The Trains Were Cancelled

[poliphilo]

We turned up at the station to find all the trains had been cancelled. Instead they were laying on coaches. Our driver complained that he hadn't been issued with a map.

We were supposed to stop at various stations on the way, but we sailed past most of them because the driver didn't know they were there. "I'm not worrying about it," he said.

The baby sitting behind us was sick.

The tutorial was mainly about Great Expectations. We were discussing whether Dickens is a realist or not. In a literary context "realist" means something like "unsensational", "uneventful", "unexciting"- and what that has to do with Reality I really don't know.

We had lunch at the Indian restaurant where we are now greeted as regulars. I had a vegetable Bhuna, Ailz had a huge plate of meat- half of which she wrapped in a napkin and put away in her handbag. "See you next week," said the owner as we were leaving- thus creating a sense of obligation.

The driver for the return trip (also map-less) managed to find all but one of the stations.

We walked home from Oldham Mumps. There was pigeon lying in the road. A car swung round the corner and ran it over. I tried not to look. "Oh well," said Ailz, "at least it died with a full crop."

At the bottom of our road there's a house called Arnhem. I've always imagined it as the home of an old soldier with fond memories of World War II, but this afternoon, as we passed, we noticed it had a huge Irish tricolor draped from the bedroom window.

So I guess the old soldier has gone.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I think your day sounds so pleasant, except for the pigeon.

I have never once been in an authentic Indian restaurant--how many are there, really, in East Tennessee?

(I like curry, too.)

"I'm not worrying about it." How funny to imagine all the people at those stops shaking their fists at him as you "sailed past"!

Does this mean Frankenstein can be laid to rest until the Final?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You've never had an authentic Indian meal?

Hurry on across the Atlantic and we'll rectify that toute suite.

Ailz's next paper is a comparison of Frankenstein and Great Expectations, so we're not finished with Mary Shelley quite yet.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Poor Ailz, though I smile now whenever I think about her reading that endless story and making little notes and frowning and (perhaps) wanting to toss the book out the window.

We just got back from a lovely spring walk on a warm 70ish afternoon and I went Holga-ing. I got some "art shots" of the sun through clouds with greening willow boughs in the margin. We shall see...

While there, I saw (and took 2 shots, which accidentally double exposed because I forgot to roll forward the film) a family flying March kites in the park! The little girl's kite took a nosedive and she promptly sat down on the grass and began to sob. I wanted to take her photo, but felt I couldn't intrude on the family that much. (I am no Diane Arbus, and probably a good thing, too.)

I promise to take you up on your authentic Indian meal, and I would LOVE to go there by train!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's 70ish? O my!

We've had very cold weather. I can't get warm. I feel chilled to the bone, or "fair clemmed" as they say in these parts.

I'm very shy about taking pictures with strangers in. I'm afraid they'll come up to me and ask for their souls back. I prefer to wait till my field of vision is empty.

And yet I love photographers like Cartier Bresson who went round snapping people promiscuously.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid they'll come up to me and ask for their souls back.

LOL.

I had two shots left, and just ahead of me on the path were a very old man and woman. He was wearing a straw hat and was holding her hand. They were both rather feeble and were walking slowly along.

I popped the lens cap off and Holga'd them. I hope they wouldn't mind.

The Holga shutter is alarmingly loud.

I do hope it turns out. They were very touching.

There aren't many nuances on the Holga, so it is up to fate whether or not it was a good shot.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I must do some more Holgaing.

I need a suitable subject. I want broken columns, I want ivy-covered walls....

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Do I have the perfect place for you!!!

Highgate.

I have a book of black and white photographs from Highgate.

My brother goes there every time he is in London.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been to Highgate, but it's a very long time ago. Yes, that would be a splendid place to take the Holga.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I mean the cemetery, in case Highgate is also a town.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's both.

Highgate cemetery is in the borough of Highgate.

My father, as it happens, went to Highgate School. It's some sort of minor public (that is to say, private) school.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I think Holga and Highgate would be a superb match, Tony.

And I would love to see the results.

Broken columns and ivy galore.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, but it's a long way away from here.

We have big Victorian cemeteries in the north of England, but nothing I know of that's nearly so grand.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Well, IF you ever go, please take Holga with you!

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I went Holgaing myself today. No where near 70 though,right around 30. I took some photos of the winter harbour. I can't quite see the numbers on the window so I accidentally wound past the first three numbers- this roll will only have 8 photos on it, I guess.


Jackie - going to see Tony and Ailz would be great fun. YOu can, though, get a great Indian meal in...Pittsburg. Or here.

Or Toronto.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Pittsburgh? My son and daughter-in-law live just outside Pittsburgh.

I'll give it a try there first.

So you went Holga-ing too?

Yes, I forget from time to time to forward the clunky thing.

And the flash battery fell out, so it was rattling around in the bottom of the plastic case!

I think I got about 8 shots, too...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The winter harbour sounds like a great venue for Mme Holga. Will you be posting the results?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I have to 1st finish the roll and then get it developed. And then figure out the technicalities of posting here. But, I expect to do that. I can PROBABLY figure it out. If not, I'll bet Jackie can help me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, Jackie is a whizz at that sort of thing.

So is Ailz.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Kate says you and Ailz should come to us, and we will serve you an authentic American Indian meal--wild turkey, pumpkin pie...

Come for Thanksgiving, and we will give you a meal from history!

Sweet potatoes, corn, cranberries.

Or forget eating and we will go instead into the Great Smoky Mountains.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's very tempting.

And I think we will. Yes, we will.

But first, Ailz, like you, will have to conquer her fear of flying.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Ailz and I need to go get unconditioned or whatever it is.

Why not? You can see the South in all its glory.

We live near the Smokies and--well, a wonderful fresh water aquarium, and the Museum of Appalachia.

You could meet my mother and see the Norris Commons...

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I like the format you've used, it's almost like reading down a list of short descriptions of stories floating on the presswires.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It was a bit experimental and I wasn't sure it worked.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

...and did a little black cloud hover a few inches above your heads all the way home?.....What a day!

To call Dicken's a realist seems a bit narrow to me. Yes, a realist, but also black comedian, master of the grotesque, lyric scene-painter, moralist, etc, etc...and for "Great Expectations" and "Bleak House" one of the two or three greatest novelists in the language.I love those books.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm struck by how accurate Dickens is- and how phantasmagorical. We were looking closely at a passage from G.E. describing Mr Jaggers' office. The place is very exactly visualised, but with a wealth of imagery all relating to death and violence- the skylight is patched "like a broken head," the back of Mr Jaggers' black chair has brass studs round its edge "like a coffin". Dickens is giving us two realities at once- a reality of appearances and an underlying spiritual reality (Jaggers is a criminal lawyer, dealing daily with thugs and murderers.) The passage is also (a third level?) very funny.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

Apropos nothing much, some of my favourite novels are, (in no particular order):

Great Expectations

Bleak House

Lolita

Pale Fire

Gulliver's Travels

Ulysses

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony...(I don't know if this is a novel, but I don't know what else to call it. It's brilliant.)

The L.A. novels of James Ellroy, which become increasingly inventive with language as they progress.

The Dalziel & Pascoe detective stories...especially "Pictures of Perfection" and "On Beulah Height"

The Satanic Verses

Tom Jones

Grendel

Some of the greats, like Lawrence, George Eliot and Conrad and much of Henry James, leave me cold.

re; "The Satanic Verses".

Fundamentalisms of all kinds are the plagues that have rotted the foundations of civilization throughout history...whether in Madrid, Mecca, Salem or Salt Lake City. It is the duty of anyone with a mind to fight them with all their might, even if the battle seems to be a losing one.That a man of genius dared to think critically about the religion he was born into goaded the fundamentalist bullies to a fury because they know that independent thought will eventually bring their dreams of a worlwide theocracy to nought....and speaking as one with an inherent tendency to evil, that breathless bastard in Rome can expire along with his curia anytime he likes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love Dickens. I would add Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend to your list of favourites.

I don't read novels with the enthusiasm I once did. I used to be mad keen on the Big Russians, but I can't see myself ever sitting down and re-reading War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.

Chekhov maybe...

Somewhere along the line I transferred my affections from novels to the cinema.

Bergman
Kurosawa
Fellini
Welles
Hitchcock
Powell

I fully agree with what you say about the Satanic Verses. Fundamentalism of every stripe is the Enemy.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

I really liked "Our Mutual Friend" too.Some of the writing seems so contemporary with all those tortured psyches. I wondered how it could all be pulled together but, fortunately, in Dickens there is always some little ill-used man to pull a rabbit out of a hat and save the day.

Strangely, I have started "Little Dorrit" twice and wasn't able to settle into it. I know its reputation....maybe the timing was wrong. The long and reputedly excellent film adaptation was not released here...too good for for the ex-colonials I presume.

Powell is an interesting choice. He directed many of my favourite British films...and a candidate for one of the worst ever films.

I love "Peeping Tom"; "Black Narcissus"; "...Colonel Blimp";and "A matter of Life and Death" and "The Thief of Baghdad" I have seen "The Red Shoes" once or twice too often.

I enjoyed his early films"I Know Where I'm Going" (Wendy Hiller...what a woman!...eat your heart out J-Lo!) and "A Canterbury Tale"...( a very odd little film).

He also directed the execrable "They're A Weird Mob", a ghastly piece of stereotyping as gauche and insulting as anything perpetrated by any condescending Pom, anywhere.

He was, by all accounts, hell to work for...and I've heard it straight from the horse's mouth, if I can call Deborah Kerr a horse.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A Canterbury Tale is my favourite Powell. It comes close to being my favourite film of all time. Maybe it's because I know Canterbury so well.

That scene where the camera tracks down a bombed-out street and all the premises have notices saying the business has moved to such and such a place- it just makes me so proud.

Black Narcissus runs it close.

You've spoken with Deborah Kerr? Oh my!

Little Dorrit really got under my skin. I read it at 17 and fell in love with Amy Dorrit (weird, I know.) The film is good- and furnished Alec Guinness with a lovely swan-song.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

Not only Divine Deborah Kerr, but Vivacious Vivien Leigh! I know name dropping is a deadly sin but wotthehell...eat your heart out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I just want to know more.

Might you consider posting about them?

[currawong.livejournal.com]

PS: The mesmerising performance of Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth in "Black Narcissus." has granted her some sort of immortality. Perhaps too individual looking and intense for mainstream stardom. She was unforgettable in that role. The scene where she puts on her lipstick is more erotically charged than any in your face American sex-fick could ever hope to be.

...and wasn't David Farrar cute in shorts?...come on, pretend you're gay for a minute or two.

...and Sabu was far too exquisitely beautiful to be sexy. He had quite a career for a mahout from the jungle.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes that film is perfectly cast.

It's odd that Byron and Farrar didn't go further.

What I particualrly marvel at is how Powell and his crew created that Himalayan light without ever going out of the studio.

There's a rarely seen Powell called Gone To Earth (a vanity project for Jennifer Jones- which Powell later disowned) in which Farrar plays a lecherous, villainous Squire- right out of Victorian melodrama- and he's pretty good in that as well.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

The majority of Australians did, and still do, want a republic but our crapulous little PM, a genius at playing on fear and greed and the lowest common denominator, presented an arch-conservative model as the only option in the referendum...an option acceptable to precisely no-one.

When the torpid, sport obsessed, philistine Australian public finally gets sick of him, we may have a chance.Howard has never been seen at an opera, a gallery, a play or a concert. He was brought up the narrowest of Methodists but converted to low-church Anglicanism for his domineering wife, Jeanette.He is at present courting the happy-clappy, prosperity theology spouting, Americanised Hillsong Church Community...thus introducing the religious-right as a force in Oz politics.

The fact that big art shows and libraries have repeatedly been proven to be more popular than cricket or football here, has never been able to influence either our politicians or our trashy, witless media.

The Deborah/ Vivien sories can be found in an earlier entry on my blog about brushes with fame

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've just been reading an article by Tony Benn about the disjunction between the politicians in Westminster and the electorate.

Politicians accuse the electorate of apathy. In fact people are simply cheesed off with the way politics is played by the power elite. People feel passionately about all sorts of grass-roots political issues, but, when- as with the war on Iraq- they take to the streets to make their views known- they find they are simply ignored.

Benn says that public opinion is now way to the left of our Labour government and this gives him hope.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

P.S. The entry is Oct 3, 2003.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'll go check it out.