Masterly

I speak only for myself, mind – it is my own truth alone – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have – for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

Thus a slightly drunk Stephen Maturin to an even more befuddled James Dillon in their first chance of real conversation on board the Citoyen Durand after they have met again several years after the failed rising of the United Irishmen. It’s part of an extraordinary scene, one I listened to the other day on CD 7 of the Master and Commander set (which I am dragging out as long as possible by repeated playing of individual CDs), the kind of scene that occurs again and again in the Aubrey/Maturin series: just when you think the writing can’t get much better in terms of vivid recreation, at every level, of life in the early nineteenth century, O’Brian hits you with something so rich and illuminating about his characters that you simply want to stand up and cheer. Here it’s the utterly convincing nature of the awkwardness between these two intelligent, decent, humane men as they feel their way towards some kind of accommodation with political and individual failure – and one another - and seek to function in the world.

In these great historical novels O’Brian lets us understand that everything has changed and nothing has changed. This is recognisably our world, though convincingly different even in its most minor details.

Yesterday whilst browsing in a bookshop in which I’d taken refuge during yet another foray to yet another shopping mall in KL (can there ever really be enough of them?) I noticed that there’s a new design for the paperback jackets of the series. The earliest jackets (the Fontana edition) were wonderfully appropriate, possibly the best I’ve ever seen for any series. These were replaced in the mid-nineties by a weaker, but still acceptable design for the HarperCollins. The new design is abominable. No doubt it’s been tested on some panel of ‘consumers’ by some ‘marketing’ department somewhere. I wonder if any of those involved can read? Progress.

Rediscovery

One of the pleasures of being in KL is that it puts me in touch with some of the books for children I purchased in the middle-eighties, before coming to Singapore. I shipped these over only when I had the storage space, with the house here and lack of contact with them has led to an odd combination of almost familiarity mixed with the distinctly strange. Yesterday I read Jan Marks’s tasty collection of short stories Nothing To Be Afraid Of and found a story that I’ve vaguely recalled over the years in Singapore in situations when students are being pulled every which way regarding different activities they are forced to attend and just don’t know what to do about it. But until yesterday I’d forgotten who wrote the tale and quite how it dealt with the situation.

The story in question is entitled The Choice is Yours and, as I realised when I first read it, it’s a gem. It’s strength lies partly in the utter believability of the absurd situation in which the protagonist finds herself – needing to attend at one and the same time her regular choir practice and an unscheduled but vital training session for the school’s hockey team – but mainly in the devastatingly acid portraits of the teachers involved. Each of them is good at what she does, and knows it. Each is using the situation to put on a kind of performance for the rest of the students dutifully assembled to do the right thing. Each is completely callous, ensuring that the full responsibility for attempting to reconcile an impossible situation falls on the shoulders of the weakest person in the power struggle being played out.

Jan Mark makes you detest both and yet see just how common such types are in a school. Unnervingly she makes you realise (if you’re a teacher) that you just might be one of them. I suppose that’s what makes a genuine horror story.

Out Loud

We’ve been playing host to Mei and Boon from Singapore since Monday, and they’ve just gone back. As always, having Boon around was most productive in terms of opening up wide-ranging conversations and a discussion regarding the virtues of hearing stuff read aloud, provoked by Mei noticing my Master and Commander CDs, proved particularly interesting.

To my surprise both our guests talked about how much they don’t appreciate the experience of being read to. Now I take it for granted that the general populace would regard being read to as one of life’s finer experiences and still find myself at quite a loss as to how there are those who might and do think otherwise. So I need to consider the possibility that one of the few absolute certainties I hold to regarding what works in a classroom and should take place there is not quite so certain or absolute or both.

This (previously) absolute certainty is or, rather, was, that students, of all ages, should be read aloud to, regularly. And what should be read aloud is, well, broadly speaking creative stuff – poetry, drama, fiction – material that in some sense benefits from performance. In what sense do I consider doing so educational? To be honest I’m too lazy to bother to figure out what good it does. I just know it works in terms of keeping the troops fruitfully occupied and kids seem to like it. I liked it when I was at school, though there was precious little of it in the early years of secondary school. But up to that point it regularly featured in lessons. Curiously we did a great deal of it at ‘A’ level and no one seemed to think it odd. Quite the opposite. We got through whole swathes of the first half of Emma.

One thing it does is to create a sense of a shared experience. Somehow a text seems to mean more when listened to by a whole lot of people together. The experience often generates an excitement that goes beyond anything an individual would be likely to experience. Even when it doesn’t, when a novel is simply going down well enough to be accepted by a class, there’s still a sense of happy acceptance that accompanies the reading aloud lesson.

As far as I can tell in Singapore there is no tradition of such reading at all in schools. I asked Fi Fi the other day whether she was read to in primary school at all and the answer was a simple no, never. Sad really. A sort of built in deprivation. Maybe that’s why Mei & Boon find it impossible to relate to the idea of the experience.

And now for something completely different: we’ve just had to chase a monkey off our roof. Just one more of the trials of home ownership.

Activities

Running (6 laps of the taman), swimming, shopping (Mid-valley Megamall – just got back), drinking (tea at Dunkin’ Donuts), eating (at Madam Kwan’s, tasty.) Oh, and reading Popper’s scything (and necessary) attack on Plato in The Open Society And Its Enemies.

Old Favourites

I’m trying to make good use of the opportunity to get a decent amount of reading done and brought over a number of books from Singapore to get stuck into. However, as a result of visits to bookshops at Times Square and KLCC last week I found myself supplementing these supplies with three essential items I could not resist purchasing: Peter Ackroyd’s most recent novel The Fall of Troy; David Lodge’s The Year of Henry James, for the most part an extended essay on the writing of Author, Author his novel about James; and Daniel J. Levitin’s rather clumsily titled This Is Your Brain On Music, an account, among other things, of what happens to us mentally when we listen to music. All three slipped down very easily indeed, which I think is a pretty good justification of the expenditure involved.

Now I come to think of it, Ackroyd and Lodge are probably my two favourite novelists, and writers on literature generally, among currently publishing writers. It’s unusual for me to be able to say I’ve read everything by a particular writer but this is almost the case with these two and I would regard First Light and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (Ackroyd) and Therapy and Small World (Lodge) as the novels I’ve read with the greatest pleasure in the last few years.

Ackroyd’s last few novels (from Milton in America onwards) have lacked the intensity of the two I cite above but, like those of Lodge, they guarantee entertainment and The Fall of Troy was no exception. Generally I’d say Lodge was much more the consistent of the two and I was surprised to find out from The Year of Henry James that sales for Author, Author were disappointing, though the clash with Colm Toibin’s The Master (which I still haven’t read and really must get round to) would seem to account for this to some degree. Whilst buying the Henry James book I noticed there was a new novel by Lodge for sale but I didn’t like the size or design of the paperback at all. So I put it on hold, for the moment at least. I think it relates to the deafness Lodge suffers from, mentioned in The Year of Henry James.

On The Move

Yesterday: the taman run; ten-pin bowling at Ampang Point; a pasar malam somewhere near Wangsa Maju – then Home James, and don’t spare the horses.

Today (in prospect, menu subject to availability): the taman run; swimming; tea at Hamzah’s; then a drive to Melaka and rest. We’re intending to drop off several squad members in Melaka who are back at school next week. The it will be back here on Sunday to a slimmer quieter household.

It’s all go!

On Visual

Some pictures of what we’ve been up to. The romantic one of me and the missus, with the big food in the background, comes from last week’s anniversary dinner.

Full House

Hamzah & Sharifah came round today with the rest of the family to celebrate Sabrina’s birthday and, with the arrival of Tinid & Fajar to help scoff the mee hong kong and pizza & cake, we put together something of a family reunion. This ended with the usual disputes as to who intended to stay where and one particularly broken-hearted little girl who didn’t the chance to join us for the night. (There is no pain like that unto a six-year-old denied what she really, really wants.) No doubt we’ll eventually enjoy her company in future, though, given the flexibility of our extended family.

That's Entertainment

Our arrival at the KL Tower yesterday proved to be a signal for the heavens to open and release torrents of rain. We sent the kids up the tower to view the capital through the greyness while we grabbed an overpriced cup of tea down below. They weren’t up there for so long though and soon descended to munch through two packets of oreos which Mak Ndak had sensibly brought along.

After that it was off to Times Square, an extraordinarily large mall with little to recommend it other than a fairly decent Borders Bookshop and an indoor roller coaster. Oh, and there’s a sort of amusement park with lots of improbably noisy machines, which proved to be a good spot to occupy the troops for a while. One curious feature of this mall is the fact that it’s obviously too big to fill up. It has ten floors, but beyond the sixth floor there are lots of vacant spaces and the massive eating area situated at the top is distinguished by its lack of customers.

Like so many malls it has a distinctive hollow raw echoey quality. I suppose this must be a good thing since so many people flock to these places. Like the vacant lots. Somebody, somewhere knows what they doing. Or possibly not.

And the late, breaking news today: we’re just back from watching Prince Caspian and the price of petrol in Malaysia will be shooting up from 2.00 tomorrow morning.

Making Connections

I wasn’t able to post yesterday. As I discovered last December there seem to be occasions when access to this Far Place from KL is limited, I think due to the slow connection speed (or whatever they call it) to the Internet. Anyway, here’s what I wrote yesterday, better late than never, I suppose:

Yesterday’s journey north was not exactly a smooth one, though we’ve known considerably worse. The first hitch occurred going through immigration on the Singapore side at Tuas. For some reason the authorities decided to stop every vehicle and check the thumbprints of all adults. Of course this created something of a jam, not a particularly bad one but irritating in its completely artificial nature. We’d not seen anything about such ‘enhanced security’ (I quote the young man taking my thumbprint) in the papers so it didn’t help that we weren’t expecting it. We assumed this had something to do with the Mas Selamat fiasco but it was difficult to be sure. I pointed out to Noi that it was unlikely even that master of disguise would have been able to transform himself into either of us so it seemed pretty useless to bother checking our prints.

Anyway we pressed on with two of our nieces in the back, picked up at Woodlands, to Melaka, where we added another three assorted nieces/nephews and one maid, having switched to a bigger vehicle. Sulis came on board to visit a friend in KL and do some cleaning for us (for which, I hasten to explain, we’ll amply reward her – no exploitation from us.) We also took the opportunity to replenish ourselves with a pot of Mak’s fine teh tarik plus a number of just cooked, succulent epok epok (curry puffs), which was a good thing as it turned out since we didn’t get to eat until late in the evening having got stuck in a major jam at Seremban. This appeared to have been caused simply by the sheer volume of traffic making its way to Kuala Lumpur, serving as a reminder to try and avoid coming up here on a Sunday evening in future.

Arriving on the hill we stopped off to eat at the Indian restaurant, roti prata being the popular dish of the evening, allowing Noi and I to reflect on the fact that the cost of living increases considerably with five young hungry mouths to feed. Again it was good to be fortified against the slings and arrows of what was waiting around the corner. The following problems manifested themselves upon arrival: smelly decayed food needing to be removed from the fridge as the electricity had been cut off at some point; no television (to keep the troops occupied) as Astro had decided to change smart cards to enhance their service and we couldn’t get the new one to function; a temperamental DVD/VCD player that wouldn’t (play); five kids who’d been cramped up in a van from Melaka with lots of energy to spare and only our house to exhibit it in.

I manfully went to bed as soon as I had the opportunity.

Most of the problems are now fixed and it seems our squad strength is due to further increase as Sharifah is now visiting with several more nephews & nieces and looks set to leave at least two of them behind. What larks!

I should point out that the squad strength has now increased by two (the number of Sharifah’s offspring left behind yesterday) and breakfast this morning was a major undertaking. Thank goodness for baked beans!