What I love about 'research' is that you never know where it will take you. At a concert in St Nicholas Church in Sevenoaks – a well-known town in west Kent - I was talking of Charles Dickens' novels and mentioned that, although he was born in Plymouth, the county of Kent was very much 'Dickens Country'.
It was the Kentish places in which he lived that he used in his novels. When he was five his family moved to Chatham, on the north Kent coast; it was a naval base and appears in his novel A Tale of Two Cities. And it was from here that he and his father would often walk to Cobham Hall – a large country estate – recognizable in the Pickwick Papers.
Chatham abuts the ancient town of Rochester, which Dickens loved, and he mentions it in detail in David Copperfield. And it was at the nearby port of Gravesend, that Peggoty and David in the same novel say farewell to their friends sailing for Australia: in Great Expectations it is also from Gravesend that Pip and his accomplice try to smuggle the convict, Magwitch, out of England.
The marshes and churchyard at Coolings - a small village on the Kent coast just north of Rochester – were the setting for Pip's scary meeting with Magwitch and Restoration House - a medieval mansion in Rochester – was the inspiration for Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations.
From the time of his first novel Dickens liked to holiday in Broadstairs on the east coast of Kent: he may have claimed Kent as his county but the people of Broadstairs claimed Dickens as their man. Apparently it was a little old lady there that inspired the character Miss Betsey Trotwood - and her cottage the setting - in David Copperfield.
Before even 1900, the house in which Dickens stayed when he used Broadstairs as his "English Watering Place" was known as 'Dickens House'. And for the past 69 years there have been productions of his novels performed there every summer: known as the 'Dickens Festival', the townspeople of Broadstairs have a jolly time dressing up in Victorian costume to publicise it.
Dickens' first novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in instalments, as was that of his great friend Wilkie Collins. This is well known but, whilst I was checking on the facts mentioned above, I was surprised to learn that Collins' brother married Dickens' daughter, Kate.
Whilst she was married to this sickly – and apparently not too popular - character, Kate lived in London but after his death she married a much more inspiring character, the painter Charles Perugini (a friend of the great painter, Lord Leighton)and lived in Park Cottage, Sevenoaks! According to a very informed blog reader they lived in Sevenoaks from 1875 to 1893.
But guess what, when Perugini died in 1917 he was buried in St Nicholas churchyard! Kate moved back to London and when she died she too was buried there. Now that is what I call a result: if I'd known all that at the concert I'd have gone out to look for the gravestone by torchlight. Amazing where research can take you.
Lucy
PS After Kate married Perugini she became a noted painter herself: Millais painted her as a bride dresssed - unusually - in a black dress, looking backwards over her shoulder. Just making sure there was no Woman in White following here perhaps.
http//www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
www.alittlebluejacket.com
Saturday, 24 March 2007
Saturday, 17 March 2007
Down with Dictators
Writing on the laptop on the kitchen table, frustration sets in. I'm just back from Cape Town and can't help thinking about it: the place is stunning. I sigh. I make another cup of coffee. I look out the window.
It's a sunny spring day but, due to a wind, it's not as warm as yesterday. On the bank beneath the kitchen window the pretty nodding snowdrops that struggled through the ivy have died down but elegant narcissi have taken their place.
Under an old cherry tree the dramatic architectural leaves of Helleborus foetidus and their peppermint flowers look grand. Beyond them Helleborus niger and h.purpurascens – in shades of cream and claret – look equally magnificent. And between all of these are interspersed the dainty daffodil, 'Tete-a-Tete'.
These were planted in true Lucy style: bought in September, planned for planting October, on the 'To Do Next Week' list all through November and finally, in desperation, green tips beginning to show, hastily thrown into the ground all over the place half way through December.
Any self-respecting garden designer would turn in their grave. But what happens - they come up three months later as healthy and happy as any carefully planned and nurtured plantings. And the whole thing looks absolutely beautiful: pure luck.
But it's the birds that really entertain me: a confident robin is standing on the bird table picking at some cornflakes (we only eat healthy cardboard things now) and pecking some grains out of a slice of our nutritious (hard in a day) brown bread.
He’s off as a handsome nuthatch – such a beautiful muted blue with a soft tan breast – appears and hops upside down on the nut holder that hangs beneath the table. His sharp beak makes short work of quite a few nuts – a dunnock on the ground vacuums up his crumbs – before he’s scared off: shy but greedy.
The blue tits and great tits make the most of his departure. Then the sparrows get wind of the action and pop their heads out of the box bush – they look like ladies from the harem peering out from their screens – and decide it's their turn.
I used to be so pompous about bird feeding, “birds shouldn’t be dependent on us feeding them,” I’d spout to my poor innocent clients, “we should plant plenty of species with buds and berries throughout the year” etc etc. I now realize I was denying us all hours of pleasure: what a fool. And, anyway, what is so wrong with a free meal.
Finally, they all depart as a great spotted woodpecker flies in. Dramatic or what: bold black and white plumage and a bright red cap. Then I move at the window and he’s off; very nervous character. The birds have put on a better show than any cabaret.
Now I'm feeling quite refreshed – how beautiful England is in the spring - and start tapping away: marvellous what a little simple pleasure can do for one. Down with dictatorial designers.
Lucy
http://lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
www.alittlebluejacket.com
It's a sunny spring day but, due to a wind, it's not as warm as yesterday. On the bank beneath the kitchen window the pretty nodding snowdrops that struggled through the ivy have died down but elegant narcissi have taken their place.
Under an old cherry tree the dramatic architectural leaves of Helleborus foetidus and their peppermint flowers look grand. Beyond them Helleborus niger and h.purpurascens – in shades of cream and claret – look equally magnificent. And between all of these are interspersed the dainty daffodil, 'Tete-a-Tete'.
These were planted in true Lucy style: bought in September, planned for planting October, on the 'To Do Next Week' list all through November and finally, in desperation, green tips beginning to show, hastily thrown into the ground all over the place half way through December.
Any self-respecting garden designer would turn in their grave. But what happens - they come up three months later as healthy and happy as any carefully planned and nurtured plantings. And the whole thing looks absolutely beautiful: pure luck.
But it's the birds that really entertain me: a confident robin is standing on the bird table picking at some cornflakes (we only eat healthy cardboard things now) and pecking some grains out of a slice of our nutritious (hard in a day) brown bread.
He’s off as a handsome nuthatch – such a beautiful muted blue with a soft tan breast – appears and hops upside down on the nut holder that hangs beneath the table. His sharp beak makes short work of quite a few nuts – a dunnock on the ground vacuums up his crumbs – before he’s scared off: shy but greedy.
The blue tits and great tits make the most of his departure. Then the sparrows get wind of the action and pop their heads out of the box bush – they look like ladies from the harem peering out from their screens – and decide it's their turn.
I used to be so pompous about bird feeding, “birds shouldn’t be dependent on us feeding them,” I’d spout to my poor innocent clients, “we should plant plenty of species with buds and berries throughout the year” etc etc. I now realize I was denying us all hours of pleasure: what a fool. And, anyway, what is so wrong with a free meal.
Finally, they all depart as a great spotted woodpecker flies in. Dramatic or what: bold black and white plumage and a bright red cap. Then I move at the window and he’s off; very nervous character. The birds have put on a better show than any cabaret.
Now I'm feeling quite refreshed – how beautiful England is in the spring - and start tapping away: marvellous what a little simple pleasure can do for one. Down with dictatorial designers.
Lucy
http://lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
www.alittlebluejacket.com
Sunday, 11 March 2007
Books Worth Every Penny
Bookshops in and around Cape Town are very social places. On week-ends it seems that the book store in the mall is the place to go with the family: mum and dad with the kids, grandparents and grandchildren, couples - they're all there.
One reason for their popularity may be that the shops are very user friendly places: no hushed tones, books piled high on tables, several places to sit, no raised eyebrows when a customer seems to be reading cover to cover. In the larger stores there's even a café to round off the experience.
But it's the second hand bookshops that I'm addicted to. Every village sports one and towns often have several: books in South Africa are very expensive and so there's a healthy respect for second hand books. Used paperback fiction is cheap but anything collectable – military history, the beloved classics of childhood or that denoted 'Africana' - can fetch a good price.
Whenever I'm in Cape Town I make straight for Long Street to see what's new in the quality bookshops before I allow myself to become immersed in all the second hand book stores. It's from shops such as these that I've found much of my most useful research material.
Internet research is all very well but it's only the book shop or library that comes up with the very thing that you didn't know you wanted. Odd books about plants, landscape or language, for instance, or novels of the period that I'm researching, their covers faded with age, that might help me generate the correct sense of time or place.
Another favourite haunt is Kalk Bay, just south of CT: it's an arty place in a time warp (think Southwold in Suffolk, Haight Ashbury in San Francisco or St Kilda in Melbourne) full of antique and junk shops, second hand bookshops, dark cafes and retro stores. And there's a super book shop there now, catering for the cognoscenti.
An antiquarian bookshop (it has a new sister shop in Stellenbosch) is a must because hidden in the musty interior may well be that elusive tome that will fill in the blanks. And the emporium – with its parrot and its old polished counter – never fails to turn up some small piece of memorabilia for me to get excited about.
But, this visit, it was a second hand bookshop in Somerset West that amused me the most: from the outside it looks ordinary enough but step over the portal and it's an Aladdin's cave. I have never seen so many used books in one shop: one room leads onto another and just when you think it must be the end another room leads off that.
Books cover every surface: remaindered books are piled up on the floor; books are sorted under headings on tables; alphabetically on shelves in narrow passageways. More valuable books are displayed in glass cases, children's books have a room to themselves, as do comics, and educational books reach to the ceiling: books, books, books and more books.
Think of any category and there's a place for it there. Even the path to the loo is paved with piles of books. Eventually you sight the exit – you're through to the shop next door – stagger to the counter and pay: an experience worth every penny.
One reason for their popularity may be that the shops are very user friendly places: no hushed tones, books piled high on tables, several places to sit, no raised eyebrows when a customer seems to be reading cover to cover. In the larger stores there's even a café to round off the experience.
But it's the second hand bookshops that I'm addicted to. Every village sports one and towns often have several: books in South Africa are very expensive and so there's a healthy respect for second hand books. Used paperback fiction is cheap but anything collectable – military history, the beloved classics of childhood or that denoted 'Africana' - can fetch a good price.
Whenever I'm in Cape Town I make straight for Long Street to see what's new in the quality bookshops before I allow myself to become immersed in all the second hand book stores. It's from shops such as these that I've found much of my most useful research material.
Internet research is all very well but it's only the book shop or library that comes up with the very thing that you didn't know you wanted. Odd books about plants, landscape or language, for instance, or novels of the period that I'm researching, their covers faded with age, that might help me generate the correct sense of time or place.
Another favourite haunt is Kalk Bay, just south of CT: it's an arty place in a time warp (think Southwold in Suffolk, Haight Ashbury in San Francisco or St Kilda in Melbourne) full of antique and junk shops, second hand bookshops, dark cafes and retro stores. And there's a super book shop there now, catering for the cognoscenti.
An antiquarian bookshop (it has a new sister shop in Stellenbosch) is a must because hidden in the musty interior may well be that elusive tome that will fill in the blanks. And the emporium – with its parrot and its old polished counter – never fails to turn up some small piece of memorabilia for me to get excited about.
But, this visit, it was a second hand bookshop in Somerset West that amused me the most: from the outside it looks ordinary enough but step over the portal and it's an Aladdin's cave. I have never seen so many used books in one shop: one room leads onto another and just when you think it must be the end another room leads off that.
Books cover every surface: remaindered books are piled up on the floor; books are sorted under headings on tables; alphabetically on shelves in narrow passageways. More valuable books are displayed in glass cases, children's books have a room to themselves, as do comics, and educational books reach to the ceiling: books, books, books and more books.
Think of any category and there's a place for it there. Even the path to the loo is paved with piles of books. Eventually you sight the exit – you're through to the shop next door – stagger to the counter and pay: an experience worth every penny.
Saturday, 3 March 2007
From Little Acorns Forests Grow
Flying across Africa is an awesome experience for many reasons but one of the most amazing is looking down on the vast expanses of desert. But it can also be depressing: the deserts are, well, deserted. Deforested and dry.
Reminds me of a line in a song "Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing." And, by the same token, where the heck are all the trees. In the simplest terms deforestation throughout the world has led to low rainfall, soil erosion and crop failure as we are all too well aware.
In Africa the problem has historically been that wood has been (and often still is) needed for fuel and shelter. We are not talking here of the recent - shocking and unnecessarily - wide-spread deforestation that occurs in some areas of South America or the Far East in pursuit of roads and ranches.
Everyone is aware of the long term problem of deforestation in Africa and there have been - and currently are – many worthy initiatives to plant trees and many to improve irrigation: the best of these give the power to the local population by showing them 'how to'.
There have been success stories of course but, considering that an enormous amount of money has been spent on tree planting, projects to date have been disappointing. Very often the newly planted trees don't flourish and often they die: in some areas the trees are the property of the government and farmers are not rewarded for looking after them.
But - without any large global initiative, without masses of money - some farmers in Niger have halted the encroachment of desert, have encouraged tree growth and are succeeding with their crops. They are showing the world how to do it the low-tech way.
Quite simply, instead of clearing their lands of naturally occurring young saplings when they plant their crops, they have left them to grow. After many years these indigenous saplings have grown into trees and provide shelter for the crops and, as their roots anchor the soil, erosion has reduced dramatically.
The farmers now consider these trees theirs and nurture them; the mature trees provide them with additional income from seeds or fruit and as such are more valuable as a crop than as firewood.
In addition they are planting ground cover between crops – either inter-cropping or sowing 'green manures' – both of which combat soil erosion and reduce water evaporation. Additionally, the fallen leaves and manures add organic matter to the soil which helps retain moisture and increases soil fertility.
And they are using inexpensive, simple, irrigation methods to help it all along. Low and behold, for a fraction of the cost of major tree planting initiatives, these farmers have succeeded in greening their environment and reducing poverty.
This is not to say that we shouldn't encourage tree planting wherever we can, but it does show that when farmers are empowered - when they can see and get the benefit of crops and income for themselves - they are the best innovators and custodians of their land. From little acorns forests grow.
Lucy
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
Reminds me of a line in a song "Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing." And, by the same token, where the heck are all the trees. In the simplest terms deforestation throughout the world has led to low rainfall, soil erosion and crop failure as we are all too well aware.
In Africa the problem has historically been that wood has been (and often still is) needed for fuel and shelter. We are not talking here of the recent - shocking and unnecessarily - wide-spread deforestation that occurs in some areas of South America or the Far East in pursuit of roads and ranches.
Everyone is aware of the long term problem of deforestation in Africa and there have been - and currently are – many worthy initiatives to plant trees and many to improve irrigation: the best of these give the power to the local population by showing them 'how to'.
There have been success stories of course but, considering that an enormous amount of money has been spent on tree planting, projects to date have been disappointing. Very often the newly planted trees don't flourish and often they die: in some areas the trees are the property of the government and farmers are not rewarded for looking after them.
But - without any large global initiative, without masses of money - some farmers in Niger have halted the encroachment of desert, have encouraged tree growth and are succeeding with their crops. They are showing the world how to do it the low-tech way.
Quite simply, instead of clearing their lands of naturally occurring young saplings when they plant their crops, they have left them to grow. After many years these indigenous saplings have grown into trees and provide shelter for the crops and, as their roots anchor the soil, erosion has reduced dramatically.
The farmers now consider these trees theirs and nurture them; the mature trees provide them with additional income from seeds or fruit and as such are more valuable as a crop than as firewood.
In addition they are planting ground cover between crops – either inter-cropping or sowing 'green manures' – both of which combat soil erosion and reduce water evaporation. Additionally, the fallen leaves and manures add organic matter to the soil which helps retain moisture and increases soil fertility.
And they are using inexpensive, simple, irrigation methods to help it all along. Low and behold, for a fraction of the cost of major tree planting initiatives, these farmers have succeeded in greening their environment and reducing poverty.
This is not to say that we shouldn't encourage tree planting wherever we can, but it does show that when farmers are empowered - when they can see and get the benefit of crops and income for themselves - they are the best innovators and custodians of their land. From little acorns forests grow.
Lucy
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
Monday, 19 February 2007
The 3 R's: reading, reading and re-reading
Love of reading usually has it’s roots in our early reading experiences and the books we discovered then. Obviously, taste in reading matter grows and changes through our teenage years and on into young adulthood but sometimes, later in life, we return to the sort of books we liked when young. This was certainly so in my case.
As a child at school I read Dickens and most of the children’s classics too. And mostly I enjoyed them, although the weekly trip to the library was a treat to look forward to: this was where I got to choose. All the harmless girls-own stuff I loved and all for free. Then there were comics too, of course; another sort of anticipation and pleasure.
As a teenager I went through literary pash after not so literary pash. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were a real passion that opened the door to spy stories, fantasy and science fiction. My eldest brother introduced me to James Bond and Wyndham and I progressed to George Orwell.
That all led to more scary stuff: I became hooked on Dennis Wheatley which I read by torchlight under the bedclothes late into the night. The result was nightmares but it was so deliciously scary. However, I finally gave up on the genre when I took part in a séance with some friends and realized that maybe there was more to it all this ghost stuff than was comfortable.
I graduated to romance: Georgette Heyer and wonderful romping sagas. So much more pleasant to go to bed with. But the advent of boyfriends rendered Georgette and her like superfluous. A more serious literary phase ensued – mostly driven by school curriculum rather than any elevated taste.
Although we had to study the works of Shakespeare, Byron and Thomas Hardy these did strike a chord in most of us. However, from choice we read Lady Chatterley’s Lover (very inadequate sexual descriptions in our opinion) and JD Salinger (lots of insight into teenage angst).
Then the bright lights of London beckoned and with them Edna O’Brien: I too learned what it was like to live on pennies and could dry my tights over the gas stove with the best of them. After Edna came cheerful Monica (grand-daughter of Dickens) and then block-busting trash.
A rise in the quality of my reading matter coincided with a rise in my fortunes: my boyfriend became my husband. Suddenly everything male was in the ascendant: Hemingway, Somerset Maughan and Greene were order of the day.
Parenthood brought Fay Weldon into my life too, along with every feminist writer I could lay my hands on. This was interspersed with DH Winnacot (serious parent stuff) and Freud (more serious still) and cookery books of every type; we young women were nothing if not Catholic in our tastes.
But I finally had to stop reading much fiction when my little treasures were small because I simply couldn’t bear to put a good book down and guilt was beginning to set in (Mummy, pleeease can we have tea? Just wait till I’ve finished this chapter, darling). A similar fate befell my feminist friends: Simone sent me to sleep and the American sisterhood were making me bolshie. Neither was conducive to happy married life.
When the children were finally at school all day serious reading resumed: first came Austen, Bronte, Hardy and Dickens. The Americans (James and Wharton) and the Russians (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) followed. Then back to the Brits: George Elliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West became new best friends.
But, finally, too set in my ways I joined a Book Group which has been very good for me. Contemporary novels are again on the agenda and, for the most part, it’s fun and stimulating. But it’s the classics that I always return to: the sort of books one can read over and over and see something different at each re-reading.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites@blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
As a child at school I read Dickens and most of the children’s classics too. And mostly I enjoyed them, although the weekly trip to the library was a treat to look forward to: this was where I got to choose. All the harmless girls-own stuff I loved and all for free. Then there were comics too, of course; another sort of anticipation and pleasure.
As a teenager I went through literary pash after not so literary pash. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were a real passion that opened the door to spy stories, fantasy and science fiction. My eldest brother introduced me to James Bond and Wyndham and I progressed to George Orwell.
That all led to more scary stuff: I became hooked on Dennis Wheatley which I read by torchlight under the bedclothes late into the night. The result was nightmares but it was so deliciously scary. However, I finally gave up on the genre when I took part in a séance with some friends and realized that maybe there was more to it all this ghost stuff than was comfortable.
I graduated to romance: Georgette Heyer and wonderful romping sagas. So much more pleasant to go to bed with. But the advent of boyfriends rendered Georgette and her like superfluous. A more serious literary phase ensued – mostly driven by school curriculum rather than any elevated taste.
Although we had to study the works of Shakespeare, Byron and Thomas Hardy these did strike a chord in most of us. However, from choice we read Lady Chatterley’s Lover (very inadequate sexual descriptions in our opinion) and JD Salinger (lots of insight into teenage angst).
Then the bright lights of London beckoned and with them Edna O’Brien: I too learned what it was like to live on pennies and could dry my tights over the gas stove with the best of them. After Edna came cheerful Monica (grand-daughter of Dickens) and then block-busting trash.
A rise in the quality of my reading matter coincided with a rise in my fortunes: my boyfriend became my husband. Suddenly everything male was in the ascendant: Hemingway, Somerset Maughan and Greene were order of the day.
Parenthood brought Fay Weldon into my life too, along with every feminist writer I could lay my hands on. This was interspersed with DH Winnacot (serious parent stuff) and Freud (more serious still) and cookery books of every type; we young women were nothing if not Catholic in our tastes.
But I finally had to stop reading much fiction when my little treasures were small because I simply couldn’t bear to put a good book down and guilt was beginning to set in (Mummy, pleeease can we have tea? Just wait till I’ve finished this chapter, darling). A similar fate befell my feminist friends: Simone sent me to sleep and the American sisterhood were making me bolshie. Neither was conducive to happy married life.
When the children were finally at school all day serious reading resumed: first came Austen, Bronte, Hardy and Dickens. The Americans (James and Wharton) and the Russians (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) followed. Then back to the Brits: George Elliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West became new best friends.
But, finally, too set in my ways I joined a Book Group which has been very good for me. Contemporary novels are again on the agenda and, for the most part, it’s fun and stimulating. But it’s the classics that I always return to: the sort of books one can read over and over and see something different at each re-reading.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites@blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
Saturday, 10 February 2007
Down With Books
Libraries, large and small, are in the news at the moment. The Government has announced it will cut funding to the British Library by a massive £7 million. This is appalling because it is one cultural institution that is justifiably admired throughout the world. If you want to find something out, go to the British Library.
For the Labour Party to make such a cut is particularly shocking because it was through such institutions - albeit more modest - that millions of working people had access to self-education and, ever since borrowing of books became free, visiting a library became a way of life for many.
The powers that be are very good at lip-service, however, and like to appoint 'tsars' to champion cultural pursuits. One such is a Children's Laureate and it's Jacqueline Wilson - that well-known children's writer - that currently has that honour.
And she's got the bit between her teeth: she's warned British libraries (in general) that they are failing to offer children a wide enough and large enough range of books. We certainly need someone like her to speak up for young readers.
Because what she says is right. My local library has just been re-built (for the second time) at great expense. Incorporated is a new museum, an art gallery and a cafeteria: the first 'new' library had most of that of course, minus the cafe.
But what of the area dedicated to the Children's Library: it's smaller than the last one, which was smaller than the original one in the Victorian building. Young readers are obviously considered to be so unimportant now that their area in the spanking new up-to-the-minute building is tucked away in a cramped little corner.
As an adult, you can have a cappuccino as you browse through your Italian novella but there's no room for you to get down on the floor - or even stand - with your little cherub to nurture his interest in gladiators and help him find a book about them.
We need to encourage children to read - isn't that what libraries are meant to be for: today's little readers will be tomorrows big borrowers. We should be supplying a friendly, bright and open space for the purpose.
And that's not the only problem, as Jaqueline points out. Libraries are spending money on new buildings but they're not spending it on what they should: new books. They make the excuse that young visitor numbers are falling, due to cheap books and expensive computers. But generally figures disprove this; young visitor numbers are slightly up.
It seems that every kid on the block has bought or read the latest Harry Potter; the success of Rowling's series proves that there are ready, willing and able young readers out there. These guys need a constant supply of fresh and challenging new books in as wide a range as possible if they are to keep up their interest.
Books feed the mind and a narrow diet is not very appetising. And, by the way, nobody likes being pushed into a corner.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
For the Labour Party to make such a cut is particularly shocking because it was through such institutions - albeit more modest - that millions of working people had access to self-education and, ever since borrowing of books became free, visiting a library became a way of life for many.
The powers that be are very good at lip-service, however, and like to appoint 'tsars' to champion cultural pursuits. One such is a Children's Laureate and it's Jacqueline Wilson - that well-known children's writer - that currently has that honour.
And she's got the bit between her teeth: she's warned British libraries (in general) that they are failing to offer children a wide enough and large enough range of books. We certainly need someone like her to speak up for young readers.
Because what she says is right. My local library has just been re-built (for the second time) at great expense. Incorporated is a new museum, an art gallery and a cafeteria: the first 'new' library had most of that of course, minus the cafe.
But what of the area dedicated to the Children's Library: it's smaller than the last one, which was smaller than the original one in the Victorian building. Young readers are obviously considered to be so unimportant now that their area in the spanking new up-to-the-minute building is tucked away in a cramped little corner.
As an adult, you can have a cappuccino as you browse through your Italian novella but there's no room for you to get down on the floor - or even stand - with your little cherub to nurture his interest in gladiators and help him find a book about them.
We need to encourage children to read - isn't that what libraries are meant to be for: today's little readers will be tomorrows big borrowers. We should be supplying a friendly, bright and open space for the purpose.
And that's not the only problem, as Jaqueline points out. Libraries are spending money on new buildings but they're not spending it on what they should: new books. They make the excuse that young visitor numbers are falling, due to cheap books and expensive computers. But generally figures disprove this; young visitor numbers are slightly up.
It seems that every kid on the block has bought or read the latest Harry Potter; the success of Rowling's series proves that there are ready, willing and able young readers out there. These guys need a constant supply of fresh and challenging new books in as wide a range as possible if they are to keep up their interest.
Books feed the mind and a narrow diet is not very appetising. And, by the way, nobody likes being pushed into a corner.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk
Saturday, 3 February 2007
Memories Are Made Of This
Memory is a marvellous thing: it comes, it goes, it changes. Memory is who we are - it's our identity - it's rooted in the past but it's also about the future.
If you're embarking on a memoir then memory concerns you a lot. Although, as a writer, it's very important for me to get my facts right (on paper that is: I'm not so good when being mouthy at parties) I must keep reminding myself that this is not necessarily the most important thing. It may be the significance of the memory that's more important than the accuracy: two people with a shared experince can have quite different memories of the same event.
Radio Four is a brilliant service; there are the most interesting programmes on it, albeit at times not always conducive to work or sleep. Last week, getting ready to go out in the middle of the day, I stumbled on a programme about memory between experts on the subject. Needless to say I was late for my meeting.
Discussion about 'earliest' memories was interesting: it seems much psychology is associated with this one. I won't even go there or we'll be here all day. But events that happened between the ages of 15 and 20 tend to be those that people remember most often: a 'reminiscent bump'. It's a period of great change in our lives and memories are often associated with those changes. Music, fashion or even events like going to the fun-fair alone for the first time may feature in these.
Then there are 'self-defining' memories which are often vivid and may be associated with sight, sound or smell. I've never forgotten the smell of a sweetie shop that my grandmother took me to when I was four; I can also remember the paving stones that I walked on, the dark shop and the kind shopkeeper. Very occasionally I come across that smell and it stirs my comforting sweet shop memory. Apparently this sort of memory can affect our goals in life or our preferences: lucky I don't have a sweet tooth.
Among others there are 'flash-bulb' memories - often of major events like the death or President Kennedy or Princess Diana - where we may recall all sorts of other things that are associated in our minds with that event. For example, perhaps we remember where we were, what we were wearing or who we were with when we learnt about the event. But these 'flash-bulb' memories can also be more understated; sitting around the fire, being at a birthday party, catching fish.
Now I can suddenly see myself five years old; my brothers and I in the shallows of the stream with our jam jars, trying to catch tiddlers. And I caught the biggest Stickleback: well that's how I remember it.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
If you're embarking on a memoir then memory concerns you a lot. Although, as a writer, it's very important for me to get my facts right (on paper that is: I'm not so good when being mouthy at parties) I must keep reminding myself that this is not necessarily the most important thing. It may be the significance of the memory that's more important than the accuracy: two people with a shared experince can have quite different memories of the same event.
Radio Four is a brilliant service; there are the most interesting programmes on it, albeit at times not always conducive to work or sleep. Last week, getting ready to go out in the middle of the day, I stumbled on a programme about memory between experts on the subject. Needless to say I was late for my meeting.
Discussion about 'earliest' memories was interesting: it seems much psychology is associated with this one. I won't even go there or we'll be here all day. But events that happened between the ages of 15 and 20 tend to be those that people remember most often: a 'reminiscent bump'. It's a period of great change in our lives and memories are often associated with those changes. Music, fashion or even events like going to the fun-fair alone for the first time may feature in these.
Then there are 'self-defining' memories which are often vivid and may be associated with sight, sound or smell. I've never forgotten the smell of a sweetie shop that my grandmother took me to when I was four; I can also remember the paving stones that I walked on, the dark shop and the kind shopkeeper. Very occasionally I come across that smell and it stirs my comforting sweet shop memory. Apparently this sort of memory can affect our goals in life or our preferences: lucky I don't have a sweet tooth.
Among others there are 'flash-bulb' memories - often of major events like the death or President Kennedy or Princess Diana - where we may recall all sorts of other things that are associated in our minds with that event. For example, perhaps we remember where we were, what we were wearing or who we were with when we learnt about the event. But these 'flash-bulb' memories can also be more understated; sitting around the fire, being at a birthday party, catching fish.
Now I can suddenly see myself five years old; my brothers and I in the shallows of the stream with our jam jars, trying to catch tiddlers. And I caught the biggest Stickleback: well that's how I remember it.
Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
