Well, I've got plenty to talk to Lois about this morning when we do our daily walk at "The Leap", the little recreation area and children's playground in the middle of this new-build housing estate in Malvern. Oh my goodness me, yes!
And, sadly, although it's something exciting for me, it's a bit of an annoyance to Lois, because it's news of a former classmate of mine, Martin, whom I haven't seen or heard word of, since 1965, so almost 60 years - yikes! And annoying for Lois because, what with women changing their name on marriage, she's found it so difficult to connect with her own former classmates - poor Lois !!!!
Do you ever hear about YOUR old classmates? It can be kind of traumatic, and it's often incredibly surprising, isn't it. And I saw this story in the local Onion News just the other day:
It's quite a shock, that type of experience, isn't it! We all tend to have massive preconceptions about the sort of lives our classmates must have been leading, and it's often wrong, as I explain to Lois as we do our walk this morning. I'm all excited, but I can tell she's a little bit "miffed".
me on our walk this morning, all excited, bless me!...
....while, I can tell, Lois is a little bit "miffed". Poor Lois !!!!
Yes, Lois is miffed because she's no longer in touch with any of her former classmates, but sometimes this is a blessing in disguise. There's nothing worse than classmates who've become more successful than you have, for starters.
There was Jeremy, for example, who sat behind me in class, and was a bit of a "naughty boy" on occasion, slipping out for a pint at a local pub when he should have been at the Monday Lecture. He ended up as a biographer, cultural historian and critic, an emeritus professor and at one time Editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
And then there was Steve, who sat next to Jeremy - he became an academic in social psychology and, for a time, published articles in the Sunday newspaper colour supplements in the 1970's on his chosen specialty of "friendship", but disappeared off to the States at some stage - he's still a professor at the University of Iowa.
flashback to 1960: Jeremy, back row, 3rd from left,
dressed in "drag" for a school play - it was a "boys only" school
I was in email contact with Jeremy for a time, and went to a talk he gave at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. And Steve is my Facebook friend.
And now, annoyingly for Lois, Martin is my Facebook friend as well.
the moment just before I break the news to Lois this morning
that Martin is now my Facebook friend - poor Lois (again) !!!!
I asked to be Martin's friend some time ago, but I didn't hear anything back, so I assumed he didn't want to bother with all that sort of malarkey - well, not everybody does, do they. And then this morning Facebook asked me if I'd like to be friends with Martin's wife Susan, so I checked and confirmed that Martin has indeed agreed to be my friend.
Nice to be popular isn't it!
my old classmate Martin, who apart from the grey hair, has barely
changed since the early 1960's, and who, I discover today, has been
a world traveller, and since retiring, has become a long-distance walker
It's amazing what you can find out about people on the web, isn't it, and I can see that retired accountant Martin is a great world traveller and long-distance walker - he's recently done the 1200-mile Land's End to John o' Groats walk, which covers the whole length of mainland UK.
my old classmate Martin (left) - a great world traveller,
seen here posing with some friends on Easter Island
And his wife Susan turns out to be a liberal politically, and just as interested in world travel, if not more so, than her husband Martin.
On the web, Susan even shows us her "koala face", which is nice!
Martin's wife Susan, showcasing her "koala face"
At last - something for Lois to cheer about too! We've both been avid collectors of "koala face" pictures for a few years now, and this one of Susan is a real "doozy", no question about that !
flashback to 2011, Sheldon Cooper, senior particle physicist
at Caltech, shows us his "koala face" while watching a koala
chewing some eucalyptus leaves, in the "Big Bang Theory"
flashback to 2015: Lois's "koala face"
showcased here during our holiday in Victoria State
2019: Michael Portillo, once one of Margaret Thatcher's
junior ministers, shows his "koala face" during one of
his televised epic train journeys through Victoria
2019 again: this time we see the koala's "Michael face"
Awwwwwww!!!!!
20:00 We go to bed on one of a spate of BBC programmes airing this week to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of one of our favourite poets, John Betjeman (1906-1984).
Lois and I, despite our interest in poetry, are quite shallow people in many ways, and as well as wanting to be tucked up nice'n'warm in bed by 10pm, we also want to see the Popmaster pop music trivia game show on More4 channel at 9 o'clock, which will put us in a good mood for when we "hit the hay", which will be nice.
Busy busy busy! So for now we content ourselves with just a "shortie" from this evening of Betjeman-fests: it's the little TV programme Betjeman put together in 1964 about his friend and fellow poet and Hull-based librarian Philip Larkin. The programme was called "Larkin and Betjeman: down Cemetery Road", and comes from the old Monitor series of arts programmes.
two poets for the price of one: John Betjeman
(left) with is friend Philip Larkin
We hear some nice Larkin extracts tonight, ones that make Lois and me fairly "wriggle with thinly-disguised pleasure", which is always nice on a Monday night, isn't it!
Betjeman was always "just a poet", although a distinguished one to put it mildly - he was made Poet Laureate in 1972 - whereas his friend Philip Larkin was also a librarian at Hull University, and Betjeman reveals he has always envied Larkin for having a "day job" to fall back on, meaning there wasn't the constant pressure to come up with a new poem every 5 minutes, and Lois and I can see what Betjeman means here.
In his poem "Toads Revisited" (1962), one of our favourites, Larkin celebrates the joy of having an in-tray, something so much nicer than the superficially seductive alternative of spending the day in a beautiful, quiet park, by the lake, in the sunshine, sitting on a bench watching the day start, work itself out, and then end, and watching the people come and go - not such a great way to spend the day, Larkin thinks!
And Betjeman also explodes the myth that great poets "don't care" if their poems get bad reviews. When you've put your heart and soul into a poem, it's "hurtful", Betjeman says, when some jumped-up critic in the Sunday papers tears it to pieces. Yes Lois and I fully get that ourselves, although it's sadly too late to tell John this, which might have cheered him up.
[Don't start giving yourselves airs again! - Ed]
And although a lot of people would regard the city of Hull as "a bit of a dump" - nothing much to distinguish it, a soulless industrial town and port, Larkin says it rather suits him - Hull is on the fringe of England, the last bit of the country before you get to the cold expanses of the North Sea and the sea-routes to Scandinavia. Hull is very much "on the edge" and Larkin prefers that - and he doesn't envy Betjeman's life in and around London.
And Betjeman, for his part, admires "the reality" of Larkin's poems, which express so exactly what it's like to live and work in an unremarkable grey, industrial town and port like Hull, where so many things are indistinguishable from other such towns.
Tonight Betjeman takes the viewer on a brief tour of Hull, starting with a vantage point on the other side of the Humber, on the Lincolnshire coast.
Once a historical town, a fact now only detectable from its older churches, Hull is, for the most part,now totally unremarkable. What Betjeman likes, however, is the way that Larkin manages somehow to get "both Hulls" into his poetry.
This is "The Large Cool Store" (1961), said to have been inspired by a visit by Larkin to the Hull branch of the Marks and Spencer's clothing store chain.
Steve Hudson of the Philip Larkin Society writes:
This one embodies one of the main reasons I love Larkin’s poetry
– the ability to find something transcendent in humdrum everyday lives. It’s a
simple poem with a simple theme, but it says something fresh about poetry’s
favourite subject, love.
"The poem was
inspired, I have heard, in a visit to Hull’s branch of Marks & Spencer. The
first stanza is a brisk tour of the store, where the narrator finds ranks
of affordable clothes for ordinary people. These are practical, hard-wearing
clothes. The colours are muted – “browns and greys, maroon and navy” to
reflect their functional nature.
"In the second
stanza, the narrator reflects on the unglamorous lives of the people who wear
these workmanlike clothes (“factory, yard and site”), before walking past
Modes for Night – women’s nightwear. The contrast is striking. The colours are
seductive and beautiful, although the material is thin and cheap – sexy
nighties that seem to pout and flounce.
"Larkin
realises that this reflects the place that love, and sex, have in these lives,
something spiritual and unrepresentative, and how ultimately unrealistic
it is. He implies this is primarily a delusion of young men, before the
realities of life, and women, and sex become clear to them. There is a
great feeling of sympathy in the poem for this.
"As is often
the case with Larkin’s poems, the payload is all in the last stanza, which
takes a while to unpack, but it is I think a lovely thing, all ringing
phrases and quiet, intense passion. Love (or sex) is “separate and unearthly”,
and women become something other than themselves through love (or during
sex) – they are “natureless in ecstasies”. A wonderful poem, from a man who
spent a lifetime yearning for love and sex, while running from the
practical realities they entailed."
Fascinating stuff isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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