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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Bad health and black books


I felt bloody awful in the morning yesterday.  I felt bloody awful when I got to school.  I felt bloody awful about the mistake I made when I decided to teach my first lesson.

No matter what I feel like, especially if I am feeling less than 100%; I invariably feel better after I have done some teaching.

At the end of my first period I felt, if not better, then at least passable in the health stakes.  I made the fatal mistake of saying that I would soldier on, when, and only when no less than everybody on the staff knew that I was being foolishly selfless.

It in the afternoon and I even had the energy to force some food between my staunchly gritted teeth for lunch.  It was pig’s cheek for the meat course of the meal and, while it may sound unappetizing, it is actually tender and delicious and not something which I would reject unless upon the point of death.

So having fought the good fight in the first part of the day I was left with the distinctly daunting prospect of a double period with the equivalent of Year 9.  For Media Studies.

They are the sort of lessons where, were I to succumb to the discomfiture which I have been struggling with throughout the day, my colleagues would undoubtedly kill me rather than take my class!

I have a great and almost mystical belief in the restorative power of a good night’s sleep – even if it is uneasy!

I was all set to purchase my very first book electronically, “The Fall of the House of Wentworth” which I came across somewhere and seemed to be the sort of book in which I might be interested.  I powered up my Kindle and tried to make my purchase and discovered that the book was “not found”.  My grandiose plans to start downloading the whole panoply of modern literature has foundered at the first obstacle!

Back to Amazon!

Today I feel if not completely well, then at least better than ill.  And, while my cough is flamboyant, it is not causing me enough discomfort to bleat for sympathy – though I will take all the sympathy that I can get, because, as is always true in teaching you get bugger all thanks for what you do.

It has rained spasmodically for the past few days and today dawned glumly but has now improved so that we can look down in glorious sunshine on the festering pollution that shrouds Barcelona.
 
I have a naive belief in the health giving possibilities of living by the side of the sea fostered, I think by memories of that insanely bouncy, if somewhat camp fisherman leaping along the sands with the legend “Skegness is so bracing!” on the poster advertising the resort.
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In spite of the obvious damp that characterises littoral living kids of my generation and before have been stamped with the idea that that seaside ozone is invigorating rather than poisonous.  We now know that ozone in the lower atmosphere is a pollutant (though how anything with three oxygen molecules could be anything other than good is beyond me) and it appears that only in the upper atmosphere is it beneficial.  So, like butter, cheese, eggs, full-fat milk and nuts, it joins the list of “things that we were told as children were good for us and now we find are harmful”.

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However, like Ben Gunn I cannot envisage life without cheese.  My favourite quotation from Treasure Island is “Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese - toasted, mostly.”  Personally, I wouldn’t add the last part about “toasted” but life without cheese would be unthinkable.  And the idea of living only with the lower fat varieties such as the rubbery and largely tasteless Edam is not worth considering.  Though I did once taste a mature Edam with a black rather than red rind and it was surprisingly flavoursome.

Though I can talk about cheese, at this present moment in time I wouldn’t particularly like to eat any.  I am at that stage of “unwellness” where eating does not seem to be a priority and I could well imagine a world in which eating was not necessary.  This feeling will last until lunch time when the fanatical approach to eating together in this school will determine my dietary approach.
 
Meanwhile I am re-reading “Catch-22” and am finding it much les enjoyable than my last re-reading of a novel that I recommend to anyone who listens.

This time I am finding Heller’s style ornate, self-congratulatory and irritating.  I still laugh out loud, because I happen to think that you would have to be dead not to respond to some of the humour.  Which stand up comedian has not at some point or other in their act adopted some of the techniques of insane dialogue that is Heller’s stock in trade?  Who has not used his insane logic for ludicrous effect?  Where would Douglas Adams have been without “Catch-22” to show him the way?


And yet.  Some of his chapters seem formulaic after a time and some of his descriptions are elaborately overworked.  His characters have all the mechanics of Dickensian grotesques without their depth.  And yes, I am being ironic.

It is simply not getting at me in the same way as it did.  Admittedly I know what is going to happen, but I always found delight in re-reading the text and being shocked anew at the freshness and quality of daring that made it worth reading in the first place.

This reading is more of a compulsion: I’ve started and so I’ll finish.  It has lost its edge somewhat: perhaps hardly surprising for something over fifty years old.  Perhaps it’s going through that “difficult” phase while it becomes an historic classic rather than a contemporary classic.  I will not stop reading it, but the next reading may be a long way in the future!

I’ve now finished reading the book and perhaps the most unsatisfying thing about this reading is the “happy” ending. 

The penultimate chapter entitled “Snowden” finally gives the details of the young man’s death and Yossarian finally discovers that “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret.”  The “glum irony” which informs so much of the book gives way at the end, in spite of the unending corruption of the corruptible, to an affirmation of faith and a renewal of belief.  It may be unrealistic and fanciful but it is upbeat and “Yossarian jumped” and escapes death yet again as “he took off.” 

And who knows, he might actually have joined Orr in Sweden.  But it is the mere act of defiance and determination that gives the lie to Snowden’s “secret” where, in spite of the carnal nature of Man he is capable of something more, as Yossarian says, “I’m not running away from my responsibilities.  I’m running to them.” We even have the soppily romantic statement of Yossarian when he talks of Nately’s whore’s younger sister, “There’s a young kid in Rome whose life I’d like to save if I can find her,” which sounds like a line from a B movie Western voiced by a rough diamond played by John Wayne!

One cannot pretend that there is a guaranteed future for Yossarian, but in a novel of such ground breakingly black humour then even such a muted assertion “But at least I’ll be trying” has to be seen as something of an affirmation of human possibility.

I know that I will read the book again.  But next time in a decent hard backed edition with white pages!

Barça has just lost 2-1 to the Arsenal.  All is not lost, that away goal may yet prove to be of vital importance in the next leg.

Who knows?  Who cares?  I have to get up at 6.30 am tomorrow!

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