Morning is broken

Slowly and dimly become aware that I am no longer asleep.

Wonder what day it is. Can’t remember.

Try, and fail, to remember something that happened yesterday.

Yesterday?

Wonder what the weather forecast was for today.

Decide that it doesn’t matter because it is almost certainly going to rain.

Wonder whether the cat has peed on the kitchen floor again.

Reflect on the possibility that someone else might clear it up.

Dismiss the idea as implausible.

Become aware of mild nagging pain.

Decide that it is the first symptom of terminal illness. Spend some time imagining all bodily functions failing one by one.

Would it be better to stay in bed for the rest of my life (however short)?

Perhaps I am hungry. If only I could remember what day it was I would know what was for breakfast, eggs or not.

Remember some daft line about a flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me singing in the wilderness. Willing to forego all of that for a cup of tea.

Cautiously extend right leg and flex toes. Usual cannonade of small arms fire as joints crack.

Repeat with left leg.

Surprised there is no reaction.

Turn head carefully (in case it falls off) sideways and see empty pillow.

And suddenly all is well in the world. The sun is shining and the birds are singing fit to burst!

OH is already up, will have cleared up after the cat and will shortly arrive with tray of tea.

(And it turns out to be Wednesday and scrambled eggs for breakfast).

Maurice, by E. M. Forster

From time to time I lapse into thinking that I should be reading literature rather than books. I am mindful that there are a number of serious authors with whom I have never successfully engaged, Henry James being the most prominent example, and I went to look for Portrait of a Lady, intending to give it another go. I was sure that we had two copies on the shelf; we may have been married for more than 25 years, but it doesn’t do to rush into weeding the collection to remove duplicates, which is something I did only last summer. It looks as if I managed to get rid of both copies by mistake and a shame-faced search of the Oxfam bookshop did not reveal either of them.

So I went for E.M. Forster instead, another author that I have struggled to like. And I still struggle to like him. I found Maurice rather hard going. Given that it was not published until after the author’s death, when he was safe from criticism of the subject matter, there was little reason for him to be so coy – this is the only book I have ever read which had me thinking wistfully of D.H. Lawrence (yet another author with whom I fail to see eye-to-eye). The effusive introduction to the Penguin Classics edition – and it is a bad sign when I feel I have to read the introduction in case there is something I have missed – went on and on about how beautifully written it is. I agree that it is artfully written but that isn’t the same thing at all. It was all much too “Francesca da Rimini, niminy-piminy, je ne sais quoi” for my taste. 

I bought Howards End at about the same time as I borrowed Maurice from the library, and it is staring balefully at me from the pile of unread books on the corner of my desk.  It doesn't bode well that I was so eagerly anticipating Maurice's end; it may be a while before I engage with Forster again.

A long way from Verona, by Jane Gardam

This was another book I sneaked in while I was simultaneously reading Ken Livingstone’s memoirs. Although a very different read, it was chosen for the same reason as Goodbye Mr. Chips, in that it is fairly short and relatively undemanding.  I have always enjoyed Jane Gardam’s books, and a longer-term project is to read her “Old Filth” trilogy again; I read the final book quite recently, but it was too long after I read the other two and I couldn’t pick up all the threads as I would have liked to do.

A long way from Verona is an early book. It is too simple to say that it treats of a schoolgirl’s life during the Second World War – that makes it sound very straightforward and a period piece, whereas it is much more penetrating – and much funnier – than that. I suppose that Jane Gardam is often thought is as a women’s writer, which is as unfair as such a label usually is, but I would be interested to hear a man’s view of the book. My schooldays came a while after those of the book’s protagonist, but some of the pleasure was in the depiction of school life, the sudden friendships and fallings-out, the pang of recognition of the stifling atmosphere of a single-sex school and the spinster teachers.

Perhaps I should be comparing it to Goodbye Mr. Chips... It is only now that I realise I had chosen two school-based books to read successively. But Jane Gardam is infinitely more to my taste than James Hilton and much more complex; it is dated in that it is set in a time that most of us do not remember, but it certainly isn't out-of-date.

Goodbye Mr. Chips, by James Hilton

When I was growing up, I was always aware of the books in the (very small) bookcase in our sitting room. They were the books that my parents enjoyed reading, rather than being books chosen to display what might have been considered a “proper” taste in literature. I do not mean to imply criticism when I say this, only to explain that those books represented an honest choice, instead of being put there to impress. Most of the authors are long-forgotten. My mother’s shelf was full of Jeffery Farnol; my father inclined to Dornford Yates and Ernest Raymond, but his selection also included James Hilton. The Jeffery Farnol titles were discarded before I got my hands on them, but many of the books have ended up in my own bookcase, often remaining unread by me. 

I should have been finishing Ken’s biography, but it is a very big fat book, and I only had two chapters left to read, and for that reason didn’t want to take it away on holiday. So I cast around for something short, light to carry and, not wanting to end up with two unfinished books, easy to read at speed. Goodbye Mr. Chips certainly filled the bill in all three respects. 

It is almost unimaginable that any modern author would write such a short book, only 128 pages, small thick pages of big type. I read it easily in two sessions before bed. It is the sentimental story of an elderly schoolmaster in an English public school, full of the ideals of duty, honour, sportsmanship and decency which are only trotted out nowadays as the butt of satirical humour. The world has moved on, and properly so, and the book is a period piece. My father was the contemporary of the boys in the book and the product of that world. The book was first published in 1934, referring often to the sacrifice made by former schoolboys killed in the First World War and with no knowledge of events to come; my father bought it in 1948 (he signed and dated his books) when he was fresh out of the chaos of the Second. I wonder whether he read it with nostalgia, knowing as we do that it described a society and culture lost for ever; or whether he read it in the hope and expectation that once a settled peace had been restored the clock could and would be turned back to those golden days?