Books - an adventure in every one

Where to start? This weeks blog theme is books. I can't imagine a life without them. They have been the catalyst for so many adventures in my life.

From my first dip into Enid Blyton's Mystery series, I was hooked.  I became a detective.

One of the first books I ever bought was Heidi - a story that inspired me to travel to Switzerland. I have loved the mountains ever since.

There are so many wonderful stories. At school, I learned to love Dickens, delved into Orwell and the romantics, Jane Austen and the Brontes but as an adult I have had far less time, so every year I choose a new publication from the Booker prize list.  This habit has led me to sample the delights of other worlds.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin inspired me to travel to Kefalonia, beginning a love of the Greek islands that takes me back to sample their delights year on year.

Yann Martel's book, The Life of Pi sent me to Pondicheri in Southern India, a place that my father loved during his WW2 service and it is still on my list of places to visit.

Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel broadened my knowledge of the life of Thomas Cromwell, a fascinating and very shrewd character from Tudor times.

Arundhati Roy took me back to India.  Her vivid imagery captures the Indian culture and imprints it in the mind. The heat, the sounds, the smells, the colours - all deeply engraved into each page - perfect for the armchair traveller to enjoy.

The Booker winners list has introduced me to many up and coming authors; Julian Barnes, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. The latter has to be one of the best books that I have ever read.

Another inspiring book, a biography this time, is The Hare with Amber eyes. A Costa prize winner. It is a magic carpet ride of a story, from Odessa, to Paris and Vienna that culminates in Japan, another place that I intend to visit because of a wonderful book.  I recommend Edmund de Waal's book to you all. It is a great read.

I love to read. I love books. What more can I say except that I have trouble parting with them. I do use the library but find it so difficult to return a book that I have really enjoyed. I am currently trying to reduce my hoard ready to move house. It is a gut-wrenching chore that I keep putting off.  The up-shot may be that once I move,  I hope to have room for more books and as a consequence of reading them, a whole heap more adventures.

Writing a book is another matter.  My own efforts usually crash and burn at the tenth chapter or so. I think I just lose heart.

My poem is written in the style of Joyce Kilmer

Books

 

I’m sure that I will never look

At anything as lovely as a book

A book that’s crafted artfully
Whose storyline enraptures me

A book that spans the centuries
Enlightening their histories.

A book that sails the seven seas
Revealing nature’s mysteries

Upon whose cover dust has crept
As patient pages quietly slept

Poems are made by fools with luck
It takes so long to write a book


Thank you for reading.  Adele

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Childhood Secrets

The going wasn't always easy for we junior citizens of the Undemocratic Republic of Mother & Fatherland back in the day, (Peterborough, late 1950s into early 1960s).

I'm not saying life was lived under a permanently repressive regime. Peterborough was actually a fascinating environment to grow up in, unusual for the times. Our next door neighbours were Italian and Polish, my playmates from along the street included Helmut (Austrian), Lima (Lithuanian) and Tamara (Ukrainian) as well as the usual Johns and Julies; there was a Greek-owned B&B (it called itself a Hotel) on one corner of the street, an extended family of West Indians at the other end, a smattering of American Air Force personnel (servicing the nearby Alconbury airbase) and digs for Peterborough United footballers with their wives and kids. Lime Tree Avenue was pleasingly and spectacularly diverse for an English street on the cusp of the sixties, but the Undemocratic Republic seemed stuck in a pre-war time-warp where 'Though Shalt Not' appeared to be the state motto! Therefore we frequently gazed in surreptitious envy at the rights and freedoms permitted to the children of more enlightened neighbours...

...like the freedom to watch TV (banned in the Undemocratic Republic - we did not possess a set); the right to spend pocket-money on sweets and comics (a frivolous waste, forbidden on pain of forfeit of funds); the entitlement to free speech (aka answering back - likely to incur corporal punishment); and for a heathen (see my blog from a fortnight ago) the unalienable right to do as one wanted with one's Sundays (no chance - church in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon and church again in the evening if we'd protested about either the morning or afternoon impositions).

In such a predicament, books were our lifeline - either borrowed from the library or purchased (an approved use of pocket-money) from the city's SPCK Christian bookshop in the cathedral precinct. The latter were invariably Puffin paperbacks. They were my window into a brighter, broader world beyond the sheltering shadow of the Undemocratic Republic (in much the same way that Beatles albums were a beacon of hope in the former USSR). Communication with the elders was limited and so knowledge came primarily from the written word. For instance, all I knew about sex as a pre-teen I gleaned from the pages of the Puffin Book of Muffin! (No, it wasn't actually called that. I wish that it were. It was full of stark facts and black and white diagrams.)

It can come as little surprise, then, to hear that we junior citizens revelled in reading seditious literature about kids who had shucked off the yoke of the oppressor: the Famous Five, the Big Six, the Secret Seven were particular favourites, kids who were doing it for themselves, braving danger, ignoring curfews, solving crimes and righting wrongs very often more effectively than their adult counterparts.

The Secret Seven in all their sartorial magnificence!

At the time I was surprised such subversive reading matter was tolerated in Mother & Fatherland. In practice we were just being played, kept tame - but never realised it at the time. Enid Blyton's books may have outstripped the Bible in terms of sales but they peddled vicarious pleasures, paradise deferred, a parallel set of illusions. Real life couldn't match up to the fable.

I was nine when my cousins Keith and Martin plus Aunt Amy came to stay. This was a novelty in itself.  Uncle George had recently died at an indecently young age of a heart attack. Smoking and drinking were rumoured to be his downfall - both banned, of course, in the Undemocratic Republic. We boys, lured by the possibility of being the Fantastic Four, conspired to have a secret midnight feast in the bedroom. Did I mention that eating between meals and taking food upstairs were also strictly not allowed? I was nominated to smuggle a banana - the first time, to my knowledge, that I had ever wilfully deceived my parents. I did this by hiding it down in my underpants. I was walking nonchalantly from kitchen to stairs via the dining-room when I was challenged over the stud-like bulge in the front of my trousers. Foolishly I denied the charge - the lie possibly a more heinous crime than trying to smuggle a banana in the first place. I was humiliated and sent to bed early without any tea as punishment. The dream of the Fantastic Four was also consigned to an early grave.

I never again misunderestimated (thank you, George W Bush) the pervasive intelligence network spanning Mother & Fatherland. That night, a hardened undercover agent was born - working alone and tirelessly, but in secret, for eventual liberation from the shackles of innocence, to a world beyond books, into the realms of experience.

I've had no time to write a poem this week, nor to identify anything that would fit. Maybe something about Stud Bananas will surface eventually, or a wry reflection on the Puffin Book of Muffin. Who knows?

Thanks, as ever, for reading the blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a good week, S ;-)

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Curiosity - who knows where it will take you.

The say that curiosity killed the cat but I have always had an enquiring mind. I asked too many questions and was often referred to as a 'knowing child' or remarks would be made that I 'had been here before' or perhaps that , 'she knows things that she's not supposed to know.'  Well often I did and a public blog is not an appropriate medium with which to reveal close family secrets or how I came to discover them. All I will say is that as an avid early reader, it make assessments. In a way I was a child detective, investigating anything and everything.

My early reading, Aesops fables, Greek myths and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales often gave me moral wisdom way beyond my years and as the confident youngest child of four, I happily dispensed the lessons that I learned whenever a situation required my knowledge. I read everything from log tables and the bible to cookery books and my elder sister's Dennis Wheatley novels. What I most enjoyed was trying to research something that interested me and I was relentless in my pursuit of a solution to a problem.

Had I not been a gifted dancer, I think I might have had a career in science or perhaps law but in recent years I am convinced that I would make a really great detective. My reading favourite reading from age nine was Enid Blyton's Mystery series. Dad would buy me a new paperback at the Post Office every Saturday and when I had a good selection of books, I painted a wooden box yellow, decorated it with butterflies and started the Butterfly Club for the village children, charging them sixpence to borrow a book.

I still love to read detective stories, especially the Scandinavian variety but also fell in love with Alexander McCall Smith's traditionally built First Lady Detective, Mme Ramwotse.  They are great human interest stories. If being a private detective in the UK didn't involve so many licences, perhaps I would enjoy the work. As things go, the cuts in Legal Aid for matrimonial cases means that many detectives are finding work thin on the ground, so perhaps it isn't such a great idea.

I have a slight disconnect in my short term memory, I often lose items when out and about and although it is quite distressing to misplace my reading glasses, car keys or gloves, I actually relish the pursuit of their retrieval.  I love retracting my steps, thinking through the logistics and am always so delighted when I get things back that it is almost worth experiencing the initial loss. When I began having immediate recall problems, I did think that I was losing my mind and actually went through all the tests for Alzheimer's.  I am relieved to say that my problem is not progressive.  I was delighted to discover that my long term retention memory is in the 95th percentile for my age and even my short term memory is well above average.  It is just a concentration deficit due to chronic pain that affects me, my neural pathways divert so that my brain is not aware that I am in pain. The human brain is such a remarkable organism.

I spent a little time this morning in a newly opened dementia café.  This is an innovation to bring suffers of dementia and their carers together in a safe environment. Carers can open up, share their experiences, obtain help and advice. My friend and former college buddy Peter Brooks who works as demetia care homes officer for Blackpool Council invited us to go along to consider whether poetry is a medium that might help sufferers of this debilitating disease to unlock long term memory and open conversations.  We are going to give it a try. As a frim believer in QED - I won't dismiss anything until I have investigated it thoroughly.  Oh and if any of you think you might like to join in as a volunteer poetry reader - just email deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk

Memory Café

You are locked in now,
a safe place,
because your forget,
your name, where you live
when to wash, to eat, to sleep.
They care for you,
keep you safe,
help you to keep you warm,
but all the memories that made you
are locked away too,
as if they could cause you harm.

Will Wordsworth's words unlock them?
Will Keats offer release?
Could a host of daffodils clear the cobwebs in the mind,
or neural pathways reconnect as 
seasons mists sweep away in rhyme?

If I just leave you there, to sit and stare,
or simply walk away
no one may hear the things you want to say.
If time told poetry and prose
reanimate emotion in your face,
then in your remembering smile,
I may find grace.


Thanks for reading.  Adele   

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Bless you, Enid Blyton!

The first story I ever wrote was my own version of a fairy tale, loosely based on The Three Bears and Little Red Riding Hood. It was written in my best handwriting on two sheets of my father’s pale blue Basildon Bond paper, folded in half to make a book. I was seven years old and this was a farewell gift to the head teacher of my infant school. She was sad to lose me and I was sad to go, but my parents were taking on another pub in another town so we were moving.

In our new home, a box of old children’s books had been left ‘for the little girl’. What treasure that box held for me! There was a book about ballet, a girl’s annual that introduced me to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, some junior encyclopaedias and a stack of hard-back books by someone called Enid Blyton. When I looked at the beginning of a ‘Secret Seven’ book, I discovered that not only could I read and understand it, I loved it. The story was about children playing and having fun making up their own games. They were children like me and the friends I had in my new school. It was tons better than ‘Janet and John’ or ‘The Green Reader’. I still have those special books.

Throughout my childhood and early teens I read and re-read Enid Blyton. I would reach the end of ‘The Ring O’ Bells Mystery’ and go straight back to Chapter One and start again. I loved the characters so much, I had to keep them with me. I couldn’t get enough of The Famous Five and all ‘The Mystery of…’ stories. When I read the school stories of Malory Towers or St Clare’s, I longed to be at boarding school with those girls.

All this reading did something else. It developed my desire to create characters of my own and I have continued to write stories and poetry for most of my adult life.

Despite her success as a wonderful storyteller, Enid Blyton’s books were not considered suitable for the school library and, I quote from an article in The Telegraph from 2009, “Enid Blyton, the best-selling children’s author, was banned from the BBC for nearly 30 years because executives thought her a ‘second-rater’.” Also, in the same article, Jean Sutcliffe, named as head of the BBC Schools department in 1938, wrote: “My impression of her stories is that they might do for Children’s Hour but certainly not for Schools Dept, they haven’t much literary value.”

To me, this is an opinion that shouts out academic snobbery loud and clear. I like to read a good, well-told story. The aim of my fiction and poetry writing is to offer enjoyment. My carefully written gift to my head teacher was received with delight and many years later, long after her retirement, I was thrilled to learn she still had it amongst her teaching souvenirs. And, I’m sure, not for any literary merit.

Thank you for reading.

Pamela Winning.

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Desert Island Kindle

 By Ashley Lister

 This week’s theme of desert island discs genuinely scares me. One of the things I savour about reading is the excitement of discovering something new each time I approach the unfamiliar (and familiar) pages of any given title. Imagine the horror of only being able to read the same paltry handful of books again and again and again. I believe, no matter how good the book, the joy of reading a favourite tome would quickly be bleached to the ennui of monotonous repetition.

Also, desert islands give me the willies. From what I’ve seen in documentaries they’re filled with dangerous pirates, man-eating spiders and a rather disturbing lack of lavatories and KFCs. Faced with these levels of deprivation, I think it would be facile for me to start worrying about which books I might fancy taking so I could be choked on the boredom of words I once loved.

So, instead of discussing the literary merits of various titles, I’m going to talk about the books I’d take for more practical purposes.

 

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Soft, strong and thoroughly absorbing. I have no intention of reading the inanities of the twentieth century’s most hateful monoflorid nutjob. But, even on a desert island, I suspect I’d need something with which to wipe and Mein Kampf looks like a thoroughly Charmin’ alternative to regular toilet paper.

(NB – if I can’t find a copy of Mein Kampf, I’ll happily take the manifesto of the BNP).

Lord of the Rings

Whilst desert islands are renowned for being sunny, night time eventually falls on every piece of land. With night comes the need for fire. And with fire comes the need for something that should be burnt.

This is where the Lord of the Rings stories would prove useful. Admittedly, there are some passages that are so dull they’d be likely to extinguish the flames. But, overall, I think this is the only way this book will ever honestly be described as “…a scorching hot read…”

 

Fifty Shades of Grey (the trilogy)

I don’t particularly care for seagulls. One of them once pooped on me. I believe there are lots of seagulls on most desert islands. And I think it would be handy to have something disposable that could be hurled at the seagulls. If my aim is good enough, I could knock fifty shades of grey out of the little bastards.

There is only one book that I would want to take on a desert island for reading purposes. This is a book that I’ve read repeatedly over the past forty plus years. To me the content never grows wearisome. It’s called Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton and this is the final passage of that book:

Then, with a bound he was on the bed, and snuggled himself down into the crook of her legs. He gave a sigh, and shut his eyes. The four children might be happy – but Tim was happiest of all.

‘Oh, Tim,’ murmured George, half waking up as she felt him against her. ‘Oh, Tim, you mustn’t – but you do feel so nice. Tim – we’ll have other adventures together, the five of us – won’t we?’

They will – but that’s another story!

For anyone reading that passage with a knowing smirk on their lips, perhaps you’ll understand why, even if I was suffering the austerity of a desert island, I could enjoy reading this title again and again and again.

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I wish I could have a pint with Patrick Hamilton

Patrick Hamilton

It started with Enid Blyton, my long love affair with books. I went through the card, read the lot, then moved on. Louisa May Alcott followed, then Susan Coolidge. One by one I picked off all the children's classics, rampaging through that series of red-bound books you could buy in Woolworths in the 1950s.  At the age of 11 I graduated to the occult books of Dennis Wheatley. (Goodness knows what a good Catholic girl was doing, messing about with them.) And it’s carried on ever since, down the decades. If I like a writer’s work, if I really like it, I have a compulsion to read all their books.

How do I choose what to read? At the moment my reading material is prescribed for me by the College and will be for the next two years – the only downside to an otherwise glorious experience. (A degree in English does not permit any frivolous reading for the pleasure of it!)  Ordinarily, I may hear an unfamiliar name mentioned on The Book Programme and decide to investigate; or I might read an enthusiastic review in the Guardian; maybe a friend recommends something that has appealed to them; or I can be browsing in a bookshop and choose something unknown on a whim. 

There is nothing quite as enjoyable as ‘discovering’ a writer hitherto unknown to me. An example is Patrick Hamilton, whose ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ was recommended in the Guardian a few years back. Patrick Hamilton was a successful writer in his lifetime and a fairly prolific novelist and playwright  from the 1920s until his death in 1962. His work was largely consigned to oblivion after his death, as the London, or near London, that he wrote about – its dingy boarding houses, rationing, the dirty streets, the grey monotony of working class life – gradually improved and the cheery pub life that he described so evocatively, with its ‘characters’, spivs, prostitutes all battling against life and fighting for survival was no longer recognised by the newly upwardly mobile. Several decades later, his worth and stature as a writer is at last being rehabilitated and his books are being republished.

‘London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the almighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels.’ Thus begins ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ and I was hooked.

Patrick Hamilton’s novels are extraordinarily satisfying, larger than life, brimming with pathos, packed with low-key unrequited love for unsuitable, unreliable, unattainable objects of affection, teeming with indestructible stoicism and forbearance. He was also a writer decades ahead of his time in some respects. There is something in his style of writing that is fresh and contemporary; it could be written today.

When I really, really like a writer’s work, I have to know all about them, which leads me on to their biography, of course. Through the excellent Through a Glass Darkly by Nigel Jones, I learned of Hamilton’s hopeless alcoholism, his failed marriages, his socialism, his bonhomie, his generosity, his torment, his love of pubs. I’d love to have a pint with Patrick. In the words of the Saw Doctors ‘I never even met him, but I know we’d be a pair. We’d have sat in any pub in town and had a good time there.’ Cheers, Patrick.

BS Johnson

Jonathan Coe is one of my favourite contemporary writers, for his sane, matter of factness, his beautifully understated style and his social perspective. I buy all his books on publication and have never been disappointed. We went to one of his book readings in Manchester and he was asked which of his books most reflected himself. He said that he had put the most of himself and seven years of his life into Like a Fiery Elephant, his biography of BS Johnson, an ‘experimental’ novelist, poet, stage writer, broadcaster, journalist and football reporter in the 1960s and 1970s. Who? My mystified question exactly.

Coe’s biography is probably the best single book I have ever read to date. It is an object lesson in meticulous research, deep humanity, epic empathy, warmth and humour. It’s worth reading for Bryan’s replies to publishers’ rejection letters alone! He was a gregarious, affable, larger than life character, with all the insecurities of someone who writes for a living. Having lived Bryan’s life with him I could hardly bear to read the ending, veering as it did to the inevitable suicide.

Naturally, I had to investigate Johnson’s work after reading such a tour de force. Courtesy of eBay, I acquired a prized copy of The Unfortunates, his ‘novel in a box’, which is in 27 different parts, almost like pamphlets, to be read in any order preferred by the reader, apart from the first and last chapters. It covers a semi-autobiographical account of Johnson’s trip to Nottingham to cover a football match. Crowding into his mind as he walks through Nottingham are the poignant memories of his friendship with someone who has died of cancer, his illness, other relationships, football. The format of the book lends itself to this sort of rambling reminiscence and I loved it. Which led on of course to the acquisition of various other Johnson novels and poetry books, all stashed away for the glorious day when I can again read freely once ! I’d like a pint with him too – cheers, Bryan.

The walls of our house are closing in on us, as the books threaten to engulf us and there’s no place to go with more bookshelves. I can’t really answer a question as to who is my favourite writer. The answer is, it depends. Depends on when you ask, how I’m feeling, what’s on my mind at the time, my age at the time of asking. And I don’t want to answer it either, as to do so would imply that I’ve read enough, don’t need to carry on discovering new writers, am comfortable with what I’ve already read. Never!

Sheilagh Dyson

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