Random Jottings

Miss Hargreaves

I am a huge fan of Simon's blog, Stuck in a Book, and it is one of the blogs I read on a daily basis as I know that Simon loves the same kind of books that I do, and it is lovely to have a kindred spirit when it comes to reading matters.  I am old enough to be his mother (actually grandmother as well which is a tad dispiriting), but we are of like minds when it comes to literature and whenever Simon loves a book, then I know I will too.

On his blog he has a list  "50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About" and heading this list is Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker.  If you click on this link you can read all about his thoughts on this book, but to save you leaping across for the moment, HERE is what he has to say.  You will see my name crop up as a convert to this title and I read it at Simon's urgings, well must be about six or seven years ago now.  I was talked into buying the then only in print edition, published by Tartarus Press, and even though this was in my money earning days, I jibbed slightly at its price £30, but bought it anyway and have never regretted it.

If you read what Simon Says then you will know the story of how Miss Hargreaves, created by Norman and his friend Henry, when they are looking at an exceedingly ghastly church in Ireland in the pouring rain and decide to cheer themselves up a bit and have a laugh at the expense of the ancient of days showing them around, is invented on the spur of the moment.

".... and what is your friend's name?'

'Miss Hargreaves'

It seemed to me there was a sort of stirring of air in the church, like - like what?  Rather like someone opening a very old umbrella.  I looked round sharply, but couldn't see anything unusual. A ray of feeble sun had broken through the dark clouds and was shining down on the dust in the galleries.

I realised I was trembling"

When he and Henry then send an letter to Miss Hargreaves at an imaginary address and invite her to visit any time she is free, that is an end of what they both regard as a good joke.  But then Miss Hargreaves writes accepting their invitation and to their utter horror, turns up complete with cockatoo and hip bath, little extras they had added to their description in order to add a little verisimilitude.

Then the fun starts.  Norman is horrified, scared and angry in turn as Miss Hargreaves proceeds to take over his life, his friends and his family.  His father,  a man of deep understanding of his son's flights of imagination as he is very similar himself, is the only person who believes in how Miss Hargreaves came to be, but he too begins to fall under her spell, and it is at this stage of the book that Miss Hargreaves who, up to now has been endearingly eccentric, begins to assume a slightly menacing aspect.  Norman knows he has to rid himself of her by destroying his creation and to prevent her total power over him, but he has come to love her and he is in turmoil at what he knows he has to do.  In the end, he and Henry travel back to the church in Lusk, whence she was created, in order to bring the situation to an end.

"Immediately, where there had been that old lady there was now only a greenish darkness, broken faintly by a dusty light from some great windows.  Her voice died away, far away, echoing deep and long into space, vibrant at first then then thinner.....I opened my eyes.  The wind that had been roaring round the roof, suddenly stopped.  Henry and I lowered our heads as if by mutual understanding. We both knew that she had gone from us"

Frank Baker is a writer I know nothing about, except what I have read in the introduction to Miss Hargreaves. I gather he published fifteen novels and three works of non-fiction and wrote for the Guardian and the Radio times.  Other than that, nothing.   This was his most successful novel and was adapted for the stage in 1952 with Dame Margaret Rutherford in the leading role.  Talk about perfect casting!  Just wish there was a film somewhere of that particular performance. 

Miss Hargreaves is a fascinating story.  It is hilarious and witty, sharply written and with great style, but Frank Baker is also wonderful at creating atmosphere and suddenly a paragraph of sheer beauty will catch your eye and make you realise that he is more than just a writer of fun and froth (not that I would describe Miss H in this way, rest assured).  Just look at this:

"The times when I really loved the Cathedral were weekdays when you could look right down the great nave, seeing perhaps only one tripper creeping from pillar to pillar with a guidebook, a vigilant verger stalking him and ready to net him if he so much as sneezed.

In winter you'd see nothing at all except the light from one gas-globe plunged smokily into the remote and vast darkness of the nave roof.  Then you really felt that Evensong and the Cathedral meant something.  Heralded by old Dyack and his pitch-pipe, Tallis in the Dorian Mode would float down the aisles; a motet by William Byrd weaves its intricate pattern upon the dark silence. At such times I believe we all felt a relationship to the great roof that soared away above us and to the wonderful old monks and people who'd built it all, and wrote that glorious music, centuries ago"

See what I mean?

Thank you Simon for telling me all about Miss Hargreaves  - I would never have discovered her without you.  And thank you Simon for suggesting this reprint to the Bloomsbury Group.  And thank you the Bloomsbury Group for so doing.

All of you now have the chance to read this gloriously inventive, eccentric and wonderful book for the princely sum of £7.99.  Nip across to the website HERE and order.

Go on, you know it makes sense........

Friday Rambles

Glad to see the back of this week as I seem to be stumbling, literally, from one thing to another.  Day after my headlong pitch in Cambridge, I woke up to find my left foot closely resembled in shape, if not in colour, that of a pig's trotter it was so swollen.  Instead of a delicate shade of pig trotter pink, it was black and the bruise spread throughout the day and looked pretty horrific. Then bruises started to appear in other places I will not mention, the right wrist which I used to break my fall started to throb and the back was on its way to seizing up again.  Spent the afternoon soaking in a hot bath, not sure it did any good, but psychologically it made me feel better.  My friend Rosemary came to see me in the evening, she is a nurse of many years and she took a look at my foot, poked and prodded a bit and said she did not think anything was broken.  She strapped it up for me and so today, once more, I am on the sofa with feet up.

(Mem: Isn't it strange that for so many years I longed to spend my days lolling on the sofa and now I am forced to do it, it seems to have lost its charm?  Be careful for what you wish for.....)

My neighbours loaned me NCIS, Series 1 and 2 and then inconsiderately disappeared on holiday and when I watched the final episode of Series 2 and watched the denouement which shook me rigid, I was then faced with the ghastly thought that I did not know when they were coming back and, short of breaking in, would have to wait their return for the next series.   When I saw them driving into the car park on Sunday I was hanging out the window saying Oh How Lovely to see you - did you have a Good Holiday and please can I have the next two series of NCIS?   To their eternal credit they handed them over before they had even got their luggage in the door or put the kettle on.  (I am going to lend them The Wire as a small thank you). 

 

   

I have become addicted to this particular series. Never watched it as I was working at the time it was on and with ER, 24 and West Wing to watch felt that was enough.  So now I have all these episodes to watch and Mark Harmon as Agent Gibbs is wonderful and gorgeous (I recollect he was in a episode of West Wing so must hunt that out), Michael Weatherly who plays the sexist and slightly stupid Agent DiNozzo is really eye candy to die for  and David McCullum - well, I so remember being madly in love with him when he was Ilya Kuryakin in the Man from UNCLE all those years ago.  He still has the same floppy hair style that he had then and apart form the obvious extra wrinkles, hardly seems to have changed at all. 

So I have plenty to keep me occupied.  I am also reading the new Margaret Atwood which is seriously weird and superbly written, but is so bleak and ghastly that I have to put it down each 50 pages or so and turn to Jeeves for a little light relief.  Have also read another of the Bloomsbury Group titles, Miss Hargreaves, which I loved all over again and will be writing about this weekend, Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg, a great Swedish thriller writer and have Volume 3 of L M Montgomery's journals by my bed, so I certainly have an eclectic mix at the moment to keep my mind occupied and off my foot.

The sofa calleth...more tomorrow.

Love's Shadow - Ada Leverson

I had never heard of Ada Leverson until I stumbled across an old Virago of The Little Ottleys at a book sale, bought it, read it, loved it and reviewed here.  On re-reading I see this review has only concentrated on the Ottley marriage and I rather ignored the other story line - I have corrected this below.  Love's Shadow is the first story of the three.

My by line is on the back of Love's Shadow and above me is a comment by Barry Humphries 'Saki meets Jane Austen in the delectable comedies of Ada Leverson' and while Love's Shadow is certainly comic, there is also sadness and unrequited love.

Edith is married to the unutterably ghastly Bruce Ottley (Mr Pooter without the charm), who is pompous, and vain. She has a young, beautiful friend Hyacinth Verney who is in love with the elusive and dashing Cedric Reeve. He, in his turn, is fascinated and infatuated with an enigmatic widow some ten years older than him, Mrs Raymond, who spurns his attentions and insists that he marries Hyacinth.  In turn, Hyacinth is loved by her guardian Lord Cannon, unhappily married to the redoubtable and self deluding Lady Cannon who had "a very exalted opinion of her own charms, virtues, brilliant gifts and, above all, of her sound sense.  Fortunately for her, she had married a man of extraordinary amiability who had taken very possible precaution to prevent her discovering that in this opinion she was practically alone in the world".

There is also a hint that Bruce, who is furious at Hyacinth's marraige, may also be in love with her....

Still with me?

Cedric has an Uncle Lord Selsey, who in his turn, becomes fascinated by Mrs Raymond and as she has been a widower for some time and he is a suitable match, decides to marry him.  On hearing this news, Cedric then marries Hyacinth and though he does love her, he still has a secret yen for Mrs Raymond, now his aunt.  It is this unrequited love that casts 'love's shadow' over their marriage and nearly brings him to disaster.

This sounds very convoluted, but the writing of this comedy of manners, because in the end it is a comedy, is so stylish and witty with such a  deft touch that the reference to Jane Austen is not unwarranted.   The main thrust of the story is this love triangle, (or should that be quadruple?) but balancing this out is the Edith/Bruce marriage and I think I can safely say that Bruce Ottley  is one of the most irritating characters I have ever come across.  In my earlier post, I mentioned that Ada Leverson's marriage was not a happy one and I made the assumption that she had imbued Bruce with some of her husband's characteristics.  Edith and her mother in law are joined in an unspoken alliance in managing Bruce and the knack is for Edith to ask him not to do something she really wants him to do, secure in the knowledge that he will then ignore her, do it and she will have achieved the desired result.  

"I feel the want of air" said Bruce. " If you don't mind dear, I think I shall go for a stroll"

"Oh, don't"    He went to  the hall and put on his coat "Just a stroll, or I may look in the club. You don't understand Edith, a man feel rather cramped in these surrounding"

And off he goes to his club where no doubt he will empty the room and Edith makes her telephone call to Hyacinth for a gossip which is what she wanted to do all along.  (This is a strategy I employed many times in my marriage which may go some way to explain why I now live alone...)

The humour and awfulness of Bruce which can only make the reader laugh despite feeling that he really is worth strangling, counter balances the Mrs Raymond/Cedric/Hyacinth tangle which is all sorted out in the end by Mrs Raymond, now Lady Selsey, arranging to go away on a trip with her husband to the Greek Islands for a year or two, and leave Hyacinth and Cedric to sort themselves out.  Left alone, Cedric will realise that he loves Hyacinth and though I feel that Lady Selsey is doing the right thing, I am left with the strong impression that she rather enjoyed being a femme fatale and only decided to let Cedric go when the marriage was in danger of collapse which would not have suited her at all.  Not a pleasant character and I can hardly help but wonder what will happen when she returns.  We will never know of course.  

Ada Leverson has a satirical eye for the absurd as you can see by the reconciliation between Hyacinth and Cecil.

"Cedric, are you really sorry that she's going?" 

"Not at all if I'm going to have a little peace now"

"Oh Cecil have I been unfair to you?  I'm very very sorry. I see I was wrong. How could I be so horrid?"

"....you did make me feel pretty miserable"

"Oh poor boy. Then you don't care a bit for that woman then?" 

"Not a straw!"

"Oh Cecil will you ever forgive me?"

"Well, I'll try" said Cecil.

After all the sturm and drang, threats of divorce and angry words, it is all sorted out in this rather silly little exchange and the reader is left with a wry smile at the comic-serious situation.  Wonderful stuff.

Do read.  I know you will love it.

Tuesday Woe

First of all NOT my lunch with my friend Jan Jones (she has a new book out soon will keep you posted), but afterwards.  I had gone to meet my daughter Helen and we had agreed to meet at a church cum cafe  in Michaelgate and I trolled off in the right direction and turned into the entrance which slopes down in a mini ramp because lots of mothers and children in buggies use this place, there is no sign warning of this, I stumbled, went over on my left ankle and measured my length in a spectacular fashion and hit the ground with an almighty thump.

Nobody noticed!  Quite pleased about that as I staggered to my feet and made my way to a chair to sit and recover.  Then got a cup of tea and Helen arrived and we chatted etc etc.  An hour later I went to get the bus back to Park and Ride and I could feel that I had a few aches and pains but no matter.  The traffic was appalling and when I eventually arrived at my car, an hour later, my left foot was black and blue and was the size of a football.  Nothing I could do so drove home, it hurt,  and boy did it suddenly turn black and down came the rain and a simply horrid drive nearly all the way to Colchester.

I have at least two books reviews to get up here and I have not forgotten that this is meant to be a Book Blog but all I am going to do tonight is stick a bag of frozen peas on my left foot and hope it does the trick.

I need chocolate but do not have any handy....'sigh'

So an evening spent with NCIS Series Three to which I have become totally addicted.

My how you've grown

In Post ashes recovery mode so very tired from all the shrieking and yelling, and also took my Mum to the seaside for the day.  As she is 97 this entails a lot of slow walking, speaking clearly so she can hear me and wathcing that she does not step off the pavement into the road without looking when she wants to cross - she seems to think that traffic will stop for her.  OK we were in Frinton where the average age is 75+ and they really do seem to be more careful, but even so.  Came home with splitting headache and have spent the evening not doing much.  Not up to blogging.

 

But thought you might like to see these two photos.  Remember this guy?

 

Well look at him now.

Off to Cambridge tomorrow to lunch with a good friend and then meet up with my younger daughter in the afternoon so a good day ahead.  I LOVE Cambridge....

Calloo Callay O Frabjous Day!!!

    

We have won the Ashes!! I have spent all day listening to the radio and checking the laptop except for a few intervals when I switched off all communication because we needed wickets.  Let me explain. This harks back to when my girls were young and we were watching the Test match and we needed to get our opponents out. 'Go and make a cup of tea Mum' I was told and every time I did there was a shriek from the front room and a wicket fell.  Worked with footie as well when we wanted our team to score.

   

So the other day I  went out for a walk and when I came back Stuart Broad had taken 4 wickets in 8 balls.  Then when I felt we needed some more, I went and fed the ducks and when I came back another two had fallen.  It was getting late and I did not fancy a walk so switched off - checked again ten minutes later to discover we had bowled the Aussies out for 160.

This afternoon, despite the fact the Aussies needed an unreachable score they were doing well and the crowd were getting tense.  So off I go on my perambulations and ten minutes later came back to find that there had been TWO run outs, one of which was the Aussie Captain Ricky Ponting.  I then sat glued to the radio all afternoon and we were wicketless  and it was getting a tad tense and so, yes you have guessed it, I had a shower, made some tea, sang a song or two, made a telephone call and then switched the radio back on and we were off again, another three wickets had fallen.

Now this is all very well but I now have the worry for the future - will I ever be able to watch a full Test match because if I do we will never win!

Heaven knows what my neighbours were thinking as I stayed with it for the last half hour and the yelling and shouting that was going on from moi was probably a bit over the top.  In the midst of this Kathryn called me from a pub in Leeds, where she had been all day watching SKY and as she spoke to me the last wicket fell and the roar down the phone was ear splitting.

And yes I know that to some of you watching cricket is about as exciting as watching paint dry but you will have to bear with me here.  It is the greatest game in the world and Test Match cricket is the best.

So there.....

Ramblings in which a Sofa is bought...

After my reading of the Hermione Lee biography of Edith Wharton, truly magnificent, I needed to rest and recuperate and have various chores to do round the flat and decided just to let my mind have a rest and come back down to ordinary things.

After the visit of my darling daughter Kathryn the other week and having given her my bed as she was recovering from having a cyst dug out of her back and me sleeping on the sofa (with my still aching back) made me realise that this could not continue and so I decided to get rid of my small two seater sofa (nice to look at but uncomfortable) and get a sofa bed.  So I hied me off to have a look around and was greeted with cries of rapture by sales assistants in empty furniture stores all looking for a sale.  Well, if I had £700 to spare and wanted a super filled, top of the range mattress there was plenty of choice, but all I was looking for was a bog standard sofa bed for the occasional visitor.  Lowest price I could find was a slightly dirty one marked down to £400 in one warehouse.

So I turned to IKEA and by coincidence, the new catalogue arrived on my doorstep that very day. Spotted one for £200, that is more like it I thought.  So I planned a trip down the M25 to the nearest store and then thought with sinking heart of the queues, the trying to get decent service from the staff (something I have yet to achieve at this store) and the drive home and so on and so on.  I knew it had to be done and was not looking forward to it so was very pleased yesterday when dropping into one of these All Purpose Stores to purchase a mirror for my bedroom, spotted there was a furniture sale and lo and behold there was a small sofa bed, just what I was looking for for £300.  Apparently the store had had a flood and there was 'water damage'.  I lurked and checked and it was not unsightly and I always have throws on my sofa anyway so I pondered.  Up came a fresh cheeked young man scenting a sale.  I expressed tepid interest in the item and let him give me his spiel etc and after he had been going for a while told him I might buy it, but only if he let me have it for £250.  He reacted as if I had stuck a pin in him.

HIm:  Oh I can't do that Madam

Me: Yes you can

HIm: I couldn't possibly

Me: Yes you can

Him (wavering):  I will have to speak to the manager

Me (cordially): yes do

So he phones through and as the manager on the other end had rather a loud voice I could hear him quite distinctly say, Oh for heaven's sake just get rid of the thing.  Wished I had offered £200 when I hear this but decided not to push it.

So the upshot was that they delivered it the next day and, what is more at 9.30 am so I did not have to hang around all day, and they also moved my old sofa out and stored it under the stairs in my apartment block whence it will be collected by a charity on Wednesday, and there it was.  Slightly bigger than my last one, but no matter and when I opened it out to have a look at it realised that they had not known the the end of the mattress was very very wet.  However, hanging it out my window all day where it got the full force of the glorious sunshine means that it is very nearly dried out and I am very pleased with my purchase.

If you don't ask you don't get.  Quite often you get a response in which you are invited to leave the store, but quite often I also get a good response.  If you have the confidence to ask for things in a shop you can quite often get them.  Every time I bought a new video recorder (ah those far off days), I always made the shop sling in a pack of blank tapes; when I had a new TV delivered with a scratch on it I kept it but made them knock £50 off; when I moved into this flat and bought fridge, freezer and cooker all from the same place at the same time, I made them give me a 10% discount and sling in some saucepans as well.   

It might,but I doubt it, also interest you to know that I spent the rest of the day having an almighty clear out and with the wrapping the sofa came in (yards and yards of that stuff they wrap round cases at airports), the cardboard from a small cabinet I had also purchased for the bathroom, plus the polystyrene it was packed in and other boxes that boxes had been delivered in, I spent a merry half hour at the Tip hurling it all in the skips which is tremendous fun.

Then the sofa in the afternoon, two fun mystery books by one Linwood Barclay, full of twists turns and deviousness, which I knew nothing about and given by a friend recently, a PG Wodehouse The Girl on the Boat and feet up.  Then in the evening a simply sublime performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, his only opera, on the TV from the Proms which reduced me to tears.

Just off to take the Aged Parent out to Hall Farm for coffee and cake this morning as the sun is shining out of a clear blue sky and it really is a stunning day.  This farm has some wonderful animals and thought you might like to see one of their rather endearing pigs having a snooze in the sunshine when Kathryn and I visited last week:

   

Au reservoir.

Edith Wharton - Hermione Lee

Back in January 2007 I purchased the above book which I had been eagerly awaiting as Edith Wharton is one of my favourite writers and I admire her enormously.  However,  I found it very hard going and explained why in my post of February 2007 just why I found it so.

The book was put back on my shelves and there it has sat ever since and I have been looking at it constantly and thinking I really must have Another Go.  Well, cometh the hour, cometh the book and  for some reason I picked it up last weekend, sat down and just got on with it, dived in head first and took the plunge (sorry for these mixed metaphors) and that was it, totally hooked and immersed and finished yesterday with head reeling at just how wonderful this book is and how my earlier impressions were wrong. 

I doubt very much if another biography of Edith Wharton will ever need to be written  as I cannot imagine there is anytihng left to say that Hermione Lee has not put down here.  The biographical details of Edith's life are probably pretty well known by all Wharton lovers, the doubt that she was her father's daughter, her difficult relationship with a demanding and socially conscious mother, her unhappy marriage to Teddy Wharton (whose father had died in a mental asylum but nobody thought this mattered), his deterioration, then divorce, her life in Paris, her travels, her friendship with Henry James, her passionate love affair with the untrustworthy and shallow Morton Fullerton, her life long friendship with Walter Berry, her war work in Paris duirng World War 1, the awarding of the Legion D'Honneur....well, this is all fascinating and deeply dissected and discussed, but the main reason I found this book so engrossing was the linking and analysis of her writing with her life and her state of mind and location at the time each book was written, all of which have a bearing on the individual novels, short stories and poems.

I cannot write a literary criticism of this biography - I do not have the intellectual capabilities to do so and I can only sit back in admiration at the sheer breadth and scale of this life.   I have, however, stuck yellow post its at various places where I have come across something I wanted to mention and I am now going to have a look at them and see if I can remember what I thought at the time and why I marked it.  Here goes with just a few:

House of Mirth - Hermione Lee points out that the plot revolves around paper - letters, notes, bills, telegrams, newspaper scandal sheets, a will (by which Lily is disinherited) and a cheque.  Lily pays her way by helping Judy Trenor 'with the chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents', during her last farewell scene with Selden she burns the packet of love letters he wrote to his ex-mistress.  She spends her last hours at her desk sorting her papers and writing and her last act before she takes the dose of chloral which kills her is to write a cheque.

Pretty obvious when HL points this out, but not noticed by me when reading.

Edith Wharton and Henry James - their friendship endured though there were times when it was strained and Edith used to be irritated and the constant reference to her work being  'Jamesian' but in spite of his frequent exasperation, he wrote this to her: "I cling to you dearest Edith through thick and thin and believe that we shall find ourselves in some secure port together.  The great thing is that we shall always tumble together, more and more never apart and for that we may trust ourselves and each other to the end of time". 

I find these words very moving and EW kept them and copied these words into her memoir many years later.

Teddy on Edith - seemed to be an ordinary, perfectly nice chap though this changed when his mental state became precarious.  Their marriage a total mismatch of course and yet in a letter he writes about her with great affection and a knowledge of his own literary shortcomings: " She has suffered a lot with an abscess and the grippe and is much pulled down. I shall motor her off to the South as soon as she is well enough.  You know I am no good on Puss's (his pet name for her) high plane of thought, but you will agree that no lady of talent is as well turned out as she is, but she is a wonderful person..."

Edith Wharton's standing as a novelist waned as she grew older and she was regarded as old fashioned and a writer of old fashioned stories, completely missing the fact that her eagle eye for hypocrisy and the social scene was as sharp as ever.  However, this seems to be the fate of all novelists (same thing happened to L M Montgomery as I discovered in the recent biography I read of this wonderful writer). Fashions come and go and eventually authors are taken out of the cupboard, dusted down and their reputations looked at once more in the light of modern thinking and they are restored to the Pantheon of Greatness once more.  Edith Wharton is now firmly back where she belongs and the fact that two hugely successful films, The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth, were made in the 1990s certainly had a great deal to do with raising awareness of this magnificent writer.  I always find it rather galling when one has loved an author even though they were not popular and I become annoyed that others talk about her as if they, personally, had just discovered her and I feel like shouting Well I always read her even before Daniel Day Lewis came along, but that is pure silliness on my part.

Edith had practically no family left by the time she died, her family ties had always been tenuous and she surrounded herself with her family of friends and though she could be imperious and haughty with outsiders, within this small circle she was loyal, loving and devoted.  She was buried in France, where she lived most of her life, and the book ends on a rather melancholy note with Hermione Lee visiting her grave in Versailles. 

  

There she finds it, rather plain and rather ugly and  the tomb covered in weeds and broken bottles, nobody had obviously been there for some time. "It struck me as an unvisited and lonely tomb of a person who died without close relatives nearby to look after it.....this neglect seemed sad.  In the rain I weeded Edith, and planted a single white silk azalea, bought from the flower shop at the cemetery gate.  She would probably have been scornful about the artificial flower, but would, I felt, have been glad to have her grave tidied up".

Me, the Dentist and Dame Edna

I am sure you are all delighted and thrilled to hear that my back has unlocked, no more shooting pain and I can now move with ease, well more or less, I still have to take the odd amble around the apartment to make sure I don't seize up again, but oh the relief.  Every time I have one of these episodes I realise I have forgotten how painful they can be.  While searching Random for a review of a while back, I came across a post dated June 2007 in which I lamented that I could barely move and was laid low with a bad back, so it seems as if I have been inflicting my aches and pains on you on a regular basis. 

Sorry.

Anyway let's get the next boring thing over - I am sitting here in a tremble and quivering like an aspen after a sleepless night.  The reason for this is that I am going to The Dentist later on today (Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors has featured largely in my thoughts in the twilight hours).  I have a totally irrational fear and dislike of the dentist with all his drills and instruments and sometimes when lying on the tip back chair with the light shining down and a masked face leaning over me saying 'Open wide' I have this desire to leap to my feet and run shrieking and screaming from the room never to return.  That this is stupid I know but nothing I can do about it. 

Enough - I am sure I will survive.

 

OK so this is a Random Ramble and thought you might like to see some of the new arrivals that have dropped through my letter box in the last week or so.

 

Delighted with the latest two from the Bloomsbury Group and you can see that I have reached the giddy heights of fame with my tag line on the back of Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson.  Please note it is me and Dame Edna, together, next to one another, in juxtaposition.....what more can life hold for me?

 

Kisses on a Postcard I have already written about and just a simply gorgeous book which I recommend to everyone.  The new Atwood looks pretty formidable and I may need to be in post-Dentist mood to tackle this one.  I have dipped into it and know that it will need all my concentration.

More later if I have the mental fortitude after my ordeal this morning.  Stupid thing is, this is just the initial examination and it will be future appointments that will be the real test as I know I have a couple of fillings to do and plaque to be sorted and oh, it is all too much to bear.

Have a nice day everyone.

Kisses on a Postcard - Terence Frisby

Gosh what a lovely lovely book.

Yes folks I always believe in starting a book review with an intellectually thought out, pithy turn of phrase and this is it 'Gosh what a lovely lovely book'.

And it is.  A parcel from Bloomsbury arrived last week, I think they are a lovely lovely publishing house as well, and this was contained therein.  I was in back recovery mode at the time and decided to combine resting on the sofa with Kisses on a Postcard, a tale of Wartime Childhood.  I opened it up  and that was it, instant enchantment, totally beguiled and I sat and read it straight through and when finished just sat with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes.

Terence Frisby is a playwright, actor, director and produced and his most famous play, There's a Girl in my Soup, was London's longest running comedy and a worldwide smash hit.  I remember it well. He and his elder brother, Jack aged eleven, were evacuees 'vackies' and were sent to the tiny Cornish hamlet of Doublebois where they lived at No 7 Railway Cottages with Uncle Jack, an irreverent ex-Welsh miner with trenchant views on more or less everything, and his warm hearted wife Auntie Rose.  The Kisses on a Postcard was a code thought of by their mother and they were to send a postcard back to their parents on arrival.

"Now this is the code. Our secret.  You put one kiss if it's horrible and I'll come straight there and bring you back home. You put two kisses if it's all right and three kisses if it's nice, really nice. Then I'll know"

They put kisses all over the postcard....

Jack and Terry were in Cornwall for three years, the woods and river became their playground and they were  delighted to see that the the main London to Penzance train line ran right through the cutting where they were to live.  Children of a railway man, this made them feel at home immediately.

Doublebois was full of the usual eclectic mix of inhabitants.  One dominant character was Miss Polmanor, a narrow minded and upright Wesleyan Methodist who seemed to be determined to make life something to be endured rather than enjoyed.  There was no hypocrisy about her, she might have been tough on everyone but she was even tougher on herself.  She lived frugally and in order to earn extra money to live on she had acquired, rather bizarrely, the local concession on Corona, a firm that made fizzy drinks very popular with the children at that time. She had crates full of bottles in her cellar and Jack and Terry were allowed to have a glass each with their Sunday meal.  "Our favourites were cherryade (sweetly disgusting) and ginger beer". Miss Polmanor would not trade on a Sunday and therefore the drink had to be purchased on a Saturday.  One Sunday when the boys forgot this, Terry was dispatched to see if he could wheedle a bottle out of her despite it being the Sabbath.

Not a hope it seemed, but when she discovered that he sang in the church choir she consented to let him have a bottle of Corona and he would pay the next day.  After that, he was sent up on a regular basis which led to an unwelcome intimacy.  He was invited inside her old fashioned house packed with bric a brac and other mementos and there, on the sideboard, a silver framed photo of a man turned into a modest shrine "standing on a little tapestry with candlesticks on either side". The discovery of who this is later on in the book is guaranteed to make any lip, no matter how stiff and upper, quiver. It did mine.

One of Terry's friends was Elsie, a precocious and sexually aware young teenager, eager to show him how to play Doctors and Nurses, a game which he found fascinating and terrifying in equal measures.  In what must be the worst allocation of billets in the village, Elsie found herself sharing  with Miss Polmanor who struggles in vain to install good behaviour in her and to and save her soul from eternal damnation.  As she grows older, Elsie abandons Terry for more grown up companions and when the US are stationed near by, she is in a permanent state of delirious excitement.

"In our part of Cornwall, people from the next village were strangers, Englishmen from across the Tamar were foreigners, American might have been from Mars. And that wasn't all, to cap everything they were BLACK..........it's no good thinking in terms of colour prejudice, the village wasn't prejudiced, it was astounded. Although we were at the centre of the British Empire, this was a remote part of Cornwall in 1943"

The soldiers thought they were in paradise 'you should see where we come from' and asked 'we see you have two churches in your city.  Is one - maybe - all right for coloured folk to worship in?'  the villagers took them to their hearts.

"These smiling flamboyant to us, gentle men who came from God knows what hells in the Deep South of the segregated USA, let us pat and pull their hair, rub their skin to see if it came off, examine their pink palms, marvel at their very existence, and then they were gone just as suddenly as they had appeared and were replaced by other Yanks, white ones, no less friendly, no less generous but with not a tenth of the exotic appeal of their black comrades"

I could carry on quoting huge chunks from this gorgeous book ad infinitum, but I do want you to buy a copy and read it for yourselves.  Uncle Jack and Auntie Rose are two warm hearted and generous people and Jack and Terry were lucky that they  chanced upon them as when evacuees arrived they were herded into a church hall and the locals came along and chose them, so they could have ended up anywhere.  We know that some evacuees were unlucky and were treated as slave labour by some less than kindly people, and so they were doubly lucky to be chosen by Uncle Tom who just laughed when told he had to take both of them or none at all, and duly did so.

Of course, the time came when they returned to London. As well as the main danger having passed, Jack and Rose were taking Elsie into their home and they no longer had the room to house the boys.  She had, rather predictably, fallen pregnant by one of the US visitors, did not know which one and as her mother had deserted the family and she had no notion of the whereabouts of her father, Elsie would have found herself in one of the grim homes for Fallen Women that were the only refuge at the time, if it had not been for Jack and Rosie.

So the parting arrives and they are taken down to catch their train:

"Goodbye boys....Uncle Jack choked, stopped, tried to grin at us and failed miserably, tears ran down his cheeks.  Auntie Rose cut in 'Don't cry Jack for God's sake, you'll start me off' and she started to cry"........Uncle Jack and Auntie Rose. Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack. Not father and mother, not distant either, just in between relatives.  Of course they weren't even that..........but even now sixty-seven years later, I still cannot say their names without a full heart and a lump of gratitude in my throat"

I have a lump in mine as well as I write this.

I will say it again, a lovely lovely lovely book.