Author Archives: aides memoires

Grange to Cark

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A very still, sunny, cold day, so I headed for the hills. The poetry post at Grange was totally out of synch with today’s weather. It was lovely to feel sunshine again – it’s been two and a half weeks since the last bright day – but there were still some icy parts.

I’ve done part of this walk over Hampsfell and down to Cark station before; I remembered certain bits but wondered where other bits were – then realised that I was cutting it short by going via Cartmel rather than Beck Side. A couple of fords and some cattle; snowdrops, sounds of woodpeckers, a barn owl (perhaps) and skylarks on Hampsfell. I could have done without seeing massed segway riders at Cartmel, but that’s just me being cantankerous.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski (1953)

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A waking nightmare: a young mother suffering from TB falls asleep on a day bed and awakes to find herself on the same bed and in the same condition but in another body and another time. The themes of illness, death, frailty, constriction and loss of identity are unnerving. The short novel follows Melanie as she realises what is happening to her – her fear, her attempts at rationalising, her horror as hope of escape or return fades. She is aware of being both herself, Melanie, and the person whose body she inhabits, Milly, whom she begins to understand:

I think we did the same things, she told her, we loved a man and we flirted and we took little drinks, but when I did those things there was nothing wrong, and for you it was terrible punishable sin. It was no sin for Melanie, she explained carefully, because the customs were different; sin changes, you know, like fashion.

The chaise-longue as a Procrustean bed that cuts women down to helpless femininity? Or a gin-trap for women who are not on the alert to their vulnerabilities in the outside world? There are parallels in the women’s lives across the distance: both have experienced sexual passion – the words used are “rapture” and “ecstasy”, which both imply something out-of-body – outside/before marriage, and both have been weakened by their pregnancies. Milly’s life is a dark version of Melanie’s: in place of a loving (but straying?) husband and a fond doctor, Milly has a lover who cannot marry her and a doctor who resents his thwarted passion for her. Instead of Melanie’s sensible professional nurse, Milly has her stern sister. Melanie’s TB may be curable in the 1950s; Milly’s, in the nineteenth century, will literally be the death of her. Suburban Gothic horror.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (early 1960s)

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I read this book in the early 1980s shortly after it was first published. The story of the neglected author who had killed himself years earlier and his mother’s struggle to interest a publisher in his work made for (sadly) good publicity. And then there was the book – which I found just as brilliant this time round as the first. I retained a clear memory of the first time the book made me laugh till I hurt (the sucked-out jam doughnuts that Mrs Reilly offers to Patrolman Mancuso). It’s a perfectly constructed tale of wonderfully grotesque characters (how could I have forgotten Miss Trixie?) and ludicrous situations that slot into each other smoothly and deftly. Ignatius Reilly is a compelling and repelling anti-hero who somehow retains his pathos. Despite his love of jam doughnuts and hot dogs and his obsession with Doris Day, he is a complete misfit in consumerist mid-century America; he belongs several centuries earlier – somewhere between Boethius and Thomas Aquinas, and probably in a monastery. His standards are idiosyncratic and exacting:

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul.

Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. Their pleats and nooks contained pockets of warm, stale air that soothed Ignatius. The plaid flannel shirt made a jacket unnecessary while the muffler guarded exposed Reilly skin between earflap and collar. The outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life.

This eccentric scholastic is at large in decadent New Orleans. Unsurprisingly each new attempt to earn a living results in disaster for those around him – and great entertainment for the reader. There is a happy ending of sorts for those Reilly leaves behind him (big cheer when Jones’s wheel turns upwards) as he is rescued by the anti-heroine and is driven off into the sunset. Boethius lives another day. A masterpiece.

Nouvelle Vague

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Director Richard Linklater with Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin

I did my homework: I rewatched À Bout De Souffle the previous night. I was too old when I first saw it to be bewitched by its youthfulness and spontaneity and too used to the techniques/approach that it pioneered; this time I was more aware of the circumstances of its creation and more sympathetic to the sense that Godard was trying to capture. Perhaps, too, I am now old enough to appreciate the actors’ youthfulness – particularly Belmondo’s athletic grace and the close-ups of Seberg’s angelic face. This time, too, I wondered about an anti-American angle: the Bogart vibe and the betrayal by an American woman of a good old purse-rifling, car-thieving, police-killing French gangster.

Anyway, Nouvelle Vague is a film about the making of À Bout De Souffle, and it was wholly successful in making me interested in it again. It’s an amusing, engaging, clever homage with brilliant performances/impersonations. It was strange to see Belmondo portrayed as an easy-going young man, since the character he plays in the film is so impatient and hectoring, subconsciously aware that his days are numbered. Marbeck was great as the epigram-heavy, and devious Godard. Mercifully, Linklater’s film avoided the jump cuts and stilted wordiness of Godard’s film; it was the epitome of a stylish, tasteful well-made film that was the opposite of Godard.

More London

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Thursday’s ticket gave me half-price entry into the London Transport Museum, so I decided to visit it, if only for the exhibition of art deco posters. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that every other adult had a pushchair, but I certainly felt out of place without a small child in tow. They were pinging about all over the place. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there, so it was familiar. I did linger at the steam locomotive used on the Metropolitan & District underground for over 40 years; it had a condenser to capture the steam but nothing to alleviate the smoke. At first I thought how awful it must have been for passengers . . . and then I thought of the drivers and stokers.

I enjoyed the exhibition of art deco posters from the underground. They implied affordable modern luxury – a visit to Kew Gardens, the zoo or the West End. There were a couple by Sybil Andrews/Cyril Power that I’d seen in Dulwich.

Then, since I was nearby, I headed towards the Courtauld Gallery. I was briefly sidetracked by a youthful band celebrating the anniversary of the founding of RAF air cadets. I looked at the”Courtauld bag” (from Mosul, 1300-30) and was rather taken with Tobias and his fish in the Botticelli painting of the Trinity. There was also a small exhibition: A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860. I’ve seen a lot of Turner and Constable landscapes recently, and I can’t see that Elizabeth’s Batty’s is markedly inferior.

Cutty Sark

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The most surprising thing about the elegant Cutty Sark (1869) was that it had an iron skelton. That saved on space, which was crucial for the container ship of its day. The hull was covered in a metal alloy (Muntz) to deter barnacles and to smooth her passage through the sea. She was one of the last and fastest tea clippers of her day but was soon replaced by steamships. The crew was around 26 men and boys, all living in small quarters on the top deck – with rather larger quarters for the captain and officers. One of those visits that are more fascinating than you expect.

Euston underground tunnels

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Another Hidden London tour – this time under Euston. I can still feel the dust in my nose. We looked at a former tube tunnel that was taken out of service when the island platform between two tube lines became too narrow for safety. Then the old tunnel linking two rival underground lines (whose separate entrances were either side of the mainline station) where there was a shared underground ticket hall. This tunnel was closed in 1962 and the walls are still layered with advertising posters from then. They have decayed but – given the lack of light – they are still vibrant.

The tour was full of interesting little things – e.g. making it easy for people to change trains by having platforms adjacent for popular connections is hazardous when the trains don’t arrive and depart in tandem. It’s actually safer to manage hordes of passengers by making them walk some distance to make their connection. I learned that the Luftwaffe bombing of Guernica in 1937 prompted the British government to prepare for the possibility of air raids; there was a control room just off the tunnel, and air raid warden service was established that year.

I also discovered that the oxblood-red building at the end of Drummond Street I’d noticed before was the station for the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead railway from 1907-14. Designed by Leslie Green, it has been used as a ventilation shaft ever since, but it is soon to be demolished to make way for HS2. I shall have to take a photograph before I leave.