Did They Get a Look In?

Because I am not nearly such a noble parent as my husband - (he plodded off with children who became fascinated by the story, accompanying them patiently while they watched the film time and time again) - I only saw Titanic once. 

From my faint memory of that one viewing, I don't think the people in the engine room got a mention in the whole extravaganza. But I am glad to say that in Liverpool there is a splendid monument to the memory of the 244 men who died while trying to maintain the Titanic in enough of a working condition to allow at least some of its passengers to escape as it sank. For more about the monument, follow this link.

Reverse Process

Returning to England after the forced absence of lockdowns, I read this passage in a newspaper:

"Every time I return to England from abroad, the country seems a little more run-down than when I went away; its streets a little shabbier; its railway carriages and restaurants a little dingier ... and the vainglorious rhetoric of politicians a little more fatuous."

"Yes, yes", I thought, "my sentiments exactly."

But, hang on, these were words written by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1963 - my halcyon days! What? Is it not England that has changed, but me?

Fruit, as it matures, ripens and becomes sweeter, but do people - well, me - become sourer, following the ripening process but in reverse? 

PS

In my vinegary senescence, I saw this in today's paper, and my instant thought when I read that Basquiat - I know, I know, a total genius, just my narrow mindedness and bigotry that prevents me seeing that - when he said he was inspired by Leonardo, was referring to di Caprio:

Is There a Sub Text?

Picture the scene: a conservative household, perhaps not entirely unlike mine, the partner who identifies as male in the marriage - someone not entirely unlike my husband - peering at an article in the Telegraph, headed by a photograph of the artist formerly known as Carrie Symonds. "What's that", asks the partner identifying as female - someone not entirely unlike myself.

The Telegraph reader looks up at the female-identifier, his eyes full of puzzlement. "She says Boris Johnson is going to extend gay rights further. What can that mean?" he asks. 

"Is he going to make it compulsory?"

We’re talking about a speech at the 2021 conference of the British party that calls itself Conservative. Clearly, we aren’t alone in taking the word conservative at face value. All across Great Britain there are conservative voters scratching their heads along with us, unaware of the intricacies of textual interpretation, understanding nothing of the joy of discovering sub-texts, unaware that these days language is as much a plaything as it was for Alice's Humpty Dumpty,(1.), with dictionary meanings unmoored from their one-time words.

----------------

(1.) 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

Treasure in Plain Sight

As a child, my dream was to find my way through the back of a wardrobe or to travel via a time warp to some point in the distant past. I loved the idea of magic - and half magic, as described by the wonderful American Edward Eager, inspired by E Nesbit. I still find the idea of continuity with the past or a link with the people who have gone before very appealing. It is probably the thing that makes me slightly more attached to the British Isles than to Australia, although I was born a citizen of both countries, (once, Australia tipped the balance in its own favour by appearing to be so much better governed than Britain but sadly the current panic - sorry, pandemic - has revealed that to have been an illusion.)

Anyway, as we grow older it is difficult to retain a sense of magic and of the past being all about us. But sometimes still that feeling can be recaptured. For me, it happened when I stepped inside the parish church of St Just in Cornwall. The interior of that place is quiet and shadowy and resonant in a beautifully melancholy way. 

There it is, on the crest of the hill - the sight of a church tower rising from the landscape is always for me one of the joys of Britain.

Here it is, at close quarters, the stone in front of it, I would guess, dating from centuries earlier than the buildings that stand there now.

This tomb stone also appears ancient, although I cannot make out what is written upon it - can that be the year 1281?

An excellent local historian called Andrew Michael Burt has provided fascinating and very clear information about the church, the bulk of which, as it stands now, dates from the 14th century. However, on the site as far back as the 5th century some form of place of worship has existed, as shown by the Selus memorial stone, commemorating St Just's brother Selevan: 

Burt explains that the parishioners of St Just were part of something I had no knowledge of before - an event that is topical in light of contemporary events in the Catholic church. This event is called, according to Burt, the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. At this time, the Cornish took up arms, outraged because the new Book of Common Prayer was written in English. They petitioned the King, saying that the new service was "like a Christmas game" and insisting, "We will have our old service of Mattins, Mass, Evensong and Procession as it was before. And so we as Cornish men (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English". Burt explains that Cranmer had no understanding of the fact that from early times the bulk of the service had been in Latin but the Creed, Commandments and some other parts of the Liturgy had been celebrated in Cornish. 

Burt also explains that the Puritans insisted on covering over all decorative elements and so it was only in 1865 that this fresco from the 15th century, called Christ of the Trades, was uncovered. It shows a wounded Christ blessing the tools of the various trades practised in the surrounding area:

All the time one is in the church, one is conscious of a huge piece of drapery hanging against the wall of one of the naves. It turns out to be the white ensign flown by HMS Revenge during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. For me, there is always something of the mournfulness of a Wilfred Owen poem about huge old flags of battle, hanging, often tattered, in places of worship - I suppose I am thinking really of St George's Chapel, Ypres, one of the most poignant church interiors that I know:

I don't know what used to be in the church's windows but they seem to be Victorian and post-world war 1. I am fond of stained glass from this period and I am always puzzled about why we have lost the skill to produce such work now. Today's figurative sculpture and stained glass both seem immensely clumsy compared to that made as recently as one hundred years ago:

Given my heritage, I was surprised as I left St Just to realise that Bendigo in Australia is St Just's twin:

I was also intrigued to see, in what seemed to be an entirely white area, a lone outpost of the organisation Black Lives Matter:

She spends each Wednesday in the central square of St Just apparently. I hope that cup of coffee is Fair Trade:

In these strange times, I find a place like the church at St Just a refuge of calm, continuity and, of course, Christianity, without which I fear our civilisation will soon cease to exist.

I was surprised to see a flock of sheep beside the church marked not in the usual one shade but rather in rainbow colours. I suppose the farmer simply wants a bit of gaiety in his fields; or possibly he (or she) is unusually loyal to the alternative religion of Britain; that is, the NHS:

Malevich Proves My Point

Recently I was moaning about the fact that the word “binary” has largely ousted the words “simple” and “straightforward”. This evening I came across a remark from the abstract artist Kasimir Malevich that I think proves my suspicion that “binary” is not generally a word  chosen to increase clarity:

“The square is an expression of binary thought that distinguishes between impulse and no impulse, between one and nothing.”

Absolutely meaningless. Nothing binary about that.

Casual Boggling

On August 28 I read something in the Saturday Review section of the Times and ever since I have been mind-boggled. This is the passage that did the damage:

I'm sure the writer meant no harm, but casually introducing the idea that there are other universes outside this one - what happened to infinity and infinite space; how can we be banging up against another universe if the universe is infinite? - or the concept of "a random fluctuation in the fabric of reality" - what? - is one sure way to frighten the horses, which, incidentally, seems to be the context in which the word "boggle" was first used, if the Oxford English Dictionary is to be believed (and, if it isn't, what is?)

Recent Reading

I've been reading a book of poems by Elizabeth Bishop called Questions of Travel. This is the marvellous poem that gives the book its title, a discourse on travel and whether it is worthwhile or frivolous (it's both, of course, like all the best things):

Questions of Travel

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams

hurry too rapidly down to the sea,

and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops

makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,

turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.

—For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,

aren’t waterfalls yet,

in a quick age or so, as ages go here,

they probably will be.

But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,

the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,

slime-hung and barnacled.

  Think of the long trip home.

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Where should we be today?

Is it right to be watching strangers in a play

in this strangest of theatres?

What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life

in our bodies, we are determined to rush

to see the sun the other way around?

The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?

To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,

inexplicable and impenetrable,

at any view,

instantly seen and always, always delightful?

Oh, must we dream our dreams

and have them, too?

And have we room

for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

  But surely it would have been a pity

not to have seen the trees along this road

really exaggerated in their beauty,

not to have seen them gesturing

like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.

—Not to have had to stop for gas and heard

the sad, two-noted, wooden tune

of disparate wooden clogs

carelessly clacking over

a grease-stained filling-station floor.

(In another country the clogs would all be tested.

Each pair there would have identical pitch.)

—A pity not to have heard

the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird

who sings above the broken gasoline pump

in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:

three towers, five silver crosses.

  —Yes, a pity not to have pondered,

blurr’dly and inconclusively,

on what connection can exist for centuries

between the crudest wooden footwear

and, careful and finicky,

the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.

—Never to have studied history in

the weak calligraphy of songbirds’ cages.

—And never to have had to listen to rain

so much like politicians’ speeches:

two hours of unrelenting oratory

and then a sudden golden silence

in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

  “Is it lack of imagination that makes us come

to imagined places, not just stay at home?

Or could Pascal have been not entirely right

about just sitting quietly in one’s room?

Continent, city, country, society:

the choice is never wide and never free.

And here, or there … No. Should we have stayed at home,

wherever that may be?”

This Sporting Life

I once overheard someone confiding to a friend that their husband was mainly lawn mowing at the minute, but that what he really wanted to do, in his heart of hearts, was "break into the carpet-laying world". Such a magical phrase - but, after coming upon this article, I find myself questioning that guy's judgment. Mowing sounds fun.