I see, on reviewing the messages I have placed in this half-drained bottle and thrown into the sea of cyberspace, that I started talking about my enthusiasms a while ago.
Something for which I have no enthusiasm at all is technology. I’ve nothing against machines. After all, I prefer to use a rolling machine for my cigarettes, don’t I? So I can hardly be described as a technophobe.
What I’m not is one of those men – and they’re always men, aren’t they? – who will spend thousands on a camera just to take snaps of the kids eating candy floss at Skegness; or quadraphonic sound systems with huge woofers and spiky tweeters all the better to listen to Daniel O’Donnell; or some long red phallus of a car in which to take the little woman to Tesco.
No. I’m more in touch with my feminine side, which probably explains why I’ve not written much recently. I couldn’t get a word in.
In other words, I read books. This was an early enthusiasm. Don’t disparage Enid Blyton to me. I learnt to read from Noddy. Why wait for the stumbling efforts of teachers? I moved on to Captain W E Johns and I have to say I thought Biggles was a snobbish, racist bastard, which is not bad insight for a nine year old. Next I discovered C S Forester in the school library, but soon realised I was reading the ‘Cadet’ edition, the one with the more graphic violence and what little sex there was removed. I was furious and joined Boston public library, where I could get the real thing.
There I discovered Denis Wheatley, especially his black magic stuff. The Devil Rides Out terrified me. So I went back to find To the Devil a Daughter.
It wasn’t long before I discovered The Camp on Blood Island, which was passed from boy to boy in the fifth form (archaic phrase that), until it was confiscated by a master (another archaism).
Of course, we were more sophisticated in the sixth form and passed around Lady Chatterley’s Lover. What a boring book. You would think that a writer of Lawrence’s quality could knock out better pornography than that if he put his mind to it.
I was also introduced to Chaucer (The Miller’s Tale, obviously) and Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Julius Caesar was the play, and I loved it. ‘Wherefore rejoice, what conquest brings he home To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels . . .’ I had to learn that speech and I still remember it.
Off hand, there are two things I particularly like about Shakespeare. One is his earthiness, his concrete imagery. As when he says, ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may.’ It’s an abstraction expressed in a very homely way.
Similarly, he’s fond of – and there’s a word for this –attributing human emotions to inanimate objects, or shall I say transferring those emotions. For example, when he talks about a boy atop a ‘giddy mast.’
I would like to be able to rhapsodise about the great man, but my talents are too puny even to contemplate that task. Suffice it to say that I love him.
Currently, my enthusiasm is for poetry, or at least the technique of it. As when I start to talk in iambic feet. Like that. No doubt it will pass, because I have trouble just writing an e-mail.
At last I’ve shaken off my writer’s block
And finally emerged from mental fog,
To raise two fingers to the ones who mock
My puerile attempts to write a blog.
Something for which I have no enthusiasm at all is technology. I’ve nothing against machines. After all, I prefer to use a rolling machine for my cigarettes, don’t I? So I can hardly be described as a technophobe.
What I’m not is one of those men – and they’re always men, aren’t they? – who will spend thousands on a camera just to take snaps of the kids eating candy floss at Skegness; or quadraphonic sound systems with huge woofers and spiky tweeters all the better to listen to Daniel O’Donnell; or some long red phallus of a car in which to take the little woman to Tesco.
No. I’m more in touch with my feminine side, which probably explains why I’ve not written much recently. I couldn’t get a word in.
In other words, I read books. This was an early enthusiasm. Don’t disparage Enid Blyton to me. I learnt to read from Noddy. Why wait for the stumbling efforts of teachers? I moved on to Captain W E Johns and I have to say I thought Biggles was a snobbish, racist bastard, which is not bad insight for a nine year old. Next I discovered C S Forester in the school library, but soon realised I was reading the ‘Cadet’ edition, the one with the more graphic violence and what little sex there was removed. I was furious and joined Boston public library, where I could get the real thing.
There I discovered Denis Wheatley, especially his black magic stuff. The Devil Rides Out terrified me. So I went back to find To the Devil a Daughter.
It wasn’t long before I discovered The Camp on Blood Island, which was passed from boy to boy in the fifth form (archaic phrase that), until it was confiscated by a master (another archaism).
Of course, we were more sophisticated in the sixth form and passed around Lady Chatterley’s Lover. What a boring book. You would think that a writer of Lawrence’s quality could knock out better pornography than that if he put his mind to it.
I was also introduced to Chaucer (The Miller’s Tale, obviously) and Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Julius Caesar was the play, and I loved it. ‘Wherefore rejoice, what conquest brings he home To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels . . .’ I had to learn that speech and I still remember it.
Off hand, there are two things I particularly like about Shakespeare. One is his earthiness, his concrete imagery. As when he says, ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may.’ It’s an abstraction expressed in a very homely way.
Similarly, he’s fond of – and there’s a word for this –attributing human emotions to inanimate objects, or shall I say transferring those emotions. For example, when he talks about a boy atop a ‘giddy mast.’
I would like to be able to rhapsodise about the great man, but my talents are too puny even to contemplate that task. Suffice it to say that I love him.
Currently, my enthusiasm is for poetry, or at least the technique of it. As when I start to talk in iambic feet. Like that. No doubt it will pass, because I have trouble just writing an e-mail.
At last I’ve shaken off my writer’s block
And finally emerged from mental fog,
To raise two fingers to the ones who mock
My puerile attempts to write a blog.
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