St Hilda's, August 2009

It was the Mystery and Crime conference at St Hilda’s, Oxford last weekend (21^st-23^rd August) and, as last year people seemed to be queuing round the block to say, “Are you coming to St Hilda’s?” Yours Truly put in an appearance.

Gosh, I can see why people like it.  St Hilda’s is a lovely venue.  It’s a Victorian college, founded in 1893, and the main building has a real grace and charm.  The setting is perfect, with the river running close to the main door with lawns and trees.  The accommodation is fine, if a bit student-y (it is a college, after all) and the Garden Building, where I was, has a complicated sort of trellis arrangement on the outside.

As a picture paints a thousand words, so to speak, here’s what it looks like from the outside:



Goodness knows what all the woodwork is for, but I can tell you, it’s great for hanging out the white jeans and white tee-shirt that I managed to slosh red wine down.  I don’t know what it is about me, wine and anything coloured white but, as sure as night follows day, the three things will come together and then it’s Ho for the tube of travel wash and some impromptu laundry.

The highlight of Friday night was, without a doubt, the after-dinner speech by Priscilla Masters on the subject of Luck and her early life.  Priscilla’s parents, who sound an incredibly generous and open-hearted couple, adopted Priscilla and six other children (I think it was six;  I was laughing too hard to take notes) the children coming from all four corners of the globe.

The great thing about St Hilda’s is that it doesn’t loose sight of the fact it’s an academic institution.  The speakers present proper papers and I knew I was going to enjoy it when the very first one was Jill Paton Walsh on Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case, the Attenbury emeralds, followed by Kate Charles on Margery Allingham.  Theology, morals, psychology and motivation all got thoroughly analysed and it set the tone for the weekend.  It’s great to have serious stuff like this but treated with enough humour – and there was lots of humour – to lighten the discussion.   It was a bit like the best conversation in the pub who’ve ever had and set the standard of the papers to follow.

Privately, Jane Finnis and myself descended to personalities over a bottle of wine.  I essayed the theory that Rudyard Kipling’s short stories were complicated (Mrs Bathhurst to you, Jane!) Jane took the opposite view  and the ensuing literary discussion (complete with quotes, poetry and yet more wine) was one of the best bits of  the weekend.

The only thing wrong with St Hilda’s isn’t a televisions and I didn’t have a radio.  Dear Lord. This, with England’s fate hanging in the balance at the Oval (Cricket, yes, we’re talking about cricket) was a severe deprivation.  Calls home filled some of the void and so did Len Tyler’s frequent trips to his car radio.  (“We should be at the Oval, Dolores;  Flintoff’s hitting them all over the ground.”)

It was Len (L.C.)Tyler who pondered one of the conundrums of the weekend; when is a Man a Woman?

Now, those of you who know Len, author of the excellent The Herring Seller’s Apprentice, will know that he isn’t given to such deeply philosophical sounding speculations.  Not shortly after breakfast, anyway. I mean, it sounds like something almost German in its complexity.  What it actually was about was the annual meeting of Mystery Women, the group set up by Lizzie Hayes.  I asked if he was attending and hastened to reassure him that mere sex was no barrier.  After all, Martin Edwards and Andrew Taylor are members and Andrew’s got the tee-shirt to prove it!  Len duly attended and after that came the punting.

Okay, hands up, I was pants.  Priscilla Masters, who was watching my attempts from the front of the boat (she was sort of lured into it) eventually took matters into her own hands, suggested I shipped the punt-pole and paddled us up the river.  And back.

And, as I’d been silly enough to get in a punt wearing white jeans, it was back to the laundry again….

All at the seaside

We had the annual family holiday last week.  It wasn’t so much bucket and spade as pack-a-macs and umbrellas and keeping a stiff upper lip. Honestly, I think the Met Office’s prediction of a “Barbecue Summer” is going to be up there with Michael Fish’s famous comment before the hurricane of 1987.  (“There’s a lady who phoned up to say she heard there was a hurricane on the way.  Ho, ho, ho…”)

To those reading this in sunnier climes than Dear Old Blighty, you ought to know there was a time – it seems a long time ago now – when Britain had summers.  This hasn’t happened for a while and this year has been no exception.

The Gordon-Smith troop gave Cornwall the once-over this year.  It actually did stop raining long enough to register but there is a reason why the countryside is so beautifully lush and green.  Plenty of people have written about Cornwall;  here’s one of the reasons why.



Gorgeous, isn’t it?  It’s Mullion Cove, near the Lizard.  We stayed in Carbis Bay, near St Ives of cat fame.  (“As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives.  Every wife had seven sacks and in each sack were seven cats…” etc)  The reason why there were so many cats in St Ives is that the upstairs rooms in this predominantly fishing village were used to store nets and sails and mice loved nibbling away through the ropes.  It was biological warfare up there.  So much so, there was – ages ago – an official cat nurturer who rejoiced in the sobriquet of “Pissy Willy”.  This was your basic, Victorian-style neutering where a couple of bricks and a tom-cat with a pained expression featured.    Apparently Willy also manufactured ice-cream; and was never known to wash his hands.  I mean, it makes you think twice about the nut sundae, doesn’t it!

My holiday reading was Louise Penny. I had the pleasure of meeting Louise and her husband, Michael, a couple of years ago, and we got on like a house on fire.  Gosh, she’s a good writer.  She brings such a sense of place to her stories that I’m sure I could find my way round the fictional village of Three Pines.  Gamache, her detective, is such a nice bloke to spend time with as well, that you feel, by the end of the book, that you’ve made a friend.

St Ives is, of course, known for Art.  There’s lots of hobby painters -  it’s so picturesque that it makes you long for a paint-brush - but real artists live/lived there too.  The most famous is the sculptor, Barbara Hepworth.  She had a studio in St Ives with a garden attached.  The garden is fascinating.  It’s fairly small but full of these amazing sculptures that are positioned against the plants and the settings she chose.  I can’t honestly say I’m a huge fan of abstract art, but I fell in love with that garden.  It’s interesting, too, that her sculptures are so easy to copy –  many a town centre is disfigured by its pointless obligatory lump of Hepworth-style Art – but the real thing has got life and magic all of its own.

Across from Barbara Hepworth’s house is the old Palais de Dance. It’s been unused as a dance-hall for years and now, empty and silent, it’s used as a store-room for Hepworth’s sculptures.  Some of the figures in the garden look like Easter Island figures and it’s odd to think of those stone giants waiting on the dancefloor.  There’s a story in there somewhere;  stone music to breath them into life.  Maybe – in the story – they are dancing but their life runs on such a different scale than ours that we can’t see them move.  Rather like the kids in the morning!

The keen observer (as all the readers of this piece naturally are) will notice that I’ve written anything for the last couple of weeks.  This isn’t idleness (well, not entirely, anyway) but computer gliches.  It’s still not entirely sorted out, but it’s getting there – I hope.  I spent last week off-line altogether and it’s weird how cut-off it makes you feel. Considering that only a few years ago, computers were the stuff of science-fiction, it’s astonishing how necessary they’ve become.  I sometimes feel we’re all going to end up like one of those races they used to have in Star Trek, who are just pure brains and no bodies.  Mind you, I think the Youth of the future will probably have enormous thumbs, because of all the texting they do.

Talking of Youth – mine – we travelled down to Egham, Surrey, to watch Helen’s graduation.  Here’s a picture of all the graduates throwing their hats in the air after the celebration.  It was a wonderful day, set in the architecturally wacky late-Victorian dream of Thomas Holloway’s Royal Holloway.  Royal Holloway is now part of London University but when Thos. built it – it opened in 1886 – it was a women’s only college inspired by his wife, Jane, who reckoned it was a good use of quarter of a million or so.  There’s a statue of Thomas presenting the college to Jane in the middle of the quad and he looks fairly smug about it – and with good reason, too.  There’s few buildings which bear the imprint of their designer quite so blatantly.  It looks like a French château run mad.  It’s impressive but always makes me want to laugh, too – so result!  The graduation started with sparkling wine and Haribos (you know, those squashy sweets) outside the History Department, and then, after this laid-back introduction, we moved into the very formal surroundings of the Chapel.  The Chapel, as you might expect from such a sturdy individualist as Thos, is decorated without a trace of English restraint, but in an exuberant Italian-with-attitude style, glowing with colour and with lots of women saints on the walls.  Here’s a bit of the roof.  Trumpeters sounded, the graduates walked in, received their degrees and the whole thing went like clockwork.  Then it was off outside, into the gigantic Quads, for more sparkling wine and nibbles (if you could get to them; graduating gives the Young a fairly hearty appetite.)   It was a wonderful day; it all ran to plan and even the sun shone. 

The other event worthy of note is that the cat establishment of the Gordon-Smith household is now back up to full strength.  Tospy, The Ancient Of Days, handed in her chips a while ago at the grand old age of 19.  Post of Most Senior Animal was then taken by Snooker (aka “Grumpy”) who is impartially bad-tempered with dog, cat and human alike.  She just can’t see why any other animal is needed and knows just who to blame for disturbing the even tenor of her days. She reminds me of Maurice in Suzette Hill’s “Bones” stories.  Her life didn’t get any better when we arrived home with a new kitten.  Peter had naming rights and – because he’s a bit of a Francophile – chose “Minou”.  Apparently every French children’s story has a cat called Minou.  Perhaps we should try and find her a blue-and-white stripy collar with an onion motif.  Here she is, helping The Graduate at work.  I'm off to Sunny Cornwall (fingers crossed) next week so I'll talk more when I get back.