Ties That Bind

We drove through the quiet streets of Sydney to the airport where we met Tommy Geddes of a flight from London.  He's here for the cricket.  It's his first visit to Australia and the country is performing its best for him: 30 degrees here (40 degrees in Penrith), 45 degrees in South Australia with fire warnings issued at the "catastrophic" level; meanwhile, up in Queensland, there is flood area larger than the combined land mass of France and Germany.  Back in the flat, having been joined by Sharon and Ken, we waited for the Bells recounting predictable tales of the very many forms of animal life here that can kill.  Snakes seemed to make a particular impression on Tommy who, I realised as we talked, I first met 35 years ago.  Spike was 4 months old at the time.

Earlier in the day I opened a parcel from Scotland.  I expected it to be a belated Christmas gift from my mother.  It turned out to be a card from Martin Currie accompanying a commemorative T-shirt for Tam White who did this year.  The Gagdefather indeed!

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

I finished reading Toni Morrison's short novel A Mercy.  It's well worth reading; challenging in some ways (not least working out whose voice we're hearing at times), lyrical in parts and affecting throughout.  If it's not as fully realised as is her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved, one can hardly fault the author.  Beloved is a once in a lifetime event.  No author could produce two novels at that level of accomplishment.

There is, however, a direct line between A Mercy and Beloved.  The unnamed mother of Florens. like Sethe's Africa-born mother, remembers the pens of her initial captivity and subsequent sale to slave-traders who transport her to Barbados where she is sold to Senhor, the two-dimensional malignant force with whom Jacob reluctantly trades. But A Mercy is not a prequel.  There are no common characters or shared storyline.  The more recent novel deals with an earlier period, the late-17th Century when indentured servants hailing originally from Europe lived little-better lives than African slaves; where religious intolerance amongst Christian sects replayed old European (particularly English) rivalries and where the loss of the New World paradise to the be-spoiling touch of the fallen European re-enacts the original sin and banishment of Genesis.  It's probably no co-incidence that the house built by Jacob, with its serpent-headed wrought iron gates, is on the edge of a hamlet called Milton.

I think it's a good read.  The New York Times called it one of the best books of 2008 and gave a glowing review here.  Others were less persuaded.  In an uncomfortable, rather sneering review, here in The New Yorker, John Updike damned the novel with faint praise.  His thoughts on the text should not prejudice anyone.  It's a decent work of fiction with something valuable to tell us.
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Discretion is the better part of valour

My skin is a bit delicate.  Less than two weeks out from our flight to Scotland I've stayed off it most of the day.  I borrowed Spike's Kobo e.reader (a Christmas gift from her parents) and started to read Anna Karinina.  My jury is out on both (the Kobo and the Tolstoy).

There and back again

Like a hobbit enjoying his second breakfast I opened my second Christmas gift, the "special edition, extended version" DVD of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.  There's nearly four hours of my life that I'll not see again but I did enjoy it ... although nothing like as much as I enjoyed my first breakfast / gift.

In one of my favourite moments Sean Bean as Boromir rolls his eyes in the mines of Moria as he says to Aragorn, "They have a cave troll."  Lots of fun.  The added footage does improve on the original film.

Bliss

String of Pearls from The Glen Miller Story

That noise is nature

One can luxuriate at times in the romantic notion of a rural idyll.  But not for long. 

At first I thought it was rosy tinted Dawn (to borrow from Homer) whose light woke me this morning at five-thirty or thereabouts.  But no.  I lay in bed in Spike's parents' house in the Dooralong valley trying to puzzle out what machine had been started or why a giant lawn-sprinkler was operating then realised the noise was nature.  Specifically it was the mating call of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions for all I know) Cicada males trying to attract females with their impressive and loud sound boxes. 

The trees around the property are bursting with sound.  It is constant, from dawn to dusk and truly deafening at times.  I wondered at one point if it never stopped, if there might not be some let-up.  I hit on this silly notion.  That in the dense forest of sound there is one tree from which not a sound is made.  There, I speculated, sits a solitary male with the loudest, most impressive boom box in all of Cicada land.  He has a smile of satisfaction on his silent face.  Around him sit a bevvy of happy Cicada females, sated by their Alpha male and oblivious of all the also- rans still banging away around them.

We've had a delightful couple of days with Spike's family.  Tranquil, however, is not a word that immediately springs to mind.
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Happy Christmas (from my friend Pat)