Obscure in the Moor

One of the fascinations of being a fairly bookish person is the discovery of obscure books by obscure writers. The fascination doesn't disappear with digital books such as Kindle. For example I recently came across Thomas Kindon's detective novel Murder in the Moor published in 1929. 

From the introduction - 


Thomas Kindon’s life is as mysterious as the plot of his one and only work of detective fiction – Murder in the Moor. We know precisely nothing about the author apart from the fact that he entered his manuscript into London book publisher Methuen’s ‘Prize Competition for Detective Novels’ in about 1927. The competition was judged by three well-known mystery authors, A.A. Milne, H.S. Bailey and Father Knox. Kindon’s book was one of the runners-up.


The story takes place in Dukesmoor, an obvious fictional name for Dartmoor with lots of atmospheric remoteness, mists, bogs and mystery. Competently written and plotted, so much so that it was not likely to have been a purely amateur effort and Thomas Kindon may not be the author's real name. 

He was clearly familiar with Dartmoor and the novel includes enough technical and military detail to suggest that he knew something of the military and its activity on Dartmoor, so there are clues to the man behind the name. Assuming of course that he was a man, but that's it for Thomas Kindon, a few clues.

Any keen reader with a taste for serendipity will have come across lots of obscure books by obscure writers, but they don't come much more obscure than Thomas Kindon.

Tempting

Boris Johnson to release bombshell new memoir as date it will hit shelves revealed

The publication date for Boris Johnson's hugely anticipated autobiography has been revealed, with the publishers promising it will "shatter the mould of the modern prime ministerial memoir".

Mr Johnson's memoir from his political career, including his time as London mayor and in Downing Street, will be released on October 10 this year. A newly-released book description promises expectant readers that it will be "written in his inimitable style".

I don't read political memoirs but this one is tempting. Will it be...

Reliable?  Hardly.

Readable and amusing?  Bound to be.

Men sit writing and forget to lie

What do you know of books? They are the most wonderful things in the world. Men sit writing them and forget to lie, but you business men never forget.

Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson’s Son (1916)


This is something I like about older fiction. Even moderate writers would weave sketches of another world into their novels – their world, vignettes of life as they saw it. Though they sat down to write fiction, when it came to the world as they knew it, they forgot to lie.


Writing
In those days a hasty writer used to flick his work with sand, which stanched but did not dry the ink. The result was often a grimy dabble, like a child’s face blotched with blackberries.

R. D. Blackmore – Clara Vaughan (1864)


Shorthand
“I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go in for phonography.”
“Phonography?” She was at a loss.
“Yes; Pitman’s shorthand, you know.”
“Oh! shorthand — yes. I’ve heard of it. But why?”
“Why? It’s going to be the great thing of the future. There never was anything like it!”

Arnold Bennett – Hilda Lessways (1911)


Cold Weather
In the Five Towns, and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers — not because she is cold, but merely to express herself.

Arnold Bennett - The Matador of the Five Towns (1912}


The Wireless
There was a man sitting on the roof of Old Place with a coil of wire, and another sitting on the chimney. Though listening-in had not yet arrived at Riseholme, Georgie at once conjectured that Olga was installing it, and what would Lucia say? It was utterly un-Elizabethan to begin with, and though she countenanced the telephone, she had expressed herself very strongly on the subject of listening-in. She had had an unfortunate experience of it herself, for on a visit to London not long ago, her hostess had switched it on, and the company was regaled with a vivid lecture on pyorrhea by a hospital nurse . . .

E. F. Benson – Lucia in London (1927)


The Radio Gramophone
"You wouldn’t give anything cheap to your wife, would you, Mr. Cross? That’s why you’ve given her this radio gramophone that must have cost at least thirty pounds. Just think of that—ten weeks’ pay gone in one fell swoop for a radio gramophone!”

Nicholas Brady - Week-End Murder (1933)

Old gods are dying

Devenish made himself agreeable to half the people in the room. I do not know how this trick of frank friendliness is managed. It is all I can do to be pleasant, without stiffness, to my own parishioners whom I know well.

George A. Birmingham - Wild Justice (1930)


George A. Birmingham was the pen name of James Owen Hannay an Irish clergyman and novelist. Here he describes a kind of social diffidence which must be familiar to many. It’s a minor social insight which can be one of the fascinations of fiction, even the fiction of minor writers.

I read both fiction and non-fiction, but in recent years I’ve veered quite strongly towards fiction. Too many non-fiction books have turned out to be turgid, biased, long-winded or plausible ideas padded out to 300 pages which could have been 30. Of course the number of non-fiction books which are well worth reading is vast, but fiction has its interests too, often going well beyond the story or plot.

 

 
A Dostoyevsky, a Jane Austen, a Stendhal, a Melville, a Tolstoy, a Proust, or a Joyce seem to show a grasp of human behavior which is beyond the methods of science.

B.F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior (1957)

Through fiction it is often possible to experience an imaginative view of the writer’s world, to gaze with them through their window. Busy city streets, country lanes, storms, snow, foggy evenings, the call of an owl, a lighted window in the distance, sunrise, sunset, the growl of a distant car on a distant road, silence, human habits, petty annoyances – the insights are endless.

In addition to the ephemeral details of other lives, there is that intriguing, delightfully mundane poetry of life which cannot be said so concisely within non-fiction. "A picture is worth a thousand words" the old adage says, but a fictional paragraph may say even more and say it better.


As he listened to her, with a full plate in front of him, he was affected, in spite of himself, by the prim comfort of his surroundings. The matting beneath his feet seemed very soft; the gleams of the brass hanging lamp, the soft, yellow tint of the wallpaper, and the bright oak of the furniture filled him with appreciation of a life spent in comfort, which disturbed his notions of right and wrong.

Émile Zola - The Belly of Paris (1873)


His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour, friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance, one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that, people with their faces and their words flit through our lives and are drowned in the past, leaving nothing except faint traces in the memory.

Anton Chekhov - Verochka (1887)


Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying.

Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)

Clem

 

I never know when I’ll next meet Clem. Months go by then my phone bleeps and it’s a terse text saying he’s in the area so how about a moorland walk? It’s always a moorland walk with Clem. Not the scenic bits though, always the bleak stretches. Usually a bleak time of year too.

The last time was early December last year. Haven’t heard much from him since, but we met at our usual café where Clem was as taciturn as always. I suppose we are both that way and perhaps it’s why we get on so well. He seemed slightly scruffier than usual, beard even less neat and his woolly hat had a hole but that’s Clem. He isn’t hard up – far from it.

We were both equipped with boots and waterproofs because the weather forecast wasn’t good and after a quiet coffee, off we went. Our usual walk begins with a stiff climb which I swear is steeper than it used to be, but we reached the moors soon enough. A dull December afternoon it was, great stretches of tussocky brown heather under low grey skies.

“I love all this,” Clem replied to my comment about the unlovely conditions, “it’s atmospheric.” He always says that. Possibly it is.

After about six miles we took a break and sat for a while on a cold gritstone rock for a drink. I had my flask of tea while Clem took an old glass bottle of apple juice from his pocket. He said it was apple juice, but he seemed to enjoy it far more than I would.

“What would most people think of this?” Clem waved an arm to take in a great sweep of moorland.

“It’s too bleak, much better when the heather’s out, and maybe a bit of sun, and some blue sky would improve the visuals. And some warmth,” I added, squinting into a bitter breeze.

“It would be horribly crowded though,” Clem answered, “and that’s not the point of being here. I reckon what we see in places and times like this is the beat of the universe. On and on and on. It never stops, never pauses, never repeats itself. Not a single second is ever repeated. Now that’s worth slogging up here for.”

“Oh, well - maybe so if you want to paint in some mystique, but it’s only a stretch of moorland and we’ve been here before. It looks much the same to me.”

“Ah but we haven’t been here before, not exactly. It changes and will change forever and we can’t come back. We never can come back. That must be worth contemplating – once we’ve left this rock we can’t quite come back.”

“That’s Heraclitus saying you can’t step Into the same river twice – for the same reason.”

“Of course it is, but we forget don’t we? We never really listened to the man, never took on the broad insight.”

“Okay, suppose we never listen. Why do we think that is?”

“Because out there…” Clem paused. 

“Because?” I replaced the plastic cup on my flask, because I was ready enough to leave our cold rock and the thickening gloom and gathering mists of late afternoon.

“Because out there is the river of Heraclitus,” Clem continued. “It’s the same truth, slightly less easy to see, but we can sit here and see what he saw. Perhaps he saw God.”

“But you aren’t a believer.”

“No I’m not, that’s a stumbling block.” Clem stroked his beard. “But out there is an eternal indifference which has handed us a whole lifetime to do with as we will. That eternal indifference – name it as you will, it’s worth contemplating. We only get one short lifetime to do it, one flicker then out we go and no coming back for another attempt.”

After that bit of Clem’s philosophy we trudged back to the café for another coffee. Not quite the same coffee of course – as Clem just had to remind me. By then it was almost dark outside, the café virtually empty. Somebody had left the door open so I pulled it shut against the cold, but that made the place seem even more empty.

“It’s the problem of yesterday,” Clem suddenly said while stirring his coffee with a small twig he’d picked up from the moor. He took the twig from his coffee, stared at it for a moment before dropping it on the table. It lay there in a tiny brown puddle of coffee.

“Take the perennial yearning for Utopia,” he continued. “Even if we get there, Utopia today becomes Utopia as it was yesterday because today it isn’t quite the same. Can’t be. The beat of the universe goes on and our precious Utopia slips away into last week, last year and never ever comes back as it was. It changes and the changes can’t be fixed. Slowly, slowly our Utopian dream slides away down the memory hole. Inexorably…”

Then Clem seemed to wake up, knocked back his coffee and climbed to his feet. “Time to be off.“

The Vote

Old One lies back in her pillows, sips unaccustomed coffee. There are extra pillows now and the heating pipes in the ward click with unusual warmth. A brightly coloured blanket on her bed too. Old One is past feeling pleasure, but comfort is surely welcome.

Noises in the corridor, but not the usual noises. No bangs and clattering of chipped enamel dishes. No undertones of annoyance. No shouts.

Nurse enters with soft feet then a little crowd of men and women with cameras and cautious eyes. Of course, it is election day. Old One in her pillows lying beneath her brightly coloured blanket, she remembers it now.

It is election day and she is to cast her vote. She wished to cast her vote and somehow Candidate’s ear caught the faint echo of her wish. Candidate must be there now, out in the quietly shuffling corridor where enamel dishes are no longer banged around.

Nurse arranges the brightly coloured blanket as Candidate enters, grandly but without obvious effort. Candidate looks around, seems satisfied before approaching Old One in her bed, her pillows and blanket.

A gold pen and a little slip of paper with Candidate’s name. Only one name. Old One grasps the gold pen in unsure fingers. Nurse assists, Doctor and Candidate look on, smile as the cameras click. As for the little crowd with the cautious eyes, they seem to smile too.

Then Old One dozes and it is soon dark. All are gone.

Heating pipes make no sound when Old One wakes in the dark. She lies flat, extra pillows gone, along with the brightly coloured blanket. Perhaps it was too warm? A whirl of snow whispers by her window as Old One closes her eyes for the last time.

Christy

I spotted Christy sitting by the window of a dingy bar, so having nothing better to do I pushed open the door to join him. A bar tucked in between shops and offices it was. Very quiet, somehow suited to a cold and foggy evening in November. Almost Dickensian.

Christy gazed at me as I struggled to remove my recent purchase - an almost new charity shop coat with too many zips and fasteners to be quite convenient. No wonder it ended up in a charity shop.

“Well done.” Christy sipped his drink as I finally managed to exit the coat and drape it round the back of a chair.

“Oh thanks.” Someone had placed a glass of something colourless on the table before drifting off behind the bar. I couldn’t quite see who it was – the place wasn’t well lit, but Christy’s haunts never are.

“I see you bought the coat. I thought you would,” Christy added.

“I suppose you saw me in the charity shop.”

“I did. It’s a very distinctive garment - changes you into a person who should be tramping up and down hills in bad weather.”

“Distinctive – I suppose it is, even in a dim light.” I pulled back the chair, its dragged feet curiously loud in that dim stillness. Musty silence rolled back as I sat down and sipped the colourless drink. Vaguely herbal to my taste, slightly exotic.

“It’s water.” Christy turned the bottle label towards me, but I couldn’t make out the language. “I don’t know what else is in it or where it’s from,” he added, “but I like the label. I like this place too. Bits of brass and old wood - reminds me of HG Wells.”

“The Time Machine?” I guessed.

“Yes, the book and the sixties film.” Christy paused, gazed around in that abstracted way he has, frowning slightly as if lost in some puzzle world of his own. “He missed a trick you know.”

“HG Wells?”

“Yes – shouldn’t have bothered with the Eloi and the Morlocks. Obvious why he did. His political views and the novelist’s need for conflict. But he shouldn’t have bothered. Spoiled the possibilities.”

“What possibilities?”

“Well think about it. A marvellous beginning in the house of a late Victorian inventor who builds a fabulous machine to travel through time. First the mysterious model on the table. A member of the invited audience presses a little lever. Then with everyone watching, the model quietly vanishes into the future. A slight draught, a flickering candle then gone forever. Later the Time Traveller goes off in the full-sized machine.”

“Then he returns then disappears again,” I replied, “this time forever. Presumably gone to help the Eloi and you object to all that because?”

“Because it’s so banal. The Eloi were beyond helping. What had they done to make them repay the risk and the effort?”

“Well – ”

“Consider what Wells could have done instead, the human situation he could have chosen to explore.”

“The Time Traveller couldn’t ignore the plight of the Eloi.”

“Of course he could. They were no concern of his. He could have made some attempt to explore eternity.”

“Ride his machine into the future forever?”

“Not exactly.” Christy topped up his glass from the bottle with the strange label and glanced towards the bar. As if responding to a signal, a figure appeared out of the gloom, placed a glass of beer in front of me before floating off again. “More to your taste I think,” Christy explained.

“Thanks.” The beer was better than I expected after Christy’s herbal water or whatever it was.

“The point is, in the end he couldn’t explore eternity,” Christy continued, “not even the first few million years of it. Yes, he could set the time machine controls and whizz off through time until he died, but even if Wells ignored the obvious bodily needs, it doesn’t work.”

“He would at least see more than anyone else has ever seen.”

“That’s not the point. He would discover how impossibly remote time and the universe are, how we have our niche, but we’ll never explore beyond it. Beyond is forever beyond.” Christy paused before adding, “it’s so incomprehensively vast. All we’ll ever do is study our geology, gaze through our telescopes and make up stories about it.”

“Yes but – ”

“The Eloi and Morlocks – pure politics. Wells failed to bring that out, failed as he was bound to fail. The great beyond is out there just beyond the clouds. It’s there, we know it’s there, but all we have, all we’ll ever have is politics. It’s the ultimate horror story.”

A Smaller Book of Less Amazing Stories

 

As the boundaries of knowledge have expanded, worlds of romance and adventure have contracted. Our understanding of space, spaceships and extra-terrestrial exploration have expanded to such a degree that imagination and adventure have a lesser role to play. The marvels of limitless possibility have been heavily eroded.

We associate these losses with childhood, but when they were lost, they were lost to technological progress and the expanded boundaries of ordinary life. There is no going back.

 

Eleventh hour drama

Prince Harry makes ‘eleventh hour attempt to change tell-all memoirs’

The Duke of Sussex is worried that some of the revelations in his book “might not look so good” following the public outpouring of support for the monarchy, both at home and abroad, it is claimed.

The book, part of a three-title deal worth £36.8 million, is expected to be published this autumn, but the Duke is now said to be worried that it will be ill-timed as his father the King begins his reign.

He reportedly wants to make “refinements” to the manuscript, which had already been signed off by publishers Penguin Random House, though industry sources have questioned whether it might be too late.

Almost dramatic, isn't it? Surely not dramatic enough to induce many people buy his ridiculous book though - nothing could be lurid enough for that.

There is an interesting theory about celebrity books such as this. The theory says that every single copy is bought as a present for someone the buyer doesn't really like. It's why they end up in charity shops so quickly. Only the other day I saw one of Michelle Obama's books in a charity shop. Seems appropriate  somehow.

Binns and Son

I recently read a detective novel by Max Dalman, pseudonym of writer Max Dalman Binns, son of Ottwell Binns.

Ottwell Binns (1872 - 1935) was a British novelist and Unitarian minister. Binns was a prolific author, publishing many novels of adventure and mystery, from 1917 to 1939. His publisher in Britain was Ward Lock. Though he died in 1935, Ward Lock continued to publish novels under his name until 1939.

His son, Max Dalman Binns, was also a mystery writer under the name Max Dalman.

It's a guess, but most people probably haven't heard of either chap even though Max Dalman had fifteen books published and died within living memory in 1951. I’ve only read one of his books, but it was competently written, well plotted and just as readable as some more famous writers within the same genre.

I think of them as railway books bought from the station bookstall to while away a journey. Reading them, I almost catch the hissing and clanking and unmistakable aroma of a steam engine.

Fading memories perhaps, but it isn’t easy to make out why some writers rapidly sink into obscurity where others don’t. Talented writers who were famous and widely read in their own lifetime – their longevity is easy enough to understand. Yet when it comes to the durability of lesser writers, a certain amount of luck seems to come into it.

From my perspective, Max Dalman’s books were strong enough to have been adapted for films in the fifties, even if only low-budget B pictures. But as far as I know they weren’t and Max Dalman the writer faded into obscurity. Maybe the Kindle will make a difference, but I suppose it’s partly a numbers game – some writers have to disappear simply to make room for new ones.

Beyond Phantasy Mountain

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a story for kids. I’m not quite sure of the age range I’m aiming for, but here is my initial effort.

Beyond Phantasy Mountain

Far, far away beyond Phantasy Mountain lies a magical land of mystery and mists but no unicorns. We can’t go there except in our imagination, but who knows? One day we may find a way over Phantasy Mountain and venture into the mysterious land which lies beyond.

In the land beyond Phantasy Mountain, everyone has a very strange idea which they follow through all the ups and down of their whole lives. Their strange idea is this - they always, try to be cheerful and sensible whatever difficulties life throws at them. Oh - and they don’t believe in unicorns.

They won’t tell lies about climate change, they know there are only two genders, they don't accuse each other of racism all the time  and their rulers don’t change the law every five minutes. Their newspapers cheerfully refer to US President Joe Biden as a senile old fart, but of course they do it in the kindest possible way.


That’s as far the story goes at the moment because it doesn’t seem quite right when it comes to kids suspending their disbelief. That imaginary land beyond Phantasy Mountain has already drifted too far from the reality modern kids grow up with. 

Maybe magic wands, witches, spells and monsters would be more believable. And unicorns.

Christmas at Lostway

It was Christmas at Lostway Hall. Outside it snowed heavily, the grounds beyond steamy kitchen windows completely covered with a crisp, white blanket of snow, deep drifts forming against the great yew hedge planted just after Waterloo.

Inside a vast kitchen Lady Clara was to be found busily basting the Christmas goose as the servants had all left for better jobs with Amazon. Her uncle, Sir Henry Lostway, appeared at the kitchen door. He had never been inside the kitchen and even now seemed reluctant to cross the threshold.

“Clara my dear.”

“Yes Uncle Henry?” Lady Clara turned towards the kitchen door. A few drops of goose juice from the basting spoon trickled onto her sensible shoes.

“I’m sorry my dear but it must be faced,” Sir Henry continued, edging his way into the kitchen as if expecting mantraps.

“What must be faced, Uncle Henry?” Lady Clara returned to her basting.

“Clara - you cannot possibly marry Gerald.”

“Oh really Uncle Henry, you have always disparaged Gerald, you know you have. What I simply cannot understand is why you dislike him so. He rides, he shoots, he went to the right school.”

“Notwithstanding all that Cecilia, I am persuaded to think that in your heart you know why I do not approve of him.” Sir Henry inspected one of the kitchen chairs but decided to continue standing. “I do not dislike Gerald personally, but honesty compels me to add that I do not approve of him.”

“Yet I still fail to see why, Uncle Henry.”

“In which case, forgive me for being blunt Celia my dear. It pains me to say this but for your sake I must state the case without embroidery. Gerald is an activist.”

“What?”

“An activist my dear.”

“An activist? Oh dear.” Apparently undisturbed, Lady Clara replaced the goose in the oven. It was a large goose, enough for at least twelve people, but it was all they had.

“Yes I am afraid he is an activist my dear. There is absolutely no doubt about it. He waves ungrammatical placards and shouts at people in public.”

“Shouts at people in public?”

“Yes. He shouts - bellows really. In public.”

“He shouts and waves ungrammatical placards in public?”

“Yes.”

“Oh no Uncle Henry he can’t be an activist - not Gerald.”

“I’m so sorry Celia my dear, but the truth of the matter must be faced for your sake. Your dear mother would have horse-whipped him of course but she was made of sterner stuff. Pity about the lions out in Tsavo but it took two of them to bring her down. We may be proud of that.”

“Yes Mummy would have scared off Gerald within minutes. An activist. Oh dear.”

“You know what you must do Celia. Gerald is due to arrive any minute, assuming he braves the snow.”

“He probably won’t brave the snow Uncle Henry, but I’ll take my horse whip to the drawing room just in case. Although there is one problem.”

“What is that my dear?”

“Well – it is rather difficult Uncle Henry.”

“Come now Clara, you need have no qualms about telling me.”

“Well – I am afraid Gerald quite likes being horse-whipped.”

“Doesn’t surprise me at all my dear. He wants to be an MP.”

Guess the ending

Hello All – as you may assume from this email, I arrived intact so the journey down was as you expected. Heavy traffic but no real snarl-ups and in the end I made good time. The hotel you found for me is fine thank you. I have a view of the sea as promised - not quite on the seafront but set back in its own grounds. Decidedly old-fashioned and almost genteel if one is allowed to be genteel these days.

I even took myself out for a stroll on the seafront before unpacking. A fairly typical seaside spot with sand, shingle, cliffs and so on. I'll not bore you with an attempt at descriptive prose which in any event is beyond me as you know.

Had coffee in the hotel lounge which was good enough although I’ve had better. The service was adequate although they seemed to think I ought to be stuffing myself with cakes and whatnot. Cakes in the afternoon – good grief. After coffee I finally came up to my room to unpack, thus proving to you that I am perfectly capable of slowing down and taking things easy for a while.

One little incident I must tell you about – there is a door in my room which leads to the adjoining room. Not uncommon in these old places I believe. The door did not appear to be closed properly so I gave it an exploratory nudge and found it was indeed unlocked.

It swung open to reveal another room exactly like mine. Ha - what a surprise I don’t think. I was about to close the door and retreat into my own room when I noticed a tan coloured leather suitcase on the bed exactly like mine.

I’m disappointed - I thought you said my suitcase was an absolutely exclusive make. I'm joshing of course, but you will never guess what I did next. Yes – I took a quick survey of the contents of that not at all exclusive suitcase. It was half open you see. By the way, I hope you did not jump to the conclusion that I rummaged around the contents of a stranger’s suitcase.

From what I could see the contents were remarkably similar to my own, or at least what I assumed you have packed for me. Apart from that a further sign of occupancy was a paperback book on the bedside table. Here is another coincidence though – it was the exact book you bought for me and said I should read as relaxation. You know – that popular detective yarn you optimistically claimed I would enjoy.

There was nothing in the wardrobe as yet, although by the bed were a pair of shoes uncannily similar to my brown brogues, but I soon felt ridiculous poking around another room. I returned to my own room and firmly closed the connecting door. It locked with a loud click so must have been left open accidentally. Cleaners failed to close it properly perhaps.

Before I click 'Send', I may as well tell you that I have decided not to go ahead with the Panama deal. I don’t like it and that is the end of the matter as far as I am concerned. We should never have entertained it. In deference to your wishes that I put work out of my mind for a few days I'll not raise the subject again until I return but it is only fair to let you know my decision.

On a lighter note and after reading a few pages of that better than expected detective yard, it occurred to me that my fingerprints are all over the place in the adjoining room. Ha ha – I hope foul play does not descend on the hotel. I do not wish to explain myself to some gimlet-eyed sleuth.

That's all until tomorrow.

A

Snipped Off

It was too late really, but a last drink seemed to be essential before the trek home to a cold flat. Anyhow I had to tell Alice about my weird dream. Perhaps the atmosphere of the pub and the murky street outside played a part too. After the clamour of the day things sometimes become dreamlike as life finally goes quiet. Well in my world they do.

“Did I ever tell you about my spooky dream?” I asked Alice as she carefully placed those last drinks on the table. She is always careful like that. Tidy too.

“Which one? You seem to have loads of dreams.” Alice seemed tired as she slumped back and took a sip of that last drink. She wasn’t really listening but Alice doesn’t listen much. That’s why I like telling her things.

“My dream about the railway journey,” I explained.

“Clackety clack through the storm? I’ve heard it.”

“No - not that one. No - in this one it’s snow. Miles of untrodden snow – and trees, miles of trees. A train ploughs its way through a vast snowscape - like a Russian landscape. Endless snow studded with fir trees.”

“A puffing train?”

“Well yes - I suppose it was a steam train.” Alice always picks up on these things so I have to explain the details but I don’t mind.

“So you recently watched a movie like Doctor Zhivago or something. That’s what dreams are, just memories of stuff.”

“No, not Doctor Zhivago – nothing like that. I was all alone in the carriage and it was almost dark outside. A strange purplish dusk it was, with long fingers of moonlight pointing at me through all those black fir trees. And it was seriously cold - although I didn’t feel the cold because it was outside. I felt it through the carriage window though – that unearthly alien cold. Like being on another planet.”

“It would be cold. You know why? The clue is the snow – I’m surprised you didn’t spot that. And what was Doctor Zhivago doing while all this snowy angst was going on?” Alice is cynical like that. It’s deflating sometimes.

“I told you - it wasn’t Doctor Zhivago. I haven’t watched it in years. Anyway there was hardly anyone else on the train and every now and then we passed an inn or a house or just a shack and they all had a light in the window. Or sometimes we would come across a station with an empty waiting room.”

“And did the train stop so you could nip off and grab a coffee?”

“No but the train did stop at every station. Shadowy people appeared from nowhere and got on while some got off and faded into the snowy wasteland just beyond the station. More like shadows than people they were. Sometimes the train just stopped in the middle of nowhere then started again.”

“So what made you remember this version of the train spotter's favourite dream? Because it sounds so boring I’d have woken up for a nice drink of water to assuage the tedium.”

“I remember it because it was my subconscious telling me something important.”

“About Doctor Zhivago?”

“No – forget Doctor bloody Zhivago. It wasn’t that at all.”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“No it was telling me something much deeper.”

“What?”

“It was telling me about luck - or something like luck. The train was taking me somewhere, but I didn’t actually know where I wanted to go because we can’t see into the future. It didn’t matter if I stayed on the train, got off at one of the stations and waited for another or if I decided to get off in the middle of nowhere and make my way to one of those inns with a light in the window.”

“Or if you simply wandered off through those dark trees among the fingers of moonlight, where the only sound is that creaking noise when you tread on fresh snow.”

“That was an option too.”

“Not a good option I’d say, not without survival gear. Or did you have that?”

“That wasn’t the point. The point was – well anyway I think it was all about the unknown. I had no way of knowing where I was going and what I would gain by staying on the train or by getting off at one of the stations. The only thing keeping me on the train was inertia, but even there I was trusting the unknown.”

“So – sounds like a fairly commonplace homily packed into a spooky dream. I wish I had dreams like that.”

“That’s not it either. The dream was telling me more – that life is essentially spooky. We pretend it isn’t and we pretend we know where we are going but we don’t. There are journeys we take and journeys we could take but don’t and we can’t tell which is best.”

“I don’t see what’s spooky about that. It’s life as we know it.”

“The spooky aspect was the trees and the fingers of moonlight.”

“Okay so it was visually spooky. I can see that.”

“The trees and the fingers of moonlight – that was the unknown watching us. Like an eye. The eye of reality adapting itself to whatever we do, reaching into our lives. Most of the time we gather together, turn on the lights, go about our business, go to the pub, make some noise and pretend it isn’t there but it is. It’s there in the street outside this pub, waiting for us to leave.”

“Well yes… I’m sure life seems a little spooky if you insist on seeing it like that.” Alice shivered theatrically and glanced over her shoulder at the empty bar.

“The spooky aspect is that we can’t stay on the train and get off the train. We can’t do both.”

“What? That’s supposed to be spooky? It isn’t spooky it’s nonsense.”

“Of course it’s nonsense, but that’s the spooky aspect too. The point is that if I decided to stay on the train – well that was it. All the possibilities open to me by getting off the train – they just disappeared. Gone forever.”

“So?”

“Until the train moved off again, being able to get off and do something else was part of my human potential. It was real, I could have done it so easily. Get up. Open the door. Step onto the platform. But reality just snuffed it out. Those fingers of moonlight – they were just like ethereal pairs of scissors.”

“Now that is spooky.”

“It is spooky. A rich seam of alternative possibilities all gone. Part of my unrealised potential until it was –

“Snipped off?”

“I suppose so.”

The Slimewarbler Incident

The other day I found myself browsing through some old Galactic Resource material. Not something I usually do but I’d just completed a shift in the old Pluto Observatory and hadn’t enjoyed it as much as usual.

Maybe the remoteness of Pluto is getting to me. I’ve never really taken to the place – all that frozen nitrogen may inspire poets who don’t work there but it doesn’t do much for me. Anyhow, I had this idea that a spot of historical research would clear the bugs from my brain before another shift came along.

I only went as far as Moonbase of course, no point dropping all the way down a gravity well like Earth. I’d only have to climb out of it again and that’s an expensive game. Anyhow, going back to that historical stuff in Galactic Resource, I stumbled on the Slimewarbler Incident which I knew about but had almost forgotten.

As anyone would expect, the dear old Galactic Resource has masses and masses of info on the Slimewarbler Incident and Guide pointed me towards a huge discussion on when it is supposed to have started but I skipped all that. It started round about 2000 as far as I’m concerned, but why the interest and why would I snub Guide?

Simple answer – one of my ancestors was involved and managed to record some of it before Earth was Purged. I don’t know much about him, but he was some kind of engineer. Guide has it all stored away of course, but as we all know she doesn’t think much of the personal angle and tends to discourage it.

However I still have my ancestor’s diary written on some kind of thin, flexible organic material called paper. I’ve had it preserved and translated of course because I want to pass it on to my descendants eventually, but here is an extract where it is easy to see definite evidence of Slimewarbler contact.

July 1st. Had some discussions with H about our plans but we have to complete a preliminary carbon footprint assessment before October. This stuff makes me tired but we have to do it.

Weird isn't it? Or try this.

October 4th. Met our October target but have been told bridge design is not sufficiently gender neutral and we have to revisit that. Maybe the tablets aren't strong enough. 

Much of the diary is just as cryptic as this because I don’t think it was ever intended to be read, but there are fascinating hints of the strange lives they led in those far off days. The things they worried themselves sick over are not always easy to understand but that’s the Slimewarbler influence. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and just tell them all about the Slimewarblers.

The Slimewarblers really screwed them up and it just gets worse and worse until Galactic Ethics spotted what was going on. Naturally they had to Purge so I’m not sure how my diary got out. Maybe it was evidence taken away before Purging.

As we all know, the Slimewarblers go in for illegal preaching to untouched civilisations and at that time Earth was untouched. Then the Slimewarblers arrived although to this day nobody seems to know how they got through. Galactic Resource has plenty of theories but nothing solid.

Incidentally, Slimewarblers look a lot like humans so acceptance was never a stumbling block for them. The ludicrous nature of their preaching should have been a stumbling block but as we know, it wasn’t. It’s a pity I suppose, but it all happened a long time ago.

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

 

Fiction and non-fiction

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything had been said better than we can put it ourselves.

George Eliot - Daniel Deronda (1876)

Why do we read books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, web articles etc? Is it entertainment, information, education or something else? I don’t know why others read, but in part I’m looking for insights. Sounds pompous I know, but from what others have written online over the years, insight seems to be a very common reason for reading. It applies to both fiction and non-fiction.

Take two examples, firstly from fiction and secondly non-fiction.

Mrs. Dale was one of those empirical thinkers who love to philosophize generally, but who make no specific application of anything to their own affairs.

Theodore Dreiser – The Genius (1915)

The Hanoverian kings owed their position as kings to the Whigs. They paid for their right to reign by the abandonment of the powers that had hitherto inhered in the monarch.

Charles Downer Hazen - The Long Nineteenth Century (1919)

Of course insights vary between fiction and non-fiction as these two quotes demonstrate. They are certainly not equivalent, but the dividing line can more diffuse than we usually assume. Factual information is an insight in itself, but even factual information ends up distilled and compacted into wider and more general insights. Lists of facts are not in themselves particularly useful.

For example even a cursory study of Operation Barbarossa could lead to the obvious insight that this was Hitler’s biggest mistake. Alternatively one might study Operation Barbarossa in enormous detail, extract from it a number of insights about Hitler, Nazi Germany, Stalin’s regime, the course of WWII and so on. Insights become wider and more nuanced.  

On the other hand fiction may give subtle insights about human behaviour, social mores and the power of language. In many cases fictionally-derived insights are cogently expressed reminders of familiar viewpoints. Such insights may be expressed so powerfully that we absorb them into what we are whereas factual information may slip into the background.

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

Charles Dickens - Bleak House (1853)

…not a man of refined conscience, or with any deep sense of the infinite issues belonging to everyday duties; not quite competent to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without private fortune it is difficult to see how they could all live genteely if they had nothing to do with education or government.

George Eliot – The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Another difference between fiction and non-fiction is that non-fiction tends to be comparatively recent and written from a modern perspective. Obviously a vast amount of modern fiction is written from a modern perspective too, yet a vast amount of readable fiction and even non-fiction was written decades or even centuries ago from perspectives which are no longer modern but still valid.

But vain men are fools as well as ignorant of themselves, and make this plain to all the world; for, not doubting their worth, they undertake honourable offices, and presently stand convicted of incapacity: they dress in fine clothes and put on fine airs and so on; they wish everybody to know of their good fortune; they talk about themselves, as if that were the way to honour.

Aristotle – The Nicomachean Ethics

This escape from modernity can provide interesting insights into our modern concerns and assumptions. Often older fiction reminds us of aspects of the human condition which have slipped into the background but do not change.

The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being, may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live with them—like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makes color an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless ennui, may be making somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols.

George Eliot - Daniel Deronda (1876)

In addition, older fiction frequently reminds us of numerous economic, political and practical changes which have influenced the way we live. These tend to be much more compact insights than a work on social history is likely to provide.

Wishing to be polite, he entered, in spite of the artistic disgust he felt for all that zinc, coloured to imitate bronze, and having all the repulsive mendacious prettiness of spurious art. ‘Good morning, monsieur. Is Henri still at home?’ The manufacturer, a stout, sallow-looking man, drew himself straight amidst all his nosegay vases and cruets and statuettes. He had in his hand a new model of a thermometer, formed of a juggling girl who crouched and balanced the glass tube on her nose.

Emile Zola - The Masterpiece (1886)

To my mind the attraction of older fiction is that we see fictional scenarios through eyes which looked out on a world no longer ours. Our times are so intense, so suffused with manufactured drama that escaping from it every now and then is something of a necessity. If we don’t escape we can’t see what it is to escape.

The Cyclist

Driving in January can be exhilarating or dismal - not much in between. I’m thinking of those crisp sunny days versus the day-long pall of grey, penetrating damp. My recent drive on the Buxton road was the latter version. Hardly anyone else on the roads too which was a bonus but a rapidly thickening mist detracted from even that.

Anyhow, as I trundled along winding roads at the regular speed I spotted a distant cyclist in my rear view screen. Nothing odd about that but I didn’t recall ever passing a cyclist. Was he gaining on me too? Surely not. Maybe he’d emerged from a side road but I didn’t recall passing one of those either. Oh well - my geography isn’t too hot so I shrugged and drove on.

About a minute later I glanced again in my rear view screen and that cyclist was still there. He wasn’t keeping pace with me either – he was definitely closer. I could see him much more clearly now. He wore some kind of dark cycling goggles for example. Strange in that weather and level of visibility but I could see him quite clearly.

He crouched low over the handlebars, legs pumping hard, staring straight ahead. Staring at me as far as I could see but no doubt that was my imagination. As he was obviously some kind of top class rider I decided to pull into a lay-by and let him pass before driving on. I was in no hurry. From where I’d parked the car in the lay-by I couldn’t see back down the road so I just waited.

A minute passed and still no cyclist. Another minute and then another so reluctantly I climbed out of the warmth of the car to investigate.

An empty road – no cyclist. Nobody at all.

Oh well, maybe he turned off somewhere. I climbed back into the car and resumed my journey. A few minutes later – yes you’ve guessed it – the cyclist appeared again in my rear view screen. This time I accelerated and when I saw I couldn’t shake him off I drew into another lay-by, jumped out of the car and stepped out into the road to check out that blasted cyclist –

“What the – what are you doing?” With a scrunching slither the cyclist skidded out of the mist and almost sent us both sprawling across the road.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Oh hell he was just an ordinary lycra-clad cyclist unprepared for loons like me jumping out at him on a deserted road –

“No harm done mate. Are you okay?” The question sounded friendly enough, though the eyes were invisible behind that dark goggles. Like the question, his breath hung there in the cold air between us.

“Er yes I’m fine,” I replied eventually. Of course I was fine, what did he really mean?

“Only I was wondering why you kept going slower and slower back there. I thought there might be a problem that’s all.”

“I was going slower?”

“Yes mate – really slowing down. I was catching you up. Didn’t you notice?”

“But I drove faster when I saw you gaining on me –"

“No mate – you slowed down. I’ve been doing the same speed all the way. I’m not superhuman. And I'm late.” With a quick glance down the road he rode off, soon disappearing into the mist, the red eye of his rear light vanishing shortly afterwards.

After that I turned the car round and set off home. By then the mist was more like fog and home seemed the better option. Anyhow I didn’t want to pass that cyclist further up the road. He probably thought I was a bit cracked - or worse. Yes – home was definitely the better option.

“Sounds to me as if you were slowing down as he said. Nothing else explains it because nobody is superhuman outside the movies.” That was Grainger’s opinion when we met up later in the pub and I told him about my experience with the cyclist.

“Of course I wasn’t slowing down. Strewth I can tell the difference between speeding up and slowing down.” I was quite indignant but Grainger often has that effect on people.

“Yes but it was foggy,” Grainger replied. "Speed can be deceptive, visual reference points change without you noticing."

“It was misty rather than foggy, but so what?”

“So the car will have detected the mist or the fog and is bound to have slowed down anyway. They all do that these days - it's a basic safety feature. Even an old car like yours knows when it's foggy.”

“Misty.”

“Same difference – poor visibility and getting dark. The car knew -”

“Yes but I would still have known –“

“Not you. You’re too old-fashioned.”

“Old-fashioned? In what way?”

“You still think people are in control.”

A fragment of fiction

I’ve been roaming through my old writing, bits and pieces of stories I abandoned years ago. The piece below is twelve years old and where it was going has leaked from my memory. I can’t even recall who the characters were supposed to be, yet whatever ideas were floating around in my mind would have been driven by those characters.

No great surprise of course. Ideas can be annoyingly ephemeral unless linked to something already familiar - which probably  explains a chunk of the human condition. Use it or lose it really does seem to be the message. The title of this fragment was Johnson.

Johnson

“We have to be careful.” Johnson stood by the window in familiar pose, staring at a thin line of distant sea. We were on the fourth floor of the Tower and the window was dusty. Beyond the second floor all windows were out of reach of any window cleaner – because of the blades. The sun shone brightly, Johnson squinted and rubbed his chin.

“What shall we say to the others?” Johnson spoke like that – as if he valued the opinions of the people he was talking to.

Somewhere upstairs the Master Lavatory flushed. Pole the Butler must be using it. Using the Master Lavatory while the family was away was one of Pole’s perks – one of a series of perks he had devised for himself after he rose to the long-coveted status of Butler to the Tower. As the Master Lavatory sluiced and gurgled to silence, Pole’s heavy tread trundled back downstairs to his lair on the fifth floor. Pole never used the lift.

“I said what shall we say to the others?” Johnson repeated. One of the turbine blades sighed past the window squirting a few more watts into the National Grid.

King of the Air

This is a book I haven't read but I do like the cover so I took a photo of it. As anyone would guess it is an adventure story for boys. A presentation label inside tells us that this copy was probably a school prize presented in 1930 to a young chap whose name is now illegible. 

It was written by Herbert Strang who was not one person but two. 

Herbert Strang was the pseudonym of two English authors, George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L'Estrange (1867–1947). They specialized in writing adventure stories for boys, both historical and modern-day.

King of the Air was first published in 1908. It's the cover I like - so evocative of a time when the world was smaller and thrilling adventures were still possible.