Byproducts of Spring

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonders where the birdies is.
They say the birds is on the wing.
Ain't that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird.
So says Anon (no it isn’t Ogden Nash nor e.e.cummings). So it’s time to get into the garden and perform familiar acts of self-flagellation. Or should I say it’s time for someone to mortify themselves. Here at Chez Bonden our thoughts are on higher things – literally. Both of us sit at our computers on the first floor and watch our neighbour Brian attack weeds in our garden with self-confessed enthusiasm. Brian will be paid but believe me we have no complaints.

A spring clean-out revealed two items which, like boomerangs, are hard to throw away. It would not only be irresponsible to toss these cutting devices into the dustbin it would be illegal. One of us must transport them to les flics. But that in itself opens up risks; being in possession on the public roads is also illegal. Perhaps I’ll have to use my angle grinder and render them anonymous, like the verse.

The knife dates back to Mrs BB’s dad – a chef – who used it in his kitchen. There’s a touch of sentiment but it’s surplus to requirements. The herb-chopper (I’m sure Lucy will know the French word) looks charming but is being discarded because of its ineffectuality. For one thing it requires a special wooden bowl to work properly. But even then it must bow the knee to a combination of a pair of scissors and grandson Zach’s Melamine drinking cup.

Novel progress 13/4/10. Ch. 20: 913 words. Chs. 1 - 19: 85,903 words. Comments: Hatch bollocked for over-writing.

Both needed - plus a following wind

Julia, preparing to celebrate Bloomsday (June 16 1904), is reading Ulysses “bit by bit” and asks whether I prefer the audio or the printed version. Both. The novel is damnably difficult and I need all the help I can get. The CDs cost £85 so this is a plutocratic assertion but because I shall continue to read it/listen to it until overtaken by idiocy or death the investment is amortised over time (well, I hope so).

There are immediate benefits from the CDs. Jim Norton, the Irish actor who does the reading characterises the voices so Mr Deasy sounds pinched and fussy whereas Buck Mulligan bellows through the Martello tower. Haynes, the Englishman, is a dweeb. But the greatest advantages come during the stream-of-consciousness passages, generally reckoned to be the hardest. When Stephen is pondering “the ineluctable modality of the visible”, and much else, Norton breaks the paragraphs into bite-size chunks which are easier to seize on.

But the printed pages are necessary. Sometimes these aural fancies fly past at speed and you need to re-set the context. Nothing easier when reading, more complicated when a laser is standing in for your eyeballs.

Why read this difficult book? For the same reasons you might read the Odyssey. To grasp the sense of a wearying journey where humans are tested and brought into the comfort of a shared arrival. Ulysses is unbearably moving and Leopold Bloom, with all his imperfections and his much greater humanity, stands hands in pockets in front of me, irrepressibly three-dimensional – make that four-dimensional – as I write. For me the most memorable character in fiction.

Novel progress 11/4/10. Ch. 20: 0 words. Chs. 1 - 19: 85,903 words. Comments: Hatch and Clare - a conversation starts, continues, ends (for now).

The life unswum

Finding an activity which replaces the two vital elements of length swimming – exercise, zen-like absorption – was never going to be easy. And while I appreciated the sympathy and the suggestions I received I was never in the market for a transformed way of life. Immersed in the late autumn, if not the mid-winter, of my expectations, I devote my day predominantly to writing.

Pro. tem I am back on the exercise bike in the shed, surrounded – ironically – by garden tools. Pure drudgery but it’s over quickly. However, drudgery erodes the mind and some divertissement is necessary. In the past music from the MP3 player worked but now I’m not so sure. Perspiration interrupts continuity. HHB has suggested downloading Melvyn Bragg’s radio programme and I’ll look into that.

As an alternative I have acquired an unabridged audio of “Ulysses” (22 CDs, £85) and a portable player (£10.50) - glad to see the two items correctly valued. But there’s a snag. The tracks are 6 – 7 min. long and the player has no facility for resuming where I break off.

Trying to resolve this I downloaded all 22 CDs to the MP3 player only to discover it “shuffles” the tracks. Many would say how could I tell the difference with Joyce but I’ve read the book three times and I don’t approve of Molly turning up in the Castle of the Winds. The lost ripples of the South Wye Leisure Centre continue to plague me.

Novel progress 10/4/10. Ch. 19: 3016 words. Chs. 1 - 18: 82,369 words. Comments: Hatch and Clare - a conversation starts, continues, ends (for now).

Strong in the leg, weak in the head

It could have been just up my street – a three-part TV series about a Scot who cycled from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentine, climbing on foot the two highest points en route, Mt McKinley and Mt Aconcagua. But by the end I was gibbering.

For one thing he whinged: at the uphills, at the rain, at the wind, at food poisoning, at fatigue. Hey, he’d chosen to do this; it wasn’t my fault. Worse was his commentary. Cycling offers time to prepare the mind, yet he’d have been bereft without “incredible”. He said “This is the most remarkable/impressive/overwhelming sight I’ve seen.” about a dozen times. And at least thrice uttered the traveller’s ultimate indiscretion “indescribable”.

All adventurers looking for a wide audience should be forced to read Eric Newby’s “A short walk in the Hindu Kush” and thereafter practise self-mockery and minimalisation of hardship

WHEREAS… Why should I, an unreconstructed atheist, be glued to another three-parter called “Sacred music”? Well the subject was slightly off the beaten track (it’s not the first thing one associates with Brahms and Bruckner), it was sung a capella by a choir of angels (The Sixteen conducted by Harry Christophers) and it was anchored by someone who had got his tongue in gear, Britain’s greatest actor, Simon Russell Beale. He speaks with quiet urgency and has the ability to be transfixed by beauty. Don’t take my word: Harry let him sing along with the choir. Simon should buy a bike.

Out of the (loop: anag.)

Sonnet – Loss, Easter 2010

Because I am the sum of all I love
I am in mourning for this tiny death
And at the pool which saw my spirit move
Toss on its azure an encoded wreath.
I blame myself, I joined a hard elite,
Embraced an abstract petty discipline
Drawn by a fullfelt ardour to compete
With time and those whose natures could not win.
But I who overtook the frailer souls
Was overtaken by my own desire
A sickness stronger than my fevered goals
Left me land-locked, a hawk outside the gyre.
I’ll not repent, I’ll hear again the roar
Of discharged breath, of voices saying ‘More’

Novel progress 5/4/10. Ch. 19: 572 words. Chs. 1 - 18: 82,369 words. Comments: Hatch and Clare - early days.

Not just wings and white robes

I know not, oh I know not, what joys await us there,
What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.

The hymn-writer is vague about heaven which isn’t surprising since, as a friendly and tolerant Catholic told me “we may not know the mind of God”. But we may use our imagination. In fact we must, otherwise heaven is simply earth without ageing and financial problems. Here are some of my secular heavens.

A warm person-free passage of sea over a coral reef where, as I swim, I recall every piece of music I have ever heard, give it its exact name, split it into movements where these exist, and play the best versions extant in my head.
The moment when I realised how a graph showing the characteristics of a thermionic valve (a hysteresis curve) matched the associated maths AND having Auden write a vilanelle describing this.
Travelling back to a geography lesson at Bradford Grammar School, seizing the master, trussing him and thrashing him with a red-hot riding crop, requiring him simultaneously to recite Paradise Lost.
Revisiting in our Scirocco a gorge on the Loire full of early morning September mist with Brendel playing the Andante Favori on the tape player AND being able to repeat this experience without it ever palling.
Needing a couplet to end a Shakespearean sonnet, seeing its shape dimly ahead and knowing it’s excavatable. Calling in Auden again.
Watching a fifties film noir, Flaxey Martin, where the star, the gorgeous Virginia Mayo, is suddenly transformed and is able to act.
Attending a church service based on a form of Christianity which retains the morality, the beauty and the narrative power of the New Testament but ditches the mysticism (resurrection, etc), the sado-masochism of Calvary and the omnipotence of Jahweh. Music by JSB
HELL follows (and will probably be more fun).

Novel progress 1/4/10. Ch. 19: 0 words. Chs. 1 - 18: 82,369 words. Comments: Hatch and Hester - the past is another country.

Another milestone passed (reluctantly)

Imagine I’d lost a little finger or the lobe of an ear. Given what I know of you all I’d be granted some sympathy. Imagine something worse but perhaps too esoteric for sympathy.

Twice a week I visit a private pool and swim a mile. Because I swim crawl my head is regularly underwater and my sense of direction is hampered. My windmilling hands could touch another swimmer, unforgivable since most are women. To halve the risks I try to ensure I swim adjacent to the poolside (There are two pools so I have four opportunities). Other serious swimmers favour this reduced-risk lane and there is competition.

Over the years I have adopted stratagems to obtain this lane but it’s becoming a lottery, especially with the onset of summer. There is something else. As I get older I am more susceptible to stress. And this situation – despite its apparent triviality – is stressful. On the night before my apprehensions grow, in bed my stomach churns. As I drive to the pool I feel sick, a sensation which continues as I swim. This morning I felt I might vomit as I swam. As I drove back I decided that this had been my last mile.

Simple. One must accept old age. Age ended my ski-ing for physical reasons. But here the restrictions are psychological and swimming is something I do reasonably well. It is halfway between the terrestrial and the celestial, translucent and remote. The exercise is good for me but not the rest. I’ll swim in the sea when I’m able and in the pool in France. But not twice a week.

Novel progress 26/3/10. Ch. 18: 773 words. Chs. 1 - 17: 77,929. Comments: Clare in all her glory.

BB and his womanly tendencies

“Women have handbags. Men have jackets.” is how Plutarch concluded an encomium to his corduroy garment. Pockets support this assertion and Plutarch certainly needs them to store his ever present camera, his ever more present notebook, his Swiss Army knife, the complete Ovid, chewing tobacco and much else.

In which case I fear I must join the ladies. I do have a jacket but I wear it only at light-hearted funerals involving basket-work coffins and Pink Floyd on the CD player. For two or three decades my essentials have been carried in a series of shoulder-bags, each shifting nearer and nearer to the ideal. The current one, a gift from my elder daughter, is made of something like canvas and straightaway meets the first criterion: exterior dimensions at least 10% larger than a sheet of A4 paper.

The larger of two inner compartments holds my wallet, my cheque-book, my coin purse and nothing else. The smaller my mobile phone and two pens, all in integral holsters. The outer flap contains nothing, that at the rear reveals a tiny bit more about me. An address book, Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2008, a street map covering Hereford, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury and Leominster, instruction manuals for the phone, and a 17-page catalogue of my 600 – 700 collection of CDs which requires updating.

Why the wine book? Because I’m weak on Italian and Spanish wines. Why the CD catalogue? Because I can’t remember which Haydn symphonies and string quartets I own and this equips me for impulsively bought special offers. Anyone stealing this bag would look inside and reckon me to be a dull old dog. True. That’s why I blog.

PS: That's Mrs BB's hand.

Novel progress 24/3/10. Ch. 17: 4676 words. Chs. 1 - 16: 73,302. Comments: Clare even more alone.