Random Jottings

Happy Hallowguyfawkeseen

It is Halloween tonight is it not?  Or am I mistaken and thinking this is the anniversary of the failure of the plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament?  (Each year this sets off a wonderful train of thought in my mind.  If only....)

The reason I ask is, that apart from Trick or Treaters marauding through the streets, we are also having fireworks shooting up in the night sky.  I am expecting someone attired as a witch to knock on the door any minute shouting Trick or Treat and then ask me for a Penny for the Guy, although nowadays if you gave less than a £1 you would be in danger of your life.

Once upon a time these feast/fun days, whatever you like to call them, came round in an ordered procession and you knew where you were.  Now these events seem to be spread over weeks and weeks and start earlier and end later.  We had our first bonfire party last weekend and will, no doubt, have more over the coming weeks.  I was in St Albans earlier in the month and had lunch in a pub which had a full Christmas tree out, complete with tinsel and sparkling lights.  Nearly put me off my food.  Harrods had its Father Christmas arrive in August, yes August and when I visited my local Marks & Spencer in June I was greeted with their Back to School range of school uniform before the schools had broken up for the summer.  Once the January sales are out of the way, Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns start appearing.  I find the whole thing totally disorientating and wonder why it happens.

Perhaps it is because everybody wants everything NOW and cannot wait until the appointed time.  I have to say, I am at a loss.  Anybody got any ideas?

All this blogging is making me feel a bit peckish so I think I will have a cold turkey and stuffing sandwich before I go to bed...

Modesty Blaise 2

"It's just the flux"

"The what?"

"Willie calls it the flux" said Modesty "He doesn't believe that coincidences are coincidences.  He says there's a magnetic flux about the earth which causes like events to occur simultaneously or in sequence.  Open the Times Literary Supplement and you find three different people have written books about Queen Victoria's third cousin twice removed who was Governor of Honduras or somewhere.  All published in the same month.  And nobody every heard of him before.  It's the flux"

This is a paragraph from The Silver Mistress by Peter O'Donnell. This sort of thing happens to me so often it can be slightly spooky.  Now here is an example of the flux. 

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Slightly Foxed on my blog as I had let my subscription lapse because I just could not keep up with everything that dropped through my letterbox.  A certain blogger (yes you know who you are!) persuaded me to subscribe once more, so I did.    I am blithely reading the reissued Modesty Blaise books and thinking how much I would like to post about them.  So, I did.  I am then told that the latest edition of Slightly Foxed contains an article on Modesty.  So tonight I pick up my copy which I have not had a chance to read yet,open it up and there it is.  It is a perfect example of 'the flux'.

As I have mentioned Madeline Brent and Peter O'Donnell being one and the same person, I now fully expect that within the next few days somebody, somewhere, will write about this too.  Keep an eye out everybody and let me know if you spot it....

Arthur Watts

"Arthur Watts was a well-known illustrator and artist whose life was tragically cut short by a plane crash over the Swiss Alps in 1935 when he was only 42.

His first drawing for Punch, the English humour magazine, was published in 1912 but his work continued to appear regularly - with an 8-year gap due to the Great War - right up until his death. He also did four drawings a week for the Radio Times, illustrated a dozen or so books, including E.M. Delafields "Diary of a Provincial Lady", designed travel posters for the railways and the London Underground as well as editing and illustrating one book, "A Painter's Anthology".

I was intrigued by his illustrations for the two E M Delafield Provincial Lady books that I have managed to pick up at book sales and which I have just blogged about.  I see from Amazon that these particular editions are still in print.  I think I prefer my old battered copies however.

This is about all I can find out about Arthur Watts though I have trawled the web this evening for some time.  If there is anybody reading this posting who knows a bit more about him than this, I would be very interested in your comments.

The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy

A comment posted on my blog recently by Susan expressed the hope that I would write more about the Forsyte Saga which I had mentioned in passing.  I need very little encouragement to pontificate about anything so here goes....

The original Forsyte Saga was a BBC production in the late 60's which was so popular that public meeting places emptied on a a Sunday evening as everyone stayed in to watch the latest episode. While I was addicted like everyone else, it seemed to me then that I was the only person in the UK who found Irene, Soame's wife, the most irritating female character I have ever come across. I watched the remake of the Saga, on ITV a year or so ago, to see if I felt the same some forty years later and, yes, I did.  I am not sure if this irritation was to do with the two actresses who played the role in both series, Nyree Dawn Porter and Gina McKee as, in my opinion, they were wildly miscast with Gina McKee being particularly poor, but I do not think that anybody could make a sympathetic figure of Irene.

First of all,  I do take the background into account.  Irene was more or less forced to marry Soames as she was poor, alone and really had no future other than marriage.  I also take into account that a woman at that time had no rights at all and was considered her husband's  property.  The first book is, after all, titled A Man of Property,  which, in this case was Irene.  So, I know Irene was locked in an unhappy marriage with someone who was obsessively possessive and whom she came to loathe.

I should have sympathy with her, but I don't and have never been able to explain why.  I think it might be because she is never endowed with any particular character by Galsworthy.  She is just there.  She acts as a catalyst for the narrative and is a shadowy figure throughout.  Irene is always being spoken to, or about, she never seems to say very much herself but her presence manages to permeate the novel and effect all those around her.   So a whistle stop tour of the story is as follows, with apologies for any inconsistences that may occur.  I have not read the book for some 35 years. 

Soames decides to build a house for his wife, hoping that this will improve their relationship.  He hires a new young architect with whom Irene promptly falls in love.  The architect, dismissing Soames as a philistine, ignores his instructions and over reaches the budget and changes plans without consultation.  Soames gets a bit shirty about this, as one would, and in the end decides to take Bosinney, the architect, to court.  Bosinney comes round to see Soames and arrives just as it is clear that Soames has abused his wife.  Off he runs, straight under the wheels of a carriage and is killed.  Needless to say, that is the end of the marriage and Irene leaves him.

Later in the saga, Irene goes to visit the house, Robin Hill, now owned by Old Jolyon, a member of the family who dislikes Soames intensely, becomes friends with him, bewitches his son, Young Jolyon and marries him.  They have a son, Jon.  In the meantime, the divorced Soames marries again, a somewhat sophisticated, cynical Frenchwoman, and has a daughter Fleur.  Inevitably, once Fleur and Jon grow up, they meet by accident and fall madly in love with one another.  And, thus, the continuing Irene/Soames relationship affects another generation.  Pressure is put on Jon by his father to give up Fleur, for his mother's sake, and he does.  Jon and Fleur, though they marry others, are never really happy again.

Throughout the entire story Irene lurks in the background.  She does not say much, but is a hovering influence over everything and causes endless unhappiness and misery.  Soames never recovers from his love of her, Bosinney died because of her, her son Jon has an unhappy marriage because of her. My allegiance has always been to Soames.  He is never given credit for his love of his family, the tender way he looks after his old father James, and takes care of his sister who is married to a wastrel.  His love for his daughter, Fleur, is the light of his life and the knowledge that he has caused her misery and unhappiness because of his past action is a source of perpetual pain to him.

Eric Porter played Soames in the earlier version and Damien Lewis in the latest dramatisation.  Though Damien Lewis was excellent, he lacked the necessary ability to make the viewer feel for his heartbreak and unhappiness.  'The night Soames died' as it was billed in all the newspapers back in 1967 is an evening I remember well.  I was awash with tears at the end of the episode which was utterly heartbreaking.  One of the all time great TV performances and it made the main BBC news that evening it had taken such a hold on the nation.

I have not read the Forsyte Sage for many years now, but I remembered the last lines as being incredibly sad and melancholy and affected me deeply.  Galsworthy is fairly unfashionable nowadays with his writing ability somewhat denigrated, but it should be remembered that he won the Nobel Prize for literature so he can't have been that bad!  No, I don't think he is exactly up there with Tolstoy or Dickens but just read these lines below and say they don't give you a pang.  I dare you:

And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.

He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the world!

See what I mean?

Strictly Come Dancing

Saturday night is the battle between X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing and though I know of a most distinguished author, not to mention a certain blogger par excellence who love the former (though she likes Strictly as well), I am a huge fan of the latter and tune into it without fail.  A good friend of mine came round tonight who is also an addict and we had terrific fun cheering and shouting at the various performances.

Star of the show so far is Mark Ramprakash, a cricketer (what is it with cricketers?  last year's winner Darren Gough was one too) with a gorgeous smile, dramatic good looks and a stunning physique.  He is a very quiet, shy person but once he gets on the dance floor ...well.  Tonight was pasa doble night and the men were really strutting their stuff.

Brendon Cole, who seems to love his 'bad boy' tag (I personally think the tag should be 'irriating boy') was taking issue with the judges who, I have to admit were being wildly inconsistent, but he did himself no favours with his attitude and they really gave him a telling off.  Don't think his partner was too happy with his ego nearly getting them ejected.

But it was a great evening, fun, exciting and as it goes out 'live' there is no editing or cutting out of comments which all adds to the tension.

Great stuff.  It is not all highbrow Shakespeare and opera on this blog you know!

Book Sale Day

Up early this morning to get to the book sale nice and early.  I actually managed to be 10th in the queue, usually I am about 50th.  Started to rain nicely as soon as I arrived, but as I had just been given a plastic bag by a lady volunteers I turned the edges up, pretended I was at Ascot and this was the latest creation, and plonked it on my head.  Did not care what I looked like, just wanted to keep dry.  Man behind me in queue said it looked rather fetching and perhaps I ought to sell it on eBay....

On entering the hall the trick is to do the first sweep, slinging everything in your bag that you think you might want to keep.  Within five minutes, I had filled two carrier bags, dumped them at the holding bay, got another two and made second sweep, slightly less frenzied than the first.  Third sweep is more contemplative and and takes more time and this is usually when you find things you have missed in Sweeps 1 and 2.  Sweep 3 brought to light five Dorothy L Sayers, 1949 editions published by Gollancz, all slightly brown at the edges but simply wonderful and which seemed to belong to the same person, Kenneth Milne (any relation I ask myself to you know who?) who had written his name inside.  I do love owning books like this, makes you wonder who the previous owner was and want to know about their life.  This gentleman  was given one of the books for Christmas 1955 from 'Shelagh'.  By a series of brilliant deductions (well not really, he had written the date and location inside the books) I can report he lived in London in 1954 but by 1957 he had moved to Cambridge.

Not many Ngaio Marsh around - only one, Overture to Death, but I snaffled quite a few Agatha Christies, two Margery Allinghams (brand new), plenty of Dickens, a couple of Margaret Atwoods, and two by Susan Hill, including one that was on my wish list,The Service of Clouds.  Also found a simply wonderful 1932 edition of EM Delafield The Provincial Lady Goes Further with the most delightful 1930 type illustrations, which sits alongside my 1940 edition of Diary of a Provincial Lady which I purchased at same book sale some two years ago.  Both, I discover are illustrated by Arthur Watts (another illustrator to look up). 

Ada Leverson - The Little Ottleys was popped in my bag for no other reason that it was one of the 'old' Virago editions with the green background and one of those brilliant covers.  This one uses 'Costumes Parisian 1913' .  Irresistible.   Throw in Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter (again the Virago edition), the first Harry Potter (my old paperback was worn out), a couple of Louisa May Alcott's, Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser and you can see I have had a glorious morning.  (I have not listed all the books but if you double click on the photograph you might be able to make the titles out).

I am now sitting here writing this with Beethoven's Eroica symphony playing and a cup of tea to hand.  Can you think of a nicer way to spend a quiet Saturday afternoon?  This is purely a rhetorical question you understand as I am sure you can think of lots, but I am enjoying it.

(By the way I have just spell checked this and Eroica comes up as Erica.  The Erica symphony - now there's a thought).  Bet Ludwig would have called it that if he had known.

Mark you, I now have the problem of where these books are all to go?  I am out of space.  Nothing for it, I will have to move.  My lottery ticket was bought this morning so fingers crossed.

Me and Will 2

OK here is Me and Will  Part Deux and I am sure all readers are waiting with bated breath....

Well, the long and winding road back to loving WS started with the film Much Ado about Nothing with Kenneth Branagh and the then Mrs B, Emma Thompson.  Sheer pleasure and fun from start to finish, filmed in Tuscany, sun shining, great music and wonderful acting (well, from most of the cast anyway).  Kenneth Branagh looked seriously gorgeous in this film (a great surprise to me as I have always thought he had a face like a current bun); Emma Thompson delightful; Denzil Washington in leather trousers (need I say more?) and Keanu Reeves (OK we know he can't act but who cares...). 

My then husband and I and two daughters went to see this singly and severally on at least four occasions and in the end worked out that between us we had seen the film 15 times.  I managed to persuade the manager of the Odeon to give me one of the posters outside the cinema and had it framed.  Wasn't till I collected it that I realised just how huge it was - it is now adorning one of the walls in my flat and reminds me of happy times.

Next up, Shakespeare in Love, the movie with Joseph Fiennes as Will.  Again, great fun, witty and delightful.  The cinema audience was split into two camps the night I went.  Those of us over 40, who picked up every Shakespeare reference in the film and laughed and enjoyed, and those under 35 who did not pick up one and obviously wondered what we were laughing at.  It was during this film that I realised just how much I was soaked in Shakespeare's language and just how much of it was familiar and loved by me.  The defining moment in my return to the Bard came towards the end of the film when Viola (in the person of Gwyneth Paltrow) was given a copy of the play Romeo and Juliet.  She quoted the line 'night's candles are burned out' and to my utter astonishment I found an instant rush of tears to my eyes.  It was such a simple emotive line and it finished me off.  Cannot explain why.

Then earlier this year a friend flew in from New York with tickets for Henry IV, parts I & II at the National Theatre.  She had suggested this some months earlier and I blithely agreed that, yes, this sounded fun.  This coincided with a stressful and busy time at work (is there any other I ask myself?) and I did wonder, as I strolled across Waterloo Bridge, if I was stark staring mad to commit myself to 6 hours of Shakespeare and could I keep awake?

Well, the answer is yes I could keep awake and no, I was not mad.  Stunning production, from the minute Henry IV entered in Scene 1 (played incidentally by the actor who is the ghastly caretaker in the Harry Potter movies!) and said his first lines, the entire audience was hooked.  When I tell you that the Falstaff was Sir Michael Gambon, you will probably need no further explanation for my conversion.  Please look up any reviews you can find on the web as my words will not do justice to this magnificent performance.  The stage was raked and no curtains so, at one stage when Sir M was in the middle of one of his soliloquies, he  strolled around addressing the audience in a very casual way and, as I was in the second row on an aisle seat and some 6 feet away, he fixed his eye on me and spoke directly to me.  Slightly unnerving I can tell you.  His performance was funny, sly, preposterous and, ultimately, moving as his affection for Prince Hal (performed by Matthew McFadyan just a few months before the release of Pride and Prejudice in which he was Mr Darcy) was clear throughout.

When it came to the final scene and the rejection of Falstaff, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop.  It was heartbreaking and quite a large section of those watching were in tears.  I went into the theatre at 2.15pm and came out at 10.30pm.  I had entered tired and fed up - I exited revitalised and exhilarated and could quite happily have sat through the entire thing again.

I have since visited the Globe a couple of times which is THE place to visit in order to gain the experience of what it must have been like to watch these plays in Tudor times, and then earlier on this year, took a short Open University course on Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, both of which I loved.

I am back to reading the plays to myself just for sheer pleasure and the only thing I am cross about is that I have wasted so much of my adult life disliking Shakespeare.  Just think of all the wonderful performances I have missed.  Never mind I am back now.

Me and Will

I studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school.  Come to think of it, I studied it three years running as it was produced each year in our English Literature class by three consecutive teachers who did not listen to our complaints that we had done it before.  After three years, three exams and endless papers on The Dream I was totally fed up with the wretched Helen and Hermione and sick to death of Titania and Bottom.  I began to go off Shakespeare shortly after this.

Before being inflicted with this annual Puckfest, I was a huge fan of our Will.  I used to stand, yes, stand at the back of the Old Vic and watch Shakespeare.  I remember standing through a full length performance, no cuts, of Hamlet which must be nearly all of four hours.  John Neville, later Sir John Neville, but then a young, dashing and handsome actor was Hamlet and I remember that Coral Browne played his mother, Gertrude.  I cannot remember any of the other members of the cast at all, but I know I enjoyed it hugely.

I also remember going to the Mermaid Theatre and seeing Henry IV Part II with a very young Hywel Bennett playing Hal and Bernard Miles, the founder of the theatre, as Falstaff.  The Round House in Chalk Farm, now recently revamped, put on When thou Art King which was Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, in truncated versions obviously, compacted into one long fabulous evening.

At this time, and I am talking 1960s here, the BBC actually put out programmes of some artistic merit and there was an entire series of performances of all the historical plays under the banner title An Age of Kings.  I well remember Richard Daneman as Richard III, Robert Hardy as Prince Hal and a very young Sean Connery as Hotspur.  There was then another series combining Julius Caesar and Cleopatra over three Friday nights with Keith Michell (who later scored a huge hit as Henry VIII in another BBC programme).  What with a Hamlet filmed in Elsinore, with Christopher (Captain von Trapp in Sound of Music) Plummer as Hamlet and a young Michael Caine lurking, and a showing of the Russian Hamlet with music by Shostakovich, we were well served at this time.  The BBC Bardothon of the late 70s, on which money was lavished so profusely that all of £10 must have been spent on each of the sets, was not a patch on anything that had gone before and, really needs to be redone, if somebody currently at the BBC would have the guts to do it.

Some of the casting of this Bardathon was suspect to say the least:  John Cleese as Petrucchio in Taming of the Shrew is a prime example.  You kept expecting him to launch into his Monty Python Silly Walks at any minute and, indeed, some of his rages were classic Pythonesque moments.  Bob Hoskins, complete with cockney accent, as Iago was another bit of miscasting.  I took an OU course on Shakespeare this year and the two plays studied, The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, were accompanied by the BBC videos.  They were both unwatchable even if the Romeo and Juliet boasted in its cast a very young Alan Rickman (totally ungorgeous and with a dreadful pudding basin hair cut.  He had yet to become sexy, that came later).

I remember getting hold of the Taylor/Burton/Zefferilli film of Taming of the Shrew which I saw in the cinema when it first came out in 1966.  Of course, it is totally over the top with streets teeming full of colourful Italian peasantry quaffing wine, clouting each other across the back, and who seemed to have nothing else to do but dance and sing all day.  Taylor/Burton were in the middle of their love affair/divorce/marriage at the time the film was shot and Zefferilli milked this for all he was worth with them fighting and screaming and having huge fights all over Padua.  Elizabeth Taylor was surprisingly good and Burton gave a wildly hammy performance all grins and dirty laughs and looking as if was totally plastered most of the time (which he probably was) and the whole thing was a riot.  It was shot in colours of gold, crimson, yellow ochre and burnt Sienna, and looked simply stunning. 

The famous speech in the final scene of the play was delivered beautifully by Elizabeth Taylor and, whether you take issue with its content as most women do nowadays, I found myself very moved by it.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince

OK so what is the point of this blog?  It is too say that until this year, I had eschewed Shakespeare completely.  I had sat through some appallingly acted performances (why do British Shakespeare actors have to rant all the time?), found the ‘rude mechanicals’ incredibly unfunny and realised that I could not take any interest in the plays at all.

I have to tell you now, in 2006, I have completely changed my mind and adore Will all over again.  I will tell you why another day as this blog has gone on far too long and I am going to write one of equal length to explain why I now love the Bard.

Summing up

I have created a Category RIP Challenge so all my posts can be located in the same place.  I have really enjoyed this challenge.  Out of the five books chosen, three were totally new to me, one was a re-read of a book I had enjoyed a while ago and the final one was a read for the umpteenth time of a classic favourite.  So here is my summing up:

Among the Shadows - L M Montgomery.  Surprising ghost stories from the creator of Anne of Green Gables.   Not frightening but slightly creepy and so different from her usual sunny stories that this made an intriguing choice

Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton - Had not read these for a while and remembered how surprised I was when I first discovered that the writer of An Age of Innocence and House of Mirth had written in this genre.  Slightly disconcerting but written with her usual elegance of style

Woman in Black - Susan Hill.  A new discovery for me and a seriously scary book.  Read late at night and scared myself witless

The Mist in the Mirror - Susan Hill. Another new discovery, also scared me witless.  This time took precaution of reading it in daylight

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens.  Just pure joy.  I read this every Christmas Eve and will do so again even though I have read it for the challenge.  The most perfect ghost story - ever

Thank you Carl for setting this challenge.  I have really enjoyed it - can you think of another one please?!

Book sale weekend

Every year we have a mammoth book sale at a local school and I had a sudden thought that it must be due soon so checked the web and found out it is this weekend, phew, nearly missed it.  Can you imagine the angst if I had not found this out?

I have a hit list of Ngaio Marsh, Allingham and Dorothy L Sayers for starters to feed my addiction for 1930's detective stories.   I have already read the Ngaio Marsh and had the entire set on my shelves years ago and for some reason I cannot fathom, got rid of them.  I now have to go and get them all over again.  This is a good reason for never ever throwing out books.

They have a wonderful system at this sale.  You are given a plastic carrier bag on way in, you fill it up, go to a holding station and they give you a ticket with a number on it, put it away for later collection and give you a brand new plastic bag to go away and fill up again. On a good day this process can be repeated a number of times and, indeed, has been done in the past

Aficionados know full well how to dress for this sale - ie in your oldest clothes with small bag slung round neck containing money and credit card as you have to push, shove and squeeze through the crowds and grab books.  There are piles of boxes under the trestle tables for refilling gaps so you can end up crawling on the floor and meet other subterranean grovellers.  It is all quite friendly and matey 'oh I will swap my Agatha Christie for your Margery Allingham' etc etc but occasionally you spot a book you really really want at the same time as somebody else and I tell you now, it can get a tad fraught.  Politeness and courtesy do vanish under these circumstances.

The sale is, of course, targeted by the book dealers, but they are quite easy to spot as they have acquisitive quivering noses and once identified, you can knock them over and trample on them.

I will report back on my haul in due course.