I made a garden gate this week. Not that, you understand, the Gordon-Smith garden has been hitherto open to the public to wander in at will. No, this is an additional gate to stop the ruddy dog howling at the bottom of the garden.
Lucky, the aforesaid Ruddy Dog, only has three legs. We got him from the dogs’ home in this tripoded condition (I imagine his card was marked as soon as he was called “Lucky” by his previous owner). He lost his leg by taking issue with a lorry. Despite making a fair old bit of it, the Dumb Chum hates noise.
And, at the bottom of the garden is a street with children racing up and down with roller skates, skateboards, little prams, bikes and all sorts of things with incredibly noisy wheels. Lucky, taking this as a personal affront, goes and howls through the gate at them. And, by the way, when I say “howl” I mean it. It’s not a polite little wuff. The animal stands there simply baying; take a line through the hound of the Baskervilles in the big scene when it comes tearing out of the Dartmoor mist and you’ll get the idea.
So I made another gate to enclose the area that leads to gate proper, if you see what I mean, solely to baffle the dog. And, when working on the gate, it was totally weird how quickly the light went once the sun went down. Yes, yes, yes, I know, night is a well-observed phenomena and has been with us on a fairly regular basis for some time, but we’re so used to having light literally at the click of a switch, it’s strange to have to stop work just because it’s dark.
Next week, after the clocks have Sprung Forward an hour, I’d have another hour of daylight to work in and that extra hour is why, during the First World War, British Summer Time was introduced. Although the idea was first proposed by an Englishman, William Willett, an early-bird type, in 1907, it took until 21st May 1916 for the government to be convinced. Germany and Austria had introduced Daylight Saving Time on 30th April of that year and that seemed, to some parliamentarians, a good reason why we shouldn’t have it in Britain. Lord Balfour, obviously a man who wanted to be prepared for every eventuality, asked his fellow peers to consider the plight of twins born during the change of the clock, with the result that the second-born might be held to have been born earlier than the first-born and thus mess up the first-born’s inheritance. Wow.
Anyway, we got BST and in the Second World War there was double Summer Time. There’s a story of an American GI out with a girl and looking for some privacy. When moved on by a policeman, he said in disgust, “Say, doesn’t it ever dark in this country?” Poor guy.
Don’t forget to put your clocks forward!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
This blog is not about a bus with a gas-bag on the roof
We’ve all met gas-bags on the top of buses. The woman who won’t stop talking, the man on his mobile phone… Here’s a picture of one in real lifeI’ve put the picture in because my pal, Jane Finnis, was astounded that such things could be, and it does look a bit odd, I must say. It should really have gone with the last blog but better late than never, as they say. Jane voices her incredulity in the comments. Mind you, Jane’s last post on her blog, (have a look at it on http://janefinnisblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/beware-the-ides-of-march/) left me scratching my head a bit.
It’s about how the Romans dated things. You know, as in, “Shall we meet up on the 19th?” “No, make it the twentieth, instead.” You couldn’t have this conversation in Ancient Rome. They had a peculiar system, involving counting backwards and forwards and probably turning round three times, crossing your fingers and making a wish. Considering how we’ve all been told that the Romans were a red-hot superpower, with efficiency as their middle name, the truly bizarre way they worked out their calendar does make you think a bit. Jane and myself once did a talk at the library together which more or less turned into a debate on which of us had the best historical period to work with. Jane loves her Romans dearly and was a persuasive speaker, but I think I’ll stick to my Agatha Christie-like 1920’s. At least you can get the date right to actually turn up at the talk without mental gymnastics and possible recourse to black magic.
Talking about Agatha Christie-ish stuff, there’s been a dickens of a fuss this week caused by the remarks of Brian True-May, the executive producer of Midsomer Murders. Mr True-May said that the success of the programme is down to – get this - “The lack of black and Asian faces.” He told the Radio Times, the official magazine of the BBC, “that the programme “wouldn’t work” if there was any racial diversity in the village life.
“We are,” said Mr True-May, “the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it like that.”
I loved the response of David Edwards, a café manager in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, the real-life setting of the fictional Midsomer. Mr Edwards is black, and he reckons that Midsomer is the safest place in Britain to be black, granted that every one of the victims of the 272 murders to date have been white.
True-May’s comments, apart from being offensive, are nonsense, of course. The murderous English village, in all its fascinating glory, is associated indelibly with Agatha Christie, and her villages are very diverse indeed.
Mysterious foreigners? They turn up by the bucketload. Not black or Asians, particularly – this is pre-War Britain, after all – but Greeks, Italians, French, Eastern Europeans etc., etc. Poirot himself is Belgian, of course, and often travels to fairly exotic locations. “Englishness” is a subject which often comes up. Take this, for example, from Murder On The Orient Express. The very English Colonel Arbuthnot comes to the defence of the very English Mary Debenham.
“About Miss Debenham,” he said rather awkwardly. “You can take it from me that she’s all right. She’s a pukka sahib.”
Flushing a little, he withdrew.
“What,” said Dr. Constantine with interest, “does a pukka sahib mean?” (He’s Greek, you’ll notice.)
“It means,” said Poirot, “that Miss Debenham’s father and brothers were at the same kind of school as Colonel Arbuthnot.”
Time and again Agatha Christie punctures that pompous idea of “Englishness” with that most English weapon, humour. Dave Edwards, the café manager, was pictured grinning his head off. So who’s got the last laugh now?
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Getting it right
In Finding Nemo, Albert, the clown fish’s wife and whole family-to-be- of clown fish eggs are eaten at the start of the film. One egg, which hatches into Nemo remains and, when Nemo gets lost, Albert sets out to find him. It’s a delightful story and very funny, too. However, when a mother clown fish is killed, the male clown fish turns into a female. I know this, because the director said so on the DVD extras. The makers of Nemo chose to ignore it because it would make the film just too damn complicated and they were absolutely right. That’s a creative decision that makes the story work better.
However, on the weblist DorothyL this week, a point was raised about accuracy in historical fiction.
The heroine of a book set in the First World War motors around Britain without any thought of petrol rationing. Was there, Dave Bennet asked on the list, any fuel restrictions? The question pulled him out of the world of the book. The notion of fuel restrictions should at least have been raised, because there were petrol restrictions and, like most things which seem like a problem at first, the very problem could have been creatively used to give a better sense of the period.
Restrictions, in the form of licences, were imposed early in the war and were tightened up as the war went on. I had to think about this for my WW1 spy thriller, Frankie's Letter, where the villain whizzes round in a Daimler (so handy for kidnapping heroes and carrying them off!). That's 1915, but by the following year, newspapers would report incidents of joy-riding very censoriously. Private driving became semi-respectable again in the summer of 1917 by attaching large gas-bags, which looked like miniature Zeppelins, on a wooden frame to the car with six feet of pipe for recharging at gas-points. There were plenty of cases of drivers filling up illegally at lamp posts! (All lamp posts were fuelled by gas, often tapping into the sewers for a supply).
Is it important to get it right? On one level, no. The story can be good and the writing fine, but if you are setting a story in a particular era, it seems like only fair play to the eventual reader to at least try to get it right. And, by getting details right, the chances are, the overall impression of the time will be right, too, so the reader gets the impression of living in another world. Besides that, it’d be fun watching the heroine get free gas from a lamp-post!
However, on the weblist DorothyL this week, a point was raised about accuracy in historical fiction.
The heroine of a book set in the First World War motors around Britain without any thought of petrol rationing. Was there, Dave Bennet asked on the list, any fuel restrictions? The question pulled him out of the world of the book. The notion of fuel restrictions should at least have been raised, because there were petrol restrictions and, like most things which seem like a problem at first, the very problem could have been creatively used to give a better sense of the period.
Restrictions, in the form of licences, were imposed early in the war and were tightened up as the war went on. I had to think about this for my WW1 spy thriller, Frankie's Letter, where the villain whizzes round in a Daimler (so handy for kidnapping heroes and carrying them off!). That's 1915, but by the following year, newspapers would report incidents of joy-riding very censoriously. Private driving became semi-respectable again in the summer of 1917 by attaching large gas-bags, which looked like miniature Zeppelins, on a wooden frame to the car with six feet of pipe for recharging at gas-points. There were plenty of cases of drivers filling up illegally at lamp posts! (All lamp posts were fuelled by gas, often tapping into the sewers for a supply).
Is it important to get it right? On one level, no. The story can be good and the writing fine, but if you are setting a story in a particular era, it seems like only fair play to the eventual reader to at least try to get it right. And, by getting details right, the chances are, the overall impression of the time will be right, too, so the reader gets the impression of living in another world. Besides that, it’d be fun watching the heroine get free gas from a lamp-post!
Monday, March 7, 2011
University Choice 2
I recieved a fascinating response to the blog I wrote about the TV series Bones and how to choose a university (it's last but one in the blogroll). I thought Kathy's response was so interesting, I've posted it here rather than in the comments section.
SPENSER’S MYSTERY BOOKS
364 Main Street
North Andover, MA 01845
(978) 689-0629
www.spensersmysterybooks.com
Kathy Phillips wrote:
I read your comments about the “Bones” bit where Cam’s got problems with her foster daughter about school choices. I’ve spent a good bit of time in England, especially in my late-teens (London, Somerset), and I’m pretty familiar with your educational system. Your definitions of “student” and “academic hot-shot” have no parallel in this country, and particularly not for a student in a Washington D.C. area school system. At 18, our kids graduate high school and are not nearly at a level that compares to your university-bound hot-shots. Out SATs are generic exams that colleges use for admission criteria, but they bear absolutely no relation to your A-Levels and O-Levels. Achievement here is a relative thing. Grades here are a relative thing.
Not to put too fine a point on it, American kids, unless coming out of the premier prep schools on the level of Phillips Andover or Choate, are largely immature, and even the better students have merely achieved success when measured against a less than elevated standard. I could go into details that would make your eyes glaze over (no classics, history limited to American history or “world civ” – a general overview that makes no effort to distinguish between cultures and norms, English literature studies limited to the very most basic texts). The simple fact is: American education is available to everyone through the age of 18 – or the 12th grade – and the numbers that have to be reached insure that the standards are lowered to meet a mean of ability.
In any event, Michelle’s comments were very familiar to many of us. At least in theory. I’ve known some pretty sharp kids choose schools based on weather, sports, appearance of campus, and nearby cities. And I wouldn’t have said no to any of these criteria. My extremely bright goddaughter (whom I help to raise) chose to go to Duke University, a premier school in North Carolina. She just liked it, liked the feel of the campus and – yes – the weather. She had no idea what she would major in so she wasn’t looking for any particular school or academic. Frankly, we don’t expect our very brightest kids to achieve very much in school – unless they go to Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, Princeton and the like after attending a premier preparatory school – and to find their feet in graduate school. Kate is now in medical school after the kind of search for a place to study along the lines that you describe in your blog. She knew then what she wanted and went after it. But even a very smart and mature 18 year-old kid here isn’t going to apply the same criteria to their choice as one of yours would.
Good luck to Lucy. I hope she gets to do what she wants to do. But I’d give her advice I’ve gleaned from my nephew’s education: he went to Princeton University, one of our premier institutions, intent on becoming a mathematician. Princeton is known for its math and physics departments. After a year, he was disillusioned and floundered around a bit – he didn’t like the department or the professors. He found his footing. He graduated from Princeton summa cum laude with a degree in Chinese Language, Literature and Linguistics and is now a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Poetry and Linguistics from Harvard University.
SPENSER’S MYSTERY BOOKS
364 Main Street
North Andover, MA 01845
(978) 689-0629
www.spensersmysterybooks.com
Kathy Phillips wrote:
I read your comments about the “Bones” bit where Cam’s got problems with her foster daughter about school choices. I’ve spent a good bit of time in England, especially in my late-teens (London, Somerset), and I’m pretty familiar with your educational system. Your definitions of “student” and “academic hot-shot” have no parallel in this country, and particularly not for a student in a Washington D.C. area school system. At 18, our kids graduate high school and are not nearly at a level that compares to your university-bound hot-shots. Out SATs are generic exams that colleges use for admission criteria, but they bear absolutely no relation to your A-Levels and O-Levels. Achievement here is a relative thing. Grades here are a relative thing.
Not to put too fine a point on it, American kids, unless coming out of the premier prep schools on the level of Phillips Andover or Choate, are largely immature, and even the better students have merely achieved success when measured against a less than elevated standard. I could go into details that would make your eyes glaze over (no classics, history limited to American history or “world civ” – a general overview that makes no effort to distinguish between cultures and norms, English literature studies limited to the very most basic texts). The simple fact is: American education is available to everyone through the age of 18 – or the 12th grade – and the numbers that have to be reached insure that the standards are lowered to meet a mean of ability.
In any event, Michelle’s comments were very familiar to many of us. At least in theory. I’ve known some pretty sharp kids choose schools based on weather, sports, appearance of campus, and nearby cities. And I wouldn’t have said no to any of these criteria. My extremely bright goddaughter (whom I help to raise) chose to go to Duke University, a premier school in North Carolina. She just liked it, liked the feel of the campus and – yes – the weather. She had no idea what she would major in so she wasn’t looking for any particular school or academic. Frankly, we don’t expect our very brightest kids to achieve very much in school – unless they go to Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, Princeton and the like after attending a premier preparatory school – and to find their feet in graduate school. Kate is now in medical school after the kind of search for a place to study along the lines that you describe in your blog. She knew then what she wanted and went after it. But even a very smart and mature 18 year-old kid here isn’t going to apply the same criteria to their choice as one of yours would.
Good luck to Lucy. I hope she gets to do what she wants to do. But I’d give her advice I’ve gleaned from my nephew’s education: he went to Princeton University, one of our premier institutions, intent on becoming a mathematician. Princeton is known for its math and physics departments. After a year, he was disillusioned and floundered around a bit – he didn’t like the department or the professors. He found his footing. He graduated from Princeton summa cum laude with a degree in Chinese Language, Literature and Linguistics and is now a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Poetry and Linguistics from Harvard University.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Boots Not Made For Walking
It’s a busy weekend in the G-S household. Elspeth is driving down from Scotland with her young man, Jessica moved house last week and talks to me about Plumbing, Helen is moving flats in Edinburgh and Lucy and Jenny continue their party-focused life. Geez, the social life of an eighteen year old! It seems every weekend brings yet another 18th birthday with dancing into the wee sma’s. You’d think the supply of eighteen year olds would run out eventually (I suppose it must at some time) but, at the moment, it seems a fairly endless stream.
The dancing is usually provided by our local hairdresser and barber, Keith. Let me explain. I don’t mean that his salon is fitted out with flashing lights, a disco ball and a sound system, but Keith, like most hairdressers, has another job, and Mr K is a DJ. It’s a neat trick; first he does your hair, then sees you let it down on the dancefloor. He was doing my hair yesterday, as (gasp) I was going to a party. Not a disco, unfortunately; but a 60th birthday meal. While he was doing my hair, Mr K provided a moment of pure stand-up comedy. The shop has a large plate-glass window which looks out onto a fairly busy square. He stopped snipping and gazed at the window.
“What’s happening, Keith?” I asked. I couldn’t see because I’ve got to take my glasses off to have my hair done in the first place. You know that bit at the hairdressers where they hold a mirror up and show you the back? I always say, “That’s lovely,” as I’ve got the idea there’s some hair there, but I can’t actually see anything.
“A young lady in boots,” he said, returning to the matter in hand. (ie My Hair; very important.) “I love girls in boots. It does it for me every time.”
At this point the young lady in boots entered the shop. “Hello, Keith,” she said.
“Hi,” replied Keith, then, took up his previous train of thought. “Nice boots.”
She looked rather startled and, putting her hands under her chest, hitched up her boobs. “Thanks,” she said in a puzzled sort of way. “They’re all mine!”
The dancing is usually provided by our local hairdresser and barber, Keith. Let me explain. I don’t mean that his salon is fitted out with flashing lights, a disco ball and a sound system, but Keith, like most hairdressers, has another job, and Mr K is a DJ. It’s a neat trick; first he does your hair, then sees you let it down on the dancefloor. He was doing my hair yesterday, as (gasp) I was going to a party. Not a disco, unfortunately; but a 60th birthday meal. While he was doing my hair, Mr K provided a moment of pure stand-up comedy. The shop has a large plate-glass window which looks out onto a fairly busy square. He stopped snipping and gazed at the window.
“What’s happening, Keith?” I asked. I couldn’t see because I’ve got to take my glasses off to have my hair done in the first place. You know that bit at the hairdressers where they hold a mirror up and show you the back? I always say, “That’s lovely,” as I’ve got the idea there’s some hair there, but I can’t actually see anything.
“A young lady in boots,” he said, returning to the matter in hand. (ie My Hair; very important.) “I love girls in boots. It does it for me every time.”
At this point the young lady in boots entered the shop. “Hello, Keith,” she said.
“Hi,” replied Keith, then, took up his previous train of thought. “Nice boots.”
She looked rather startled and, putting her hands under her chest, hitched up her boobs. “Thanks,” she said in a puzzled sort of way. “They’re all mine!”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)