to hear the bass notes as well as the top notes, the dissonance, destruction and displacement. The power of the land and its significance is both mighty and humbling.

Some of the facts left me horrified and anguished by turns, not least the forcible removal of the First Nation children to boarding schools miles from home where their native traits, language and traditions would be forcibly and cruelly erased to be replaced with something more acceptable. 80% of children in one community had been sexually abused by a single priest during this experience. Imagine the continuing trauma from that in people's lives; little wonder that drug and alcohol abuse is so rife.

I'm also reminded of favourite books like The Snow Geese by William Fiennes where no judgements are made about the people, and if you read Kings of the Yukon for no other reason than to meet Mary Dementieff then I can vouch that your reading time will not have been wasted. 

'When she was seven she was taken to the Holy Cross Mission Orphanage...on the recommendation of one of the priests...her father was dead and her mother was incapable of looking after her. She was out of hand, the Jesuit priest said, and her mother was not in the habit of questioning the opinions of the church.

And the parting...

'Her mother stood on the riverbank, her eyes raw and red as she watched her daughter shipped off ...for most kids the expensive trip on the steamer was one way and they would not return home until they were eighteen...'

But don't be downcast because Mary is made of tough stuff. She copes with the discipline and comes good, will marry, have twelve children and adopt another, and her life story is a remarkable one of resilience and fortitude steeped in the traditions of her people, and still driving her boat down the river to her summer fish camp at the age of eighty four.

The so-much-more, that struck me about Kings of the Yukon, emerged in my mind as we reached the final leg of the journey. That the fate of the salmon, trapped, blocked, caught, removed and so often thwarted in their attempts to swim up their home rivers to spawn, in a strange way mirrored the lives of the people. The plight of both similar in many ways and the two seeming inextricably entwined. I sensed a deep concern too about the salmon still being there for the next generation to catch in the traditional way, and the next generation being interested enough to even try. Whilst the elders do their best to hold onto the heritage it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

This was a real and unexpected surprise of a book and how delighted I am that it has recently won the The Sunday Times / Peters Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. So well deserved, beautifully written and just the ticket for an unexpected winter journey from the armchair.

Talking of Alaska, did anyone see Michael Portillo’s recent Great Train Journey across the country. It was stunning and clearly impressed Michael, and in a nice way I felt I already knew the place thanks to this book.

And of course if you live there, or nearby, or have visited I would love to hear your thoughts...

Does this book, and the impressions it has given me, ring true...

Any more Alaska reads to recommend...

Once Upon a River ~ Diane Setterfield

I've had to delve a long way back in my reading journal to find out when I read Diane Setterfield's first novel The Thirteenth Tale. August 2006, the scribbles here would have been a mere five months in existence and now look...we're heading for teenage-dom and our thirteenth year this March. I always enjoy a look back over books read, The Thirteenth Tale preceded by The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moburg, The Girl From the Chartreuse by Pierre Peju and The Barracks by John McGahern, and followed by Lying Awake by Mark Salzman, The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth. I can see no rhyme nor reason to the ordering of these things either, no common and recurring theme, no method. I was obviously just enjoying a summer of reading whilst still working at the coalface. It would be another three years before I left the NHS and caseload health visiting for four years as an online health visitor for Netmums, and then 'retirement' and looking after the Tinker and life since.

Goodness, where does the time go.

A proof copy of Once Upon a River arrived a few months ago and, noting that the story began on the winter solstice,  I had set it aside for an early Christmas read ...

'It was solstice night. the longest night of the year. For weeks the days had been shrinking gradually, then precipitously, so that it was now dark by mid-afternoon. As is well known, when the moon hours lengthen, human beings come adrift from the regularity of their mechanical clocks. They nod at noon, dream in the waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night. It is a time of magic...'

I think it has almost become my most favourite time of the year, especially now that we are home and able to really take notice of the landscape around us and the Tamar nearby. So I was ready for some enchantment...

'And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between the worlds. Dreams and stories merge with lived experience, the dead and the living brush against each other in their comings and goings, he past and the present touch and overlap...'

Oh yes, I was certainly ready for this. Walking up to the woods and watching the winter sun through the trees, knowing that the earth would be turning and we would be on our way back into the light, I settled down with Once Upon a River and not an ounce of disappointment or disenchantment did I feel from beginning to end.

It is 1887 and the arrival of a stranger, photographer Henry Daunt, carrying a child in his arms, to all intents a dead child, has the locals at The Swan Inn on the upper reaches of the Thames all of a dither. 

The sights, smells and sounds of the river pervade the story from the off. It is winter-damp, dark and dank, murky and powerful, controlling and all-consuming and laden with potential for a story to unfurl and flow...

'A river no more begins at its source than a story begins at its first page...'

Let there be no greater warning than this, that I was about to embark on a journey with this story as it ebbed and flowed and meandered off along tributaries before finding its way back to its source. It is an analogy that weaves it way throughout the book as Diane Setterfield brings the fundamentals of story-telling into the light to be examined.

How a story begins...

It's effect on those first witnesses...

The urgent and compelling need to tell others...

How far will it stray from its origins in that telling...

How far will it travel...

And how exactly did a story travel back in the day. I think we might almost have forgotten, though I am reminded whenever I go to a village gathering.

The river metaphors abound and it is nigh on impossible to describe the book and its plot without falling into river-speak about flow and under-currents and merging waters  in connection with story-telling, and all quietly juxtaposed with the early years of photography about to usher in new ways of telling.

Meanwhile, when local nurse-midwife Rita Sunday, called to The Swan to minister to the new arrivals, discovers that the mysterious child thought dead is actually alive, it's clear to all present that 'something is about to happen' and plenty does, none of which I am going to go into in any detail but here's one page from several in my journal which I jot down as I read...

 

'There will be much thwarting of hopes and desires, and a story which refuses to remain within the confines of its banks, frequently over-flowing and finding new directions, leaving sediment and clues and detritus in its wake, refusing to be tidy...'

and I loved it all.

'Surrender to the current, go with the flow and escape into this magical, mysterious, watery world.'

 

 

Reading Journeys...

A lot of writers were kind enough to take me along with them on their journeys last year...

It is by chance that I seem to have been on a journey each month (more or less) with these twelve amazing books. Links back to original scribbles with just my thoughts on paddling down the Yukon still to come...

The Mighty Dead ~ Adam Nicolson

In Pursuit of Spring ~ Edward Thomas

The Salt Path ~ Raynor Winn

St Kilda - The Silent Islands ~ Alex Boyd

Coasting ~ Jonathan Raban

Swimming With Seals ~ Victoria Whitworth

A Single Swallow ~ Horatio Clare

The Odyssey ~ Homer (trans. Emily Wilson)

The Rings of Saturn ~ W.G. Sebald

At the Loch of the Green Corrie ~ Andrew Greig

Something of His Art ~ Horatio Clare

 

Central to all the journey reading before and since has to have been that June read of The Odyssey. I really wasn't prepared for the impact of this book. The understanding of all that had gone before and all that I have read since. I see it everywhere to say nothing of now being especially appreciative of a 'rosy-fingered dawn' when it happens. I'm hoping to read it again through next June too; it's a book that set the seal on summer.

I've been scouring the shelves for a few more journeys that might take my fancy this year. A sort of counter to all the holiday adverts that proliferate about now and knowing that we have committed ourselves to a project nearer home that will preclude much journeying for a while. It will be spur of the moment if we do.

Meanwhile nothing is certain in the journey reading either. Much depends on mood and whim but these seem like a good starter for some virtual packing and setting off...

Hungary and Transylvania with Patrick Leigh Fermor in Between the Woods and the Water

Stones of Aran - A Pilgrimage with Tim Robinson

Dublin to Tibet on a bicycle with Dervla Murphy in Full Tilt. (I do still have the padded attire from that 100 miles plus in New Zealand, might as well get the wear out them.)

From Wales to New Zealand and the Himalayas with Rebecca Loncraine's post-humous memoir Skybound about learning to fly a glider.

And perhaps a tramp around the Lake District with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in O Joy For Me! an account of the origins of fell-walking in the late eighteenth century by Keir Davidson.

And at the last minute I feel I must add another by Adam Nicolson as it was thanks to his patient, diligent and accessible explanation of Homer that I set off on The Odyssey in the first place, so Sea Room is added to the pile of potentials.

Meanwhile please do share any of your own journey-reading recommendations, because nothing is booked yet, I am armchair-ready for the off ...

 

Reading gallimaufry.

A round-up of recent good reads which includes extracts from my reading journal notes...

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

When a group of volunteers gather in a 'haunted' house as part of an experiment there's bound to be trouble. Vulnerable Eleanor Vance, until recently full-time carer for her mother, the enigmatic but seemingly confident Theodora, Luke Sanderson, nephew of the owner described as a liar and a cheat and overseeing the project Dr Montague. Everyone gives a false and slightly ethereal account of themselves, nothing seems true, not house nor people. With the narrative comes all the uncertainty as to whether what we witness is for real or a distortion through the eyes of  Eleanor in particular who, having arrived both depleted and susceptible, will encounter the most terrifying of the group's experiences. 

This all made me look into the background of Shirley Jackson a little more closely...what a strange life she led. I will certainly read more.

 

Every Man for Himself ~ Beryl Bainbridge

Our choice at Endsleigh for our 'One Author One Book' themed evening was Beryl Bainbridge. We choose an author and each read whatever we like. At this point I have to admit to owning a shelf full of Beryls but only having read one, well make that two now. She really is an author I feel I want to love and read them all voraciously but somehow it has never quite happened.

Every Man For Himself  a novel about the sinking of the Titanic and of course, as everyone boards the ship and I settled into First Class with Morgan, I knew exactly what was going to happen and when, so no surprises there, but our progress towards the disaster was very cleverly wrought. Drifting on from stage left and right would be the Guggenheims, the Astors, Lord and Lady Duff Gordon as well as Morgans closer circle of acquaintances with all their foibles. There is one hysterically funny incident which somehow epitomised the Beryl I expected...when Morgan finds himself trapped in the state rooms of a woman that he is particularly fond of only to hear her enter with a man he is not particularly fond of. The ensuing 'episode', and Morgan remembering a trip to a volcano as a child, needs to be read to be appreciated. Five star Bainbridge humour and I will read more.

Meanwhile if you have a favoured Beryl please do let me know which it is...as I say, I have a shelf full, it's odds-on that I have it sitting here.

The Distant Echo ~ Val McDermid

This was a listen rather than a read, but so excellent that I must include it.

Four students, slightly the worse for wear after a night on the town, stumble across a dying woman lying in the snow. They all know her as the barmaid from the pub they have just left and whilst one of them, a medical student, attempts to save her life another runs off for help. They are immediately considered suspects and placed in the frame for her murder. Fast forward twenty-five years when the crime is reconsidered as a cold case and once again they are in the spotlight. So cleverly plotted, and no I couldn't guess where it was headed for a very long time. Not too much gore by Val McDermid standards (The Mermaids Singing anyone?) and a  brilliant listen while I stitched.

All further suggestions for good Val McDermid reads gratefully received.

Every Good Deed ~ Dorothy Whipple

Sometimes nothing else will do but a jolly good Whipple. I picked up Every Good Deed & Other Stories one evening and read the 122 page story of the title in a single sitting. 

The gullible and naive but desperately kind sisters Emily and Susan take in a wily, scheming and utterly deceitful child from the local children's home..

'Every source of beauty they had opened to her ran dry in the sand of Gwen's nature. She turned all she knew to vulgar ends...'

And so she did. The sly and devious Gwen taking full advantage of the sister's generosity, they kind to a fault and trusting to the end... well almost. Every character and plot delineated with Dorothy Whipple's usual precision and attention to detail and the result a completely immersive story that has me thinking I must keep all my Whipples to hand for just those moments when all else pales.

Edward Thomas - A Life in Pictures ~ Richard Emeny

'Edward Thomas ranks as one of the foremost poets of the twentieth century, both in his own poetry and in his influence on subsequent poets. 'He is the father of us all,' asserted Ted Hughes.This book combines the story of his life until his death at the Battle of Arras in 1917 with numerous illustrations, including photographs, printed material and original letters, many of which have never been published before. The book will add to what is already known of Thomas and his family before and after his death by putting his biography into a visual and historical context.'

For anyone out there who is an Edward Thomas completist here's the book for you and how much I have enjoyed this one over the last few months, and especially given the Armistice 100 commemorations. Both Richard Emeny's full and thorough commentary on the life of Edward Thomas alongside the best collection of pictures of him (some previously unseen) have added to my knowledge and enthusiasm for a poet I return to often and the book is beautifully produced too.

As always, if you have read any of these please do share your thoughts, and of course  add your own recent reading gallimaufry in comments to give us all a starter for ten for 2019...

 

 

 

 

Couch to 50 yards...

It really was a mistake to whisper the words 'Couch to 5k' within earshot of Offspringette. Having added the Personal Trainer string to her bow whilst in New Zealand, she was on it in a flash and once I had downloaded the app there was no going back.

In fairness I had been considering it for a while. Whilst I do a fair few summer miles up on Dartmoor, the regular winter miles are more elusive, and I could definitely feel the lack of fitness creeping up and the pounds creeping on...but running...seriously?

For those that don't know what on earth I'm talking about, Couch to 5k is a running/walking fitness programme that encourages non-runners (like me) to work towards being able to run 5k in nine weeks time.

I can come up with myriad valid excuses when I put my mind to it...

Firstly what about the knees...

Really no excuse since my recent steroid injection, and the doctor did say 'Off you go then...get that well-oiled knee working.' I had the first injection back in March after a winter of painful discontent and it was nothing short of a minor miracle, so having been instructed to come back before it gets as bad next time I'd been in for a top-up.

So the knee is no excuse, and let's face it I'm not planning to pound out the mileage and run a marathon. If I EVER hint at such a thing, a half, or a quarter or an eighth of a marathon, please save me from myself.

And the the clothes...leggings? All this Sweaty Betty designer gear??

Really no. Just no.

And supposing someone sees me...

There really is the huge hurdle of feeling a bit of a self-conscious fraud to be overcome, but then the lane is very quiet, it's only going to be the postman who's in for a shock.

I've downloaded the NHS app and Offpsringette did the first week with me. You can select a choice of trainer who talks you through each well-timed session. We started with Michael Johnson, but that had me thinking I'd need to be setting a 400m record, so we swapped to Sarah Millican before settling on someone called Laura.  I'm just going up and down the lane in front of the house, early in the morning, in case Bookhound needs to call the air ambulance or anything.

The first week I had to run for sixty seconds at a time, and hell's teeth it was tough. I needed a lot of encouragement before staggering in for breakfast.

Three excursions a week, a day's 'rest' in between, but that was me running (sort of, I hesitate to call it 'running' just yet) possibly for the first time properly and intentionally since I was at school. Maybe one or two trots whilst a student nurse and there was a cardiac arrest, but then you were told off for running so I soon stopped that. However lurking, buried inside my legs, is the glory of holding the school record for 200 metres in 1969.

I dug out the school magazine for 1970 because of course I still have it...

Just in case this was a false memory, but no, there's the evidence, the previous year's sports day results...

200 metres...L.Chester...30.6 secs

Only about eleven seconds slower than Usain Bolt.

And there's my best friend June holding the 800 metre record.

I find it hard to believe that I was quite a good sprinter back in the day and enjoyed the competitive edge to racing, though I must confess I only held the 200 metre record by default. It was the first year it had been run and I just happened to win it. But life, career and motherhood intervened and running wasn't really something you did back then, nothing like the fashionable pursuit it is now. And certainly not distance running for me.

I did however once stand in for June who had been selected to represent the London Borough of Sutton in a 4 x 800 metre relay, but the race was on her birthday.

'Oh alright, I'll go along and pretend to be you,' I said when she begged and pleaded with me to do it.

My friend Gill lived near the running track in Ewell and invited me round for tea before the race.

Before the race...

I had done no training and how I ever thought I'd get round two laps I have no idea. Add in high English tea and Gill's mum's best chocolate cake ever, and I probably don't need to tell you much more. Sent off on the first leg 'to get us a good lead' I was well ahead at 200 metres but a clear lap behind the rest of the field when I came in with the baton 600 metres later, and very, very sick behind a bush soon afterwards. I didn't hang around for the wrath of my team-mates and I doubt June was ever chosen to represent the Borough again.

Talking of fashion, my perception of 'running shoes' apparently bears no resemblance to latter day requirements, and after three outings it was more than Offspringette could bear.

'Don't argue with me, I'm taking you out to buy you proper running shoes, you'll trip over in those...'

And so off we went laughing at the role reversal as she asked me if I could wiggle my toes, did they feel comfortable, did I like them...

In the end I had to close my eyes and choose the most comfortable pair, (plain black Nike) which I knew and felt were instantly right, whilst eschewing all the pretty, multi-coloured ones. No matter it's muddy out there, and quelle difference. Like running on nice soft springy marshmallows and with good arch support, which is all a blessing to the troublesome soles of my feet that seem to have lost all their padding with age.

Then there was the the whole thing about music...

I really have no idea what works for running and no headphones for me, it has to blare out because if I use headphones I won't hear tractors, but I cannot sit still under any circumstances if I hear Coldplay and Viva la Vida and so it has proved with scuffling along running. By the time I get to Perfect Day I'm doing my five minute warm down (get me) and the day does feel perfect, even if my legs feel slightly less so.

So that was me sorted and on track. Offspringette left the country but with words of encouragement ringing in my ears, and she has been sending me messages at about 8.45 am to make sure I'm out there.

I am.

I'm not so sure I'll make the 5k in nine weeks, but I'm going to keep going, maybe repeat a week if the step up feels to hard, and if it snows I'll just have to do it round the house.

Any more Couch to 5k'ers out there...

Any school record holders out there...

Were any of you as mad keen as I was back then only to find the enthusiasm for actually doing it dissipating with the years...

Any advice, and words of wisdom and encouragement most welcome...

 

 

 

 

 

Ready....Steady...

Firstly here's wishing you all a belated but very happy and peaceful New Year; one that prospers where you need it too and is gentle where it needs to be too. I hope you have all had a restful mid-winter break too. We've had a splendid few family weeks covering Christmas, New Year and Bookhound's birthday, but now that Offspringette is flying home to New Zealand it's time to fire up the desktop, wake up the scribbles and get started on a new year of reading and other exciting projects.

We bade our farewells at 4am this morning. I waved Bookhound and Offspringette off to Heathrow, standing in the lane in my PJs and wellies whilst going through every emotion that you do at moments like that. Back into a quiet and empty house but one full of lovely memories, it proved hopeless to try and get back to sleep, so I eventually gave up and took the dogs for a walk, and as I looked skyward, and thought about Offspringette aloft for 11,000 miles, I just had to marvel at the gods for delivering exactly the sort of morning my spirits required.

I'm fairly into gods right now having settled on the read of a book a day from The Iliad through January. This is probably on a par for cheerfulness with January 2017 when I read Anna Karenina, but I am really enjoying it all and look forward to picking up my delicious Robert Fagles translation each day, in its floppy US paperback format. Bookhound gets a potted resume at some stage along the lines of...

'It's beyond me why anyone would pick a fight with the Greeks...'

before I recount the day's events and he tries to look interested.

And those naughty gods. Stirring up trouble on a whim it would seem.

Meanwhile my Christmas reading, apart from The Box of Delights, which was pure enchantment, was Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe. Offspringette is a huge fan too, and one with little choice having grown up listening to Joni from birth. And so we listened our way through the various albums. Much more about that soon but it was a terrific and fascinating read.

'Where are the guitars?' asked Offspringette having grown up with those around the house too.

'In the loft,' we confessed, having felt some time ago that maybe they'd done their time.

Offspringette is a keen as mustard player (no surprise there either, she's tripped over guitars since she could walk) but is left-handed. This, however, and always to our amazement, has never stopped her playing our guitars upside-down and just reversing the fingering. It's all enough to frazzle my brain as I watch, but anyway the guitars were retrieved, she tuned them all and we cracked out a few strummings between us. Bookhound and I stopped short of our John Denver / Peter, Paul & Mary ' Leaving on a Jet Plane' routine, for which everyone was truly thankful, but we have been told we mustn't stop playing and they are not to go back in the loft...

Do your children tell you what to do as well?

But enough of us, how about you...

Christmas reading...

Bookish gifts...

Prolonged Monopoly sessions

We need to know...

....GO...

 

 

The day thou gavest...

...isn’t ended here yet either, but I’m nipping in to send good wishes your way and sharing my owl shelf in this year’s card department.

We hosted our usual family Christmas breakfast with three ‘children’ under one roof for once, and it was the mayhem of the olden days. It’s the homemade crackers that do it. Same toys year after year, the wind-up clockwork reindeers, the whoopee cushion, the false teeth and everyone recognising their favourites.

We’ve opened presents (there will be no shortage of socks in this family for the foreseeable) and I have scooped, lovely books, diary, pen, notebook, thermal tops (thank you New Zealand), scarf and so many other special things. 

Bookhound is labouring away at the Aga and dinner will eventually be announced.

Meanwhile, I hope your day is going well. If you are on your own...well you’re not really because we are all sending you much love and season’s greetings, and if your house is packed to the rafters I hope you can find a tiny peaceful corner somewhere to stroke the new books that I feel sure will have come your way.

Eggy Missmass everyone, as the baby Gamekeeper used to say, and toasting ‘absent friends’ as we always say.

 

Wishing you all...

I thought I'd better get my Christmas good wishes to you all on here before the mayhem begins with Offspringette's arrival from New Zealand and the scribbles go to 'as and when'. I'll be popping in and out, and at some point on Christmas Day as usual (because I am always aware that not everyone has a houseful) just not in a very organised, scheduled, pre-written way, until January 8th-ish. I have some very exciting reading and other projects lined up for next year and can't wait to get started and share them with you all, but for now it's time for family all under one roof (briefly) for the first time in three and a half years, hearth and home beckon. 

Meanwhile I wanted to wish you all a peaceful, gentle happy Christmas, and to thank you all for your reading and participation this year. Thank you for comments, for emails, for cards and letters, for support via the 'Donate' button, and thank you to those who I know read quietly but are out there and appreciating this place. Your presence in whatever form is valued beyond all measure.

In such uncertain times I think perhaps we could use a bit of feeling wrapped around and secure at the moment, and the best way I know to offer that to you is to share my very most favourite exhibit in the Stromness Museum.

Merry Christmas everyone xx

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Reading..

It's that time of year when we must all declare our Christmas reading plans.

It doesn't matter if none of it gets read, it's the thought that counts, though I will read A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas as I do every year.

As usual I have resisted putting Bleak House on the pile again. One day, one day it will have its moment but this year my plans are modest as reading time may not be a top priority with Offspringette around, though we will probably continue our Boxing Day tradition of lighting the fire and hunkering down around it with a pile of books.

So I have three books lined up as well as The Box of Delights by John Masefield which we thought we'd read together. I have started it and am loving it. Complete and believable enchantment that seems not the least bit out of the ordinary to Kay Harker, so it's already a winner for me.

Has anyone else made a start?

On my stack, the latest book from Diane Setterfield Once Upon a River, due to be published in January.

'On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames, the regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open and in steps an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a child. 

Hours later, the dead girl stirs, takes and breath and returns to life.

Is it a miracle?

Is it magic?

And who does the little girl belong to? 

An exquisitely crafted multi-layered mystery brimming with folklore, suspense and romance, as well as with the urgent scientific curiosity of the Darwinian age, Once Upon a River is as richly atmospheric as Setterfield’s bestseller The Thirteenth Tale.'

It is a long time since I read The Thirteenth Tale, and for some inexplicable reason I missed Bellman & Black, but Once Upon a River is getting glowing five star pre-publication reviews so I am very intrigued.

Likewise The Skylark's War by Hilary McKay, about which I also hear very good things...

'The Skylarks' War is a beautiful story following the loves and losses of a family growing up against the harsh backdrop of World War One, from the award-winning Hilary McKay.

Clarry and her older brother Peter live for their summers in Cornwall, staying with their grandparents and running free with their charismatic cousin, Rupert. But normal life resumes each September – boarding school for Peter and Rupert, and a boring life for Clarry at home with her absent father, as the shadow of a terrible war looms ever closer.

When Rupert goes off to fight at the front, Clarry feels their skylark summers are finally slipping away from them. Can their family survive this fearful war?'

And finally I have been waiting all year to delve into Collected Ghost Stories by M.R.James. Happy Camper 'A' read it last Christmas and enthused so much that I have had my beautiful hardback copy on my Christmas 2018 shelf since January. On her recommendation I'm going in...

So over to you...

What Christmas reading do you have lined up...

 

Saturday afternoon (and the winners are...)

Many apologies for the delay in announcing the recipients of a Candlestick Press pamphlet here, but at the very moment that I had a moment to sit down and write a post the Typepad composing screen went into complete meltdown, and I have only just managed to find another moment.

We did however notify Jane, Penny, Jane, Joan, Pat, Jackie, Lois and Debra to expect a bit of 'pot-luck poetic treasure' as soon as we had their addresses, and Bookhound took the treasures to the Post Office a few days ago so they should be arriving soon.

Are you there Pat from Levington...we are still waiting to hear from you.

When Bookhound arrived at the Post Office the woman behind the counter said...

'Aha, you are here to post things to New Zealand aren't you, and we're doing the Christmas stamps again aren't we?'  They were all ready to add up £20 worth and get sticking...

'But no,' said Bookhound, 'New Zealand is coming to us,' and there was much squealing and excitement all round. The Post Office ladies are a wonder whenever we go in with anything to post for Offspringette, she'll have to go in and say hello to them while she's here.

I am loving my Angela Harding Advent Calendar this year which is helping to contain the excitement a bit...

...and I have a mountain of things to do, but I seem to be going round in circles, which doesn't explain why this afternoon I was waylaid by the third kitchen drawer along. The one where you stuff anything and everything 'in case it comes in useful.' 

Do you all have one of these?

I cleared out 1lb 8ozs of 'stuff' into a rubbish bag..

Left a pile of 'mysteries' for Bookhound to identify and pronounce on..

Plus a heap of keys that we don't have the first idea of relevant keyhole locations...

I also threw away the Ibuprofen dated 2001...

Then I painstakingly created a pot of screws, hooks, fuses, tap washers, put all the electrical tape in one place, sorted the immediate First Aid things like plasters and paracetamol, put the stray batteries in the Battery Tin (where they are supposed to have lived since a fire safety training session at work in about 2004 when we were told of the dangers of the kitchen drawer catching fire) and so it went on.

Really I'm sure I should be doing something else, and it is inevitable that tomorrow we will need the very thing that has lain useless and unneeded and is now discarded.

Meanwhile it's the Strictly final tonight (Stacey to win) and The Apprentice final tomorrow, both of which we vowed not to get involved with because half your life disappears as the weeks fly by to Christmas, except this year I've been counting the days off anyway so it's all helped.

How's it going your end...

 

Something of His Art - Walking to Lubeck with J.S.Bach ~ Horatio Clare

'Perhaps every long distance walk is a pilgrimage, whether the walker is a believer or not. The reconnection with ourselves through immersion in the world is inevitably therapeutic.'

I'm not going to make the overdone wisecrack about buses, you know, waiting for hours and then three come along together, so forget I said that. Just know that having read two books by Horatio Clare in quick succession I'd be quite pleased if a third would hove into view around the bend. 

Firstly The Light in the Dark, the winter journal and an antidote to the challenge of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and now Something of His Art - Walking to Lubeck with J.S.Bach, this latter published in an exquisite edition by Little Toller. I can't deny that the three-way combination of Horatio Clare's writing, the Ed Klutz cover and Little Toller's gold-star production standards had my undivided attention from the off, though I might have known about this sooner had I heard Horatio's Bach Walks radio series last December. As it is I missed that and am now praying it will be repeated because of course, having done the reading journey, now I'm desperate to do the listening one.

In the winter of 1705 Bach sets out to walk from Arnstadt to Lubeck to hear the music of Dieterich Buxtehude (who?) the famous organist at St Mary's church there. Interestingly my new friend Clemency Burton Hill had chosen some music by Buxtehude and mentioned the walk soon after I had started Year of Wonder (September 28th)  so my ignorance was only partial. I had at least heard the name. And three centuries on Horatio Clare, together with a team from Radio 3, sets off to complete the same journey with Bach and his music as his companion. I fell into step and walked alongside because, as Horatio Clare suggests, Bach never travelled quite alone either...

' A composer and performer such as Bach gave breath to the word of God: there was always a higher purpose, alongside, beneath and beyond his worldly concerns. No artist of any worth ever works without one, whether or not he or she is religious.'

Along the way music weaves its way into the narrative and my Bach collection was 'good enough' to contain the cello suites. I have both the Pablo Casals and the Jacqueline du Pre recordings and so could listen in..

'Though they are not explicitly religious pieces, the suites have a power and humility which takes the listener to the same places that the religious describe when they talk of the mysteries of faith, of states of grace and diving comfort...' 

And then this...

'The music seems by turns wise and melancholy, ruefully amused sometimes and philosophical, both accepting and longing...'

Along the way there is much to see, and much to compare with how Bach may have experienced it, so by the time we arrived in Lubeck, which Horatio Clare likens to 'entering a kind of holy city, I was fair desperate to see inside the church and hear the organ playing. I was anticipating the moment for days and can't quite describe how I felt when I discovered that the original building and its contents had been destroyed by allied bombing during the Second World War. I know we suffered losses too, Coventry Cathedral being one, but my sense of  loss was instant and profound, acutely so, even though the church had been completely rebuilt.

Moping around over this, and having missed the Bach Walks radio series, I suddenly realised that my new-found Spotify skills (thank you Clemency Burton-Hill) might come to the rescue. I retraced my steps and made a note of all the music that Horatio Clare had mentioned and listened to along the way, compiling my own 'Something of His Art' playlist. Then, with that playing, I stared at the cover of the book for a while and realised here was another book that I needed to immortalise for my A4 Journal Quilts.

It's a work in progress, my own journey with the book stitched into place. I had the last remnant of that hand-dyed Arashi shibori that was perfect for the sky, and I'm lining up the map for the reverse...

Lots of stitching to be done over the winter months with that playlist in the background. This is book as entire experience.

So there you have it. Another journey and one I might never have 'walked' but for this book. 

If you heard the radio series please do share the joys of it with me...

 

 

 

 

Candlestick Christmas

A little cohort of the dovegrey Candlestick Chapter have kindly emerged from winter hibernation to share their thoughts on the season's offerings from Candlestick Press. Jessica and Fran have penned this post about two of them and the rest of us will chime in via comments, which I hope you will too.

Three beautiful pamphlets to send instead of a card, Christmas Lights Ten Poems for Dark Winter Nights, Ten Poems About Robins, (both of which also include a postcard with another poem alongside the customary bookmark) and a short story The All Night Bookshop by David Belbin.

Firstly Jessica who luxuriates in the consolation and comfort of  The All Night Bookshop by David Belbin...

 

     There is something about this time of year that makes me long for olden days, for candlelight and fir scented Christmas trees glowing inside and lacy curtains of snow falling outside. Being a Jewish girl, born and still living in California, I can’t realistically call this angst nostalgia but that is what it feels like. Tucked inside the overseas packet from Candlestick Press is a story (with two exquisite poems) that perfectly captures my mood. On the cover, painted in muted shades of winter and limned by streetlamps stands a tall building, a relic of days gone by. From the attic story a light glows even at this late hour. And in the alley a black cat stands poised, waiting like me, to slip inside The All Night Bookshop.

     I am guessing that if you clicked your way to this blog you are not just someone who Loves to Read but a card-carrying member of a group that Reads to Live. And I don’t know the actual statistics but would hazard a guess that most people who Read to Live have insomnia. AND if you are an R to L’er with insomnia, you have most certainly suffered at some point from abibliophobia…fear of running out of things to read.

 Oh I know things are different now and those same clicks that brought you here can send a net into the ether and haul in as many books as your credit card can handle, but it is not the same is it? Not the same as slipping in with the cat over the threshold of an All Night Bookshop.

     Once inside, the story lives up to the cover’s promise… books higgledy-piggledy, overstuffed armchairs, odd insomniac customers and odder staff. The black cat, some romance and just the right amount of mystery were the perfect remedy for this particular Read to Live member who suffers chronically from insomnia and at times acutely from abibliophobia.

     Did I mention the exquisite poems? There are two, delightful bookends to the story. Unlike some befores and afters, these poems give context to the booklet and celebrate bookshops and their precious contents. Fetch a mug of cocoa and a fleece, your companion of choice (husband and dog for me) and enjoy.

    

And now Fran extolling the poetic virtues of the nation's favourite little Christmas bird...

Ten Poems about Robins

selected and edited by Hamish Whyte

 

Sociable, perky, Britain's national bird and recognised by most , the robin has been associated with Winter and Christmas for centuries. Stories and myths abound; Stephen Moss writes of many in The Robin: A Biography  [2017]. Their habit of living in close proximity to humans [more common in British robins than those in Europe] means they have been closely observed and researched. David Lack published The Life of the Robin in 1943, a ground breaking book and early classic of nature writing.  His love of this common bird led him to also compile an anthology of prose and poetry which his son Andrew Lack updated and reissued as Redbreast ; The Robin in Life and Literature in [2008]. The book contains excerpts of poetry and prose, along with art from Anglo-Saxon times onwards showing quite how much has been written over the centuries. So it must have been quite a task for Hamish Whyte to narrow down the Candlestick collection of Poems about Robins to just ten.

John Clare was bound to feature;  his "The Red Robin" starts off the collection. Not his only poem about robins; a quick look through my books and I have found four. In this one he writes of the a robin's song, heard throughout the year, and he notes,  changing slightly with the approach of autumn. A bit further on Christina Rossetti also writes of the poignant autumn/winter song  in The Key Note.

The connections with Christmas begin with UA Fanthorpe's "Robin's Round"- " I am the proper/ Bird for this season"…  For me the lines '' I dine in his garden/ My spoon is his spade"  from this poem are the highlight of this collection. Next time I am out digging and suddenly sense a robin's presence close by I know I shall recall this. Still out side in the garden Norman MacCaig compares man and robin in "Real life Christmas Card".

The custom of sending Christmas cards started in 1843. Since then robins have, and still do feature on many. Reading "After Christmas " [ Peter Wilson] I find I am not the only one who gathers together my robin cards as they arrive and group them in one place.  In the natural world of course this would never happen; a collection of robins altogether. Notoriously territorial it has been observed they will fight intruders, sometimes to death should their space be invaded. Peter Walton writes of a winter walk and seeing plenty of robins along the way. He wonder's if there has been " … a mantelpiece migration'.. yet returning home finds all his robin cards still up and occupied.

Watching birds feed outside the windows is one of my simple pleasures of wintertime. So many of us put out seed and fat balls, eagerly eaten by robins and many other garden birds. Both Fleur Adcock and Hamish Whyte write of this in "To the Robins" and "I watch the robin". Hamish notes the fact that robins have adapted their feeding habits now that humans often provide hanging supplies. Traditionally ground feeders they have learnt that good things maybe found from suspended feeders; …" whirring at the half coconut shell….like a humming bird…."

Living as they often do in close proximity to us we are very aware of their characteristics; their bright feathered fronts and beady eyes which often look so knowingly at us. The final two poems in this collection speak of this connection; "Robin Redbreast" by Stanley Kunitz and John Freeman's "Gardener's Friend". This final one with the poet talking to a robin has become another favourite of mine.

Plenty to ponder on here, as well as enjoy. One left unmentioned; "You know Her-by Her Foot" by Emily Dickinson. I confess I have read, and re-read several times and as yet have not really "got" it. Not that it really matters, always good to have a challenge. It crossed my mind she may have been writing about an American Robin, bigger than our European species but, it would seem, a songster too.

That is the great thing about these booklets. Unlike the cluster of robin cards which I will tidy away soon after the festivities have ended I can keep this booklet on my shelf. It will fit well amongst all my "birdy" books and throughout the year revisit those poems which I have so enjoyed. This would make a perfect small gift/Christmas card in one. Just as robins are with us year round so can these poems be. I shall be putting it out amongst the robin cards as part of my decorating, the front cover is illustrated with a very knowing robin perched on some frosty teasels, so festive enough. Then turn to the window and watch "my own" robin as he feeds close by, his beady eye watching me back.

 

My thanks to Jessica and Fran for their thoughtful contributions and please do scroll down for gifts.

 

 

 

 

 

From me to you, instead of a card...Candlestick Press Prize Draw

Candlestick Press very kindly send out copies of the pamphlets for the Chapter members to read and they send me two of each. I keep one copy on my shelf and set the spares aside, sending them hither and yon when the moment arises, especially In Memoriam Thirty Poems About Bereavement, which arrived in my life at exactly the right moment and copies of which I have sent to some of you. 

At year's end I have a small accumulation of pamphlets on various themes, including this year's Christmas collections, which I think would be much better re-homed than left sitting in my desk drawer, so if you would like one (apologies UK ADDRESSES only) please do leave a comment on this post. We will draw the recipients names in the usual way (thank you Magnus) and hopefully a little bit of pot-luck poetic treasure will arrive from Me to You, and before Christmas if we get a wriggle on.

 

 

A Pentameter of Poetry...

A small regathering of the Candlestick Chapter has been convened and we have been busy reading the latest pamphlets (Robins, Christmas Lights, and, pre-empting the Chapter verdict but I loved it, an exquisite short story The All Night Bookshop) and will be reporting back on them dreckly. Meanwhile I thought I would parade a pentameter of poetry books that are by my side at the moment, and likely to stay there for a while because it takes me months to read a collection of poetry properly.

Seamus Heaney 100 Poems 

It was apparently always on his list of Things to Do. To compile...

'a personal selection of his poems from across the arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction to all-comers'

Sadly times wasn't on Seamus Heaney's side but his family have done his wishes proud with 100 Poems...

'By its very nature, this is a different selection from the one Dad might have made...we have also made some special choices that have special resonances for us individually...each one of us approached the task with a lifetime's memories...'

and thus does the Family Note at the beginning of this collection set the seal on a wondrous and intimate selection of Seamus Heaney's poems. I did 'cherish' and I was 'surprised' , as the family hopes each reader will be, by the selection of poems and yes, I do (because I am still reading them) bring my own memories of first reading some of these choices too. The Rain Stick, we have one here somewhere...

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And a diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

The subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

 

 

Treelines - A Collection of Poems

We've had Shorelines and Washinglines and now we have Treelines, another themed collection from Lautus Press, selected by Janie Hextall and Barbara McNaught. When I opened the book at random and settled on a poem by Alice Oswald I knew I was going to love this one. Poems by Wendell Berry, Helen Dunmore, John Clare, Gillian Clarke, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gerard Manley Hopkins and so many more, and all beautifully interspersed with etchings and wood engravings (twenty-five exquisite illustrations) make this little tome incredibly good value and one that will keep me going for months.

 

Green Noise ~ Jean Sprackland

I've barely been able to let go of Green Noise since I found a copy of Jean Sprackland's latest collection tucked away on the shelves in Waterstones whilst browsing recently. To think I might have missed it when I loved her last collection Sleeping Keys so much, and before that Tilt and Hard Water.

I read Jean Sprackland very methodically, a poem a day, in order and I keep notes. Each day I revisit previous poems as well as reading the new one, because re-reads reveal hidden layers. Poetry is the gift that keeps on giving, and these poems especially, for their observations of ordinary life that becomes far from ordinary when seen through Jean Sprackland's lens. The value of the notes became apparent when I looked back over my Sleeping Keys experience in 2013...

Sincerity ~ Carol Ann Duffy

This Carol Ann Duffy's final offering as Poet Laureate and so the quest begins for her replacement, though I don't really want to think about that because, like many, I have so enjoyed her years as the incumbent. This collection a distillation and a reveal about much that has mattered to her in that time...

'Time and its passage are at the heart of this reflective work, which gazes out from the autumn of life. There are moving elegies here for what has departed; whether that be children who have flown the nest, a way of life, literary luminaries, past loves, lost parents or our own youth. As Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, she finds moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life.

This collection finds a poet at the height of her powers using her full poetic range, casting her eye both inwards, in poems of a deeply personal nature, and yet also outwards, taking stock of a world in turmoil. In some of her most radical work yet, we see Duffy satirise and unpick the deception and dishonesty at the heart of our current political situation. A rallying cry builds steadily through the book culminating in a moving closing ode to the virtue of sincerity.'

 

Injury Time ~ Clive James

Since reading The River in the Sky, my love and respect for Clive James now knows no bounds and this collection makes it sparkle even more. What a bright and honest light he shines on these his most treasured of days...

'Injury Time finds James with more time on the clock than he had anticipated, and all the more determined to use it wisely – to capture the treasurable moment, and think about how best to live his remaining days while the sense of his own impending absence grows all the more powerfully acute. In a series of intimate poems – from childhood memories of his mother, to a vision of his granddaughter in graceful acrobatic flight – James declares ‘family’ to be our greatest blessing. He also writes beautifully of the Australia where he began his life, and where he hopes to 'reach the end'. Throughout Injury Time, James weaves poems which reflect on the consolation and wisdom to be found in the art, music and books which have become ever more precious to him in his last years.

The poems in this moving, inspirational and unsentimental book are as accomplished as any he has ever written; indeed the unexpected gift of James's Injury Time shows him to be in the form of his life.'

 Well, there's my pentameter of poetry for you, meanwhile if you have more collections to recommend, or are familiar (or not) with any of these, please do leave a comment.

The older I get the more I can't manage without poetry. Fiction. Non fiction, new, old, classics, contemporary novels all very lovely but if push came to shove I'd want poetry on that desert island.

How about you...any collections you couldn't manage without...

Which poets would you want by your side...

 

 

 

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Staying north of the border for one more post, I'm hoping some of you will have heard of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and if not you are about to, so please settle back in your chair and read on because I NEED you.

Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world.  With a total value of over £30,000, it is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past.

Sponsored by Sir Walter Scott’s distant kinsmen the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Prize celebrates quality, and innovation of writing in the English language, and is open to books published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Reflecting the subtitle ‘Sixty Years Since’ of Scott’s most famous work Waverley, the majority of the storyline must have taken place at least 60 years ago.

The Prize was founded in 2009, and is awarded at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June every year. The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1000.  In addition, the Walter Scott Prize Academy, made up of a panel from across the Commonwealth and UK, chooses a ‘recommended’ list of titles every year.

Firstly let's sort this out...if you are trying to pronounce 'Buccleuch' remember DorOthy Dunnet like Buck-loo.

If I am honest, the Walter Scott Prize has only really entered my radar recently, and more especially with the most recent winner The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers  but I (and I expect many others) have been approached by Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury in a letter as follows...

Dear Lynne,

As founder and sponsor of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, I am hoping I may be able to enlist your help to spread the reach of this prestigious prize further around the world.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction awards a book published in the previous year with a substantial £25,000 award – making it one of the most valuable fiction prizes in the UK.  Founded in 2010, the prize seeks to honour the reputation of the inventor of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott, and has been awarded to some of our best-loved authors as well as some whom we hope will be newly discovered by readers.  Previous prizewinning books have included Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, John Spurling’s The Ten Thousand Things, Simon Mawer’s Tightrope, Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End and, last year, Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole.  

We very much hope that you might agree to join an honorary ‘Academy’, made up of well read folk who can share their enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, new books that might be suitable for our prize.  All we ask is that, as an Academician, you let us know of any novels published in 2018 in any of the Commonwealth countries, the UK or Ireland, that you think would be suitable for the prize. If eligible, these would then go forward for judging.  

The prize rules demand that the book has its first publication between 1st January and 31st December 2018, and has a historical setting – the benchmark taken from Walter Scott himself is ‘at least sixty years ago’, although we accept books which switch between past and present, as long as the majority is set in the past.  

A panel of 8 judges (including broadcasters James Naughtie and Kirsty Wark, writers Kate Figes and Elizabeth Laird, my wife the Duchess, and chair of judges Alistair Moffat) decides on a longlist in February and a shortlist in April, basing their choices on the criteria of originality, innovation, and potential longevity of the work, with quality of writing as the deciding factor.  We are proud to insist on a high literary standard for our shortlists, and our reputation grows every year....

With thanks and best wishes

Richard

Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

I'm very happy to spread the word about the prize and though I read a lot I think between us we read even more, so I wrote to the prize administrators to ask if I could possibly add all of you to the academy and they said yes.

I've worked with prize lists before, doing some pre-reading to whittle down submissions to a long list for the judges to then work with (I won't name the prize but it was 104 books reduced to thirty or so). This is slightly different and seems like a wonderful opportunity for us ordinary, yet as we all know extraordinary readers to suggest books for consideration for a major literary prize.

I have highlighted the selection criteria in red above and now I'm hoping you might all have a few suggestions for the prize committee to consider, especially as (don't blush) I have been singing your praises..

I have a supremely well- read worldwide audience who would certainly offer you some excellent suggestions. We will have read far more between us than I have on my own.

Previous winners with links to those I have read are Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, On Canaan's Side and Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris, The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling and Tightrope by Simon Mawer. It's worth checking out previous shortlists too, some excellent reads tucked way there.

Meanwhile a few suggestions from me for next year's Walter Scott prize would have to be 

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar , 

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, (does this squeak through the criteria? I hope so.

Little by Edward Carey

 

Now over to you...I'm relying on you all, check out the eligibility criteria in red above and please do share your best historical fiction reads of 2018.

 

 

 

Shall we read ...

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Why stray from annual tradition and the words of John Betjeman. I couldn't think of a good reason not to fire up the tortoise stove again. So here we are then, 'tis Advent, we can all make a start on the calendars and say the word 'Christmas'...

It's a few years since I have bought an Advent calendar, but this year we have something special to countdown because Offspringette will be flying in from New Zealand to spend three weeks with us over Christmas and New Year, and I'm thinking opening the doors on this lovely Angela Harding creation will be a fine way to wish Landing Day that bit closer. 

Meanwhile I am very grateful to Fran H-B who reminded me about this when we met up recently...that last year I had suggested we might read A Box of Delights by John Masefield over the Christmas season.

I had immediately ordered the DVD of the BBC series last year (as yet unwatched as I always have to read the book first), but have only just ordered a copy of the book having NEVER read it before. I found a nice copy of the NYRB edition very reasonably priced on eBay.

But how can this be.

How have I missed such an iconic children’s classic first published in 1935 and by the Poet Laureate of the time too.

'Strange things begin to happen the minute young Kay Harker boards the train to go home for Christmas and finds himself under observation by two very shifty-looking characters. Arriving at his destination, the boy is immediately accosted by a bright-eyed old man with a mysterious message: “The wolves are running.” Soon danger is everywhere, as a gang of criminals headed by the notorious wizard Abner Brown and his witch wife Sylvia Daisy Pouncer gets to work...’

I’m not promising a series of lucid and in depth blog posts all over the festive season because as usual the scribbles will be shifting into its habitual doze, bar the odd post now and again, but it wouldn’t it be nice to think some of us were reading and enjoying the same book. I will of course create a post where anyone can add comments as and when, with no pressure at all, so maybe some of you would like to join in....

What do you think...

 

 

 

St Kilda - The Silent Islands ~ Alex Boyd

I still have this ridiculous idea that I want to go to St Kilda. Even though I know it's unlikely and not all 'otters and primroses' as Kathleen Jamie would say, or quaint little cottages gathered around Village Bay and the voices of the departed residents echoing on the wind. Nice coloured aerial shots of the island on a sunny calm day...

You know me, I'm a sucker for all this, village children, women knitting on clifftops...

The chaps gathering barefoot...

I even bought the wool...

And before you ask, no of course I'm not wearing it yet. This is slow-knitter-do-it-dreckly me remember.

I bought the music too, thanks to Carol S who told me about it here...

Hirta Songs, and now I see it features Robin Robertson whose latest book The Long Take I read recently, so I must listen to this one again.

But how often I've looked at those pictures of the women and children...the likenesses, the low-set hairline, the clothing, the headscarves, and then just wondered about the sheer toil of it all.

No matter that I'd probably be as a sick as a dog on the three hour sea journey to see for myself where they, whose 'way of life broke on the wheel of the world' (Kathleen Jamie) had lived. In fact Kathleen Jamie did go to St Kilda, as a gift for her fortieth birthday even though it took repeated attempts to land, and she did put me right about all this, the 'modern myth', in her essay Three Ways of Looking at St Kilda (Sightlines) . If you still don't know of Kathleen Jamie's writing then hie thee there instantly. Sightlines and Findings would be two books on my Desert Island list without a doubt. 

None of it has been enough to stop me reading every book that comes along though, this was my last hefty investment...

St Kilda - The Last and Outmost Isle by Angela Gannon and George Geddes and exquisite and informative it is too. I've just checked the comments on that post from 2016 and I wonder if / hope Jane from Derbyshire is still reading here. Jane’s OH had a potentially very exciting opportunity coming up and I think we’d all love to know how that particular adventure went. 

 

So when I heard about St Kilda The Silent Islands by Alex Boyd I was on it  and had pre-ordered a copy from here in a nano second.

 

Alex Boyd, a landscape and documentary photographer, previously based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and now living on the mainland. I'd been to the Hebrides on another armchair journey with Madeline Bunting in her far-reaching and deeply informative book,  Love of Country - A Hebridean Journey; a book which explained clearly much of which I had never really had an understanding. In the preface to his book Alex Boyd is compared to Fay Godwin, ' that great seer of cultural landscape', Godwin a photographer whose work is synonymous with Ted Hughes, and with which I was very familiar.

The paradox of St Kilda, thousands of years of continuous habitation rendered unsustainable by the twentieth century, and to be replaced by militarisation and the need for Cold War surveillance, is a stark and perhaps uncomfortable reality for anyone nursing romantic notions about the island.

The cottages of Village Bay, abandoned during the evacuation of 1930, were left to decay until restoration work began in the 1960s

©Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

Making several trips to the islands Alex Boyd seeks a balanced view (and achieves it) aiming to dispel distorted and romanticised perceptions whilst incidentally using a camera that once belonged to Faye Godwin. To this end the book includes 'a hard hitting' essay on the myth and reality of St Kilda by Dr Kevin Grant who was the island's archaeologist. The series of  monochrome images and commentary are compelling, arresting and quite beautiful. Radar stations and military installations juxtaposed with the more familiar scenes of wild landscapes, all brooding and desolate, and I have pored over them at length. There is an honest intensity to the images, a truthfulness that puts my imagined visit into a new perspective.

Dùn and Ruabhal in the mist 

© Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

Images laden with mood, atmosphere and a narrative that all adds to my informed appreciation of this place, making this book an essential addition to my St Kilda shelf.

Ab Mullach Bi from Ruabhal. The precipitous cliffs reach a height of 358m.

  © Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

And, the thing is, yes,  I still want to go.

On the other side of Village Bay is the island of Dùn (fort), which provides protection to the bay from the prevailing south westerly wind. It is separated from Hirta by a narrow strait 

©Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

 

With grateful thanks to Alex Boyd for permission to use the images on dovegreyreader scribbles.

 

 

 

At the Loch of the Green Corrie ~ Andrew Greig

Continuing this week's Scottish travels we're going fishing, because At the Loch of the Green Corrie came highly recommended at a recent Endsleigh Salon evening where our book theme had been 'Hunting, Shooting, Fishing'.

The selection of reads that evening was broad from my choice of Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson ( I somehow made it fit) to The Power by Naomi Alderman, A Monstrous Commotion by Gareth Willams (about the search for the Loch Ness monster), Angle of Repose (get it?) by Wallace Stegner, Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon, The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon by Fred Buller (this a lovely coincidence as unbeknown to the chooser Bookhound had worked on this book with Fred for many years) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger and The Shooting Party by Isobel Colegate.

As always we all come away with a list of books we want to read and At the Loch of the Green Corrie was at the top of mine. I had come across the poetry of Andrew Greig whilst staying on Orkney. The Tinker had bought me Found at Sea, one of his collections in the bookshop in Stromness, so I was intrigued to see what this was about, a poet writing about a poet seemed promising.

 Andrew Greig sets out to fulfill dying poet Norman Macaig's challenge to him..

'I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie,' MacCaig commanded months before his death.' ' Only it's not called that. But if you go to Lochinvar and ask for a man named Norman MacAskill - if he likes you he may tell you where it is. If you catch a fish, I shall be delighted. If you fail, then looking down from a place in which I do not believe, I shall be most amused.'

He duly sets out on his mission with two companions. First driving to the Assynt in the far north west of  Scotland to find his man and his loch.

It strikes me that fishing is one of the ways men bond with each other...if you have a fisherman in the house you might know what I mean. Or perhaps you have seen the new TV series with Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, both recovering from heart surgery and counting their blessings in a very amusing way from the riverbank as they fish. The place and the moment gives them the opportunity to say things to each other, sensitive thoughtful things, that I doubt these two comedians would have felt able to say anywhere else.

And At the Loch of the Green Corrie is, in part,  a perfect example of men doing just that. Andrew along with lifelong friends Andy and Peter find their way to the loch (eventually), set up camp and start to fish. They go their separate ways along the bank for the necessary solitude (I think fishing requires that as well) and for their own piece of water, occasionally calling across to each other, dashing along with the landing net when required, coming together for a brew and a chat, whilst sharing memories and moments and life events with each other, and the result is a really heart-warming read. The mission empowers Andrew Greig to examine his own life and loves, the mistakes and the memories, the fault lines that have brought him to where he is and to consider what may lie ahead.

Geology plays its part too. The Assynt in particular has been the source of much debate and disagreement. The limestone layers beneath actually younger by five hundred million years than the upper strata of metamorphic rock. Pre-Cambrian lies on top of Cambrian apparently. It all became very controversial but fascinating nevertheless, and what is not to love about the old geological maps.

Published in 2010, At the Loch of the Green Corrie is an intensely candid and personal memoir, as I suppose they should but so often aren't. Andrew Greig deals unflinchingly with painful moments in his life, exploring how he arrived there and where he has travelled since. What may have happened to him in the eight years since I have no idea, or whether he is still a resident Orcadian, but I do wish continued good things for him along with the ever-present memory of catching that trout on the Loch of the Green Corrie and Norman McCaig smiling down from the place he didn't believe in.

In the way that books about poets do, this all led me to explore Norman MacCaig's poetry too. I knew nothing about him so I read The Many Days alongside and feel as if I have sojourned in the highlands along the way..

So Many Summers

Beside one loch, a hind's neat skeleton,
Beside another, a boat pulled high and dry:
Two neat geometries drawn in the weather:
Two things already dead and still to die.

I passed them every summer, rod in hand,
Skirting the bright blue or the spitting gray,
And, every summer, saw how the bleached timbers
Gaped wider and the neat ribs fell away.

Time adds one malice to another one–
Now you'd look very close before you knew
If it's the boat that ran, the hind went sailing.
So many summers, and I have lived them too.

I don't know the Assynt but of course the sign of a good bit of armchair journeying is that the reading makes you want to go there, and now I really do. 

Meanwhile please do add any more suggestions of your own for that theme of 'Hunting, Shooting, Fishing'...

Into the Mountain - A Life of Nan Shepherd ~ Charlotte Peacock

With St Andrew's Day coming up on Friday this seems like a good week to go to Scotland with some reading and I did, via an adventure to Penzance for the day back in May.

Pootled down on the train for £14 return to meet Barbara (once but no longer writing Milady's Boudoir) and a mutual friend staying with her in the Egyptian House, a Landmark Trust property in the centre of town. It was all very exciting, and of course it is always imperative to buy a book on these days out as a memento of a happy time. I was delighted to find a copy of Into the Mountain - A Life of Nan Shepherd by Charlotte Peacock for half price in the very delectable Barton Books. We squeezed a lot more into the day...the exhibition of Newlyn paintings at the Penlee Gallery, a tour and wine-tasting at the Polgoon Vineyard (well I tasted the elderflower because I don't drink) and a good trawl of Penzance's other fantastic emporium The Edge of the World bookshop.

Once I had waved farewell to friends, Penzance, St Michael's Mount etc, and watched the sunset from the train I settled down with Nan, reading the book for the two hours back up to Plymouth and the forty minutes back out to Gunnislake, and for the days thereafter until I had finished it.

My love for Nan Shepherd's non-fiction book The Living Mountain knows no bounds. I've read it about six times now, each time it welds to me a little bit more and I took a copy (which Robert Macfarlane very kindly inscribed for me) to give to Offspringette on my last trip to New Zealand. Every time I read the book something Nan says will have new relevance, and I think I know Nan Shepherd well enough from those readings, as she contemplates the might and power of the Cairngorms and the impact on body and soul of walking there, but of course I don't, so it has been fascinating to read more about her life.

I find that some biographies keep you at arm's length from the life, others plunge you straight in, as did this one, and with little on the record about her life and much destroyed (presumably to make the task more difficult) I wonder if the notoriously reticent Nan ever imagined that anyone would be remotely interested, let alone that her face would appear on a Scottish bank note.

Yet Nan Shepherd did leave three novels, The Quarry Wood, A Pass in the Grampians and The Weatherhouse, all of which are known to be, in varying degrees, autobiographical. Along with commonplace books and poetry plus some correspondence Charlotte Peacock has scoured available material extensively for her research. Thus, whilst it could be argued that much of the information is supposition and speculation, I sensed I was reading an accurate enough picture of the Nan Shepherd I felt I have come to know from those readings of The Living Mountain.

Born in 1893, Nan's life is clearly constrained by the times and setting aside any notions of a 'famous person' the book also offers a wealth of insight into the social mores of the time. But Nan is also constrained by a mother who for whatever reason 'went off her legs', as we used to say in nursing parlance, becoming an invalid for reasons unknown, in need of care and confined to her own home. Nan's education leads her to employment as a trainer of teachers in Aberdeen, a job she held for her entire working life until retirement.

Everything that lay dormant, all Nan's hopes, dreams and unfulfilled potential... and can you sense her imagining it all in this picture...

...everything seems to unfurl at the point where she takes to the hills seriously in 1928.

Walking in the Cairngorms gives Nan the opportunity to shake off the constraints of her existence and to experience real freedom, both from disappointments in love, and the responsibilities of home and family as the main bread-winner for her ailing mother following the death of her father. I sensed the other light in her life came from a regular literary and critical correspondence with the writer Neil Gunn. 

The disappointments in love are heart-rending and fascinating. The man Nan loves marries her best friend, but within the open marriage that John McMurray and his wife create there is some speculation that Nan's affections and desire may not have been entirely thwarted. 

Meanwhile her correspondence with Neil Gunn provides the literary and cultural exchange that Nan craves and thrives on, and a mutual respect and openness and honesty between the two is evident in their letters...

'Poetry means too much to me - it seems to hold in intensest being the very heart of all experience: and though I have now and then glimpsed something of that burning heart of life - have intimations and hauntings of its beauty and strangeness and awe - always when I try to put these things into words they elude me. The result is slight and small. And then when I read something like Hugh McDiarmid's

" You cannot sing until your flight
Leaves you no audience but the light."

and go away humble, chastened and shut my lips.'

Nan's lack of confidence and self-belief in her own ability would endure throughout her lifetime.

But how sad it always is to read of a life full of such vigour and energy drawing to its close. I walk on Dartmoor and often think of Nan striding purposefully yet mindfully up a mountain while I puff my way up a tor. Who can know how Nan must have felt, eighty-seven years old, packed and ready to leave hospital after a collapse, to move into a cottage next door to Sheila a long-standing family friend, only to be told Sheila had suffered a heart attack and the move cannot happen. A place is found for Nan in a nursing home where she will end her days, but thankfully in sight of the hills.

'You're like a lovely day in the hills', says the last line of Neil Gunn's final letter to Nan, who accepted it as a lovely compliment 'an all sufficient goodbye,' her own farewells to life made on February 27th 1981 just two weeks after her eighty-eighth birthday.

What a surprising legacy this seemingly ordinary life has left us, perhaps proving that this is exactly what ordinary lives can do. It is indeed ' a grand thing to get leave to live' and Into the Mountain a book I can highly recommend if you are a lover of all things Nan Shepherd or reading about women's  lives in general. 

 

 

A 'Pleasing' Stitch-Up

It's the only way I could think to describe this week's dovegreyretreat / hibernation with thread, needles, audiobooks and fire-lit.

Bookhound was off on his pre-festive season travels across country to visit The Olds for a few days which left me home alone. Honestly, I try not to look excited at the prospect because I know there could come a time in life when being home alone becomes a reality for one or other of us, and that won't be exciting, but for now...well let's just say I treat it like a bit of a hunker down and a retreat from the world, especially in winter. I can be silent and focused and give way to extended episodes of flow without being conscious of everything else I really should be doing. Bookhound would argue I do that anyway, even when he's around (and he's right, I do), but somehow, when it's just me I can surrender to it completely.

I have to walk dogs and things, but even that becomes a mindful excursion up to our valley vantage point at the woods where I just stand and stare at a view that can hardly have changed in centuries....

Coming back down, the view on this frosty morning seemed so Month-in-the-Country it took my breath away...

And bless the man for leaving me a full log basket and a new batch of torches. It's proper dark here so we keep a torch by every door, but also to hand just in case the power goes off. It's rare but if its going to do it you can bet it will be when I'm here on my own. In the end I was pleased because BBC weatherman Ben Rich (Tavistock lad) pronounced a frost in the south west, so I was out in the greenhouse by torchlight covering up my cuttings and seedlings.

Anyway I lit the fire and went into semi-silent retreat for three days. I sometimes feel as if I talk far too much as it is, a few days of being quiet does me no harm at all.

With too many projects on the boil as usual I set about a few unfinished journal quilts. This has been a Pleasing I have relished this year; moments captured quickly  eventually in an A4 quilted piece.

I thought Armistice 100 was incredibly moving this year; watching the annual Festival of Remembrance from the Albert Hall, seeing the tide reclaim those sand pictures of the soldiers. We went to the Service of Remembrance in the town square in the morning and listened to the half-muffled peal afterwards, and then across to the village church (in the picture above) that evening. We all gathered to hear Last Post played from the top of St Mary's church tower (by a very brave villager, well done Pete if you are reading this) followed by a wonderful half hour of bell ringing. There are some pictures on the Instagram feed over here <<<<<< and some film footage too, in case you missed it and are interested, but the moment needed to be stitched into fabric too, as well as etched in my memory...

What did Edward Thomas write in his poem of 1915...

'The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle
In the naked frosty blue...'

There was a waxing crescent moon that evening, with Saturn clearly visible just below it in the night sky, so they were stitched on along with some stars. I sensibly looked up the right notes for Last Post before stitching them along the bottom, and added lots of berries to the yew trees in the churchyard because it has been a prolific year for them. 'Mast Year' were Robert Macfarlane's Words of the Day a few weeks ago...a year when across the country, trees are laden with nuts and berries, we've certainly just experienced one of those. I'm always in danger of over-gilding the lily with these things, so I stopped.

Talking of Robert Macfarlane, next up, while we all eagerly await his new book Underland (May 2019) I had an unfinished book jacket entry in the journal quilts. I am slowly adding in some of my favourites. I was fortunate enough to interview Rob at Port Eliot Festival about The Old Ways in 2012 and gave him a quilted map of one of the journeys in the book as a thank you.

The Old Ways was a favourite book then and it's become a treasured one now. I've read it and listened to it countless times and have copies various including battered old charity shop copy for my rucksack having given Offspringette my original rucksack copy full of under-linings, marginalia and quotes from elsewhere. Along with a copy of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd I thought it would be nice for her to add her own walking thoughts to it in New Zealand. 

 

I've taken a large slice of quilter's license with the cover design but, like The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, The Old Ways was a cover asking to be done.

That finished I turned my undivided attention to Cass by Rita Angus (signing herself as Rita Cook on this occasion). This was a painting I fell in love with in the Christchurch Art Gallery and went back to see it countless times...

Then visited Cass Station itself up on Arthur's Pass...

While I was in New Zealand I read a biography of Rita Angus borrowed from Christchurch Library, went and said goodbye to the painting and have been meaning to do a journal quilt of it ever since. A year on and I've at least made a start...

and within a day (and listening to The Distant Echo by Val McDermid) I have made good progress. I sort of make the stitches up as I go along but I need to be a bit more adventurous I think...

When I wasn't dog-walking or stitching I was knitting, but that's probably another whole episode in the story of the spontaneous dovegreyretreat which I can highly recommend for insurance against the winter doldrums. I could feel all that flow-related serotonin stacking up and emerged feeling as if I'd had a little holiday...one very great big Pleasing. Bookhound returned safely, there was a casserole in the oven and I was very pleased to see him.

Now how about your Pleasings... I hope there are good, nice things happening...

 

Little ~ Edward Carey

I have spent an awful lot of time whilst reading Little by Edward Carey, and since, trying to remember if I ever went to Madame Tussaud's as child.

Have I ever been there...

Surely I would never forget a visit...

I can clearly remember interminable hours on school trips to the Planetarium next door. The tedium of staring at the night sky on the domed ceiling which seemed to lose its appeal after the first five minutes, and we'd all wish we were next door in Madame Tussaud's instead. 

The verdict is that I have never been to Madame Tussaud's.

No matter, I have now read Little by Edward Carey, a re-imagining of the life of Marie Grosholtz who would eventually marry Francois Tussaud ' a nice enough man but useless,' and find herself living in Baker Street, London and the rest, to coin the cliche is history.

Except not a lot is known about the prior history given that the only record is apparently Madame Tussaud's own, and doubt has often been cast on her own account. It would seem the story is there to be written and Edward Carey has cleverly engaged in a fictional re-imagining of little Marie's life and I was transfixed by it all.

You know how some books take a good few pages to warm up. By pages thirty or forty I'm seeking encouragement to continue, plot, character, setting, voice, please jump out and drag me in. Well, setting the scene for 1761 on the first page worked like a charm, steeped me in the moment and installed me into the book within minutes. I was interested and committed, in for the long haul with a book  that I sensed was going to be slightly bizarre and unusual and all the more compelling for it.

1761..

The Mozart minuet for Harpsichord...

The British capturing Pondicherry from the French...

The first publication of the melody that would become Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...

The Coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte..

'Many miles from all this activity, in a small village in Alsace, in the presence of a ruddy midwife, two village maids, and a terrified mother, was born a certain undersized baby.

Anne Marie Grosholtz was the name given to that hurriedly christened child, though I would be referred to simply as Marie...Pig-headed, pocket-sized thing.'

 

And when Marie's father dies and she and her mother move to Basle to keep house for a Dr Curtius, little could they know what they would be walking in to. As an anatomist and creator of replica wax body parts it will be unusual packages that are delivered to the Doctor's house from the hospital. Too horrified by it all Marie's mother commits suicide, leaving six-year-old Marie (and it has to be said her young but cast-iron stomach) in the care of the gentle and diligent doctor, and thus does the future Madame Tussaud's apprenticeship begin...

'There is a melancholy to wax heads: they were never born, they capture life, but life shrugs away from them.'

Moving to Paris, Marie and the Doctor find themselves in the midst of revolutionary maelstrom at the court of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, and when Marie is engaged as a companion and teacher of sculpture to the over-indulged Princess Elizabeth she finds herself at the...well... at the cutting edge of things.

There is a lot of story to be told before arriving at the expected London waxworks era and I had to think 'what did I know before?'

How much was fiction and invention,how much was based on truth. In the end I didn't really care 

As Bastille Day approached I had to put out a call for 'No Interruptions' because I was gripped.

Little is unique, different and compelling and with splendid illustrations by Edward Carey. First person narratives can often seem limited by scope of vision, experience and point of view, but not in the case of Marie Grosholtz whose eyes don't miss a thing.

Her years living in a cupboard and at the behest of the Princess...

The years under the tyrrany of Dr Curtius's live-in 'friend' the Widow Picot...

The apprenticeship in wax modelling which see young Marie matter-of-factly receiving heads hot (and dripping) from the guillotine in order to create a mask . It really should be gross but somehow it wasn't. 

Literary agent Jonny Geller put a list online recently 'What we look for in novels' I think as a vade mecum for authors sending in their manuscripts (he says' love writing your book but don't expect to love reading it' ), but several points seemed pertinent to us readers too.

Plot is key but not at expense of character, we'll go anywhere with a full character but question every move with a thin one.

How a story makes you feel is as important as how it makes you think

We read to learn, experience and feel something new. Comfortable is anathma to a writer and readers can sense complacency instantly

Take your characters to the limit

I don't know whose desk the manuscript for this book landed on, but impose those criteria and Little comes out all-singing and all-dancing and I commend it the house.

Meanwhile I’m expecting that you have all visited Madame Tussaud’s...

It’s longevity and ongoing existence surely defies the odds in the age of the Internet, but the queues are always a mile long whenever I happen to be in London and walk past.

What is about standing next to wax effigies of the real thing...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Faces From Far Off Places...

Flagrant nepotism, please forgive...

Those of you who have been visiting the scribbles for a year or two will know him as The Kayaker, may even have read the occasional post here about his travels, and exciting things are happening for this son of ours through December. 

Firstly 'Faces From Far Off Places', an exhibition of Tommy's images at The Wharf Arts Centre in Tavistock from December 3rd until December 28th 10am - 4.40pm daily, and obviously during any evening events being held there.

Tommy will be there on Saturday 8th December to talk about his pictures and his work to anyone who strolls in, and he's also doing a couple of workshops too. For ages 11-104 (!) getting to grips with a digital camera of your choice (I really should go, can't keep phoning him up.)

I know some of you went to see Night School during its sojourn in the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Taylor Wessing Prize exhibition last year (and thank you) and it will be on display again for this exhibition, along with a  wonderful selection of his other pictures. 

And one of those events at The Wharf will be an evening talk on Monday December 10th,  so if you are nearby please do come...

Bookhound and I, having heard a version of the talk (I'm bound to say it's good, but it really is, we were immensely proud)  and seen the film footage, are billing it as 'Come & Find Out Why His Parents Went Prematurely Grey'...the kayaking the White Nile and the bike ride down the Indian mountain perhaps just two examples. It's getting a very good reception out there so if you know of a group or a school or any organisation who might be interested in booking him for an illustrated talk, photography workshop or even a photographic shoot, please do make contact with Tommy. There's a contact form here. He's out and about around the county and the country, working very hard at it all and is very keen to inspire others.

Oh yes, and one more thing, the 2019 calendar is ready too,  £10 plus p&p and available here. Lots of you bought one last year (thank you and hope you've enjoyed the year of pictures) 

 

 

 

Reading Gallimaufry

Here it is again, a brief gathering of a few books I have read recently that don't make it into longer posts. No reflection on the quality of the book in any way. I just don't have quite as much I want to say about them. Notes taken from my notes as I read ...

Transcription ~ Kate Atkinson

'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'.

The quote at the beginning of the book by Winston Churchill is a fair indication of what to expect in this novel of espionage and undercover agents in wartime London, and I was on the alert for things to watch out for. 

What to believe...

Who to believe...

Keep an eye on the timelines..

Expect to be duped because this is Kate Atkinson after all and things are never what they seem...

Expect red herrings and the rug to be pulled from under my reading feet...

Expect a surprise and unpredictable denouement other than the certainty that something unexpected will happen...

I wasn't disappointed, I didn't see it coming even though there were plenty of clues and warnings along the way ... 'We believe what we want to believe'...'Never take anything at face value'... and so yet again, another excellent read from Kate Atkinson.

  

Wild Woman Swimming ~ Lynne Roper

Lynne Roper and her family are well-known locally, indeed Bookhound did a lot of work for them back in the 1990s. Sadly Lynne, a paramedic. died of a brain tumour in 2016 and this book is a tribute to her, and to her passion for wild swimming. The book takes the form of a journal logging Lynne's regular excursions (often with her dog Honey) to many of the most exciting wild swimming places on Dartmoor and around the south west coast. Here's a flavour...

'It's December, the air temperature is 7 degrees, and the water half a degree less. Honey and I stride through the woods, dead leaves squidging underfoot like soggy cornflakes...I dive forwards and the river slashes me like a blade. In her winter guise she has lost her silky, peat-scented enchantment and become a steel-hard witch with the taste and texture of bootleg vodka. My hands, face and neck burn with cold and I feel my blood freezing. A flock of kayakers zip by, one of them shours " People think we're mad!"'

It is 2011. That could so easily have been our Kayaker who regularly paddled the Double Dart in winter. 

If you love swimming you will love this book. If you love Dartmoor you will love it too. So many of the places favoured by my Walking Friend and I...Spitchwick, Foggintor, Sharrah, Tavy Cleave, though maybe not always to swim.

'It's a spiritual experience, sliding through wild water. Worries dissolve, my mind is liberated; thoughts flow and glide and play like dolphins. My souls swims wild.'

Here meanwhile is the necessary proof that I did actually get wet this summer, and with my Walking Friend's collie on stand-by as lifeguard...

 

Bluets ~ Maggie Nelson

240 numbered observations. Snippets about blue embracing both the end of a relationship and a friend's serious injury, Maggie Nelson examines  her obsession with the colour and its many connotations. The cover alone will make any blue-obsessive buy the book.

Bluets, visceral in places, touches something deep and often unrecognised by the Blue Obsessive and this (and the cover) may have been why I was drawn to it so immediately. Grief, loss, love and learning are all explored via Joni (Mitchell) Leonard (Cohen) Bille (Holiday) and Andy (Warhol) amongst others and in small increments that create a whole. I need to read this book many more times to really grasp the full extent of its reach.

'And so I fell in love with a colour - in this case, the colour blue - as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.'

 

The Children Act ~ Ian McEwan

I am way behind the curve with this one. In fact about four years behind. But my Reading Friend and the recent film both reminded me that I needed to catch up. Everyone is saying that the film is Emma Thompson at her finest, and I can't go and see it until I've read the book, so I did.

There must be few jobs in life that have the potential and the power to skew perspectives and mess with your personal life as much as Fiona May's as a Judge in the Family Division. Surrounded by conflict, abuse, violence and having to regularly exercise the wisdom of Solomon, it is little wonder that Fiona's marriage is flailing and she is emotionally susceptible to the fatal mistake of becoming too personally involved in a case that comes before her. 

I'm still not sure how I felt about the ending...but it did make me realise that I still have a few unread McEwans from his oeuvre to tackle... The Innocent, Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, Saturday, Solar, Sweet Tooth, Nutshell...

Your thoughts...

 

If Cats Disappeared From the World ~ Genki Kuwamara

One of those little Japanese gems of the philosophical variety that make you see the world at a slant.  Entering into a pact with the devil is never going to end well, and when a young man is given months to live  and the devil appears in a Hawaiian shirt and makes him an offer it is too tempting to refuse so the consequences become apparent. In return for each extra day of life he must choose to make something disappear from the world. Phones, clocks and movies go and with it come all sorts of previously unconsidered outcomes. It's a bit like the Un-Creation, the creation in reverse, as the consequences of  each absence are explored. But then on the Fourth Day it is cats who must disappear and this obviously needs much more careful thought. There is the most delightful insight into a cat's real thoughts...you know when we talk to them and think we know what they are thinking or want. No, we don't have the first clue..

'And what you realize when you've lived with a cat for a long time is that we may think we own them, but that's not the way it is. They simply allow us the pleasure of their company...'

Of course Magnus was completely in accord with all of this when I discussed the book with him...

The Otterbury Incident ~ C.Day Lewis

Last but definitely not least. The Endsleigh  theme for October was 'Tribes' and I could think of no better book than one of my childhood favourites, The Otterbury Incident by C.Day Lewis. Published in 1948 this is the post war England of bomb sites and children having plenty of freedom whilst being in awe of authority. The boys in rival gangs play war games and get themselves into all manner of scrapes, but when a crime is suspected they join forces to defeat the baddies and end up heroes. 

I read my ancient copy, sent by one of those unofficial aunties we seemed to accumulate as children. This one was a teacher at Delabole Primary School and knew just the right books to send us. Neither the story nor the writing dims with time, though as the years progress I become slightly more incredulous with each read that when it came time for the boys to head home and arm for the battle they all reappear with air guns and sheath knives. Ah yes, 'twas a different world.

 

 So there you have it, your thoughts on any or all of these most welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Light in the Dark - A Winter Journal ~ Horatio Clare

'Thank goodness for this journal. To have somewhere to put this small story, something to do with it, is a salvation.'

Under a lowering winter sky how much darker and intractable the problems can seem. The fog and mist and cold and and damp ensnaring the worries, refusing to resolve or dissipate the anxieties, and finding himself seriously compromised by winter SADness Horatio Clare decides on light-seeking and journal-writing as a way through the winter of 2017-18...

'I will pay attention. Depression kills your power of vision, turning you fatally towards yourself, but I will practise looking and looking outwards like an exercise, as though I am training for an expedition.'

Now published by Elliot & Thompson as The Light in the Dark - A Winter Journal. Elliot & Thompson that rare but precious breed these days, an independent publisher.

He chose the right winter to put it all to the test; the Beast From the East earlier this year had me rushing for my Vest in the West, but, based in the more northerly Calderdale town of Hebden Bridge, and with the backdrop of the often dark and forbidding Pennines, the challenge for Horatio Clare was bound to be even greater.

The book is searingly honest about the vissicitudes of depression.

'The past is a guilty place, the future a hanging threat, the present a humiliation. Stop it, you want to shout. Just stop it. Let me be.

Depression for Horatio Clare and for many is debilitating and de-skilling and the impact on work, family and friends is apparent along with acute crises of confidence and self-esteem...

'Last night was deep winter, freezing starlight over the valley and Rebecca warming the whole house as she banked up the fire. I looked at her and loved her and felt I had let her down so utterly, not saving enough, not planning enough, not loving and cherishing enough, worrying too much, changing too little, being away too much...'

But, and here's where the book triumphs, there is balance. 'I will embrace this winter like a summer' moments of despair are leavened with moments of insight, hope and grace, a sense that 'things will and do get better', and with ways of facilitating that...

Walking...

'This! This! I thought. How did I let myself fall so far from this? All I had to do was hold it in my heart, take it as love. It is not so hard.'

Paying close attention to nature..

'Beware that glaze which creeps over the inner eye, blinding you to the vision of moss in the rain...'

Paying close attention to and spending time with his son, and let it be known that the account of Aubrey's birth some five years previously one of the most moving I have read...

'To hold him, so new, so small, made me feel like a tentative giant. The tiny mole-like utterness of him, and the feeling of a compliment greater than any you have imagined when he sleeps in your arms, and the sheer impossible vastness of everything ahead of him mantles your shoulders over him.'

I sensed the Book of Common Prayer often returned unbidden to Horatio Clare, exposure to it as a child often ensuring that it rests somewhere deep within ready to surface. The Evening Collect flits into my head regularly on a cold winter's evening..

Lighten our darkness we beseech thee O Lord and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night...

The Nunc Dimittus never far behind in my mind...

LORD, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace :
according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen :
thy salvation;

Which thou hast prepared :
before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles :
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

But the moments of grace shine through for Horatio Clare and for the reader too because he has a lucid and lyrical turn of phrase, and having read this book through to get a feel for it I will now read it slowly, by dated entry.

February 19th, and the first sighting of the snowdrops is 'hope incarnate' and suddenly so much more becomes apparent, there to be noticed, the first bee flying into the attic, the thrush calling at twilight, ducks flying up the valley. 

It is that day in February that Kathleen Jamie writes about in Sightlines when the light shifts noticeably...

'Every year, in the third week of February, there is a day, or more usually, a run of days, when one can say for sure that the light is back. Some juncture has been reached and the light spills into the world from a sun suddenly higher in the sky.

I've written on the page in my copy, '2013 - Feb 14th'. Maybe we get it a little earlier further south and west.

And for Horatio Clare with that light comes real illuminating vision, describing the paralysis and inability to see with honesty, seeing the cloud lift, the promise of hope and the decision to seek help. So much to commend The Light in the Dark. It's a book I'm very pleased to have invested in (I bought it at the North Cornwall Book Festival). Incidentally, knowing how carefully some of us choose bookmarks, this postcard was mine...

Last winter was a shock to the system here in the south west, even the stalwarts rated it as the worst they had known since '63. Maybe it’s because we're getting older we wondered, even though we are fit and well (deo volente) but still enough to make you a little nervous about this one. Yet, like Horatio Clare 'winter suits this house' too...

'...with the fire going, the clothes hanging on the drying rack, the door curtain pulled across and the key turned in the lock, a fractional attempt to stem the freezing draught from the keyhole...'

Yes, yes, yes and yes except this year, suddenly realising that we never open the north-east-facing French windows in the Book Room from the outside, I have taped the keyhole over outside and hung a new, thicker and much-improved layer of insulation on the rail inside.

On a sunny winter's morning it's like having our very own quilted wall of stained glass. 

In fact I may actually have over-compensated this year...we have draught-proofed every last breezy inch around the windows, the fleece linings have gone up on the curtains, the logs are stacked high, I've stocked up on Vitamin D and fleece-lined leggings, the electric lap blanket is at the ready, but above all I am very pleased to have The Light in the Dark in the toolbox too.

Hat tip to Dan Mogford for the beautiful cover artwork. I always check out who has designed the cover of a book and this one speaks to the contents beautifully. Checking out Dan's website I see I unwittingly have quite a few 'Mogfords' on my shelves...

Meanwhile I wonder if you have any suggestions for more books that will cheer through the winter...

And of course all tips for staving off the cold gratefully received...

And as always with apologies to all Southern Hemisphere readers basking in the sunshine.

 

 

Poppies ~ Mary Oliver

The loss of the gardeners of the Heligan estate in Cornwall during the First World War, and the garden's subsequent dereliction is a story that is well-known here in the West Country. Resurrected and restored some years ago, the gardens are now a very popular tourist attraction and this field of poppies was sown in commemoration of the lives that were lost.

I thought long and hard about a poem for today, a hundred years since the cessation of hostilities, so many war poems to choose from, oft quoted at this time, but in the end I settled on this. It seems to speak not only of loss but also of optimism, the triumph of light over darkness.

 

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Peaceful Reading :: A Month in the Country ~ J.L.Carr

Another peaceful read...

I've recently helped establish a new book group that has started to meet in the church that we can see from our home. This village has no meeting place and so our new churchwarden is injecting a new lease of life into the building with an art group (Bookhound has joined) and various other groups and events.

I love to open the bedroom curtains to this view in the winter...

and this view in summer...

Not our parish, but as we are right on the boundary this our nearest church. I walk across there a lot and it is a church I have written about often here and which I love.

Small in size thanks to a rebuild after a disastrous lightning strike and fire in 1956 which decimated all but the fifteenth century tower...

St Mary's a church that always reminds me of the one in George Eliot's Adam Bede.

We are running the book group on a monthly theme rather than a set book, and for 'The Village' I decided to read (for the umpteenth time) A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr.

As soon as I open the book my spirits soar because I know I am in for something special, Oxgodby in 1920, and each time I read that 'something special' will be something different.

I first wrote this about the book here in 2006 ...

'War veteran Tom Birkin reflects, almost 60 years later, on the summer of 1920 he spent uncovering a medieval wall painting on the wall of a village church.He sleeps just below the belfry and spends his days high up on the scaffolding inside the church. Meanwhile outside another war veteran, Moon, is digging in the church grounds for some archaeological remains.

There were real and very obvious analogies for me of Tom reaching to the heavens for the healing he was searching for after the grimness of the war, and Moon conversely digging in the opposite direction and so much more.It is a reflection on times and loves lost.

"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever....they've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass" says Carr's narrator towards the end of his account.

Was there ever a more realistic description of grief in so few words?

In her introduction Penelope Fitzgerald adds her own thoughts...

"The death of the spirit is to lose confidence in one's own independence and to do only what we are expected to do. At the same time, it is a mistake to expect anything specific from life, life will not conform"

She was the wisest of women and J.L.Carr most certainly a writer with the "magic touch to re-enter the imagined past".

This time around my mind was focused on that summer we have just had and so like the one that J.L. Carr describes...

'The summer day of summer days - a cloudless sky, ditches and roadside deep in grass, poppies, cuckoo pint, trees heavy with leaf, orchards bulging over hedge briars...'

and this...

'Deep red hollyhocks pressed against the limestone wall and velvet butterflies flopped lazily from flower to flower. It was Tennyson weather, drowsy, warm, unnaturally still...'

The contrast between the bucolic idyll that village life seemed to be (though of course in reality far from) comes in stark comparison to the horrors of war. This is the country that Birkin and Moon fought for and the village knows it. The debt to these survivors of the trenches is in part repaid with acceptance and kindness, with shelter and work, hospitality and inclusion. It was all the more poignant to sit and talk about the book (by chance chosen by two of us) in a church that must resemble the one that features in the book, and in the run up to the forthcoming Armistice commemoration. 

On the evening of November 11th, Peter, one of our number, will (or maybe because the weather forecast is terrible) be playing Last Post from the top of the church tower before nipping down to the belfry to join the ringers. Throughout the day  bells with ring out across the country to mark the 100th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities, and St Mary's, with its tower of five bells, will be joining in the great peal. In Tavistock there will be a half muffled peal followed by a full peal of over 5000 changes...for the campanologists out there this will be of the method known as Grandsire Caters, apparently one of the oldest of all ringing methods, which will last for three hours from 2.30pm.

Meanwhile I would rate A Month in the Country as one of my top ten essential reads. Now I've said that I'm wondering what the other nine might be... any suggestions...

And is this one of your most treasured books too...

The River in the Sky ~ Clive James

'....................................Books are the anchors
Left by the ships that rot away. The mud
The anchors lie in is one's recollection
Of what life was, and never, late or soon,
Will be again.'

I'm not sure whether The River in the Sky emboldened me to try reading Robin Robertson's The Long Take, or whether it was the other way around. Suffice to say, I started Clive James epic poem, a grand tour of 'the fragile treasures of his life,' and took about a month to read it...

'At the opening of The River in the Sky, a book-length poem, we find James in ill health but high spirits. Although his body traps him in his Cambridge house, his mind is free to roam.

... Animated by powerful recollections, James presents a flowing stream of vivid images. He moves from emotionally resonant personal moments, such as listening to jazz records with his future wife, to unforgettable encounters with all kinds of culture: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony sits alongside ‘YouTube’s vast cosmopolis’.

In some ways I was reminded of Tony Judt's remarkable end-of life book The Memory Chalet for its collection of memories and revelations, alongside wisdom and insight, in that way I'm guessing the approaching end concentrates the attention like no other. The difference is that The River in the Sky takes the form of an epic poetic elegy, and in the case of Clive James the end has been a long time in the offing.

Diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia in 2010, and with little hope of a remission or a cure, Clive James had already accepted that the disease had beaten him and the end was nigh. Now, in 2018, expressing some embarrassment that he is still alive and thanks it would seem to an experimental drug treatment...

I had thought this ship was sailing
Across the river in the sky towards
Andromeda, but in the night, it stopped
Quite close to home, and on the quay
Boxes were swung ashore that indicated
Another destination altogether.'

For a man to live under the shadow of imminent death for so long, and for me as a reader to see that the time hasn't been wasted is the most encouraging and uplifting thing, though possibly for very personal reasons.

I have mentioned it many times before so it is well-known here I think, that my brother died of acute myeloblastic leukaemia when he was twenty-four and I was twenty-one. Treatments in the early 1970s were mostly experimental, harrowing and painful, but after his death Malcolm's consultant at the Royal Marsden (Dr Ray Powles) wrote my family a very moving letter which included these words...

'At present it is impossible for you to think of anything but sadness, but I must say to you that we learned a great deal about the management and ultimate control of this very distressing disease from Malcolm's case, and I hope that his loss will not be wasted, and he may ultimately have contributed to the cure of leukaemia....'

Dr Powles won't know how many times I've read that letter over the years and wondered, even hoped that this was true, and so when I hear of any progress, or of successful leukaemia treatment trials, as in Clive James's case, that are extending life, I feel a real sense of gratitude for the short life that we knew, but also for the contribution that might have been made and for the hope and better prognosis that now exists.

So, you see, I bring a lot of baggage to a book like The River in the Sky which may all have added considerably to its impact, I loved the way that threads of a whole life were picked up, woven in and dropped again, only to be re-threaded some time later. Subjects and themes to which I can barely be privy, can only watch as an outsider, but which offered windows into a life well-lived.

One minute dancing the tango in Buenos Aires the next listening to Thelonius Monk playing After Midnight...

Watching The West Wing with his daughter or remembering his childhood and the loss of his father, who having survived the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp would die when the plane returning him to Australia crashed.

There is indeed sorrow, sadness and regret but Clive James is not a wallower; there is a vast amount of uplifting joy here and with so much gratitude to so many people, often perhaps addressed for the first time...

.....A terrific teacher,
So why, till now, have I always left him out,
Except for the occasional fleeting name-check?
The answer is too easy and still too daunting.
The ideal father figure, he raised the question,
Simply be being there, of what life would have been
Like if my father had come home.'

Mr Leonard, who had navigated Lancasters over Germany and had returned.

The River in the Sky an accumulation of deft flights of wonderful memories, whose paths cross like contrails across a summer sky, and once I got into the flow of the writing at each sitting I was transfixed.

Clive James did a radio interview recently. By his own admission failing physically, but his voice, though frail, still had those dry laconic antipodean tones with which I associate him, and with it a mental acuity that allows the memories to flood in and be translated onto the page. He seems deeply philosophical and accepting of his condition and determined to keep the flame burning to the very end making this a moving and in many ways energising read. It has all propelled me into another of his poetry collections, Injury Time. There’s even talk, with my Reading Friend, of a shared plunge into Clive James’s translation of The Divine Comedy.

Maybe though, the abiding message to me from The River in the Sky was something about not wasting a minute...

And perhaps about writing it down when the time feels right..

'In this most fruitful chapter of my life
I swear that I can hear the light...'

 

Clothkits is 50...

I’m sorry I just HAVE to inflict one more bout of nostalgia on  you before I cease and desist this self-indulgent behaviour (for a while) because how could I let the fiftieth birthday of the inimitable Clothkits pass by without mentioning it. The DIY clothes company where the pattern pieces were pre-printed onto the fabric and all you had to do was cut and sew.

Founded, I now discover, at a kitchen table in Lewes in Sussex in 1968 by Anne Kennedy, though really not a big part of my life until the 1980s. I suspect that decade might have been the company’s heyday and I certainly did my bit to aid their profits. The colour catalogue would arrive and there would always be something irresistible and completely reliable when you cut it out and stitched it together. Seams would match, patterns would match, the cotton would match, the buttons were their own, the instructions were crystal clear and the finished garment would fit, no messing. I was a devotee of their dungarees for grown-ups but the piece de resistance (or pieces) were the three padded jackets (farm and jungle designs as I recall) I made for three very delighted children; the ones with matching stuffed animals that fitted into specially designed pockets, and in our case attached by long ribbons.

There nestling in the pattern box I inherited from my mum were all the originals...

Now might be the moment to confess too that I made 'one or two' paper patterns from the Clothkits kits, but then I made patterns from everything from Mothercare and M&S too. A heinous practice and probably now a retrospectively imprisonable offence, but times were hard, interest rates on a mortgage were running at 17% and this was the era when childcare was sparse; none of the women in my circle of friends returned to work for several years after having babies. We were stay-at-home mums, careers forcibly on hold and existing on one salary. I'm hoping I can be forgiven. 

Bought out by Freeman’s catalogue in 1990, the Clothkits brand lay dormant until a revival in 2008 and I gather it is now up and running again and as strong as ever.

Go on then, I can't be the only one who loved them...

Happy Birthday Clothkits.

 

 

Dogger ~ Shirley Hughes

It all started yesterday with a picture from Shirley Hughes over on Twitter... the feed run by someone on her behalf...

'One lady had a Toy Stall, full of knitted ducks and cars and baby dolls in bonnets. And there, at the very back of the stall, behind a lot of other toys, was - DOGGER!'

I scrolled back and there were more illustrations from the book with quotes from the story. I'd been reading backwards but no worries, I know this one off by heart. This is Dogger by Shirley Hughes. First published in 1977 and a staple of our bedtime reading shelf along with the Ahlbergs and Topsy and Tim (what was it about Topsy and Tim?)

Meeting his sister Bella from school with mum and baby brother Joe, Dave, distracted by the sight of an ice cream van, leaves his beloved toy Dogger behind. There is misery and mayhem at bedtime and in the days that follow.

...and there I am, things to do (Dyson-ing, washing, writing) places to go, people to see, but instead I granted myself a moment of reminiscing. Not only about how much we all adored Dogger and the fact that I could lay my hands on our bedraggled copy in seconds, but remembering all those moments of the Lost Item.

I say 'item' because whilst two of our three were firmly attached to their teddy bears one was firmly attached to a variety of things, any one of which could be lost. Will I ever forget us having to ring up the local supermarket to ask if they'd found a Thomas the Tank Engine pyjama top anywhere in the store. Bless the manager who, clearly sensing our plight, sent out search parties who eventually located the said item in the frozen peas cabinet. I don't know who was the most overjoyed about the reunion...us, the child or the store manager.

Or the night time search for the furry hedgehog 'somewhere' in the garden, but could be anywhere.

And then let's not forget the Sweep glove puppet left behind in Departures as we boarded a plane. 

'Anyone lost Sweep?' announced the flight attendant as he paraded him down the aisle of the plane. Imagine ten days in Switzerland without it. Bookhound and I blanched at the mere thought.

I suspect many of you will have similar tales of your own...please do share in comments if you want to.

Dave's pain is self-evident through Shirley Hughes's beautiful illustrations, and his misery at the school summer fair is there for all to witness in his face and his general demeanour. And bless sister Bella for doing all she could to assuage the loss...lending one of her own teddies, and then coming to the rescue in the final denouement, which I couldn't possibly spoil in case you haven't read Dogger.

It's a book about attachment, loss, family, kindness, security, and so much more and that evening, as Bella and Dave settle down to sleep and all is well with the world, I remembered how this was the sort of book to reaffirm that, even after some of those nightmare days we had as parents. Some of you might know the ones too ...the days when you felt you'd got it all wrong and thank goodness tomorrow will be another day when you can all wake up and start over.

Incidentally Shirley Hughes could have been standing in the bedroom in our house when she painted this...

The more I think about it the more I realise Dogger is a brilliant book for grown ups too. It's magic still works. I often think of those who don't have children and who, for whatever reason, may feel excluded from books like this. All I will say is we've all been children and it may resonate. 

I drifted out of my state of reverie and reminiscence and found our copy of Dogger...

 

...but going to the shelf unleashed a whole lot of other well-thumbed memory-jerkers too.

The Baby's Catalogue in particular would doubtless be sent to the incinerator of it was a library book. Heaven knows what infectious diseases it harbours. And that reminded me of the joy of the mail order catalogue to us children of the 1950s. Traffords and my brother and I would competitively 'bagsy' something with the turn of each page...I knew exactly where the Etch-a-Sketch was and won it every time.

I was quite pleased to read this in the back of one those books I found. Strictly speaking writing in books wasn't really allowed but I'm now relieved we didn't police that one too hard, and clearly we did get some things right..

Reassured no end, I transmitted beams of love out to our scattered offspring, now all thirty-somethings, before heading for the washing line, except I sat down here to write this first.

 

 

Petal Power : Floral Fashion and Women Designers at The Silver Studio 1910-1940

One of my favourite stopping-to-stare places when I am wandering around the Penlee House Museum and Gallery in Penzance is the display of Cryséde fabrics...

Designed in St Ives in the 1920s and 30s the fabrics seem suddenly timeless, and perhaps the inspiration for much of what I covet in clothing from Seasalt,  the Cornish-based company who are very much in the ascendant right now. I'm not sure I could face a winter without my Plant Hunter coat, whilst I have lived in my stripeys and skirts or my Coach House linen day dress this summer, and my Challah pinafore is already doing good service now the cooler weather is here. One piece per season is my treat and I take my time choosing it.

So with my interest in textiles and design always simmering I ordered a copy of this little book published by MODA (Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture), Petal Power : Floral Fashion and Women Designers at The Silver Studio 1910-1940, as the result of an Instagram post from Florence Knapp (aka flossieteacakes). Never let it be said social media doesn't have a place in book sales because, having spent some time on the trail of designers like Enid Marx this year, I would never have heard about this one otherwise. I am intrigued about the lives of other lesser known women using their artistic skills in the first half of the twentieth century.

Established in 1880 in Hammersmith, West London by Arthur Silver and taken over in 1901 by his son Rex, the Silver Studio employed many women as textile and wallpaper designers for clients who included Liberty & Co and Selfridges. The designers worked anonymously receiving no credit for their work and for very low wages, working for a stickler of a boss who certainly didn't mince his words when it came to demands, criticism or rejection of submitted designs.

It was fascinating to read that, at a time of limited career options for women, here was another route into work for those of artistic ability left unmarried or unsupported after the First World War. Whilst the male designers worked in the studio, the women had to work from home and were often sent a complex design brief but with no assurance of wages. Nor did the copyright belong to the artist or even the studio but to the buyer, who could then decide whether to put the design into production or not.

As Keren Protheroe elaborates, the work was very labour-intensive but not beyond the skills of the women, many of whom had received art school training and with it a sound foundation in drawing. With skills that were readily transferable to other mediums such as advertising and ceramics as well as calligraphy the women's versatility ensured ongoing work.

I was intrigued by the process of working in miniature before scaling up to a full-sized design all of which had to take into account colouring, re-colouring and pattern repeats, and the fact that scaling up could lose some of the 'prettiness' that Rex Silver was looking for. 

The book is just forty pages long but nicely illustrated with designs that evoke the era perfectly, and I saw plenty of iconic designs that I recognised. Women designers were assumed to be more in touch with the fabrics most likely to attract the female consumer and, as buyers for the large stores, were considered to have a commercial advantage over men in this respect.

Books about shops and shopping came to mind, Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola and High Wages by Dorothy Whipple,

' Shopping in department stores was central to the experience of fashionable modernity, whether it involved window shopping or actually purchasing. Swathes of fabric draped colourful shop-floor displays, and floral fabric could be bought by the yard for making up at home...Ready-to-wear clothing was readily available by the 1920s but wealthier women continued to employ designers and dressmakers.'

Mention of the department store and I wonder if you agree that you and I may be living through the era of its slow and tortuous demise. Long may John Lewis thrive, but both Plymouth and Exeter are to lose their House of Fraser stores (always known as Dingles) and Debenhams would seem to be on the ropes too. The hours my mum and I would spend in Grants and Allders in Croydon choosing fabric.

Does anyone remember Rose & Hubble in the early 1970s. I made plenty of these dresses and blouses with their floral designs...

Meanwhile Persephone Books have single-handedly increased our awareness of so many textile designs with their end papers, I even recognised this one in a tiny museum in Geraldine in New Zealand for goodness' sake...

So when I turned the page in Petal Power and saw this it immediately sent me to my shelves...

I'm not going to say which book features this design for a dress silk by Mrs McPherson, someone will know, but it was created in 1928 in the spirit of the French couturier and artistic-decorator Paul Poiret's Atelier Martine.and I recognised it as a Persephone end paper fabric instantly. And as Keren Protheroe says of these women...

'They represent the first generation of female designers to work directly with industry for large-scale textile production. Their careers helped pave the way for greater female influence in fabric design. Artistic sensibility, skilled draughtsmanship, and eye for the popular market allowed women to forge careers in the modern commercial world and become textile designers in their own right.'

And given that until now I had never heard of the Silver Studio, there was a timely coincidence as I sat down to write this...

The latest Biannually arrived from Persephone Books with news of their latest books and included the free bookmark. Mine was of the end paper for National Provincial by Lettice Cooper, of an early 1930's design for a woven cloth by John Churton for the Silver Studio.

 

 

Autumn on Dartmoor

Please do come for a virtual walk today because I am still walking out on Dartmoor each week with my Walking Friend if weather permits and I haven't taken you along for a while (though do usually put some pictures on Instagram <<<<) 

If weather permits means we can talk ourselves out of going out in the pouring rain and sit at the kitchen table and sew instead...

Can be persuaded to go if it's a bit drizzly but the seaweed promises an improvement...

And are mostly unstoppable if it's merely cold.

We had a splendid summer, even a bit of wild swimming in the River Dart, and some fabulous walks across open terrain that for once was unusually dry. Our big day-long challenge walk out to Cranmere Pool  saw the pair of us puffing up steep hills to reach the high moor before hopping over miles of bogs (these never dry up) to reach our destination. 

That little square stone box in the middle of the high moor that holds the visitors books and stamps.

Incidentally we both use these Osprey Women's 'Tempest 20' rucksacks and rate them as the most comfortable we have ever had. Even with a full load I can't really feel that I am wearing it. We both carry basic emergency equipment and first aid 'stuff', along with waterproofs, extra layers, maps and sundry items that we have deemed 'might come in useful if we were in a fix.' Plus a water bottle with a filter that can be filled from any water source. 

Last Wednesday dawned thick with mist here in the Tamar Valley but that is never a predictor of Dartmoor conditions so, as I drove towards my Walking Friend's cottage on the edge of the moor, what delight to see clear blue skies and wall-to-wall sunshine.

A few weeks ago we had planned a walk out to Grimspound along a small part of the Two Moors Way, starting up near the Warren House Inn, but we had been stymied by mist. On that day we decided if the sun was out we needed to enjoy it and so revised our plans and headed back down to the lower moor.

No such problem this time.

I'm not sure I have ever seen Dartmoor looking quite so lovely in autumn. It was heart-singing weather.

The temperature was 18 degrees, the sun actually burning faces as we strode out to Grimspound via Hookney Tor, putting the world to rights along the way, catching up on family news, debating the best place to buy some fairy lights and dissecting the Ikea experience amongst other issues of world importance. We have known each other for over forty years, are godmothers to each other's sons and just rub along happily in conversation or silence as we walk. I'm sure many of you will know and treasure these golden friendships too. We did a lot of stopping and staring because Dartmoor was breathtakingly beautiful and we never cease to be thankful that we live here and can walk it whenever we choose. 

The 'gurts', those gullies on the hillside clearly visible in the autumn shadows. These were the open-cast workings for the tin miners back in the days when Dartmoor yields were high. They would run water down the hillside and wash the ore down with it.

Grimspound is your original Bronze Age settlement, complete with the remains of twenty-four stone huts and this time we approached it from the top of Hookney Tor...

We always opt for the Chief's Hut and settle down with drink and snacks to take in the view. Looking across Headland Warren Farm and to that little white dot in the distance which is the Warren House Inn near where we have started from. 

It was here back in April that I took some video of the skylarks. Where do they go in winter we wondered and realised that neither of us really knew. Lower altitudes, coastal marshes and winter stubble, that's where. Hopefully they will be back in the spring.

Meanwhile, as if the gods hadn't been kind enough to us already it was Cauliflower Cheese soup on the menu at Fox Tor Cafe.

Next to Parsnip and Parmesan this is our absolute favourite.

Let joy be unconfined.

 

 

Peaceful reading :: A Time to Keep Silence ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

We are now in recovery from the excitement of a couple of Ikea runs, choosing the sofa, having it delivered in sixteen boxes two days later when we thought it would take weeks, spending an entire Sunday building it, having three washers left over and not getting divorced, and now sitting (or rather reclining) on it. We bought a 'Gronlid' combination in the end with the chaise option at one end, say no more, I adore it, bring on winter, I'll cope.

And I have a little pile of peaceful, mindful reading on the chaise in progress at the moment which I thought I would share with you over the next few weeks; books to calm the nerves and realign spirits that may be feeling a little more depleted after each news bulletin.

 The first is A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor in which Patrick recounts his retreats in two monasteries capturing both the atmosphere and all its transforming qualities. 

'No automatic drains such as conversation, small talk, catching trains or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison every day life.'

That was 1957, imagine it now.

The assimilation of a strange new world creeps in gradually and not without some sense of inner panic verging on depression  at the solitude.

'The period during which normal standards recede and the strange new world becomes reality is slow, and, at first, acutely painful.'

That power to calm is quietly but powerfully wrought as Patrick Leigh Fermor feels his own life calming and slowing down in the midst of the monks and their daily round of prayer and contemplation....

'As the monks dispersed after Vespers and a few hours later after Compline, I had a sensation of the temperature of life falling to zero, the blood running thinner and slower as if the heart might in the end imperceptibly stop beating.'

Back in the middle of that hot summer we have just had I went along to an evening concert during the Exon Singers Festival, which comes to Tavistock for a week at the end of July each year. It was an evening of anthems amongst other things, Parry's I Was Glad, Handel's Halellujah Chorus, Zadok the Priest, sending shivers down my spine and lifting the roof off our ancient Parish Church. As part of the week-long church-based festival Compline is held every evening at the end of each concert. The candles are lit, the clergy and choir sing the antiphons and responses and time slips away, it could all be hundreds of years ago. As the last notes dissolve back into the ancient stonework I walked out of the church in silence into a summer's evening of complete peace. Our town's abbey, like so many, was a victim of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, I passed the abbey ruins on the church green and it all made me wonder...had that not happened what might its fate have been.

I had been sitting in the North Aisle with a long view of the St Mary Magdalene Chapel with its William Morris window and the Fitz monument. Sir John in his armour (which he probably never wore in anger as he was a lawyer) who died in 1589 and his wife Mary.

On the wall by my pew the board with names of all the Abbots...

990 Aelfmaer
1009 - 27 Lyfing
1027 - 43 Ealdred
1043 - 82 Sihtric
1082 - 88 Geoffrey
1091 - 1102 Wymund

And so it went on, through Osbert, Robert, Walter, Godfrey, Baldwin, Herbert et al until the final name on the board 1523 - 1539 Peryn

'And on the morning of 3 March 1539 the twenty Tavistock monks gathered under their abbot in their beautiful octagonal chapter house, just as their predecessors had done for five and a half centuries. They were faced with an ultimatum to surrender to the Crown the abbey and its lands. The monks duly signed the deeds of surrender and went their ways...the finest of the abbey's ornaments and fixings were dispatched to London....'

Other sundry items were bought by the churchwardens with 'two-pennyworth of drink for anyone who volunteered to help carry the items on their short journey to the parish church' where I had just been sitting.

'The physical loss that followed the dissolution was the destruction or decay of beautiful buildings....at a level more immediate and more profound the loss was of an institution that was both civilising and supportive of the local community. Tavistock in 1539 must have been a town in which shock and disbelief gave way to alarm and foreboding.'

With their tendency to be domineering and pocket taxes there may have been some relief at the loss of the abbey, but there was much 'worried pessimism' too. The monks ran the school, healed the sick, supported the poor, conducting a whole range of social services...'the economic prospects looked equally hazardous'. The abbey employed large numbers of people...centuries of economic management were now under threat...tourism was surely destined to dive. The keynote was uncertainty, all the familiar props had been removed.

This is 1539 by the way not 2018, in case you were sensing similarities to our current predicament here in the UK, and my thanks to the late Gerry Woodcock's wonderful book Homage to St Eustachius's A History of Tavistock Parish Church for this enlightening background and the sense that plus ca change when it comes to turmoil.

Patrick Leigh Fermor considers the fate of the monasteries too, exploring their place 'as the only guardians of literature, the classics, scholarship and the humanities' for many centuries. France ultimately fared no better than Britain, the French Revolution saw to that apparently. Monks scattered, libraries split up, buildings sold or demolished, but the faith lived on as did the order, indestructible in the face of persecution and ready for reinstatement when the time was right. Patrick offers a deep and insightful reasoning for the existence of these orders in the modern world needed then and well.... many would argue still very much needed now...

'They are the anonymous well-wishers who reduce the moral overdraft of mankind.'

You have to wonder where it all leaves us in the twenty-first century and the digital age, because times have certainly a-changed since Patrick Leigh Fermor escaped from the daily round to write a book or two.

If you haven't come across digitalnun maybe check her out. Dame Catherine Wybourne is bringing the Benedictine Order right up to speed with her internet presence, forging an innovative online version of Benedictine welcome and hospitality. You can find her as a daily prayerful presence on both Twitter  (where she has twenty thousand followers) and also on Facebook.

A Time to Keep Silence is a very special little book, less than a hundred pages of intense and precious reflection which I have read often. It's a book for the spirit; to calm, to uplift and to encourage, especially when the world order at large seems slightly chaotic, and either out of anyone's control or in dubious hands.

If you don't know it I can highly recommend, and if you do I would love to know your thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Housekeeping gremlins...

I could pretend that I'm an expert in all this but I won't... and Magnus hasn't been much help either.

My apologies if the scribbles have been a bit slow to load (or not loading at all) over the last few days. Typepad have been experiencing 'issues' perhaps associated with the fact that their blog platform is now https compatible. If I knew what I was talking about I could explain it all, but the most I know is that there's now a padlock on the search bar and the site does not now flag up as 'untrusted' on google searches (maybe).

Apologies too for the muddle that is Instagram over here <<<<<. 

The old widget wasn't compatible with the https 'thing' so I am in the process of removing that and finding and embedding new codes ( can you feel my pain) when I can remember where to do that. Please don't click on it until it shows images again. Some nice Dartmoor ones from today.

And while I am about it, apologies to those who follow the blog via Facebook. Facebook have changed their somethingorothers and the automatic link is now incompatible until Typepad make it friends again.

Oh and another thing, if you receive the blog via email I am reliably informed that the posts are heading straight for the junk mail rather than the inbox. I'm not even going to try and say anything funny about this but maybe, if you do happen to read this and think I've been quiet for a while (I never am without an explanation), check your junk files and see if you can find me in amongst the emails telling you about the enormous inheritance you are party to, or 'much worse.' Maybe add filters to make sure the emails arrive where you want them to.

Normal service will be resumed once I've had a lie down.

UPDATE: Instagram now sorted

 

 

 

Ngaio Marsh - Her Life in Crime ~ Joanne Drayton

I mentioned I'd had a birthday recently. It was one of 'those' birthdays, the one that is halfway between two big ones. I had a lovely day, spoke to all my chicks and had lovely gifts from them...birdfeeders and enough fat balls to feed the village from the Gamekeeper, a bright yellow notebook (for winter cheer) and pen holder from the Kayaker, and a parcel from Offspringette in New Zealand that included Ngaio Marsh Her Life in Crime by Joanne Drayton. I don't know about you but if someone gives me the gift of a book, whoever it may be, it becomes a special read. It has been chosen for me, just me and I was quickly into this one...

'While Ngaio Marsh had a flamboyant public persona, she was fiercely protective of her private life. And no one knows better how to cover tracks with red herrings and remove incriminating evidence than a crime fiction writer…Marsh one of the four Queens of Golden Age detective fiction, alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.'

My Women's Lives shelves are bursting with biographies about women writers (mostly), and I had recently thought I should try and read of one life each month or so and then read something they had written. As she had just arrived, and as I was pining a little because I was in New Zealand this time last year, I made a start with Ngaio and emerged a few days later really impressed with her and what a good egg she was.

Born in Christchurch on South Island in 1895, the only child of good and doting parents, Ngaio grew up in the city, her family making their home out on the Port Hills. The Port Hills one of the first places I go to when I arrive for a visitation for the fabulous perspective on the city, the view across Lyttleton to Diamond Harbour and the sheer vastness of the land where I will spend the next three weeks. 

Despite regular trips abroad it was to the family home, Marton Cottage in Cashmere, that Ngaio would always return for her entire life, never marrying but making countless cherished friends who shared her life. Ngaio's Christmas Tree party the stuff of legends apparently.

I was intrigued to read of a devastating incident in her father's life. A bank worker of the most diligent variety, imagine Henry Marsh's dismay on discovering at the end of a working day that his till, for which he was personally responsible, was £500 short. With a fair idea of who was responsible for the theft, but with no way of proving it, Henry had to pay back the money, a vast sum, from an inheritance, leaving the family short of money but, it would seem never short of love. 

Educated in Christchurch before enrolling in the city's art school I was interested to read of Ngaio's close association with many of the artists I had come to know and love during my last visit. I spent a lot of time wandering around the art gallery and then borrowing books from the library (on Offspringette's ticket) which is how I came to read biographies of both Rita Angus and Olivia Spencer Bower while I was there. Both, I now discover, friends and peers of Ngaio...

I fell madly in love with Rita Angus's painting Cass Station, going back to see it at least three times, and then going back one last time to say goodbye to it.

but also stopping at the real Cass Station just so we could say I had been there...

In fact, as Joanne Drayton points out, Ngaio and her friends were the cream of the art school..

'Collectively they represented a phenomenal blossoming of post-war female talent. Not only did they share the ambition to become professional painters, but they knew it was an unconventional role.'

Ngaio would share a studio with Viola Macmillan Brown whose painting Across the Plains I was also standing in front of this time last year. It is the view from Cashmere and might it be a fair assumption that this was painted near to Ngaio's home.... I'd like to think so, and then like to take the liberty of imagining the two of them painting plein-air together

Ngaio was indeed an expert at covering her personal tracks and traces making a biography a difficult task, but she was also a generous and sociable woman. Not only a writer and artist but also a theatre director of note, and with many excellent productions to her name, all of which has left a trail out there which Joanne Drayton has followed assiduously, making this a hugely enjoyable read. Not the least of these trails is the critical reception received by her crime fiction..

'Commentators were now consistently identifying the qualities that set Ngaio apart from the plethora of other detective writers: her characterisation, her narrative ability, her ingenuity, and especially her humour, which performs the important function of making them more palatable.'

Hugely popular in the UK and a regular visitor here, eventually being made a Dame, it was interesting  to learn that the war was no deterrent to the ascendency of the crime novel. As Joanne Drayton elaborates...

People continued to read crime fiction while bombs rained down and vast casualty lists were posted. Special pocket-sized editions of detective novels were produced for easy reading in bomb shelters and lending libraries posted crime sections close to bunker entrances. The demand for intriguing puzzle plots would soar.'

My one Ngaio Marsh book to date is an audio version of Surfeit of Lampreys which I enjoyed immensely and I have especially enjoyed discovering the background to the book and of Ngaio's friendship with the Rhodes family. Childless herself, Ngaio paid special and caring attention to the children of friends, often making financial provision for their education.

I have a very modest shelf of Ngaio Marsh's crime novels and will be interested to see if they stand the test of time given that I find Agatha Christie nigh on impossible to read. Had I read her as a teenager I think the die of a lifelong attraction would have been cast, but I didn't and I just can't make the Christie books work now. I have greater hopes for Ngaio Marsh now that I know so much more about her. A jolly good egg indeed, good to be reminded that here was a woman of many talents and an excellent book, highly recommended.

Meanwhile, I'm sure there must be plenty of Ngaio Marsh fans out there, do you have an recommendations..

And while we are on the subject of crime, any more good crime reads lately..

In fact, let's extend that to thrillers as well...