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26 entries from November 2010
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ~ Stieg Larsson
The night before I headed off for London I suddenly decided to download something different onto the e reader. It's already stuffed full of classics and a wonderful selection of out of print books from girlebooks, then Ellen in New York had alerted me to netgalley. I'd requested a copy of the forthcoming volume of letters between William Maxwell and Eudora Welty, plus they had David Vann's new novel Caribou Island so I added that, then I'd downloaded the last few editions of Five Dials, including the latest Quebec issue, so surely plenty to read there, ninety books to choose from should be enough to keep even me going.
But suddenly I wanted something contemporary and involving, plot driven and easy to pick up and put down, no hidden depths just a good old story and involving enough to block out all background noise because I've changed my tack on the train recently. Instead of Coach A, the Quiet Carriage, where every cough assumes excruciatingly annoying proportions and the sight of someone cheating and using a mobile gives rise to a very distracting inner apoplexy, I've moved along to Coach D, the Entertainment Carriage where it's all hell let loose. People managing multi-nationals and hiring and firing over their iPhones, little airline-style screens on the back of the seat in front where for £3.50/ 24 hrs you can watch old episodes of My Family and The Office, yet somehow I find it easier to block out the mayhem and concentrate. Even better it's nearer Coach F which is the buffet and when you get to Paddington Coach D stops right by the stairs for the Hammersmith & City Line tube.
These things matter.
So I browsed and I pondered and eventually splurged my Waterstone's Card points on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, of which I'd heard much but knew very little. 775 reviews on Amazon over half of which give it 5* while seventy give it 1*.
I do have to agree with the person who suggests it gets off to a bit of a pedestrian start which requires some perseverance, and someone else who thinks the translation's a bit wooden, whilst I'm nodding in agreement about the rather odd product placement references often very in depth... I could probably build my own Mac computer now with bits we've got in the shed.
Someone else reckons money and favours have changed hands to get the ecstatic cover quotes (which of course I couldn't see on my e reader) whilst one poor soul of the 70 x 1* cohort couldn't get the hang of the Swedish place names and thinks the whole lot should have been relocated and the names changed to English.
Lisbeth Salander the heroine comes in for some stick for being so...well so thin and stick-like and so clever, the world's best hacker and apparently one step away from 'wish fulfillment' according to the person who had wanted it all relocated to Wiltshire or somewhere. Someone else found gaping holes in the plot and left it on the bus rather than carry it an inch further and then felt bad that whoever finds it will also lose several hours of their life discovering likewise, whilst another suggestion was that Enid Blyton contained more reality than this, though for the little I know about sado-masochism and sociopaths, those bits seemed as real as anything Noddy and Big Ears could conjure up.
So you can see I'm a little torn because I suspect The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo might be one of those books, a bit like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which readers who take themselves seriously and want others to do likewise should steer clear of. There must be diatribes about poor writing, and absent editors who should have lopped off 200 pages at least, then we must bemoan the demise of the nation's reading standards if everyone's giving this 5* when it's so clearly rubbish...except thankfully I'm not any of those so I can tell you unashamedly that I really enjoyed it.
Never has the train arrived in Paddington quite so fast before, never have I been sneaking a few more pages on the platform and then a few more between tube stops, never have I felt slightly sick at the thought that the battery might run out on the e reader and where would that leave me on the journey home, and never have I arrived home and turned my back on a book I am loving (Romantic Moderns) in order to switch the e reader on and finish this one first. I wouldn't give it 5* but nor would I give it 1*, anything that gets me to London and back and doesn't send me to sleep is good enough for me and the e reader perfect for the book you might not want to keep on the shelves.
By the way, what do you think...I'm considering buying a Kindle. With apologies to Sony, Amazon are streaking way ahead with this thing, a far greater selection of books and all much cheaper than Waterstones, and whilst I know all this is really exercising the publishers at the moment it's a question of basic economics out here and needs must. Whilst never replacing books, to my complete surprise the e reader has slowly but surely become intrinsic to my reading life and I wouldn't be without it.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (39)
War Horse @ the New London Theatre
There's been a good game going on in West Devon recently called 'Spot the Spielberg' because our bit of Dartmoor is one of the preferred locations for the filming of War Horse and Stephen is on our Manor, so we are taking it all very seriously.
Radio Devon ran a little phone in slot for Spielberg sightings and of course as the maestro has been staying at that nice hotel up the lane (thanks for the intelligence Jim the Postie) we'd probably have had plenty of sightings to report had we been looking. The Gamekeeper did return from the local pub with news that Stephen was in there enjoying the smelly-welly-dung-spit-and-sawdust ambience, but the GK and his ilk are very hard to impress so they all pretended not to notice, as you do.
Do you see someone famous and then work very hard not to notice?
I was standing right next to Angela Rippon at the counter in Boots a while back, it was her voice that gave it away of course and then I tried my utmost to be nonchalent as she bought her hairspray and I stocked up on shampoo.
If ever we go to the theatre we tend to sit up in the dress circle, foregoing the stalls as a bit too expensive and anyway you're too near and can't see everything. So when I was debating my War Horse visit with Will Rycroft, who is currently playing Major Stewart in the production, and Will very kindly offered to book my ticket for me, I sent off my cheque and guessed he'd know where the best seat might be.
Too right, Row D Seat 3 people.
Not so near the front that you are kissing the stage, but near enough to feel completely involved in the action and the exact spot where some of the most dramatic of that action takes place. I'll own up that my heart sank when a row of children filed into Row C because The Woman in Black experience remains a traumatic memory, but I should have known better than to fret because these were American children. Impeccably well-behaved (I know, I'm sure UK children can be too, just not at the Plymouth production of The Woman in Black) to the point where I didn't even notice them, and nicely short so I could see over their heads.
I suspect the story of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse is well-known, and my thanks again to Curzon who sent me both the book and the play after she had seen it a few years ago. Set in Devon on the eve of the Great War, Farmer Narracott heading to the auction three sheets to the wind blows the mortgage money on a foal which his son Albert takes on and trains up. Joey is a bit of a mix, mostly a hunter but under pressure from his father Albert teaches Joey to plough. When the war breaks out and horses are required for the Front, Albert's father sells Joey to the army and off he goes to war. Inevitably distraught at the loss of his best mate it's clear Albert, though only sixteen, will follow.
So how on earth can all that be conveyed on stage?
If you've seen it you will know how magical this is, if you haven't this trailer will give you a clue and there are also some fascinating video diaries made by the cast all available on youtube..
It's all in the ears and the breathing; as the horse's torso rises and falls it gives a clear indication of mood and I could feel my eyes welling up as soon as I caught sight of the gangly foal, let alone the fully grown Joey in battle. I was near enough to the action to catch all the delicate nuances of equine expression, the tilt of the head, the arching of the neck, the swish of the tail and the twitch of the ears, the pulling back when cautious and uncertain, the ranging forward when fearless and all so cleverly done by the puppeteers. The notion that they are puppets is quickly forgotten, the puppeteers blending seamlessly with the horses and making all the horsey noises too through what must be a physically draining performance and surrounded by a great cast of actors.
So I'm completely immersed and only just stopped myself shouting out (in true Plymouth style) at a few key moments and I won't reveal the context but there is a moment when I wanted to shout
'Put it on Joey, he'll know what to do...'
and I'm crying at puppets and I wasn't the only one with tears streaming down my face by the end either... yes I saw you man sitting next to me, but an incredible theatre experience that I can't recommend highly enough. Bookhound wasn't with me on this trip but we will definitely be going again when he is. Nor can I quite see how this is going to translate into a film though I feel sure Stephen's got that sorted, but it was good to meet up with Will Rycroft aka Major Stewart afterwards and to complement him on that clever leap onto the horse with nicely co-ordinated draw of the sword and battle charge which seemed to be heading right for D3, so my thanks to him for nabbing me that brilliant seat.
I'm not sure whether Devon has made the trek up to London to see this but I really do hope if this production goes on tour that it at least comes down to Plymouth before it heads off to New York and everywhere else. We're pretty good at horse etiquette down here, slowing down when we see riders ahead of us in the car, proceeding with caution down the lane in case there's a horse around the bend etc, so we can only hope that translates to the theatre and the horses won't be spooked by any screaming .
Monday, November 29, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (9)
A snowy pony...
The Kayaker's been out with his camera snapping the ponies up on Dartmoor today while I've been wrapped up indoors writing about War Horse and realising just how brilliant it was, so my thoughts about that on here tomorrow, but meanwhile here's a lovely snowy pony.
Sunday, November 28, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5)
It's that time of year again...
Bookhound was doing the town trip. One of us decides we have the steam for the post office, the library, and all the bits and pieces that everyone's written on the kitchen whiteboard.
We communicate via kitchen white-board here...
'Next one out car needs petrol.'
'Monday 9pm BBC 1 Spooks.'
'Lighting tube for under kitchen cupboard F15W/135'
But I knew he would forget the most important item so I rang the mobile and uttered one word...
'Mousetraps.'
And I'm so very sorry to all those of you who adore them and use humane traps to release your rodent invaders back into the wild, except I'm told by them as know that it's illegal to do that unless you release them onto your own land, in which case they'll be back indoors before you.
So it's Little Nipper time because there is the annual clog dance going on in the Book Room loft space over my head as I type and I can hear brave Bookhound, who doesn't suffer from my musophobia, up there mixing it with the Muridae on my behalf.
As a student health visitor back in the dark ages, I spent a day with a community psychiatric nurse as he treated patients with phobias. It was my good fortune to be visiting on spider day (I'm not much better with arachnoids it has to be said) and please don't ask me how I got through the day; keeping a cool countenance in front of the quivering patients whilst sweating buckets and thinking I should be one of them. Much worse he gave me his jar of dead spiders to look after, occasionally removing one and asking the phobic person to place it in their pocket. The game was almost up and there's me, fixed smile, uttering words of gentle encouragement whilst praying they wouldn't ask me to do it too. I was poleaxed by the time I got home that evening to our flat in Plymouth and unfortunately some sort of transference was hatched when a mouse ran across my foot in the kitchen, and that was me and the kitchen off limits until the rodent control man had been, and another musophobic was born. Hence mouser cats chez dovegrey.
Anyway good things have come of Bookhound's loft excursion because the odd smell we'd been getting a whiff of (and it seems erroneously blaming the Gamekeeper's socks) has now been diagnosed as a long dead mouse in one of last year's traps. There's the occasional *bang* followed by a plaintive *ow* as Bookhound tries to set the bait with our magic recipe of dog biscuits laced with jam....do you have any good mouse-attracting recipes? I won't explain the principle behind the dog biscuit element except to say it's all about timing.
We have no idea where the mice get in but it would seem our defences have been well and truly breeched again this year and I now have the horror of the bang that will happen right over my head when the trap is sprung, and then I have to run out of the room at the mere thought of the carnage happening up there.
Meanwhile I'll leave you with these words of wisdom from Ralph Waldo Emerson for no other reason than he mentions books and mousetraps in the same sentence.
'If a man write and better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.'
Saturday, November 27, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (24)
Back home...
Back home from London in the early hours of this morning and having left three men at home with a combined total age of 109, (and had the Tinker called round that would have upped to 194) you do wonder what may await the return. On occasion they can be like a pride of lions with some roaring boys mixed in, but all entirely capable so everything was fine and dandy in my absence but for the state of the kitchen floor, which none of them seem to notice though I am assured it was 'swept'. The Vileda and I have reclaimed that from oblivion now so all's well.
Firstly I have to say a huge thank you to Erica Wagner for those very special 'dovegreyreader asks...' replies which I think we are all agreed were something very special and a big thankyou to all of you for making Erica so welcome here.
Secondly a Happy Thanksgiving to all U.S. readers whether at home or abroad. I know from comments on here in years previous that this day means a lot to all of you wherever you are. A time for home and family and a raid on the turkey population a month before we embark on ours so I hope you all have a wonderful day.
London was everything I had planned and more, and thank you to London for not raining.
I try and walk as much as I can when I'm there, and the cold but dry weather made all that a real pleasure. You might be surprised at my train reading too because I splurged my Waterstone's card points on a copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson for the e reader. Never have I arrived at Paddington or back in Plymouth quite so fast, or so it seemed, and yes I kept switching it on at every available spare minute on the tube as well. For all that the book is dying and e readers are it, I didn't see another single one all the time I was there, just real books, lots of them.
You'll be pleased to know I took you to plenty of places in between the reading, The Threads of Feeling exhibition at the Foundling Museum, the V&A Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green and The Wellcome Collection.
Then there was the invite ages ago from the Royal Society of Literature to attend an event there, and this I finally fulfilled on Monday evening. Susan Hill and Sarah Waters in conversation with Philip Hensher about writing ghost stories, and incidentally exciting news now made public today that Our Susan will be one of this year's Booker judges.
The Persephone Lecture this year was given by David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain and Family Britain, and with his emphasis on the importance of womens' diaries in his research I left to catch my train last night feeling inspired all over again to write one. It would seem that the ordinariness of what many women shared in their diaries provided much of the important information required for social history research, the day to dayness of lives recorded matters a great deal.
I was also fortunate enough to meet with Matthew Hollis the author of Now All Roads Lead to France, the Last Years of Edward Thomas, to be published by Faber in August 2011 and I'm very grateful to Matthew for sparing the time to talk to me. Me new to the life of Edward Thomas and with those half-formed largely half-baked ideas shaping up into questions, Matthew sharing the details of his research and news of a book I am very much looking forward to.
And then there was War Horse.
Well what can I say? I emerged a gushing heap and it was good to meet up afterwards with fellow litblogger Will Rycroft, who currently plays Major Stewart in the production and I had to stand at the stage door and everything. How grown up was that being out on my own in London at 11.30pm.
Then as if that wasn't all enough excitement for three days, I also met up with Justine Picardie in Hampstead for a yarn and a stroll around some literary corners including paying homage at the grave of Penelope Fitzgerald which I had been wanting to visit for ages.
Not a word more, I'll be sharing it all over the next few days and weeks.
Thursday, November 25, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (13)
dovegreyreader asks...The Literary Editor - Erica Wagner even more questions
Is it difficult to read for pleasure and not feel as if you're working, and when you do, who and what do you read...old favourites, new authors, who 'must' we read?
Okay, I guess there's a practical difference between reading "for work" and reading "for pleasure" – if it's the former, I'll always have a pencil in my hand and the margins and endpapers will get pretty scribbled-on. And I'll probably read a book I'm reviewing at least twice. But all reading gives me pleasure – pretty much – I am an obsessive, indiscriminate reader. I'll read in-flight magazines, the backs of cereal packets, instruction manuals, whatever's in front of my eyes. A book I haven't read is always a joyful prospect: yes, I might find I don't like it, but you don't know till you try, do you?
I am incredibly lucky that my "work" is what I love to do. So I've just "had" to read Jonathan Safran Foer's extraordinary new book, Tree of Codes – but when I did, I sat in the bath (my favourite place to read…) and sobbed in the very same way as I am sure any reader who comes across this creation will. But yes, in need of comfort or recreation, I'll surely re-read. Let's see: Ursula Le Guin's The Earthsea Quartet . . . anything by Alan Garner . . . Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff . . . and there I books I loved which I should re-read soon, because they've gone a little dim in my mind and I want to enjoy them again: nearly everything by Robertson Davies springs to mind.
If you were going to press one book on us in the street which would it be?
"A hundred miles into the Pacific, drenched in rain and wind and mist and sunlight, lie the islands known as Haida Gwaii. In September 1900, a young, soft-spoken linguist with a new degree from Harvard and a bundle of instructions from his mentor stepped ashore there, planning to stay half a year, learning what he could of the Haida language, and of Haida life and thought and social structure.
"The linguist found himself confronted by great art, great devastation and great literature. His teacher had forewarned him to expect the devastation and the visual art as well. It was the literature that took him by surprise. And so for three and a half years he did nothing whatsoever but transcribe, translate and study Haida mythtexts, stories, histories and songs.
"Back in Washington and Boston and New York, the linguist's learned colleagues did not hear what he had heard nor see what he had seen in the texts that he transcribed, and he was not a man to force his views on others. He published what he could, blamed himself for others' failings, and went on to other work, with other persecuted languages, elsewhere in the world.
"The fact remains that he had heard, and had recorded as well as he was able, one of the world's richer classical literatures, embodying one of the world's great mythologies."
… So begins the Prologue to Robert Bringhurst's A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and their World. Now, I'll admit it's not so easy to get hold of this remarkable book, but it's worth the effort; and I hope – Margaret Atwood hopes, too – that Jamie Byng at Canongate will produce a British edition before too long. I'm guessing you don't know much about native North American literature; I didn't either, when I discovered this book seven or so years ago. It changed the way I thought about literature – all of literature -- and it changed the way I thought about life. What else can I say? Robert Bringhurst's Selected Poems have just been published in the UK by Jonathan Cape; they will certainly give you an idea of this artist and his work; it's one place to start. But if you can get hold of A Story as Sharp As a Knife, I promise you another world.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (7)
dovegreyreader asks...The Literary Editor - Erica Wagner some more questions
How do you select your reviewers...is there a marrying up of titles and expertise?
Oh yes, there certainly is; and that's one of the great joys of the job. Generally, I'd say, I'm looking for reviewers to enjoy the books I send them. Life's too short, and reviewing pays too poorly, to want your reviewers to struggle through something they don't like – though sometimes, of course, that's unavoidable. As I said before, however, I am on the side of books and in general wish to celebrate rather than scorn.
I remember very well how early on in my days at The Times, we got in Francis Spufford's wonderful book, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination – which I thought looked wonderful, and I am fascinated by all things polar, anyway. Looking through the contacts book I had inherited – I was just starting to build up my own! – I saw Jan Morris's details on an index card (this was the days of index cards, O Best Beloved). Now – Jan Morris was the writer my mother loved most in the world; Jan Morris was a writer I too had come to love, if not venerate; and suddenly, I was looking at her phone number. I could call her. I could ask her to review this book. And so, with not a little nervousness, I picked up the phone – and there was Jan, her brisk self, on the other end of the line. I described the book – she didn't like the sound of it at all. But somehow, I was convinced she'd like it. Please, I said, amazed at my own boldness, please just have a look. All right, said Jan. So I posted it off… and you know what? I was right. She adored it. "The thrills of desolation, of icy beauty, of challenge, of human courage, of comradeship . . . I May Be Some Time is a truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination," she wrote. I was delighted, because what greater joy is there in life than discovering unexpected pleasure between the covers of a book?
The remarkable Jan Morris continues to write for me – she's just filed a piece on a book about the Ordnance Survey, which will have been published by the time this is! I am a lucky woman, is all I can say.
What do you expect from a book review as a Literary Editor?
Here's another once upon a time story from my early days at the paper. Peter Stothard – then Editor of The Times, now Sir Peter Stothard and the editor of the TLS – wandered into my office and picked up a book. I think it was a book about Jung and the Nazis. "I'd never read that book," Peter said, "but I'd very much like to read 500 words about it." Now, sometimes that's just what you want from a book review – I imagine myself as the reader, the person who's not sent a zillion sacks of books the way I am, a person who just wants to be informed about the world and all the things in it. Book reviews can certainly do that.
So when I commission pieces I expect them to tell me – and therefore, my readers – a complete story. It sounds basic, but it isn't, really – and it isn't basic to convey a lot of information in a compact and entertaining way. The longest review I commission is 1,500 words, which isn't really very long; often pieces are much shorter. Iain Finlayson and Kate Saunders, who do non-fiction and fiction reviews "In Short" for me, could give masterclasses in the art of compression – each of their reviews is about 150 words long and they tell you everything you need to know! I suppose it's the same when I am reading reviews for myself – when I read the Guardian's reviews, or those in the New York Review of Books or the TLS. But I read each of those publications in a different way – they are all aimed at different audiences. You can't expect the same thing from each one; you'd only be frustrated, that way.
How do you feel the litblogs sit alongside the review pages?
Hurrah for as many voices as possible, I say. To return to the previous point: different strokes for different strokes, is one way to put it. Blogs are personal, a single voice (though often with others chiming in of course); reading a blog, to me, should be more like chatting with a friend than reading a review. And we need both in our lives. Each offers a way of thinking about books – and so about the world.
Tomorrow's questions for Erica...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5)
dovegreyreader asks...The Literary Editor - Erica Wagner
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I am a New Yorker; I grew up on the Upper West Side and went to the Brearley School, a place I really loved. (Recently I interviewed Lydia Davis, the remarkable American short-story writer and translator – her new translation of Madame Bovary is just appearing from Penguin Classics – and was thrilled to discover that she too had been a Brearley girl in her time…) The year before my graduation, however, I spent a year at school in London; it was then that I determined to come to university here. Why? Oh, probably because it was a way of making trouble, really, but one where no one could really argue with me. So I read English at Cambridge, which nearly put me off reading books completely – but still and all, I truly began to feel that Britain was where I belonged. I can't really explain why – I just knew it –
I went on to do an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where I was taught by Rose Tremain and Malcolm Bradbury… and it was during that year long course that I began to take myself seriously as a writer, to accept that, in some ways, I didn't have a choice about this. Finding a way after that to actually earn a living was another matter. How did I end up at as Literary Editor of The Times? Luck, perseverance – it's hard to say. But even after fifteen years (!) I've never stopped being amazed that this is my job… seriously. I really feel I have never taken it for granted.
Can you outline some of the dilemmas faced by the literary editors today?
What's a book? Is a memoir by Jordan or Russell Brand a book? Is a novel by Sharon Osborne a book? Or are these merely book-shaped objects which are part of a marketing scheme? In which case, how should we cover them? Do you interview a first-time novelist, or do you interview Chris Evans or Harry Hill? In some ways you could argue that it's a fine thing that books are now seen as part of any famous person's c.v. – but it leaves less space for what I would call real books.
Despite having lost a dedicated Books section, I still can't really complain about not having enough space to review books – because when I first came to The Times a decade and a half ago, we had only a page of broadsheet book reviews – eventually two, and then more, but it's absolutely fair to say that books have broader coverage than they ever have had. You can't move for literary festivals these days, which is another outlet for discussion, as are book groups, and of course blogs (of which more later). But there are always more books than there is space to cover them. I imagine the only time this wasn't true was in back in Gutenberg's day… and maybe even then…
How do you make your choices for books to be reviewed?
Sometimes it's easy. New Salman Rushdie, new Margaret Atwood? The technical term for whether or not you'll cover those books is "no-brainer", I believe. What's harder is picking the book that's not necessarily obvious; not least because you'll have to drop something else in its favour. You want to make the right choices – let your readers know about the books they already know they want to know about, but also alert them to things they never would have found otherwise.
How do you spot those books? Different ways. I look at everything myself, of course – but there are plenty of days when I get four big Royal Mail sacks of books to look at (that's maybe 100-125 books I guess) so time is, shall we say, of the essence. Trusted reviewers/colleagues will draw things to my attention. I go through the publishers' catalogues, of course, and I talk to publicists – with whom I try to develop good relationships. Yes, it's their job to "sell" books to me, but if we each know what the other is trying to achieve we can work together. I know the publicists who understand what I am trying to do… and the ones who don't quite get it.
I should also say I'm trying to build an interesting set of books pages to read, even if you are not going to buy any of the books. So, you need to create a balance. You can't have two pieces on a page that are too similar; you need variety. Of course, that will affect the commissioning process too.
Like dovegreyreader, I am on the side of books. I will send out a first novel with the caveat, tell me if you don't like it… Of course I have run (and written) reviews that aren't positive in my time, but on the whole I'd rather they were…
Tomorrow's questions to Erica...
Monday, November 22, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (21)
Off a-travelling...
I'm off on my annual November wanderings for the first half of this week and travelling light so in terms of technology no laptop, just an iTouch and thus entirely dependent on butting in on someone else's wireless signal. It's becoming something of a tradition now to book myself a week away from the day job about now, leave the men at home and head off to re-charge my batteries ready for working over the Christmas season, frequently not one of good cheer and happy family gatherings for those who have been bereaved or are seriously ill.
Working online and from home is a wonderful near perfect combination for me, PJs and a pot of tea, no more trekking out in the trusty Fiesta to farms on high Dartmoor on a freezing cold and wet November afternoon, or feeling like the only person stupid enough to be outside as I trudge through Princetown. Princetown can resemble a ghost town in winter, many the day I found myself whistling the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti western tune as I walked down the main street in the shadow of Dartmoor Prison, the tumbleweed twining around my ankles...
Do-do-do-do- do - doo-doo..
I'm always telling others to pencil in treats for themselves so I've pencilled in a few for me, talks, exhibitions, bookish events, lunches, theatre, walks with authors and all in three days which I think will add up to about a year's worth and I will be taking you along too, so much more about it all on my return.
However, I don't think you'll miss me because I have lined up something special.
It was my pleasure to meet Erica Wagner, the literary editor of the Times, at the recent PEN event in London and we had a fine old natter about books over dinner afterwards. It was a few days later that I asked Erica if she would kindly do "dovegreyreader asks... the Literary Editor" as part of this little series of interviews I then hatched to sneak us back stage on the world of books, writing, reviewing and publishing and I'm very grateful to Amanda Craig who launched the endeavour wonderfully with "asks...The Author."
It's all taking a while and I think I have a few people out there patiently waiting for their questions, but I want this to develop step by step over a period of time rather than map out the whole process with rigid questions from the start, plus composing open-ended questions that offer scope for interesting answers is often quite a challenge and not to be rushed....well those are my excuses.
So I am delighted to bring you not one but three posts from Erica this week, because in the end I sent over eight questions and she has answered them so diligently and thoroughly, and they make such sincere and fascinating reading that I felt it would be good to share them out over several days to give you time to read and digest and comment if you want to. I certainly hope you will enjoy Erica's answers as much as I have and she has very kindly to pop into comments occasionally and respond.
Here are Monday's questions ...
Hedging our bets...
I'm hoping there are some Bob Flowerdews and Pippa Greenwoods among you out there because it's Gardener's Question Time today and our need is great as you will see for yourselves.
In the surgery and awaiting diagnosis, one hundred feet of evergreen Escallonia hedge, inherited with the house, possibly as out of keeping with a Devon lane as the Leylandii that we also inherited. The Leylandii dispatched with indecent haste when we first moved here but somehow the Escallonia has hung on.
Here's a glimpse of it in its heyday and usually like this year round.
For all its incongruity amongst beautiful Devon banks, the hedge does provide a welcome barrier between us and the copious traffic in the lane... three cars, two horses and one tractor per day, and then there's the one walker a month whilst also fending off a bit of weather etc, but you may recall the annual hedge-cutting row that would start brewing here in June. Trimming its sappy sticky growth was like a military campaign, ladders and extension leads, copious perspiration, jugs of lemonade out on the lane and much huffing (not me) plus deathly trampling of the flower beds in front, swiftly followed by a carpet of evergreen cuttings that refuse to die. All repeated three times in as many months in the summer each year that we have lived here as the hedge continued on its quest for the outer stratosphere... leave it too long and it was almost impossible to tame.
Here it is on the left earlier this summer, looks OK but certainly not growing at its usual rate.
Now look at it...
Looks as dead as a bishop on the landing. It was only realising that we hadn't had the hedge-trimming row that made us pay attention, in fact all one hundred feet transformed without us really noticing from a lush evergreen bit of a nuisance, to a bald as a coot skeletal mass of twigs and branches, a nice climbing frame for the birds but that's about all. We had quite thought it might perk up and would kid ourselves it was OK because the thought of grubbing it up and replacing just felt like a task too far. Then we noticed quite alarmingly that whenever the cows have been moved up and down the lane recently there would be great splintering noises and we'd go out and find big clumps of dead Escallonia on the ground, and huge bald patches leaving portholes in our hedge.
So, much as we hated the idea of the massacre that would ensue, we nabbed the hedge-trimmer from the farm when he was passing this week and have gone for the drastic option in the faint hope it might recover and regenerate. We're also well aware that the ivy in places won't be helping, but we typed 'escallonia hedge dying' into google and got worse news... we may not be alone, it could be a national disease. Spots on yellowing leaves, then no leaves, people complaining about the same symptoms over in Exmouth (definitely in our flight path) and people everywhere finding a white vein of fungus tracking up the middle of the branches.
Out we dashed and sure enough there it as plain as day, isn't that white fungus up the middle of our branches?
Branches that are normally so sappy you couldn't possibly break them now snapping like breadsticks, and the two remaining yellow leaves have spots on them.
The advice seems to be copious spraying with something nuclear that may or may not resolve the problem but that's not an option, so what do you Bobs and Pippas out there suggest, and if you could possibly desist from offering Bob's solution to all ills which is urine, I'd be grateful.
Might this week's drastic massacre aid a bit of regeneration?
Is it really dead or just pretending?
Does a hedge like this reach the end of its natural life?
In that case was eternal life and immortality too much to ask of an Escallonia hedge?
If it's fungus might that just run its course?
Should we pull all that ivy out to give the hedge a chance or leave it to hold the whole thing up... currently the ivy is the saving aesthetic grace and could continue to be so if we adopt the next suggestion.
Are we now left with a sort of natural trellis and we plant things up and through it?
Climbers perhaps? Honeysuckles? Wild roses?
Or should something that might be diseased be grubbed up (oh heck, all one hundred feet of it) and we start again with a beech hedge?
Bookhound has visibly paled at what may be coming next, we've already started thinking about a hedge fund, and the only saving grace might be that he'll need to hire a digger for a week or two.
World Book Night update...
Bless the weather for not raining on Monday, frosty cold and crisp for my crack of dawn journey up to London on what felt like the milk train, but was actually the 7.44am, so not that bad and England was looking particularly beautiful as it sped past.
I was in London for the World Book Night editorial meeting and what an experience that was.
Just to recap, this is another event that will be linked to World Book Day 2011 when on Saturday March 5th (we can but hope it doesn't clash with the Royal Wedding) a million books will be given away by 20,000 passionate book lovers who can choose how they want to do that, and the hope is that some of the giving venues will be really innovative in order to reach a broad spectrum of people.
Chaired by James Naughtie who at times had to put on his sternest, most head masterly countenance to maintain order amongst the twenty-five book-loving people present, (only occasionally holding his head in his hands and threatening that we'd still be there at midnight if we didn't get a move on) ) the meeting was fascinating. Everyone waving their lists of suggestions all plucked from the longer lists submitted by booksellers and libraries around the country, but everyone had the chance to talk to their favourites, so really James Naughtie could probably now step up and keep the House of Commons in shape.
It took me days and days to come up with my list and then I had to whittle my forty-six wild cards down to two, these could be books not on any list but that we felt passionately about. It really was quite a task but after four hours and some intense deliberations we emerged with a very exciting list of titles that holds something for everyone, some fantastic reads like.... and.... and ... plus a few surprises and then there's .... you'll love that one and how could we leave out.... or ..... or.... and the one that squeaked in at the end and replaced.... and you'll be surprised about that one...
Of course I can't possibly breath a word or I'd have to kill you all.
Parts of the meeting were filmed for The Culture Show to be broadcast on BBC 2 on the evening of December 2nd, the day the titles will be announced and the search for the 20,000 book givers begins. I was sitting next but one to Amanda Ross and opposite the BBC's Alan Yentob so if you catch a glimpse, that's me in my lucky turquoise scarf, the one most likely to be gawping open-mouthed in the background for which I hope you will forgive me.
It was lovely to meet Professor John Carey again having shared a platform with him at the Oxford Literary Festival a few years ago, and even lovelier that he remembered me and has since sent me a copy of his recent biography of William Golding for which I am so grateful. I've been swithering around for a new (to me) author to explore and having only read Lord of the Flies at school I'm looking forward to some more Golding. John has suggested where I make a start so more on that soon.
The meeting was held at Foyles in Tottenham Court Road. In the Gallery on the third floor in fact, and in the midst of an exhibition about fonts and Simon Garfield's book Just My Type, so plenty to gaze at while deliberations progressed. I think you can already predict my happy dilemma, because that's a lot of bookshop to walk through before you get back out onto the road and a lot of books to idle past and browse.
Heck Foyles really is amazing, I wish they'd open one in Tavistock, a rural branch, we'd love it. More buying temptation than can be good for anyone but I had already decided that I would buy a book and come home with a souvenir of my day.
I knew exactly the book I wanted but wavered over the decision because I also wanted this
and my attention was very seriously diverted by sight of this...
But in the end this won.
Alice Herz - Sommer
My thanks to Kate for sending this link, it is quite remarkable take a look...
Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest survivor of the holocaust will be 107 on November 26th 2010 and you too can send her birthday wishes.
Thursday, November 18, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2)
More cooings from the Dovecote (Press)
I have been steeped in the life and writing of Edward Thomas in recent weeks, and gaining many insights into the mind of this complex man all mediated through the eyes of his wife Helen. I tracked down and bought a collection of Helen Thomas's writing, Under Storm's Wing, published by Carcanet and I can't recommend it highly enough. It includes As it Was and World Without End, the two books published after Edward's death at the Battle of Arras in 1917, plus letters, memoirs of literary meetings as well as a childhood memoir by Edward and Helen's youngest daughter Myfanwy. Slowly the picture is building and it's not the one I was expecting.
However the whole Edward Thomas theme also necessitated a little trip to Poetry Corner to see what else I had on my shelves.
Poetry Corner actually contained in this pine dresser in my book room and one of those pieces of furniture that rather oddly always reminds me of the early stages of pre-eclampsia before Offspingette's arrival.
'What on earth have you been doing to send your blood pressure this high?' exclaimed the doctor as my over-inflated arm nudged 150/100 on the old sphygmomanometer.
' Well, nothing really just beeswaxing an old pine dresser.' I offered by way of explanation.
'In that case don't touch it again.' he replied, giving me a sharp stare 'or you're going to be in trouble.'
And I was 'in trouble' eventually anyway, but I took him at his word and as you can see, almost twenty-nine years on, I haven't touched it and it really could use some TLC on those doors.
One book has led me to another and how odd that the very day I reached up to the shelf for the beautiful Little Toller Press edition of The South Country by Edward Thomas, a parcel should arrive from Little Toller (a subsidiary of Dovecote Press) with their latest offerings which I have kept alongside and been dipping into ever since.
If you will soon be facing this dilemma...
Book + December + Gift = ?
then these might be a worthy consideration, always beautifully produced and of course we always like a nice French flap don't we.
Letters From Skokholm by R.M.Lockley.
Well who even knew that the island of Skokholm existed off the Pembrokeshire coast? Not me, I'd have stuck the pin in Scandinavia for sure, but Ronald Lockley leased the island for twenty one years in 1927 at a cost of £25.00 per annum eventually making a home there for himself and his new wife.
The letters Ronald then wrote to his brother-in-law John Buxton, himself a distinguished naturalist, are actually what Adam Nicolson describes in his foreword as a "bit of a performance", in fact the product of years of notes and diaries shaped up into essay form and then sent as 'each was written'. But it matters not because what emerges is a fascinating and involving account of life on the island, the natural world under the increasing shadow of Europe at war and Tunnicliffe's precise and atmosperic engravings too.
A Shepherd's Life by W.H.Hudson
Another name I am coming across in relation to Edward Thomas, William Henry Hudson 1841 - 1922 who came to England from Argentina in 1869. Living the life of a nomadic shepherd, poverty-stricken yet a pioneering conservationist and founding member of the RSPB, the memoirs and writings in this volume track a life that I wanted to know about, chapter headings that draw me like a magnet (you can see I don't get out much) ...A Shepherd on Foxes... Concerning Cats ... A Sheepdog's Life...Starlings and Sheep Bells and not an ounce of disappointment when you get there.
In his introduction Adam Thorpe quotes Ford Madox Ford,
'It is astonishing how little literature has to show of the poor.'
and Adam Thorpe qualifies this, suggesting that with a few notable exceptions this is particularly true of the rural poor, the 'ruinous hovels' rarely exposed when there was an idyllic cottage to be described. Any such literary lacunae set to rights here and with a set of exquisite wood engravings by contemporary artist Howard Phipps.
If you have time to look don't miss that link to the Rowley Gallery website, I have fallen in love with Howard's engravings, so beautiful, and would never have discovered them but for this book.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion
The pen name of Bruce Cummings and quite a different book to the other two, and I have to say having made a start, a remarkable diary and no wonder it caused a sensation when it was first published in 1919.
A nature diary set in Devon slowly evolves into a 'deeply moving account of poverty, lack of formal education and flailing attempts at love', but above all the authors slow decline into a degenerative condition that would eventually cause his death. But there is humour and beauty here and and it is mostly to be found on the streets of South Kensington because the author works in the Natural History Museum, or in the concert halls of the capital because Bruce is an avid music-lover.
No pictures in this one but don't be disappointed, in a way you don't need them, the words suffice and you've still got French flaps to drool over so no worries.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (14)
Perfect Lives ~ Polly Samson
I am unusually (for me and reading) measured and disciplined with the short story. One a day at most, occasionally two, but one good one will give me enough to think about through the day as a sort of little performance stage to walk onto in my mind. A nice place to visit as I go about the less exciting aspects of life chez dovegrey, where things still need ironing, washing machines need feeding, you spend half your life on this recycling thing and cats still sick up on the kitchen floor, you know the score.
However schedules and discipline were scattered to the west winds when I started reading Polly Samson's new collection, Perfect Lives, recently published by Virago.
Now I'll own up I only picked this up in desperation for a book to take along to the Endsleigh Salon last week for the theme of Music.
How can I have struggled with such an enticing theme and always I promise myself that I'll be organised like Linda and Rebecca, but there I was Mrs Last-Minute.Com again? So I bargained with Polly Samson and said she could come with me if I got the merest hint of music in the first story. Polly squeaked it with a reference to a song playing on the car radio but in fact it wouldn't have mattered because it didn't need a song, I was hooked anyway, and to be honest she was home and dry with her epigraph from Leonard Cohen,
"It's the notion that there is no perfecttion - that this is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still that is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances."
Dear old Leonard, how we loved him and music surfaces frequently in this collection, in the shape of concert pianists, classical singers and piano tuners, and I felt at times as if I was reading the literary equivalent of a suite or a concerto or a fugue or something. Help me out musical readers...the one where the melody changes and is reshaped a little later on, enough to trigger your memory of what went before.
This musical interest would all have come as no surprise had I done my homework first because Polly Sansom is a pianist and lyricist and the wife of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame, so clearly music matters, but as Dave Gilmour has been keen to point out about Polly's book ..."it's not %&*^&% autobiographical." so don't go there. I don't know about you but I rarely make that assumption about fiction these days so no problem. In fact forget autobiographical connections (and what would I know) I was more as sick as a parrot to discover I'd read five stories in one sitting and the remaining six in another which meant I didn't have any left and I wanted many more.
The difference being that in this collection that is Perfect Lives... except you know these are only going to be Perfect-Enough Lives because Leonard has said as much... the stories connect and weave into each other offering differing perspectives on the lives they contain. The web is intricately woven across the whole which made this book read quite differently, unlike a disparate collection here there were connections to hold in mind and make throughout.
This is my favourite sort of writing, events told slant and all off to a riveting start with Celia's discovery of her husband's waywardness and her subsequent coping strategies, and all set against the backdrop of the beach side home, exposed and battered by the weather and the sight of the waves. A home harbouring secrets which are slowly unwrapped, just a few words here, a few there, enough to help me sniff out the trail and a home offering but limited protection for poor Celia's battered emotions too...amazing what can sneak in through the letter box. And then there are the waves with their potential to be calm and soothing or to hold the power of malevolent forces, and all exploited wonderfully in the telling of this story. The local weather forecast here in Devon always predicts wave conditions for surfers and often the lovely David Brain tells us the waves are 'messy', Celia knows about 'messy' waves.
The stories progress through the connected lives so this is one collection you need to read in the given order, which I often don't, if you are to get to grips with who belongs to who and thus experience the full and very satisfying impact of the slow dawning realisation about those relationships.
It all reminded me of health visiting days and suddenly in mid-home visit someone would say, "Oh you visit my sister" and then you'd place them in a much bigger setting and pull in another raft of background information that informed and expanded on what you already knew. Talking of which, a stout health visitor wearing Hush Puppies features in this book, and doing daily visits too, (neither of those is me in this picture by the way, but I do love it and one of them is a health visitor...your guess) so for all its contemporary setting this bit must have been well before my time.I didn't wear Hush Puppies once in thirty years honest, and daily visits?
Then there are the gaps and silences and how much I appreciate an un-bossy writer who trusts me to fill them as I choose, not as they insist.
Prose described as lyrical switches me off almost as much as limpid, I think we need to draw on a whole new batch of prose-describing adjectives, I just can't think of any at the moment so perhaps decide for yourselves...
'She grew up with the delicate weight of her grandmother's dreams draped around her shoulders like a shawl...'
'That and the way he played Chopin, long strong fingers playing the keys so softly they might have been stroking the cheek of an infant...'
Pulling 'lyrical prose' out of context may do it no favours now I read that back but when you come across moments like this in a book, and in a short story in particular, it really is like finding your favourite chocolate in a box that you are already enjoying gorging on anyway.
Remembrance Day, so that can only mean one thing... time to share another story from the Tinker's little memoir Bugle Boy, which for anyone who may not know is a published collection of his memories of going to war at the age of 14 in 1939 as a Royal Marines boy bugler.
I haven't mentioned the Tinker, (father of dgr ) in a while which is most remiss of me, but he is very chipper, walks twice as fast with the double pacemaker, sends you all his regards and reads here every day.
In case anyone's wondering it was Our Susan (Hill) who gave him that nickname and based on an incident I recounted to her concerning the regular gatherings of the Tinker's little band of octogenarian World War II veterans, which always seemed to involve some mischief and the need for an ambulance for one of them.
That's him, the little lad on the left in the cover picture and all ready to go off to a battleship in December 1939.
He did a wonderful thirty minute live question and answer interview about Bugle Boy on Radio Devon recently, so the book's still available out there and still being read which is lovely. And because it is the bugler playing Last Post and Sunset on Remembrance Day that always brings a tear to my eye, I have tagged on a picture of our own 'at the going down of the sun moment' here last night, it was breathtaking.
My Debut
The first time Mum and Dad said they would come down
to Eastney to see me filled me with excitement. I knew
they would feed me and make me financially sound for a
short while and, of course, I could show off in my new
uniform. I suppose it was a month after I had arrived but
it had taken at least three weeks to assemble all my kit.
The accoutrements were no problem but the uniform had
to be specially made, after all at 4' 8" I was not exactly off
the peg, besides which we had to be trained in how to
comport ourselves when out of barracks. In those days,
when a Royal Marine went out he wore white cotton
gloves and carried a silver-headed cane, something I was
sorry to see discontinued, it made you feel a little special;
but there was a drill to it all that had to be learnt before
you were allowed out.
It was a Sunday, as I remember, and they would meet
me at the barrack gate at 2 p.m. by which time I had
cleaned my buttons, boned my boots to the best possible
shine for a new pair and starched my cap cover. We never
had white-top caps then, just blue caps, but we donned
cap covers between 1 May and 1 October and they had to
be starched. A word about my boots; they too had to be
made, by the cobblers in the barracks, from greased cow
hide that took weeks and weeks of boning before getting
the required polish. They were size six and each boot had
116 hobnails, a heel plate and a large toe plate; when I first
put them on I felt like a deep-sea diver.
Two o'clock came eventually, I left it for a few minutes
to make sure they would be there to see me march up to
the Sergeant on the gate, and there they were, in earnest
conversation with the Sergeant. Drawing myself up to my
full height, I halted in front of the Sergeant.
'Po/x 3943 Boy Bugler L. Chester, permission to leave
barracks Sergeant.'
My father was bursting with pride and my mother had
tears in her eyes; I was terrified. Whilst I stood there with
my proud parents watching, he did a 360-degree inspection
of me, including a bird's eye view of my cap cover,
because I'm sure he was 7' 6" tall.
'You have dust in the welts of your boots, go back and
clean them properly.'
My father's pride at that moment knew no bounds, my
mother shed some more tears and I was completely
humiliated. I have said that after three weeks we were
completely streetwise, we had ways and means for all situations.
For this one I went back to my barrack room, sat
on the bed for ten minutes then walked back again.
'Why didn't you clean them like that the first time,
laddie?'
In those halcyon pre-World War Two days, I'm sure
that was the way of the Royal Marines, more so with the
recruits: they endeavoured to break your spirit and then
proceeded to build you up to what they wanted – sheer
blind obedience. It worked, unless you were as cunning as
us boys who had nothing to break down in the first place.
Sunday, November 14, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Strictly Come Dancing 2010, Ann Widdecombe and knitting gloves.
The nation is divided, debate rages in the Guardian and I think it's time I declared and said it publicly
"Ann Widdecombe we love you chez dovegrey."
There, it's out and now perhaps I'll duck for there are sure to be stiletto heels at my throat or someone will try to smother me with a Paso Doble cloak , but I care not a wit and Esther Rantzen agrees with me
My apologies, this will mean nothing to anyone who doesn't follow the programme, and may seem ridiculous when we should be worrying about the polar ice cap melting and things, and my support is probably the work of the devil to any serious Strictly fans out there who will all be renting their sequins asunder, however I can but hope that cries for Ann to resign from Strictly are falling on deaf ears. It's obvious that the nation is sending a big message with the weekly phone vote and keeping her in the show for a reason, and we are all busy telling her as much on Facebook, because the criticism has indeed been cruel and unkind...all water off the proverbial to Ann and you can read a very revealing interview with her here
"One of the many canny things about Widdy is that, whatever unkind descriptions her critics come up with, she has already trumped them. She once said of herself: "I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell?"
At the first training session with her partner and dancing instructor, Anton Du Beke, she caught sight of them in a mirror. "He looked like a Greek athlete," she reflects warmly. "And here was me like a sack of potatoes. It was hysterical."
Ann Widdecombe for many years an MP, a trustworthy and serious politician of great integrity and one of the few I knew would come out of the expenses debacle unblemished. Now in her 60s and retired, very traditionally built and thus not benefiting from the best physique for a dancer, but there are local connections and Devon supports its own. Ann has continued to dance despite serious illness last summer and the recent death of her brother, and she and her professional partner Anton du Beke are training in Newton Abbot near to Ann's Dartmoor home. There have been regular Ann & Anton sightings, not least a friend of mine who sat next to them in a coffee shop and is still cherishing the hand that Anton brushed accidentally as she then passed him the requested demerara.
We all pay our licence fee so are entitled to get what we require from our TV viewing and for us it's the hilarity and reality Ann brings to this spray-tan-glitter-fest each week (the programme hilarious in its own right.) Just five minutes of it in amongst an hour of proper cavorting, no harm done, no one has died (yet) other than of laughter. Might Ann's steely determination to enjoy what she is doing whilst not being phased by the surrounding bevvy of scantily-clad nymphs, plus her weekly repartee with the judges doubtless honed to perfection in the House of Commons, all actually be feeding into our current state of imposed national gloom and doom and giving us just the smile we need?
More jobs losses, more cuts in services, more misery promised and now student riots ... but at least Ann's still in Strictly we chime as we listen to the news, bring on the final and the show dance we say.
Of course for many it's excruciating and adding to their gloom, but for the rest of us it's a glimmer of entertainment of the highest order and hats off to Anton for being such a sport too; but perhaps more importantly it's someone saying if I can do this you can actually do anything. Personally I have nothing but admiration for the courage of a life-long single woman with a bosom that she herself calls her "upper circumference" for putting herself through it in a sort of graceful, court jester style and to her own set of rules, my back would have gone weeks ago.
And is it just me or is Ann looking a little more radiant each week?
So to assist with the tension (because a slough of despond beckons if Ann and Anton go) I have to knit like the blazes, tricoteuse-au-guillotine style, and this last few weeks that has been mostly fingerless gwubs...or gloves to the rest of the world, but gwubs here. Having turned many-a sock heel I thought it was time to move on around the available limbs and look at hands, at least master the art of the thumb, if not fingers eventually, but best not to be too ambitious. After a large number of false starts, there was much hacking around of different patterns off Ravelry before eventually coming up with a fingerless glove pattern that worked for me. I've also been a little ambitious and done the cables, which I have never really done before but thought that was another challenge to be met.
The timeline equation for the production of the first glove went something like this...
One episode of Strictly + one episode of Downton Abbey = glove succesfully knitted as far as thumb + one episode of Spooks = unpick a lot + one more episode of Strictly + Edwardian Farm = one glove.
Is anyone else watching The Edwardian Farm?
Filmed very near us here in the Tamar Valley last year, so we can't wait to see how they cope with the freezing temperatures and the snow.
But back to the gwubs and I have to tell you about a radical and life-changing discovery, though before I do that here's that first glove complete with all imperfections.
Now you may notice it sits alone and un-twinned, that's because I felt sure I had a whole skein of the beautifully soft Noro Kochoran wool stashed away, when I fact I haven't because I had forgotten that I'd knitted these.
I nipped over to Becs Clayton's gorgeous wool shop at Launceston just to look at the wool, because obviously I now need to be choosing wool for its glove-potential rather than its sock-potential, and there they were, some little friends who have transformed my glove-knitting life and things have speeded up no end... very short needles.
Once I got the hang of knitting un-peasant style, ie with no needle wedged on my stomach, I was away and have now managed one prototype pair of gloves which have gone off to Offspringette for rigorous trials. They came out different sizes, the cables are wonky because I lost track of in front or behind, something funny went on around the thumb on one of them but she loves them. Now I'm onto the more perfect pair in the left-over baby llama wool of which I have plenty.Thumbs surprisingly simple to do, if anyone's been frightened by the thought of a thumb all I can say is don't be, it sort of made itself.
So all a bit like Ann really, far from perfect but trying my best and I know at least one person who is enjoying the fruits of my endeavours.
Just My Type ~ Simon Garfield
I have never really paid much attention to the font that I use for writing here.
Typepad gives me a list of available ones and I think I chose whatever I did probably just because it was there, however for the purposes of writing about Just My Type - A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, I have felt obliged to see what else is available because apparently your choice of font will say a great deal about you and I'm amazed at the choice.
So I'm just warning you, writing in Comic Sans, the typeface of ridicule, that this may well be the messiest blog post ever written on here.
Bookhound, having trained as a graphic designer back in the 1970s and loved all the printing aspects of the training is a real lover of the old-fashioned printing press. Caxton had an anniversary whilst he was doing the course so it was a good excuse to resurrect the old methods and he bought me these letters years ago which have sat on my desk ever since.
It's been interesting to handle and hold these weighty letters as I've read this book, and pondered all the intricacies of typesetting then versus now. I have distant memories of a primary school trip to a newspaper and us all coming away with our names cast in metal, which had us all scurrying home to our John Bull printing sets with renewed enthusiasm.
Remember the tiny rubber letters and the tweezers and the hours you'd spend thinking you'd got it all the right way round when in fact it was back-to-front?
And then the excitement surrounding the friend who was lucky enough to have a Dymo machine?
Imagine having a Dymo machine of your own in those days, it seemed like the pinnacle of decent gifts when I was nine, on a par with an Etch-a-Sketch if I have to make comparisons, and how I treasured my name stamped out on the blue plastic.
I'm quite liking this Helvetica, or perhaps I'll swap to Andale Mono, or Book Antiqua, Courier New, Impact, Symbol, Terminal, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Webdings, Wingdings... in fact who knew that Typepad had been so generous with their selection since I last looked.
Now I'm in a complete mess and can't think where I started, so perhaps I'll go to Georgia which Offspringette always assured me was the font of choice for essay writing, apparently guaranteed to put the marker in a good mood and according to Simon Garfield the most legible and adaptable screen font.
And so here's another non-fiction book, seemingly of little interest which has had... oh no I'm sorry, I'm not liking this Georgia at all... hang on a minute... let's go back to Helvetica, 1957, Swiss, clean, practical and sans serif... serifs the joining bits that lead the eye from one letter to the next, apparently a bit of a cult and Helvetica absolutely everywhere you look, almost impossible to avoid on the signage out there and fulfils all the demands of a modern typeface.
I'm going to head into Comic Sans for a minute because apparently that's the font that has gone wrong, the one not to be seen using if you want to be taken seriously. Designed with strict intentions 'by a man with a solid philosophical grounding in graphic arts' and now the subject of much hate and loathing.
You can't take anything seriously if its written in Comic Sans.
So where was I?
Yes, fonts, how about Courier New,designed to resemble an old-fashioned typewriter,
'the effect amuses for a limited time, leaving cumbersome words that are difficult to read and lack emotion'
and I can see that clearly now, wouldn't work here at all.
Then there's good old faithful Times Roman, the fall-back font, far too familiar.
Tahoma, quite a favourite of mine and bears the seal of approval having been designed by the master of typeface design, Matthew Carter, highly respected in the trade and the man who understood that typefaces were an important matter of taste and preference.
So in the same way that a book about Charles Linbergh and the history of American aviation seemed to hold no allure for this reader and yet proved to be one of my most interesting reads in ages, how incredible that I should find a book about fonts equally fascinating.
I do have very fond memories of Bookhound slaving over the Letraset on his projects. Those sheets of transferable letters that had to be carefully rubbed onto the page with a special smoothing tool, and that was how it was done, very laboriously until the advent of the computer.
And Simon Garfield (Trebuchet) led me through this fascinating and largely unknown world, as if removing a blindfold. Who knew how complicated all this was, or the effort that goes into creating a typeface that will speak for itself. Forgive the pun but a good sign should be something you take as read, should speak silently, anonymously and unnoticed in order to take you where you want to go.
Well until I read this book that's exactly what a sign had always done.
And who knew (we're in Verdana now) that there was a typeface called Doves, created by Edward Prince who had worked for William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. A quirky little number with its 'y' that descends without a curl, the ligature connecting the 'c' and the 't', and that offset bottom bowl of the 'g'. Owned by the Doves Press and considered to be a very beautiful type, the type (all the metalwork) was the subject of some dispute when the company was dissolved in 1908. An agreement was drawn up between the partners; Mr Cobden-Sanderson would own it until his death when it would pass to Mr Walker. Except Mr C-S had second thoughts and couldn't bear the thought of this apparently very beautiful type being used for inappropriate subject matter, so, over a period of three years and one hundred trips later, this frail man in his seventies had thrown the whole weighty lot off Hammersmith Bridge, parcel by parcel, into the mud of the River Thames where it is assumed to have lain ever since.
And that just one of many (Arial) fascinating anecdotes in Just My Type. Such a clever subject for a book and one I have really enjoyed but just beware, you will never ever think any sign is ordinary ever again and be it on your own head if you use Comic Sans for anything at all.
Friday, November 12, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (28)
At the eleventh hour...
I thought we'd have a quiet post for today, a sort of virtual silence with the merest whisper of a heartfelt poem from
Edward Thomas,
Killed in action at the Battle of Arras in 1917.
Edward Thomas has my poetry heart at the moment and I am finding it hard to imagine quite what such a gentle, nature-loving soul made of trench warfare.
So I'm reading his wife Helen's book Under Storm's Wing to get a clearer picture of Edward Thomas
the man, the husband and the father.
All is never as you expect and I sense it was Helen who made many sacrifices to enable her man to be the man he was and the one that we think we know.
And I think Edward Thomas knew that too.
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
Dig out the glad-rags we're off to the Nibbies...
Well sort of by proxy.
It's a while since we've been to a sparkly-glam book awards party on here, so I'm very grateful to Justine Picardie who will be tucking us all into her pocket and taking us along to tonight's Galaxy National Book Awards, fondly known as the Nibbies.
Justine's biography of Coco Chanel has been shortlisted in the Tesco Biography of the Year section and Coco is up against some interesting competition...Tony Blair and Alan Sugar for a start.
Can't you just imagine Coco in Lord Sugar's "Apprentice" board room...
In walks Lord Sugar... "What's that b&%*$£ awful smell in 'ere...'
Coco fixes her steely gaze on him, whilst her team (especially Alex) delicately bathe her in wafts of No5 in homage as Karren Brady announces with deadpan face that Coco's team have stormed home in the task with a profit of £50 million.
Nick Hewer seductively purses his lips in that way he does... as if about to kiss someone, but sadly Coco's on the other side of the table.
Coco is oblivious to Nick's veiled entreaties, after all he has nothing of the dash of Boy Capel about him. She points her beautifully manicured finger imperiously back at Lord Shugs across the table before uttering the words...
'Non mon ami...you are fired.'
Finally Madame has her revenge on the moneyed classes who used her so ill.
Sorry...where was I?
Yes, my heart will be in my mouth for Justine and I'm sending her many good luck wishes because, as you can probably tell, I'd love Coco to beat off all-comers and storm home with a Nibbie.
Tony Who?
Whatever happens Justine has kindly agreed to write about the evening's glitz and glamour for us as she rubs shoulders with the literati in all their gliterati, so perhaps get out your Manolo Blahniks in readiness...oh no hang it all, let's just go in our slippers shall we?
Talking of prizes and books written about here, I am also really delighted that a book which impressed me enormously The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was awarded the Wellcome Trust Book Prize last night.
"The £25,000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. It brings together the worlds of medicine and literature, appealing to literature lovers and science enthusiasts...."
and chair of the judges, Clive Anderson's verdict,
"This is an engaging account of the life of Henrietta Lacks who died in Baltimore nearly 60 years ago and the immortal life of her cancer cells which continue to replicate in research laboratories around the world to this day. There are several stories to be told: the changing attitudes and ethics of the medical profession, the economics of health care and the successes and slip ups of modern scientific methods. In addition the book reveals the human story of Henrietta Lacks' family who the author got to know in the course of her extensive research. A worthy winner of a prize designed to honour fine writing on a medical theme."
Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust Book Prize added:
"It's wonderful that the prize has been awarded to a book that was such a labour of love for its author. Rebecca Skloot's work absolutely meets the objective of this prize. It has something of everything - a compelling science story, an emotional personal story and intriguing ethical dilemmas - and all woven together and written with great style. Congratulations!"
You see nice things do happen to really good books.
Team Tolstoy :: " Evewy bullet has its billet..." (Troika Stop Two)
"Every bullet has its billet" according to Denisov though shouldn't that really be "evewy" and we can only be gwateful he didn't have to talk about wifles or cawtwidges.
So which battle was that then?
Or was it just a minor skirmish unworthy of a name?
I've read as far as Chapter 21 and the end of Part Two and feel quite please to have survived the first battle. I suppose it could have been much worse, in fact doubtless it will be before we're done, and at least Count Nikolai Rostov seems to have survived that contretemps with the enemy.
Poor Nikolai, fired with courage and then splat in the mud.
How did you all get on in the heat of strife?
I tried to keep you all in my sights but I think we may have been flung asunder once that flanking thing happened.
I'll admit to getting a little tangled in battle strategy whilst trying to keep sight of old friends and meet a few new ones and couldn't help but think here was Tolstoy telling like it was, as he may have witnessed it first hand in the Crimean War.
I thought this section did get off to a great start with the episode of the 'Wrong Coats' and the smart regiment that was actually required to look dishevelled, which had me lulled into a false sense of perhaps more Tolstoy humour to come, when in fact he quickly knuckled down to the serious business of war to balance the peace we had been enjoying. But he does thread in the humour, unless that is we're not supposed to laugh at speech defects and the widiculous ministwations and declawations of Vaska Denisov, witness to Nikolai's fears,
'At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other stretchers came in view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation....
'Well, fweind? So you've smelt powdah?...'
I was mindful of all those plaudits heaped on Tolstoy for War and Peace, including his ability to hover over the action one minute whilst quickly swooping into the minds of his characters the next, and without missing a beat, and that much became evident as I read. It is also well known that Tolstoy wanted to somehow convey the lived truth about history rather than some distorted fictional fabrication sanitised by the academics, and his methods for achieving this are already becoming clear.
Orlando Figes (in his afterword to the Penguin-Briggs edition) flags up the way that history creates that distortion, with battle outcomes attributed to commanders rather than 'the random acts of the rank and file' and Tolstoy is clearly countering that approach with episodes various in this section. I'm thinking in particular about the bravery of Tushin and his men and Dolokhov's insistence that he is recognised and remembered for his bravery when all seemed lost.
Prince Andrei is a quickly changed man it would seem,
'Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrei left Russia, he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former affected langour and indolence. He now looked like a man who has no time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with agreeable and interesting work...'
I felt for Andrei's excitement at sharing the news of the battle, swiftly followed by his crestfallen mood when it was received with that less than immediate sense of gladness he had anticipated.
So I'm feeling 'in' the loop, involved, interested and immersed in the book already, sticking with my 'read in one chunk' approach if I possibly can, which has thus far involved two afternoons in front of a very welcome fire.
I'm still reading the Maude's translation and occasionally comparing it with the Briggs which is the only other one I have, but I was also intrigued enough to look up some background to Aylmer and Louise Maude.To my surprise I discover they were both born in the 1850s and lived into the 1930s and knew Tolstoy as a friend and correspondent, and something else is becoming clear too.
I'm reading Russian-born Irene Nemirovksy again at the moment and had never quite understood what critics meant when they said of Suite Francaise, that she would have been the 'next Tolstoy'.
With her ability to hover above the theatre of conflict whilst descending into the minds of her characters at will, and perhaps dare I say it... Irene even a little more astute for writing whilst in the very midst of the turmoil, without the advantage of historical perspective, nor the time and space to reflect on events or know of eventual outcomes, and all whilst feeling so seriously compromised by such a life-threatening situation.
And something also chimes in the way that Irene wrote by hand, all to be so diligently transcribed by her daughter so many years later,
because I'm also still feeling the love for poor Sonia handwriting War and Peace seven times from this...
Perhaps someone can tell me... are we in effect reading a Leo-Sonia joint effort?
Or is it a naive and heinous crime to even suggest such a thing?
Because I can't believe she didn't reconstruct the odd sentence here and there with a quick *tsk* about his spilt infinitives or something, or even added or subtracted a bit here and there... too much gore Leo...let's have a bit more emotion here.
Have translators gone back to Tolstoy's original manuscripts?
So that's enough from me, over to you Team Tolstoy, and I'm really excited to hear what you are making of War & Peace so far. I expect you will all have noticed much more than I have so I'll get the samovar hissing while you jot down your thoughts and I'll go and see if the Pelmeni are ready, yes we're having Siberian dumplings today.
For December 9th 2010 :: Book One - Part Three
A little light history
I thought we'd have ouwselves a welaxing day today because of couwse it's Team Tolstoy tomowow and if you've wead this month's chapters you'll know who I'm thinking of, and it's not Jonathan Woss.
I think I may have mentioned to just about anyone who will listen that I've read and very much enjoyed the biography of Edith Cavell and therin discovered a very interesting local snippet.
In 1901 or thereabouts, Edith Cavell applied for the post of Matron of Tavistock Hospital.
Now the consensus is that this was our Tavistock Hospital and, even if not, my imagination has already run away on a frolic of its own
Sadly for the town's history, and what would have been a good excuse for another statue that isn't Francis Drake or the Duke of Bedford, to say nothing of interesting road names like Cavell Close and Edith Lane, Edith's application to run our hospital was unsuccessful.
This is Tavistock Hospital now and it all piqued my interest in the history of the town's cottage hospital about which I knew very little despite having worked there, so it was off to the local library to find out more. Luckily the library has a really informative local history section and a complete file of cuttings and articles about the hospital including evidence of a medieval leper hospital thought to have been somewhere beneath what is now the Spar shop.
Browsing the file was fascinating and it's often the incidentals that can reveal the interesting details and the little nuances of social history that give such a wonderful picture of life back then... and how might the path of Edith Cavell's life have differed if she had secured the post of Matron at our little cottage hospital?
Would Belgium and the idea of war service and her ambitions to establish a nurse training school have been quite so urgent had she been settled in Devon, rather than filling a rigorous and exhausting permanent night sister post at the St Pancras Infirmary, located near Highgate Cemetery in London, for want of anything else?
One in five of the admissions would die, and many of those deaths would be from the complications of city living with squalid sanitation leading to infection, and fog-induced respiratory disorders prevailing.
I'm not sure what may have prevailed in Tavistock at the time, rural living probably just as perilous but in different ways ...charging bulls and farm accidents probably.
But in 1923, in order to raise £500 towards the cost of the new Tavistock hospital building there were all manner of community events.
The Royal Marines Band came from Plymouth and gave a concert in the market to 2,500 people and in the arcades around there was a miniature fat-stock show (Tavistock doesn't need much of an excuse to hold one of those) and competitions various run by residents various...
Throwing coins with Messrs Williams & Stenlake
Bran Pie with Messrs Wilmot and Weeks
Hoop-La with Mr Ash
All very enterprising because any gifts won were given back and auctioned for the fund, whilst Matron ran a competition to guess the final total raised, alongside Sister Friend who ran a competition to guess the number of people who paid for admittance.
Nothing like milking the event to the maximum.
But then there was the Draw and this was no ordinary draw with perhaps a dozen or so prizes, heavens they could teach us a thing or two because there were hundreds of prizes, twenty-six column inches of tiny printed details giving names, addresses and items own. I've left out the addresses as they will only be of interest to those who live here, but if you do live here you too may wonder as I did how Mr Muzzlewhite of Brook St or Mr Mitchell of Parkwood Rd or Miss Madaver of Bannawell St fared with their prizes.
And then my imagination ran riot with the others...
Let's hope Mr Maunder's cakes looked nice on his prize
and Mr May had a friend to pass his on to
and then there's Mr Goodman doubtless thrilled to be kept in sandwiches for about a year,
and I wonder who Nurse Hosking took with her
and I expect Miss Hillyar had herself a rare old time,
and thank goodness Mr Muzzlewhite had something to hold his trousers up with while he ran after his other prize,
and I hope to goodness Mrs Titcombe's teeth were up to it
and Mrs Gale must have been thrilled and...
oh I'll let you imagine for yourself...
Col Coleridge 5 cwt of coal
A.Down 4 doz eggs
G. Shellabear a lamb
Col Coleridge a silver pickle fork
Mr Muzzlewhite a cockerel
Miss Hillyar 1 doz Guiness
B.Bailey a goose
W.F.Brown one dozen photographs of yourself
Mrs Gawman a box of cigars
Col Coleridge 2lbs of tea
W.Maunder 2 D'Oyleys
George Giles 2 ducks
Mrs Gale an "EverSharp" pencil
Mrs Titcombe a 4lb tin of toffee
Mrs Cornish a hen and 6 chicks
Mr Muzzlewhite a pair of braces
Mr May a ladies camisole
Mr Woodward one week's washing up to 10/-
Nurse Hosking 2 cinema tickets
Miss Maddaver a gander
Mr Goodman a 6lb tin of corned beef
Rev Peacock 2 fowls
Mr Mitchell a pig
Mr Ball a pair of ladies silk stockings
Two years later in 1925 an £8000 extension scheme was announced for the hospital which would have meant an awful lot of prize draws and hoop-la throwing, so thank goodness the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, in attendance at the public meeting to discuss the plans, started the ball rolling with a donation of £25.
Mr Alger apologised to her Ladyship for the smallness of the meeting but it was a market day.
Apologies were sent from Mr Sperling who promised £5 towards the scheme and from Mrs Rowe who hoped they would have a good time.
To Monk's House, Rodmell...
I am very grateful to Fran, a regular visitor here who having given me the wonderful little book Bloomsbury in Sussex, then undertook the pilgrimage across to Monk's House in the village of Rodmell to furnish me with the photographs. Monk's House, the Sussex home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf and now a National Trust property.
The photos have been a pure pleasure for me to look at after reading about the house, and my thanks to Fran for letting us all share them and I've added in some quotes from Simon Watney's excellent little book.
"A home, an office and a place of work, and never conventionally comfortable, it was a house of 'ramshackle informality'..."
Badly neglected when the Woolf's purchased it in July 1919 for £700, according to a September entry in Virginia's diary 'Monk's House much improved 'after the fashion of a mongrel who wins your heart...'
'An unpretending house, long & low, a house of many doors; on one side fronting the street of Rodmell, & wood boarded on that side...'
Whilst Virginia decorated inside, Leonard's domain was the garden.
"In 1927 she was painting another room blue, and wrote instructing Vanessa only half mock-complainingly:
'For God's sake take up the making of wallpapers. I'm sick of the long monotony of distemper, besides which, when dry it is totally different from what one expects.' "
Leonard would make the coffee at eight o'clock every morning and take it out to Virginia's bedroom, entered from the garden, where she ' had always been working through the night.'
"They lived frugally, spending little on clothes or luxuries. They bought books but were not serious collectors..."
Fireplaces were commissioned from Vanessa though Virginia took a while 'getting attached' to them thinking that 'perhaps the proportions are wrong.'
In the winter of 1934 she had a new free-standing wooden studio built away from the house at the churchyard end of the garden...
"This was Virginia's lodge from which she wrote in the summer months and from which she reported in the hot August of of 1937 that the Downs appeared 'the colour of lions,' "
"Leonard buried her ashes under a tall elm overlooking the meadows, one of two trees they had nicknamed after themselves. The tree fell in 1943."
On a low brick wall are the scuptured heads and plaques which mark the new resting place of the Woolf's ashes, placed there by Trekkie Parsons close friend to Leonard Woolf after Virginia's death.
"Beneath this tree are buried the ashes of
Born January 25th 1882
Died March 28th 1941
Death is the enemy. Against you I fling myself unvanquished
and unyielding- O Death!
The waves broke on the shore."
A turn up for the books...
Bit of excitement here.
I had been keeping half an eye on proceedings with regard to World Book Night to be held on 5th March 2011, (two days after World Book Day,) when it is planned that a million books will be given away across the UK by an army of 20,000 passionate readers.
If you fancy being one of those givers you can get involved here.
The book give away will comprise of 40,000 copies of 25 selected titles.
Keeping half an eye because there seemed to be a lot of vociferous rumbling around the social media about what a pointless and terrible idea it was and how dreadful this would be for the book trade.
All that seemed to be drowning out any suggestions about how fantastic it might be for the givers and the recipients of the books, to say nothing of the media focus scheduled for that evening... in living memory I don't recall the BBC turning over a night of TV coverage to book-related programming, but that's the plan.
For us readers what's not to love, for the chosen authors what's not to love and for booksellers for all the enthusiasm that could be generated for books and reading.
So what's the excitement here then?
Well I have been asked to be on the World Book Night Editorial Commitee to be chaired by James Naughtie and convening in London very soon to select the 25 titles which are to be announced on December 2nd 2010.
So not only is that a turn up for the books, but I will be turning up for the books and very delighted I am to have been asked.
I'm sure there will be some virtual 'brickbats' flying around from the disgruntled, but equally I hope the occasional virtual 'bouquet' because I have been giving it all a great deal of thought since I was asked and before I agreed.
I can't help it, I'm a book Tigger who would press that book on you in the street if we met, and as you know living in the middle of nowhere...not a street in sight, so I've been doing it in that virtual way here at dovegreyreader for the last four and a half years.
What could be more exciting than to actually place a much-loved and recommended book into someone else's hands and say 'I would really love you to read this...' so I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to be involved with the real thing.
Thinking caps on everyone...
We have a book mystery to solve...
Dear Dovegreyreader,
About 30 years ago I read a short story (it was more like a novelette, as it had chapters in it) which made a deep impact on me. The story was set during WW2 on the west coast of Scotland. The two main characters were on leave and it describes their swimming (were they in an accident or swimming from one island to another? I can't remember) and coming to a shore on Isle of Jura. This place was a respite from the trauma of war - it creates wonderful images of the wooded shore and the deer and the quiet of being alone in nature. I remember being thrilled when I read it; it was so beautifully written, so evocative and felt so rare. It made me fall in love with Jura and eventually visit it myself.
I think it was published by someone like Penguin as I can remember the size and feel of the book, and this story was first in a book of other short stories. I am sure it was written by a woman author maybe in the 40's or 50's, but I can't remember who. I've looked into George Orwell (who lived there and wrote a short story called Night Swimming, but I can't believe he could have written something so intimate), Rebecca West, even Stevie Smith who was a friend of Orwell's. Maybe though it was a more obscure woman author.
It's led me on a trail of seeking, but I've yet to find someone else who has read it. This is why after reading your blog I am contacting you, hoping that you have!
A volte-face...
I can't deny that back in 1974, and halfway through my student nurse training at Gt Ormond Street Children's Hospital in the heart of Bloomsbury, I wasn't bitterly disappointed to discover that the expected secondment for the year's State Registered Nurse training sandwiched into our Registered Sick Children's Nurse course was to be at the London Hospital in Whitechapel and not, as we had been led to believe, Addenbrookes in Cambridge.
Not that the two other choices held that much allure either, with apologies to Watford General and the Hammersmith.
I'd always fancied a taste of the Cambridge life and a bit of punting on the Cam, even if it was as a nurse rather than a university student, but any pleadings were to no avail. With hopes of getting out of the city dashed, and defeated by the cost of rent and transport, we gave up our flat next to Haringey Dog Stadium, and my friend Wiz (later my bridesmaid and probably reading this and laughing) and I moved into the most dire and depressed looking nurses home known to mankind (second only to the one attached to GOS in Guilford Street that is, where it was common to find pigeons nesting under your bed if you left the window open) in the heart of London's East End.
This was the mid-1970s, we would be slum-dwellers, the Monopoly board told us as much.
Cavell Home in East Mount Street.
Despite the blurred result of this Kodak Instamatic picture, (taken on the bridge that crossed from Cavell Home into the hospital so you didn't actually have to risk setting foot in the East End in uniform,) I think it's still as plain as a pike staff that despite those nice flared jeans I wasn't impressed...
Cavell Home was dark and forbidding and when I pitched up with my luggage including a trunk now full of books, and porters bursting a blood vessel getting them up the steps, you could almost see the ancient cage lift shudder at the mere thought of what was ahead. The rooms were tiny, you had to trek miles to the bathroom and your washing was always getting pinched, plus needs must, we were going to have to nurse moany old grown-ups, instead of sweet and lovely little babies.
We were going to have to whisper on night duty for fear of waking them up when we had been used to having the radio on in SCBU.
We were going to have lift twenty-five stone people in and out of bed, not cradle and smile at 3lb babies in our arms.
No more reading children bedtime stories before you went off to supper on a late shift.
Grown-ups did unexpected things like have heart attacks and embolisms when you least expected it and you still couldn't run.
Women seemed to want bedpans and cups of tea and bedpans and Horlicks again and again in an endless 24/7 cycle.
No more sweet little cots and pink or blue counterpanes with nursery rhymes on them, instead thirty great big beds to strip, change and remake every morning, big heavy mattresses and a thing called a 'donkey', a sandbag wrapped in a sheet, that you placed strategically in front of a patient's feet to stop them sliding down the bed...which admittedly did save you the trouble of constantly having to lift them back up the bed.
And then three months of night duty in Casualty pumping out stomachs ...always cabbage ...always carrots ...sorry but true.
There were small advantages of course, like Mens Surgical and medical students, and cheap stereos and black and white TVs out on the market stalls but there's no denying it, we were unsettled and perhaps it was all blighted the more for me with the death of my brother halfway through the year.
Worse were the draconian Cavell Home rules and regulations imposed on us after the freedom of our Haringey pad, a watchful warden who ensured we signed in any male visitors and signed them out again by 10pm. But I guess at least we felt safe because after all we had all been brought up to know this as Kray and Ripper territory, brown end of the Monopoly board just past 'Go' and definitely not the bit of London you traversed voluntarily, let alone lived in.
How times have changed.
It was clear when we set foot in the London that we were working in a hospital laden with a tradition and history to match that of Gt Ormond St, but could we haven given a fig for it and who was Edith Cavell anyway?
Shot during the First World War, Anna Neagle in the film?
No, we were homesick for what we now realised was the light and joy of the Alma Mater and if discipline could have been stricter anywhere than Gt Ormond Street it was here at the London, where the ward sisters were called by the name of their ward as if they had entered a sort of marriage contract with it, and we appeared having been thrust upon them to throw the orderly betrothal into chaos, cast the two asunder and unplight the troth with our ineptitude....sorry, I had to run with that image for a minute there.
Sister Paulin would hold morning prayers (as if calling on all the help she could muster to cope with us) in the bit of the ward called The Big End, clutching the wooden prayer board, akin to an outsized table-tennis bat, with the London Hospital prayer inscribed on it.
Here's Sister Paulin's Big End in the 1930s, little had changed by the 1970s.
I watched Sister Paulin and that prayer board for eight weeks and by the end of that time had mastered the little cross-thumbed way she held it, niftily doing a sign of the cross with said thumbs and all without dropping the board, and all to a ward full of Jewish patients.
The London Hospital nurses wore uniforms incorporating vast acres of lilac check fabric all gathered in most unflatteringly at the waist, so even if you had no hips you didn't stand an earthly, leg of mutton sleeves that blessed you with bingo wings regardless, and dresses which almost touched the floor, all in stark contrast to our rather skimpy pink and white stripes.
But we all muddled along, frequently incurring the wrath but they tolerated us, and we made the best of it and I mustn't grumble because I did meet Bookhound there, so we stuck out our year before returning 'home' for our final year's training.
So that's how I've felt about all that for ...hmm... thirty-five years or so now, hard hard work, essential training, occasionally exciting (the famous ballet dancer who Sir Anton Dolin came to visit and Dame Margot sent flowers, or the day Evel Knievel was brought in after didn't make it over the buses at Wembley Stadium) and I'm wondering if it's too late to take all that slight sense of unimpressed disenchantment with the London back?
Is my fifty-something self allowed to do a bit of a U-turn on the twenty-one year old me?
Do a complete volte-face?
Best do it publicly and get it over with in that case.
Because having just finished Edith Cavell by Diana Souhami, how immensely proud I now feel to have unwittingly walked in London Hospital-trained Edith Cavell's footsteps.
I'll be sharing my thoughts about the book very soon, but it's a long time since I have read a biography which has moved me quite as much as this one, and how impossibly hard I found it to read through to an ending that is barely imaginable and one that had been least expected by everyone at the time including Edith herself.
Cavell Home was being built during the First World War (I knew it, you could tell ) financed from a fund raised by the Daily Mirror , and following the execution on October 12th 1915 of Edith Cavell by German occupying forces in Belgium, Queen Alexandra requested that the name be changed from the Queen Alexandra to the Cavell Home, which it was.
Strange how little my callow self appreciated these things at the time, and how refreshing to discover that age and a book can inform and impose a different order on a period of my life I thought I knew so well.
Better late than etc.
Corduroy ~ Adrian Bell
Corduroy by Adrian Bell may yet prove to be one of the gentlest and happiest books I have read this year. I've been reading the Faber Finds edition but the book has known several incarnations since it was first published in 1930.
Set in the early 1920s I can think of no better book to counter the infidelities of the early twenty-first century with its daily dose of misery. That misery currently being administered to us through gritted teeth with news of recession and swingeing cuts, spending reviews and unemployment, and how overwhelming it can all feel at times.
I say infidelities which is probably being a bit over-dramatic given that I am also reading Diana Souhami's excellent biography of Edith Cavell and am finding myself reeling from some of the bald facts and figures about the Great War.
It's well-known that ten million men died in that war but how many horses do you think died ?
I thought perhaps in the tens of thousands which seemed carnage enough, and so was stopped in my tracks to discover it was about eight million.
And before anyone mentions it...yes, I have finally booked to see War Horse next time I'm in London.
So perhaps that helps gain some rational perspective on what we are living through now here in the UK, and why sometimes a bout of good old-fashioned nostalgia does the trick here.
Of course I know life would not have been 'better' then.
These were the years immediately following the Great War, a nation swamped by grief, no antibiotics, death by influenza if not the trenches and I'd be the first to moan without my washing machine but this was an era when taking a pride in the land was treated with respect, and everyone from the postie to the blacksmith farmed their acre of land just to be a part of that community of growers and harvesters.
Actually I wonder if that's making a comeback? Allotments and Grow-Your-Own now more popular than ever.
Adrian Bell 1901-1980, Uppingham School educated, too young for the Great War, too old for the Second World War found himself 'flying from the threat of an office life' in 1920 and heading to Suffolk at the behest of his father, the news editor of the Observer who rather scoffed at the idea of his son becoming a writer with his assertion that
'the desire to write on the young was but a manifestation of the sexual impulse.'
Equally scathing about the university life for his son,
' the citadels of the privileged and the playgrounds of the rich..'
I am assuming that a young Adrian would have been following Old Uppinghamians Edward Brittain and Roland Leighton of Testament of Youth fame up through the school.
Adrian Bell is apprenticed to farmer Vic Savage on his farm in Weston Colville near Bury St Edmunds. It is a callow but hard-working youth who arrives on his motorbike and with so much to learn, having begged his father to at least let him live the outdoor life. Here he was to get the best agricultural education available, as his son the journalist Martin Bell suggests in his introduction 'on a well-run working farm' that eventually enabled him to run a farm of his own.
These were the days when the farmer's wife kept house on the money she earned from the chickens, the eggs and the butter.
When Sunday observance was paramount, smart clothes, church attendance, no deals done, a lunch gathering followed by a siesta and then the traditional 'walk round' the farm.
When the colours spoke to the richness and depth of the surroundings,
' The colours of his clothes and of the things he handles echo one another; his corduroy and the Suffolk horse he drives, his handkerchief and his plough-beam. With red-blue shirt and necktie he rides out to the harvest field in a wagon the colour of the sky. His face, too, contributes a tone, and his copper-coloured arms...'
When knowledge about the weather was primeval and instinctive... we have a go at that here, but only along the lines of when the hill over there disappears we have ten minutes to get the washing in.
None of the farms around us here have milking herds any more, which seems like a crime in rural Devon, but we were surrounded by them when we moved here sixteen years ago and there was much I could identify with as I read Adrian Bell's account of trying to persuade a languid herd of contented cows to stir themselves and walk in for milking.
You could set your watch by the farmer's shouts here too and the cows would always be right down by our garden gate leading into Rocky's Field, as far from the shouting as possible and the poor farmer would almost be on top of them before they'd budge. Wonderful to sit and watch too, it's impossible not to feel calm and tranquil when gazing at a grazing dairy herd, all that lazy chewing and tail swishing. Not a bit like the hyper-active young bullocks we get in the field now who all seem to have ADHD, and charge at the fence the minute they spot you. It's as if they know they'll be on a polystyrene tray in Tesco's any minute so best make the most of it and have the field sheared to a crew cut in hours.
Plenty more recounted in Corduroy that still goes on around us here and all in that timeless harmony with the seasons experienced by Adrian Bell in the 1920s. I am suddenly mindful that the family who worked the farm that surrounds us here then lost all three sons in the Great War.
We often think about that as we walk Rocky's Field behind the house, a field that those boys must have known so well and paths that were doubtless walked by their grief-stricken parents too.
We have emerged from harvesting and are now into the shoot season here in the Tamar Valley, so my thoughts whilst reading naturally turned to our own family Gamekeeper walking those same nearby fields and woodland. Twenty-five years-old, his first season as a Head Keeper and happily working from dawn until dusk every single day since he started the job in February. He's often back out in the darkness too... with apologies to all animal-lovers, a fox only gets one chance to kill fifty of his pheasants and Adrian Bell would have understood that too, as would the farmer's wife with her chickens.
Then there's the easy familiarity of the market town that Adrian Bell describes so accurately.
Where you can sometimes be on a stately progress along the street for hours as you stop and chat to everyone you know. Though you do have to seek out the cattle market in Tavistock, the auctioneers voice can still be heard echoing across the town on market day. Traditions that somehow rightly defy and evade twenty-first century sensibilities, and long may they remain because our resident Gamekeeper maintains that sometimes there are still no better ways to do things like catching those zillions of rabbits than by using ferrets, but only when there is an 'r' in the month of course.
So just occasionally along comes a book that transcends the ordinary and fits the reading moment as if born to it and Corduroy did exactly that. Somehow the gentle pace and rhythm of Adrian Bell's language fits the rhythm of the rural life he is portraying and I slipped into that comforting melody willingly and with ease. I was reminded of Edward Thomas, who I am also reading at the moment, as Adrian Bell recounted his first attempts at ploughing with horses,
'When I glanced up I was surprised to see the horses treading so slowly. This too I thought, must appear a sleepy occupation to the passing poet. One hears talk of the monotony of ploughing but I found it a keen exercise of hand and eye...'
and it was but a simple change of key in my mind and into that lovely Edward Thomas poem As the Team's Head-Brass
'Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more....'
If you live in the country this book will be comfortingly familiar, and if your are in a town and fancy an escape to the country from your armchair you could head for no better reading. Adrian Bell will quietly transport you to the place where, though his reference is to the cloth but equally applicable to the book, 'Corduroy takes on an easy grace in wear.'