a gallimaufry

on Beatrix Potter and Brer Rabbit

Perhaps you missed the slight kerfuffle about Beatrix Potter recently? I certainly did; it wasn’t until I was chatting on the phone on Sunday with M that it came to my attention. M had read about it in The Times; Beatrix Potter was being accused of cultural appropriation by some crazed academic because Peter Rabbit was a talking rabbit like Brer Rabbit, and Brer Rabbit stories were originally told by enslaved Africans. We both thought this seemed a bit silly.

Curious, I found the article in The Conversation by Dr Emily Zobel Marshall. It is a really interesting article! I am so glad to have read it. If you are a Potter fan, I urge you to do the same. And if you are a fan of Enid Blyton, for once she comes out of it well!

(Beatrix Potter, illustration for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published by Frederick Warne, London, 1902; found here)

Zobel Marshall makes a compelling case that Potter knew and loved the Brer Rabbit stories of ‘Uncle Remus’ and drew on them for the plots of some of her stories as well as some of the language. Fearful of plagiarism and accusations of plagiarism, Potter herself never publicly acknowledged the link; since then very few academics have acknowledged the link either.

Finally, Zobel Marshall sites this refusal to discuss Potter’s use of Brer Rabbit as part of a wider appropriation of Black culture, in which Black culture is used by predominantly white culture and not acknowledged.

I mean, can any of this actually be disputed? The article is measured and well argued. I do disagree with her claim that the plot of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, of the trickster stealing food, being the ‘plot [that] is the main storyline in most of Potter’s tales’. The plots of most of her books are quite different. Still, I was curious about M’s interpretation of the article, based as it must have been on what they read in The Times. And a cursory Google brought up a list of furious headlines in the right-wing press.

I couldn’t read The Times article because it is behind a paywall. I think it must be this one. I note the use of the word ‘stole’; not a word that Zobel Marshall used once in her article, as far as I could see. However, inflammatory headlines in the Daily Express (‘Beatrix Potter Accused of ‘Copying’ African Slaves’ Stories for Peter Rabbit) and the so-called news site GB News (‘Now Peter Rabbit is Under Threat by Woke Mob as Beatrix Potter Attacked’) were followed by reasonable summaries of Zobel Marshall’s article so perhaps the Times article is also better balanced.

Not so Libby Purves’s reaction in the Daily Mail: ‘Academic Accusing Beatrix Potter of Stealing Peter Rabbit Needs a Lie Down.’ To be honest, I never have high hopes of the Mail and this is an opinion piece, but I do respect Purves and was therefore very disappointed by what I read. Purves admits that what Zobel Marshall writes is ‘fairly convincing’ but the problem is her tone: ‘her essay seems to be designed to whip up indignation and division between cultures — and, I suppose, supply a box-fresh new dose of white guilt’. Purves then goes on to explain that cultures have always borrowed from and influenced each other, which is not Zobel Marshall’s point, and to complain about the term ‘cultural appropriation’.

(A.B. Frost, illustration for Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, by Joel Chandler Harris, published by D. Appleton and Co., 1911; found here)

Purves uses Zobel Marshall’s article to make a wider point, and I intend to do the same with hers. I find her reaction absolutely typical of those people who lose their wigs when the National Trust dares to include information in their properties that a family enriched itself through slavery or who immediately tell you, when the topic of slavery comes up, that Black Africans profited from slave trading too. Why are they so frightened about accepting historical fact? Why can’t we say that some British families profited enormously from the transatlantic slave trade? Why are we only supposed to feel pride in our past and not shame as well? Why can’t we acknowledge it if we draw on another cultural tradition for our own creative work?

Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated wonderful books that we still enjoy today, and she drew on the stories of Brer Rabbit to do so. See – it’s not difficult to make a start, is it?

Storm Jameson Reading Week cancelled

I am really sorry, but I am not going to run Storm Jameson Reading Week this year. Although I should be absolutely delighted if someone else would like to take it on?

Why am I ditching it? Well, ’tis a mixture of Covid and Brexit, the gift that just keeps on giving. The reason I chose Storm Jameson for a reading week was that she is so neglected and her work is out of print. This has also turned out to be my undoing, because I only actually own one book by her. And since last summer, obtaining anything from the UK if you live in Europe, has become more difficult.

Because I am an idiot I didn’t realise this until I ordered a second-hand copy of Barchester Towers as I am on a bit of a Trollope jag. The book and postage cost me about £6, I think. The import duties? €19. So that is the end of international second-hand book-shopping for me.

Plan B was to stock up on books during visits at Christmas and Easter. Alas! I had to cancel my Christmas visit when the risks from Covid (too boring to go into) rendered it unwise. Now I only have one trip before Storm Jameson Reading Week, and I have to carry back a load of Christmas presents as well… All in all, it has tipped over from Something Fun into Something that is Giving Me Disproportionate Levels of Worry.

Obviously this is very disappointing. I still would like to host a reading week for someone, but it seems most sensible to limit myself to someone whose books I already possess. I’ve been pondering this for a while and the other day my eye lighted upon … Isak Dinesen (or Karen Blixen).

Now, I appreciate she is considerably better known than Storm Jameson, and her work is in print and easily  available. But she has a substantial and varied body of work, encompassing short stories, memoir and one novel, and I think she is worthy of greater attention. I did hesitate because I remember her being a frightful snob and almost certainly racist, a contentious figure and rather a particular taste. Still, I am queen of this here blog and ultimately my word goes. Let it be done!

I shall put together a post about her in the next few days, and I hope very much that you will join me!

 

on Kate Clanchy

The unfortunate Kate Clanchy has been in the news again this week. Clanchy’s publisher, Picador, announced they would no longer be publishing or distributing her work. They had ‘parted company by mutual agreement’. I haven’t seen any comment from Clanchy about this and without any further information, it is hard to know the reasoning behind it. This has not stopped people assuming that it is a cowardly dumping of the writer as cover for Picador’s failures to address its own shortcomings in the saga, which it may well be. The result is that not only will Clanchy’s memoir be ‘cancelled’, so too will a forthcoming collection of poetry written by the pupils at her school that she was editing. Everyone loses.

‘Being cancelled’ is a term that is used to cover a wide range of actions, from losing your job to simply having someone dare to disagree with you. Pressure to ‘cancel’ someone in the most serious interpretation of its meaning – to silence them by removing their ability to speak publicly, or to take away their job or position – is often used in an aggressive manner by people who lack power, and sometimes in a disingenuous manner by powerful people to shore up their power and shut down criticism. While the people who make the ultimate decision to ‘cancel’ someone are those in a more powerful position – the employer, Twitter, etc.

The Kate Clanchy story, painful as it must be to many of those who are or were involved in it, is worth rehashing because it is such an interesting example of how ‘cancelling’ is framed. The topic is so emotive it is hard to be dispassionate about it. It is important because if we all carry on like this, we will end in a culture where many people will no longer dare to speak out and it is minorities and vulnerable groups who may well most suffer in that situation.

The trouble started innocuously enough, with a review on GoodReads. Someone read Clanchy’s Orwell-Prizewinning book Some Kids I Taught and What they Taught Me and criticised passages within it as containing anti-Semitic and racist tropes, which were quoted. Clanchy reacted by Tweeting to her followers that the review contained made-up quotes and urging them to flag it. This they did, and many people expressed outrage on Twitter and support for Clanchy, including prominent writers such as Philip Pullman.

So far so fair, until someone, a journalist named Monisha Rajesh, actually read the book. The GoodReads quotes were sloppy but pretty much what Clanchy had written. Clanchy conceded the point, but argued her words were taken out of context. Rajesh, plus Professor Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman, two other women who criticised Clanchy, were then subjected to a deluge of racist abuse on Twitter. You can read Rajesh’s account of the affair in the Guardian. Clanchy herself also came in for a lot of nasty Tweets, including some I saw suggesting that she was a terrible and even abusive teacher (based on no evidence whatsoever).

Clanchy then apologised fully. I cannot link to her Tweets because – unsurprisingly – she has protected them, but you can read the Guardian article about her apology here. Picador waded in and announced they would work with Clanchy to revise the book and remove the offensive passages. And now, for one reason or another, that work has broken down and Clanchy’s contract has ended.

What to make of all this? The first point is that it was Clanchy who demanded a ‘cancellation’ in the form of censoring a review she disliked and whipping up support on Twitter to have it flagged. Worse, she denied she had written passages that she demonstrably had. Her critics had taken issue with her language and been entirely within their rights to do so; instead they were abused and shouted down. In this exchange, Clanchy, with her 40,000 supporters, many of them famous, was the more powerful and used her power.

But it was Picador, not Clanchy or her critics, who in the end actually did the ‘cancelling’. They chose to revise Clanchy’s work, with her, an unnecessary overreaction for most of the people involved in the controversy. Yet they had allowed the problematic language to slip through their editorial filters. As Rajesh rightly pointed out in her piece for the Guardian, publishing lacks diversity, being overwhelmingly white and middle class. A more diverse publisher might not have missed this, and then, when faced with criticism, might have reacted more moderately.

Because everyone has strong views on racism and on freedom of speech, this story has tended to be flattened out and trimmed to fit the preconceptions of the person discussing it. Clanchy made a mistake, a bad one, but she apologised for it and tried to make amends. That should count for something and should be respected. In notable contrast, the Jewish community forgave and supported the cricketer Azim Rafeeq, after he apologised for his anti-Semitic comments and committed to learning about the discrimination Jews face.

Unfortunately, some people are unforgiving. If you rootle about on Twitter, you can find people who have decided on no other evidence that Clanchy is a dreadful person, and unfit to teach or publish. (There is certainly evidence that she inspired and is regarded with affection by many of her pupils.)

More widely, the story has frequently been reported not as a news article but to bolster an opinion piece, with the bits sheared off that do not fit with the writer’s argument. These have tended to present Clanchy as a martyr to the woke mob in order to present free speech as under threat from people who complain about racist or sexist language and demand disproportionate punishment.

Debates about free speech are very emotive; using a distorted version of this story as handy ammunition for your position on it only stokes the anger and denies the complexities. If you look down to the comments on the Unherd article, you will see that already people are unfairly blaming Rajesh and Clanchy’s critics for Picador’s actions. The anger against people complaining about racism is stoked, and it becomes that much harder for people of colour to dare speak up and criticise texts. At the same time, if like Picador you don’t engage with criticism but just wipe out anything that anyone might consider offensive, it will become more attractive to stick with ‘safe’ books that won’t attract any controversy. On this occasion, we may well have lost out on Clanchy’s anthology of her students’ poetry. In the long term, we may lose out on so much more.

 

catching up

Oh dear! Where did the time go? I am almost embarrassed to come back here after so long. How are you all? Did you enjoy the summer?

I have mainly been having a lovely time. International travelling rules were relaxed just in time for me to pop over to the UK in August to see my family. I fell upon the charity bookshops of Ipswich with joy and managed a small but respectable haul (I am limited by what I can carry back on the Eurostar and my suitcase also held the Folio Society edition of The Lord of the Rings which is possibly the heaviest three-volume set ever published, my arms are now six inches longer).

Here is my swag, rounded out with a few books I filched from my mother’s box of books to go to Oxfam:

But! Not a single work by Storm Jameson! It seems my dreams of second-hand bookshops stuffed with her books are indeed dreams with no basis in reality. Bother.

I have mentioned before that I decided to rearrange the majority of my fiction, poetry and plays chronologically. Dear friends, do not do this. In theory it was a wonderful plan which would reveal very clearly the development of (mainly) English literature; in practice it is difficult to sustain because you have to keep checking publication dates every time you want to shelve a book (so you don’t bother and shove books in where there’s space and then everything becomes even more chaotic) – quite apart from what to do about books published many years after they were written, collected works, etc. I had known that it would take longer to find any book I wanted but I thought this would yield pleasant rambles through my books as I sought a particular volume. In fact it’s just annoying. But I am too lazy to re-organise everything again.

Anyway, an unexpected drawback of scattering slender volumes of modern verse among novels is that you can’t really see them any more. So, when we redecorated my daughter’s bedroom and a small bookcase became surplus to requirements, I stole it for them. It’s right beside the door to the kitchen and already I’m reading more poetry than I’ve done for years. Hurrah!

At the moment I am having a Brontë fest. I reread Jane Eyre – it’s so good! And then I read Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës by Isabel Greenberg, which was fun and led me back to Juliet Barker’s The Brontës. It was abandoned half-read a couple of years ago but I am now fully absorbed in it. It is too unwieldy for the bus, so I am also rereading Wuthering Heights and loving it all over again.

And now, although I ought to be preparing a four-hour English lesson on answering the telephone and takng a message (four hours! I know! my lucky, lucky students), I will leave you with a quick list of books I’ve read recently that I recommend to you!

• The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox. (Whenever I clap eyes on the spine of this novel, in my head I hear a voice saying ‘The absolute BOOK!’ with exactly the emphasis of a Georgette Heyer heroine gasping ‘You absolute SWINE!’) This is a novel which is always changing, never quite what it seems – characters move through different worlds and we move through different genres. A mash-up of Ruth Rendell, The Shadow of the Wind and Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale, streaked with darkness and splendidly evocative, it is an enjoyable read slightly let down, I felt, by the neat ending.
• The Trick is to Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway. I’ve had this book for twenty-five years and finally its moment arrived and it was worth it. In it Joy Stone, a drama teacher, chronicles her struggle with grief and mental breakdown; this sounds grim but it is clever and witty and hopeful as well as sad. I want to read more of her work now.
• The Queen of Air and Darkness, by T.H. White. Darker and crueller than The Sword in the Stone, this is an excoriation of the chivalric code with which Arthur’s court has become associated. White depicts it as either violent or ridiculous and the novel lurches between these two extremes. I found it uncomfortable to read, I think that’s the point. Soon: The Ill-Made Knight.

Happy October, everyone!

 

is a writer obligated to give readers the pleasures they expect?

In the comments on last Monday’s post on The Flint Anchor, Lory asked this excellent question:

‘Is a writer obligated to give readers the pleasures they expect?’

I have many Thoughts about this, which I couldn’t really cram into a reply to her there; instead, I’ll bore you with them here. As Sir Humphrey might say, ‘Well, yes and no.’

(Constantin Hansen, The Artist’s Sisters Signe and Henriette Reading a Book, 1826; Statens Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Denmark; found here)

A writer is of course not obliged to anyone in their writing, they are completely free. I am still pottering about writing my second attempt at a children’s book and I am doing whatever I please. I cannot say, however, that the results so far are anything I’d want anyone else to read. The characters are weak and keep shifting about, they mess up the vague plot I am trying to follow, or I change my mind, or I realise there’s a massive hole in it, or it gets just dreadfully boring. If a reader bought it from a bookshop or borrowed it from a library, they would be appalled.

Therefore, I would argue that a writer does have to fulfil a few obligations if they expect readers to read their work. And I termed those obligations as ‘pleasures’ – not perhaps the best word to use. However, I do believe that a novel, like any work of art, should provide a form of pleasure to at least some of its readers; and by ‘pleasure’ I mean it should provide some sort of aesthetic, emotional, intellectual or even educational satisfaction. And when you slide a book off a shelf and open it, you do so in expectation of one of those forms of satisfaction.

That satisfaction might take the form of characters who feel ‘real’ to you, it might be a delight in the language the writer has used, it might be in the recognition that the writer has expressed something true about the world, it might be an eagerness to find out what happens next, it might be learning about life in sixteenth-century Florence... When you read a novel that provides you with no form of satisfaction on any of these levels, you feel that the novel is ‘bad’ or ‘poorly written’. And this is what I mean by ‘pleasure’, ill-chosen as the word is.

Some of these pleasures – the emotional ones, I’d say – are more easily evoked in the reader. Bestsellers tend to provide them: excitement, fear, identification with the characters. Others are harder to discern or are those that many readers don’t enjoy. We might here think of the difference between Riders and The Waves, both of which offer pleasure to readers but of different sorts, reflected in their respective sales figures.

The ‘expectation’ of such a pleasure is not unreasonable in a reader, and so to that extent I would answer, yes, the writer does have an obligation here. But this is one interpretation of Lory’s question and it’s not I think what she meant by it. (I could be wrong! Lory – tell me!) She is, I believe, thinking of readers’ expectations in terms of dictating how that pleasure is delivered. And to that I would answer, with her, ‘No’.

Does a novel have to have characters who feel ‘real’ to you? No. Nor does it have to have characters who are likeable or admirable. It doesn’t have to be moral or tell you how to live. It doesn’t have to have a compelling plot, or beautiful writing, or strike you at a deep emotional level. A reader might expect or hope for or want these elements, and might be annoyed if they didn’t find them in a novel – but that might well be a failure of reading. We don’t read Agatha Christie for complex characterisation; we don’t read James Joyce for unicorns; we don’t read Tolstoy for laughs.

There are plenty of writers, like Sylvia Townsend Warner, who choose to subvert expectations in their work. This may upset some readers. It can lead to novels which are challenging, not easy to read, but it can create exciting fiction. A ‘good’ writer does this while retaining some element of pleasure, even if some or perhaps many readers do not notice it: a ‘bad’ writer makes a mess. A ‘good’ reader, in my opinion, tries to approach every book with an open mind and let the book show them how to read it. (This doesn’t mean we should all ‘enjoy’ every novel published but if we want to pass an informed judgement on it we should be alert to ‘pleasures’ that we may not personally enjoy.)

Here’s an example of the difference between the expectations a writer should satisfy and the expectations a writer should not. You want to read a detective novel, you’re in the mood for it. Detective novels have certain conventions, the most obvious being: there’s a crime and the detective solves it. You, an avid reader of detective fiction, understand these conventions.

The novel proceeds in the usual way, crime, detective, but then, at the end – the author doesn’t tell you who the murderer was! You’re outraged! But that’s the point. Now you’re thinking about why you’re outraged, you’re re-evaluating what you’ve just read... The novelist has subverted your expectations but in a way that causes you to question them, to re-categorise the novel not as a whodunnit but as something else... It’s a form of satisfaction.

Now you pick up a second detective novel. The writing is ridden with clichés, the characters are stereotypes and the reason for the crime implausible – the whole thing is silly. On no level are you satisfied. This book has abided by the conventions, the expectations of a detective novel, but it has failed to deliver any form of satisfaction.

What do you think? How would you answer the question?

And many thanks to Lory, for posing it.

reminder: Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week 2021

It’s coming soon! In two weeks, to be exact.

Rush to your library or bookcase, seize that STW novel or poem or short story you’ve always wanted to read, pour yourself a nice G&T and settle down in the lovely June sunshine...

reading notes, 5th March 2021

(Dogwalking chez gallimaufry; French school, early nineteenth century, A Young Woman Standing Reading a Book in the Woods, her Dog beside her, oil on canvas; found here)

Writing about books takes me an insanely long time, and sometimes I don’t have an insanely long time to devote to it. Sometimes I read a book and I enjoy it but I don’t have anything to say about it. So I thought what I might do, fairly regularly, is write a short post about what I’ve been reading and what I’m looking forward to reading, no real analysis, no spoilers. And then I hope that in the comments, you’ll tell us what you’ve been reading and are looking forward to reading.

I have just finished...

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. I found it in the library and for some reason I borrowed it. ‘For some reason’ because I read her first novel, The Thirteenth Tale, and began by enjoying it but found the ending unsatisfying – annoying, even. And then I read her second novel, Bellman & Black, and did not like it at all. Still, there was something about the way she writes... So I’m very glad that I persevered because I really did enjoy Once Upon a River and it was exactly the right book at the right time.

One midwinter night a man bursts into The Swan at Radcot, on the Thames, carrying a dead child in his arms, and collapses. Miraculously, the child returns to life. But who is she? Is she Amelia Vaughan, who was abducted two years ago and never seen again? Her parents believe so. Is she Alice Armstrong, whose desperate mother has drowned herself? Her father claims her. Could she be Ann, Lily White’s little sister, even though Lily is now a woman in her forties? And how can a dead child revive? It’s a novel about the stories people tell themselves, as entertainment or exploitation or as a means of surviving, where they come from and how they can change. It brings a nineteenth-century community to life, it’s funny and sad but ultimately a cheering book, and it features a sapient pig.

I am looking forward to...

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. For reasons too boring to list here, I had ordered a copy of this before it was published but was only able to get my hands on it (thanks to my kind mother) yesterday. Entirely by coincidence, I had been having a tiny Susanna Clarke fest. My daughter had received the DVD of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell for her birthday (yes it was from me, pretending to be the hens; I knew she’d enjoy it and I am of course softening her up for when she’s old enough to read the novel). We watched that, and I’d been rereading stories from The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Piranesi lives in a wonderful house quite alone, except for Tuesdays and Fridays when he’s visited by his only friend, the Other. But then messages start appearing, chalked onto the pavements: there is someone else in the house. A friend or, as the Other tells Piranesi, a foe?

What have you just finished? And what are you looking forward to reading next?

wittering on

Happy Monday, everyone!

Summer is definitely over now, and with it the pleasure of life opening up again after the Covid-19 restrictions. The numbers of people admitted to hospital and dying are slowly rising, here in Belgium and also across much of Europe. It all feels as if we’re in March 2020 again – but this time, with all the Brexit highlights of 2019 thrown in: the dire warnings, the impending deadline, the uncertainty over whether agreement between the UK and the EU can be achieved, the fear that it won’t.

So I’m back to checking the news every five seconds and I note that I haven’t read much over the last few weeks, though I have started a lot of books. A noticeable exception was the latest instalment in Christelle Dabos’s fantasy quartet: The Memory of Babel.

This series, The Mirror Visitor, is set on what might be Earth in the future, after an event called the Rupture which has split the planet into many pieces, called Arks. The Arks float in a shared atmosphere and each one has a presiding Family Spirit, who has special Powers, some of which can be inherited by their offspring. Ophelia, an unassuming archivist, is able to ‘read’ objects with her hands as well as to bring them to life; she also has the more unusual ability to travel through mirrors. To her surprise, a marriage is arranged between her and Thorn, the arrogant, rude Treasurer on the icy Pole Ark. What is the purpose of this marriage?

Unravelling this and associated mysteries brings Ophelia repeatedly into danger as she explores the origins of the Arks and the Spirits themselves. The books unspool at a tremendous pace and are quite complex (I had to reread the first two because I had forgotten so many important details). There is steam punk, a floating city, people who can fold space or create illusions as real as reality, a nightclub in the catacombs, murders, disguises, doubles, a circus, an animated woolly scarf. Reading, libraries and books are of central importance and I feel convinced that the secrets of the world’s origins are going to be quite meta. I’ll have to wait at least a year to find out!

I have also decided to avoid a Leonard Bast demise and put away some of my books. For a while now, I’ve been havering between two positions: (1) I love all my books and will not be parted from them and (2) I don’t really care about most of my books and am too weighed down by materialism and the need to possess things – let me bet rid of them all! I have read with admiration of people purging their bookshelves down to a core of books they really love, and have looked enviously at other people’s extensive book collection while re-reading a book I’ve had for thirty years.

Since we have an attic, I finally decided to take the easy way out, not make a proper decision and put some books into boxes up there. Then I spent months on and off wondering which books to keep up there. It seemed better to emboxen whole categories of book, rather than skim through the shelves and pick out some I thought myself less likely to re-read in the near future (which might then languish for ever). This past weekend I finally did it. Books that went up there: most of my old children’s books (though by no means all) and what I call ‘girly fantasy’ (Patricia McKillip, Theodora Goss, Peter Beagle, etc.). Detective fiction may also go up there.

Behind the piles of books I found some forgotten treasures lurking on the shelves! This was an unexpected bonus.

But now, gazing at the wall o’ books in the sitting room, I am bitterly regretting the impulse a few years ago that made me re-shelve my fiction, poetry and plays chronologically. It’s actually not very practical AT ALL. I want to return to alphabetical order! However, I do not think I can face the massive task of re-shelving once more...

(Gratuitous painting by the Napolitan artist Colantonio of St Jerome in his study; obviously the lion is the best bit but St Jerome is almost as untidy as I am; painted 1445–6 and now in the National Museum of Capodimonte; found here)

The end of the holidays (warning! a long post!)

(Boats at Pin Mill, Suffolk)

With the beginning of September, Belgian teachers and students return to school like swallows to the south. Last week I squeezed into the tiny study, nearly breaking my neck on assorted heaps of books, to start preparing for the new school year. Quite how it will pan out, of course I do not know, although early signs indicate that a great deal more cleaning than usual will be involved.

So here I am at the computer again after a lovely summer. Despite lurking Covid-19, the horror of the explosion in Beirut and the absolutely disgusting re-emergence of immigrant hatred expressed by British politicians and public, I have enjoyed myself. I have even been travelling! And what is peculiar is that I have travelled more than usual (well, I did in July; since I came home I’ve barely left the house...).

First, we visited some friends in France, in the mountains near Chamonix. It was astonishingly beautiful! My daughter, who has never been in mountains before, went slightly crazy – it was a mighty contrast to the flat Flemish countryside.

Then, we took advantage of what turned out to be a relatively brief period of time when one could travel to the UK without quarantining, and visited my family for the first time since the world turned topsy-turvy. This was a strange but also happy experience.

(This is the house in Essex designed by Grayson Perry, which we peered at through the hedge.)

Back here in Belgium I have started going for a run a few times a week in a feeble effort to become fitter – and I do mean feeble: dog walkers overtake me as I wheeze along. Surely at some point I will (a) improve and stop looking such a wally and (b) actually start to enjoy the experience, aren’t there supposed to be endorphins involved somewhere?

I am also – roll of drums – taking driving lessons. After I passed my theory test a hundred years ago my husband said he would teach me to drive. Readers, this will surprise you, but our lessons were not a success. So now I am taking lessons from a proper instructor, who specialises in teaching weedy people who are scared of everything and don’t really want to learn to drive anyway. (That is me.) So far no one has died, although my heart did almost give out when we had to drive on the motorway last week. So. Much. Terror. And my instructor shouting, ‘You must drive faster Helen!’ when I swear my molars were flying out the back of my head there was so much g-force.

Naturally I have been reading... and here are a few books I read.

I am working my way verrrry slowly, for it is BIG, through Fiona McCarthy’s biography of William Morris. Morris attended the boys’ public school Marlborough College not long after it had been founded. It turns out that there was a massive riot there in 1851, ‘the Rebellion’, in revenge for disciplinary measures taken against boys for bullying peasants and dancing by moonlight; the boys went berserk and threw fireworks at the masters, trashed the school and marched on the local town. For weeks on end! They even burnt the headmaster’s manuscript copy of his translation of Sophocles! School life has become considerably duller since the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps for the best.

I am also working my way, less slowly, through She Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India by Katie Hickman. This is a fascinating book and if the beginning of term doesn’t kill me dead I plan to write about it here.

Some months ago I read an article by Samantha Shannon recommending Under a Pendulum Sun, a novel by Jeanette Ng. With such a splendid title I was reaching for my purse even before I saw that it is about Victorian missionaries in Fairyland, with strong Brontë overtones. The Revd Laon Helstone has travelled to Arcadia, land of the Fae, to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. When his letters to his sister Cathy cease, she goes in search of him but no sooner arrives in Arcadia than is pent up in the creepy house of Gethsemane. Cathy’s problem is as much ‘reading’ the land and its people as it is finding Laon and surviving her encounter with Queen Mab and her fairy court. Ng’s Arcadia is properly weird and her Brontë references add depth (her version of Jane Eyre’s first encounter with Rochester is particularly cleverly done). Either I or the book ran out of steam a bit at the end – me, probably – but I do recommend this anyway.

Back in the day Ruth Rendall was pitched as P.D. James’s rival to queen of crime writers. But for me, Rendall has always been superior: James is good at place but Rendall’s characters are acutely (dispassionately!) observed and even her monsters have a credible psychological depth to a degree that James never achieves. The House of Stairs is one of her Barbara Vine novels, and is narrated by Lizzie who, by chance, encounters Bell, a woman she had known in the 1960s who has just been released from prison. Feeling compelled to write down the experiences that led to that long-ago murder, Lizzie allows herself to be drawn back into Bell’s life due to a sense of complicity in what happened and with possibly yet further terrible consequences. You may consider it as a warning against reading too much Henry James...

So how was your summer?

of face masks, cats and magic hens

Excitingly, things are changing here in lovely Belgium. This week my daughter E, clutching her two-months’ pocket money, and I went to actual shops for the first time since everything closed down. This was a careful exercise as each shop had subtly different variations on the theme of safety. How many people were permitted in the shop? Was it obligatory to carry a basket? If obligatory, did you have to disinfect the basket yourself or use one which the staff had already disinfected? Could you pay with cash? (Generally, not.) If you were paying with a card, did you have to use a little ear stick thing to tap in your PIN code?

Furthermore, although we plan to make our own face masks my husband K had bought a box of disposable ones and I had decided that this shopping trip might be a good opportunity to try out wearing one (we have to wear them on public transport and I will at some point before the end of June have to travel on the bus to school). There were instructions on the back but what sort of fool needs instructions to put on a face mask, for goodness’ sake? This sort of fool, obviously. We encountered a former student of mine who is a trained nurse. He helpfully pointed out that not only should I have pinched it over my nose but I was in fact wearing it inside out.

Wearing a face mask was irritating. Perhaps because I had put it on wrongly, it seemed to poke my right eye rather a lot. But it also changed my behaviour, I later realised. I felt surprisingly free of any urge to be friendly or chat. I did what I had to do in each shop with just enough politeness, and left. It is a little bit like when you wear sunglasses and think you’re invisible. Nobody could see the lower part of my face and whether or not I smiled, so I didn’t bother, and then I didn’t bother with much else in terms of sociable behaviour either. I felt disengaged, very separate from everyone except E. I didn’t even feel like talking to my former student, or other acquaintances we saw; there was too much to say and nothing to say and I wanted to go back home. Was it just the mask? Was it also the effect of isolating at home? Will it persist?

Home these days is a bit like a furry version of the set of Kill Bill. Nala (I didn’t choose her name) our cuddly fluffy tortoiseshell pussy-cat, has gone full psycho-killer and every sun rises on fresh corpses strewn around the kitchen. This morning was a record five. We bury the dead rats in the garden but individual graves and funerals are now a thing of the past and there’s a mass grave behind the greenhouse. I know rats are not exactly the most desirable of neighbours although I have a soft spot for them (before you think Dark Thoughts about my housekeeping skillz I should point out that our house is attached to a barn wherein our landlord keeps dozens of hay bales and the food for his chickens and donkeys in uncovered bins, total rat heaven) and if Nala doesn’t keep the numbers down then our landlord puts out poison which is a horrible death, but I can’t help feeling depressed at this wanton slaughter. (She does sometimes eat them, which at least ameliorates it a bit.)

(Nala, on patrol)

More cheerfully, we have some new hen friends. Frosty and Sparkle, the resident ladies (I didn’t choose their names either), had as good as given up laying in March. Sometimes an egg would carelessly drop out as they were strolling round, but like as not they’d tread on it. So a few weeks ago, when it was once more allowed, we acquired two pullets to keep them company: Dorothy Robin and Matilda Misty (no, nor their names). But Dorothy Robin turned out to be Not As Other Hens. Was she magic? Or was she just a supreme escapologist?

(Dorothy Robin and Matilda Misty at home)

As anyone with any chicken experience knows, introducing new hens is a fraught and upsetting time with bullying aplenty. Frosty immediately developed an intense hatred of Dorothy R and actually leapt on her (I’ve never seen that happen before). Then suddenly Dorothy was on the other side of the fence, looking surprised, among the gooseberries. How did that happen? Surely she could not have squeezed through one of the small holes in the fence?

(Frosty asks if you want some of this)

Over the next few days, Dorothy Robin kept appearing in odd places. We found her on top of the shed. We found her strolling through the potato trenches. We found her with next-door’s chickens, pretending not to know who we were. I did feel mean returning her to the run and we did separate the hens for a couple of days. On a few occasions, she took Matilda Misty with her, though Matilda didn’t like straying far from the run and would hang round the gate hoping to be let back in.

And then she just stopped. Perhaps, now that Frosty was being friendly, she felt no need to escape. Perhaps her magic powers wore off. Perhaps our alterations to the run thwarted her. But now she’s everyone’s best friend. And when the forces of evil next mass over Belgium, I think we know which little red hen will be the only one capable of defeating them.

(Dorothy Robin contemplates saving the world)

How are you all getting on? Are you reading, or not reading? Reading something different from usual? Far from getting stuck into all those demanding tomes I’d hoarded for years against some sustained reading time, I am unable to cope with anything more intellectually or emotionally demanding than selected vintage detective novels and children’s books. Worryingly, given that the Reading Week I’m organising is looming, I do not feel up to reading Sylvia Townsend Warner (she is just too disconcerting and too liable to slide a knife between your ribs for me at the moment, love her as I do). I’ve just rollicked my way through Alex Bell’s Polar Bear Explorers’ Club series, and am dusting down my elderly copy of Nine Tailors. I don’t seem capable of anything creative and I am still obsessed with reading the news to an unhealthy extent. Poor E has been finding it all very difficult and won’t be going back to school this term. For her, the Harry Potter audio books have been an absolute lifeline. She’s just starting book five but I am already worrying about what else I could find for her when she finishes them. Any suggestions (she’s ten) gratefully received.