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Friday, December 25, 2009

Ho! Ho! Ho!




Let’s start with the positive.

Today was sunny. Cold, but sunny.

Toni’s Christmas meal was an orange and two ham sandwiches: one Spanish and the other York.

Determined not to share this Spartan, utilitarian fare (and not being ill) I stuffed the emergency chicken that I bought yesterday with home-made stuffing; put slices of garlic into the flesh; laid bay leaves on the skin and lay slices of Spanish ham over the bird. I didn’t add the trimmings that I had also purchased as it seemed a little unfeeling to the prone character on the sofa!

I accompanied the unaccompanied chicken with a glass of dark Dutch beer. Not quite the meal that we had been expecting but needs must when the flu bug drives!

I have decided not to go to Benidorm: visiting Brian will have to wait for a more auspicious and healthy time.

Something that I have enjoyed doing today is finishing off “The Children’s Book” by A S Byatt. In many ways this is an intimidating book. The confidence with which Byatt creates the world of the second half of the nineteenth century is remarkable, and her grasp of the family saga she has chosen to tell up to the end of the First World War is not only intriguing as history but also is fascinating in the way in which she has chosen to concentrate on certain aspects of life: pottery, The Victoria and Albert Museum; Fabianism; the Women’s Movement. She has the Dickensian technique of recognizing the power of lists; from pottery glazes to artifacts in the museum to types of cloth she weaves a picture which is truly seductive.

This story of interconnected families is as fascinating in its detail as it is sometimes frustrating in its use of coincidence.

One of the central elements of this story is the making of a series of individual stories for her children by one of the central characters. Everything is an inspiration for a story and it is through story that she comes to terms with (or avoids) life. The use of a writer as a character also gives Byatt the opportunity to write what the writer writes. This conceit gives a multi-layered texture to the novel. The facility with which she writes is astonishing and it is a privilege to read a book like this.

The ‘gained’ days in Castelldefels will have to be spent doing something about the books that I am at present liberating from their storage. The basic problems is that there is no room to put them in the house and I am having to double stack shelves and let gravity defying stacks of books accumulate in all odd corners and alcoves. And still there are boxes of books in storage and three boxes lurking outside the front door.

It is something of a curse being a bibliophile. But I’m prepared to put up with it!

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