Greetings From KL

Noi & I decided to take advantage of the long weekend afforded by the holiday for Good Friday and come up to Maison KL to put the place in order. This has included managing to finally get back on-line here after a hiatus stretching back to November. Cursed by a faulty modem and a sometimes temperamental supply of electricity to the plug sockets below the computer table, compounded by the inability to stay here long enough to get these problems fixed, it has sometimes felt as if we’d never be webbed-up again. However, my brother-in-law, Hamza’s, expert intervention has put an end to our woes. And so here I am, finally on the blog from KL. All told the last few days have been busy ones. I needed to prepare for a lesson observation on Tuesday and have some files checked on Wednesday, as well as having some involvement in quite a big event for the department, a speech competition culminating in a sort of assembly-style final on Thursday. I can’t say any of this was unduly onerous being accustomed to these aspects of the job, and it all went off without too many headaches – but it did tend to eat up time, leaving me beat by Thursday evening. Oh, and I went to see West Side Story as performed by one of our junior colleges in Singapore on Wednesday night. That was tiring, but enormously rewarding. Watching young people perform on stage with energy, exuberance and not a little talent is a fine way to spend an evening. The splendid dance routines alone made attendance worthwhile.

I found a bit of time on Friday to get some reading done, in between protracted naps. I finished The Van over which I still have mixed - though mainly positive - feelings. There were several sequences which were as good as anything in the earlier novels, particularly the scenes involving Ireland’s progress in the World Cup, but I felt the whole thing was just a bit too long and a bit predictable. A bit too spelt out, I suppose. Having put down The Van I found myself picking up Samuel Beckett’s More Pricks Than Kicks. From one fine Irish writer to another – though I don’t think one can accuse Beckett of spelling out anything, or of being particularly Irish. But he is very funny (like Doyle) – at least when you manage to get the hang of what’s going on.I also embarked on Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book.

I’ve been intending to read this for months since acquiring a rather tasty edition with useful notes (at the foot of the page, by the way, where all good notes should be.) What is it I find so attractive about book-length narrative poems? I suppose partly it’s the sense that anyone who has bothered to craft something of this size probably has got something worth saying. Also the feeling that something’s come along that you can really let yourself sink into, ignoring human voices long enough to drown. Never underestimate the value of literature as escapism.