Category Archives: books

books, medical, memes, personal, photography, pleasures, science, topographical

Listography: What I want to do this Summer

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Keith at Reluctant Housedad is running Listography again this week while Kate Takes 5 has a break and we’ve been asked to say five things I want to do this summer.

Hmmm … well .. I thought summer was over. Wimbledon has finished, the first blackberries have been picked and it’s raining. Sounds like the end of summer to me. 🙂

But in the spirit of beating my brans out (‘cos I actually found this hard!) here is my rather pathetic list …

Run a Successful Conference. For the Anthony Powell Society; at the beginning of September. Yep, I’m organising it (again — that only five of the last six!). It certainly promises to be good, but you never know until you get there if some joker or other is going to be put into play. So let’s hope all the speakers turn up; the venue works OK and the events all run smoothly.

Kill off my Depression. I’ve had depression for far far too long. It’s high time it b*ggered off for good. It’s certainly better than it was; I’ve halved my dose of anti-depressants this Spring and the hypnotherapy seems to be doing some good. Now for the remainder, please!

While we’re at it can I also Get Rid of my Hayfever once and for all. It had really p’ed me off more than usual this Summer as I’ve been having really itchy, watering eyes despite my usual anti-histamines. After 50-odd years enough is enough. Thank you!

Visit Kew Gardens at least once on a nice day. Kew is one of my favourite places, but despite living only a few miles away we get there all too seldom. At least one visit is a must this summer.


Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, home of the late Derek Jarman.
© Copyright Dr Keith C Marshall, 2010.
Finally we need a Holiday. But it ain’t going to happen until after the conference in September. Does that still count? We’re going off to wallow in decent B&B in New Romney, Kent. The Romney Marsh area is another of my favourite places: wide open spaces; Dungeness; seaside; medieval churches; RH&D Railway. And I have ancestors from New Romney and around the edges of the Romney Marsh, so we’ll be doing some family history while we’re there too. Mix and match depending on the weather, but get away and get some good sea air — and even better if it is warm and sunny.

Will that do?

amusements, books, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

OK, so here’s this week’s vaguely mixed up nosebag …

A writer is a professional rememberer.
[Gunter Grass ]

I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right.
[Unknown]

This recession won’t be over until we raise a generation that knows how to live on what they’ve got.
[Unknown]

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
[Edward Abbey]

[T]herapists try to make a person fit in with society, while Buddhists see the value of being able to deal with society. [Buddhists] question its core values and don’t really try to make people fit society’s warped mold, only deal with it.
[Brad Warner on his Hardcore Zen Weblog]

There’s only one thing that I know how to do well
And I’ve often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that’s be you
Be what you’re like!
Be like yourself!
[They Might Be Giants album Flood]

I am sure you will agree with me, Lady Warminster, in thinking, so far as company is concerned, enough is as bad as a feast, and half a loaf in many ways preferable to the alternative of a whole one or the traditional no bread. How enjoyable, therefore, to be just as we are.
[Anthony Powell, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant]

amusements, beliefs, books, current affairs, freedom of speech, nudism, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

So here’s this week’s cornucopia of quotations. There’s a philosophy PhD in this lot somewhere!

A clean house is the sign of a broken computer.
[Unknown]

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
[Rose Macaulay]

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
[Robert Frost]

The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendour and its beauty … Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness … Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person … The human body is not in itself shameful … Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.
[Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body]

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
[Jean Cocteau]

The best things in life aren’t things.
[Unknown]

Those who are at ease with themselves […] want to undermine authority rather than exercise it.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

[Tony] Blair has […] told us, “Hand on my heart, I did what I thought was right”. If a dry-cleaner said this after ruining our jacket, we would not be pleased with the explanation. Politicians are different: don’t look at any unfortunate results, they say, just admire my generous motives.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason, and the real reason.
[Financier JP Morgan]

One of the basic human rights is to make fun of other people, whoever they are.
[Anthony Powell quoted in John Russell, Reading Russell: Essays 1941 to 1988]

If you don’t like our sense of humour, please tell us so we can laugh at you.
[Unknown]

beliefs, books, memes, pleasures, thoughts, topographical

Listography – Travelling

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Unlike me, many who responded to last week’s listography about decision they’re glad they made included some item of travel. So this week Kate is asking us to nominate five places we would still like to visit.

For me this is quite easy as I have some places I know I would like to see. But it is sad because I know I likely never will see most of them: I don’t much like the actual travelling to get to these places (too much stress) and at 60 and living on my pension I’m unlikely to be able to make myself afford (even if fit enough) the cost of getting there. Quite a number of the places I won’t visit on principle because of their lack of respect for the environment or the people. But leaving all that aside, here is my choice of five places I would love to see.

Japan. I find Japan a fascinating country. I’d really love to see all those Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto temples; Kanamara Matsuri, the annual Shinto fertility “Festival of the Phallus”; the koi carp farms; the unspoilt mountainous country; zen gardens; Mount Fuji; and the bullet train. What a photographic experience it would be. We have friends in Japan, so we should be able to do this easily; and as our friends are in topical Okinawa islands we’d get some great music and wonderful beaches too. But I won’t go to Japan on principle because of their intransigent stance on whaling. And I don’t much relish a 12-14 hour flight.

Iceland. Land of glaciers, volcanoes, geysers and geothermal hot water. The country looks frighteningly beautiful; Earth in the raw; new land still very much being built by plate tectonics. Visiting should be easily achievable (there are endless package tours) and a wonderful photographic experience, but again it’s a land I won’t visit because of the whaling issue.

Norway. Like Kate I’d love to see the Aurora Borealis. The midnight sun. The fjords. And to go to Hell. (Yes, there really is a place called Hell). And Noreen has friend who lives on a tiny island off the south coast. Again it should be easily achievable. But again it is off-limits for me because of the whaling. (Why is it that my top three picks are all off-limits because of whaling? It really wasn’t designed that way!) Although we could achieve a lot of that by visiting (friends in) Sweden; which we might yet manage — at least do keep talking about going to Sweden!

Tibet. It must be one of the poorest countries on Earth, but it’s hard to find out because it has been assimilated into China. But it’s a land of rugged mountains, high plateaus and curiously interesting Buddhist monasteries. But it is another place I’m unlikely ever to visit: it is so hard to get to and I won’t go on principle because of the way China has occupied it and largely destroyed the culture and the people. Again it would be just such a wonderful photographic experience. One really should have done this when young and fit.

The Amazon. I’d love to see the Amazonian fishes and parrots (not to mention Jaguars) in the wild. And for once I have no moral objections to going there other than tourism beginning to impact the environment, although nowhere nearly on the scale of Africa. Again I can’t help feeling this is travel one should have done when young and fit.

So they’re the five places I’d probably most like to visit. But there are so many others which should be more achievable: Bruges, Kyle of Lochalsh, Ireland, Italy, the pyramids, the Alhambra, ride the Orient Express, travel from Thurso/Wick to Penzance by train, Scilly Isles.

So much to do, and so little time to achieve it.

amusements, books

Fur Side

And now for something a little different …

Parody of Longfellow’s Hiawatha
George A Strong

He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the cold side skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That’s why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.

amusements, books, pleasures

Hamlet had a Cat …

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For the cat lovers amongst you …

Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock’s bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal’s opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there’s the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob.
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household’s petty plagues,
The cook’s well-practiced kicks, the butler’s broom,
The infant’s careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor’s yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans’ faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.

amusements, books, history, pleasures, quotes, topographical

Quotes of the Week

A small selection of this week’s strange and interesting findings …

Hogwash entered the room, and, having entered, decided, upon entry, having viewed all there was, and some of what was not, to be seen, to remove himself, once more, from the room by the same route through which he had, so recently, entered.
[Craig Brown, The Marsh-Marlowe Letters, parodying Anthony Powell]

He possessed that opportune facility for turning out several thousand words on any subject whatever at the shortest possible notice: politics; sport; books; finance; science; art; fashion – as he himself said, ‘War, Famine, Pestilence or Death on a Pale Horse.’ All were equal when it came to Bagshaw’s typewriter. He could take on anything, and – to be fair – what he produced, even off the cuff, was no worse than was to be read most of the time. You never wondered how on earth the stuff had ever managed to be printed.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room]

I just love Tudor/Restoration “irregular” spelling …

[I]n 1558-59 St Mary Woolnoth paid ‘one Robert Bennett syngyngeman for servynge in the churche at dyvers tymes from the begynnynge of August tyll Michaelmas’.
[John Harley, The World of William Byrd: Musicians, Merchants and Magnates]

London is a patchwork of the fabulous and the shit.
[Antonia at Whoopee]

Too right!

Finally something bringing us right up to date …

This train reduces CO2 emissions
[Slogan on a Southern Trains emu at Clapham, 19/05/2011]

I’m not sure how this is achieved: presumably the train selectively sucks CO2 from the atmosphere. One suspects they mean “this train causes the emission of less CO2 than other trains/modes of transport. But that’s not what it says, guys!

books, photography, topographical

Rye

Rye, in East Sussex, is another of my favourite places because of its history, its friendliness, its proximity to the sea and to Romney Marsh and of course because of its “olde worlde” charm and picturesqueness.

St Anthony's, Rye
St Anthony’s, Rye, © Copyright by Keith Marshall, 2010.
Following on from my post of a couple of days ago about Fairfield church, I came upon this poem by Patric Dickinson (the poet, 1914-1994, not to be confused with my friend Patric Dickinson who is currently Clarenceux King of Arms and still very much alive).

Rye

It seems solid enough
As you come through the Landgate
And the streets climb up to the church
That, like a stranded ark,
     Straddles the hilltop.

But Time is different here.
The streets are full of beggars
You cannot see, who speak
The tongues of centuries
     To the deaf tourists.

‘We have always been perverse
And unprofessional beggars,
For we want to give, not take,
To offer you this town’s
     Particular nature.

‘It is not what you see
As you trip on the cobbles
And say the houses are quaint,
Nor was it ever like that,
     It is our presence.

‘The town keeps whispering
Its history – fishermen, merchants –
Lifetimes that have been built
From unimportant scraps
     To construct a clement

‘Enclave and sanctuary.
Once you have understood this,
You will feel Rye within,
And be disposed to come back,
     If you ever leave it.’

books, history, personal, topographical

Fairfield

Wanting something to read in bed the other evening, and not wanting anything heavy, I chose at random from the pile of books by the bed. My hand alighted on Betjeman’s England, an anthology by Stephen Games of extracts from the scripts of Sir John Betjeman’s TV films about England.

Now I love the Romney Marsh and Dungeness in Kent, and the nearby small town of Rye. So imagine my enjoyment when the book fell open, quite at random, at the following piece about Fairfield Church in the heart of the Romney Marsh.

KENT

FAIRFIELD CHURCH, ROMNEY MARSH
From the Shell series Discovering Britain with John Betjeman
Random Film Productions Ltd
ITV, Spring 1956 (exact date unknown)
Director: Peter Woosnam-Mills

Romney Marsh, on the Sussex border of Kent and close to the sea. Romney Marsh, where the roads wind like streams through pasture and the sky is always three-quarters of the landscape. The sounds I associate with Romney Marsh are the bleating of innumerable sheep and the whistle of the sea wind in old willow trees. The sea has given a colour to this district: it has spotted with silver the oak posts and rails; it gives the grass and the rushes a grey salty look and turns the red bricks and tiles of Fairfield Church a saffron yellow.

For a moment, when you see Fairfield Church there on the skyline, you think it must be a farm or a barn. There’s no road to it – only a footbridge and a path. And in the church, you feel you’re on an island in the marsh.

Inside, it’s like walking underneath an upturned ship. (Those great beams are made of Kentish oak.) The communion rails go round three sides of the altar as they used to in many churches two hundred years ago; and since in those days, just as much as now, people were literate, they hired a local inn-sign painter to paint, in yellowish-gold letters on a black background, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

The church is still kept up and used, though it’s miles from anywhere, and that’s what gives it atmosphere.

Another thing that endears Fairfield Church to me is that it’s been spared electric light and the surgical basins in the roof that go with it. How pleasant those Victorian oil lamps are and how well they fit in with the scene.

Let’s go into one of the high, white box pews. And sitting here in the quiet waste of marsh, islanded by grass in water, let’s think ourselves back two hundred years. The place can’t have looked very different. The parson read the service from that lower desk where the candle is, he climbed to the pulpit to preach, and if you found yourself not attending to the sermon, there was always a text to remind you of where you were and of the reverence due to this loved and lonely house of God.

Fairfield Church: it’s about ten miles from Tenterden in Kent and therefore sixty-three miles south-east of London.

I’ve been to Fairfield a number of times and it is even now just as fascinating and delightful as Betjeman paints it, despite several heavy restorations in the last 200 years. Fairfield really is in the middle of nowhere, and probably always was as there was never anything much by way of village there. There is still no electricity but the church is used, at least sporadically.

For me Fairfield has a further attraction. It is dedicated to my patron saint, Thomas Beckett (Thomas of Canterbury), ca. 1118 to 29 December 1170; murdered at the behest of Henry II and canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1173.

The church, which is tiny, is on a slight rise in the middle of a rather wet sheep field, and when you go into the church you have to remember to shut the door behind you so the sheep don’t follow you. I have been there and found several sheep sheltering in the porch!

Yes, it is one of those idyllic and idiosyncratic English places!

There’s more on the architectural structure of Fairfield church here.

Stephen Games (Ed.), Betjeman’s England (John Murray, London, 2009)

amusements, books

Pure Silliness

My brain has gone on strike. I cannot get it into the right gear to write anything even remotely resembling thoughts. See it can’t even write proper English!

So instead I decided I’d share with you a really very stupid, silly, not to say crap, piece of dogrel verse I penned a couple of years ago, when work was especially horrid.

Sisyphus Rolls His Jelly
 
The mountains of treacle
Grow up to the skies;
The mouldings of jelly
Grow big in pigsties;
But my toothpicks, my toothpicks
Stay tiny and slight,
No wonder my job
It is stressful and shite.

See I told you it was a pile of old tripe.

Now I’d better let my brain have a a lie down.