Just Finished Reading: Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (FP: 1929)

It isn’t really surprising that he had little or no respect for those in authority. After his mother’s untimely death Robert was shuffled off, by his seemingly uncaring father, to Public (AKA ‘Private’) schools of varying unsuitability. Bullied and worse by other pupils and teachers alike he hated almost every moment of it. Fortunately Robert was both academically gifted as well as being a fair boxer – as his fellow pupils and one particularly obnoxious teacher found out to their costs. Robert was also very good at making lifelong friends including one teacher at Charterhouse – the climber George Herbert Leigh Mallory (who died on Everest in 1924 aged just 37) – who leant the young Graves books and took him climbing. His progression to Oxford was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War when he enlisted almost immediately. Eventually sent into action on the Western Front he met and befriended the fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon before being injured and sent back to England to recuperate. At the Battle of the Somme he was seriously wounded by a shell fragment and was told (as he lay on a stretcher awaiting the casualty train) that he wouldn’t make it home alive. Needless to say he proved them wrong. Spending the rest of the war in a training camp he tried to teach raw recruits the basics for survival in the trenches. But one thing he never lost in all his time in the army was contempt for the generals who sent ill-trained and ill-equipped young men to their deaths in the thousands with no real understanding of what they wanted or what they were asking of their troops. From his testimony throughout this often heart-wrenching narrative the level of incompetence and indifference amongst the British officer class was staggering. You can feel the anger and the distain between every line.

As biographies go this was raw indeed. Graves opens his life to examination without asking anything in return (except maybe understanding). His experiences are laid out before the reader warts and all. He tells of his darkest thoughts, his mistakes, his romantic encounters (with both sexes) and his no holds barred experiences during the Great War and all of the pointless death he encountered there. All in all it’s really quite something to behold. His schoolboy experiences felt oddly Dickensian to be honest, but I suppose that they were so far out of my own experiences in a State education system 50 years later that Dickens or “Tom Browne’s School Days” was the only imagery I could fall back on. I know for a fact that I would have hated the experience just as much as he did. The fact that he not only became friends with Mallory but that he took him climbing (!) took my breath away. Just IMAGINE! I did a little bit of climbing in my 20’s (mostly as the prompting of a friend who was manic on the whole thing!) and enjoyed it – not having any great fear of heights helped no doubt – but the thought of Leigh Mallory *asking* you to go climbing with him…… [gulp] Then, of course, bumping into Sassoon in France! [shakes head, laughs] That sort of thing did seem to happen to some people! It does make me laugh though how famous people always seem to move in the circles of other famous people.

Despite the sometimes painfully raw moments this was an astonishing biography and rightly deserves its place as a modern literature classic. Not only will you learn a great deal about the formative years of a great poet and novelist but you will also get an insight into the society that created him and a harrowing look at life in the Western trenches. Highly recommended.       

Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: The Traitor by Sydney Horler (FP: 1936)

It was the mistake that defined his life and almost cost him everything. On his return to the Western Front in August 1918 Captain Alan Clinton took the opportunity to meet his French lover in Paris before delivering his Secret dispatch to his commanding officer. Unknown to Alan, however, his ‘French’ lover was in fact a German secret agent who had arranged for his wine to be drugged and his dispatch copied. Once decrypted the message allowed the German forces to prepare for an Allied assault with disastrous consequences. Managing to cover up his part in the debacle Alan joined the British Secret Service in an attempt to assuage his guilt and to protect the country he had inadvertently betrayed. Seventeen years pass. Alan’s son, now a newly minted officer in the Tank Corps, is determined to ‘do something’ as his country heads to war with the old adversary. Hearing that a new caterpillar track is being demonstrated in the German capital he travels without official permission and becomes entrapped in an enemy Secret Service plot aimed at his country and his father. When he is discovered by the British and charged with treason who will come to his defence – especially if the cost is his father’s reputation and career.

After enjoying a few of the British Crime Classics that seem to be flooding the market these days I couldn’t really resist picking this up and one other (not by this author) cheaply in my favourite ‘remainder’ bookshop. The author is hailed as something of an institution from the 1920’s onwards and produced works at a prolific rate throughout his life (needless to say I had never heard of him until I saw this book for sale). Although the bones of the story were strong enough to carry the narrative – and actually there *is* a good story in there – the 30’s writing style really didn’t translate at all to the early 21st century. The story was rather overly contrived, the characters were, by and large, less than believable and their motivation questionable at best – although I did think that at least some of their motivations – honour, public face, class – probably meant much more in 1936 than it does in 2020. Some of the characters (actually both of the lead females) were almost believable and were definitely more nuanced than their male counterparts. Overall however this book had dated very badly in the 80+ years since its publication. An interesting enough read in places but not recommended for its general entertainment value.   

Cartoon Time.

Impressive!

A Ninth View from the Apocalypse.

I went back to work on Thursday! Or kind of anyway….. Ever since my Retirement coincided with the ‘End of the World as We Know It’ [Are REM making a packet of money out of this Pandemic or what??] I’ve been holding on to all of the Working from Home paraphernalia – laptop, phone etc – and last weekend they finally asked for it back. I was only too happy to oblige and so used Public Transport for the first time since March. These days it’s mandatory to wear a mask on the bus/tube and so on but that as OK as I’d previously picked up a few packets via Amazon. It did feel a bit weird though and I found myself hyperventilating until I took conscious control of my breathing. As a side effect it also started to steam up my glasses which is going to be MUCH fun during any winter travel! On my way back I started hyperventilating again but it calmed down much more quickly than the first time. I suppose it’s just something to get used to.

Chatting to my ex-boss we compared a lot of notes on how we’re both doing. He’s now back in the office alternate weeks which, after 3 plus months working from home, felt more than a bit strange. We also both laughed that us both being at work was the furthest either of us had travelled since March – which for me was only around 3 miles! How small (in some ways) our worlds have become since Zombie Dawn. The other thing that’s strange presently is that I haven’t used cash for any transactions other than to pay my window cleaner. I wonder what will happen post-vaccine. Will an almost cashless society be another unintended outcome of Covid-19? Maybe it will. It’s certainly accelerated a lot of other technological trends.

Naturally I’m still reading quite a bit and am presently averaging around 2 books a week as I had hoped pre-retirement. I would be doing a lot more in the garden if it’d stop raining for more than a few hours. Even so it’s looking a lot tidier than it was. I’m watching a fair bit of YouTube presently too – quite a bit of news but also a REALLY good history series covering WW1 week by week in over 600 10-15 minute slots. So that’s keeping my interested in the evenings when I’m too tired to read but not tired enough to go to bed. Plus I have a new solo game (care of the Steam Sale) called Oxygen Not Included which is a survival/resource game based inside what I think is the remnant of an exploded planet. It’s very complex, very cute (the guys you look after are little very cartoony people) and very engaging. I love it.

As the country continues to open up I’m holding back on doing anything too public oriented presently. I’m food shopping and that’s essentially it. I might do some other types of physical shopping but I’m not planning on movie outing, pubs, restaurants or anything like that. They’re still too risky seeing that nothing much has changed since the viral wave washed over us all. It’s all about risk management and risk reduction. You’ll never get it to zero but I’m going to try!

Whilst still not exactly enjoying my captivity I’m fully aware at how lucky I am in that I have no job worries or any other kind of worry to be honest. I do miss being with people (which came as a bit of a surprise to me to be honest – though it really shouldn’t have done) but I’m coping and am pretty much hunkered down for the long, long haul. Luckily I think I might just have enough books to see me through. Although my Amazon Wish List is calling to me……. Be Safe & Stay Safe. See you ALL on the Other Side!

Oh, I almost forgot…. I’ve created a few labels over on the right to reflect the ‘Current Situation’: “Post-Apocalypse” – covering all types of fictional world-ending, and “Pandemics” covering pandemics (obviously) in both fact and fiction and including these reports from inside the thick of it. Please use them as a resource to get through the End Times in one piece. 

Sorry Kids, DEFINITELY back to School!

Just Finished Reading: The Joy of Missing Out by Svend Brinkmann (FP: 2017)

After really enjoying his previous book (Stand Firm – Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze which I reviewed back in May 2017) I was looking forward to reading his other two available works. I was a little disappointed that the book was only 97 pages not including notes, but, I thought, it will be worth every page…..

Unfortunately I thought this was thin in more ways than one. The general argument throughout the slim volume is this – you can’t have it all so don’t even try. Firstly you’ll be happier because of it and so will the planet when you stop striving to die with the most toys. Everything in moderation – essentially know when enough is enough and stop there. Stop working late at the office looking for that bonus to upgrade item X or event A because you won’t be satisfied with it once you get it anyway… so why kill yourself when you could (at least theoretically) be in a pub with friends actually having fun. So travel in Standard Class and stay in a 3* or 4* if you’re feeling flush, drive your more than adequate car for another year, stop trying to keep up with the Jones’s (who are actually trying the keep up with you) and just RELAX. Oh, and one last thing: If you’re in a relationship stop the constant looking to ‘trade up’ to a more "ideal" partner without at least giving things a chance – it’s really annoying!

That was essentially it: Get off that bloody treadmill and start enjoying the life that you have now. To me (who is a fully paid up rejecter of all things treadmill related – *long* before I retired) this all seemed rather obvious and possibly a little trite/patronising. But maybe my head wasn’t in the right place to find it all that useful. Full of good advice on the Good Life but preaching far too much to my particular choir for me to find it too informative or useful. Sadly a little disappointing.

Cartoon Time.