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Buddy Reading The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland

5/2/2017

I’ve mentioned before how, together with a small bunch of reading enthusiasts discovered on Twitter, we take on a group read twice a year. This time we read The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland. I vaguely recall having watched the 1957 film of the same name which starred Peter Finch on TV, probably sometime in the late Sixties, on one of those long drawn-out Sunday afternoons that always held a kind of dread back then, and seemed to colour everything a little bit grey - strange, because I love Sundays these days, and aim (not always successfully) to do as little as possible.

D’Arcy Niland was a writer dedicated to the great art of short-story writing, and during his relatively short life (1917-1967) he managed to produce over five hundred. He left school at fourteen to help support a large family, and seems to have lived a life as an itinerant worker in much the same way as Mac Macauley does in The Shiralee. He had been encouraged to write by the nuns at his school and he seems to have self-educated himself whilst on the road. He married New Zealander Ruth Park in 1942. She, like Niland, had done some journalism, and they decided they would try and pursue their ambition to write full-time. They had five children together and they both won various literary prizes to support their writing. In 1952 Niland was awarded £600 by the Commonwealth Literary fund to write a novel, and the result was The Shiralee (published 1955). It has never been out of print since and has been translated into many languages.

What did I think of The Shiralee? It is a very fine novel. Niland possessed a short-story writer’s eye for capturing detail that might otherwise pass as mundane or fleeting. It’s not a very thick book but what it lacks in size is made up for in weight. I laughed and wept and genuinely felt a little sad when I finished it, simply because there were no more pages to turn. Niland was a very good writer, as was Ruth Park, whose Harp in the South trilogy, set in the slums of Sydney and partly based on what they observed from living there, is equally worth reading.

Mac Macauley, the book’s main character, is walking the backroads of New South Wales, always on the look out for work, his four year old daughter Buster, the shiralee (burden) of the title, alongside or trailing behind. Macauley is hard and uncompromising, like the land and the life he has always known. He bumps into friends and enemies along the way but this is a story about a man and a child, about loyalty and love. The characters he meets are wonderful, rich, poignant, sometimes spiteful, occasionally violent, but most often surprisingly generous and kind-hearted. I think Tommy Goorianawa, Beauty Kelly, Luke and Bella Sweeney, Wigley, Sam Bywater and the wonderful Desmond have established themselves in my psyche just as firmly as Ham Peggotty, Yossarian or George and Lennie. This is an exceptionally good book, the writing is wonderful. I would go so far as to say that it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and it will most certainly be making my Favourites shelf on Goodreads. I urge everyone to read it.

Thanks to my clever Twitter book club friends for suggesting another great book I would probably never have discovered without them! Having both read it, the wife and I are now very keen to trek up to London to see the Australian Impressionists exhibition.

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First Post 2017

4/1/2017

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The Bullshiteers (with a nod to Hans Holbein) - limited edition print by Tom Johnson

A friend sent me an email recently enquiring if I was okay because he noticed I hadn’t updated this blog in a while. The truth is that since 23 June, 2016, I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged, and for the first time in my life probably, I began to feel uncomfortable about my British identity. I had always enjoyed the feeling of connectedness to our friends in mainland Europe that EU membership brought us, along with the longest period of peace and cooperation between nation states in European history. The xenophobes and far-right may view the Battle of the Somme or the Battle of Britain (perhaps backed by the Dam Busters’ theme) as our finest examples of British nationhood; personally, whilst I don’t gainsay the brave sacrifice of those men and women, I ‘d personally opt for the abolition of slavery, the creation of the welfare state and the NHS.

I don’t think the EU is perfect, but then, what political model is? The European Court of Human Rights is something to be admired, and we may well lose some of our workers’ rights by leaving. Of course, the right wing press has whinged on for years about Brussels red-tape, but it’s always easy to find fault. I certainly don’t share the UKIP leader’s disgust for the EU passport; in fact, I’m fairly sure I share none of Nigel Farage’s Little-England views. I find it extraordinary that this man, the product of a private education at Dulwich College, an ex commodities dealer, and proclaimed worshipper at the shrine of Margaret Thatcher, has somehow promoted himself as the crusading hero at the forefront of an anti-elitist battle to reassert the rights of the ordinary man (sorry, I should have inserted the word ‘decent’ - ‘ordinary, decent, man’ - which in the lexicon of the right wing seems to mean ‘xenophobic reactionary’). Farage is a man who has regularly demonstrated his utter contempt for the intellectual lightweightedness of his fellow UKIPers, so I am incredulous that he can actually embrace ‘ordinary people’ - at arms length perhaps, whilst wearing latex gloves and a nose-peg. But Farage didn’t pull off Brexit alone, although he’d like us to think he did; let’s give credit where credit is due, Boris Johnson was actually the campaign’s figurehead with Michael Gove at his right hand. When I consider this opportunistic pair, I can’t help thinking of Jabba the Hutt and his sidekick Salacious Crumb from Return of the Jedi. This unattractive twosome, so deserving of each other (as demonstrated by Gove’s subsequent stabbing of the Johnson back), once guaranteed their loyalty to David Cameron, now a former tenant of 10 Downing Street as a result of trusting them. They seemed prepared to sink to any level of vulgar populism during the debacle that was the referendum debate.

Shortly before standing down as Prime Minister, David Cameron claimed that he didn't regret holding the referendum because he was so completely committed to democracy. He blamed EU rules on immigration as the reason he lost - nothing whatever to do with any of his domestic policies, like his party’s failure to build enough decent homes for our people or the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Apparently, he’d once joked at a meeting with EU leaders, when some had voiced caution about holding a referendum in the first place, “Don't worry, I'm a winner”. So, this pain we're all suffering could be seen as stemming from one man's arrogance. I daresay the Murdoch press or one or other of the big publishing houses will see him alright with a million or two as an advance on his memoirs. I now hear that our failed Prime Minister is being tipped for the top job at NATO. Mmmmm ...
2016 was a very odd year indeed. Does anyone recall the public vote In March called by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to suggest names for their new research ship? Overwhelming numbers voted for ‘Boaty McBoatface’ - 124,000 votes with its nearest rival polling just 34,000. However, it seems that ‘the will of the British people’ a phrase so often quoted at us by our politicians post-Brexit, could in this particular case be waived in favour of upholding our national dignity - the ship was subsequently named RRS David Attenborough (phew!). Yet, when it came to the most important referendum there has ever been (whose remit was always stated as advisory), less than 38% of the eligible voting population was enough to stand for the overwhelming will of the British people.

The thing that upset me most about Brexit was the lack of intelligent debate during the campaign, especially, if not solely, from its victors. However, the Leave camp did plumb depths which I personally have never witnessed before in a British electoral campaign. The Leave politicians all seem to have recently distanced themselves from their much-paraded claim “We send the EU 350 million a week - Let’s fund the NHS instead - Let’s take back control”. And no politician with any decency could have stood before that poster, as Farage did, of (brownish-skinned) migrants streaming across the Slovenian(?) border with the caption “Breaking Point - The EU has failed us all - we must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.” Or what about Michael Gove’s derogatory remarks about the considered opinions of experts on the bad effects of leaving the EU?

It’s hard to gauge the Brexit referendum’s impact on that other big election of 2016, the US Presidential election of Donald Trump in November (or, is that the Precedential Election, Donald?); it was a double-whammy for Remain voters like myself. The victorious campaigns had many similarities: they were shockingly light on fact-based argument, didn’t shy away from making outlandish statements, were quick to berate the press as biased whenever it criticised them, and both campaigns were remarkably swift to identify, claim and draw to their hearts the large numbers of disenchanted voters on both sides of the pond who found themselves hurting and seeking someone to blame for their ills. What came to light shortly after the US election was the influence that the (presumably self-named) Alt-Right Breitbart News organisation exercised over both events. I had never even heard of Breitbart or of its executive chairman Stephen Bannon before; he’s the man now destined to become Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist at the White House. Yikes!

We are being told on both sides of the Atlantic that our real enemy is a global liberal elite. Across the water, Donald Trump’s cunning plan to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington insiders is to backslide on a number of promises he made to his electors during his campaign and fill his White House team with lobbyists and insiders of the very worst kind. What strikes me as particularly scary is Trump and the Alt-Right’s lack of respect for democracy. One of the greatest vulnerabilities in democracy is a requirement on the part of those who partake in elections to conduct themselves with a certain level of decorum, honesty and fair-mindedness. Do you think Vladimir Putin (who may, or may not, have authorised a few computers to be hacked in order to help Donald win) really admires him, or does he think he’s a moron, like the three million majority of Americans who voted against him?

The first book I completed in 2017, which I sincerely hope doesn’t demonstrate any kind of prescience on my part, was The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans. It charts the forces at work in Germany from the end of the Bismarck era, through the Wilhelmine period which led up to the end of WWI, then on through the years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis from fringe group to power. I always believed Hitler was elected Reich Chancellor by popular vote. This wasn’t the case; he was installed as Chancellor through a deal with some right-wing politicians who were under the woeful misapprehension that they would easily be able to control him. They couldn’t have been more mistaken. The Nazis, who possessed no respect for democracy whatever, never won an election by fair means, and once they’d achieved power, they quickly suppressed (often by killing) any opposition. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the way they seized and held onto power is the speed with which they managed to silence any opposition - within just weeks of assuming power they had established the notorious Dachau concentration camp along with several others to detain their political opponents. This is the first book in a trilogy by Evans about the Third Reich which was clearly written with the layman in mind. It is beautifully accessible in its writing and Evans’ scholarship gives a superb overview of this terrible period in European history.

In light of our Brexit referendum and the US elections, the banal rhetoric, the racist slurs, blatant lies, these words seemed even more chilling words whilst reading The Coming of the Third Reich:

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be ... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but the power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (Mein Kampf)

Can’t allow Hitler the final word on my blog.

I wish all lovers of freedom and democracy, however they may have chosen to vote, a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017!

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Austria Again!

7/10/2016

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A few weeks back we returned from our summer holiday. We’ve picked the Austrian Tyrol five times over the past seven years. I assure you we are capable of imagining other destinations, yet the Tyrol remains an absolute dead cert for us, ticking all the boxes for two people inclined to overwork themselves. Sometimes, we’re not aware of how exhausted we are until we arrive and find ourselves taking extended afterrnoon naps over the first few days.

“Blimey,” one of us remarks, “didn’t realise I was this tired!”

The scenery is breathtaking, and taking a cable-car to the nearest mountain-top never fails to excite us - we’re easily pleased. This time we stayed for our first time at the relaxed and charming, family-run Schneeberger Hotel in Niederau, literally five minutes away from the Markbachjoch lift station. Every summer tourist is presented with a Wildschonau Valley Card which offers unlimited travel on two lifts, daily swimming at the local heated outdoor pool and entrance to the local museum - all free! Our main pastime is of course the daily walking; generally we start off with a few easy ones before tackling the mountain hikes. We always nip into the local tourist office when we first arrive and buy a copy of the best map available - an invaluable purchase if you mean to do any serious walking. Even so, map or no, we still seem to go wrong at least once or twice; this experience has been known to produce some exasperated sighs and even the odd bad word, especially when you realise the last 200m downhill descent you’ve been finding such an incredible doddle was completely wrong and you now need to entirely retrace your steps back uphill.

If your idea of a summer vacation includes wearing a pair of slingback heels (I’m thinking of the ladies here, please don’t imagine me shod in this way!), then you should probably avoid this destination. However, that’s not to say the holiday’s only fit for serious mountain hikers; not at all, there are good paths and walks for all ages, every fitness level and ability; even so, if you’re planning a walk, a pair of walking-boots, a hat, a rucksack containing waterproofs, something to eat, some sun-cream and a water bottle are all advisable - the weather can change very quickly in the mountains.

We generally avoid large towns, however, on this occasion we did a lovely round-trip walk from Niederau through woodland to Worgl. We bought some lunch in Worgl and became a tad overjoyed on spotting a C&A store; these have been long extinct in Britain and our excitement probably only serves to give away our age. I remember my mother taking me to Swansea C&A in the mid-sixties to buy my first off-the-peg suit for chapel. For old times’ sake I bought a linen shirt and a new pair of shorts, and Judith got herself some t-shirts.

The coffee, even when served at a hutte on the top of a mountain, is almost invariably good; we did however get an expensive cup of instant (surely a work of the Devil?) at one alm that we had instinctively wondered about before entering - the place was scruffy and seemed a bit grubby - so very untypical for sparkly-clean-in- every-way-Austria; we should have trusted our instincts, but let’s face it, a two-week holiday where the only bad experience is one lousy cup of coffee has to be a winner.

Apart from the walking, there was of course always time for daily reading. I happily devoured Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (see review in previous blog),The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, Oh Pioneer by Willa Cather and The Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis - all different but all great reads and definitely recommended.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

3/9/2016

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This book was chosen for the buddy read I take part in with some pals discovered on Twitter a few years back. We don’t exert any pressure on each other to complete the read within a set time period, although we always have an agreed kick-off date. There are no rules, and so far we’ve read books by writers previously unknown to us (certainly unread). What generally happens is that someone suggests a book and the others either agree with the choice or raise an objection - we’re all pretty amenable and accommodating, I suspect, because this establishing the next book phase usually only requires a few short tweets - so, If you’re the Genghis Khan type, inclined to dominate your sewing circle, please don’t consider joining our little reading group - otherwise, everyone’s welcome! The reason why I have so far enjoyed this twice-yearly interaction so much is because of the way it has introduced me to literature I might not have found otherwise.

I daresay, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (published 1937), is a prime example of a book I would never have experienced without the gentle encouragement of this group. The novel is related through a Southern Black dialect by an anonoymous narrator, telling the story of its main protagonist, Janie. The narrative takes place over approximately twenty-five years and describes Janie’s marriages with three different men. The first two relationships leave her unfulfilled, but she finds true love and a sense of spiritual enlightenment as an individual through the third marriage. The book was out of print for some years and was for a time condemned for its lack of political comment. It’s true, the book has no particular moral or political agenda, nor does it make any strong statement about race, although it certainly touches on race issues; it does however powerfully depict the struggle of the protagonist as an individual to inhabit her own voice. I have never read another novel that is anything remotely like Their Eyes Were Watching God, and in this respect it is unique. The book does however have some flaws, and a number of passages that I felt might have read so much better had they been whittled down - the mule dialogue for instance. The book does however contain some wonderfully poetic images that managed to fill my head with pictures as I read.

The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods - come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value.

Unique. Poetic. Definitely worth reading.

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Book Catch-Up

27/7/2016

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Like at least half the population of the UK I was really thrown by the Brexit result. I planned to write a piece about it, perhaps I shall, but at the moment my feelings surrounding the whole referendum thing are still too raw, and this blog was never meant to become a rant platform or an opportunity for spitting vitriol. The first weekend after the vote I wrote this on Facebook, which basically sums up the way I felt at the time:

“No point feeling depressed any longer about Brexit. Happily readjusting to living back in the 1970s. Looking forward to a nice prawn cocktail followed by a Vesta Beef curry and then we're planning to settle down to an episode of Love Thy Neighbour with Jack Smethurst and Rudolph Walker. Laugh!”

As for David Cameron and his cowardly resignation after recklessly allowing the referendum to happen in the first place, I feel angry still. I felt somewhat sickened when his sycophantic Tory chums described his arrogant foolishness as ‘a brave decision’ and talked of the great courage he’d shown as their leader ... grrrr!

But I’m not going to talk Brexit ... well, not anymore. I’ve read a number of very good books over this period, so here’s a brief appraisal of them:

My Ántonia - by Willa Cather

This is a powerfully evocative novel about home, love and friendship by a wonderful writer. It is written from the perspective of the book’s sympathetic narrator, Jim Burden, who at the age of nine arrives at his grandparents’ farm in Black Hawk, Nebraska, and becomes smitten by the ‘force of nature’ that is Ántonia from the first moment he sets eyes upon her. The book is far more than just a love story though. The characterisations are richly satisfying and it left me with a powerful sense of place and time. Cather helps the reader understand, through her straightforward but nearly perfect prose, the strains, hopes and dreams of the immigrant settlers who inhabit her landscape, and gives us an insight into the fears and old oppressions they are fleeing from. This is one of those rare books that once reaching its end you could happily return to the beginning and start over. Excellent.

The Winter of Our Discontent - by John Steinbeck

This was Steinbeck’s last novel - not however his final book. It has been sadly overlooked possibly because it received some very mixed reactions at the time of publication. Don’t let this put you off. This is a very finely-crafted work, which seems particularly appropriate at this moment in time after the greed demonstrated by banks, corporations and individuals in recent years. Steinbeck makes a small East Coast town his backdrop for the moral dilemma that grocery clerk Ethan Hawley faces in this story. It is a morality tale. The writing is first rate. Definitely amongst my favourite Steinbeck novels and seriously underrated. Recommended.

The Road to Nab End - by William Woodruff

Autobiographical account of a childhood spent in Blackburn, a Lancashire cotton- weaving town in the early twentieth century. Woodruff never writes sentimentally about the terrible hardships these working-class people faced throughout the depression years. Unusually for an autobiography I found it utterly compulsive reading. It is the first of two parts and I definitely mean to read its sequel . A very fine slice of social history without the lecture; a masterfully-written account of an impoverished childhood. Superb.

When the Women Come out to Dance - by Elmore Leonard

These short stories are deliciously entertaining, great characterisations, lean prose, not a word out of place. Great fun to read.

No Name - by Wilkie Collins

This was considered pretty scandalous in its day because it deals with the subject of illegitimacy. It tells the story of Magdalene and Norah Vanstone, who are disinherited because of the sudden deaths of their parents. The family money which was intended to be shared between them goes to a miserly cousin who treats them with utter contempt. The sisters have very different personalities: Norah humbly accepts her lot in life and seeks work as a governess; Magdalene (the name’s a bit of a give-away - but this is nineteenth century literature!) seeks to regain her family fortune.

If you’ve read any Wilkie Collins before, you can expect a great cast of characters: misers, wicked housekeepers, scoundrels with a heart of gold and naval men with hearts of oak. It’s great stuff!

So, there you have it - everything I’ve read since I last posted a blog.

On 1 August I’m taking part in a summer buddy read with some chums I discovered on Twitter. Anyone can join in. We do two books a year. The current choice is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Basically all you have to do is get a copy and start reading on that date; no time limit, write a blog or leave a review and get in touch. It’s fun!

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The Wettest Holiday Ever!

9/6/2016

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In 1960 we looked like this

Holiday time approacheth ...

Memories of childhood are notoriously imprecise, but certain things, whether entirely accurate or not, somehow lodge themselves in the brain and refuse to budge. One such recollection is a family holiday to the Welsh seaside town of Porthcawl during what must have been the summer of 1960, when I was five/six. Porthcawl was considered the holiday mecca for us Valleys folk; in fact, it was impossible to visit the place without bumping into someone you knew from home - no place then to fly off to for an illicit weekend liaison, not that such thoughts would have had any place in my innocent mind back then; any fantasies I entertained were wholly confined to fighting injustice and righting wrongs like my heroes the Lone Ranger and his ever-faithful Indian companion Tonto.

Wales, a mountainous place with a large coastline, is famed for its rain. I’ve heard it rumoured that some of our sheep, if not a few of the locals in some rural parts, are web-footed. Back in the Porthcawl summer of 1960 a natural proclivity for an amphibious lifestyle would have come in useful. I wouldn’t entirely trust my own memory here; my parents however always maintained that over a two-week holiday we did experience fourteen days of almost non-stop rain. The first week we boarded with a lovely lady called Mrs Jones (the names of both saints and sinners were always faithfully recorded by my late mother); the second week, we suffered the misfortune of lodging with a Mrs Martin. Mrs Martin was a widowed lady who quite evidently detested children, which naturally didn’t bode too well for my brother and me. Even my father, normally big-hearted, found his good nature put to the test by this woman; Mrs Martin was more strict Victorian governess than welcoming hostess, and to top it all, she was a rotten cook to boot - this is probably what riled Dad the most! I think Dad regarded a bad cook as a work of the Devil (well, not far off!). I recall him, after one of numerous inedible meals, gruffly muttering to my mother that perhaps the late Mr Martin had gone to his heavenly reward after consuming one of his wife’s dinners.

Mrs Martin’s guest house truly was cold and unwelcoming. In those days, families like us who lived on modest incomes purchased their own food and had it cooked for them by their hostess. I’ve no idea what this practice was called, eventually it was of course succeeded by B&B and half-board. I have a feeling it may have been called something a bit misleading like ”All found”. So, our domestic situation only made matters worse; outside it continued to rain and inside the guest house we were subjected to Mrs M’s culinary abuse and sneering dislike of children. One evening, shortly before the evening meal, Mrs Martin accused my brother and myself of vomiting over her bathroom and leaving it in a terrible mess. She was very condemnatory and quite scary in her manner I recall. My mother, like all good mothers, would not stand for her ‘chicks’ to be maligned thus, “I can assure you, Mrs Martin, that It wasn’t either of my boys!” she protested. “Who on earth was it, then?” sneered the awful Mrs M, “I don’t know,” replied Mam on the verge of tears, “But it wasn’t either of my boys!” At the same moment as Mrs Martin scoffed scornfully at this, a plaintive voice called down from the landing upstairs, “It was me!” a frail male voice called out. The Joneses were a kindly, elderly couple from the Rhondda who were the only other paying guests in the house. “I’m very sorry, it wasn’t the boys, I was taken ill and I was about to clean up the mess!” Mrs Martin looked appropriately shamefaced as she shuffled away from my mother who was standing guard over her boys, proud and victorious. As far as my brother Ian (seven years older than myself) was concerned, the confrontation was the final straw. The next morning he caught the bus back to my grandparents’ house. I don’t recall him coming on a family holiday again - Mrs Martin had been the line in the sand for him!

I don’t think I gave my swimming trunks an airing at any time over that holiday, but I did manage a few paddles in the odd rock pool between cloudbursts. One evening we went to see the variety show at The Grand Pavilion. I remember Dad particularly enjoyed the comedian, and was still telling a joke he heard that night about a family of rabbits thirty years later. The local cinema had only one offering as I recall, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the 1958 Hammer version of Dracula. It had an X certificate (i.e. eighteen and over!) so no good for me, in fact I recall my hair standing on end just looking at the black and white stills that were displayed in a glass case outside the cinema. The large shelter on the promenade with its multiple rows of benches was filled to capacity every day. Each day we did the same circuit of shops around the town - Woolworths was by far the best, of course, and hours were spent browsing its aisles. Every day we’d have a Fulgoni’s ice-cream cone or two; we’d generally escape the rain mid-morning and mid-afternoon by going to a cafe to have cups of tea for the grown ups and a glass of pop or a milk shake for us. Sometimes, to avoid Mrs Martin’s meals we’d have faggots and peas from the stall in Coney Beach (to allay the concerns of American readers here, faggots are a ball of minced lamb and offal, traditionally served with mushy peas) or Mam’s lifelong favourite, fish and chips. I think the putting green, a traditional holiday pursuit, and still surviving in Porthcawl to this day, was waterlogged and closed up those weeks, I certainly don’t recall us playing. But not all was lost, on the last night of the holiday I was taken to the fair and allowed to go on half a dozen rides and to spend any pocket money my grandparents had pressed into my hand before leaving.

One of the best things I remember was going out one evening after dark when it was high tide and dodging the waves that surged into the air like a blowing whale and left its spume washing across the promenade.

Here is Another Porthcawl story

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Gilgamesh

2/6/2016

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Driving to work one morning my wife almost ran over a book. Yes, a hardback book, strange but true. Just imagine what this meant for a book fanatic like Judith - books materialising out of nowhere and suddenly appearing on her path?

She naturally pulled into the side of the road to try and see if she could help. Its cover was slightly bent and Judith did what any book-lover is duty-bound to do - brought it home so it could be treated for shock and duly nurtured. The gentle reader will be delighted to learn that the aforementioned book has since found happiness and fulfilment amongst others of its species upon our bookshelves.

The book was Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell.

“That’s the oldest story ever written down,” I exclaimed when she brought it home.

“I know,” she said, “I found it in the middle of the road.”

“Wow,” I said, “I’ve always wanted to read it.”

“Here’s your chance,” she said, passing me the book.

It’s pretty ridiculous to rate a book that is actually older than The Bible by a system of stars, one to five! The poetic text in English by Stephen Mitchell is far easier to regard objectively and review. For my money he has done an excellent job of bringing together literal translations of the surviving fragments of Sumerian,Babylonian and Akkadian texts and working them into an agreeable epic poem by adopting a certain amount of artifice, which he freely admits to in his introduction.

This is a morality tale about the tragedy of human existence. When we first meet Gilgamesh we are told of his tyranny and how he oppresses the people in his kingdom, the walled city of Uruk. The people petition the Gods to temper their king’s abuses, and the responsive Gods duly send Enkidu, a kind of wild man, who is very nearly Gilgamesh’s physical equal, to restore balance to the world. It is interesting that as the story proceeds, and after they’ve become friends, they develop the attributes of each other - a bit like people are said to do in a marriage, and the text most certainly has a homo-erotic quality.

Gilgamesh is later forced to suffer bereavement and loss when his friend Enkidu is chosen by the Gods to die as a punishment for Gilgamesh’s wanton destruction of Humbaba, a monster entrusted by the Gods with the task of guarding the Cedar Forest and for killing the Bull of Heaven. Gilgamesh is so heart-broken after the loss of Enkidu that he wanders the world in despair. Eventually, he perks up a little and goes on a highly perilous journey to find Utnapishtim to see if he can learn the secret of eternal life. Utnapishtim tells him about the great flood (Noah’s Ark but predating the biblical version) and assures him that eternal life is impossible and its secret belongs to the Gods alone. Finally, he returns home to the walled city of Uruk as its rightful king. He has acquired some wisdom and perhaps the knowledge, known to the mystics and sages througout the ages, that man’s life can only be lived in the present.

What this poem tells me is that almost five thousand years ago, when the earliest of these tales were first conceived and written, human beings were largely concerned with the same issues as they are now.

A very successful roadside rescue indeed, I think.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Some Other Thoughts

12/5/2016

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I am sometimes appalled to hear educators declare that teaching the classics of English literature in our schools should be abandoned because they hold no relevance for modern children. I firmly believe that anyone who truly wishes to understand the development of language and writing needs to possess a firm grasp of of our literary heritage. The famous quotation from Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke acknowledging his indebtedness to others, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” can be applied to any discipline just as easily as science. There would be no detective/thriller genre if Wilkie Collins hadn’t created books like The Woman in White and The Moonstone (just imagine what prime-time TV would ever have done then, even more reality and game shows perhaps?), without H Rider Haggard there would be no Lost World genre (Tarzan would still be apeing about in the jungle and there would be no Jurassic Park!). If John Polidori’s The Vampyre hadn’t influenced Bram Stoker, then there may never have been a Dracula, and Stephen King wouldn’t have written Salem’s Lot. The whole Fantasy genre basically stems from the pen of one man, J R R Tolkien, who had himself been inspired by the Norse myths. On a personal note, I most definitely couldn’t have written Niedermayer & Hart or Roadrage without following the bright trails that lead back to their many rich sources. Anyone who claims total originality is I think deluding themselves. However, there is a big difference between following themes or traditions and direct, deliberate plagiarism.

I’ve just read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus, for the first time (published 1818 - and acknowledging its debt to Greek mythology in the title). It is of course the original mad scientist scenario that has since become a stalwart of just about every form of popular culture. The story, then not a hundred years old, first made it to the cinema screens as far back as 1910 - we just love to be horrified! The book might be loosely classified as science fiction too, and its influence on art and literature has been incredibly far-reaching. As a novel it most certainly deserves its classic status. The book’s basic premise of man taking on the role of God has cross-bred with other genres: combine a mad scientist and lost world theme and you get Jurassic Park, mix mad science that creates computers who themselves create horrific human-like machines and you have the Terminator series, perhaps even Tolkien had something of the book in mind when he has Saruman create the Uruk-Hai.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Godwin in 1797, the daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and writer and journalist William Godwin. Her mother died soon after she was born, and Mary received no formal education and doesn’t seem to have taken very well to her step-mother. She began an affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when still a teenager and eloped with him to the (then war-torn) Continent. She began writing Frankenstein in 1816 whilst holidaying on Lake Geneva ; by this time she had lost her first baby and had given birth to a son (sadly not to survive either). They were assailed by weeks of rain, and their chum Lord Byron suggested to the group of friends present, that they each compose a horror story to pass the time. The rest is, as they say, history.

The story is well written and has withstood the test of time. The monster of her tale undertakes to do many cruel and vindictive acts in revenge upon his creator Frankenstein; yet it is the monster who is given the last word in the novel by Shelley, and it is for him that we feel the deepest sympathy. Frankenstein never acknowledges his responsibility as creator, and simply abandons his creation which he finds too abhorrent to even gaze upon. The monster subsequently wanders the world like a lost child receiving only cruelty, unkindness and hatred from mankind who he yearns in his heart to join. Is the monster in this story the creature, or the human ego?

We stand at a point in time where such matters are no longer far-fetched. Whilst our governments can attempt to reassure us that any genetic experiments are only carried out with the utmost care and with every attention paid to what is both morally and ethically right ... we know too that once the genie is out of the bottle ...

I wrote a blog some time back that was based on the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein.

And on a lighter note - one of my favourite comedy films, Young Frankenstein.

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Musical Weekend

3/5/2016

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My wife is currently reading the autobiography of Helen Keller, who, from a very early age, lost both her sight and hearing. I simply can’t imagine what that must be like - a very different kind of life I guess, though, certainly in Keller’s case, not without joy and a sense of fulfilment . It’s hard for anyone born (especially since the invention of broadcast sound) to conceive of a life without music; it’s all around us a lot of the time. Just step into the garden a moment: hear the radio blaring from the guys working on the loft conversion in the next street, the pounding bass of a passing car as it drives by, or the sound of a child practising piano scales.

A running theme of our past Bank Holiday weekend seems to have been popular music - not intentionally planned though, things simply fell out that way. We’d booked several months back to see Eric Bibb in concert at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. We possess several of his albums and have always enjoyed listening to these, so it was very satisfying to get an opportunity to catch him live. He is a highly accomplished blues performer, a beautiful songwriter with a distinctive and very pleasing voice. On Sunday evening he had a band of excellent musicians and backing vocalists accompanying him. His daughter Yana Bibb, a skilled jazz vocalist, provided the support for the first part of the evening. The Bibb family are something of a musical dynasty: Eric Bibb’s father Leon was very active in the New York folk music scene of the 60’s, his godfather was the legendary Paul Robeson and his uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. You get the feeling that the musical luminaries of the sixties like Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta etc regularly dropped by the Bibb family home like my mother’s neighbours in the valleys of South Wales used to pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. Eric Bibb himself moved to Sweden in the Seventies and now lives in Finland. I see one of the dates he has for his current tour is Porthcawl in South Wales - a favoured holiday destination of my family’s when I was a child. I’d love to see him again if I had the opportunity and excuse to pay a visit to Wales at the end of the month! He’s playing at a number of locations all over the UK - so I hope you take the opportunity to see him. Check out Eric Bibb's website for details.

The reason why I said our weekend had a musical theme was because we also watched the George Harrison documentary, Living in the Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese. This is a film in two parts, beautifully realised through hundreds of clips and interviews with those who knew George. If you grew up in the Sixties as I did, The Beatles were inescapably part of your life. And George, the youngest of the four, was in many ways the most fascinating and complex character, often upstaged by Paul and John in the song-writing stakes, he too created some wonderful songs including Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord and dozens more. If you haven’t seen this film (I’d caught about half of the second part on TV a few years back)and if you’re interested in The Beatles, The Sixties, George Harrison, or all three, this is an excellent film which I can highly recommend.

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Radio Four

17/4/2016

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I've been decorating over the past week or so - trying to catch up with the stuff I pretend isn't waiting to be done when I'm busy writing. I'm not a great fan of the paintbrush, if the truth be told, however, I have been grateful for the opportunity to listen in to more on the radio. When I say radio I am naturally referring to BBC Radio 4. We generally wake up to Radio 3, the classical station, as the other half dislikes opening her eyes (ears!) to the full-on confrontation that is the Today news programme on 4.

The variety of programmes on Radio 4 is always astonishing, and as someone who rarely watches television I think I'd happily pay my BBC licence fee for this service alone, which has managed to both educate and entertain me over many years. If only I could write and listen to radio programmes at the same time! Alas, during periods of writing the radio has to be switched off until I break at lunchtime (here I must confess to having been hooked into the Helen & Rob marital abuse storyline of late in Radio Four’s daily soap The Archers!). I've really enjoyed some of the drama offerings, especially Killing Time by Peter Jukes, starring Lenny Henry, and The Clerks' Room by Janice Okoh, plus a number of one-off plays and some serials like Home Front, about the First World War, which relates itself to a day exactly a hundred years ago. But the Radio 4 diet is completely omnivorous, and this week I've also particularly relished hearing Thinking Allowed and The Media Show.

There is one fifteen minute programme that I've found immensely engaging though, and I'm so glad I didn't miss any of it: Free Speech, written and presented by Timothy Garton Ash. Basically this is a series of essays on a subject I truly believe we should all feel passionate about - the hard won right to express ourselves without prejudice. This is a terrific short series and I can highly recommend listening to it.

So, mostly thanks to BBC Radio, the decorating has been getting along nicely and relatively pain-free!

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