Cornflower

Ready, steady, go

     Grabbed from the postman's hands moments ago was the parcel containing these books which have to be read and reviewed for The Good Book Guide in fairly short order. There's a fourth one still to come, so lots to do over the next few days, but hopefully much to enjoy, too.

     First up is Erica James's Tell It To The Skies. Set in Venice and described on the back cover as "compelling and heart-breaking, with a touch of bittersweet romance...", this should be a very good read as its author is a great story-teller. On to Gates of Paradise by a writer new to me, Beryl Kingston. This novel is about William Blake, poet and illustrator, and his time in the Sussex village of Felpham. The publicity material for this one says it's "warm", "astute" and "packed with historical detail". Lastly, "A newly discovered, previously unpublished gem, finished in 1942, hidden until now.... a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France": Fire in the Blood is by Irene Nemirovsky, whose Suite Francaise will be familiar to many, and its cover says it is "Atmospheric and haunting as Embers and with the crystalline perfection of Chekhov..."

     The fourth title in this month's batch will be a great treat. The Careful Use of Compliments is the latest in Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club series, so I'm looking forward to revisiting Isobel Dalhousie, housekeeper Grace, Jamie, et al., and to spotting the real characters among the fictional ones. As the author said recently, "I never write anything unpleasant about real people; or, for that matter, about fictional people." Quite so.   

In the wilderness

     I'm reading Katherine Mansfield's Journal - not a book to choose if your spirits need a lift, as she was frequently ill, depressed, anxious, agonising over not writing (as opposed to not being able to write), unsettled and leading an almost painfully itinerant life. But that said, there is much here worth reading: some humour, some beautifully descriptive passages - notes for her writing, jotted lines and images which she'd later work up - and some ideas which require reflection.

     Here's a piece from 1920 on 'Cultivated Minds' : "Such a cultivated mind doesn't really attract me. I admire it, I appreciate all 'les soins et les peines' that have gone to produce it - but it leaves me cold. After all, the adventure is over. There is now nothing to do but to trim and to lop and to keep back - all faintly depressing labours. No, no, the mind I love must still have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two (real snakes), a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of  - and paths threaded with those little flowers planted by the mind. It must also have real hiding places, not artificial ones, not gazebos and mazes. And I have never yet met the cultivated mind that has not had its shrubbery. I loathe and detest shrubberies."   

     What do you think? Any views on 'wild places' - or, indeed, shrubberies?

A passage to India, or plumbing the depths

     I was looking forward to today as my first free day for eight weeks: everyone back at work or school, the house to myself, nothing particular to be done. But it wasn't to be, of course. The plumbers who should have been here yesterday decided to come today instead. Replacing a section of cast-iron drainpipe an alarmingly great height above the ground involved much to-ing and fro-ing with long ladders and equipment, sucking of teeth and sharp intakes of breath, discussion about the viability of the job in the first place - the boss had said it was straightforward, his men were not so sure.

     The dogs had to be coralled the while, and as they don't like to be unable to inspect visitors to the premises, they expressed themselves with some well-phrased barks.

But having pacified them with biscuits - and provisioned the workmen similarly (different type of biscuit, I hasten to add) - I settled down at the computer for an idle browse.

And then technology let me down. Despite my newfangled wireless setup, I was unable to connect to the world, so I had to phone the immensely polite, respectful gentlemen of the helpdesk in India. Several hours in touch with the subcontinent (I'm not exaggerating), several repositionings of the laptop, several conversations interrupted by labourers and labradors [anyone remember Linda in "The Pursuit of Love" mis-translating the Spanish word 'labrador'?] connections and disconnections of the ethernet cable, error messages, switchings on and off of the router, tearing of hair, respectful gentlemen telling me "we are unable to solve the problem at this end/there is an internet traffic jam/your computer is not responding/we shall call you in a moment/half an hour/tomorrow, ma'am", and I am feeling hard done by.

     However, the plumbers despite their misgivings, have managed to replace the pipe, the dogs know the 'intruders' have gone so they are sleeping peacefully, and I am once again in contact with the outside world, albeit in a wired state. India will be calling in the morning to try to solve the problem once and for all, I have a free hour before the afternoon school run, and to soothe my frazzled nerves I am looking at these pictures which I took in our local park. The flowers are from the allotments there.

Naming of parts

     Following on from something I said in yesterday's post, Nan mentioned that she'd often come across references in British books to nametapes and the sewing on thereof, but had never had to do this job herself.

I wonder how many hundreds of the things I've lovingly stitched to the uniforms my children have worn since the age of five. It's not just one outfit (with changes) for each, there are summer and winter variations, kit for various sports, cadets uniform, art overalls, and so on and so on.

     My father went to boarding school, so my grandmother had a trunk full of things to name for him, including a tartan rug for extra warmth on his bed:-

(You can tell we tend to hoard preserve things for posterity in this family....

.....that's my old school beret and scarf above, and I bet my mother still has some of my nametapes in her sewing box).

                                        ~~~~~~~~~~

The title of this post refers to a poem I well remember studying in the days when I wore that uniform. You can read "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed here.

Home truths

     My mother tells me that this website is not very interesting just now as all I've been talking about is books. Let it not be said that I ignore the wishes of my readers as to content, but the site tends to reflect what I'm doing and if that has been reading above all else, then that's what will appear here. However, comments are noted, so this will be a miscellaneous piece for those who've had enough book talk.

     I did have some photographs of an excellent cake my mother made for us recently and was all set to do a post about it, but I discovered that I'd accidentally deleted them from the camera before transferring them to the computer, so we are without baked goods for your delectation.

     It has been a while since the dogs made an appearance on these pages, but despite the lack of a carpet in the newly decorated study, they are making themselves at home. That's Bess above, finding a patch of sunlight on the bare boards [no Mum, I haven't polished the hearth yet, but I will],

and here she is with Mollie.

     What else? Went to hear Jeremy Paxman talking about monarchy at the Book Festival last night - he was very good indeed. Today I shall be sewing nametapes onto school uniform - not a particularly interesting or photogenic activity. No knitting has been done for ages due to a hectic schedule of visitors, decorating and review reading. Meals cooked haven't been original enough to include here, and there's precious little in the garden worth showing. This is beginning to sound like one of my early diaries : "Monday - did nothing".

     Sometimes I feel tempted to conduct a poll among readers, asking them what they want more or less of on the site, but I don't think my rather fragile self-confidence could stand to hear that something or other isn't popular. One thing's for sure, you can't please all the people all the time, mothers especially.

    

Holiday reading

      

La Plage de Carnon, 1987 - Marie Hugo

     Prompted by Harriet's recent reviews of the books she read while on holiday, and a piece by novelist Louise Doughty in yesterday's "Telegraph", I wondered whether, in general, holiday reading matter differs from non-holiday material. Clearly, if reading is part of your job, then you probably do choose something other than the usual fare for your time off, but if it isn't, do you consciously downgrade or upgrade, or sample a particular genre when you are away?

     Louise Doughty quotes someone as saying that they don't read at all on holiday as reading is an escape and "what's the point of escaping when you're on holiday unless you're having a horrible time?" Interesting point, but not a view I share.

     I make no distinction between the books I choose at home or away (though I rarely am away!!). I find it difficult to settle to reading on short flights, but I had David Attenborough: Life on Air for company on one long journey (a look at the cover was enough to steady any nerves I may have had), and for the return trip Victoria Finlay's fascinating Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, in which I read about lapis lazuli from Afghanistan as I was flying over that country and looking down at the mountains she was talking about. With the triumph of hope over experience, I usually overestimate the number of books I'll get through while I'm away, forgetting that family holidays demand as much if not more activity than home does, and taking away with me several volumes which will remain unopened until my return.

     What do you read when you're away, and do you always associate certain books with the place in which you read them? Which titles have you just packed or unpacked? Do you read on planes, trains, boats, beaches, mountains, hotel balconies, at pavement cafes, by swimming pools, in cottages by log fires, while 'watching from the side' as other members of the family fish, ski, play golf, etc.? What's your most memorable holiday read? Please tell.

   

By George, she's got it!

    I wrote last month about my reactions to Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing, the first volume in his twelve book series, "A Dance to the Music of Time". I acknowledged that my inability to appreciate the book (despite making two attempts, albeit twenty two years apart) was more my failing than Powell's, and persuaded by those who know better, I went on and read the second book.

    My friend Lindsay has been Professor Higgins to my Eliza Dolittle and his encouragement has paid off as I have finally 'got it'! I have truly enjoyed A Buyer's Market, finding in it much more humour, much less emotional detachment, a lighter tone and richer writing than in Volume I. It is a very clever, very well-observed, perceptive study of the human condition, which I am glad I have - despite myself and thanks to others - discovered.

    While "A Question of Upbringing" had a chilly feel, somehow in this book the clouds have parted and the sun has come out; there is a charm about it which was previously absent. The characters have grown up a bit, entered the world of work or of marriage, are finding their respective paths in a society in which some are still ill at ease, and throughout I could hear Powell's 'voice' as I could not in the predecessor.

     There are many exquisite lines: [at a ball] "... I saw Widmerpool ploughing his way round the room, as if rowing a dinghy in rough water", "There is, or, at least, should be, a fitness in the follies each individual pursues, and uniformity of pattern is, on the whole, rightly preserved in human behaviour" and "The Walpole-Wilsons defied prevailing mode by still employing a table-cloth, a preference of Sir Gavin's, who prided himself on combining in his own home tastes of 'the old school' with a progressive point of view in worldly matters. The scented geranium leaf usually to be found floating in the finger-bowls could be attributed to his wife's leaning towards a more exotic way of life."

     On to Volume III !

   

Perfect pitch

     To the Book Festival again last night to hear journalist, writer and broadcaster James Naughtie talk about music. He spoke with a great deal of passion and eloquence on this vast topic which is the subject of his forthcoming book,  The Making of Music: A Journey with Notes. His overview of the development of music and its place in society stressed the dendritic pattern inherent in its progression: everything is linked, though not always directly or seamlessly, often tangentially, but traceably so.

    From the building of Notre Dame - a huge space required music much bigger and more glorious than the plain chant which had sufficed until that time - to Bach's "Well-tempered Clavier", described as 'the nervous system of music' encapsulating everything which went before it and was to come after it, to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and the riot it caused, musical progress had its seminal moments.

     From there he moved to the personal, discussing his own piano lessons as a child - and many in the audience identified with that story - except that he said there came a day when his teacher, who was also a composer, stopped him playing and talked to him about music instead, and that was when he began to get the point of it all. He said "Music makes you an offer - you can get somewhere if you listen to it. If you work at it you can understand it and it will sustain you. "

     Asked to choose favourite music, he discussed his dislikes instead, namely Rachmaninov, who leaves him a bit cold, and Liszt "the David Beckham of his day" who was a great performer and coined the term 'recital', the first to place the piano side on to the audience (he needed two on the stage at a time because he quickly sent the first one out of tune) and who would toss cigar butts and lilac gloves to the adoring fans - women used to clutch his legs as he played!

    There were no attempts made to grab James Naughtie's person last night, though all present could happily have asked him to stay and listened to him talk for much, much longer.   

The finer points of reading and writing

      

     I rarely listen to audiobooks, but lately our constant companion on the car CD player has been Alexander McCall Smith's The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs read by the incomparable Hugh Laurie. This is an inspired combination of text and voice.

     For anyone not familiar with the series of books of which this is the second, they concern three German professors of philology and are funny in the extreme. Around eight years ago, we went to the launch of the first of the trilogy, "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" (they are now collected as The 21/2 Pillars of Wisdom), which took place in a lecture theatre very well known to me in Edinburgh University's Old College, home of its Law School. Quantities of malt whisky were served, a real live German professor was present and much fun was had by all. The book had been privately published, its illustrious author being nothing like as famous then as now, and the event was attended by friends and colleagues, rather than the scores of fans who form his audiences today, but it was a typically jolly, good-humoured gathering, and much more intimate than later launches.

     Here's what it says on the back of "The Finer Points....": "....our hero, Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, is the unlikely choice to address veterinarians in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, is dogged by dachshunds, becomes embroiled with that notorious Coptic schismatic, the Duke of Johannesburg..... and finally ends up as the star attraction on a Mediterranean cruise ship."

     What it doesn't say is that Hugh Laurie has perfected not one but many different German (and other) accents in order to read all the different characters  - both male and female - and  just thinking about it is enough to start me laughing.

Real worlds and real worlds

     I've just been 'back to school' through the pages of Secret Letters at Trebizon by Anne Digby, published by the excellent Fidra Books. This book originally came out in 1993 and was the thirteenth in the Trebizon series, itself almost the last of the school story genre until it returned - albeit in fantasy form - with Harry Potter and Hogwarts.

     Many of the conventions of the genre are upheld here, but the period detail is interesting - especially for one brought up on Enid Blyton's "Malory Towers" - so, being the early 1990s, we have the girls listening to Jimmy Somerville tapes, reading Ruth Rendell, having boyfriends (!!) and meeting up at Mick's Diner on the seafront of the local town.

     The story will appeal to collectors of the series who have followed Rebecca and friends as they've moved up the school to the fifth form, where this adventure concerning missing revision notes, letters being tampered with and boyfriend/girlfriend misunderstandings takes place, but I was particularly interested in something Anne Digby says in her introduction to this edition:

     She devised her boarding school series in the late 1970s and discussed her proposal with an agent only to be told that editors were looking for "stories of 'urban crises' set in the 'real world' with which children could 'identify'". She remembered identifying with books such as "Anne of Green Gables", "Doctor Dolittle" and "Alice in Wonderland", while her own children were then besotted with "Winnie the Pooh" and C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" novels. She writes "There are many different 'real worlds'. An imaginary world that becomes very real to its author, be they Kenneth Grahame or J. K. Rowling, will usually find readers out there who want to step right inside it and join them."

     How very true that is, and how narrow is the mind that seeks to restrict the reader to a particular view of reality.   

    

Before and after (or, per ardua ad aqua)

     I'm not in the habit of posting pictures of anything less-than-lovely here but days of strenuous stripping and painting warrant some before and after shots just to prove we have done the study!

Removing the first layer of wallpaper revealed more underneath, so there was nothing for it but to go on:

Back to brown distemper (?) and we discovered the signatures of the men who worked on the room in November 1917.

Colour at last. "Sea Urchin" 3 & 4 have given the 'mackerel' effect I wanted.

 

     We have no carpet or curtains yet but The Desk Of Power has been returned to its rightful position!

Meet the author

     No pictures to prove it, but we had a special guest here today. It was an absolute joy to have Adele Geras with us, and as the sun was shining for her, we drank Pimms in our 'garden of luxuriant growth' (i.e. wilderness) before a family lunch round the kitchen table.

     So engaging a person is Adele that we could have talked for hours, but there was time in her busy schedule for a leisurely chat and a fascinating insight into the world of books and publishing and the writer's life.

     This evening Harriet and I went to hear Adele and Julia Golding talk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on writing historical fiction for children: a very well-attended event was much enjoyed by the young audience as well as their parents, and many excellent questions were asked. Long signing queues for both authors afterwards showed a healthy appetite for good literature!

I dream of .....

....knitting! Yes, I've had so little time to knit lately that my deprivation is being felt in my subconscious. What would a psychoanalyst make of this scenario: I dreamed that I was part way through some kind of sweater made in a luxurious ecru-coloured yarn; I put down my work for a few minutes and someone stole it! This was theft, but with a twist, because later a completed - but very different and superior - garment was left for me in place of my work-in-progress. In the manner of The Elves and The Shoemaker, or The Tailor of Gloucester, I ended up better off. Now what does this say about me?

Meanwhile, the new edition of Interweave Knits has arrived. What do we think of it? A bit cluttered? A touch nondescript? I am underwhelmed, but then I haven't had a chance to read it thoroughly yet. If I put it down, the fairies might take it and leave me something even better.

Warp and weft

     I started reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Shuttle weeks ago and had to keep putting it aside when other books took precedence. The fragmented approach hasn't harmed it, (that is how it was written after all, over a period of seven years with work on it stopping for other books such as A Little Princess and The Making of a Marchioness) but with a clear run at the last hundred or so pages yesterday, I raced on to the end.

    Thanks are due to Elaine at Random Jottings who was largely responsible for getting this book back into print (it was first published in 1907). I could call it melodrama of the highest order - which it is - but there's more to it than that. Yes, we have the dastardly villain, Sir Nigel Anstruthers, all cruelty and dissolute ways, the wonderful heroine, Bettina Vanderpoel, an heiress with brains as well as beauty and a strength of character unusual, perhaps, in books of this type, and the romantic hero, Lord Mount Dunstan, distant, brooding and silent, but the way these three are portrayed and connected is more subtle and cleverer than the melodramatic tag suggests.

     However, there are one or two lines I must quote: "He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheek felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. He laid her down on the couch of hay and turned away." "He caught her out-thrown hands and looked down into the beautiful passionate soul of her. The moment had come, and the tidal wave rising to its height swept all the common earth away when, with a savage sob, he caught and held her close and hard against that which thudded racing in his breast."

     Be still my beating heart! That gives a flavour of the novel which follows - after around a hundred introductory pages - the efforts of Bettina to save her sister Rosalie from her disastrous marriage to the loathsome Sir Nigel. There is no actual swagger of the cane or twirl of the moustache in the book - Sir Nigel is far more complex than the stock villain, and Mount Dunstan has more to him than any matinee idol. There's an unlikely deus ex machina in the form of plucky American typewriter salesman G. Selden, but after some anxious moments, all is resolved as the reader would wish. A line from another book sums up this one very well: "Joy and woe make a nice tight weave."

Sunny?

     I'm posting these pictures to try to give a bit of vitality, positive energy, spirit-lifting sunshine to....

myself. I'd like nothing more than to curl up with a good book just now, but I must get back to the decorating.

A day and a half of stripping wallpaper from the study has left me tired and aching - no sympathy required, it's not that bad - but I'm finding it hard to get going again this morning.

We are about to begin the filling, sanding, lining-paper hanging, before starting the transformational bit - the painting - but it feels as though we have a long way to go and the house is a mess and I wonder why we ever started.

The end result will be worth the temporary discomfort, I'm sure, and we'll be glad we did it, but for now I'm flagging! Does anyone have any good motivational tips?