Gweilo, A memoir of a Hong Kong childhood

Martin Booth's autobiography, Gweilo, was written at the end of his life and covers three years of his young life in Hong Kong. For research, he relied on memory and a scrap book as well as visits to Hong Kong as an adult.

Not that this is a problem, but the groupie who chose and presented Gweilo probably had a lack of objectivity with regard to this autobiography: as a child she too had travelled on a liner on her way to an exotic new life abroad. She too had been allowed an enormous amount of freedom, of the sort that parents today would shudder at the thought of. So many of the experiences in this autobiography echoed those of her own childhood.

But she chose the book because she felt we would all enjoy it. And we did: it’s an easy and enjoyable enough read. Another of our group has lived in Hong Kong and was delighted with Booth’s descriptions of places. And for those of us who have only visited it is also possible to recognize many of the places that crop up in the book. There is an authenticity to the descriptions of Hong Kong: the places totally believable and colourful.

Many of the stories recounted in the memoir must be apocryphal – they feel it anyway – and quite obviously he could not possibly recall the conversations he writes about. But this brings us to the whole question of ‘what is memoir?’ In his case it is a construct: a reconstruction of a period (1940’s/50’s), its mores, the culture of Hong Kong, its atmosphere and family relationships.

The style of the autobiography is a bit of a hybrid: it veers between travelogue and memoir. He may have chosen style this to beef up the landscape and life in Hong Kong for his readers. I understand that in his other novels he includes facts for the reader so perhaps this is just his way.

I’m aware too, from my father’s descriptions, that Booth’s depiction of the boat journey across the oceans was spot on. And he conveys very well the sense of freedom that all children in the Colonies (and in Britain at that time) enjoyed. His descriptions of places in Hong Kong are colourful and lively, and he manages to get across the magic and excitement of his childhood there.

And Booth captures the moment too: there is a description of his visit to an opium den in the Forbidden City that is an experience that could never happen now. As such it encapsulates a period in the history of Hong Kong that is quite unique. Being British, and in the Services, gave those who were posted there an elevated sense of their own importance and this was true of his father.

His father may well have been pompous and a bully but the one thing in the book that I did not like was his biased portrayal of him. The young Booth was totally in thrall to his mother: she was his hero. His mother was Peter Pan, his father Captain Hook. He admired her - and not without reason - as he portrays her as a woman ahead of her time. But, like many war-time babies, he had spent his early years alone with his mother, his father’s return an unwelcome one.

He shows us a mother who derided her husband, and championed her son. And his character assassination of his father sits uncomfortably on the page. I should have hoped that at stage he wrote the book, and having experienced fatherhood himself, he might have shown us a little more insight into their relationship or at least let the reader make up their own mind about his parents and their relationships.

Gweilo is, after all, as much a book about his parent’s marriage as about his childhood exploits in Hong Kong. As such it captures the time perfectly, as well as the excitement of a childhood spent in an outpost of the British Empire. A good book to buy if you’re planning to visit Hong Kong or want to reminisce about your time spent there.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Byzantium

Byzantium, such a lovely word: conjures up pictures of a mystical east. We imagine the riches of Constantinople and a great empire. We’re reminded of the amazing architectural and artistic heritage of the period.

The exhibition at the Royal Academy in London reinforces all this. And, with a plethora of icons and other saintly images (and much gold leaf into the bargain), it’s likely to put you in a very Christmassy mood.

I guess, in the 5th century - aeons before TV and advertising - the gold leaf and images did a very good job. The murals and mosaics told particularly good stories pictorially speaking. And, by all accounts, they convinced worshippers that there were riches awaiting them in heaven.

Icons and illuminated manuscripts had one up on these, in my estimation, because they could be carried around. The former were to worship visually, the second possibly read whilst waiting for the next camel train. Either way, they sure beat a glossy magazine and a grubby paperback. But, of course, you don’t have to be so rich to afford these modern day messages. But then nor do they inspire us to higher things, only more consumerism.

One of the most interesting conclusions that emerge form the exhibition is that there are only so many ways that specific religious events can be portrayed in an icon. It seems that the images of Christ, Mary and the Angel had to adhere to classic poses carried down over the centuries. Whether 5th century or 14th century icons, they had to stick to the story.

It’s an interesting fact that the figures in an icon were not meant to depict real people: they were flat, two dimensional, to be prayed in front of. They were meant to be inspirational. I loved the beauty of the icons but my Best Beloved, who thoroughly enjoyed the historical content of the show, found himself iconed-out by the end.

Although, to be fair, the show is not all icons: there is jewellery too, and household items and relics on display as well. One of them, the Antioch Chalice, was rediscovered 100 years ago. Since then it’s inspired several art forms: books and films based on searches for the Holy Grail. But, contrary to speculation, the chalice couldn’t have been the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper as it actually dates from about 500AD. There you are, that just goes to show what advertising and a bit of hype can do.

It’s also obvious from the exhibits that Constantinople (Istanbul to us) was an amazing city. It was called the second Rome, but one halfway between the eastern and western cultures of the day. Their religion was neither Muslim nor Catholic, whilst the architecture drew on both. Think of vast square spaces, enormous domes and rich decoration.

Overall, you get the impression by the end of your visit that the Byzantines were a cosmopolitan lot. You have until 22 March to be dazzled and see for yourself.

The curse of agricultural sprays

It’s all in the news: the ugly face of pesticides and herbicides. At last, farmers are being asked to watch where they spray all that stuff they say they need to make their crops grow. Maybe they do – some of it anyway – but not over all of us, please.

Last week a brave and determined young woman convinced the courts that the excess spray from a neighbouring farm has seriously damaged her health. It should be quite possible before spraying for farmers to give at least 24 (or preferably 48) hours notice that they are about to spray their crops in ones vicinity. At the moment, inconsiderate farmers are spraying next to homes, gardens, schools, playgrounds and parks without any notice.

The droplets are carried in the air and inhaled by all and sundry in the vicinity. Not to mention what it does to our gardens and wild life: it kills stuff off. Fortunately there are farmers who do care about their neighbours and wild life in general. They've reduced intensive farming methods and take care with their spraying whilst those who are organic, only spray with vegetable based products.

And many farmers who wish to increase wildlife on their land (possibly, in part, because they realise the un-sung benefit of it) have re-laid and maintain their mixed hedges. These allow wildlife to move from area to area and forage in safety. Other ‘wild life corridors’ are the uncultivated strips of land alongside field boundaries. Such bio-diverse habitats as these allow insects, birds and small mammals to thrive.

Farmers have been helped to encourage wildlife (whilst reducing food mountains) with ‘set- aside’. This was a EU policy that paid landowners to leave some fields fallow which allowed wild life to flourish on it. Unfortunately, the policy of set-aside has now come to an end and, with it, large areas of wildlife’s little larders and safe accommodation.

So it’s down to us gardeners as never before. Many of us already feed the birds in an effort to keep up their numbers whilst having the pleasure of watching them. And we fill our gardens with plants rich in seeds and berries, nuts and fruit.

But it’s the ‘wild’ side of gardening we need to embrace. Forget neat, embrace natural. Not so easy on a small plot, I grant, but even a tiny corner with a clump of nettles and brambles and the odd rotting log will do wonders for the wild life population. And benefit you too.

Many of our most beautiful butterflies need nettles to breed and ‘weeds’ such as comfrey encourage the bees. Finches will welcome the seeds left on the spent heads of perennials whilst larger birds appreciate fallen nuts and ivy leaves that harbour insects. Small mammals, like dormice, will welcome the blackberries that fruit on wild brambles and hedgehogs will be thankful for a cosy home under a blanket of leaves or a pile of old logs.

And if you want to spray your garden with a good natural feed then those clumps of nettles and leafy comfrey plants will come in handy. The leaves of both are compost activators: add them to your heaps and your compost will rot down much faster. Add the leaves of either to a large water butt and, a few months later, you’ll have the most nutrient rich liquid feed or spray that your plants could ask for. Now that’s what I call a friendly spray.

War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo

It’s not often that one goes to the theatre and runs out of superlatives to describe a play. This is what happened to me last week. Our book group went to see War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo, which is on at the National Theatre, and we were blown away by the production.

Michael Morpurgo wrote the book, War Horse, for children and adults. He had wanted to write about the madness and carnage of the First World War (1914-1918) and the part that horses had played in it. And the sad fate that became most of the horses in France and Flanders.

The story is told through the eyes of a horse, Joey, who is reared on a Devon farm by a young farm lad, Albert. His father sells the horse to the army and Joey is shipped out to Belgium. There he plays his part in the war as a British cavalry horse that is captured by the Germans and used to pull guns and ambulances.

Albert joins up to find Joey but it seems that both he and Joey will meet a sticky end. However, in the style of all good fairytales, the baddies get their come uppence and everything comes right in the end. We had a group of eleven year olds in front of us and they were transfixed but the eighteen years old behind us (who fidgeted more!) were just as complimentary in their appreciation of the play.

The acting doesn’t stand out particularly but the adaptation and direction of the piece is excellent and the design of the set is absolutely stunning. The story moves very quickly from one scene to another and the devices used (lighting, videos, revolving stage, rolling or rising constructions) are brilliant. It is a visual treat that will hold the interest of not only children but theatre phobics too.

The horses are life size puppets made of jointed wire and steel made by the Handspring Puppet Company, a South African company of marionette makers. This makes sense to me because wire work animals and models are quite an art in Africa. The large puppets are manipulated internally and externally and the nuances, movements and character that the puppeteers manage to imbue them with during the performance is very clever. Their movements are so lifelike, subtle and moving that it is quite enthralling.

A war artist sketches during some of the scenes and moving images are projected on to the backdrop that are reminiscent us of the work of the First World War artists such as Paul Nash. Poems and songs in the play remind us of the First World War poets too. My blog of 11 November 2007 covered the poetry and prose relating to the war: if you like Vera Brittain, AE Houseman etc then just go to the archive for 2007 on your right to read the blog about them. War Horse was particularly moving for us as it was so close to Remembrance Day.

Morpurgo has written over 100 stories, most of them for children, several of which have been made into films. I haven't read any of them but I shall also now read his novel, A Wide Wide Sea. This book is also aimed at children and adults, the story inspired by the fate of the children shipped out to Australia after the Second World War, and the neglect and abuse some of them suffered. The novel is very well thought of and I shall read it as soon as I have the time. But first I shall read War Horse: the play was a real inspiration. We need to be reminded that war ravages not only countries and cultures but every living thing.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

The Colour of Autumn

When at last we get a really cold snap of weather the trees get the message and turn their brilliant autumn colours. In England we don’t get those wonderful vibrant reds of the American New England natives but the many different greens of our native trees do take on orange, ochre and lime, yellows, rusts and browns, which give a beautiful, toning tapestry look to the landscape.

In gardens, sumach trees show us just how wonderful those foreign reds can be, and the odd red leaf oak looks stunning; the leaves of our garden cherries only a soft and pale imitation. The first foreigner to turn in my garden is the Amalanchier, which goes from green to mass of pinky red. The beautifully textured leaves of the Cornus kousa Chinensis turn a deep rich claret, those of the Malus a bright, light yellow.

Two of our best native trees for autumn colour are the hornbeam and beech which turn a rich copper, the hornbeam holding onto to its curling, brown paper rustling leaves throughout the winter. The leaves of our large weeping copper beach turn, surprisingly, from copper to almost green before - with the hardest frost – they turn steadily darkest orange to pale tangerine.

The grass beneath gradually becomes a rust-coloured carpet that parts satisfyingly as we walk through it. When the leaves have all fallen we will rake them up and use them as a mulch, piling them in situ in corners of the garden where no wind will send them skittering away. There they will stay until next spring, a thick warm blanket, protecting the bulbs, suppressing the weeds.

The oak tree is the last to turn, the leaves holding stubbornly on until its every neighbour is nearly denuded. Then, by Christmas, the wind will have taken these and sent them all over the garden to settle themselves like blankets under hedges and gates. Or we will find them, damp or dry, piled in between pots and plants.

Then, before we have had time to track them down and consign them to the compost bin, sneaky snow or ice will cover them, making a treacherous surface for the unwary who venture out without wellies.

Some people say that this is their favourite time of year, the air crisp, the colours so beautiful. But for me, Spring must be the best time with its promise of things to come. Although I must admit that the landscape now is mellow - the hedges trimmed, fields ploughed, verges cut - everything ready for a winter rest.

Out walking with Freddie today – himself the foxy colour of fallen leaves – this world seems still and quiet. A rabbit – wary and waiting – goes almost unnoticed against the bare brown earth until, suddenly, snow white tail up, it makes a dash for the hedge and home. Freddie sees it too late. A motionless pheasant - the iridescent emerald and pillar box red of its head surprisingly camouflaged in the landscape – thinks we are getting too near and suddenly scurries across the field to the safety of the wood edge.

The light is beginning to fade: tonight is All Hallows Eve when in days gone by bonfires were lit to the dying sun. Superstitions and ghosts, apples and nuts, games and wine were intertwined, all part of this night. It marks the end of the colourful season of autumn: winter’s ahead.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Shakespeare's Sonnets & Simon Callow

Simon Callow was performing Shakespeare’s sonnets at the Tonbridge Arts festival. Simon Callow, on locally, how could we pass this up. “Shakespeare’s sonnets contain some of the most famous lines in the English language and yet nothing is known of the story behind them” reads the blurb.

In presenting this one man show, Master/Mistress of my Passion, Callow tries to show the audience that in fact Shakespeare’s sonnets tell a tale – they are a narrative that charts Bill’s infatuation with the ideal of beauty.

Apparently, Shakespeare met and admired Mary Sidney, the Earl of Pembroke’s mother and whilst at her pad saw a painting of her son, William Herbert, and was mesmerised. This boy came to personify the ideal of beauty to Shakespeare although he had yet to meet him. And this is where the sonnets start.

These are poems that praise the beauty and disposition of his young idol and are passionate poems of unrequited love:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare, the poet, is not the same as Shakespeare, the playwright. In the latter he is the writer of brilliant and entertaining plays that explore character. In the former, he is a philosopher investigating the question of Time and its effect. “Time triumphs over flesh, and Love over all”

Callow was quick to point out that Shakspeare’s crush was not a homeoerotic one but solely a passion for beauty. Eventually he met the beautiful young man who was not very impressed with Bill’s ardour and admiration. Young Herbert did not reciprocate the passion Shakespeare felt and Bill was miffed.

Slowly Shakespeare’s passion waned although one is hard pushed to tell from the contents of the sonnets. At the time, he had a mistress and some of the sonnets are addressed to her. Like many poems of the day the content was often very bawdy and, if we could have followed them a little more slowly, we might have been a little more shocked. Finally, Simon says, Bill and Will became good friends. Although, to me, Bill still seemed a little struck.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Simon’s reading of the sonnets were interspersed with madrigals sung by Quintus. These obviously suited the period but also gave the audience a break from the intensity of Callow’s rendition. With two bass, two sopranos, one counter tenor, one tenor and one contra-tenor it was quite a large group who sang the fugues quite beautifully without musical accompaniment. A lute player also performed at intervals although we found this rather tedious.

To really understand and appreciate the sonnets it needs a great deal of scholarship, attention and experience. To hear Shakespeare’s sonnets rendered so theatrically – in true Shakespearian actor style – meant that they were a little difficult to absorb. To have followed the written word would have helped or, if we had known what homework to do, we could have read them beforehand and got our ear in. It meant that much of it went over our heads.

In fact, our group of ten found the entire programme a little long. I suspect that many of us were remembering Callow’s excellent show on the life of Dickens. It had been on in the West End and the costume and content was really quite splendid. This show, it was felt, was but a pale imitation.

But Simon Callow did get me thinking: here was a reason to read the sonnets again armed with a little more knowledge about their background. And to have a man of Callow’s fame and ability, here, in the sticks, spouting Shakespeare: we would have been Philistines not to go.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Put your faith in trees, not paper

In an uncertain world there are some things that are givens and the best of these have had as little to do with man’s tinkering as possible. One of them is the oak tree - a symbol of merry olde England if ever there was one. In a world that's in a constant state of flux at the moment it’s reassuring to learn that a natural feature can still be relied on to enhance our environment.

Oaks were native to Britain in the prehistoric era before they were finished off by the ice-age and driven southwards to warmer climes. Then, gradually, they made their way up from the Med into northern Europe again.

The tree was sacred to the Anglo-Saxons and Druids and by the middle ages the native oak, Quercus robur, grew extensively in woodlands throughout the south east and central areas of England. For centuries it's been used for timber framed houses and barns, cathedrals and churches: the wood warmed houses, the tannins preserved leather, ships were built of oak timbers.

But although we can now manufacture materials as durable as oak and more stable it is good to know that the oak tree still has a vitally important role to play. As far as biodiversity is concerned, the native oak tree supports more wildlife than almost any other tree. Over 400 species of insects and fungi can exist on one specimen which in turn attracts a wide variety of feeding birds and many small mammals.

The Turkey Oak, Quercus cerris, a native of southern Europe and further east, was re-introduced to northern Europe in the eighteenth century. It reached Britain in 1735 at the time of Trafalgar in an attempt to boost oak supplies for ship’s timbers. It is possibly the fastest growing of all oaks in this country and is easily identified by the winter buds and the acorn cups being hairy.

As our climate changes we have come to realise that the return of this oak may help our birdlife survive warmer temperatures. The Turkey oak’s particular claim to be truly beneficial is because gall-wasps like to lay their eggs on it. A gall forms round the eggs to protect them and birds (those such as tits which are now laying earlier in the year due to a warmer climate) rely on them to feed their young.

The oak has always featured in literature and here is a rhyme by Geoffrey Grigson that demonstrates just what a large part it played, from cradle to grave, in the lives of men throughout history.

THE CAULD LAD OF HILTON
Wae's me, wae's me!
The acorn is not yet
Fallen from the tree,
That's to grow the wood,
That's to make the cradle.
That's to rock the bairn,
That's to grow to a man
That's to lay me.

And it is still playing an important role in all our lives: it’s a small ecosystem all on its own and something we can continue to put our faith in. No matter what state your finances you can now gather an acorn, plant it deep in the earth and watch something worthwhile grow.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com