Having a nosey
There's a newly-posted
poem over at frankenstina. Written some time ago, it came to mind as I was playing around on Google Earth, seeing what of interest I could find on Street View. One of their camera points looks directly at our old house in Glasgow, and it felt extremely odd to look at how little it has changed in the years since we sold it (can it really be 5 years? More?). However, one thing the new owners have changed is the door - both doors, actually. For some unknown reason they've matched the neighbours in removing the panels (which were reinforced in steel plate by a paranoid owner during WW1, I think) of the Victorian storm doors and replacing them with glass. And they've obviously put in a modern inner door, with quite pretty glass as far as I can see, but have thereby lost the rather wonderful pale green bevelled panels of glass which were a feature of the original door.
I must admit to having ditched the identical Victorian storm doors in our current house, now replaced by a completely anachronistic and wonderfully insulated, draught-proof, double-glazed, all-singing-all-dancing door from Everest (ok - it neither sings nor dances; if it did I'd ask for my money back). I did it because even installing a lethal wooden door sill didn't stop the howling gale under the inner door even when the storm doors were shut, and I don't regret it for a minute. But I don't see why, if you have a modern inner door, and therefore no need to shut the outer doors during the day, you need light to come through said outer doors. And why, in the name of all that's aesthetically pleasing, paint it black with white highlights?
You'll notice, however, that the windows are still a tasteful green (I think it's called Buckingham Green). They are obviously unchanged from the way they were when I was but a child. This puzzles me, but I shall hold my peace, in a Shakespearian sort of way, and try not to think about how concerned I was about the state of the upstairs window frames just before we sold it. Maybe I was mistaken - or maybe it's a rolling programme.
And thanks, gentle Google, for letting me stare so.
Labels: doors, Google Earth, home, replacement, Street View, windows
Culture? Go to the bottom of the class
Today's Herald carries
a big piece on the anger of the arts world at the philistines who rule us - triggered on this occasion by the "demotion" of Fiona Hyslop to the lowly business of managing the nation's culture. Iain Gray, the hapless Labour leader, has stupidly led with his chin on this one, but hey, he's saying no more than the news reports earlier in the week. It's official: Culture is way down the scale of importance when you're an ambitious politician, and I didn't notice Mike Russell hanging on to the post and regretting that his bum had barely had time to warm that particular ministerial seat.
But hang on. Education ... what are we saying about Education, here? You'd be hard put to it these days, if you dropped in from Mars, to know if culture was part of our educational system. What culture am I talking about? The difficult stuff, the stuff you need cultured, well-educated, well-read, thoughtful, skilled teachers to help you with; the stuff that knows there was culture before 1960 (to pick a date at random); the stuff that layers of knowledge and insight build on to create excitement and excellence.
I feel too similar to the excellent Malcolm Tucker to be persuasively coherent this gloomy, flu-ridden afternoon, an afternoon in which we've had to cancel a carol service because two out of the five singers were too ill to sing. Even that small drop of culture is all to often misunderstood: people seem to think that excellence just happens, like magic, because - hey, you've got gifts, you know, it comes easily to you. Rubbish. It comes now because people like us have spent our lifetimes working to sing better, to learn to sing stylishly and in tune, to produce the sound suited to the music, to be the very best we can at any given performance. And if nobody notices, if nobody really listens, if nobody knows the difference - fine. We do.
And that too is culture.
Picture from the BBCLabels: Culture Minister, philistines, Scotland, Scottish Government
The last age ...
I was reminded this evening of how it is possible in the very old to see a sudden glimpse of the person as they must have looked in their youth. The wonderful Thora Hird in one of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads tonight suddenly looked much younger than she had, oh, decades earlier - something to do with the bones under the skin, the loss of the fleshiness that disguises us through our middle years.
I've noticed this before, in people I actually know, though it took a great piece of acting to make me acknowledge it. Shakespeare, I think, must have seen it too - think of the Seven Ages.
And now I'll begin to worry if someone tells me I'm looking younger ...
Labels: age, Alan Bennet, appearance, Talking Heads, Thora Hird
Sounds of the past
It is often said that smells are among the most evocative stimuli, but as I languished in what might well turn out to be the embrace of swine flu I've been thinking about sound and its power to conjure up the past. It began with the sound of my own teeth, chattering. As I curled up in a vain attempt to get warm, that first, shivering night, I could hear them, galloping away in a parody of cold, and the part of me that stays dispassionately aware giggled, somewhere, and remembered ... Scooby Doo.
I have not the least idea if Scooby Doo still appears on the telly, but when Mr B and I first set up home in a relatively bijou flat in Hyndland (red sandstone kid to the last, me) we had the telly in our living room. Actually, that first year we had most of our furniture, other than the bed, in the living room: we couldn't afford to put more than the piano and a bookcase in the large front room until the following summer. This was the first time I'd ever been in the same room as the telly in the early evening, and I used to put it on to keep me company as I learned to cook. (Sorry - read "made the dinner" there). And so it is that the chattering of my own teeth took me, via the chattering of the scared S.D's teeth and the sudden memory of the theme music, back to the time when I worried in case I'd spent too much on meat that wasn't going to last two days and thought that every evening meal should include a pudding.
Lying abed the following day, thinking of nothing at all, really, I suddenly recalled the time when I found myself at a loose end in my own house at the start of my first maternity leave. This was a strange limbo, really, as we were contemplating a move to Dunoon at the time as well as expecting a baby, and two things stand out as markers for memory. One of these is not sound but taste - the taste of Old Jamaica Rum & Raisin chocolate - but the other is the sound of the music that introduced an early afternoon TV programme - Crown Court. I recently discovered it was real music in its own right, for I heard it on Classic FM and it had a name all of its own which Mr B could doubtless supply, were he to hand, but to me it is always two o'clock in 1974 and I'm at home waiting for my first child to arrive. Tatatatatatatumtumtumti...tatatatatatatumtumtumti pom pom....
Labels: association, memory, sound, the past
Linguistic delights
A bright moment in the midst of the flu-induced gloom which currently swamps my life. An editorial by one of my offspring of which the opening sentence was so beautifully constructed as to belong to an earlier age sent me into paroxysms of maternal delight. Further investigation revealed that there was, in fact, an element of parody involved.
Further explanation of this would be tedious to most and baffling to many, but a chosen few of my readers will understand why a Johnsonian turn of phrase in one's offspring brought a tear to the maternal eye and redeemed an otherwise dreary day.
And now I must desist before my own writing takes on the elements of an 18th century essayist ...
Labels: essayists, language, style, Writing
Party time!
This (mercifully) blurred, phone-camera pic shows a kiddies' party in full swing. Actually, it's a first birthday party. The birthday boy's face is strangely lit, which may show another camera homing in for a flash shot, but what amuses me about this moment is the fact that the adults are all wearing the small animal masks, all singing like billy-oh to the lead of the Caterpillar Music lady, while the assembled tots do their best to crawl from the centre of the circle or look totally bemused at their hitherto perfectly sensible parents.
Perhaps it was the Cava, perhaps the excellence of the leadership, or perhaps the fact that Birthday Boy Alan, one year old today, actually maintained not only his cool but also a pleasant smile throughout the entire proceedings - whatever the reason, I found myself really enjoying this party. From the tot in the designer dress and glam black tights to the tiny baby, all of 4 weeks old, who slept impassively throughout, there were no wails, no frayed tempers, and no misdemeanours on the part of either kiddies or parents.
But I shall not readily forget the sight of Mr B struggling with the hand movements in Incy Wincy Spider. Maybe he should stick to providing the harmonies ...
Labels: action songs, birthdays, parties, singing, tots
The mouse's tale
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. And if you're old enough to remember where that opening comes from, I trust you're enjoying retirement. But à nos moutons - or in this case, nos souris.
Once upon a time, there was a small mouse. He - or was it a she? - might have been called a church mouse, except that he never made it to the church. No, this little mouse lived in the Rectory, in a small room under the stairs that had once been referred to as The Bishop's Bedroom but had, since the days when the hapless Bishop indeed slept there, become a dump. As the person who lived in the house gradually dumped more and more in the way of unwanted debris in this room, the little mouse found it a refuge, though there was always the dread, the flaring fear, induced by the Rectory Cat.
The joyful day dawned, however, when the Rectory Cat set off with its owner to live in a rather less damp environment, and the little mouse was free to roam and to breed and to enjoy the crumbs left by the parishioners who had returned to using the house as a hub for social activities. Free, that is, until it became apparent that the old junk was going to have to go, to make way for the junk of the next incumbent - or even, Heaven forfend, a visiting bishop. And so it came about that a hard-working and selfless couple turned up one dreary day and put all the junk in their car and took it to the tip.
A few days later, the selfless lady noticed that a packet of biscuits, left in the car against a peckish moment, had been nibbled at. Her equally selfless husband denied any snack attacks, and their suspicions grew. Eventually they found a tiny nest in a corner of the car, under a seat where no-one would look. They did not, however, find the mouse.
Several suggestions have surfaced among the faithful as to how to deal with this phenomenon. It was thought that a cat in the car could be messy, and might damage the upholstery; poison or a trap seemed likewise messy and distasteful. To date the most enterprising seems to be a trip in said car to the incumbency of the former inhabitant and the former Rectory cat.
After all, it
is their mouse.
Labels: Cars, cats, mice, Rectory
There's a newly-posted poem over at frankenstina. Written some time ago, it came to mind as I was playing around on Google Earth, seeing what of interest I could find on Street View. One of their camera points looks directly at our old house in Glasgow, and it felt extremely odd to look at how little it has changed in the years since we sold it (can it really be 5 years? More?). However, one thing the new owners have changed is the door - both doors, actually. For some unknown reason they've matched the neighbours in removing the panels (which were reinforced in steel plate by a paranoid owner during WW1, I think) of the Victorian storm doors and replacing them with glass. And they've obviously put in a modern inner door, with quite pretty glass as far as I can see, but have thereby lost the rather wonderful pale green bevelled panels of glass which were a feature of the original door.
