Sweet Sorrow, Death in Summer and Master Georgie

The only "sorrow" for me was when I finished the book. David Nicholls has written a wonderful story about what it's like to be sixteen. Only these people are far more mature than I was at their age. But the book did bring back many memories of those days. Sweet Sorrow starts on the last day of school, our last assembly always finished with the hymn "Lord Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing", corny but with an emotional tug. In the book, "they trooped out to the disco" that was in the gymnasium. Ours was outside on the playing fields, at eighteen in 1963 we "danced" to The Beatles' first LP.

The book is set in 1997 and Charlie is at a loose end for the summer holidays. Convinced he has flopped his GCSE's due to family turmoil, he becomes a little estranged from his gang (thank goodness) and ends up at the Full Fathom Five theatre company who are putting on Romeo and Juliet. It is only because of meeting Fran that he reluctantly joins. Their blossoming relationship is at the heart of the story, although we guess that not everything will go to plan. There are some vague parallels with the plot of the play, but nothing obvious. Nobody dies.

Any novel that describes the workings of putting on a play will grab me every time, especially as it is written with warmth, humour and poignancy. All the characters Charlie meets there are superbly drawn, a real mixed bag. Charlie is given the part of Benvolio. "Benvolio was a sidekick, a conformist and observer; characters confided in him but felt no need to listen in return. Amazing, really, that people I barely knew had cast me so well". Quite a big part, actually!

All the roads where Charlie lives are names of authors. When Charlie learns about Fran's favourites: "She liked Thomas Hardy, but thought of him more as a poet than a novelist, to which I could only nod because I only knew him as a street name, and so thought of him more as an Avenue than a Crescent".

Near the end Charlie mentions "Lipstick on your collar. Told a tale on you". Not sure why the author mentions The Andrews Sisters. I only know (and own) the Connie Francis version. Sad, I know. There are many cultural references, most of the nineties stuff I didn't know (heard of Pulp, couldn't name a song). Although, again near the end, I had seen Webster's "The White Devil" in 2014 at the RSC in Stratford.

You would think from the back cover of Death in Summer, that the story is about Thaddeus Devanent, whose wife has just died, and Mrs Iveson, his mother-in-law who comes to look after baby Georgina. But for me the plot revolves around Pettie, the ex-children's home damaged "survivor" and would-be nanny whose experiences have left her bitter and dark. Early on, as the author paints in the background of these characters, he sometimes gets too wrapped up in character at the expense of moving on the story.

On occasions. William Trevor's undoubted masterly language is all that matters. When Thaddeus ruminates on the death of his wife: "The cruel ending of a life aggravates this shrouded disposition, while permitting it's exposure now." But as usual, the expert later development of the plot leads to a dark and emotional but satisfactory conclusion. The writer seems to be at his best when describing difficult or troubled young women, his brilliant "Felicia's Journey" being a case in point.

Despite the excellent prose, there is no real story to Master Georgie. Just a number of set pieces told by three alternating narrators who are from the same family or group. So almost short stories. The second half of the book describes how these characters get caught up in the war with Russia in 1854. I just found it terribly boring.  Quite a disappointment as I had enjoyed  the other six novels by this author.

A new bathroom

 

We had for some time been meaning to convert the separate bathroom and toilet into one room, and at last it is now complete. The photo above shows where the wall came down between the two rooms.

The photos above show how the old sanitary ware was stripped out and the final look. We are very pleased with the result.

Movies at Home - The Band Wagon, The Fourth Protocol and Vertigo

 

Choosing a film for a Saturday night, I came up with the Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon. Although it was released in 1953, it has passed the test of time in some respects. It does have that big number "That's Entertainment" (written especially for this film) and "Dancing in the Dark" that was over far too quickly. Fred's dancing with Cyd Charisse was a dream. However, the big dance number near the end called "The Girl Hunt Ballet" was a big disappointment. Too long and too boring. Made no sense. Only for the very ending to be again, over too soon.

The Fourth Protocol falls into that category where the writer of the book should never be engaged to write the screenplay. My guess is that Frederick Forsyth's thriller is better in book form than on the screen. Here it seemed all pretty predictable and at times, quite hammy. Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan probably thought the same.

I was amazed that Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo seemed so dated. Again the writing did the film no favours. No wonder the script development was a difficult process. There is also a lot of time sitting in the car with James Stewart on the tail of Kim Novak. That needed a serious cut. The editing also left a lot to be desired. Then the only time the lead suffers from vertigo, the same shot is used time and again. I believe that when the film was released in 1958 it would have seemed quite ambitious. I did like the scenes filmed in San Francisco. It has apparently become a classic and that was why I bought the DVD. But I don't know why.

Wendover Woods, Pavis Wood, Aston Hill - The circular route revisited

 

It was a few years since I had walked one of my favourite Chiltern circuits. I started with the idea of walking from the car park at Wendover Woods to Pavis Wood and to come back the same way. However, once I had reached what I thought was my destination, I decided to walk on through Pavis Wood, down the hill at the end (using the tricky high level rocky path and not the low level muddy bridal way) and return climbing up Aston Hill. A two hour, six mile round trip.

Although the weather started off reasonably sunny, it soon clouded over and was pretty dark by the time I arrived back at the car. The paths were far less muddy once I reached Pavis Wood, so that decision worked fine.  Only I'm not used to long walks these days, so not sure how the run will go tomorrow.

An Englishman in Phillipopolis

An update on this post from November 2008

Rummaging through some old photographs, I found three from the Braintree County High school play of 1963. This was Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw where, in my final year, I played the part of Major Petkoff, a bumbling old army veteran. In Act II, I had a long speech where at some point Petkoff says "There was an Englishman in Phillipopolis who use to wet himself with cold water every morning when he got up. Disgusting!" On the first night I was completely thrown when the audience laughed. As they did again on many other occasions in what is Act II (wikisource has the whole text.)

  The last of the performances was on a Saturday evening. There was one big problem. Kenny Ball was playing that night at the Dunmow Jazz Club where my friends and I never missed a show, with a lager and lime in the pub before it started. All the big trad jazz bands played there: Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, the Dutch Swing College Band. And Kenny Ball was the biggest of them all. I think he may have only ever played one night at Dunmow. But there was no point buying a ticket. However, after the play, one of my friends arrived and, although it was late, persuaded me to go and see what was left. He must have had a car to get there? For some reason, we were allowed in without a ticket, and the band had just started it's second set. It was wonderful.

13th November 2020: A book I am reading about a sixteen year old boy who joins a theatre group in the summer holiday reminded me of when I was sixteen and successfully auditioned for the school play that year (a play always alternated each year with a Gilbert and Sullivan). For the life of me I cannot remember what the play was called. I only had a very small part, and I may have had only had one line if that. Then there was the after play party.

4th March 2024: Revisiting this post, I wondered if the night when Kenny Ball played Dunmow was actually the dress rehearsal for the play. That would make more sense, but who knows?

Agent Running in the Field, The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Man in the Wooden Hat

 

Having read a damning review of John Le Carre's "Brexit" novel, I was dreading what it might contain. Fortunately, there seemed to me hardly any interruption to what is a very decent spy thriller. OK, the two main characters are very much pro Europe, but why not? The book is tightly written in the first person and moves along at a speedy pace. The prose is as good as ever, this is a writer still at the top of his game.

This is one of Muriel Spark's early novels written in 1960, twenty plus years before those later books that I thought were so much better: "Loitering With Intent", "A Far Cry From Kensington" and "Symposium". Peckham in South London does not come out of it well. Although our anti-hero Dougal Douglas (or is Douglas Dougal?) will not travel north of the river. I had to think back to those days in the city when I was fifteen.

The parts of the book I enjoyed most involved dialogue. This is Spark at her best. The story itself is strange and flat, until the frantic ending that is. I recently watched a documentary about the author on Sky and found out why she only wrote one long novel (The Ballad of Peckham Rye is only 140 pages). I actually chose the "The Mandelbaum Gate" for book club. It turned out that this longish book was not successful and she never wrote one of that length ever again.

This book is the "sequel" to Jane Gardam's wonderful "Old Filth". I say sequel, but it is more of a companion piece as it reveals the story of Filth's wife Betty. Well, her story from when she met her husband to be. I would have loved a section about her time as a young code breaker at Bletchley Park in the war. Maybe another book to come.

Here we are treated to some devastating moments in her later life. The author is so good at setting up an event before the actual revelation. Sir Edward Feathers QC still has a large part to play in this excellent domestic drama, as has his rival from the first book, Terry Veneering. I had forgotten that Eddie Feathers' specialty was building contracts, so when the book mentions their bible "Hudson on Building Contracts", I was transported back to my days as a QS and finding the "Hudson Formula" for the calculation of the costs of delay. (See note below).

In the Sunday Times this week, I found I was not the only one who was hugely impressed with these novels. Maggie O'Farrell, one of my very favourite authors, wrote in her full page spread about reading in lock-down, that "Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy (was) a revelation".

Back to Hudson. Contract Law was always my favourite of all the many subjects for my Institute of Quantity Surveyors (now the RICS) examinations. But perversely, it was the only paper I failed first time. I did have an impacted wisdom tooth during this second batch of exams (extracted the day after the last one) so I do have an excuse. It was the only paper I had to resit, that being successful in Leeds the following year. I prepared my first ever claim for delay in 1974 on a contract for 271 dwellings at Bretton in Peterborough. I used the Hudson Formula for overheads and this seemed to be partly accepted as my directors were able to negotiate a decent financial settlement. But not before we attended a lawyer's office where I was the only one of the team he wanted to talk to. Maybe it was Old Filth himself.

Fiendish Sudoku

 

Over the last two or three years, I have made my way from simple Su Doku puzzles to increasingly difficult ones. The "Puzzler" and "The Big Su Doku Puzzle Magazine" each have three levels of difficulty: easy, medium and tricky. However, I have now graduated to the last of these through the "The Times Fiendish Su Doku" books. Here they describe this level as follows:

This is the premiership level of Su Doku, because Fiendish puzzles are the ones used in The Times National Su Doku Championship and World Su Doku Championship. You can find harder puzzles ...... but Fiendish are the hardest that can be solved in a reasonable time without any element of luck.

Those harder puzzles, or Super Fiendish, are at the back of the book, but require what is called a trial path. The book calls it "the elephant in the room" as it is described as "controversial because some people refuse to use it on the basis that it is guessing". I'm going to stick with the Fiendish puzzles. I'm not very fast, but faster than I used to be.

Movies at The Rex, Berkhamsted - Amelie, On the Rocks and Portrait of a Lady on Fire

With Cineworld closed, I gravitated to The Rex cinema in Berkhampsted, especially as it was showing some older movies that I had not seen. Starting with the wonderful Amelie, a colourful and light concoction just right for these times. Audrey Tautou is extraordinary as the unhappy waitress who hides her pain in bringing happiness to others. It does eventually turn into a romantic comedy but the whole time we are mesmerised by this young woman. Directed with affection by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, that smile you have all the way through stays with you for ages.

On the Rocks was actually  the film to show off the great acting talents of Rashida Jones, only for it to be hijacked by one Bill Murray in his best performance for years. Sofia Coppola has written and directed an intriguing drama about a father and daughter relationship on the back of the former's crazy idea that the daughter's husband is being unfaithful. Or is he? It is the crisp dialogue between the two leads that keeps us guessing as they tour New York and beyond. Classy stuff.

But the best film of these three was portrait of a lady on fire. This French move is quite something. Fortunately I knew nothing about the film, only that it had great reviews. Mark Kermode gave it five stars. We are in the eighteenth century as artist Marianne (Noemie Merlant) is hired by Valeria Golino to paint the portrait of her daughter Heloise (Adele Haenel). What ensues is a kind of relationship that blossoms into something memorable. For the two women, anyway. Memory plays a big part, and effects the audience as much as those on the screen. And I must nor forget to mention Luana Bajrami as the maid Sophie, a fragile yet feisty servant. The acting is first class.

This film needs to be seen in the cinema. Where else could you appreciate the silences that punctuate the action. There is no music (until that marvellous crescendo at the end) and we could hear a pin drop at that screening.. That was so weird, almost painful, but glorious. All down to the brilliant writer/director Celine Sciamma. Beautifully filmed on the rugged coast of Brittany, the colours match the mood.

There is a clip from the opening scene on YouTube which explains the title of the film. It could have been the last scene, but this is even later and is quite magical. One of the best ever endings to a film. A completely different tone to what came before, sad and happy all at once.

Stowe in November

Friday was forecast to be sunny and dry so it was a great opportunity to visit the National Trust property at Stowe. The second lockdown had not prevented these parks from opening, although the cafe was closed.

It was quite a chilly day, so a good walk was in prospect as we headed for a loop of the outer ring, to be followed by some paths through the central area. In fact we must have taken in most of the main routes in our two hour circuit.

The trees were past their best, but there were still some colour to be seen.

There was no wind, and the reflections in some of the lakes were spectacular. We were very glad we made the effort.