Back next week...

Sorry to be absent for a while - since I signed off my last post with a cold, you might think that I'm suffering in some Swiss sanatorium (a la Katherine Mansfield) but... no, I just went away from blogging for a couple of days, and then decided that it would be nice to have a few more too.  So, I'll be back next week - hope you're all having lovely weeks!

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A Trip to See Vanessa and Virginia

They weren't in, though.

My friends Shauna and Lauren (who were on the master's course I did 2008/9) and I have been intending to take a trip to Sussex for about three years, and on Saturday we finally organised ourselves and did it.  Our itinerary?  Monk's House and Charleston - being the homes of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and Vanessa Bell et al respectively.  When I say 'et al' that includes luminaries as various as David Garnett, Duncan Grant, and John Maynard Keynes.

We took the train to Lewes (which is lovely and where, ahem, I bought a couple of books - Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton and Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor) and then had a beautiful walk along the river to Monk's House.  It really couldn't have been a better day for it - we kept stopping and marvelling at how beautiful it was.  Normally I do this sort of gasping next to my brother Colin, who doesn't care at all about views ("They're just things from further away") so it was a refreshing change to have people agree with my effusiveness.

Such a lovely walk to take!  Also oddly deserted.

Lauren and I get a bit too excited about it all...

After a picnic and some debate over the map (and me falling into a very deep rabbit hole for a moment - sadly no Alice-esque adventures) we arrived at Monk's House, and I used my National Trust membership for probably the last time.  And we were allowed to take photos!  Here follows lots of photos...

Table painted by Vanessa Bell!

Shakespeare volumes bound & labelled by VW

VW's writing shed

 It was so special.  I love Virginia Woolf, as you probably know, and I can't believe it's taken me so many years to visit Monk's House.  To be in the same rooms in which she lived, seeing her furniture and wandering around her garden, was a really wonderful, quite moving, experience.

But we didn't just go to one Bloomsbury Group home, oh no!  Next stop was Charleston, a few miles away.  We weren't allowed to take photographs inside, so here is just the outside.  If it was a beautiful home outside (and it was) than the inside was utterly breathtaking.  Every wall and item of furniture was decorated by Vanessa Bell or Duncan Grant - abstract patterns creating a sponged-on 'wallpaper', a rooster painted above the window to 'wake up' the occupant in the morning, etc.  Despite being a rented house...!  And paintings hung everywhere, too.  All so stunning, and all the more special because they had been done by one of the residents or their friends.  They included a portrait of Virginia Woolf by her sister, Vanessa Bell, which I hadn't seen before, and which I prefer to the famous portraits Bell did of Woolf.  I can only find a small part of it online (see right).

Our guide, called Angie, was exceptionally good.  She barely drew breath in the hour we had for the tour.  It would have been nice to have time to ask questions, perhaps, but I suppose then we'd have lost out on some of the prepared tour.  It catered to people who knew nothing at all about the occupants and their friends, whereas I think all seven of us on the tour already knew quite a bit, but it was still great to hear it from an enthusiastic expert.  I'm definitely intending to go back - and if you go on a Sunday, then you can roam freely.

Oh, and there was a man about my age in the gift shop who had a 1920s chair at home, and they were buying reproduction Vanessa Bell fabric (at £55 a metre!) to re-cover it.  I don't know whose life gave me greater life-envy - the Bloomsbury Group and their idyllic house, or the man who would have that beautiful chair...

If you get the chance to go to either of these wonderful properties, do take it.  I can also definitely recommend the walk from Lewes to Monk's House, which is exceptionally beautiful on a sunny day.  It was the most delightful day out imaginable, and I was rather worried that my impending cold would ruin it for me.  Luckily I managed to stave it off for a day - and it has come back now with a vengeance.  So it might be a day or too before you hear from me again, whilst I feel sorry for myself...

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The Times piece (photographed)

I wrote yesterday's very quick post on my phone at Charleston, of all places, without actually having a copy of The Times myself at that point.  More on Monk's House and Charleston soon - but today I thought I'd pop up photos of my quotation in The Times for those of you who don't get copies.  I was so excited to be asked to contribute!

This is what was printed (I'd like to point out that, when I wrote it, it didn't end on a preposition!):

Simon Thomas, a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford and author of the Stuck-in-a-Book blog at Stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com, says: “For the unrepentant bibliophile, being in a charity shop is like being a kid in a sweetshop — except you don’t have to get a parent’s permission to buy far more than is good for you.
“I am always willing to brave mountains of Danielle Steels and Dan Browns, not to mention entirely arbitrary shelving systems, in the hopes of finding something special. It was in a charity shop shelved entirely by colour that I found an amusing 1950 novel by Mary Essex, Tea Is So Intoxicating. It cost me 10p, but the cheapest I have ever seen it online is £70.
“It is not only stumbling across scarce books that has been rewarding. I daresay there are plenty of copies out there of The Love-Child by Edith Olivier [a 1927 novel, reprinted in the 1980s by Virago], but I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t found it by chance in the basement of a dingy charity shop. That serendipitous purchase ended up helping to determine the topic of the doctorate I am currently studying for.”

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The Times, p.60...

...has me quoted on it today, talking about charity bookshops! Check it out...

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

By the time you read this, I'll either be in London or Sussex - a couple of my friends and I are off to Charleston and Monk's House (the homes of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf respectively) for a literary jaunt.  At least that's the plan - right now I feel deathly with one of my oh-so-common colds.  But I am determined to enjoy myself!  I am equally determined to tell you about a book, a link, and a blog post... so make yourself comfortable, and enjoy.

1.) The book -  I can't remember how I found this title, but it's been waiting in a draft post for many months: David Batterham's Among Booksellers.  Read all about it here, but essentially it's the letters of a bookseller travelling Europe, meeting the eccentric booksellers of the world on his way.  It sounds great fun.

2.) The link - apparently the French isn't very good in this clip (I watched it silently with the subtitles, and also wouldn't notice poor French anyway) but cat-lovers will find this amusing, I think...

3.) The blog post - is a little silly, and not entirely for the faint-hearted.  You've probably heard of Fifty Shades of Gray/Grey and have probably the same level of desire to read it as I have (i.e. none whatsoever) - well, Book Riot have read it so that you don't have to!  Their review is very funny...

4.) P.S. - if you're in the UK, make sure you're watching the documentaries Chatsworth on BBC and 56 Up on ITV - both are brilliant so far.  And, guess what?  They're on at the same time.  Of course.  9pm on Mondays - started last week, and have a couple more episodes to come.

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Moominpappa at Sea - Tove Jansson

You probably know that I love and adore Tove Jansson.  She is, indeed, one of my all-time favourite writers, and the only author whose books I eagerly await.  (Yes, she's dead, but they're being steadily translated - a newly translated collection of short stories coming soon from Sort Of Books!)  Until now, though, I hadn't read any of the Moomin books for which she is best known.  Aware of this, Margaret Szedenits very kindly gave me a copy of Moominpappa at Sea (1965) which is actually the final book to feature the Moomin family, except some picture books.

Only the beginning of Moominpappa at Sea takes place in Moominvalley, and only the Moomin family appear.  Apparently there are lots of other characters, but I got to know thoughtful, adventurous Moominpappa, wise, diligent Moominmamma, anxious, imaginative Moomintroll, and fearless, feisty Little My.  They have a map on their wall, a dot on which marks an island (or perhaps, Little My suggests, some fly-dirt) with a lighthouse - Moominpappa decides that the family will move there.

"Of course we run the risk of it being calm tonight," said Moominpappa.  "We could have left immediately after lunch.  But on an occasion like this we must wait for sunset.  Setting out in the right way is just as important as the opening lines in a book: they determine everything."

After a wet and windy journey across the sea, they arrive on the island - deserted, except for a taciturn fisherman - and head towards the lighthouse.  Everything is not quite as they hoped.  The beam of the lighthouse doesn't work, there is no soil for Moominmamma's garden, and worst of all - the lighthouse is locked and they can't find the key.  Without being too much like an educational TV programme, Tove Jansson incorporates many different responses to change - whether it intimidates, infuriates, or energises people.  Moominmamma is definitely the family member who most wishes they had never left.

In front of them lay age-old rocks with steep and sharp sides and they stumbled past precipice after precipice, grey and full of crevices and fissures.

"Everything's much too big here," thought Moominmamma.  "Or perhaps I'm too small."

Only the path was as small and insecure as she was.

And then it all gets a bit surreal.  Not only is are they followed by the Groke - a curious creature which fills them with fear and turns the ground to ice - the island itself seems to be alive.  The trees move, the sea itself has a definite, often petulant, character.  The Moomins take this in their stride - they almost seem to expect it.

Moominpappa leaned forward and stared sternly at the fuming sea.  "There's something you don't seem to understand," he said.  "It's your job to look after this island.  You should protect and comfort it instead of behaving as you do.  Do your understand?

Moominpappa listened, but the sea made no answer.

So, what did I make of it all?  I definitely enjoyed it, and I especially liked Tove Jansson's deceptively simple illustrations throughout - they enhanced the story, and also softened its edges, as it were.  The emotions and actions of the Moomins are often quite human, and the illustrations remind us that we are in a different world - they give the prose a warm haze.

And yet I never felt I quite knew what Jansson was doing.  I was expecting that it might all be a sort of allegory, in a way, for how humans respond to change.  But the Moomins aren't simply there to represent types of response - they form a family unit as valid as those in any novel, even if there isn't quite the same depth of development in these relationships (in this book, at least.)  The characters certainly often speak wisely, or demonstrate their feelings through actions (as Moominmamma does with her painting), but I couldn't ever forget that this was a children's book - and that, in this case, the children's book really did feel like a watered-down version of the adults' novels.

I wasn't sure how Tove Jansson's books for children would relate to the wonderful novels and stories I've already read.  It seemed to me, after reading Moominpappa at Sea, that it was like the skeletal equivalent of something like Fair Play.  Janssons' great talent is her deeply perceptive descriptions of everyday interactions between people - incredibly nuanced and yet subtle.  She only gives the bare bones of this in Moominpappa at Sea.  Well, more than the bare bones - more, I daresay, than a lot of adult novelists - but not with the finesse of which I know her capable.  I still loved reading it, and I'm very grateful to Margaret for giving me the book and the opportunity, but I now feel comfortable that I have not been thus far missing Jansson's greatest work.  She may be best known for the Moomin books but, based on what I have read of her oeuvre so far, she saved her finest writing for elsewhere.

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National Flash Fiction Day

As the clock has just ticked past midnight, I'm afraid you've just missed National Flash Fiction Day...

If case you don't know, flash fiction is, essentially, very short fiction.  There's no accepted definition or stated length, but usually it's fewer than 1000 words.  And it's something the internet gets on board with!

My friend and housemate Mel co-runs a British flash fiction site called The Pygmy Giant, and they've had a competition in honour of the day, inviting flash fiction with the theme 'flash' - and today announced a very worthy winner.  See it here.

I went for the less competitive The Write-In, where every contribution was published.  They had set aside 11am-3pm for people to write flash fiction, inspired by one of the 200 words and phrases which they'd created as prompts.  More info about that here.

The two I chose (and clicking on the prompt takes you to my piece of flash fiction) were 'The Sun Is Not Our Friend' and, for a bit of light relief, 'The Smell of Warm Bread'.  It was fun - and, of course, quick!

Do you read any flash fiction?  By virtue of reading my blog post, I'm going to assume that you're (a) interested in fiction, and (b) not averse to reading things online - but I don't see flash fiction mentioned much in the literary blogosphere.  I hardly ever read it myself - perhaps because I steer fairly clear of modern fiction altogether, but maybe there are other reasons too.  Over to you - do you write it or read it?  What is your opinion of it all?  Or had you simply never heard of it before?

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