Do you have the moxie to sit here?

Novels can improve on nature. My hero, Jana, is more civilised, more sympathetic and speaks better French than me. Since I am spending a year in her company I wouldn’t have it any other way. But she’s superior elsewhere: she flies planes.

Piloting requires technical skills. On the Cessna 172 dashboard about twenty sources of information must be checked and – more demandingly - interpreted. Some are more important and may be ignored only for a minute. As I construct take-offs, flights and landings I imagine I could manage this.

It’s the other side I worry about. Unlike cars and boats planes operate in three dimensions but it would be fatal to imagine this as simply a sequence of two-dimensional equivalents of roads and waterways. To gain height you climb; climb inadvisedly and you stall (ie, lose normal control of the plane); fail to correct a stall and you spin; spin… well, you can guess.

Ironically, in the perfect landing you flirt with the stall. You approach the runway slowly and it’s dangerous to fly slowly. The exterior of the plane is “dirty” with flaps and undercarriage down; the controls are less responsive. At the right moment you cut the power and the plane stalls into touchdown.

I might even manage this. But have I the capacity to be observant – all the time? This is what distinguishes flying from driving a car. Remember those lapses on the motorway? They mustn’t happen in the air. There are routines that help but do I have the temperament? Happily my age makes the question irrelevant.

Tagines, etc, are crushing us to death

Plutarch was recently in his local Lakeland shop (predominantly kitchen equipment) while I’m flipping through the catalogue. A fanciful thought arises. Lakeland is not supplying the kitchen it’s in competition with it.

For the first time ever the BBs have a sufficiency of work surfaces in the kitchen (the above isn't ours, I fear) but Lakeland seeks to make us uncomfortable again. Much of the equipment represents options (different sets of pans, mixers, knives, etc) but suppose in a moment of madness we decided to acquire one item from every category: a pasta maker (with a lasagne attachment), a wooden gripper board, a garlic press, a granite pestle and mortar, a cast-iron trivet, and so on.

Very quickly all that delicious open space would run out but that wouldn’t be an end to the matter. Problems of memory and location would emerge, I’m about to handle toast so hand me my magnetic toast tongs; I’ve done that and now I need my StemGem to hull some strawberries. Tiny tasks each with a specific tool,

How many items of equipment does a competent kitchen need? How many bought, now moulder? Answers by email.

THE LOVE PROBLEM Just finished Ch. 4 (5688 words) taking the total up to 22,549 words. Again a child has entered the story as in Gorgon Times, yet I confess children are not an instinctive subject for me. There may be a subconscious reason. Half of GT was a woman’s story and all TLP is. A story about a woman, whether she is a mother or not, seems incomplete without this reference. Or am I now anticipating a feminist thunderbolt? GT went to the agent in early January and is still there.

The blind leading the deaf

Sonnet - Bonden Agonistes
My verse is incomplete, quite binary,
Mere white and black. The white a partial draft,
The black a cave of rude uncertainty.
Wherein I’ll fumble with a half-learned craft.
And while patrolling this white/black frontier
I’ll push against this gate that might allow
A spill of words and notes that might cohere
Into a theme I might perhaps avow.
Such doubts! But then, why not? Ahead I hope
For accidents. A shift within the store
Of last year’s pale ideas, a novel trope,
A signal born of rhythmic semaphore.

It’s over. Black’s now white. An impulse dies,
Dead too the only worthwhile prize - surprise!

THE LOVE PROBLEM Chs 1 -3 16,975 words. Ch 4 (unfinished) 3146 words. Gorgon Times contains no overt bonking, the source of much bad writing by many who should know better. With TLP it’s inescapable so what’s the answer? Concentrate on facts and the unexpected – after all the latter enhances the real thing. Writing GT I fell in love with Clare (I mean that) and now I’m falling in love with Jana. And yes I frequently admit to being a cad.

REVELATION I had three goes at The Brothers Karamazov (once reaching page 150) and failed each time. This time I’ve reached page 103 and I’m wondering why I previously struggled. It’s great! But there’s a good reason. Earlier the translator was Constance Garnett; this time I’m reading the 1993 David McDuff version. One dull and obscure, one suffused with light.

Not always what the marketing man ordered

What’s the best brand name ever? Brasso must come close: short, unambiguous, even a bit of wit. The worst? How about Francis Barnett? A motorbike undermined by the manufacturer’s weak-kneed birth certificate.

Brand names encircle our lives, especially our youth. Reckitt & Colman went global as Reckitt Benckiser but for me R&C is a wooden peg sticking out of a fabric bag of dolly blue - whatever that was. Persil is middle-class detergent but who would trust cheaply ostentatious Daz? Dreft - for clothes so delicate you’d prefer not to wear them - somehow matches the translucent white flakes.

Shell, BP, Elf and Texaco snap out their oily names but Fina falls flat. As revenge I’m inclined to say Finner. Omega’s an OK wristwatch but Rolex is a supermarket trolley; Longines (my watch) speaks French chic and beats them both.

Cox’s Orange Pippin and Bramley Seedling have ancestry which Gala obviously lacks. Who would eat spreadable butter from Lurpak which sounds like an eructation? - the BBs do, but quietly. Qantas was too easily transmogrified into Quaint-arse (by Alf Garnett) to be taken seriously.

Lagonda became part of Aston Martin and serve ‘em right; sounds like a taxi you’d hail in Venice. Noilly Prat overcame English prejudice to help create the dry martini but it was a near thing.

I’ll never drink Byrrh, there was no need to spell it like that. I get the feeling a Stanley knife will cut. Same with Gillette but Wilkinson’s a subfusc hoo-ha. Never let a committee dream up a toothpaste name, otherwise you’ll get Sensodyne.

Where did this avalanche come from? From a question in a 1066 And All That exam paper: Why do you think of John of Gaunt as an emaciated grandee?

Why youth is never truly gilded

Plutarch was reflecting on reflections, notably his face in the shaving mirror (I believe Robert Graves wrote a poem about this). I took up the baton, acknowledging changes in my own face and pondering (gloomily) on the internal changes. I posed the question: would 40-year-old BB “get on” with the present version?

A new variant occurs. Present-day BB would certainly detest (does detest) 23-year-old BB shown here abseiling off a cliff above Bingley, a town in Airedale. I remember that day well. Offstage was a youth with the misfortune to be more badly educated than me. Chatting about Alpine climbing he referred to the Chamonix aiguilles (Literally needles; actually pointed flakes of rock about 2000 m high) as “aigillies” and I corrected him. A decent carpenter lad; I wince 52 years after the event.

Some showing-off is permissible which is just as well because Works Well is full of it. Self-deprecation helps, though readers’ forgiveness is more important. The above example is beyond forgiveness even though, within the hour, I seem to recall I realised what I’d done. Ultimately it was beneficial, seared as it is in my memory.

The photo has historical significance. These days pensioners abseil off cathedral towers for charity and photos appear in the local press. Closer examination reveals they are protected by hard hats, special harnesses, durable gloves and – most important – a top rope. There is no real danger of falling. In the fifties we took a more robust view. My mother knitted the sweater, my favourite until Mrs BB, whiling away her first confinement, knitted me another.

A legitimate use for book margins?

Lucy’s post about writing in printed books brings longish comments. Alas, mine was devoted to psycho-analysing her writing style, forgetting the gravamen (I like taking that word out of the shed every so often and walking it round the lawn) of her original observation. The consensus seemed to be against the practice and I would agree.

With one exception. My French lessons consist of preparing a book passage for precise oral translation “in class”. Once read the book has little re-sale value for the reasons shown above. (Click to zoom, if you're interested.) This book is the experimental L’emploi du Temps by Michel Butor. Experimental? You may well ask.

THE LOVE PROBLEM Chs. One and Two 11,328 words, Ch. Three 1709 words. An unexpected sub-theme emerges. Jana, my American pilot heroine, flies planes in France and speaks better French than me. In doing so, she reflects on French vs English, often jokily. This is so fruitful I will have to hold it in check.

Differentiated

Another funeral. Dear Ivy, quick-witted wife of quick-witted Dennis, both born in London, in their eighties, running conversational rings round lumbering Herefordians. And for that matter West Riding Tykes.

As I remove my funeral shirt, a button pops off. Mrs BB offers to sew it on but I stay her hand. She uses single thread whereas I use double, a practice adopted in the RAF where security was the watchword. We differ in other ways.

SEQUENCE Since 1966 (ie, in the USA) Saturday dinner has nearly always consisted of a hamburger with a baked potato. An unspoken celebration of a different era though toast has now replaced the bun. Mrs BB eats the burger first then spoons out the spud’s guts. I knife-and-fork the potato, skin and all, then treatfully eat the burger.

THIRST A sandy “guzzard” (courtesy Elder Daughter) at 3 am? Mrs BB slakes it from a glass on the bedside table. I stumble downstairs and swig from chilled fizz in the fridge.

MUSSELS Done marinière Mrs BB could eat a stone (ie, 14 lb). I like them but six is enough. The ratio’s the same for rollmops.

RED/WHITE Unaccompanied, Mrs BB would default to red wine all the time. I’m more AC/DC. Stealthy opening of expensive white Burgundy by me is turning the tide.

IN FRANCE I rush into impromptu conversation with natives. Mrs BB would rather open her veins.

SOCIAL PESTS Mrs BB simply lies. I lurch into embarrassingly constructed half-truths and am punished afterwards by Mrs BB.

LIBRARY The fiction shelves are her oyster as, once, they were mine. Now it’s non-fiction if at all; I prefer to buy.

DENTIST Mrs BB’s ante-chamber to hell. I chat.

TRANSPORT Given her “druthers” (Courtesy Pittsburgh mates) she prefers the bus. The car for me.

No laughs here, I fear

Works Well has been getting flabby (Useful adj, Lucy), playing to the gallery, looking for cheap laughs. Time for custard-pie risk.

Here’s musical counterpoint defined: Simultaneously sounding two or more parts or melodies. Sounds easy. Who’s big in counterpoint? J. S. Bach, it figures in most of his stuff. And what’s one of his many pinnacles? How about the chaconne, the fifth part of his second partita for unaccompanied violin. Don’t take my word, here’s Brahms:

On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.

Spotted the contradiction? “On one stave.” Two (or more) melodies on one instrument! Fine on the two-handed piano, but a violin?

For music I turn to Prague. I ask Julia: Does this mean that the line is broken into alternating fragments from each voice and that the listener “carries over” the alternating gaps in his own mind?

Julia responds: Great question! (You see why I email Julia.) Bach is able to sneak in lots of voices through both chords played double stop (across two strings) and then by using arpeggios, etc, to create an implied counterpoint.

And Larry Solomon on the chaconne, adds: ...what looks at times like a simple scale often divides into motivic counterpoint between two voices.

As I write Itzhak Perlman scrapes. Julia suggests “the violin sonatas (may be) more for the performer than for a listener.” Hmm. The jewel case sticker says I spent £23.99 for Itzhak’s two CDs. When I was very poor.