True Grit

Our month of fasting begins two weeks from today. I'm thinking of the challenge to come with the usual mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Lots of the latter this year since the month neatly coincides with the busiest time of my working year.

It was particularly hot last Friday. Walking to the Sungai Petai Mosque, exposed to the sun, was a reminder of how important the climate can be to one's experience of fasting. But I'm incredibly lucky to be able to take shelter from the elements, even at my busiest. Chatting with Fuad about the upcoming Ramadhan we both noted that if it proves as hot as it was in Alor Gajah over the weekend we'd probably struggle. Then my brother-in-law reminded me of the workers he encounters on building sites he's monitoring and how they sustain the fast no matter what, in the most extreme conditions, at the limit of endurance.

These are not guys you hear of getting picked out for their strength of character. But, my goodness, they should be.

A Lonely Place

It's a cliché to talk of how comfortable Ms Christie's murders are. Even when the envelope is being pushed a little, as with Hastings absolutely being prepared to do away with someone in cold blood (to protect his daughter, of course) the reader doesn't have any sense of the solid ground of good old social reality trembling over much. (After all, the blighter in question would have deserved it had it taken place which it assuredly didn't.)

We need that sort of comfort in our reading occasionally - at least I do. But even as I'm being comforted by things nicely as they are, or should be, I detect a faint longing to be reminded of things disturbingly as they could be, and perhaps are, when the blinkers are off.

That's what Sylvia Plath has to offer, and in her final poems (end of 1962, beginning of 1963), which I'm currently staggering through, I find myself with some reluctance joining her, at moments, in that place in which the very act of existence is one of extreme discomfort. Is this how things really are? Not for me, I'm thankful to say, but for SP the reader recognises a breakthrough into chilling, uncompromising, absolute truth.

The Queen Of Crime

As a little lad I always thought that Agatha Christie must be up there in the very top rank of writers. My mother and sister read her with a passion and I can remember reading a battered paperback of Lord Edgware Dies that had seemed to hang around the house for ages (and very unusually so since we just didn't have books, other than those from the library, in the house) feeling very grown up to do so. And very frustrated that I couldn't work out whodunnit, not quite realising that that was the whole point of the exercise.

Over the years I came to read a few of her books, but my main exposure to the oeuvre has been through movies and tv series, which seems to me to be appropriate in this case. It's been a long time since I read an actual novel and I was thinking I'd correct the omission, and perhaps reassess her qualities as a writer when I came across a cheapo cheapo second hand copy of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case the other day at Bras Basah. Today was a golden opportunity to read what seems to me a thoroughly entertaining, professional performance, with more wit than I expected or remembered - but little else. Very theatrical - most appropriately so, given the title. It's easy to see why she translates so well to the stage and screen.

So not there in the top rank by a long, long way. But distinctly in a league of her own. Not a bad place to be.

Assessing The Damage

I've come to realise the extent to which the performance of the solat, the five-times-a-day ritual Islamic prayer, quite apart from anything else acts as a sort of barometer of physical well-being. It is in part a physical act, and a mildly demanding one, and being able to pray without undue creaking is a reassuring indication that's one's body is maintaining some degree of flexibility and strength. And since I've found myself, in recent years, having to compromise by sometimes using a chair to do the necessary, it's particularly heartening to go for a stretch of time without undue discomfort being involved.

Yesterday, when we were stuck in a jam heading towards Tuas, I did wonder whether I'd be capable of doing the dawn prayer in normal fashion, or even the Friday congregational prayer at the mosque. The problem was that for a good hour or so the jam became chaotic with cars cutting across each other and a high degree of concentration and, I'm sorry to say, aggression was involved in order to make progress. I remain capable of both even in my dotage (quite a lot, actually) but I could feel the physical toll being taken. My right leg and especially the knee were aching spectacularly by the time we got through and I still had a good three hours of motoring to do. Do it I did, but had to tenderly ease myself into the coffee shop where we had a quick bite at upon completing our journey. I seriously wondered what state I would wake in, I can tell you.

To my relief I woke up aware of a degree of strain remaining, but nothing serious enough to stand in the way of business as usual. And now, after getting back from the little mosque at Sungai Petai just down the road from Mak's house, whence I enjoyed a good walk, I'd say I'm fully recovered from the travails of yesterday evening, with just a little tenderness in my nether regions as a reminder of the inevitable depredations of age.

In contrast I'm sad to report that Fuad arrived here for the family weekend in the early hours of the morning with serious damage to his car. He was about to go through the Malaysian customs around 3.30 am, having elected to travel once the serious jams had cleared, when another car rammed into him at some speed. It seems the driver of the offending vehicle had dropped his handphone and decided it would be a good idea to bend down and pick it up without actually stopping. Good grief!

A painful reminder that as long as you get there in the end without undue incident or damage, it doesn't much matter how difficult the journey is.

Breathing Space

Now planning for the long weekend ahead. It's nice to keep reasonably busy. But when you're unreasonably busy it's even better to stop. For a day or two, at least.

Worth Preserving

On the whole I prefer conservation to destruction, but frankly I can easily think of a number of buildings that the world would be better without. The ones that most readily spring to mind have appeared in the last thirty years or so.

So it's particularly ironic that last night we came close to losing a building we cannot easily do without in its embodiment of that which we most deeply aspire to. But it wasn't lost and chances are it will rise again. Good.

Unfortunately it's dreadfully easy to think of so much else we are in severe danger of losing that is beyond restoration.

New Words For Old

Stumbled upon the word caliginous over the weekend, in some work I was marking. I couldn't recall coming across it before, but it looked sort of meaningful in context and seemed used with assurance - as opposed to being something misheard, or a more common term being mangled. I looked it up and it turned out to mean something along the lines of dark or dim or misty. It has a respectable Latin origin and at least one on-line source marks it as archaic, but the Ngram Viewer indicates quite a steep increase in use since 2000, with the lowest usage belonging to the 1940s. Must ask the student where they got it from.
 
I think this is the first time I've ever failed to recognise a word used in work I've been marking, apart from ridiculous academic jargon, that is. It was a salutary experience. I suppose people with quite narrow vocabularies experience what I felt all the time: a sort of mild irritation at being excluded from the discourse, and a deeper sense of inadequacy at being not quite good enough to grasp what was in front of me.

I'm not too sure I want to commit the word to memory, or active use though. It seems too arcane. Mind you, it features in The Wizard of Oz, it seems, used of the Tin Man. I did wonder if Milton had jammed it somewhere into his great epic, but Johnson's Dictionary doesn't attribute it to our Puritan poet, so I figure not. 

Shrinkage

Just got back from living the high life at the McDonald's at West Coast Park. The McWraps, our default choice at the Golden Arches, are definitely shrinking. We may desert them. But actually the smaller size didn't bother me at all. In fact I felt somewhat more righteous than usual since I'd hit the gym earlier and eating a fairly small portion seemed to add to my general sense of robust health.

I'm pretty sure that a few years back I would have been intensely irritated at not being able to feed my face sufficiently. But one of the great advantages of aging is the way that it comes with a distinct shrinkage of appetite. It certainly makes life that bit simpler.

Mind you, I do rather fancy a curry puff at this very moment, and I'm just off to satisfy the craving. Bye, bye.

Something Sad

Saddened by footballer Danny Rose's recent comments on how he's looking forward to getting out of the beautiful game in four years or so, as a result of all the racism he's subjected to from certain 'fans'. The fact that the treatment he receives is so hurtful, even after all his years in the game, is a reminder of just how vile such racism is. I naively thought that the problem had been solved, at least in the EPL, but unless you're at the real cutting edge and facing the nastiness you just can't know.

Deeply impressive to consider how so many of those at the cutting edge succeed despite all this. Wonderful to see Raheem Sterling, particularly, being prepared to shine a light on the situation and demand change, especially after the obnoxious treatment he's been subjected to in the press.

A Mystery

I guessed it would be a day of challenges when my phone decided to ring someone of its own accord (yes, really) early this morning. And so it proved. Fortunately none of the problems proved insurmountable, though I still have no idea why a switched-off phone, safely in my pocket, felt it would be a good idea to attempt to initiate a conversation.