Pullman's my man!

In an article in todays Grauniad Pulllman says how delighted he has been with reaction to the 'Northern Lights' trilogy which is causing big protests in the good ole USA. To my sorrow Borders has banned it. Not so funny that - I like Borders.

Pullman has revealed he was delighted to discover his novel Northern Lights was one of the most "challenged" titles of the year in America, with numerous calls made to have it removed from libraries.

Pullman said that banning a book on religious grounds was "the worst reason of the lot".

"Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good," he said.

Back to reality.....

.... and boredom. I still have to get the books back onto the shelves but as no-one is coming through the door there isn't a panic over that. The new Phil Rickman has arrived and I would really like to be able to curl up with it somewhere warm. There's been an appreciable drop in temperature over night (snow is forecast for the higher places) so cocoa in my warm living room with the latest spooky goings on in Ledwardine, Rickman's fictional Hertfordshire village in the Welsh foothills, is almost irresistable.

I suppose I should press on with packing orders and re-organising. There will be time enough for curling up later, if the creek don't rise.

Book Fair Finale

It was a succesful fair for this tradesperson at the PBFA fair in Aberdeen at the weekend, mainly because I offered huge reductions to the other sellers. From the public the trade was slow all round; I didn't hear many paper bags rustling - i.e. not many books were being wrapped. Nobody actually owns to be feeling the pinch yet so I have to assume that whatever is happening here is peculiar to this shop and this High Street. Despite their insoucience several dealers did say, in response to my news, that it was probably a good moment to be making a move out of the business and their thousand yard stare got even longer as they spoke, so possibly there HAVE been signs of a slow-down. On a day when the world economy teeters round the U.S. decision not to bail out Wall Street fat cats I'm not sure it's worth worrying much.

I forgot to take my camera but there wasn't much to capture except the purple face of a certain querrilous old queen when I tried to borrow the hotel trolley to take my boxes to the car. He actually shouted at me! He still had several bookcases to empty and the driver he had hired to help him was very ready for a rest, he had no boxes ready at that moment, my trip would have taken three minutes maximum but - 'You leave that trolley there! I got that and I'm paying... ' Er... for what? The hotel trolley?

It's the first time I have EVER had anything unpleasant happen to me at a book fair, although this chap , who feels himself to be King of the castle in the organisation (and to give him his due he has worked hard for it over the last few years) had been ignoring me studiously throughout the two days because I cancelled myself from one of his fairs earlier in the year (I suppose!)

Unfortunately I react badly in these moments and instead of being grave and reasonable I laugh. I laughed rather a lot as it was all so silly. A lock of hair was tossing above the enraged face in an agitated Hugh Grantish way. It only wanted the stamped foot. Laughing didn't help the situation much. Two other much more gentlemanly dealers put my seven boxes (no bookcases because I had sold them and two less boxes than I arrived with) onto their trolleys and steered me out of the room before the prima donna could burst an artery.

Oh well. At least I went out with a bang!

Hair not growing - government to blame?

I have a new conspiracy scare. Chloë went to get her hair cut yesterday. I commented that it hardly seemed worth having it cut because it was still looking really short. "It's three months since I was last at the hairdressers" she said "I booked this appointment as I left last time." I was shocked. In three months mine has usually got from collar level to the pointy bit of my shoulder blades. Is there something wrong with my daughter?

Apparently not. Chloë reapeated all this to the hairdresser who said calmly: "I've been noticing that nobody's hair has grown much this summer."

And she doesn't think this calls for investigation by Agents Mulder and Scully?

Home thoughts of 'abroad.'

It has been a week for visitors, some of them seasonal and therefore a sure sign of autumn, like the geese and the migrating swallows, some more of a surprise like Tom, who got married, said goodbye to us and tried living in Brazil with his bride. Now he's officially separated from the bride and also from his much loved dog who flew out with them but would face a long lonely quarantine if brought back. Tom likes Brazil, had spent plenty of time there to get to know the country and his new in-laws who he likes very much but long-term it wasn't possible to adjust. In his younger day he travelled a lot, even living in Australia for some years, but now has the feeling Scotland is home and this is where he feels complete. It's a feeling I understand from my 13 years in Belgium. I went with a good will, prepared to adopt another country and excited by the challenge. When I returned, or rather when I came to live in this part of Scotland, there was a moment when I felt myself coming back into my body fully from some place slightly to the right - it was an almost physical sensation.

After Tom, by some strange synchronicity (the week isn't over apparently!) Crawford came by to talk about the preparations he and his wife are making to live in Spain. They are booked on a ferry at the end of next month. He shared his growing nervousness at leaving this country 'for ever.' It's one thing thinking about it but quite another actually doing it. Crawford lived in South America for many years, and loved the continent. He speaks Spanish fluently so in many ways it should be easy for him to contemplate living in Spain, but it isn't. Perhaps it's something to do with our age - I don't like thinking that way. I reject the idea that I'm not as adaptable as I once was. Nevertheless perhaps our vision of the future is linked to the amount of time we once assumed we had to look forward to in which we could change our minds and return, and also the ease with which we could earn money to facilitate the moving around. The reality is that European borders are open - but that doesn't make the rest of Europe automatically 'home' to us.

After that conversation Miles and Vanessa arrived and we talked books, writing, mushroom poisoning. Miles had more news of the poor funghi-eating laird now facing dialysis for the rest of his life. The media have swooped on him asking him to 'raise awareness' of the dangers of picking wild mushrooms but as he ruefully said he has his own readjustments to make and recovery to concentrate on for the moment.

Then the bi-annual visit of two book-collectors from England, a jolly pair who bring me news of other shops and the odd morsel of enjoyable scandal in the book trade. They even bought some books. 'We'll be back next May' were their parting words. I pointed out that when May arrives they should ring first as I probably won't have the shop open by then but will certainly have books. Cries of dismay -'but we love coming here and talking to you..' Flattering. Not enough to spare the axe though. I'm enjoying my first free Thursday right now and although I am sitting in the place I usually sit when the shop is open there is a world of difference. I heard the door being tried just now and sighed with pleasure. I won't have to say 'no' to their books, value their books or order books for them. I won't have to make conversation with anyone I don't want to make conversation with for two whole days!

Mind/Body/Spirit

Just lately there doesn't seem to have been as much interest in the M/B/S section except on the internet. That is surprising living as I do close to the Findhorn Foundation, but maybe they just circualte the books around themselves. There is a definate 'fashion' for the books that spin off from the healing systems and therapies that arise and wane in their turn. So many books come out in that genre that just reinvent the wheel so to speak - going over and over the same stuff, giving it a new twist or simply a new name. I have become somewhat cynical over the years but don't deny what it has given me, or what it gave me when I first entered that world nearly thirty years ago.

It took a long perod of illness to start the excursion into the New Age and adventures in consciousness.

At a certain point in my life I had recurring dreams of being entombed in a stone sarcophagus, trapped with my child in my arms. I knew that to struggle would take me faster into death; that survival lay in stillness. Struggle would lead to panic; panic would lead to destruction. The way out was to escape my body through - not my mind but that level of consciousnes beyond mind which I had no name for.

In the daytime I thought about the dream. It was a metaphor, I could see that. I was trapped without hope of escape. I was running short of oxygen and that was no more than the truth as I lived with chronic asthma. Not the kind that comes and goes in ‘attacks’ but the kind that is always present making it hard to walk across the room, waking me in the night to face suffocation, with no assurance that another breath would ever make it's way into my lungs. I needed constant medication, which itself did strange things to my vision and divorced me from the world.

There was another cause for the dream imagery so cleverly put togeher for me by my brain. As a child I spent a lot of time ill and my favourite browse was through a set of Brown’s encyclopaedia in which I found photos of old archaeological digs showing men in plus fours digging up sarcophagi. In one photo the archaeologist was standing by a tomb within a tomb within which lay the mummified corpse, like a set of Russian dolls. The body lay in the last stone cell and the person once entombed in the body had escaped.

I began to read. Unable to leave my bedroom, with a baby, a toddler, a four year old and a crippling lack of oxygen, I relied on my husband for my choice of reading. He brought me Jane Roberts and Seth. For the first time I read the channelling of a discarnate being. It didn’t matter to me whether or not I believed in the Seth personality, what he said was fascinating: There are other levels beyond the material and this is how it works. This is how your soul comes into being and this is how you are attached to an oversoul which has far greater capacity to understand and see than you do from this single focus point in space/time.

Even the pocket psychology course at college hadn’t given me any glimpses of these levels of consciousness (no transpersonal psychology in those days, or if there were it wasn’t allowed to disrupt our thinkng.) Christian religion had, if anything, stifled such possibilities in shallow history, moralising and vague allegory.

None of it was entirely new, there was an innate knowledge I remembered from being very small that the visible material world was not the whole truth. I suppose we all have ths knowledge but like many childhood gifts it usually goes unnoticed. If noticed in my day it would most probably have been discredited. The paramormal was dangerous land; the territory of the Devil, no less. Strictly speaking it wasn’t the paranormal I had discovered, it was a form of meditation but it certainly separated me from my body. When I had asthma in the days before inhalers I lay on my bedroom floor and ‘went inside.’ Of course I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, I had no words for it, but the difficulty, almost impossibility, of breathing put me in that place from which no escape was possible except in stillness and reaching beyond the body which I instinctively understood was fine left to itself. It had a enough oxygen to survive. Panic would have made heavy demands on the system but stillness meant it could tick over and slowly recover whilst I floated free, sometimes in nothingness - I remember the strange pull of that ‘nothingness.’ Sometimes I roamed in places I had never seen where I could run and play unhampered by the material form.

Now I discovered there was a word for what I had been doing - in fact several from which I could take my pick. Meditation. Out-of-Body experience. Samadhi. The Oceanic state. I read a book written by a women who had had experiences of meditation in different cultures. I wanted to follow this path myself although it sounded more goal-directed than my childhood moments. I began to want the mind-opening, consciousness awakening flashes of which she wrote. As a young woman in the 60’s I had never tried LSD. Drugs had hardly come my way and apart from a few puffs of marijuana which took me into my body rather than out of it and heightened my physical senses. I had never had any of the wild trips which others had been through, nor, to be honest, had I wanted them because I was something of a pragmatist (some might say coward) and Ididn’t want to let go of reality in such an uncontrolled way.

Mainly I wanted to escape the present. At that period of my life when my physical movements where so constricted I began meditating again and one day discovered the nothingness state which as a child I had found so welcoming. This time it frightened me. I’ve no explanation for the change except that maybe I was more ‘in’ my body, more fully incarnate than I had been at six and the need to feel my attachment to the material was linked to the primary survival drive. Who knows? I changed my meditation technique to keep myself from the abyss..
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I also read further. So many books by so many wise people. A few remain in my memory now, the others have presumably been assimilated and given me the belief system that keeps me more or less sane.

Queens of England.

I see Gillian likes old queens - I do too, and two of the book-collecting variety just came into the shop. I like that sort even better. They set up a cry of grief to hear that I'm planning to close next year but I'm afraid their visits won't keep me in bread and butter let alone jam and without a bit more incentive I would really rather extend the internet business and peel myself off this seat. I'm looking forward to having more free time. My neighbour asked me what on earth I would do with myself - that really won't be a problem!

Recently my spare time has been spent putting together a family collage of photos for both my grandsons. Now Sandy is boarding weekly he has a space above his desk to fill with pics and cards. Mostly so far it has been favourite shots of his pony but he wanted some family as well. Finlay who is further away but able to shout a sentence or two down the phone at me about his activities ('dogs walk in dunes') is also getting to the stage of wanting some pics on his bedroom wall. It's fun. The last time I did something like this I drew Asterix and Obelix, TinTin, Winnie the Pooh, Moomintroll, Little My, the Snork Maiden and all the other characters that filled my children's childhood and stuck them in between the photos. At the moment I don't have that sort of creative drive and finding images on the net isn't the same thing at all.

Another biography of a Mitford came my way: 'Life in a Cold Climate' about Nancy whose novels I read when I was staying with my mother-in-law many years ago. They made me laugh then and continue to do so. I was delighted when I discovered that as I had suspected the characters were taken from her family life so that once I had read all the novels there were still the 'real life' accounts of these extraordinary women to be enjoyed. It began an interest in the social life of England between the wars which 'The Camomile Lawn' by Mary Wesley illustrates in much the same way, light, gay (I have to use the word though it has been despoiled) way. They were terrible times, not only for the out-of-work lower classes but for the Mitfords themselves, of aristocratic stock but quite poor and with big houses to run. They were cold and uncomfortable, theer mother raising money for much needed help by raising hens and selling the eggs. It's a time that seems to have brought out a defiant frivolity and frenetic desire for FUN. Nancy, before during and after the 2nd war had a difficult life wih miscarriages and faithless partners. She did her bit to help the Spanish refugees held incarcerated in France because the French really didn't want them. She worked on the ambulances as did my own mother and in a Red Cross staion ('writing names on the foreheads of the dead or dying.') Through all this she was determined to find everything she could to laugh at. The six sisters all made it their business to be personalities - anything less than a strong personality would have been a failure in the eyes of the family I think. Unity and Diana became friends of Hitlers and Unity shot herself when war was declared, failing to kill herself but destroying her mind (the bullet remained lodged in her brain until she died some years later.) Diana maried Mosley and was thrown into prison for the duration of the war though she had a eleven month old child. Jessica became a communist. They hated each others politics but they continued to write to each other. Diana forgave Nancy for telling the War Office she felt her sister would be a threat to the country therebye adding weight to their conviction that Diana should be imprisoned.

Love them or hate them the Mitfords were a product of their time and reading about them has given me an insight into my apparently heartless mother-in-law who was always so scathing about my earnest and intense personality. Her generation and social stratum developed a sharp wit,a sense of the ridiculous,and an air of carelessness; an attitude which they never really shook off even after it was no longer necessary as armoury.

42

I’m cheating a bit with today’s post but in my own defense I did tell my daughter yesterday that she should read the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ because it’s one of the most important books of All Times. As ths is Synchronicity Week in Forres I just found out that there is to be a new sequel to THH’sG next year written by Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame) It is already titled “And another thing...”

Then, as the third synchronistic occurence, I found the following in the BBC on-line magazine:

<< Following our piece speculating what Douglas Adams meant when he revealed the meaning of life to be 42 in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy here is a selection of your suggestions.


1) If I recall correctly the "Infinite Improbability Drive" was prototyped in a nice, hot cup of tea. Arthur Dent, the last surviving fragment of the Earth project to calculate the answer to life, the universe, and everything, also exhibited a taste for tea. Coincidence? I haven't got the faintest idea if this is the rationale that Douglas Adams had for computing the number 42. But the ideal way to enjoy a cuppa is when you have someone else for company. That's tea for two, and two for tea. Or as Deep Thought may have put it: "For tea, two."
Ian Mitchell, Barnard Castle, UK


2) We are at sixes and sevens about trying to understand life, the universe and everything, meaning we are in a state of total confusion or disarray. The product of six multiplied by seven is 42. So 42 is a summary statement that we will always be confused about the big question.
Tim Lee, Hertfordshire, UK

If you take A as one, B as two, C as three, and so on, then add up D Adams it comes to 42. Also, if you want wine gums (as I often do) in our canteen you press 42 to get them. If, as Adams suggested, the entirety of the universe can be extrapolated from fairy cake, perhaps wine gums can provide a more teleological counterpoint.
Nicky Westwood, Birmingham, UK

There’s always one who takes the fun out of it isn’t there? Here she comes.....

3) Matthew 1:17: "All the generations, then, from Abraham until David were 14 generations, and from David until the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon until the Christ 14 generations." All things lead to the Christ. An obvious answer to life, the universe, and everything.
KaTie, Watford

Now this is the answer that gets my vote...

4) There you all go again, the answer is simple. Look at the number of whiskers on a mouse.
Churchill Hornstein, Wilmington, Ursa Minor

Victor Frankl

I came across my notes on Victor Frankl's book: "Man's Search for Meaning" last week, looked for my copy to read it again but found I had sold it. That evening over a meal in a local hotel a friend started to tell me about this chap who was in Auschwitz and survived because he decided his goal, his raison d'etre, was to make a record of human reactions to extreme circumstances. He survived the holocaust and along with his own survival his observations led him to believe that human beings can survive almost anything if they can dscover meaning in it. Of course my friend was talking about Frankl. She was also celebrating the having of goals. Which is something I am questioning at present.

I'm reading 'The Black Swan' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Rather slowly because after a while it doesn't grip me, but the original premis does. All swans were white in this hemisphere so the fact that a swan was white was a 'given' and swans could be used to epitomise whiteness in literature and poetry until the black Australian swan was discovered in the 19th century, at which point adjustments had to be made in thinking. He uses this as a demonstration of his own observation that most of the really life changing events have come from left field and are entirely unpredictable. Despite this fact the tendency persists in human beings to try to learn from the past, to amass information and statistics so we can gain forewarning of what will happen in the future. It's the need to control and the need for security that chiefly drives us, but there is also the need to appear to have knowledge and to be important.

Taken from N.N.Taleb's homepage: "My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know...." (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race).

It was this book and more wrangling about religion/creationism in a chat room that lead me to look up Frankl again. Religions provide the ultimate reason for existance t and it was most often those with faith that survived the horror of the camps.

Two days after my conversation on Frankl a customer came in to ask me to order a couple of books for the prisoner on death row she has befriended. One of them was 'Man's search for Meaning.'

How's that for synchronicity?

Since I started to read 'The Black Swan I have tried to be aware of where and when I am spinning a story for myself. I think I've already stated here somewhere that I can live without religious belief but I need to make my life into a story. There's nothing wrong in that - only that it is another red herring.

Probably.

As a side thought: past events have not served to avoid the catastrophic crashes going on in the financial world. Presumably the wrong conclusions have been drawn, the wrong precautions taken. I don't understand enough about the world of finance to know if there have been unforeseen circumstances but in the aftermath no doubt there will be heads rolling from the necks of those who claimed they DID 'know' what would happen.

In came Gregory...

... a nice old chap (probably not mch older than me but never mind) who is a bit of a misfit living in DSS accomodation in an ertshwile hotel which he calls his 'club.' He is highly intelligent and well read; a Christian Jew with leanings toward being in a monastery but somehow he wouln't fit there either. His heavily featured lined face and rather shabby appearance has caused rumours of the worst kind to proliferate about him in the town. The locals are quick to condemn what they don't understand. If he looked as he does but got drunk nightly he would soon blend in, as it is no-one quite knows what to make of him and crass invention is the result. Once we had established that I wasn't going to go out for the occasional walk or drink or meal with him (I have had to make this clear to a few lonely men lately which is ironic because once upon a time I would have loved to be asked out, now I am simply too switched off to be interested) he simply comes in for a chat. He is a perfect gentleman and quite quite harmless. He rarely buys a book but often gets me to order some obscure title for him and as a reward, from time to time, he brings me a polished stone or a crystal that he claims reminds him of me.

Vis-a-vis..

... swooping gulls and talk of sunshine on Chillsides blog, there was a recent enquiry into the poor health of the Scots and lack of sunshine was held to blame. Vitamin D defiency is common amongst dwellers of northern climbs and it isn't only the Scots who sufer from more of natures nasties per capita than people in sunnier places. It makes sense and I will stop blaming the indigenous sweet tooth and liking for fatty baking. Since I have lived up here my dietary tastes have changed. I can hardly be bothered with salads though once I loved them. As autumn settles in I find my longing for hearty stews (and even casoulet once in a while though I still baulk at the amount of fat a good french one has in it) increases. This in turn puts weight on which is bad but I feel the cold a lot less than my skinny daughters. Whilst I was just visiting here from Brussels I couldn't understand how folk in these parts (not only Scots) could allow themselves to get so fat. Over the years I've stopped noticing. Townies tend to be thinner. Maybe it's also the discipline of wearing those business suits that holds the tummy muscles tight.

I very much feel the need of a holiday not having been away for 18 months. not a sunshiney one, just a change which will come when the next grandchld arrives and I soldier south. In the meantime I'll buy some Vt.D supplement which I will feel good about then forget to take!

Hell is....

Today everyone is selling and no-one wants to buy except the chap who wanted Frankenstein. I have three but I just don't have the right edition for him. He declared himself shocked: 'I thought you'd make an effort to have that in stock.'

Why?

Happily Tom could give me a few hours away from this, which was just as well for the customer's sake really. I spent part of the time doing my bit toward equiping Sandy for a trip up the Amazon, a plastic cup, plate, bowl and a smart set of stainless steel eating gear, though in our day it was a whittled hazel stick with which we speared sausages and stirred the beans. After that I set sail for the Captain's table, which was crowded. I had hoped to sit in solitude reading 'The Black Swan' and having Thoughts but one of those Women Who Like to Talk joined me and Talked although I did my best to ignore her, fixing a yellow and black striped 'keep out' aura around myself. I did manage to snatch a sentence or two from my book. One in particular seemed apt: 'We are social animals; hell is other people.'

Note that it is all one sentence. I think it's neat.

Alternative realities.

After two really stupendous days in the shop the High Street has turned its back on me again and I am slipping into a black hole of boredom. So many things that need doing and they are all just - things that need doing. Nothing sets the pulses racing. Nothing grips the imagination. Nothing keeps me awake. A prospective customer came in at 11.38am to ask if I had a book on butterflies. I stared vacantly at her for all of a second (that's a long time if you are Photon Fred racing round that 27km particle collider this morning) before I could remember what a butterfly was. We should be able to put ourselves into cold storage, a semi-cryogenic state that carries us through the dull bits of life and preserves us bright eyed for the interesting bits.

Instead my mind mulls over the Photon Olympics. '...and 1 second into the race it's Photon Fred in the lead at 111 circuits being lapped as I speak by Photon Phil on his 115th circuit and now Photon Fred on his 222nd circuit has just edged into... on no there goes Phil... oh damn it all... bring on the Black Hole someone... for god's sake... oh sorry there is no god... What? You ARE god? You came here today to ask what the hell's going on? Well that's a damn silly question. What do you think is going on oh all powerful and omniscient one.. If YOU don't know, who does... You made it all, we're just trying to see how it works so we can make a better one next time.. Well don't get huffy at me, you have to admit there are a few flaws... I could show you them if you have the back of an envelope handy... meet you in an hour or so? Meet you where? The restaurant at the end of the Universe ... fine if you're paying, but I bet it's all booked up on a day like today...

CERN

9am Wednesday 10th September and so far we haven't all been pulled into a black hole by the Collider in Switzerland. We human beings never give up do we? We're always taking the watch apart to find out how it works. I think that's excellent. None of this nonsense about hubris or 'god done it.' Let's find out what we're made of.

Very strange. Trade has picked up big-time. Maybe I should stay very quiet about it.....

Mushrooms.

Very delicious, and this time of year I usually get a plateful or two of chanterelles from a friend who knows a place where they grow (people always keep this knowledge secret.) I THINK she is reliable but this year I shall take a closer look at them myself before I sauté them in butter. A local laird and his lady entertained their guests last week with a poisoned platter wherein lurked a false chanterelle (or two.) They spent time in hospital on dialysis to support their suffering kidneys and made the national news because one of the guests was the Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans. ( Embarassing enough to poison ones guests, but how much worse to have it spread over the evening headlines!) All of which probably explains why the book "How to Identify Edible Funghi" that I put in the window today at 9am had been sold, along with the only other copy in the shop, by 10am.

It's an ill wind......

Persepolis

Talking of manga (which for those reading downwards from the latest post nobody was...) reminds me of an animated film I saw recently Persepolis, based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The film is also written and directed by her. Born in 1969 she grew up against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution which gave hope to Marjane’s family for a better society but which resulted in the Islamic fundamentalists gaining power and creating a repressive theocracy, more tyrannical than ever with atrocities like mass executions for political beliefs or failures in religious observance.

Fiesty and rebellious even as a very young teenager Marjane’s parents fear for her and eventually persuade her to leave Iran for an education in Vienna where they think she will be safer. Though the decision is taken for the best of reasons Marjane feels isolated in Vienna, surrounded by people who seem to her superficial, self-obsesesd and judgemental of her, whilst taking their own freedom and peace for granted. She becomes clinically depressed, ends up on the streets and very nearly dies of pnuemonia.

Rescued and taken to hospital Marjane recovers enough to ring her parents and ask them if she can return home, although she makes it clear she can't talk about her experiences in Vienna. Once home she finds things are even worse in Iran than they were when she left. She makes a futile attempt to conform, discovers that to do so she will have to compromise all she values most, her honesty, integrity and congruence, in order to be able to lead any sort of life at all and not be arrested. Only when she has the courage to stand up and protest against the double standards for men and women students at the University does she feel herself whole again, but this is dangerous and sadly she recognises she must leave 'for good.' Her mother, because she loves her daughter deeply, tells her 'This time you must never come back.' The return home has not been entirely without purpose. Marjane has come to terms with her roots and can tell the taxi driver who picks her up from the Parisien airport that she is from Iran without feeling apologetic or ashamed.

It sounds a grim story and it is, but Marjane tells it in pictures with self-knowledge and humour and apparent lack of bitterness, so that it is poignant but also a celebration of human spirit - and that sound like a horrible cliche as I write it, I just can’t think of a better way to say it at the moment. It’s a beautiful film.

Courtesan

Kaigetsudo Anchi circa 1715
I've not been succesful in photographing the more complex scenes of Japanese life. The individual figures don't show up well enough, which is a shame.

The Lovers

Two ill-fated pairs of lovers by Utamaro circa 1797. What were we having in the West about that time - Neo-Classicism?

Nichiren calming the storm

Another by Kuniyoshi

Elephants

It's hardly surprising the Japanese lead the world in graphic novels, manga and animated cartoons. They've been doing it for centuries. It's as natural to them to draw a story as to put it into words. This 'Tai Shun and the elephants'by Kuniyoshi is from 'A Mirror of the Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety' 1840 illustrating a series of stories teaching children their duty to their parents, which I suppose makes them the equivelant of the Victorian morality tale and Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By.'

Notwithstanding that depressing reason for its existance (what IS it about morality tales that make me shudder?) I love the print. Look at the rear of that elephant. The blurb suggests that Kuniyoshi may never have seen a real elephant in his life. A huge (elephant folio!) Phaedon Press book of Japanese prints came in Saturday and I have been enjoying them.

U and Non-U

Nancy Mitford and all things non-u came up at one of the family gatherings last week. I remember my mother-in-law giving me a book (Lady Behave) which amongst other hints on how to write letters to lords and ladies and how to address an Archbishop had helpful warnings about U and non U ways. A few stuck with me. One must never have a lavatory brush in sight in the lavatory. One should not call napkins 'serviettes.' Fish knives and cake forks are decidedly below the salt. Putting the milk into the cup before the tea wasn't Done. Doileys were out as were frills on cutlets. My mother of course did everything wrong in her thoroughly fussy aspiring-to-lower-middle-class way. Happy were the ignorant underclasses who got things right by chance and circumstance - like calling the dessert a pudding and having only one set of cutlery anyway so they would never make the faux pas of offering fish knives at a meal. Nancy M wrote her book Noblesse Oblige tongue in cheek, but for some it was serious. They needed to get the signals right so they weren't mistaken for the hoi polloi.

Today I dug out this poem by John Betjeman on the subject:

How To Get On In Society by John Betjeman

Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me

Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know that I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

Looking back.

I've just been reading my own words here for March. There was much more about books and the shop. This is what happens when there is no money to buy books, my thoughts wonder and my interest wanes. A downward spiral which might become a nose-dive I can't pull out of if I'm not careful. There have been family visits to distract, and summer is a more outgoing outward-looking time I suppose, but even Donald doesn't seem very interested in books just now. He is back into the football season, racing up and down the field egging on (sorry, coaching) the school teams. Hopefully we shall meet up next week and even if books are not the topic of conversation the books in his house might re-awaken some interest. There's a book fair coming up at the end of September and to that one I SHALL go.

Hard hats must be worn.

Changes

No fireplace in the living room - hooray! Costa is very efficient and has the resulting hole plaster-boarded, the room repainted and generally looking as if it was always like that. It took him two days. I think he is marketable. The smell of paint is rather nice. I like change. It shakes out the cobwebs and gives a new perspective to life.

(Well that was all a bit staccato. At the moment I rarely have time to finish a sentence so I make them short and fire them off quickly!)

Changing rooms often involves spending money which is in short supply here just now. So far I have spent about £30 which won't bring in the bailiffs, however the new wall space simply screams for a nice horizontally oblong painting (or weaving, or embroidery... hint hint... Chillside what have you got in store over there?) I can't put back the Thanka I had there because it is oblong in the wrong direction! A nice natural sculpture - drift wood for instance....but I never find them when I want them.. and for the first time I feel as if I need curtains... and so one thing leads to another. The joy is that it alllows for creativity. There's nothing so dead as the house that remains unchanged for 30 years.

In my opinon.

My grandson Finlay is doing his best to remove cobwebs by opening cupboards and emptying drawers. Great fun. Especially at 4.30am. I have had three coffees already this morning. Not sure I'll make it through the day. Fin is obsessed with tractors. Luckily there are plenty around just now as harvest time approaches, also mowers and tractors to pull boats in and out of the water, so whilst his mum and I have sat in coffee shops or outside the Captain's Table by Findhorn Bay in the sunshine, he has found parked tractors to gaze at in admiration. The wheels are much higher than the top of his head but he is in no way afraid of them and would climb aboard if allowed.

I am frequently asked for books about farm machinery. It has a lasting fascination.