Friday, 10 June 2016
By the way...
Here's a piece I wrote about Leighton House Museum for those fine purveyors of designer lamps, Pooky.
A Rag-and-Bone Man
Walking back from the shops this morning, I heard a sound from the past - the slow clip clop of a weary horse's hooves on tarmac, accompanied by the desultory ringing of a bell. I hadn't heard, or seen, a traditional horse-drawn 'rag-and-bone man' - as we used to call them - on the street for a long time, but here was one ambling up our road towards me. I stopped to watch as the cart turned into the next road. It was laden with the modern equivalent of rag-and-bone - an unwanted (probably unused) exercise bike, a redundant microwave oven, an old mower, obsolete electronics - but the driver, who was sitting slouched under a shapeless hat, had the timeless look of detached indifference that is the mark of those who follow traditional trades. The horse was a grubby-coloured, blinkered pony, no longer young, plodding along resignedly, head hung low, its thoughts no doubt on the next nosebag.
It was a wonderful thing to see, a glimpse of a past that I thought was lost and gone, at least in these parts. When I was a boy, the milk was still delivered by horse and cart (this in suburban London), and the milkman's horse was a cherished presence in our lives. Rag-and-bone men - who in those days supplemented the bell with a forlorn cry of 'Ra'bo-o-o-ne!' - were a stock feature of street life, taken for granted, like so much else that was about to disappear, or at least motorise.
More than seeing and hearing today's rag-and-bone man, what was most evocative was the faint but unmistakable smell of a passing horse. That really did take me back, all the way to the streets of my childhood...
It was a wonderful thing to see, a glimpse of a past that I thought was lost and gone, at least in these parts. When I was a boy, the milk was still delivered by horse and cart (this in suburban London), and the milkman's horse was a cherished presence in our lives. Rag-and-bone men - who in those days supplemented the bell with a forlorn cry of 'Ra'bo-o-o-ne!' - were a stock feature of street life, taken for granted, like so much else that was about to disappear, or at least motorise.
More than seeing and hearing today's rag-and-bone man, what was most evocative was the faint but unmistakable smell of a passing horse. That really did take me back, all the way to the streets of my childhood...
Wednesday, 8 June 2016
Millais's Rascally Paradise
Famously, the figure of the drowned Ophelia was posed by the Pre-Raphaelite muse Lizzie Siddal, lying in a bath in Millais's London studio. It was winter so, to prevent hypothermia, the bath was heated by oil lamps under the tub. However, Millais let them go out, Lizzie caught a severe cold, and the artist had to pay her medical expenses.
When the painting was displayed, the response was as tepid as Lizzie Siddal's bath water. Even Ruskin, at this stage a staunch champion of Millais, praised only the technique, deploring the artist's decision to set the picture in a Surrey landscape: 'Why the mischief should you not paint pure nature and not that rascally wire-fenced garden-rolled nursery-maid's paradise?' This seems more than harsh; if the setting of Ophelia is not beautiful, I'd like to see what is. I should add that the river in Millais's painting resembles parts of the cleaned and restored - indeed reborn - Wandle as it flows through Carshalton.
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Odds and Ends
'At the risk of being written off as a spiritual wakey-wakey man, it is worth asserting that to tear one's fascinated gaze away from the raree-show of one's own dilemmas, to value Mr Pickwick higher than Raskolnikov, to try to be a bit pleasant occasionally, are aims worth making an effort for.'
That's Kingsley Amis, reviewing Colin Wilson's smash-hit existentialist primer The Outsider in 1956 (he was not impressed). Here he is again, on the Big Questions that Wilson's archetypal Outsider is forever ruminating:
'These, of course, are real questions, the most real questions. Are they? Admittedly, to ask oneself: "How am I to live?" is to ask something real, though even here it could be argued that the continual taking of moral decisions, a fairly common activity, needs no encrustation of internal catechising to make it valid. But it would be hard to attach any meaning, except as an expression of lunacy or amnesia, to: "Who am I?"'
Quite. The best answer to the question 'Who am I?' has always been 'Who's asking?'
*
As the dismal EU referendum 'debate' drags on, the broadcasters are understandably looking for new angles all the time. One result of this has been a number of looks back at the 1975 referendum, sometimes with accompanying archive - which has illustrated, if nothing else, that politicians' accents tended to be unashamedly posh in those days (no sign of the Blair-Osborne glottal stop) and that the standard of public discourse was rather higher, or at least more articulate. This morning on the Today programme, it was the 1975 Oxford Union referendum debate that was revisited, with archive of Peter Short in full flow and Ted Heath under full sail. What is seldom pointed out on these occasions is that in 1975 the UK was voting for something entirely different from what's on offer now - for continued membership of an eight-nation Economic Community, rather than a 28-nation, ever expanding pan-European political entity with hugely extended powers and the avowed aim of 'ever closer union'. The political ambitions of the Euro elite were already very much there in 1975 - they had been from the start - but a combination of hectoring and mendacity ensured that the voting public were not let in on what the 'economic community' was really about.
*
Ever since I ventured into the strange world of FaceBook, I have been targeted by a steady stream of irrelevant advertising. Mostly I just ignore it, but I always look out for the latest from my new hero and role model, the cravat-wearing supermale Stirling Gravitas. And I'm not the only one - these ads have become something of a cult. I assume I'm being targeted because of my advanced years, which is fine by me - keep 'em coming, Stirling!
That's Kingsley Amis, reviewing Colin Wilson's smash-hit existentialist primer The Outsider in 1956 (he was not impressed). Here he is again, on the Big Questions that Wilson's archetypal Outsider is forever ruminating:
'These, of course, are real questions, the most real questions. Are they? Admittedly, to ask oneself: "How am I to live?" is to ask something real, though even here it could be argued that the continual taking of moral decisions, a fairly common activity, needs no encrustation of internal catechising to make it valid. But it would be hard to attach any meaning, except as an expression of lunacy or amnesia, to: "Who am I?"'
Quite. The best answer to the question 'Who am I?' has always been 'Who's asking?'
*
As the dismal EU referendum 'debate' drags on, the broadcasters are understandably looking for new angles all the time. One result of this has been a number of looks back at the 1975 referendum, sometimes with accompanying archive - which has illustrated, if nothing else, that politicians' accents tended to be unashamedly posh in those days (no sign of the Blair-Osborne glottal stop) and that the standard of public discourse was rather higher, or at least more articulate. This morning on the Today programme, it was the 1975 Oxford Union referendum debate that was revisited, with archive of Peter Short in full flow and Ted Heath under full sail. What is seldom pointed out on these occasions is that in 1975 the UK was voting for something entirely different from what's on offer now - for continued membership of an eight-nation Economic Community, rather than a 28-nation, ever expanding pan-European political entity with hugely extended powers and the avowed aim of 'ever closer union'. The political ambitions of the Euro elite were already very much there in 1975 - they had been from the start - but a combination of hectoring and mendacity ensured that the voting public were not let in on what the 'economic community' was really about.
*
Ever since I ventured into the strange world of FaceBook, I have been targeted by a steady stream of irrelevant advertising. Mostly I just ignore it, but I always look out for the latest from my new hero and role model, the cravat-wearing supermale Stirling Gravitas. And I'm not the only one - these ads have become something of a cult. I assume I'm being targeted because of my advanced years, which is fine by me - keep 'em coming, Stirling!
Sunday, 5 June 2016
Attractions You Won't Want to Miss
I have, in my time, put up one or two reviews on Trip Advisor, usually as a favour to a deserving restaurant. So I'm used to getting a steady stream of communications from this sometimes useful organisation, most of which are deleted unread. However, I couldn't resist their latest: 'Carshalton attractions you won't want to miss'. Having lived here for a mere 57 years, I was naturally keen to find out which attraction I might have missed.
I soon found out. The list began, reasonably enough, with the Grove Park and Honeywood museum, then a couple of pubs - most definitely not the two I'd have chosen - and then, at Number Five... Craggy Island! What? A Father Ted theme park - how could I have missed that?
Alas, it is no such thing. It's one of those places where children go to climb up walls covered with protuberances ('Yes, said Mr Hackett, there are protuberances and protuberances'*). Such facilities, I noticed, abound in Wellington, where every wall seems to sprout such protuberances for the benefit of the agile citizens. I had no idea Carshalton boasted such a facility, but I think I will list it among Carshalton attractions I do actually rather want to miss.
Meanwhile, here are Craggy Island's top attractions, as listed on Trip Advisor.
1: The Holy Stone of Clonrichert.
2: Fun Land.
3: The Very Dark Caves.
4: The Chinese Pub.
5: Carshalton.
* Samuel Beckett. Watt.
I soon found out. The list began, reasonably enough, with the Grove Park and Honeywood museum, then a couple of pubs - most definitely not the two I'd have chosen - and then, at Number Five... Craggy Island! What? A Father Ted theme park - how could I have missed that?
Alas, it is no such thing. It's one of those places where children go to climb up walls covered with protuberances ('Yes, said Mr Hackett, there are protuberances and protuberances'*). Such facilities, I noticed, abound in Wellington, where every wall seems to sprout such protuberances for the benefit of the agile citizens. I had no idea Carshalton boasted such a facility, but I think I will list it among Carshalton attractions I do actually rather want to miss.
Meanwhile, here are Craggy Island's top attractions, as listed on Trip Advisor.
1: The Holy Stone of Clonrichert.
2: Fun Land.
3: The Very Dark Caves.
4: The Chinese Pub.
5: Carshalton.
* Samuel Beckett. Watt.
Friday, 3 June 2016
Another Day, Another Quest
It took a while to get to - I'd forgotten how long those residential roads that spread south from Cheam are, though I had trudged them often enough in my youth, at a time when I mingled with the jeunesse dorée of the neighbourhood. Most of their fathers, as I recall it, were geezers made good, with brassy wives and flash houses to suit their status, and some of their sons were involved in criminality to a quite startling extent, the apple not having fallen far from the tree. There was also a breathtakingly beautiful girl on whom I had a big (unreciprocated) crush, but that's another story... Suffice to say, trudging those endless roads again brought back enough memories to keep me entertained.
Eventually I reached the fabled roundabout and took the unmarked path that led swiftly away from it. Almost immediately it forked and, in the absence of signage, I took the more promising-looking path. I'm sure I need hardly tell you that this proved to be a bad decision, and soon I was walking field margin after field margin in scenes painfully reminiscent of my recent quest for the Glanville Fritillary. Once again I bashed through a spinny in hope of better things - only to find myself on a wholly unexpected golf course, from which I retreated at the first opportunity, finding my path again and retracing my steps all the way back to that fork in the path.
As a last throw of the dice, I set out again along the less promising-seeming way. When this path delivered me to a cricket field, I decided to give up my futile quest there and then and write the day off - but, taking a last look around, I glimpsed a line of fencing and a notice. Could this be it, the elusive reserve? Reader, it was; I had found it. By now, after all those field margins and spinnies, I was quite footsore and, since there was no prospect of butterflies, I decided to memorise the location and return when the sun was out. I turned and headed back, crossing a patch of level waste ground that looked as if it might once have been concreted over. Nature was fast reclaiming it, and I was pleased to find some Spotted Orchids growing out of the thin grass...
And then it happened. As I walked along, something flew up in front of me and settled on a Dogwood leaf - a day moth? No, it was a Small Blue, tiny, dark and beautiful, and all the more so for being entirely unexpected. Seconds later, there was another, and while I was gazing at that one - another male - I noticed two more basking close by. Basking in what I don't know - there was still no hint of sun or warmth - but there they were, wings spread, quite still, not going anywhere. And there were two or three more, just yards away, as I made my way back to the path, marvelling. This was truly one of the great butterfly surprises of my life - and I hadn't even set foot in the reserve. But at least I'd found it. In the end.
Thursday, 2 June 2016
'Unfortified with cold fowl and Madeira...': Amis on Peacock and others
My latest charity shop purchase is a rather battered (ex-library) copy of What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions, a 1970 collection of mostly literary essays by Kingsley Amis. As you'd expect with such a stylish, opinionated - and funny - writer, it's bracing stuff.
The title essay is an exercise in precision bombing targeted on Mansfield Park, the character of Fanny Price in particular, and what Amis perceives as the 'corruption' of Jane Austen's judgment and moral sense, as embodied in Fanny - 'a monster of complacency and pride who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel. What became of that Jane Austen (if she ever existed) who set out bravely to correct conventional notions of the desirable and virtuous? From being their critic (if she ever was) she became their slave.' Bracing stuff indeed, not to say harsh and provocative.
This fierce opener is followed, however, by something more nuanced - a pithy and discriminating survey of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock, written at a time when that literary one-off seemed in danger of being altogether forgotten, except perhaps as a friend of Shelley and sometime father-in-law of Meredith. Amis acknowledges both the weaknesses and the strengths of Peacock's novels and is happy to separate out (accurately) what is most worth reading:
'A line must be drawn somewhere between the living and the faded parts of his work, but merely to draw the line between living and faded targets of ridicule ... would not be quite adequate. To throw in a reflection on Peacock's inordinate capacity for simple diffuseness and repetition would have the advantage of helping to get Melincourt and Gryll Grange out of the way (where they belong), but would be little use on the harder question. What can we turn to next, then? To plot versus no plot? No: the answer that appeals to me is that Peacock was only at his best in farcical-sentimental comedy with a satiric background. The moment the satirist holds the stage he makes a dive for the lectern, and the reader, unfortified with cold fowl and Madeira, spreads a handkerchief over his face.'
(That's Amis the comic novelist breaking through in the last sentence.) 'Almost the whole of Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey' survive Amis's critical scrutiny (along with parts of several other novels), and that would seem a very fair judgment. He characterises Peacock as 'far more energetically original' than even his admirers have often realised, and ends with a perfect summing-up: 'That enchanting urbanity, which gave him command of a whole range between witty seriousness and demented knockabout, was something which disappeared from the English novel almost before it had properly arrived.' And more's the pity.
Opinionated as he is, Amis is also capable of changing his mind (as he did about politics, swinging dramatically from Left to Right early in his career, as described in another essay collected here, Why Lucky Jim Turned Right). In The Poet and the Dreamer, Amis subjects Keats's poetry to a withering critique that leaves little standing beyond the middle stanzas of the Ode to a Nightingale and a small part of the revised Hyperion. Having, in this 1957 essay, dismissed Keats as 'an often delightful, if often awkward, decorative poet', self-indulgent and lacking in craftsmanship, Amis returns to the subject in a 1970 postscript which, while still expressing reservations, acknowledges that 'I neglected to celebrate, or took for granted, that tremendous originality and audaciousness which went far beyond any mere "decorative" quality...'. And he concludes, generously and rightly, that 'Whatever the detail of Keats's performance, his achievement is such that no one who has never thought him the greatest poet in the world, no matter for how brief a period, has any real feeling for literature.'
The title essay is an exercise in precision bombing targeted on Mansfield Park, the character of Fanny Price in particular, and what Amis perceives as the 'corruption' of Jane Austen's judgment and moral sense, as embodied in Fanny - 'a monster of complacency and pride who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel. What became of that Jane Austen (if she ever existed) who set out bravely to correct conventional notions of the desirable and virtuous? From being their critic (if she ever was) she became their slave.' Bracing stuff indeed, not to say harsh and provocative.
This fierce opener is followed, however, by something more nuanced - a pithy and discriminating survey of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock, written at a time when that literary one-off seemed in danger of being altogether forgotten, except perhaps as a friend of Shelley and sometime father-in-law of Meredith. Amis acknowledges both the weaknesses and the strengths of Peacock's novels and is happy to separate out (accurately) what is most worth reading:
'A line must be drawn somewhere between the living and the faded parts of his work, but merely to draw the line between living and faded targets of ridicule ... would not be quite adequate. To throw in a reflection on Peacock's inordinate capacity for simple diffuseness and repetition would have the advantage of helping to get Melincourt and Gryll Grange out of the way (where they belong), but would be little use on the harder question. What can we turn to next, then? To plot versus no plot? No: the answer that appeals to me is that Peacock was only at his best in farcical-sentimental comedy with a satiric background. The moment the satirist holds the stage he makes a dive for the lectern, and the reader, unfortified with cold fowl and Madeira, spreads a handkerchief over his face.'
(That's Amis the comic novelist breaking through in the last sentence.) 'Almost the whole of Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey' survive Amis's critical scrutiny (along with parts of several other novels), and that would seem a very fair judgment. He characterises Peacock as 'far more energetically original' than even his admirers have often realised, and ends with a perfect summing-up: 'That enchanting urbanity, which gave him command of a whole range between witty seriousness and demented knockabout, was something which disappeared from the English novel almost before it had properly arrived.' And more's the pity.
Opinionated as he is, Amis is also capable of changing his mind (as he did about politics, swinging dramatically from Left to Right early in his career, as described in another essay collected here, Why Lucky Jim Turned Right). In The Poet and the Dreamer, Amis subjects Keats's poetry to a withering critique that leaves little standing beyond the middle stanzas of the Ode to a Nightingale and a small part of the revised Hyperion. Having, in this 1957 essay, dismissed Keats as 'an often delightful, if often awkward, decorative poet', self-indulgent and lacking in craftsmanship, Amis returns to the subject in a 1970 postscript which, while still expressing reservations, acknowledges that 'I neglected to celebrate, or took for granted, that tremendous originality and audaciousness which went far beyond any mere "decorative" quality...'. And he concludes, generously and rightly, that 'Whatever the detail of Keats's performance, his achievement is such that no one who has never thought him the greatest poet in the world, no matter for how brief a period, has any real feeling for literature.'
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