Return of Normal Programming

Enough bile. I'm sure there are plenty of good things about Melbourne. I'm always impressed by the baked goods.

I'm reading another Didius Falco book called Shadows in Bronze. It's one of the earlier ones before he's married. He's certainly a lot rougher and readier. Funnier too. I hope I find some more that I missed out on reading along the way.

Parochialism

It's a busy week at work and my Beloved is back so I'm not reading much at the moment. I did buy a groovy looking guide to Melbourne called "the History of Now" which has a potted history of its development and cute anecdotes about early citizens and lots of excitingly laid out pictures. So far, so funky.

Until the Sydney-bashing started. Melbourne has better food, better parks, better drinking water, more farsighted planners, more Victorian buildings, more Vince Colosimos. Melbourne dresses better and reads more than Sydney people.

Yawn. I know this song. The chorus goes "Sydney people DON'T CARE."

I grew up in Brisbane, which has probably the most one-eyed parochial citizens in Australia if not the world. People describe it as "God's Own Country" without a hint of irony and obsess about what the southerners think of them. Truth is, they're not.

Strangely, both Brisbane and Melbourne claim to be the world's most liveable city. Fine, if it's going to make people decide to move there and get off my train.

Small things

One of the sadder things about getting older is realising that you've forgotten a lot of the detail of the things you learnt at school. I studied Latin for five years a long time ago now and am often extremely disappointed that I cannot immediately translate the Latin mottos of major institutions. This isn't entirely my fault because a lot of these tags are three or four words from extremely complicated and literary poetry taken out of context without a verb sometimes. Or so I console myself.

A decade ago, the first time I visited Melbourne, I saw "vires acquirit eundo", the city's motto, on lots of signs and bridges and wondered what it meant, thinking it was something about acquiring men or strength but I was utterly stumped by "eundo".

I visited Melbourne on the week-end and was similarly stumped but this time I wrote it down, went home and looked it up in my dictionary. And it wasn't there. This made me realise that it was one of THOSE words, the complicated irregular verb forms that I studied by rote as a 13 year old and knew extremely well for years and years. ( eg I remember meeting a then current latin student at a party when I was 23 and even after several beers I knew more of them than he did). I thought my memory was immortal. But it isn't.

However, thanks to this site (thank you internet) I know that the quote is from Virgil and means "it gathers strength as it goes". Great mottto for a baby city you'd think.

Unfortunately, I do remember my teachers telling me that the context of quotes is also pretty important. In this instance, Virgil was talking about the power of rumour, getting stronger as it travels through several people. Good motto for a gossip columnist but NOT a good motto for a city I would have thought. Especially when the rumour was about an extramarital relationship between Queen Dido and Aeneas that ended in tears (and literally in her funeral pyre after killing herself when he left Carthage for his destiny to found Rome).

So I'm quietly amused by these pompous Victorians putting these words all over the place.

extremely quietly.

More things to make you squirm

I finished Arthur and George on Friday. It continued to be full of ambiguities. There was no happy ending and even any real certainty about motives and results. Just as it should be.

There was one delightful passage where a mediun was standing on the stage of the Albert Hall channelling the thousands of spirits competing to speak to audience members. Someone in the audience of Indian ancestry wondered in puzzlement why the medium was struggling so much, swaying as if against a stiff breeze, because surely the spirits of English people would have known how to queue.

To put it baldly, the book was about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's campaign to seek a pardon and compensation for someone he considered could not have committed an offence for which they'd been convicted early in the twentieth century. At that time, not all judges had legal qualifications and not all chief constables knew about policing. This was probably the last gasp of the age of the amateur, when public schoolboys and university graduates were sent off to govern the colonies with no more qualification than their moral codes and their smatterings of Latin and Greek. Not that there's anything wrong with Latin of course.

This case led to some improvements to the system. Yay. But the book is about the protagonists as complicated individuals whose lives touched each other only briefly. I'll need a legal library to understand what really happened.

I also finally read Chloe Hooper's A Child's Book of True Crime which I've been avoiding because it seemed overly praised when it was published and I thought it would disappoint. But I was recently very impressed by her article on visiting Palm Island for the coronial inquest of a death in custody she wrote in the current The Monthly. I was amazed it made it through the lawyers. It was the sort of journalism that informed and entertained. It told me far more about a part of the world I'm really unlikely to visit than the newspapers and that heavy handed RPA show on SBS where Susie Porter played a nurse on a Torres Strait island.

The book is billed as an erotic thriller and there's a twee comment on the back about how amazing it was that someone so young could know that much about erotica. Oh please. That's all the young think about (she snips enviously). One of the best things about the book is the description of the power of young girl flesh over men and the lack of this power older women feel. At the time, we have no idea how to handle it and by the time we do understand it's already fading. That stuff was good but the rest of the book quoted a bit much from child psychologists. It was really interesting structurally with bits of a very odd children's story interspersed throughout. This wasn't entirely successful but it was interesting and that's better than dull.

Arthur and George

As expected Arthur and George is compelling and beautifully written and contains a wealth of subtelty. It also makes me feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Julian Barnes has a knack for lulling you with his deceptively simple prose full of descriptions of bucolic lifestyles with loving families and then introducing some extreme nastiness or moral quandary. I find myself catching my breath and going "oh, I hadn't realised that that was the case" and I look back and can see there were clues planted in the choice of words far earlier on.

Before She Met Me was like this. There were certainly some very very dark parts of Staring at the Sun which I only vaguely remember as being about a pilot in the second world war with suicidal tendencies as a result of love gone wrong (sounds like I need to read it again).

Talking it Over and the sequel (Love etc??)were also full of nastiness but it was less unexpected because these books were more obviously experimental in form.

Last night I forced myself to stop reading before I galloped through the whole thing and wasted it. This was very hard. I was however extremely glad that there were significant delays on the train this morning and I had an extra twenty minutes to read before work. Thank-you City Rail.

I'll take the show-off

I finally got my Christmas Book Henry and George by Julian Barnes. Thanks Mum. It's great so far. Julian Barnes is possibly my favourite living stylist even if some of his books (such as, um, all of them probably)are a bit show-offy.

I think this says a lot about me though that the authors I adore, will read every word they've written even if I know in advance that it got bad reviews or is a just a muddy collection of letters or fragments of unfinished nonsense, the guys whose books I really really want to have to own and keep and preferably in hard cover, tend to be the show-offs, the guys with big vocabularies and lots of literary tricks and not much heart. I'm talking about you now, Anthony Burgess and you, Ian McKewan and you, Paul Auster and where are you going, Will Self?

Most of all I'm talking about Bruce Chatwin. I remember the day late in 1988 or early 1989 I finished Utz . It was Picador edition. I turned the last page with extreme satisfaction realising that it was his first novel and thought "at last, a new writer whose books will keep me entertained throughout my life." Soon afterwards, I found his next book The Viceroy of Ouidah and was enchanted that he seemed to know as much about Dresden as he did about the consequences of the slave trade on a West African country I'd never really heard of before. This book included a biographical note that he'd died. I've never been so sad about the death of someone I've never met.

Denouement anyone?

In what would become a habit if I hadn't finished all the immediately available books now, I stayed up most of the night again reading Fortune of War, yet another in Partrick O'Brian's Captain Jack Aubrey series.

In this book which Jack faces a series of extremely unfortunate events involving shipwreck, capture and serious damage to his manly appearance.

When I got off the train this morming I had a mere six pages to go so I read them as I waited for the computer to boot up. It was in the midst of an incredibly exciting sea battle in which cannons were fired with deadly accuracy and people boarded the ship. The lives and loves of the central characters hung in the balance. I needed to know what would happen when the smoke cleared to everyone involved. Jack congratulated the captain on his victory and then

and then

and then

it just stopped.

How annoying! The dreaded cliffhanger! Just as well these books were written decades ago and all I have to do is ask nicely to borrow the next one in the series rather than waiting a year for him to write it.

Of course, this being the 21st century, you can't just be content with reading the books. You can also go here and learn all about the historical and nautical details in almost inifinite depth. Me? I'll be reading something else by then.

Thank God for Jack

On Friday I realised that a project likley to dominate the next three months of my working life is going to be so fraught with tension and difficulty that I may have significant trouble with maintaining my professional equilibrium. I spent most of the week-end in a state of dread only leavened by faint hopes that I might drop dead of in an (arguably) increasing order of likelihood:
a) toxic shock syndrome
b) newfound allergy to cats
c) inhaling spores from potting mix while watering plants
d) heart attack while at the gym
e) inhaling gas from the stovetop burners going out before I noticed it
f) train crash
g) avian flu caught from other passengers on the train or
h) sheer boredom.

Mercifully, after exhausting all other forms of entertainment (friends, the feline, television, the telephone, four DVDs and a movie in a cinema) Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian containing the continuing adventures of Jack Aubrey and his loyal companion, ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, kept me entertained for several hours.

Hours in which I should have been sleeping. But if I'd been asleep, I would only have had bad dreams.

Thank you Jack.

literature - blergh

I was going to write an extremely literary post about the book I started to read on the train by Christa Wolf about a fictional encounter between two famous 19th century German writers I'd never heard of at a party in 1804.

On about the fifth page the man goes off on a reverie about the letters he wrote to people while abroad which he now recalled as a proxy for actually remembering the experience so he was relying on them being an actual record of his feelings but wasn't quite sure. Because he didn't want to communicate with any particular person such as his Beloved he used the same phrases in each of the letters he wrote. And I thought 'What's the shame in that? Two hundred years later, that's what we'd call a group email - or even a blog.'

I stopped reading it after that because it was dull, dull, dull.

What I did want to talk about today is a horrible discovery I made last night: sugarfree belgian chocolate easter eggs which I'd bought quickly without reading the label.

Not 'unsweetened' (which I could understand in a health shop patchouli oil sort of way) but 'sugar free'which means all the texture and creaminess (and calories??)of high milk solid and cocoa butter chocolate but with a horrible aftertaste of artificial sweeteners. Oh and in extremely fine print in six languages: 'excessive consumption may cause a laxative effect.' Not good.

Up all night with Lucky Jack Aubrey

As I mentioned on Monday, my Beloved is on a business trip for a couple of weeks. Even though I know I'll miss him, I was secretly looking forward to the opportunity of catching on the television shows that I like a bit that aren't his cup of tea. Shows like Ghost Whisperer and Two and a Half Men and soppy movies and in depth current affairs and depressing documentaries about camel drivers in Afghanistan. Rather than Striperella or Pizza or anything involving cars.

(To be fair, he's not a remote control nazi. We negotiate what to watch and most of the time we agree although if I never ever see any televised motor sport again I'll die a happy woman)

But I realised, to my horror, that this week and next week, television has gone bad. The good shows have vanished or are replaced by repeats. The worthy shows seem dull. Watching the ABC and SBS on my own, I can't help noticing that there are 10 minutes of ads between shows - gaps that together we would have filled with conversation.

Normal programming will apparently resume after the Commonwealth Games.

Which is when exactly when my Beloved will return.

Oh the abandonment!!

Just as well I have my health and three Patrick O'Brian novels.

Or so I thought. Without my Beloved, there is no-one to say "there there Mary, it's time to go to sleep now. Finish the book in the morning."

Consequently, I now only have two Patrick O'Brian books, a sore head and a hazy idea that Lucky Jack Aubrey triumphed over adversity in a nautical way.

Just how many genres are there?

From ancient Roman private eye to rollicking tales of derring do on the high seas. I'm certainly filling in the time before starting to read a "proper" book. (By which statement, I imply no criticism of popular fiction; I enjoy it as much as the next person because it is reasonably honest about the expectations you should have of it and, in fact, am frequently exceedingly disappointed by the quality of so-called "literary" fiction)

By the above paragraph of convoluted syntax, you may have adduced some recent immersion in a pastiche of early 19th century English. You would be correct as I'm halfway through Patrick O'Brian's Mauritius Command which tells the tale of Captain Jack Aubrey on a little-known campaign in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars.

The covers of these books always say they're "meticulously researched". I wouldn't actually know. They're certainly good fun and full of credible sounding details of nautical jargon and natural history. There are maps and a diagram of the parts of a ship. The books constantly remind you that then, as now, the Royal Navy was collection of fighting machines. The captains needed to be rather good at sums to make ships go faster than the enemy and shoot them harder.

I read the first of this series Master and Commander last year. This was recently a film which I enjoyed for making Russell Crowe seem like a nice-ish chap for once. Unfortunately this role was responsible for the idiotic ponytail he wore to his wedding.

The new book is number 4 in the series. Jack is older and wearier but so far just as lucky. It's a good read.

Who would play Falco in a movie of the series?

My Beloved, who does not read much or very often, was so intrigued by my description of See Delphi and Die that he took it with him to read on a business trip. It was sort of appropriate seeing the book has a lot about ancient games and he'll be in Melbourne during the Commonwealth Games. I can picture him at meal times boring his colleagues silly with descriptions of the way they did long jump in ancient Greece (from a standing start with a weight in either hand to increase momentum) and the viciousness of the bareknuckle boxing and the whole business of not letting women in to watch.

We were trying to work out if the books would be good as movies and, if so, would it be expensive to mock up sets of ancient Rome. In trying to establish if any of them were movies, I found out that (unsurprisingly) Lindsey doesn't have a very good website.

I learnt that there are 17 of Falco books and I think I've read the most recent 10 or so. I've definitely read the first one.

If there was a movie version, someone with curly hair and a bit of sun damage would be perfect to play Falco - it probably couldn't be anyone English. Someone in their mid thirties and a bit rugged - but not too tall.

Of course, I would have to be cast as his lovely wife Helena.

More about the Olympics

I should have explained yesterday that See Delphi and Die is all about Ancient Roman tourists on a package tour to the sights of Greecein the first century AD. Tour groups are traipsing about temples and things when Greece is in political decline but placeas aren't actually ruins.

And because it's a detective story, people need to get murdered and where they're murdered is Olympia, where the Olympic Games are held every four years but not during this story.

These books are great because Davis has really strong, funny characters who continue to grow and develop from book to book rather than just being. We've watched Marcus the informer woo and win Helena, his uptown girl, become a father and become slightly more prosperous. In the background is imperial Roman history and a LOT of archaeological research which is presented with such a light touch you don't even notice you're learning. Or most of the time anyway. The earlier books plodded on a bit too much about particular streets in Rome and I always felt obliged to refer back to the map even though it didn't matter at all.

Looking forward to this book getting to Delphi. The title promises that someone else will die!

The Olympics are dangerous

Yesterday I started a fabulous book by Lindsay Davis called See Delphi and Die. This is the most recent in an exhaustive series of ancient Roman detective stories starring the inimitatble Marcus Didius Falco, part time poet and full time informer.

I love her work.

Simple pleasures

I finished Pride and Prejudice last night and oh how lovely it was to be there again with Mrs Bennet rejoicing in having three married daughters.

I hadn't realised quite how sad Mr Bennet was to be losing Lizzy the last time I read it and I wondered how much of that was behind his need to be persuaded that Mr Darcy was good enough for her. Poor Mr Bennet, deprived of the constant company of his only sensible daughter.

Personally, I'd have been glad to get rid of as many as possible as soon as possible.

Almost there

Friday already and I haven't blogged since Tuesday. How quickly New Year's resolutions fade in importance once work starts getting busy.

Mary had a beautiful moment in my reading of Pride and Prejudice yesterday. Naughty Lydia was going on and on about shopping and food and how much fun the other four sisters had had on an excursion skylarking in a coach and saying she'd wished Mary had been there too.

To this, Mary very gravely replied, 'Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.'

I think I would too.

I only have a few chapters to go now. Even though I know exactly what will happen I'm really enjoying savouring the language and the wit and how the most dire of circumstances are expressed so elegantly. I love Jane Austen/