I want to make a note about a dvd I watched recently.  It was quite unusual, zany and funny.  The plot is well summarized in the wikipedia entry for Black Cat White Cat  I just want to recommend it in case you haven’t viewed it already.  The director is Emir Kusturica and the language is Serbo-Croat.  There are English subtitles.  In some ways, initially,  it reminded me of a French film, the City of Lost Children.  Again, I’ve given a reference to the entry in wikipedia.

2008 is the centenary of the birth of Betty MacDonald, a forthright and humourous author from the Pacific Northwest.  What is prompting me to write about her is that I have just been listening to a radio programme on the BBC.  Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, put together this 30 minute broadcast about Betty and her books.

On one of my recent visits to Seattle I spotted Betty MacDonald’s book The Egg and I in a 2nd hand book store - readers of this blog know how much I enjoy roaming about in 2nd hand book stores!  The Egg and I, a book I read many years ago.  It was written in the 1940’s and I read it a few years later.  On rereading it now in 2007/08 I enjoyed it just as much as I did all those years ago.  Her approach to life is so positive and very humourous.  And Lynne Truss has put together a radio programme which has re-enforced my pleasure in reading the book.

We go through spells of watching dvd’s - Orchestra Wives was recently our viewing fare.  This was an old black and white film.  Nothing on the box to tell us when it was made but Cesar Romero was one of the actors.  Ann Rutherford played the leading lady and an actor played the part of the lead trumpet player in the Glenn Miller band.  As we watched it we thought oh this really is dreadful, so corny and less than a B film.  Yet afterward we felt that we really did enjoy it.    It was so dated, but the acting was good.  And it kind of implanted itself upon us and the scenes are still vivid.   Looking it up on google I find that it is a Fox Studio classic, made in 1942.  It was just so eerie to see Glenn Miller and his band and know that Glenn Miller did not have many years ahead of him.

Not so long ago I was in Waterstone’s in Hampstead in London and a book titled The Lost Musicians caught my eye.  The old adage, you can’t tell a book by its cover, now comes to mind.  The cover was very striking, but the contents turned out to be were even more rewarding.

  with this cover I expected the book to be about some sort of music group. 

 The author, William Heinesen, was from the Faroe Islands, but he wrote in Danish to appeal to a wider audience.  In addition to being a novelist, he was also a poet, a painter, and a composer. 

The setting for The Lost Musicians is Torshavn, the capital of the Faroes.  The fact that his main characters are musicians, among other things, is only one aspect of the story.   Rather, it is more a social study of the people living in this remote town in the far North.  I liked this book a lot.  The setting was unusual and yet the characters were universal.   To quote from the introduction, this novel has music at its heart but at the same time it is a wonderful mixture of caricature, satire and poetry.  And on a higher plane, it represents the cosmic struggle between life-asserting and life-denying forces.

As of about a year ago, I seem to be going through a phase of reading historical fiction, mainly naval historical fiction.  This is a phase I dip in and out of over the years.  After several rather muted attempts at reading the Patrick O’Brian Master and Commander series, I finally got going on them and then you could hardly stop me as I read them one after another, completing the series with no. 20.  A feeling of accomplishment.  What joy now to see one or more of the series for sale and I can pass them by - finished! 

But the compulsion to read more about this period in history and also to read any and every book that is sea oriented has not left me.  One of the “unreads” that has been languishing on my shelves is The Lonely Sea and the Sky by Francis Chichester.  I thought this book was going to be about his solo voyage around the world for which he was knighted in 1967.   Not the case - this book is about his earlier life when he made many solo flights and then later turned to sailing.  The book is no longer languishing among my “unreads”.  I have just finished reading it and now feel compelled to offer the beautiful John Masefield poem Sea Fever, as printed at the beginning of the Chichester book.  This is a poem we had to memorize as part of our English course in high school, over 50 years ago.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sails shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gipsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield (1878-1967)

English Poet Laureate 1930-1967

I understand that there are a lot of poems going out into cyberspace in honour of St. Brigid’s Day.  Here’s where to look for an invitation.

And here’s my contribution, a poem I wrote a few years ago in a creative writing class.  The teacher didn’t particularly like it, but I did and so did many of my classmates.

Nantucket, Nantucket,

We went to you for memories sake

You did not disappoint us

The boat, the spray, the mist,

The emerging outline on the horizon

Summer island of our youth 

We walked your cobbled streets

Absorbed your red bricks and your gray shingled cottages

The air of former whaling days

Of widows looking out to sea

Watching for sea-faring husbands never to return 

Your sandy beaches, playgrounds for the summer visitors

We were young and carefree, only there to play

Maybe work to earn our keep

But that was quite light-hearted 

Waiting table, washing dishes

Cycling to the beach

Midnight swims

Dancing at the Upper Deck

Flirting with the fellows 

And yet behind it all lay the ghost of Moby Dick

And all that made Nantucket famous

In former days of sail and ambergris 

The beloved grey lady of the sea

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed
and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

I found this quote on  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/leonardo_da_vinci.html

I rather liked it.   I don’t want to wish my life away, but I don’t mind saying goodbye to January.  Now roll on springtime.  According to the Irish calendar February 1st was the first day of Spring.  The temperature doesn’t feel like it but we do have daffodils blooming - that is definitely a good sign.

  this is a photo from a couple of days ago - gnomes in the garden on a sunny day

I read not so long ago that Stan Getz, the jazz musician, and Alan Greenspan used to play together.  When Greenspan was in his 30’s he began to realize that he would never be able to play as well as Stan.  Stan noted that Alan always seemed to have his nose in an economics book when they weren’t actually playing.  Stan eventually came out and suggested that Alan turn to economics and make that his major activity.  And that is history.  Just think.

   Sea Stallion coming up the Liffey, August 2007

An interesting newsletter from the Sea Stallion.  The organizing people are in the final stages of picking the crew for the return journey to Denmark, leaving Dublin June 29.  This is such an interesting project and I so enjoyed following the journey from Roskilde last summer.  It will be like a precise military exercise to lift the ship out of the courtyard at Collins Barracks and get it into the Liffey ready for departure.

WORLD TRAVELS - THE MOST TIRING JOURNEY EVER

The London McKee’s have just arrived at their new assignment in Hong Kong.  I am excited for them in their new surroundings and am remembering our experiences more than 35 years ago when we first travelled en famille to our new assignment overseas.      

 In 1972 Ian accepted a 2 year appointment as Town Planning Adviser on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.  This was to be our first overseas assignment as a family and our outbound trip to that idyllic island was the first of many memorable journeys - our preparations for departure set the pattern for many to be undertaken in the future.  Given that any pre-departure time spent in a hotel would not be paid for by our employer we usually stayed in our house until the day we left.  I always underestimated the number of last minute things that had to be done.  When I think back on it I’m not sure how I did it at all with the boys so small and having to leave the house clear for an unidentified but hoped for in-coming tenant.  Although we left the house furnished, we still had to leave the house bare of our more personal belongings and any food.  So of course there was always the problem of the last meal, the sheets used for the last night, etc. 

For the St. Lucia departure in early October, David was 4 months old, Andrew 2 yrs. 4 months, and James 3 yrs. 5 months.  James and Andrew were at a particularly lively stage.  David was a good sleeper.  Andrew was still in nappies and still liked to drink from a bottle.  James was more independent - a good easy child but he could be quite headstrong.  And Andrew could be just plain ornery.  I can remember the anticipation of the night before turning to sheer fatigue as the evening hours moved on and there were still tins of  food in the cupboards and the number of last minute boxes we were taking over to our neighbours  and the boxes we were putting in our carport store seemed endless.  This first time we went overseas we stored our things with friends who lived in Monkstown, a 15 minute drive from Dundrum.  For other assignments in subsequent years as our storage requirements grew, we used C.I.E. who stored our belongings at Broadstone Station. 

The items we selected to send to St. Lucia had been packed and sent  several weeks earlier.  The shipment included favorite toys, books, items for operating a household there - sheets, blankets, towels.  We also sent our blue Volkswagon  - I can’t remember at what point we relinquished the car for shipment from Dublin, but I certainly remember getting an unexpected sighting of it in the dock area in St. Lucia.

                What with needing things for the last minute in our house in Dublin and also wanting to provide as much as possible for our new house in whatever country we were going to, we somehow always seemed to end up with too much (or too little) of various items. 

                On the eve of the departure itself I don’t think we got to bed before midnight  and then we were up at about 5 a.m. to get ready to go to the airport for our early flight over to London.  I had to have many many bottles packed for feeding Andrew and David.  James and Andrew were excited.  David was good as gold and slept most of the time for the whole trip.  We had a bit of time before our flight to St. Lucia which was scheduled to leave London around 2 in the afternoon.  But then our flight was delayed and also we were very slow going through security.  It was at a time when hijacking was a real threat and security procedures were slow and laborious - I remember they even searched David’s nappy.

                At last we were on the plane ready for departure - the longest of British Airways flights.  I don’t know how many hours it was before we landed in Antigua - David had been so good sleeping most of the time - no trouble at all.  James had been grand but did require entertaining.  And Andrew had never stopped moving, squirming, wriggling, etc.  He only fell asleep just as we were about to touch down in Antigua.  At one point he spilled butter on Ian’s brand new shoe.  Ian was cross.  James had slept part of the way so he was ready to get off the plane with me in Antigua.  Ian stayed on the plane with Andrew and David.  I was weary.  James wanted some airport trinket, I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to pay for it and James howled for a long time in protest.  Back on to the plane for the further 2 hour (?) flight to St. Lucia. 

Finally we landed in Hewonara in St. Lucia at the southern end of the island.  It was nighttime, hot and steamy.  James said to Andrew, “come on Dandu, let’s have a look around” and those two little boys  tried to set off into the tropical night. 

                We still had the final leg of our journey to complete - a short flight in a small plane around the north end of the island to reach the capital Castries.  The flight was delayed, there was a thunderstorm, Andrew and James were throwing up.  The carry cot hadn’t appeared from the hold of the big aircraft so I had to hold David while we were waiting in the airport.  We were pretty weary!!!  Finally the flight was called.  Some kind woman offered to hold David but I declined her offer because the plane was so small that she would have been in the back and I would have been up front.  The flight was very scary as thunder rumbled and lightening flashed around us.  Finally, finally - I can’t tell you how tired we were - we arrived at Vigie Airport in Castries.  We were supposed to be met but the designated person was no where in sight.  Somehow we made our way to the Miramar Hotel which was only a mile or so away but it seemed like 100 miles.  After the usual check-in formalities we reached our room and flopped into our beds, absolutely exhausted.   What a lovely view awaited us when we opened our curtains in the morning – the ocean, palm trees, green grass, tropical flowers  - magical to the revived weary travellers.