KEV67

I did Jane Eyre and MacBeth for O level. Actually, I think I read some student revision books on Jane Eyre and MacBeth mostly, but I could not avoid the books entirely. At other times I remember the class reading Julius Caesar, Animal Farm, and The Time Machine.

I have started another Clive Cussler thriller, this one written by Jack du Brul. I was intrigued because it had a WW1 fighter aircraft attacking a ship. To me it looked like an Airco DH2 pusher biplane. However this is not consistent with the blurb on the back, which said it was set in 1914, and that the plane was attacking President Woodrow Wilson's yacht. The DH2 did not appear until 1916. TBF, in the book it is just described as a pusher aircraft, with no mention of a machine gun fitted. I think the front cover is misleading. It even has red, white and blue stripes on the rudder like a Royal Flying Corps aircraft. So far so good. It is quite exciting and I want to continue reading. Isaac Bell, the young agency detective, managed to shoot down the plane, and now he has just escaped the port authorities before the police had chance to detain him. I learnt something new: the Model T Ford was so called, because it was Henry Ford's 20th prototype. His investors held faith in him for that long. Another thing that interested me was that on the yacht, Woodrow Wilson had invited bankers from around the USA to head up the American reserve bank. They had not had anything like the Bank of England before then.

Little Adrian seems to have taken to this book. It can be difficult to introduce him to new books, but this one soon became a favourite, I am surprised how old it is. It was first published in 1964. Adrian is 21 months old, and he is not speaking yet. I think he understands some words. I wonder how much he understands of the story. He does not seem to have difficulty in the concept of a bedroom turning into a jungle.

Only one page left. I read the same page of Old English every day until I understand it, before moving on to the next page. Hence it has taken me over a year to read. I do not think it is an efficient way to learn a language. It was a good poem. It reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What I liked about BtVS were the everyday teen issues Buffy was having. For example, her school grades suffered because she had to devote so much time to her vampire slaying. Her mother worries about unsuitable boys. She is disappointed about not making the cheerleader squad. The monsters were a huge concern, but a series just containing fight scenes with monsters would not have been as fun. In Buffy the monsters were a difficult fact of life, but they were also a sort of metaphor for something else. Similarly in Beowulf, the monsters are real, but so are all the other dangers: hostile tribes, feuds, stupid mistakes, natural calamities. One of the scenes I liked best was when the Geats shove the dead dragon off a cliff into the sea. They are going to honour their fallen leader with a funeral pyre, but the dead dragon is just a distraction that is maybe starting to smell.

It's alright, but I think a good subtitle for this book would have been, 'How I Filled My Time Since the Seventies'.

I attended the Unitarians this afternoon. There was a bit of excitement, because it looked like a relatively young couple (under 40) were going to join us, but they had obviously made a mistake. Then the service was delayed a minute while the government sent us all a practice emergency message on our phones. Once that excitement was over the service started. The theme was on the Zero Sum Game. I thought it was going to be a left wing diatribe, so I was surprised when it turned out to be a defence of classical economics, of the sort espoused by John Locke, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It was still a little lefty, because the preacher said those who tended towards zero sum thinking tended to be afraid of something, for example, free trade and immigration. All the same I never thought I'd hear a defence of neoliberalism at a religious meeting.

These are the memoirs written by Bernie Taupin, who wrote the lyrics yo Elton John's best songs. While I was reading it I thought, 'If Pete Best was the unluckiest man in Rock n Roll, Bernie Taupin was the luckiest.' I think Bernie Taupin's lyrics are distinctive and great, and make Elton John's songs like no one else's. On the other hand, Taupin really ripped it up, had huge cred, but retained his anonymity. I was particularly taken with the chapter in which he and a chum were supposed to be writing a film script, but we're having too much of a good time to get started. In the middle of this Elton John rings him up as asks him to write some lyrics for a song. It takes Bernie Taupin 10 minutes to write the lyrics to Don't Go Breaking My Heart, which was a No 1 hit for Elton John and Kidi Dee in 1975 or 76. Taupin meets great artists, drinks a lot of booze, gets married, divorced, shags birds, moves around the globe, and generally has a good time. To be honest I wish I hadn't started this book, because there are a lot of books to read. It is interesting enough, though.

Poor Lucy Snowe. She fancies Dr Graham, but Dr Graham fancies other birds. OTOH M. Paul seems to fancy Lucy Snowe, and in his own way is as find a chap as Dr Graham. I am still only half way through this book, but my advice to Lucy Snowe is to give up Dr Graham and give M. Paul a chance.

She has her good and her bad side. Well, her good and her difficult side to be more accurate. She once stayed up all night to care for a pair of dying hamsters when me and my brother were children.

It is difficult to grade them. It is not often I hear a sermon and feel I was made to think something new or different. In fact the last time was at a United Reform Church in Reading. The passage from the Bible was John the Baptist sending his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he was the expected Messiah. Jesus replied that people were being healed and receiving the good word. The pastor made out that John the Baptist was hoping, Jesus being the Messiah, that he would be sprung from his dungeon. I had not considered that angle. When I heard the vicar and the Church of England (Continuing) talk on the same passage, he said what I would have expected him to say. That of course John the Baptist knew Jesus was the Messiah. He was just giving him a chance to confirm it. I attended the URC church in Bury St Edmunds again. I reckoned there was definitely one person younger than me in the congregation, unless she dyed her hair. There were about three others who were about the same age, but could have been younger. It was a different pastor again. This one seemed to have a problem identifying God as male. He often referred to God as she or her. At one point he also said something about spiritual connection with people of all faiths and none, and referred to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness. He said people at oranges wrongly, because most people would pick off another segment before finishing the previous segment. Apparently you should concentrate on the segment you are eating. He also related a story about a grumpy old widower, who, nearing death, charged his friends with finding God. The grumpy, old widower was being looked after by a Jewish woman who did his shopping for him, cooked his meals and other domestic tasks. The grumpy, old man started taking her for granted and even started abusing her. Since the Jewish woman was not being paid, she was doing all this work for free, the story did not sound very likely to me. Thinking about it, my mother did help her neighbours when they were getting very old and infirm. She even wiped the elderly neighbour's arse for him. However, he was a nice old man. We were given a copy of the The Lord's Prayer. The one we were asked to read was almost the opposite of the version I learnt in assembly. The archaic language was stripped out, but also anything that hinted at poetry. So instead of "Give us this day our daily bread," it would be something like "Enable us to access our day-to-day living requirements." We were also given a strip of paper each. Towards the end we were invited to write a prayer. I had trouble. Do I write a prayer about Gaza, or something else in the news, or something personal, such as my uncle's recovery from a stroke, or something more generally applicable? Couldn't think of anything in the end.

French and Latin. I gave up French, because I was certain I would fail it. I just did not have an ear for it. Latin was the most difficult of my O levels, but there was no speaking or listening tests in the exam. The problem with Latin was that I fell off the back of the wagon about a term after starting. You just can't wing it with Latin. And there are hundreds of endings, and all the relations between the words are held in the endings. So even if you recognise the words, the chances are you will still get the sense completely wrong. I would think "That's the word for horse. That means man. That's a road. That is the verb for 'riding'. The sentence must be the 'A man is riding a horse along the road.' What else could it be? But whatever I guessed, it would be wrong. The subject was very boring. I just could not be bothered trying to catch up. What is the passive, subjunctive, third person, imperfect of a group 4 verb? What is the dative, singular of a neuter fourth declension noun?

I am trying to read the parts in different accents. I am trying my best West Country accent for Harry O'Hay. I am doing my London Spiv accent for Reginald Rake. I am having most difficulty with Betty O'Barley. I am trying an Irish accent on her.

The book has bogged down a bit. I am still in Volume 1 and Lucy Snowe is still teaching at a school in Villette. I suppose there is a lot of Charlotte Bronte in her heroine. I have thought this before, but I do not think I would have liked Charlotte Bronte as a person. She rides a high horse and is pretty judgemental about folks she does not like, which is most of them.

Daniel Defoe was a busy man. I am not half way through yet. So far he has done East Anglia, the South East, the South West, and London. He writes about the main industries in an area, the local gentry, a bit about the geography, and interesting tidbits. I am currently reading his letter about the West of England and Wales. The letter about London has been the most interesting so far. He wrote about how big it was getting, the huge trade markets, the hospitals and schools, the financial area and the government buildings and palaces.

I went to the Unitarian meeting this afternoon. We had an American from Kansas taking the service. Only he was not so much a Unitarian as a Mnenonite. He kept talking about Mnenonites, Anabaptists and, occasionally, the Amish. They were all very commutarian, and it was quite interesting. Thing is, Unitarians are not really Christian anymore. They're deists, agnostics, spiritual but sceptical or pantheists. The pastor is into LGBTQIA+ politics, but that's pretty much his poison as far as I'm concerned. We seemed to have a problem with the hymns. I missed the number of the second hymn, started singing the hymn I thought was next, but stopped because I could not hear anyone else singing it. But I could not make out which words they were actually singing. So I gave up on that hymn. We had problems with the last hymn too. No one seemed very sure how it was supposed to go. I made a stab at it. I thought it was quite a good hymn with a jaunty tune, assuming I was singing it right.

Interesting teaching style Lucy Snowe develops. I assume it was a similar style to Charlotte Bronte's. Class sizes were pretty big,60 pupils. Being thrown in the deep end with no training or any time to develop lesson plans would not be easy neither. Lucy Snowe's strategy is to take down the trouble makers and queen bees.

I have just finished chapter 7. It is not bad actually. I have heard it is based on the author's unrequited love for a professor in Belgium. The first few chapters are a foreshadowing of that. Then the protagonist, Lucy Snowe, decides to travel abroad on her own to find work. I think she has £15 with her. I thought that was bold. I multiply Victorian money by 100x to get an idea how much it would be today. Maybe 200x would be a better multiplier after the last few years' inflation. £1500 would not last that long. I read Jane Eyre at school for O level, when I did not like it. 1) it is romantic fiction for girls; 2) it is a Victorian doorstep. That makes it double girly. I read it later, when I liked it more, but I still thought bits of it were rubbish. I have also read Shirley, which is one of very few Victorian 'Factory' novels. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote two, Charles Dickens, one and Shirley was the other. I did not like it very much. It did not have a central theme. It meandered here and there. Charlotte Bronte had suffered the loss of her brother and at least one sister by then, and I do not think she was in top form. So far, Villette is a bit tighter. I am rooting for Lucy Snowe, although I hear things do not work out.

I attended the local United Reform church again on Sunday. Nothing very interesting happened during the service, but afterwards I joined them for coffee and biscuits. I told one of them I went to school in this town. I lived here from 7 to 12 years of age. The person I was talking to was involved in education and was a member of the N.U.T. He remembered my head master, Mr Snell, and two of my form teachers, Mr Leigh and Mr Webb.

I think that was the answer. In one picture, Harry O'Hay says he needs to find some water to put some pink flowers in. A toad tells him there is a pool at the top of the hill. In the background of the picture there is what I thought was a lake. Why not get the water from the lake, I thought. However, on closer inspection, I saw a lighthouse, so it must have been the sea. Something else occurred to me. Who officiated the wedding? If Worzul Gummidge married Aunt Sally then the Crow Man would marry them, but there is no Crow Man on the farm. There is the farmer himself, but he does not know they are conscious. He does not seem to anyway, and I did not seem him at the wedding.

I think it's jolly good. It rhymes very well. It is a step up from No-Bot, the Robot with No Bottom. One thing that puzzled me was that it was set in a farm, but there was a crab in it. The crab brought some sea shells, which Betty O' Barley wanted for her wedding. What's a crab doing on a farm? He belongs in another book. Another thing that puzzled me was when the farmer made up another scarecrow to replace Harry O' Hay when he went missing. The new scarecrow was called Reginald Rake. He struck me as being like the spiv off Dad's Army and I instinctively started voicing him like Harry Rednap. I didn't put on any voices for the other characters. Then I wondered about the names of the two principal characters: Harry O' Hay and Betty O' Barley. Why so Irish?

Michael Henchard - what a plonker! That is the short version. I only have two more chapters. I think the remaining nice characters are safe, because it would be breaking the rules to kill them off without some foreshadowing first. Michael Henchard can throw himself off a bridge or not.

Wiglaf is giving his comrades a dressing down for making themselves scarce while he and Beowulf were fighting the dragon, but isn't that a bit unfair. Beowulf told them himself he wanted to tackle the dragon alone, and he was the only one to have a metal shield. I suspect Beowulf did not trust his retinue and was bit of a glory hunter. The greater the odds, the greater the glory. This demoralized and enervated his troop. Thus they were not mentally match fit when they needed to be.

That's what I thought too, but why did Christians think the seventh day was Sunday, and not Saturday, like the Jews? It has always puzzled me.

I noticed a Seventh Day Adventist church in Bury St Edmunds. It was in a small, green building near the railway station. In Reading the church that was the nearest to my flat was a Seventh Day Adventist church, but I never went to it, because I would have been the only white person. The only time I saw white people there was when the funeral directors arrived with a hearse. Seventh Day Adventists hold their services on Saturday. That makes sense to me. If Jews celebrate Sabbath on Saturday then why do Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday? I have often wondered, but not enough to find out. I had also heard the Seventh Day Adventists fasted twice a week. This morning I sauntered down the church (with Little Adrian) to check out whether their congregation was all black. They looked mostly white from what I could see. Two women were handing out books on vegetarianism. I had forgotten they were vegetarians. One of them asked me if I wanted to do a health check. I said ok. I read a bit of the book on vegetarianism, which seemed fair enough. Then I took the health check. The questions were on exercise, eating meat, eating fibre, alcohol intake, sleeping patterns, spirituality, smoking, weight. I did badly on eating meat, drinking alcohol and not exercising enough. I am actually not bad at exercise, but I have not been doing much lately because of the heat. I was given my results. My actual age is 58; my health age was 66, but I had a potential health age of 42. It is the first time I have been told my health age was worse than my real age. I took part in some food science tests when I was 40. I was told I had a vascular age of an 18-year-old. I was hoping I could get off with the young, graduate student who was doing the tests, since we were so close in vascular age.

I had not heard of The Salt Path, but it would not be the first biography or autobiography to turn out to be, at least partially, fictionalised. I seem to remember Papillion was suspected of not being entirely true. I have just finished Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, in which Jeanette Winterson says in the introduction that it is not a wholly factual account, and, in the story, muses what is truth, fact and history anyway. Laurie Lee was accused of jazzing up his memoirs a bit when it came to his participation in the Spanish Civil War. It did not help that someone stole the diaries he was going to work from. Clive James' memoirs are called Unreliable Memoirs. They are entertaining, but they are his life as he remembers it. I am sure there are books that are presented as real people's memoirs that are total fiction. I think W.M. Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon was one of these.