I was woken by rain last night, which gives you some idea of my paranoia about the weather. I am one of those irritating people who lapses into unconsciousness almost as soon as my head hits the pillow and I usually remain in a most satisfyingly comatose condition until I resentfully accept that it is time to get up and go to work.
The gentle dripping of rain is not something which makes an impression on my sleeping brain, though it could add a background detail to a dream! But the sound woke me. I have to admit that once I had ascertained that water was falling from the sky I went back to sleep again.
The winter of 2009/2010 will live on in the folk memory of the Catalans for a long time to come. I found that my British sensibility to unexpectedly adverse weather was matched by those around me. Admittedly they did not feel cheated in quite the same way that I did - after all they had not moved country to get a bit more sun – but they too talked about the horrors of the winter as if the coastal plain of Barcelona had been transformed into the Steppes of Russia and that we constantly having to step over the frozen corpses of kulaks!
I may still be (for me) a pasty white colour, but at least I have been able to stretch out for a few hours and soak up what rays there were. I confidently predict blazing sunshine as soon as term restarts!
Which the sun signally is not doing at the moment. The only thing that you can confidently predict is that the bloody dog next door will, to greet the dawning day, bark his lonely triplets of noise to ensure that we are all awake!
There are two more days of the holiday left.
Just seeing those harsh words forces an icy hand to grip my beating heart. Although I have just thought too that there is the rest of today which counts, hooray!
It had to happen at some time or other. And it just happened today.
For the first time I read a Margaret Pym novel all the way through!
By page 7 of “A Glass of Blessings” I had come across “I was sure that Father Bode was equally worthy of eating smoked salmon and grouse or whatever luncheon the hostesses might care to provide. Then it occurred to me that he might well be the kind of person who would prefer tinned salmon, though I was ashamed of the unworthy thought for I knew him to be a good man.” Delight!
The novel is firmly in Pym territory with a comfortable middle class narrator with time on her hands writing about life which seems to revolve around the clergy of an Anglo-Catholic church. And it’s very funny, though rarely in a laugh out loud sort of way. It is one of those novels which reach their apotheosis in “Madame Bovary” where, when all is said and done, you don’t care much for any of the characters in the book including the narrator!
The action of the novel usually (but not always) stays this side of farcical caricature with a series of cartoon characters acting out sad but resourceful lives to the back ground of money and religion – or vice versa – if there actually is any difference!
There are irresistible moments in the book such as when the narrator, the wife of a fairly highly placed civil servant, speculates about the food appropriate to a religious retreat tea (the ‘tea’ is a particularly Pymmian touch) “with everything in dark colours; but the darkest greyest food I could think of was caviar, which seemed unsuitable, so I got no further.”
I particularly sympathized with a thought that Wilmnet had when debating whether to join a group to talk to the teacher, Piers, after a class in Portuguese: “I wondered if I should join the group but decided to remain aloof, for I could hear questions being asked about the use of the subjunctive and I did not feel equal to that kind of conversation.” It is the use of the word “aloof” that makes passages like this work. And it is often the mot (un)juste that makes an unremarkable piece of description or dialogue rise to the level of ironic, almost sardonic humour.
Only Pym (you see, I am writing of her as if I have been actually reading her rather than simply referring to her for the last x-number of years) would end a novel with the sentence, “It seemed a happy and suitable ending to a good day.” And use a full stop rather than an exclamation mark.
A thoroughly recommendable book to those who might like her. Which is a modified form of recommendation, but nevertheless heartfelt.
I will have to hunt through my books and see if I have another one!
The gentle dripping of rain is not something which makes an impression on my sleeping brain, though it could add a background detail to a dream! But the sound woke me. I have to admit that once I had ascertained that water was falling from the sky I went back to sleep again.
The winter of 2009/2010 will live on in the folk memory of the Catalans for a long time to come. I found that my British sensibility to unexpectedly adverse weather was matched by those around me. Admittedly they did not feel cheated in quite the same way that I did - after all they had not moved country to get a bit more sun – but they too talked about the horrors of the winter as if the coastal plain of Barcelona had been transformed into the Steppes of Russia and that we constantly having to step over the frozen corpses of kulaks!
I may still be (for me) a pasty white colour, but at least I have been able to stretch out for a few hours and soak up what rays there were. I confidently predict blazing sunshine as soon as term restarts!
Which the sun signally is not doing at the moment. The only thing that you can confidently predict is that the bloody dog next door will, to greet the dawning day, bark his lonely triplets of noise to ensure that we are all awake!
There are two more days of the holiday left.
Just seeing those harsh words forces an icy hand to grip my beating heart. Although I have just thought too that there is the rest of today which counts, hooray!
It had to happen at some time or other. And it just happened today.
For the first time I read a Margaret Pym novel all the way through!
By page 7 of “A Glass of Blessings” I had come across “I was sure that Father Bode was equally worthy of eating smoked salmon and grouse or whatever luncheon the hostesses might care to provide. Then it occurred to me that he might well be the kind of person who would prefer tinned salmon, though I was ashamed of the unworthy thought for I knew him to be a good man.” Delight!
The novel is firmly in Pym territory with a comfortable middle class narrator with time on her hands writing about life which seems to revolve around the clergy of an Anglo-Catholic church. And it’s very funny, though rarely in a laugh out loud sort of way. It is one of those novels which reach their apotheosis in “Madame Bovary” where, when all is said and done, you don’t care much for any of the characters in the book including the narrator!
The action of the novel usually (but not always) stays this side of farcical caricature with a series of cartoon characters acting out sad but resourceful lives to the back ground of money and religion – or vice versa – if there actually is any difference!
There are irresistible moments in the book such as when the narrator, the wife of a fairly highly placed civil servant, speculates about the food appropriate to a religious retreat tea (the ‘tea’ is a particularly Pymmian touch) “with everything in dark colours; but the darkest greyest food I could think of was caviar, which seemed unsuitable, so I got no further.”
I particularly sympathized with a thought that Wilmnet had when debating whether to join a group to talk to the teacher, Piers, after a class in Portuguese: “I wondered if I should join the group but decided to remain aloof, for I could hear questions being asked about the use of the subjunctive and I did not feel equal to that kind of conversation.” It is the use of the word “aloof” that makes passages like this work. And it is often the mot (un)juste that makes an unremarkable piece of description or dialogue rise to the level of ironic, almost sardonic humour.
Only Pym (you see, I am writing of her as if I have been actually reading her rather than simply referring to her for the last x-number of years) would end a novel with the sentence, “It seemed a happy and suitable ending to a good day.” And use a full stop rather than an exclamation mark.
A thoroughly recommendable book to those who might like her. Which is a modified form of recommendation, but nevertheless heartfelt.
I will have to hunt through my books and see if I have another one!
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