Books – Page 31 – derrickjknight

Dead Flies And Sherry Trifle

Geoff Le Pard, who entertains us so hugely with stories on his TanGental blog, would have us believe that he was once a lawyer. This cannot be true. No teenager could have had such a past profession. And Geoff is surely in his teens. Who else could so convincingly represent the mind of a nineteen-yer-old, as he does in ‘Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle’, which I finished reading yesterday?

We know that this writer is a master of dialogue, which he uses to great effect in this tale of intrigue, crooked dealings, bullying, and burgeoning sexual angst. It is funny too. I won’t reveal the story, but every time I read the name of the character ‘Nigel Sodding Parsons’ – almost always ‘Nigel Sodding…….’, I heard the voice of the hapless Harold Spittle, and could hardly stifle a giggle. Doesn’t that strike a chord with anyone who has experienced the pungent wit of adolescent relationships?

The setting is on the fringes of The New Forest, where Geoff grew up, and where I now live. The story, with its focus on interplay between the characters, and its rising tensions, could take place anywhere. The period, for those of us who lived through the UK’s scorching summer of 1976, is well described; the heat of the sun synchronising so well with that of Harry’s hormones.

Nice one, Geoff.

Today, the amaryllis that Frances gave us for Christmas produced its final bloom;

whilst our crocuses are reaching their peak.

Helen brought her grandson, Billy, for a visit this afternoon. I made a print for him to take home to Stephanie and John, his Mum and Dad.

Shelley joined us later on.

After our guests had retuned to their homes, Jackie drove me,

via the Lymington River mirror,

to catch the sunset reflected on Hatchet Pond,

and the flooded heath near Beaulieu.

This evening we dined on Thai prawn fishcakes followed by smoked haddock and Davidstowe cheddar cheese fishcakes, with ratatouille, carrots, green beans, and mashed potato. We both drank Louis de Camponac sauvignon blanc 2014.

The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street

By late morning today, the recent storm that has left the population of America’s eastern states digging out heaped piles of snow, having warmed itself on the way across the Atlantic, petered out to heavy rain that lasted all day and is expected to continue for a few more.

The Head Gardener is a regular customer of Otter Nurseries. Like all garden centres, this one, especially in the winter months, must diversify to survive. Like all regular customers, Jackie receives a collection of bargain tokens. One of these was a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer for lunch in the cafe. Like all bargain tokens this had a limited life span – the end of this month to be precise. It had to be done.

Leaving the soggy, scantily clad, sylphs and cute, damp, cherubs beneath the falling rain and among the flickering plant labels; and passing through the main showroom with its staccato overhead pattering precipitation; we entered the warm cafe, its rooftop raindrops silenced by effective double glazing. It was clear from the other token-clutching silver-haired diners, that one had to belong to the third age to be there at this time.

My choice was steak and Stilton pie; Jackie’s was scampi, chips, and peas. Not at all bad.

Later, I finished reading a Christmas present from Tess, Mat, and Poppy. This was ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street’ by Natasha Pulley.

Who made the bomb? is the essential mystery forming the theme of Ms Pulley’s fantastical novel. The lives of English and Japanese protagonists are interwoven into the fabric of Victorian England and Japan in an intriguing tale which holds the interest throughout. The writer is an imaginative storyteller, the elements of whose plot are indicated on the front board. There is no great character building in this tale which would probably make quite a thrilling film, especially given that the key theme could easily be translated to today’s world.

The said cover, designed by David Mann demonstrates similar imaginative skill of the artist. A circular panel cut out from the board represents the glass of a fob watch, the chain of which stretches down Parliament Street in the frontispiece. Filigree Street does not exist in this part of London.

This evening we dined on Tesco’s Finest Mixed Meats pizza, and Jackie’s fin salads, including the tomatoes and basil in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, to which I am rather partial. We shared Fortnum & Mason’s Chablis 2014 – a Christmas present from Luci and Wolf.

A Day Of Two Casseroles

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton Station today to facilitate my visit to Wolf and Luci in Clapham. From Waterloo I took the Northern Line underground to Clapham South and walked from there to Hambalt Road. I returned via Clapham Common.

‘Mister God, this is Anna’, by Sydney Hopkins under the pseudonym Fynn is a beautiful fable about a little girl whose ‘middle’ or essential spiritual core enables her to bear and surmount her experience as an abused runaway.

On my up journey today I finished reading ‘I Belong to No One’ by Gwen Wilson. What makes this personal memoir stand out is that the author is gifted writer whose creativity shines through her story told with deep honesty about her own feelings, and a sensitivity to those who fell short in caring for, or mistreated, her.

Albeit on the other side of the world, I have considerable knowledge of the contemporary social circumstances, ignorance, and legal constraints about which Gwen writes so eloquently.

The dramatic cover photograph does depict the despair the author describes, but what is demonstrated throughout the book is the author’s ‘middle’. Her story is for her to tell, so I will repeat none of it here, but simply urge you to read for yourself.

We have learned much since the middle of the 20th century. Nevertheless Gwen Wilson has appended an important epilogue.

The route I chose to walk this lunch-time took me along Clapham Common South Side, where skeletal trees provide a backdrop for the busy traffic.

Despite the careful maintenance of the houses on the side streets, such as these in Lynette Avenue,

you never know what you might find dumped on the pavements.

The Coach House in Shandon Road seems to have been converted into a home.

Other frontages bear the elegant detail of an earlier, more decorative age.

It must be thirty years or so that Abbeville Road has been experiencing the gentrification that brings trendy eating places.

Here is Hambalt Road.

I enjoyed a pleasurable visit with my friends, and the benefit of Luci’s excellent lamb casserole, boiled potatoes and mashed winter vegetables, followed by delicious fruit crumble. She and I drank a very good Kumala cabernet sauvignon shiraz 2013.

On my return walk a screeching and squawking heard above the roar of the traffic on the other side of the road outside Lambeth College emanated from a London Plane in which a pair of parakeets sent a squirrel scarpering.

Just before I reached the tube station the pedestrian crossing had been closed on account of water main works which are a not unusual sight in our capital.

I can’t pretend to understand this advance warning on the main road. I don’t imagine it really has anything to do with the people of Finland. Is it to be abandoned on the given date, because of engineering problems? Any ideas?

On my return home, the smell of Jackie’s sublime boeuf bourguignon was too much for me to resist having a small portion. I passed on dessert and wine.

Agnes Miller Parker

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton for me to lunch with Norman at Tas, in The Cut, EC1.

In the rather neglected station garden a Leycesteria is blooming rather early. Note the dumped supermarket trolley visible beyond the stems.

From Waterloo Station I approached The Cut, as congested as ever, via Lower Marsh

with its cosmopolitan food stalls preparing for the lunchtime custom.

I wasn’t the only photographer focussing on food.

Norman and I had our usual enjoyable discussion over the Anatolian cuisine. We both chose the Tas Special lamb meal, which was very tender and tasty. Before that we had each chosen soups. Mine was fish with coriander and ginger. For dessert we each enjoyed baklava, and shared a bottle of the house red. We finished with coffee before I made my way back to Waterloo for my return home. Further sustenance was not required this evening.

Two days ago, I featured the dust jacket of Eiluned Lewis’s ‘Honey Pots and Brandy Bottles’. This was to display the work of Agnes Miller Parker. I had bought this 1954 publication some forty years ago, essentially for the illustrations. Perhaps, I thought, it was time I got around to reading it. I finished it on the train today.

The book is a collection of essays and poems gathered to represent the four seasons of the year. Published by Country Life the writing is pleasant, if, for this reader, unexciting.

What lifts the publication well beyond the ordinary are the wood engravings of a woman I regard as one of the best illustrators of her day.

The clarity, perspective, and depth of field evident in these masterpieces would be impressive if they were simply pen and ink drawings. When one considers the technical skill required to bring light and life to images worked into blocks of wood, admiration can only be enhanced.

A Shropshire Lad

Last year’s Folio Society edition of ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by A. E. Housman contains Agnes Miller Parker’s 1940 wood engravings to this timeless set of poems. Much as I admire this superb artist’s work, I already possessed the Society’s 1986 edition illustrated in a more modern vein, so, I was not tempted to buy it. Well, not greatly. It is the latter version I finished reading today.

Here is the book jacket to another of my treasures, illustrated by the great engraver:

This is how The Folio Society publicise their latest edition:

“Beloved by both scholars and general readers, A Shropshire Lad was self-published in 1896 and has been continuously in print ever since. Housman, who was also the greatest classical scholar of his age, wrote the cycle of 63 poems after the death of his friend Adalbert Jackson. Among his themes are the transience of youth, the sorrow of death, the loss of friendship and the beauty of the English countryside. The poems’ depiction of young, brave soldiers made them widely popular during and after the Boer War and the First World War. They also captured the imagination of many composers, with George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Samuel Barber among those to set them to music.

Housman evokes a semi-imaginary pastoral landscape, his tone often rueful and elegiac as he evokes the ‘golden’ years of youth and the realm of classical myth. But it is perhaps for the directness and poignancy of his language that the poems have endured. On the vagaries of feeling and the fragility of human kinship, he is at once emotional and unsentimental, lyrical and frank.”

I enjoyed the poems and would concur with the above blurb.

Patrick Procktor’s illustrations suitably complement the text.

Here is the frontispiece;

and here the design for the endpapers.

For many years now, Folio Society publications have come in stiff cardboard slipcases. These are mostly unembellished. This one, however, has this portrait on the back:

Does it represent Adalbert Jackson?

This evening we dined on Jackie’s perfect pork paprika, savoury rice, and green beans, followed by lemon and lime merengue tart. The Cook drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the malbec.

P.S. I am indebted to Judith Munns for the information and Barrie Haynes for the photograph of this statue of Housman that stands in Bromsgrove, where Judith once lived:

Roanoke

You know when you buy a new car and for some time thereafter you seem to see others of the same model every time you venture out?

Well, I haven’t bought a Chesapeake, but, ever since my mention of Chesapeake Mill on 4th, it has followed me around. First, Barrie Haynes sent me details of how the mill got its name, with a picture of USS Chesapeake, which I added to my post; then Chesapeake Bay turned up in a book I have just finished reading.

The volume is a history of the first thirty years of England’s attempts to colonise Virginia. This, ‘Big Chief Elizabeth’, by Giles Milton, is no dry tome. It reads as the rollicking adventure story that it is. It is also a mystery tale concerning the fate of the first settlers on Roanoke Island. The reader is gripped from the start. The writing is fluid, with judicious use of quotations that enhance the text rather than simply fill it out. More than half a millennium on, and in full knowledge of the European taking of America, we really want to know the outcome. That, of course, is why I can give no more detail. It is perhaps fortuitous that I should have begun reading this at Thanksgiving time.

My Folio Society edition is well illustrated, with photographs,

such as these of John White’s portraits from 1485,

and useful maps by Reginald Piggot;

and sports a front board decoration by Gavin Morris.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb sausage casserole; mashed potato; boiled carrots, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. I consumed more of the cabernet sauvignon.

I’ve Read This Before

There must be very few celebrity biographies that are of great literary merit.

which I finished reading today, isn’t one of them.

No doubt good journalism, the book focuses on the political life, quarrels, gaffes and embarrassments of its subject, a leading, but desperately flawed Labour politician of my formative years. Undoubtedly hard-working, charismatic and energetic, Lord George-Brown intrigued me at the time when he changed his surname by deed poll to the hyphenated version, because he wanted to enter the upper chamber with the name by which he had been recognised all his life. He didn’t want to be addressed as Lord Brown.

The phrase ‘tired and emotional’ is a chiefly British euphemism for drunkenness. It was popularised by the satirical magazine Private Eye in 1967 after being used in a spoof diplomatic memo to describe the state of George Brown, who was invariably inebriated.

Paterson makes much of the Cabinet Minister’s class consciousness and the chip on his shoulder about university education; all this rather incongruous for a boy who progressed from a childhood in Southwark’s Peabody Buildings to a seat in the House of Lords.

Peabody Estates were the product of ‘The Trust (was) founded in 1862 by London-based American banker George Peabody, who in the 1850s had developed a great affection for London, and determined to make a charitable gift to benefit it. His initial ideas included a system of drinking fountains (comparable to theMetropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association scheme actually set up by Samuel Gurney and Edward Thomas Wakefield in 1859), or a contribution to the “ragged schools” of the Earl of Shaftesbury. In March 1859, however, he settled on establishing a model dwellings company. Three years later, in a letter to The Times on 26 March 1862, he launched the Peabody Donation Fund, with an initial gift of £150,000. The aim of the organisation, he said, would be to “ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy of this great metropolis, and to promote their comfort and happiness”. The paper reported, “We have today to announce an act of beneficence unexampled in its largeness and in the time and manner of the gift”.^[2] Shortly before his death in 1869, Peabody increased his gift to a munificent £500,000.^[3]

The Peabody Trust was later constituted by Act of Parliament, stipulating its objectives to work solely within London for the relief of poverty. This was to be expressed through the provision of model dwellings for the capital’s poor.’ (Wikipedia).

The trust continues to this day. Brown is an example of the potential for upward mobility even in those times.

Maybe it is because I lived through the 1960s that I did not, until reaching page 233 realise that I had read Paterson’s work before.

In my post Bookmarks I speak of my habit of leaving them in books I read. This has the additional purpose of reminding me that I have turned the pages in the past. Thus, this afternoon I learned that I had read the 1993 publication twenty years ago. Maybe I should leave my markers nearer the beginning of the books.

The Earth

My return journey today from Nottingham was uneventful. Louisa drove me to Nottingham Station and Jackie collected me at New Milton.

I have quoted Heraclitus’s observation that ‘all is flux, nothing stays still’, in an earlier post. There is no greater example of this than the planet on which we live, which, as Richard Fortey, so eloquently describes in his ‘Earth An Intimate History’ which I finished reading this evening. I had plenty of time on trains in the last couple of days to make considerable headway in this book which I began reading a short while ago.

The author is clearly a considerable geologist with a gift for explaining his science in a method intelligible to the layperson. His intention is to pass on his study of tectonic plates. I do not pretend that I will be able to remember what I have learned from this book, but I did find most of it understandable. His grasp of historical and prehistorical context makes it clear that human beings have come and gone in a minuscule fraction of the life of the earth. And my memory span will pale into insignificance in comparison to the lifetime of humanity.

Fortey explains how subterranean influences determine what happens both above and below sea level. He claims that ‘the face of the earth has its character scoured upon it by the elements, but they can only work on what has been set upon the surface by forces operating in the hidden depths. He has a gift for description, and uses plentiful simile such as ‘the chances of picking up a good rock sample [ with a simple dredge ] are about the same as catching a fish with a pair of tweezers at the end of a long pole’.

Beginning with volcanoes, the writer uses different well known phenomena to illustrate the various geological conditions and effects that he covers. Finally he covers the oceans and continents as a cohesive whole.

He begins with Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, and rounds it off neatly by finishing his summarising world tour at the same place.

A final quotation from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ reinforces the point:

‘We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.’

These illustrations are taken from my Folio Society edition of 2011, the first, of The John Day Fossils Beds National Monument, Oregon, USA, being repeated on the cover boards.

This evening Jackie and I dined on Mr Pink’s fish and chips and pea fritters, with pickled onions and gherkins. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank Doom Bar.

The Peacock Spring

A welcome visit from Shelly and Ron, to collect the platinum anniversary photographs, broke the monotony of a morning spent on too-long-deferred paperwork. We enjoyed the usual ensuing conversation, naturally involving a certain amount of reminiscing.

Afterwards, beset by the raging gale-force winds, I visited the postbox.

Despite Jackie’s distressed efforts to bring the hanging baskets and raised pots to protective ground level

some were repeatedly blown over and their contents broken.

We haven’t dared approach the rose garden.

In 1975 I bought a first edition of Rumer Godden’s ‘The Peacock Spring’. In 1996 the novel was filmed for television. Directed by Christopher Morahan and starring Peter Egan, Nareen Andrews, Hattie Morahan, Ravi Kapoor, with Madhur Jaffrey, this production was well received. It still took me until this year to read the book. I finished it today.

Set in 1959, a slow fuse burns with ever-increasing tension, until the explosive finale of the tale of a tragic relationship. The author’s trademark poetic description and insightful characterisation enables her to build an enthralling story of a flawed family and the conflict of cultural mores. I will not give away details, but can say that the picture to the left here shows the father with his two English daughters who have been brought to India to provide a veneer of respect to his relationship with the woman portrayed.

MacMillan’s publications comes in a striking book jacket designed by David Baxter.

It is not unusual for me to take forty years to read a book in my possession. As with this one, I sometimes wonder why it took me so long.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s sublime cottage pie, crisp orange carrots and green cabbage. I drank more of the Cuvée St Jainé and Jackie enjoyed Blanche de Namur, a different Belgian wheat beer. The filmy quality of the above photograph comes from the wisps of steam rising from the dish, possibly encouraged by the layer of smoked cheddar cheese over the mashed potato topping.

In Cold Blood

Jackie, now recovered, drove me to and from New Milton,so that I could travel by train to Waterloo and back, for lunch with Norman.

Many people seemed to prefer lobbing their rubbish over the railway bridge or the chain link fence onto the embankment, to using the bin provided. Those responsible for the planters on the station platforms, however, clearly take pride in their appearance.

Isla, aged ten months, has been walking for a month. Not all the time. Able to stand on her mother’s lap, with ‘one shoe off, and one shoe on’, she took pleasure in repeatedly chucking one at my feet all they way from New Milton to Winchester. Her delight gave her the opportunity to display her two front teeth every time I picked up the missile. I couldn’t resist telling the child’s mother the story of Becky’s milestones.

Having arrived at Waterloo, I was to meet Norman at Tas Turkish restaurant in The Cut, a short walk from the station.

On a wall on the taxis’ Approach Road opposite the station, a few mosaic panels have been fixed. I rather like the Escher one. A set of steps brings you down to Lower Marsh. From there, passing La Cubana restaurant with its enticing mural, I continued to the Cut, on the corner of which stands The Old Vic, and proceeded to my rendezvous with my friend.

We began with falafel and garlic sausage starters. Our main course was the Tas special, a tender lamb dish. The house red wine was very quaffable, as was the coffee to follow. The prices were reasonable and the service good.

Jackie had not been idle whilst I was thus engaged. She bought two obelisks for roses and four more plants. At Redcliffe Nurseries she at last identified the lost label rose shown yesterday. It is the hybrid tea, Rose Gaujard.

On the train, and back at home, I finished reading Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’. I believe the term faction would adequately describe this work, based on the apparently random murder of a family of four in 1959. Capote thoroughly researched the event, the period leading up to it, and the eventual trial and execution of the perpetrators. That I take as fact. Obviously the victims could not be interviewed, but a number of the main characters were, not necessarily by Capote himself. It is therefore difficult to be sure what fiction the author has woven into his narrative.

The writing is clear, flowing, insightful, and descriptive. We can believe that Capote’s imaginative sections are true to the characters he is dissecting. Even on publication of this best-seller, readers knew who had committed the murder, and what was their fate. Capote’s skill has been, by moving backwards and forwards in time and place, to give us a gripping and credible detective story, not marred by the fact that the horrific events actually happened.

Whether or not it was the writer’s intention to point up the effects of childhood and mental ill-health on psychopathic behaviour, he certainly makes a case for them.

After more than half a century we still read of apparently random gun killings. Has anything been learned?

My Folio Society edition is illustrated by contemporary and earlier photographs, one of which adorns the front cover board.