Sad, Sort Of

Just checked out the end of John Clare's March in The Shepherd's Calendar. A bit melancholic. He describes various insects who come out too early thinking Spring has arrived, and come undone as a result. Here are the butterflies: And butterflys by eager hopes undone / Glad as a child come out to greet the sun / Lost neath the shadow of a sudden shower / Nor left to see tomorrows april flower. All very sad really.

With luck I'll get to see that flower tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Doubt whether I'll sight many butterflies in the month ahead, though.

People Get Ready

Am I future ready? I put this curious question to myself this morning as I was subjected to what is known here as staff development. It seems that I should aspire to this condition, which I might try to do if I understood what exactly being future ready means. But part of me suspects it doesn't really anything very much.

Actually, the answer that sprang to my mind was that I'm not even ready for the present moment, but I might cope given that I survived a past that I wasn't really ready for when it was a future.

Oh, and I just thought of another answer: listening to Curtis will prepare you for most things life will inevitably throw at you.

Summing It Up

Just finished two bowls of the Missus's trusty lentil soup, with crusty bread. I reckon that's all I need to say. Sheer poetry. (The soup, not my writing - though I thought the 'trusty'/'crusty' rhyme was pretty good.)

Counting Blessings

Phoned John and Maureen last night and the news out of Gee Cross continues to be positive I'm delighted to say. My sister sounds more like her old, cheerful self each time I speak to her - someone I thought was lost forever. And John remains stoic in the face of all the challenges he faces, telling me he's better off than those who can't pay their bills and those who have bombs dropping on them. It's cliched wisdom, yes, but very hard-fought and completely real, nonetheless. I hope I'll be able to speak as sanely as that in the face of adversity, when it comes my way.

Maureen is going to what they referred to as a 'memory clinic' later in the week, situated at Tameside General. Didn't know such clinics existed, though considering the prevalence of various forms of dementia amongst the aged the specialism shouldn't surprise me. According to John, Maureen's short term memory is very poor indeed, but I'm hopeful something might be done to delay her cognitive decline. If they are granted a year or two - even more, I hope - of their current quality of life that will be an unexpected blessing. 

No Real Substitute

I suppose it was my lack of access to my copy of Joyce's Ulysses on the hundredth anniversary of its publication that led me to borrowing The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce from the library at work. It's a collection of essays focusing on the different works, and key concerns of Joyce, written by various hands. Well, I say concerns of Joyce, but some of the essays seem to be attempting to see where JJ stands on the burning issues of our times - stuff like feminism, sexuality, colonialism and consumer culture. As far as I can tell the great artificer seems to evade our current nets of thought, much as he evaded those of his own paralysed times. 

I enjoyed dipping into the various pieces and learnt a few new things about Joyce here and there, but it wasn't any kind of replacement for reading the real thing. And I found ample evidence that I'm not at all suited to any kind of academic study of literature these days. A sentence like, To move back to textual terrain is to find Ulysses in some senses anticipating this quest for another means of qualifying the social relations of consumption, which are, in modern times, essentially what we call culture, just brings on the shudders for me - as I suspect it would have done for Joyce himself.

Damage

I seem to be developing an increased awareness of humankind's capacity for causing damage of all sorts as I grow older. I suppose recognition of our failings comes naturally with a widening of experience. There's an obvious danger involved of succumbing to despair as a result of this knowledge. The only useful response is to seek to effect repairs - especially for the damage caused by oneself.

Not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

Just Music

I'm very familiar with Glenn Gould's playing of Bach's Goldberg Variations in his version from the 1980s, but had never heard his 1955 version - until today. (In the last hour, actually.)

Amazing tempi, way faster than the later version, yet Gould never seems to be showing off. It's as if the music impels him to be this fast. And despite the speed every note is crisp and clear. To be honest, I prefer my Bach on the harpsichord, with Gould as the notable, necessary exception.

I'm struck by the fact that he recorded this before I ever existed and it will be listened to long after I exist no longer. Isn't that splendidly reassuring? 

Words And Music And Pictures

At a bit of a low moment today I decided I needed to listen to something that would take me to another place. Was quickly delivered to that other-worldly location via Radiohead's Burn the Witch. Perfection. (And the strings beyond that hyperbole.)

More Fine Words

I'm approaching the end of William Carlos Williams's 1948 volume of poems The Clouds in my reading of Volume II, 1939 - 1962 of the The Collected Poems. I'm taking my sequential reading of the volume very easily indeed, allowing myself repeated readings of the poems I cherish (quite a few) and puzzled re-readings of the poems that puzzle (also quite a few.)

I've just read Philomena Andronica (found a copy online here) and been reminded how stunningly good Williams is at the brief sketch of a figure in some simple action that somehow magically captures the life behind it. You know Philomena was a real person and she lives again for us, for a few seconds, in the good doctor's words.

I suppose you could try and analyse how he does it, but you'd kill the poem in the attempt.

Fine Words

Full and warm. Any man who can describe himself thus can't be doing too badly, eh? Same for the ladies, I reckon.

Long Distance

I've had a bit of a problem lately calling an overseas bank I have an account with to enact some business related to paying tax. Fortunately the call is not an urgent one, though sadly necessary, so there's plenty of time in which to resolve the situation - so hardly a real 'problem' at all. In fact, it's got me thinking about how the idea of such a call (costing not much at all) would have been impossibly glamorous when I was a little lad. The world has got considerably smaller since then.

So much has been gained through the extraordinary developments in the technology of communication over half a century or so. But I have an odd feeling that something precious has been lost. Just not sure what that something is.

Fed Up, In A Good Way

Having enjoyed a thoroughly good time at the wedding of Noraini's youngest son back in early February, this morning we enjoyed ourselves yet again at the wedding of Nurhanisah, their youngest daughter. Which means the four kids we watched grow up in lively fashion back at the Mansion are most definitely kids no longer. Not exactly sure what that makes us, except pretty darned old - but we knew that already.

Must say, the food at both weddings was of the excellent variety and we passed on our dinners on both days given just how much we scoffed. It's a good thing this kind of eating isn't a regular routine. I don't think it would do much for maintaining reasonable waistlines or cholesterol levels.

Taking It Easy

When I started reading Stephen King's 11.22.63 just ahead of the vacation week I was half-wondering whether I'd go all out to complete the novel by the end of the vacation. It's 700+ pages, so it was a certainly a candidate for completion, but substantial enough to keep going for a bit longer, especially if I cracked on with other reading. In the event, I decided  very early in my reading not to press on deliberately. It was quickly apparent that King wasn't aiming for the urgency of pacing of novels like The Outsider and The Institute (both recent reads for me.) So, not a page-turner in that sense. Also I found the exposition a touch draggy, though necessarily so. After all, King isn't the kind of writer who's likely to skimp on the 'rules' he'll abide by in a tale of travel through time and it was obvious that the set-up was fundamental to determining all sorts of plot details to come.

It was also obvious that the main plot concerning Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK was not necessarily going to emerge in its full flowering until important preliminaries concerning some key secondary characters had been dealt with. In fact, I've only just reached the point at which the protagonist encounters his 'first' Oswalds (the brother and mother) and I'm around 300 pages in. Indeed, the novel has a digressive quality I don't think I've come across in any other work by King. For example, there's a lovely wholly idyllic episode occupying the entirety of Chapter 11 set in the Maine lakes in which the protagonist enjoys the happiest five weeks of his life that's quite different in tone from anything that has come before.

I should add that apart from the peculiar qualities of the text my vacation week has not proved quite as relaxed as I thought it might. Various aspects of work have managed to intrude on my time and an intense reading of any text was never going to be easy. So, I've decided to spin out my reading of the novel and make it as deliberately leisurely as possible, especially since the next few weeks look pretty intense work-wise and I'm intending to focus on Islamic-themed reading in Ramadhan (coming very soon.)

Must say, I'm looking forward to gently spinning out an already intriguing read.

Shoulder To Shoulder

It felt strange to be standing shoulder to shoulder again at Friday Prayers. It also took some adjusting to. The brother to my left was close enough to brush up against all through the prayer sequence, but there was an awkward gap between myself and my companion on my right - we were closer than has been the case when the separate areas to pray in were marked on the floor, but the gap was discernable.

And to think that the early days of distinct distancing, back in 2020, felt initially so very strange. Evidence, if it were needed, that we can adjust with alacrity to breaks with habitual behaviour and relearn what seem essential habits.

I reckon that I'll find teaching without a mask a peculiar experience for at least a week when it finally happens. But, I must admit, that's one change in the current way of doing things that I'm really looking forward to.

Getting Involved

As I mildly predicted in early March, there was enough mystery involved in Zahira's Young Adult novel Five Total Strangers to force me to read it over the last 24 hours. It was easy to see the pleasures Natalie D. Richards had to offer to her readership, which I suspect is a bit younger than the age of her protagonist, Mia (who is 18), and is likely to be predominantly, if not exclusively, female. I'm not, by the way, implying that the novel would have been in any way easy to write - simply that it has been carefully and skilfully crafted with its very specific audience in mind.

I'm happy to report that I guessed at the villain, and I think most experienced readers would, but, again, I'm not implying this is a deficiency. Indeed, for the first two-thirds of the story I was reasonably baffled as to what was going on and the 'unbaffling' was done in a generally fair manner - though there were a series of massive coincidences involving a major red herring that I wouldn't regard as quite cricket.

Indeed, the atmosphere generated by the writer made up for minor plot deficiencies. The descriptions of the blizzard in which the titular strangers are caught for almost the full length of the narrative are wonderfully detailed and entirely convincing, adding considerably to the persistent sense of menace. And the key characters are nicely rendered, being as off-putting and petty as cleverish students often are.

Unfortunately for me I didn't find the narrator, Mia, relatable (as pretty much everyone says these days, so I'll join in and say it myself.) To be honest, I thought she was an entitled, self-obsessed bit of a pain - but, then, of course I would think that of a character that I suspect most 14-year-old young ladies would aspire to imitate. So, again, evidence of the skill of the novelist (though I do wonder whether even Ms Richards might have felt she was piling it on with the (necessarily?) yucky ending.)

Things Of Beauty

In addition to the shots posted here last Sunday, I took quite a number featuring some of the rubbish, largely of the plastic variety, strewn on and around Changi Beach. It was my intention to post a few here, partly as a way of expressing and, I suppose, easing my irritation that anyone could have been thoughtless enough to leave the stuff strewn around. Indeed, I'd say that encountering the detritus coloured the early part of our walk - Boon was, if anything, angrier than myself and blistering in his analysis of human stupidity. (He was particularly on the money as far as the policies of our friends at Coca Cola were concerned, I recall.)

But when push came to shove and it was time to show the photos (i.e., now) I found/find I've lost the impulse to do so. I suppose I'm in denial, but I'd rather think of the grass:

and the trees. Well, this one:

Nice to think what Nature will reclaim when we've gone.

Out Of Proportion

Following an epically long stint yesterday at A&E, Noi went for her 'little' surgery this morning, which resulted in the epically large bandage above. It's all a bit disproportionate, if you ask me. Useful, I suppose, if you're inclined to make rude gestures, but the Missus is not that kind of girl, I'm pleased to say. 😁

A Bit Of A Scare

Am now on stand-by to pick Noi up from the hospital up the road. She's suffering from a nastily infected finger. We went to the local doctor about this over a week ago, but the anti-biotics prescribed didn't do a lot of good and the poor girl is now facing a minor emergency with some kind of op on the cards for tomorrow morning.

In terms of the bigger picture of things - easily obtained by tuning into the increasingly depressing Sky News - this is small potatoes. But it's funny how supposedly 'small' problems loom large when you're on the receiving end. I was at the hospital earlier but I wasn't able to accompany Noi into the A&E dept due to the tight regulations in place. I came back for the Maghrib Prayer since there wasn't any point in hanging around and cluttering the lobby and was extremely jumpy throughout the prayer just waiting for news to come through.

Things don't seem too bad, and it looks like we remain blessed, unlike some poor folk. Indeed, many, many poor folk. The stress people face in genuinely extreme situations doesn't bear thinking about. Which means we must think about it.

Just Another Morning

Got the day off to a fine start enjoying a fine morning out at Changi Coast Park. Fine evidence above, sort of.

Something Missing

Had to renew my passport this year. Took receipt of the new version today. Happy that it got here safely, but deeply unhappy about the changes. Horrible black colour and the lack of the words European Union on the cover cut to the heart. Why wasn't I consulted?

(Yes, I know the reason; but knowing doesn't help.) 

The Real Thing

Forgot to mention yesterday that I came across the expression pity-fishing in a Stephen King novel I borrowed from the library. I hadn't intended to read yet another tome from the Horror-meister, but decided it was worth losing myself in a bit of fictional horror to escape for a time from too much of the real thing in Eastern Europe.

Le Mot Juste

Chanced upon the expression pity-fishing in the course of my reading today, and was mighty glad I did. I instantly recognised something I used to be extremely prone to, and still struggle to keep under control. A bit of googling just now led me to sadfishing, which is almost as good, and in Joycean style eschews the hyphen, adding to its expressiveness. 

Oddly enough I happened to be exposed to a particularly striking example of the phenomenon underlying both expressions this evening in relation to something going on In Real Life (as I believe people say, in these days of 'mixed reality'.) It's not pretty, is it?

Here's a thought, though not a terribly deep one. Is naming the thing a useful way of growing beyond it? (Nice to think so, but I doubt it. A bit like claiming that reading 'literature' makes you a better person.)

Pure Envy

Nothing frantic about the flowers, I rather pithily jotted in a notebook earlier today. Sounds a bit envious, no? And envious it most certainly is.

Yes, it was that kind of day.

Something Solid

Just finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. A bit sad that there was nothing of the wonderful surprise rendered by my first reading of the novel, but happy over being able to enjoy the brilliant construction of the tale. The edition I read featured a nice Postscript celebrating that feature of the work with the claim that a second reading is even more pleasurable when you know whodunnit. I wouldn't go quite as far as that, but there is much to admire, not least the unusual psychological depth involved in the characterisation of the killer. Normally you don't go looking for anything beyond the merely serviceable in Christie's representations of character, with the service in question being strict utility to the clever plots. But in this case the very cleverness involves a sleight of hand in relation to the killer's character that leads to a strange, bleak depth. (I won't say more for fear of giving too much away for those who've never read the book.)

I'm struck by the fact that I know three Singaporeans whose English, both spoken and written is excellent, who've told me that Christie was a key aspect of their reading as young teenagers. In so many ways she is the perfect writer for anyone consolidating their grip of the language. The style is always simple and sturdy, with no pretensions to literariness, yet that simplicity is perfectly achieved. And in Ackroyd it reaches remarkable heights in creating what is surely close to the perfect detective story of the old school.

A Bit Odd

A bit distressed at having to wear an odd pair of socks today. The Missus actually laughed when she saw the mismatch this morning, which was a bit thick as she was to blame for bundling the ill-suited pair together. And, before you ask, there was no alternative since clearly I must have been wearing a similarly ill-suited and incorrectly bundled pair to work in recent days and not realised it. 

Of course, the mismatch (in pattern, not colour) wasn't visible but that's not the point (as I made clear to an uncomprehending spouse, who continued to find the situation funny, to my chagrin.) I thought I was wearing my lucky socks, but wasn't, so you can imagine the impact upon my day. 

To be honest, the day went really well, so I suppose I'm grumbling over nothing. And the wearing of the errant socks came after the debacle of the Manchester derby. But part of me suspects the result might just be connected to the unassailable fact I wasn't wearing my lucky socks at some point before the weekend when I must have assumed I was. And with that, I rest my case.

A Drawback

The Missus filled me in on the big insect I encountered last Friday afternoon, explaining that she'd read my post about the occasion. It's the local version of a grasshopper, which I'd sort of guessed at the time. Indeed, Zahira said the same yesterday when I showed her the pictures of the fellow on my phone. But Zahira didn't go into the details of the edibility of grasshoppers. It seems they're a common delicacy, fried, in Thailand, according to Noi, who knows these things. I think I also knew this, but had chosen to forget.

It's a bit sad, I suppose, to think of someone munching on a creature that seems so completely right in its existence, if you see what I mean. But, of course, it's devastatingly hypocritical of a meat-eater like myself to even mention such a reservation. The problem of seeing the particular is the way it undercuts everything that's general about one's behaviour.

Various Mysteries

Picked up a copy of Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from the library at work last week. Now halfway through and admiring the writer's craft. Sadly I know who did it having read the novel in my teens, so I'm not exactly in suspense. Hence there's only the craft left to draw this reader in - though I suppose there's an odd sort of entertainment value in Christie's assumptions regarding the English social hierarchy.

And, coincidentally, I've just borrowed another 'mystery' from niece Zahira. She was so sure of the brilliance of Five Total Strangers (according to the words on the cover: She never should have accepted that ride...) that I felt compelled to give it a go. Funnily enough I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to get more genuinely involved in this Young Adult novel than might be expected of a Very Old Adult. Certainly hope so. I'm a sucker for a well-told tale.

Even More Particular

I set myself a sort of exercise in observation today. I intended to take note of three 'particulars' in the course of the working day, these being defined by myself as observations of distinct aspects of the world as it presented itself to me of which I had never consciously taken note before.

I'm afraid the exercise proved a disheartening failure up to roughly 4.00 pm. From the workday's commencement at 6.30 am to that time I had nothing of genuine note to record. I'm just a hopeless observer, I'm afraid. And then came the moment of breakthrough.

There I was on the corridor leading to the office where I intended to drop off some keys before wending my weary way to the staffroom when I bumped into the fellow pictured below:

The day was happily transformed by the encounter, though, to be honest, I wasn't at all sure what exactly I was encountering.

The funny thing is that I was so taken by the moment that, having walked all the way to the staffroom considering my good fortune, I completely forgot to drop off the keys and had to wearily trudge back to the corridor to do so. By that time my companion of that brief, highly particular moment had gone off, possibly to avoid any further dealings with the big, ugly creature who'd stooped to record the occasion.

In Particular

Just now I found myself trying to remember what the cat says to Bloom in the Calypso episode of Ulysses. Google proved to be my friend, otherwise I would have been irritated in the extreme at not being able to remember and having no text here to look it up. In fact, the puss gets four lines of dialogue in this sequence: Mkgnao / Mrkgnao / Mrkrgnao / Gurrhr.

You hardly need the other (wonderful) details of the scene to be able to see and hear the stupid pussens across the century, like no other cat except its fictive self.

Oh, and by the by, wouldn't Ulysses make a great name for a dog? But it just wouldn't work for a cat somehow. Not to these ears anyway.

Keeping It Real - 3

I mentioned in a previous post my general dislike of jargon in education - of which there is a great deal, trust me. This relates to my similar distrust of any kind of theorising about teaching (which, I suppose, in its turn relates to my essential abhorrence of Literary Theory.)

Will this work on a rainy, windy Monday morning at 9.00 with a difficult class?; or a dull, warm Thursday afternoon when everyone just wants to sleep? And if it doesn't, what do you do to keep the wagon on the road?

That's what I needed to know when I started out as a completely hopeless, clueless teacher. It took me a couple of years to be able to frame answers that generally worked, and I never saw any particular reason to get beyond that. Still don't. My interest lies in the particular, not the general.

A Long Career

Not once but: again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

... with variations.