:: The Wendy House ::

As part of my birthday treat,  I purchased the 45th copy of AFH’s poetry book ‘Of birds and bees’.  The book is beautifully illustrated by Jo Thomas.  The first line I read was Jo’s introduction to the Bee illustrations:

“In spring 2007 walking, a bee fell, in front of me, on the pavement, dead. I picked it up and drew it. Since then I have continued to collect and draw found and gifted dead bees.” 

I’ve not yet seen a dead bee.  This summer some beautiful large fluffy bees tended the tea roses at the Wendy house.  This may become a treasure of the past as I learn to collect dead bees as memories.  At 1pm today the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) is coordinating a demonstration In London,  Whitehall outside Westminster palace and delivering a petition to Downing street (Prime Minister’s residence).  Guidance provided by the BBKA to potential demonstrators includes:

You need to look your best as you may well be on TV! An umbrella probably makes sense too.

They are demonstrating to raise awareness of the impact of the the lack of government funding provided to avert an impending ecological disaster that has clear financial, agricultural implications.  According to the Guardian:

Beekeepers have warned that most of the country’s honey bees could be wiped out by disease in 10 years unless an urgent research programme is launched to find new treatments and drugs…  

 ….the Department for Farming, Environment and Rural Affairs revealed that bees contribute £165m a year to the economy through their pollination of fruit trees, field beans and other crops. In addition, the 5,000 tonnes of British honey sold in UK stores generates a further £12m

During a conversation about films that are substantially at variance with the books that provided their original title and approximate plot and characters: 

Wendy:  W’thering Heights

Bros:  WUH,  Wuh-thering Heights

Wendy: yes,  that’s what I said W’thering Heights

Bros:  Wendy,  Wuh-thering has a U in it

niece & her friend: (snigger,  sniggger,  snigger,  hiding mouths behind hands and flashing smiles at each other and checking to see if we ‘adults’ notice)

Bros:  (shakes his head and tuts)

 Wendy:  (decides not to mention that Bros appears to have failed to count the double-u)

The Stranger in Reading is a 2005 Two Rivers Press edition of an original 1810 book.  It contains 7 letters written, supposedly anonymously, by Reading long-time resident John Man.  The book documents Man writing as if a stranger in Reading to a friend in London and includes a modern preface and editorial provided by Adam Sowan.  Despite painting a not-quite desirable-place-to-live view of Reading Borough two centruies hence, the book is a thoroughly enjoyable read that has lead to the Wendy House strapline being updated.

The orginal book is prefaced by Sowans description of John Man and then by light, within-letter, explanatory annotations.  The main text maintains the original creative punctuation and spelling.  Sowan cites one example sentence as containing:

 three colons, five semi colons and no fewer than thirty-two commas; yet it is surprisingly readable.

A theme throughout the book is the poor state of the contemporary paving,  depite the Reading paving act providing the following penalities:

ten shillings, by every person leaving any carriage in the street,  except whilst loading or unloading;  driving a wheelbarrow on the footways; throwing dust, dirt, or rubbish in the streets.  Five shillings, by all persons neglecting to sweep the foot-paths before their houses every morning (Sundays excepted) before 10 O’clock. pxxx

An enjoyable glimpse into history that has value beyond people who may be interested in Reading’s history alone.  I discovered how MP’s were renumerated and elected to parliaiment and how ‘the corporation’ helped run Reading Borough.

The Victora and Albert Library is a living piece of history.  A free piblic library where the resources themselves are artefacts of beauty. 

The internet provides information,  sometimes that information is beautifully packaged in ‘media experiences’.  The internet has not yet managed to add to its experience the package offered by old libraries of:

book scent

aging parchment texture

 atmosphere of being surrounded by ancient books

the sound of librarian moderated silences

Not an affectionate hand gesture,  a book press.

Small press’ such as Reading’s own ‘Two Rivers Press’ can target selling their publications to interest groups,  niche markets.  Two Rivers probably refers to  the river Kennet and Thames that meet in downtown Reading. 

It publishes works that have general intereast and local significance, for example,  Adam Sowan’s history of street names ‘Abbatoirs Road to Zinzan Street’,  the works of the Reading local, international, performance poet (AFH),  and historical treasures such as history and analysis of what is thought to be the oldest written song in English (circa 13th century).  The manuscript of the song, a ‘rota’, was found in Reading Abbey and now lives in the British Museum. 

A wonderful pocket-sized book with many thematic block-prints and ebulant multilayered interpretations of the meanings of the rota.  A rota is a song intended to be sung in a round of several people….   Wikipedia describes the Reading Rota in a rather dull descriptive manner,  the author of the Two Rivers book explores possibilities with a cheeky enthusiasm and passion that makes the book a pleasure to read,  its style is pixie-years beyond Wikipedia.

…Sumer is icumin in….   there has been much singing in a broad Bristolian burr in the Wendy House recently,  though I haven’t managed to do the minimum 2 or three voices required for a rota.  I am,  at least,  not scaring the cats who defintiely prefer me not to sing in their presence.

 How apt that a small press based in Reading should publish a book about a hand written document found in Reading long ago.

Off to the shops.  The shopping tortutre.  Ick.  Luckily I was armed with a set of seasonal shopping lists from those short-people* that must be obeyed because of their lung, pout, and innovative-torturing-technique, capacity. 

Toddling home armed with short-people pacifiers and a book.  A book that lists Reading street names,  almost but not quite, alphabetically as it outlines the significance of the names. 

Here’s an excerpt from my current Reading, reading, material (my emphasis):

The Reading Paving Act of 1827 – a splendid document written in legalese that never uses one word where three, or better still nine, will do – talks only of ‘streets, Lanes, public passages and Places’. (It also says that occupiers have to sweep the pavement outside their houses, and specifies when they should remove Night Soil or filth from the Necessaries or Boghouses.)

Christmas day 1999

After christmas I found this note from my 6yr old niece tucked in the cover of a book I’d been reading.  It now marks a poem drawing parallels between life and staying on a hospital ward where we do not make our beds but we do lie in them by Roger McGough in his book “The way things are”. 

The note cleverly demonstrates that the word hasea hoase house, unlike home, is terribly tricky to spell.  Probably because there are three of those infamously tricky vowels conglomerating in ‘house’. 

Megalithic  graves across Europe.  Populated, or not, 3 to 4 thousands of years Before Christ.  While in Ireland I toured the Burren and stopped at the Paulnabrone dolmen.  Very atmospheric.  “The Modern Antiquarian” a fabulous book by Julian Cope lists megalithic sites throughout Europe.  The book is one of my most treasured possessions.  Websites selling the book under-detail the sheer volume and depth of research that Julian put into constructing this fabulous book. 

Before the advent of anti-aging products these dolmen represented the celebration of aging, death, and life beyond.  Julian Cope is one of the most influential celebrity individuals in my formative years,  I blame him alone for a pair of black leather jeans being a main stay of my wardrobe and, or course, my RAF orignial flight jacket.

By Mark Haddon. 

Highly recommended to anyone who gains pleasure from social dynamics or is an Anglophile.

review ratings explained

Lots of positive reviews of the book available on metacritic.   The Daily Telegraph provides a succinct summary that maps to my experience. 

“A spot of bother” is a phrase that I understand as being used to play-down the severity of a problem.  It’s like saying,  “yes there is a nasty problem but really you shouldn’t worry because we’ve got it all under control, lets not pay it any more attention“.  It’s not a phrase or technique for managing conversational distance that I’ve encountered in the US.

The story is of family dynamics across generations situated around an impending Wedding.  Everyone has an opinion on whether the wedding should happen and why,  and different ways of expressing their opinions,  or not.   The book touches on themes such as prefering silence to talking,  social intelligence versus academic intelligence and the bounds of realism and paranoia.  Some reviews talk about it as a black comedy or farce.  My impression is that it is something other than either genre,  neither funny nor melancholic despite the topics and events. 

Thoroughly enjoyable, I felt right at home.

The first sentence in a novel. 

An excellent writer alludes to the fundamental themes and tone of the book within a simple and provocative first sentence.   This opener from Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs captured me:

“Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight,  I have had my eye on other people’s parents.”

.

Sat at SeaTac airport with an hour or so before my flight to Madrid I ordered a nice pint of Bass and started studying my pocket-sized English Spanish conversation guide. 

Questions 

“Do you speak Spanish?“  I don’t think I’ll need that,  I will need “Do you speak English?” but it is not listed.   The book does provide this question ‘what are you saying?” but without the ability to understand the answer this question would merely be digging myself a confusional hole.  There is no book section on useful  ‘Answers’ or a translation of the ever-useful phrase:  

“I’m really sorry,  I can’t speak your language can we use pointing and acting instead?” 

The Doctor

What about when I fall-over?  If I need a doctor for a broken bone?  The cartoon with the Doctor section is intriguing.  What excatly is the Dr. doing?  I looked for the “I think I’ve broken my arm” phrase but got no further than “Undress please” which seems a bit of a premature suggection for diagnosing a broken arm.  Though,  obviously,  as a single girl,  I need to memorise the phrase:

Quitese la ropa, por favor

Fifteen more books successfully released to the safety of half-price books.  In Exchange, three books paroled to the comfort of my handbag  No cash changed hands.  Bargain,  I gained book-shelf space and topically useful books… ..I feel a few more books coming on…. 

Libraries are fabulous social resources whose being is radically changing nature with the emergence of the Internet as an archive and social resources.  This Library,  Escorial, near Madrid has just made it onto my list of way-too-many-places I hope to visit.  I’ll have to use the bus* or train to get there  Brrrrrrmmmmmmm….Brrrrrrmmmmmmmm…..  

Without even leaving Madrid I may get to see an Eygyptian temple, a Palace where the Spanish Inquisition did some of its inquisiting,  fabulous deliberately leaning buildings, a very ornate post-office, a stadium bull ring, a crystal palace inspired by the London Crystal palace,  bars that Earnest Hemmingway drank in (not all of them),  graveyards, and of course the essential very tall thing for tourists to go to rather like Seattle’s Space Needle and Portsmouth’s Millenium tower.  

Then there are castles to be checked out,  like the Alcazar…  just outside Madrid…  more buses!!

* I like riding on buses

Forty-eighth post in a Wednesday series where Wendy fails to meet someone that drives singleness out of the House

Reason #48: uninvolved

 When I saw the title of this book,  I suspected that I needed a book on how to ‘get things done when people are involved’ because:

Firstly,  I have noticed that people can stop me from getting things done.  For example,  the bus driver stopped me from driving my car,  the lady in the Diner stopped me from cooking my breakfast,  and other more shocking things

Secondly, being single is being uninvolved so this book might help me to get involved.   

Meetings are much more complicated than I realised.

Making the cat laugh.  One woman’s Journal of single life on the margins.  (1995) A book by Lynne Truss,  then chief TV critic of The Times more recently famous for writing the ambiguously titled “Eats shoots and leaves“.

The book felt like a collection of paragraphs pulled together in no particular order.  Well written,  entertaining and suitably trivial to qualify purely as light entertainment.  A gift from a friend.  It failed to engross me, enlighten me, or make me laugh out loud.  Despite the obvious superficial similarities (English girl, single, has cats, her paragraphs like blog posts) I did not find the stories personally relevant. 

Unreasonably long sentence warning.  Take a deep breath now,  go:  

I adore bookshops for many obvious reasons including the way  books magnificiently overcome the merchandising trends of other products by being mixed irrrespective of colour,  size and pattern.   

Hoorah! 

I feel at home amongst the visual ecclectic of a book store. 

Mr. AFHarrold’s recent book contains hand drawn pictures of animals doing surrupticious animal things and real handwriting to explain thier naughty subversiveness in a child-friendly manner.  It’s also quite funny.  AFH has a talent for insight into the secret lives of furrifriends,  rhyming words and prompting a giggle.  But best of all,  for me, this book sneaked into my mailbox on a grimm drizzly evening and is making its way to my handbag for those emergency, on the road, poetry moments.

 Yes

Book:  Tis. A Memoir.  Frank McCourt

Franks use of plain language, provides a raw, powerful, funny and poignant walk through the experience of emigrating to America.  It’s an impressive book.   I’ve finally given up trying to read it half way through.  I’ve no stamina,  I got bored.  The story simply wasn’t gripping enough to make me drool over what might be on the next page.   The rest of this review is based on the first half of the book. 

Ratings explained

Synopsis:

In 1949 a nineteen year old boy, the author, from Limerick (Ireland) emmigrates to his dream city, New York.   The book is a sequel to Angela’s Ashes that easily stands alone. 

“that’s what you’re faced with when you come to America, one decision after another” p54

Themes:

• Immigrants: Everyone is American and something else laden with prejudices.  Spicks,  Mickeys, Polacks, Pueto Ricans, Natives, Greeks, Swedes, Chinks.  Rather than an absence of prejudice the book paints a complex, explicit and diverse prejudices. 
• Poverty:  America’s not like you expect it to be after watching films,  there is poverty here too.  The book makes explicit comparisions between poverty in Limerick, Ireland, and New York.  
• Health: nealry every character’s health is vividly described, conjunctivitus, arthritus, blood infections, alcoholism.  How these conditions effect their ability to earn money and pay for health care et.
• real Americans:  just like you see in the movies.  We see these people from a distance as they go to church or stay in hotels.  These people go to college,  have blond blue-eyed girlfirends,  are healthy, smell clean have amazingly white aligned teeth,  always have food available and warm homes:

“they can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they’d be lost forever” p59

March 15th 1984

It will take several months to read the varied scrawl of miss-spelt ramblings in my early diaries.  Mumzie recently discovered these diaries in a dark corner of her home.  The diaries stop in 1984 when I switched to letter writing…

A second sheet was added to this 1984 entry during my first year at University.   The day went something like this: 

A morning of contemplating whether a fascinating but somewhat screwed-up boy should have the benefit of my influence in his life.  

An afternoon sketching portraits of 2 handsome boys while they supplied me with lots of tea.  The tea taking isn’t explicitly mentioned because it is understood as a part of the ’spending an afternoon with a handsome fellow’ process.  The boys had the afrontary to keep the sketches.  Sadly,  I don’t actually have copies of any of the portraits I used to produce.  I was fairly prolific with my sketch-book as well as in my diaries.  

The evening involved drinking ’side cars’ in a disco and helping a girl-friend disrupt the dancefloor during some of those slow girl-boy cuddling dances by jumping around between the soppy-people.  

A fabulous day indeed.

For a photo-story of the Wendy House, 24hr Power outage, click this picture of my reading a book by candle-power:

The Wendy House was lucky,  only 24 hs without electricity and a gas-fire for warmth.  The Seattle PI reports that more than 1 million Washingston State residents lost power. The all to frequent sound of siren’s passing the Wendy House re-inforced the risks associated with a suddent lack of traditional power sources.  The smell of woodsmoke, prevalent in the air, took on an ominous tone.  Did it herald a burning home?

Memories of my childhood: 

January 1974,  11yrs old, the UK was suffering from a power crisis.  The Conservative government under Prime Minister Edward Heath introduced a ‘3 day week’ to conserve power.  At that time the UK’s main source of electrical power was the National Coal industry,  electricity from coal.  The country was suffering from extreme inflation.  To try and curtail inflation the government introduced wage-capping.  The Miners were not happy about their wage cap.  The Miners union introduced a ‘work to rule’,  they only followed the detail of the job description nothing above and beyond.  This severely curtailed coal production and reduced the power available to the country.  Unable to negotiate a solution with the Coal Miners representative,  the Union, the government introduced a 3 day week.  Power was only available on 3 consecutive days in a week.

To an 11yr old this is exciting and fun.  4 days a week where the evenings were by candle-light and no hot-water for bathing.  As a family we would play cards by candle-light. It was like camping inside home.  We wore several layers of woolly jumpers and fingerless gloves indoors.  We used a camping gas stove to brew tea and make the occassional hot meal. 

After the Heath Conservative government was replaced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government the normal working week returned.  Wilson was a working-class boy who excelled in English the educational system.  A Yorkshire boy,  like Wallace, with a quick wit.  The last great intellectual Prime Minister that lead Britain.  The last true Labour Prime Minister.  With some impressive political thinkers in his cabinet such as Tony Benn and my personal favourites Denis Healey and Micheal Foot.

The exploitation of oil from the North Sea helped Britain to avoid severe economic disaster,  and assured that Scotland would not gain independence before its natural resources ran out.  That would be approximately…. ….now.  Britain is begining to face a renewed energy crisis and despite a thrashing by Thatcher the National Union of Miners is still a voice at the lobbying table.  The fancy new Labour party, Blair’s government, is being criticised for its lack of long term planning.

In my ‘retirement’ I want to live in, or below, a Windmill, to be self-sufficient then sell extra power back to the country in an emergent decentralised power system. 

A poetry book, like a dictionary, is a book I never finish reading.  Unlike dictionaries I will voraciously read all the words in a poetry book cover-to-cover upon first discovering them.  Obviously this is after having removed my stickly little digits from the tea mug.  Both are reference books,  pulled from the shelf again and again. 

The dictionary gets pulled when I’m unsure of a word’s meaning,  range of meanings,  origins,  relationship to other words.  Assured of discovery, my question promptly answered. Inevitably a rewarding experience,  how can anyone fail to fall in love with dictionaries?  I’m very loyal to my one paper dictionary, it cannot be replaced.  The Collin’s Concise (1983) was a present from an elder brother.  When I look at its faded binding I see my 21 year old brother standing at the top of Park Street outside Georges with a white plastic bag in his hand held out towards me saying

“you’re leaving home?  You’ll need your own dictionary“. 

A very different experience from pulling one of the several poetry books from the shelf, floor, table, chair, cooker, mantle, washing-machine.   The favoured books are scattered around the Wendy House where they afford the opportunity of unpremeditated rediscovery in a moment of undirected reading.  Picking up a book,  flicking through the pages to a title that catches some thought and reading that poem.   One book purchased in a tizzy in 1989 insists on falling open to specific pages,  poems I found powerful in the early 1990s. I have to fight against its insistence on taking me to specific emotional places. 

Poetry book use is not all so sporadic. There are specific places I’ll go when I’m happy,  because I’m sad,  or I want to find the words that describe what it is that I’m feeling because I just don’t know.  They are often there,  wrapped in the ambiguities and soothing rythms, but one can never be sure of Dictionary-like success. 

With that thought I’ll return to the vacuuming

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Mark Haddon.  This is an outstanding first novel.  Recommended 

    :-)

Reviewed by charlotte Morre in the Guardian.  The numerous reviews I’ve read are full of praise for this novel.

Christopher, 15yrs, is writing a murder mystery novel.  This is Christopher’s Novel.  Christopher’s presentation is a carefully contructed stream of consciousness.  He provides details about each character,  something interesting or different, to describe the character.  What Christopher finds interesting or different does not follow common patterns of describing a person.  The jacket cover descirbes Christopher as being autistic,  this is an artistic construction of the writer,  the contents should not be taken as representative of Autism. 

goodness discovered:

• Christopher as author:  works exceedingly well to carry the reader through seeing the world through the authors eyes and allowing the reader to have a privileged view of dramatic irony. As reader we can see the impact of Christophers behaviours and understand these behaviours in a different value-set from Christophers. 
• Christopher describes and demonstrates his values.  Clearly,  entertainingly.  Christopher attributes values and priorities to events in a different way than is generally socially acceptable.  I found some of his reasoning clearly descibed,  easy to follow,  consistently applied thoughout the story.  For example the meaning of specific groups of different car colours. 
• innovative illustrations.  The book is illustrated,  not with ‘pictures’ provided by an illustrator, with pictures from Christophers perspective.  As pictures per-se they provide little extra information.  As choices of important information selected by Christopher they are powerful story enhancers.

not so goodness

• lack of empathy with other characters.  This is a by-product of working with having Christopher as the protagonist.   There is insufficient detail to build empathy with any other character.  I suspect this was an explicit decision made by the author.  I would have valued the opportunity for a deeper understanding of some of the peripheral characters.  It’s not clear how the author could have achieved this connection within the books clearly implemented perspective.
• Inconsistency.  I found it difficult to follow why Christopher made some, plot-critical, decisions and did not become distressed by events that had already been established as distressing to him. For example, it is established early in the book that he does not like people shouting.  Later he witnesses shouting without any documented personal reaction.  As if the author temporarily forgot his protagonist in favour of placing plot manipulating events. 

Aside:

• There are plausible rumours that people who exhibit symptoms of Aspergers syndrome and Autism experience successful application of their strengths in the software industry.  A quick search of the internet finds no real evidence,  just plausible arguments.  Software developers are able to procreate and this ’syndrome’ is genetically conveyed to offspring.  Evidently,  in December 2000 ““Microsoft became the first major US corporation to offer its employees insurance benefits to cover the cost of behavioral training for their autistic children.”  (Wired Magazine).  This could easily just reflect the excellent pro-active healthcare provision by Microsoft as a company.  As a Seattle local,  this Wendy wonders….

Saturday gets a self confessed McEwan addict rating of :-) :-)

Highly recommended for people who like Ian McEwan stories where everday life is intertwined with the exceptional in a suspense drama,  or is it?  For a well thought out and written analysis read this review by Mark Lawson in the Gaurdian.  Review excerpts:

• Saturday catalogues the local only in order to focus on the global
• By recording with such loving care the elements of one rich Englishman’s life, Saturday explores the question of to what extent it is possible to insulate yourself against the world’s concerns
• One of the most oblique but also most serious contributions to the post-9/11, post-Iraq war literature, it succeeds in ridiculing on every page the view of its hero that fiction is useless to the modern world.
• The most recurrent theme in McEwan’s 10 novels is the sudden ambush of the safe and smug.

We follow the protoganist,  a neuro-surgeon Henry Perowne, through 24 hours set in London, 2003, on the day of a major Anti-war (with Iraq) rally.  Through his recollections we succinctly cover the last 20 years of significant family events as he prepares for a special evening.  Through conversations,  news broadcasts and the anti-war rally we learn about different perspectives towards Britians engagement in the Iraq war.  His job centres on diagnosing complex human physical disorders,  then fixing them, saving lives.  Analogous to governments diagnosing world problems and attempting to fix them,  saving lives.  McEwan’s writing style is captivating.  In this single sentence he conveys so much about the  old people in a ‘home’:

“They stir,  or seem to sway as he enters, as if gently buffeted by the air the door displaces”

I read the first half of the book sporadically, reverently, on a Saturday.   The first half focuses on detailed,  relevant, scene setting with events.  The home,  the car,  the family,  the health activities,  the job,  the friends,  the colleagues, the rally, the news, the values.  The second half of the book was so gripping I couldn’t bear to put it down,  my evening stretched into the early hours of the morning.     

Seventh post prompted by the provocative  ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  book by Price Collier. 

“Though England may be fighting somewhere in her vast dominions all the time, she is also playing somewhere all the time.  Unless the war is a very important one, there is more itnerest taken in the playing than the fighting” p231

For his chapter on sport Price’s basic theme appears to be that the English spend a lot of money and time watching and playing sport.  They have dedicated papers to sports and columns in newspapers.  This interest helps to keep the English sufficiently fit to be good fighters.   As in previous chapters,  Price’s position is liberally littered with plausible, but unsubstantiated insults.  This chapter easily rated two pots of calming breakfast tea.  For example

“Sport as a profession, I quite agree, breeds more bullies, boasters and tricksters than anything else I can name.” p244

I’m beginning to tire of Prices persistent ‘analysis’ and may relegate this book to my oversized pile of ’started but not finished’ books while I get dressed in a low-budget,  bad-taste, outfit to swear at some people playing a sport in this fabulous, large, US stadium:

  Other posts prompted by Price’s analysis of the English: 

1. Heavy
2. fashion-failed females
3. provincially bumptious
4. the finest of all German tribes
5. mens club
6. Steady, illiterate, profane

Sixth post prompted by the utterly outrageous ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  book by Price Collier.  This chapter required 2 tea-pots full for me to maintain composure (that’s a lot).

Price asks are the English dull?  He concludes that the English are dull because they are stable, steady in their resolve, quoting the contemporary (circa 1900) British soundbite “England expects every man to do his duty” p178.  He follows this by briefly mentioning that the English have a highly developed sense of humour quickly counters by unfavourably comparing their use of the English language to that of Americans.  He find’s the English use of their language lacking because of overuse of profanities (the bugger!), poor sentence structure and lack of mass education.  Am I taking this all too personally?  Of course I am!  Yet he doesn’t mention spelling atrocities because most English people can’t even write.  He cites this convincing statistic as evidence of lack of ability to write:

“Ten years after the beginning of the reign of queen Victoria, not only the children of England, but practically one half of the adults, could neither read nor write… ..only sixty-seven men in one hundred, and fifty-one women in an hundred, could even sign their names.” p183

This statistic is based on people that could sign thier names on a marriage register,  it is likely that some could sign their names and nothing else,  hence it is an over-estimation of actual literacy.  On profanity Price writes:

“A charming English lady returning from the golf links on a wet day remarks that she is ‘in a nasty mess!’.  The English man of a certain class uses ‘bloody’, ‘beastly’, ‘rotten’, ‘bloomin’, and ‘go, on you brute’. p186

SHOCKING!  They didn’t say “bollocks’ or “bugger’ as frequently as I do ;-)  I find it extremely hard to believe that these profanities are worse than those used by his American contemporaries.  Can you feel the tension rising,  I’m on tea-pot number 2 already!

Price suggests that this lack of formal education is counterbalanced by the English having a focus on commerce:

“‘Lud’ was the God of commerce, who was worshipped in England in Pagan times.  Ludgate Hill is a remainder, or reminder, or Lud.  The Welsh still call London ‘Caer Ludd’, or Lud’s town.  Thus it is seen how deep are the roots of their commercial supremecy.” p195

In summary, the English are illiterate, swear a lot, but in their favour they stay focussed on achieving a goal if they think it will make them money.  It is difficult to believe that Price likes the English,  his affection does not shine through.  He does say in his defence that he “numbers many Englishmen among his friends” p14  Pah!  Do they count him amongst their friends? Probably only if he gives them a cut of the royalties from his book…..

Can you guess what the next chapter is about?  Sport!  Will he rail on fox hunting,  what does he think of Football and Rugby?  He’s already made copious references to golf.  I use the golf references as time to make my next pot of tea….  ….I’m not sure if I will be able to finish this book because it’s a tad insulting and its not going to make me any money…..

Other posts prompted by Price’s analysis of the English:

1. heavy
2. fashion-failed females
3. provincially bumptious
4. the finest of all German tribes
5. mens club

Fifth post prompted by the cheeky little book ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  by Price Collier. 

The construct Price uses to (uncritically) analyse differences between English and American home’s is….. ……male influence.  You didn’t see that comking did you!  Here are the main points of his position in his own words:

“In England, the establishment is carried on with the prime view to the comfort of the man, and this applies to rich and poor alike and to all the conditions of society. In America the establishment is carried on with a prime view to the comfort and the exigencies of the woman” p133  “An English man is continually going home, an American is continually going to business” p134 “It is a matter of course in the English Parliament that Mr. Balfour should object strenuously to a plan for a Saturday’s sitting which debars Englishmen from Saturday and Sunday at their own firesides” p135 “a bitter attack in the American Congress on the topic of the dinner hour would scarcely be listened to, and would certainly delegate its champion to the realms of crankdom and ridicule” p136 “In England men have more avocations, more amusements, more interests outside of the daily round of pressing business than us” p147

Apparantly this means that English homes are more comfortable than American homes because they are controlled by men who demand more for their money.  Those darn well dressed American women making American homes uncomfortable and the govenrment for not taking their lunch hour seriously!  English men have more engagements in leisure activities.  England is just one big men’s club!   It normally takes about 4 cups of calming Tea and half a dozen cries of “How did he get that through an editing review process?!” before finishing a chapter.  That said, many of his descirptive observations have a strong face validity.  Here’s an example of a description of and Englishman that I recognised as topical and personally relevant, if you ignore the gender role:

“An Englishman’s holiday is looked forward to, planned for, and provided for with some care; while all too often in America a Holdiay to a busy man over thirty-five is a white elephant, which he ends by turning over to his wife and daughters as a mount” p148

His next chapter asks ‘Are the English Dull?” Do you think Price finds the English dull?  How many cups of tea will I have to drink to quell chapter-based spontaneous outrage?

Other posts prompted by Price’s study of the English:

1. Heavy
2. fashion-failed females
3. provincially bumptious
4. the finest of all German tribes

Fourth post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  a more than cheeky little book by Price Collier. 

Price cites the Italian Tacitus on English characteristics that play a significant role in government:

“They are the finest of all the German tribes, and strive more than the rest to found their greatness on equity… …A passionless, firm and quiet people, they lead a solitary life, and do not stir up wars or harass the country by plunder and theft… …and yet they are always ready to a man to take up arms and even to form an army if the case demands it” p45

According to Price the English (actually Germans) are well behaved, focussed on being productive, with a strong sense of fairness based on common sense.  English government had its origins in Witenagemot, a ‘gathering of wise men’. 

“The present House of Lords itself is the direct result of the Saxon’s unwillingness to bother with government, and his willingness to leave such matters to those of most leisure and most wealth” p47

The Witenagemot chooses a ruler (monarch) from appropriate families,  the role does not automatically go to the next in an hereditary line.  Price provides several examples of English government choosing a preferred monarch over the direct hereditary line.  Price  is keen to illustrate that handing down of power in non elected institutions is not a strictly hereditary affair.  He provides some interesting examples to illustrate that the House of Lords has a high turn-over of family-line peers,  then asserts

“The present House of Lords is conspicuously and predominantly a democratic body, chosen from the successful of the land” p56

Price trusts in competency being moderated by social processes and effectiveness:

“God and nature turn out the incompetents” p60

Interesting perspective.  The house of Lords could represent a form of natural democracy when considered as a situated social process across Centuries rather than decades.  He appears to approve of the British governmental processes.  Can you guess what perspective Price will take in his chapter on English ‘home life’?  I’m riveted…..

Other posts prompted by earlier book chapters:

1. Heavy
2. fashion-failed females
3. provincially bumptious

Third post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  a book by Price Collier.  The quotes below use Price’s words to illustrate his first impressions of the English.  He uses such a wonderfully rich and concise turns of phrase that I couldn’t bear to summarise in my own words.  Excerpts:

On faces & food

“here the features of the women, even the features of the beautiful women, are moulded; while the features of our beautiful American women are chiselled.” p.12

“To those who have given some attention to gastronomics either for the stomach’s or the pocket’s sake, the food provided here is… …a thrice daily bugbear.” p.12

On climate & criticism:

“is a climate where the warmly dressed, agreeably exercising, comfortably housed male flourishes like a green bay tree” p14

“these pages are not written in criticism but as a study” p14

On Harlotry and bumptiuosness:

“Only here in London does one see, or rather it is held under your nose, the most shameless parading of Harlotry… …so too may one drink - men women, and even children - at almost every corner.” p.27

“an attitude of provincial bumptiousness and imprudence unequalled in the world” p30

Can you guess Price’s perspective on Royalty, The House of Lords, the Aristocracy?  Hold on to your seats because there’s a post on this very topic being brewed….

Other posts prompted by Price’s study of the English:

1. Heavy
2. fashion-failed females

Second post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view“  a book by Price Collier. (Post #1 - Heavy)

Price doesn’t much care for the fashion sense of his contemporary English women.  He blames English men for not adequately adorning their females.  Excerpt (my bold emphasis):

“But the women!  What hats,  what clothes, what shoes, what colors, what amorphous figures! Who permits that nice-looking girl to wear a white flannel skirt, a purple jacket, and a fur hat with a bunch of small feathers sticking out at right angles?…   …The gortesque costumes of the women would make one stop and stare, were it not that they are so common one ceases at last to notice them“

No mistaking Price’s attitude!  A fur hat with small feathers sticking out at right angles sounds absolutely gorgeous to a Hat fettishist such as myself.  I wonder if Price was wearing the 1909 equivalent of khaki cargo pants?  Would that I could “cease at last to notice them“.  I do enjoy Price’s turn of phrase and emotive expression.   He later explains at some length that the bad dress sense of the women is the fault of selfish men who don’t give their women enough money to construct fashionable and versataile wardrobes. 

Stay riveted to the edge of your seats… ….what will offend Price next?

Recommended reading for people who want to familiairise themselves with an influential Virgina Woolf book.  :-)

I am not planning to read another Virginia Woolf book. Probably because I am turning into a Philistine.

Mrs. Dalloway is the Virgina Woolf book that inspired the beautiful yet disturbing film ‘The hours“.  At first I found the book a tad boring.  Then I realised that Virgina was carrying me between scenes as if in one uninterupted camera-shot.  Visualising the scenes helped the dialog gain life and vibrancy.  My familiairity with the London landmarks cited helped make the visualisation rich.  I pictured an Ivory and Merchant production with a re-casting of the cast from the Hours.  Meryl Streep as Mrs. Dalloway.   This helped but I never bulit any strong connection with the book.  I found it difficult to empathise with the characters’ interests,  obsessions,  ways of being.  Here’s a sentence that illustrates how I found the book:

“going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey the banana’s bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow“  p139

strength: comparing the buses on london’s strand to banana’s is visually clever and humerous.

weakness:  ‘going and coming, beckoning, signalling’ the words that failed to show me anything of value about either this character or the storyline.  I don’t see why this charater rather than any other compared buses to bananas and used these descriptive terms.  I failed to recognise the significance of this and many of the sentences.  

I’m forcing myself to release the books I’ve been holding hostage in my home for years.  Todays escapees: 

Fabulous public librarys and internet access remove the ’need’ to own many books.   Despite this lack of ‘need’ it is very painful to let books leave.  I haven’t managed to release my 16th Birthday present from my brother - The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.    

What books would you have difficulty releasing?

Set in a future,  Plato, and orator tells stories of the different ages of the worlds’ existence.  Ackroyd paints a picture of some of the ‘current’ world understandings.  An ingenious possible world.  We follow the character of Plato as he uses stories and rhetoric to encourage the inhabitants to question their own, current, understandings.  To question their ‘truths’.  We see the societal implications of his questioning the current dominant world view within this fictional future. 

A quick,  deeply entertaining read for people with a passing knowledge of greek mythology,  philosophy,  E A Poe, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud and London’s geography/districts.  Without this knowledge the book is still brief and good with a little more proactive reflection on the readers part and lacking some of the referential humour and colourful decoration that this prior knowledge affords.

Excellent plot.  Ackroyd creatively re-interprets history using deliberate misunderstandings based on inferences from incomplete information.  For example,  the only copy of ‘The origin of the species’ has the authors name partially destroyed,  as Charles D….   They assume the author is Charles Dickens and read the book as if it is a Novel with colourful characters.  “May I recommend ‘the origin of the species’ to you then, as a comic masterpiece“p10.   

 

For the Plato character there is clearly sign posted character development.

Despite my strong affection for Ackroyd’s previous works that I have read - Hawksmoor, Chatterton, and Dan leno and the Limehouse Golem the Plato papers reads as a self-consciously clever novel.  That is A LOT more than most writers produce but not sufficient for me to recommend it as a generally good,  entertaining, read.  

 

To fully enjoy the book you need some cursory knowledge of  British authors and London’s geography.   The characters other than Plato appear merely instumental in telling the main plot; no character development.  Some points are laboured,  for example the glossary of ancient terms that Plato is writting serves its purposes of illustrating misunderstandings and the perspective of this future world well before Ackroyd finishes it.