Random Jottings

Crock of the Day - mois

Just a bijou notette that I have been struck down with the lurgy and feeling a bit as if I have been run over by a steamroller.  No blogging for a couple of days, but hope by the weekend I will be feeling a bit better and able to gather my woolly thoughts together.  I am in semi-invalid mode today and am leafing through magazines and watching the DVDs of the Pallisers but I cannot seem to concentrate for very long so no writing for a bit.

Could not resist this picture of this bear though honestly I am not as bad as he is!  At the moment just a streaming nose (which is also bright red), hacking cough and general pasty visage.  I tell you, if Messrs Rickman,  Firth and Armitage turned up on my doorstep at the moment, I would set them about their business.

I must be ill................

Northanger Abbey

OK go ahead.  Call me an Old Bat, a Grumpy Old Woman or a Jane Austen Bore I won't mind but I have to report that today I purchased the new Radio Times and turned to page 16 to read about Northanger Abbey. 

The article is headed up Racy Austen and the first few lines are: "lustful brigands, rumpled beds, girls in their nighties tied to trees....it's hardly Jane Austen as we know it but ITV's production of Northanger Abbey is the most enormous fun"

And here we go again:  "All we've done is to make things easier for the 21st century audience by showing on screen what's going on in the character's heads" say producer Keith Thompson. (My italics).

I am going to lie down now and prepare myself for Sunday.  Of course, I could not watch it but I am afraid I know I will never miss anything to do with Austen even if I do start frothing at the mouth, but at least I have been warned...

Crock of the Day - Tuesday

Well the Crock of today is really me as I am at home with streaming nose, sore throat and am sneezing for Britain.  Was fine yesterday and then woke up in the middle of the night feeling dire.  Still feeling a bit wobbly but will have to go to work tomorrow as I have a particular job to do that must be done this week.  I have no desire to make a martyr of myself, but it is simpler for me to go in and do it and then perhaps stagger homeward afterward than to spend a couple of hours explaining the ins and outs to someone else.

So, here is the next exciting installment from my china cupboard.  Oh you lucky people!

The mug on the left was bought in a supermarket near a beach in Kefalonia a couple of years ago.  It fulfills all the criteria that I look for when purchasing souvenirs, ie cheap and cheerful.  Lovely island, lovely people and though Captain Corelli's Mandolin was filmed there, no sign of pottery mandolins and the island totally uncorrellied which was a delightful surprise.  On the right a mug purchased from the souvenir shop at San Diego Zoo which my daughter and I visited a couple of years ago when we had a holiday on Pacific Beach for a week in a staggeringly cheap apartment right on the shore.  I nearly succumbed to a mug covered in pandas as well but resisted. Still cannot work out why.

Bleak House

Some while back I posted about Victorian Literature and produced a My Favourites list.  This drew many comments and one visitor asked why did I love Bleak House.  I promised to blog about this, but have only just got round to doing so.  If you should drop by again, my apologies and here, for what they are worth, are my thoughts:

Firstly, it is by Charles Dickens. Stating the obvious I know, but I am a huge Dickens fan ever since reading David Copperfield at school and loving it.  For David Copperfield read Charles Dickens and his own childhood unhappiness is amply illustrated here, a childhood which bit deeply into his soul and shaped him for the rest of his life. I went on to read other Dickens, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol (which I read religiously each Christmas Eve) and then when I was about 16 and studying for my A levels was given Bleak House to read as it was one of the exam texts. I opened it and read those wonderful opening lines:

"Michaelmas Term lately over and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.Implacable weather…………….Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollution of a great and dirty city; Fog on the marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; ………….gas in the eyes and throat of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of the shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck………………Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the street ……..most of the shops lighted two hours before their time as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look"

Well, show me a more atmospheric and brooding opening of a book if you can. Within three paragraphs Dickens conjours up the grime and dirt of Victorian London. But where is the fog thickest? No surprise to find that it is:

"Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire to deep to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day, in the sight of heaven and earth"

Dickens worked as a law clerk and would have had first hand knowledge of the arcane and time consuming ways of the judiciary.This book tells the story of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, a case over a disputed will that has been dragging on for years. It corrupts and ruins everyone who becomes involved in it. We meet two new wards of Chancery within the first few chapters, Ada and Richard who are to live with their guardian, John Jarndyce, and their companion, Esther Summerson.  Richard decides to become involved in the Jarndyce case and, despite the love of Ada, whom he later marries, gradually becomes ruined both mentally and physically by the labyrinthine processes of the law.

Bleak House teems with characters and it is sometimes difficult to keep track of all of them.  I have to admit to a slight resistance to some of Dicken’s more supposedly, funny or outrageous characters. Mr Micawber in David Copperfield, has always struck me as being acutely irritating, but is always portrayed in a sympathetic manner, and here I always find Mrs Jelleby a pain and Mr Turveydrop a selfish old man.They seem to be thrown in to provide some comic relief, though the story of Bleak House does not really need them, but as the story was originally issued in serial form in a magazine, it is understandable that they were there to keep the reader’s attention from week to week.

Every single character in Bleak House is linked to each other one way or the other. Who is the mysterious ‘Nemo’ the sight of whose handwriting causes Lady Dedlock to become faint, and alert the malevolent lawyer Mr Tulkinghorn to something in her past she might wish to forget?  Who is Esther Summerson’s mother? And who finally murders Mr Tulkinghorn and why?

I cannot write a learned treatise on Bleak House, it is too broad a canvas for me to even attempt to do so.I simply want to say that, much though I love David Copperfield and other Dicken’s novels, this is my favourite.  When I first read it at the age of 16 I was enthralled and read it through in three days. My English teacher did not believe that I had managed to take it all in and made me read it all over again, no hardship.  Since then I have returned to this book on many occasions and at every read I find I cannot put it down and want to read on and see what happens, even though I know the ending. Surely this is the sign of a truly great book that it holds the reader’s attention time and time again?

In 2005 the BBC did a simply superb adaptation. It was done by the ubiquitous Andrew Davies, who was responsible for the 1997 Pride and Prejudice which has entered BBC history as a landmark classic serial, and he decided to produce it in thirteen half hour episodes rather like a ‘soap opera’  This worked brilliantly with the viewer on the edge of their seats at the end of each half hour eager to find out what happened. Gillian Anderson was excellent as Lady Dedlock with Charles Dance, evil personified, as Mr Tulkinghorn. The cast was full of wonderful British thesps all turning in terrific performances and, much though I loved and still do, the 1980s version (Diana Rigg as another wonderful Lady Dedlock) this latest production put it into the shade.

I do not think for one moment I have given any insight into this magnificent book but I just want everyone to know that I think it is a work of genius, once again I will say I love it and if anybody picks up a copy and reads it because of anything I have said, I will be delighted.  I will close however with the following quote from a website on Bleak House:

"Bleak House is Dicken’s worst book. It’s a chore to read and the heroine is more saintly than is possible, much to the detriment of our ability to hold down the contents of our stomachs"

Ah, well can’t please everyone all of the time…

Mansfield Park - 2007

So last night was the first in the new season of Jane Austen adaptations and Mansfield Park was the first to be aired.  I was slightly wary of this before I even saw it as I had read in the Radio Times this week that modern viewers would not take to Fanny Price so they have decided to make her a bit more tomboyish so she would have more 'modern appeal'.  Well, pardon me while I kick the cat (OK don't panic I don't have one).  Let us change characters in classics so that they have more appeal to views in this year of 2007....

Jane Eyre - well we all know she was a woman of no principles whatever, so let us make her stay with Rochester after he discovered he was married and to hell with conventions.  Perhaps she could pop up now and then to say Hi to Bertha and see how she is getting on. Now that Heathcliffe is a dodgy character, wife abuser, drunk etc.  Let us make him a caring, sharing husband fond of children and dogs.  This is a possibly endless list and I daresay I am overdoing the irony/sarcasm here but this updating in the cause of making a character and book 'accessible' makes me so mad.

Those of us who have read and loved this book know full well that Fanny Price is irritating and, at times, priggish.  She is long suffering and makes a martyr of herself on so many occasions that you want to scream.  But what choice did she have?  She was the poor relation and was made to feel inferior all her life and was badly treated by Aunt Norris and her cousins, with the exception of Edmund of course. What should be remembered that out of all the characters in Mansfield Park, Fanny is the only one who stayed true to her principles and would not be swayed in her opinion of the Crawfords.  At the end of the book, her relatives have come to appreciate and love her and recognise her steadfastness.  Now surely, somebody somewhere can come up with a Mansfield Park that illustrates this.

I have the 1980's version of DVD which I think is excellent.  I remember at the time that there were some adverse comments on Sylvester le Tourel's characterisation of Fanny but I felt, and still do, that she got it off pretty well.  Billie Piper is a very accomplished young actress but Fanny Price she ain't. She has an inherently 'modern' face which just did not fit  the Austen look.  We had lots of romping around with shuttlecocks and running up and down stairs to make her much bolder and more assertive that she is in the book.  When Sir Thomas comes back from Antigua she actually asked him a question at the dinner table about slavery and whether it should be abolished.  Now, we know that Austen kept very quiet about how Sir Thomas made his money and this has been a point for discussion for some time (the perfectly ghastly film version a few years ago really brought this to the fore in a distinctly over the top and unnecessarily salacious illustration) and it is obviously politically correct to mention this now in any such adaptation.  The point is that Fanny would never have had the nerve to ask a question like this so another debit point.

Then the visit to Portsmouth back to Fanny's original home was totally left out which immediately takes away the temptation that she felt to accept Crawford's offer of marriage after all when he came visiting her, and she contrasted the home she had left to the one she had at Mansfield Park.

I could go on and on but you will be glad to hear I won't.  There were good things about this adaption.  Blake Ritson as Edmund was excellent and portrayed him beautifully, keeping his integrity while toning down the excess of morality that this character can sometimes exude.   Though the script was updated there was a large amount of Jane Austen's words used constantly shining out like beacons in the dark, and though I have criticised it heavily, it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Final moan though, as I have mentioned before in relation to the recent Jane Eyre and last year's magnificent Bleak House, we had what now appears to be the obligatory chocolate box ending of happy families in front of a beautiful period house, this time it was Fanny and Edmund's wedding as they waltzed round on the lawn gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.  All very Mills and Boon all very lovely but NOT Austen.

What this has now done is to make me want to revisit the book so perhaps I can admit that in that respect this particular dramatisation has had the desired effect.

Next week, Northanger Abbey, which has been adapted by Andrew (Pride and Prejudice) Davis.  This is all very Gothic as we know and he has promised that 'Catherine Morland's imaginings will be portrayed in a sexy way'

I can hardly wait...

Crock of the Day

Found this in a little delicatessen in the back streets of Lucca. 

You know one of those magical shops that you stumble across by accident down a little cobbled street.  Once you get inside you have to bat your way through the salamis hanging from the ceiling, and be careful you don't sit on the melons or knock over the wondrous bottles of green, gleaming extra virgin olive oil.  The smell is gorgeous and you can feel your mouth watering and taste buds tingling and the temptation to buy up half the shop is overpowering.  Somehow the cheese and ham counter at Sainsburys loses its allure (if it had any to start with at all of course...) and you think that this is how shops should be.

Lucca is the birthplace of Puccini and the first time I visited there I went to see his house and listen to his music and be overcome.  Then last year it was my turn to visit Lucca to sing when I was in the chorus of a performance of Verdi's Requiem in a church tucked inside the walls of this medieval walled town.

It is a wonderful place to be. .

Saturday Ramblings

I have my mother here with me at the moment and we have just been lolling on a sofa each watching the final of Dancing on Ice.  I am totally staggered at the skill and artistry that these celebs have gained in just four months.  Sometimes watching them it is hard to work out who is the professional and who is the amateur.  The one thing that bothers me about the show is the manic audience. they shriek, scream, yell, have hysterics, jump up and down and they never never quieten down.  I think they are being drip fed liquid mercury.  It can get a bit wearing at times. 

The whole show is just terrific fun, but the bonus of all bonuses is that each week, Torvill and Dean do a  new routine.  They are just quite simply stunning.  No other word will do. They flow, they glide, they swoop, they have seamless movements, it is beautiful.  Tonight they did a routine to Somewhere over the Rainbow where Jayne Torvill was on wires and flying through the year.  So graceful and lovely took your breath away.

I have been huge fans of them for ever and ever and have a battered old video full of performances taped off the telly and when I saw a new DVD out, The Magic of Torvill and Dean, I bought it hoping I could get rid of this old tape which has been played so often, it resembles a lace doily.  However, good though the DVD is it does not have the atmosphere of my old tape so I will hang on to it.

Have had a pretty exhausting week at work and learned on Friday that I am attending a conference in Chicago in just over a month's time.  I have been working on it for ages but have only just had this confirmation so now I am in full blown panic mode at what has to be done over the next four weeks before I go.  I have, therefore, decided that no reading of any distinction is going to be done as my brain is already so scrambled I know I will not take anything in.  I received an email from a friend in Australia today who knew I was having trouble with the Edith Wharton/Hermione Lee biography, and she says the only way to read this book is to dive into it and read it through when you have time to do so.  Even she admits that halfway through she found the sheer volume of information a tad overpowering, but recommends this as the only way to go.  That will now have to wait until I get back.  So I am putting Edith into the corner with Thomas (Hardy) for the time being as I know I am not going to have time to read that either.  I do hope they get on.

I think it will probably be Dorothy L Sayers, Alexander McCall Smith,  and Penny Vincenzi all the way at the moment, not forgetting the wondrous Anthony Trollope.  I am simply loving Can you Forgive Her?  which I am re-reading.  I feel when I read him, I am on safe ground and will not go astray.

So a hairy few weeks ahead, but you know something?  After the conference and all the client meetings and all the work is over, I will be meeting up with BlueStalkingReader.  Now that is going to be something and it will make all my panics worthwhile.

Going to Pot

It is Friday night and full of relief that another week of commuting and working has come to an end and in the mood to write another very silly blog as per my funny toaster last weekend.  This particular post has been inspired by a visit to Oh So Vintage where there is a wonderful blog about china and souvenirs and how they hold memories and how looking at them brings back a happy day or a visit (I have to say they are a lot more elegant and classy than mine...)

Wherever I go, I bring back a bit of pottery or a mug.  The mugs are not bone china or expensive, I usually go for touristy tat souvenir shops which I simply adore.  Tea towels with the Empire State Building on, key rings with I Love New York etc are all grist to my mill.  I always leave these stores with bulging carrier bags and unload my loot when I get home usually to cries of horror from my nearest and dearest.  One souvenir that was hugely successful was the most ghastly pair of thick woolly socks emblazoned with the stars and stripes purchased in a shop in the simply stunning railway station in Washington.  I gave them to my Aged Parent to keep her feet warm and she loved them.

So here we go with some very silly pictures (please feel free to abandon reading this post if you think it is all getting a bit low brow.  I won't be offended).   

First up, a trio from New York.  All self explanatory (bought the mug from Bloomingdales the same day my first Medium Brown Bag was purchased), the white mug with the wonderful shape was purchased at the Guggenheim Museum and reflects beautifully the spiral galleries in this wonderful building.

Next triumphant trio, features a  mug on the left purchased at the gift shop at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  Wow, what a visit that was.  All these Van Goghs all in one room at the same time, quite overwhelming.  In the middle my souvenir last summer from Valletta in Malta and on the right, a truly hideous mug purchased at the last minute at Luxor Airport.  I am particularly fond of the lurid colours on this one

I am also very fond of jugs and own enough now to be able to accommodate many bunches of flowers.  At present I have three alone in my living room full of daffodils and tulips which are just so joyous and springlike.

The jug on the left is a particular favourite of mine, purchased in a shop in Amalfi on the most glorious hot, sunny day.  That part of Italy is quite stunningly beautiful with houses clinging onto the hillsides and precipitous steps and winding pathways that just lure you into getting lost.  All quite enchanting.  The middle jug was bought last year in Montecatini (near Florence) and the bijou jugette on the right in a shop in Sorrento.

OK must not bore you too much but must show you two coffee cups and saucers, another one from Amalfi and the one on the right from a pottery in Mexico.  They are both regularly used for my Saturday morning sit down with coffee and paper.

I have taken pictures of loads more but really feel that is enough pots and crocks for one night.  Be warned, I will return to this theme, in fact, I think every now and then I will have a Mug of the Day or Week and slip one onto the blog when you least expect it.  I have a positive cornucopia of a china cupboard to share with you all.  Bet you are all SO excited about that...not

More Transita

Two Transita books I read a month or so ago, but did not post about in the middle of a busy period, were A Proper Family Christmas by Jane Gordon-Cumming (who has recently visited and left comments) and Pond Lane and Paris by Susie Vereker.  Susie was kind enough to send me not only this book, but her latest one An Old Fashioned Arrangement which I have blogged about earlier.  It is so lovely when these books start dropping through the letter box with request to review.  This is such a novelty for me and bucks me up no end to think that real life authors actually trust me to write coherently about a published work.  What larks!

Susie Vereker has lived the diplomatic life and uses this to great effect in both the above mentioned books.  Diplomatic wives seems to have very little life of their own and appear to be there to serve as an adjunct to their other half, smiling sweetly at cocktail parties, organising functions and always, but always being on show.  As an army child, I remember my mother being involved in events like this, albeit not half so grand.  I have enjoyed both her books enormously and am looking forward to the third, which I shall be delighted to review also (hint, hint, hint....)

I have mentioned Jane Gordon-Cumming in my post on Katie Fforde as it transpires she is her sister.  How lovely to have two talented people in the same family both writing with such charm and wit.  I did enjoy Jane's book very much and I happily logged it onto My Recently Read list shown on the left of my blog.  Jane has told me that the book illustrated when I entered it onto my TypeList is a large print edition and no longer available, but at the time this was the only picture that popped up on Typepad which I sometimes think has a will of its own.  Anyway, I have now corrected it and the right illustration is up, but I thought I would make amends by putting a much bigger photo of the cover into this post as I think it is a lovely jacket.

In a way,  I am sorry that this book is called A Proper Family Christmas as it might limit the amount of people who purchase it.  It will sell in the winter, but I cannot think that anybody is going to buy it in the summer when the sun is shining and they are just about to board a flight to Majorca, and this is a shame as it is a book that can be enjoyed the entire year round.  Anyone who has decided to gather together as a family and friends at Christmas time with the idea that they are going to have a tree, turkey, fun, games and togetherness should read this book as we all know that things do not always work out the way we had planned............

So, a book to be read and enjoyed 365 days of the year not just the one so put your orders in well ahead of next year's festive season and get the holly out early.

Handel in the Strand

The title of this post is also the title of a piece of music by Percy Grainger and, as I attended a performance of a Handel opera last night and stayed in a hotel in the Strand, I decided it was very apposite.

In my earlier blog re Handel and my falling asleep in a performance of Semele, I was slightly worried that I would be stricken the same way during Orlando, and though there were moments during the evening when I felt the arms of Morpheus beckoning, this was not due to boredom, but rather sheer tiredness from being up since 6 am.  I heroically strove to overcome these lapses and maintained an alert interest all evening.

The first thing one has to remember when going to a Handel opera is that it is a completely different listening experience.  Forget weeping into a hankie at Puccini, wanting to sing along with choruses a la Verdi or grandeur of Wagner, with Handel you get a much more stylised, static music experience and the second thing to remember is that every single Handel aria is sung TWICE.  Yes twice.  You listen and enjoy, think it has come to an end and then blow me down if the singer doesn't go back to the beginning and do it all over again, this time with extra runs and frills at the end.  Once you have grasped this fact and give yourself over to the music, then sheer pleasure sets in and plenty was on offer last night as the standard of singing was incredibly high.

The hero, Orlando, was sung by the counter tenor, Bejum Mehta (a distant relative of the conductor Zubin Mehta I gather) who has the most thrilling voice.  We were sitting in the middle of Row B of the amphitheater (best seats in the house for sight lines and sound as far as I am concerned) and his voice was projected so well that I reckon it carried right to row Z up in the very rear of the gods.  Simply tremendous and thrilling and the flexibility and control breathtaking.  All in all he has 12 arias throughout this opera and if you remember what I said about sining them twice, then this amounts to 24.  Even Wagner's Siegfried would be proud of that.

It was all done with verve and humour and style and was much appreciated by the audience. The picture in this post is Orlando being tempted by Venus.  Though this shows Mehta, this is a different production and I have to tell you that the Venus in the Covent Garden production did NOT have any covers at all over her breasts and they were on display all evening.  When she appeared I saw arms lifting opera glasses to eyes going up all around the house!  Twenty years ago this opera would not have filled even a quarter of the seats, but I gather this run has been hugely successful and with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted with such panache and charm in the pit by the wonderful Sir Charles McKerras, the entire evening was a delight  (mark you the breasts of Venus might also have had something to do with it....)

The story is very silly really. Orlando the noble knight has strayed from his heroic destiny in his desire for a princess, Angelica, rescued by him from mortal danger who has most ungratefully then gone off and fallen in love with someone else.  The magician Zoroastro is trying to persuade Orlando to cast off the influence of Venus and follow Mars.  Orlando thinks he can cope with both thank you very much, but sadly, like most men, he cannot do two things at once and disaster ensues.

The synopsis for the end of Act II in the programme contains the following gem of a sentence: "Orlando, confronted with the reality that he will never resolve his inward contradiction or win Angelica, goes mad"

How like a man....