steepholm

Tom Shippey did a nice review of DWJ's Reflections in today's Time Literary Supplement, I see. A good man, that Shippey.

Perhaps my psyche is getting back at me for not attending the conference at Loughborough, for I've now had two Tolkien-related dreams in three nights. The first, three nights ago, was only tangentially so, but in it I found myself standing next to indefatigable scholar and fan, Jessica Yates, on a balcony overlooking a ritual in which the current queen was ceremonially (yet unceremoniously) dumped on her head. Jessica shouted down the suggestion that next time she should put down cushions, and the queen thanked her for the advice.

In the second dream, I visited Tolkien himself, in the company of nineweaving. He lived in an attractive country cottage, and was all old-world courtesy. He gave me a copy of a book, underlining passages for my particular attention. A little later we heard he had died, and were melancholy.

[I think this second one may recall a visit I made - not with nineweaving - to the poet Charles Sisson in Langport, about 18 years ago, when he generously gave me his copy of Poly-Olbion.]

I woke in the middle of last night with what seemed a terrific plot for a thriller in my head. I was about to turn on the light and get it down on paper, when I remembered blearily that I had to get up at 6.30, and moreover that on previous occasions when I'd had this kind of revelation my golden idea had invariably turned to stones and dry leaves at the touch of sunlight. So I let it be, and this morning can't remember what the idea was, or whether it was any good after all. I wish I had written it down, just so that I could be certain it was rubbish.

Meanwhile, my prediction for the must-have executive gadget of 2025? A Desktop Hadron Collider ("Now With Boson Dispenser").

Sometimes, LJ leads us to the ivory gate...

Last night I dreamt that I had somehow overcome my horror of being fingerprinted and retinally scanned, and was visiting New England. Specifically I was in a large house in the country, somewhere on the border of Delaware and Connecticut (Delaware in my dream was only the size of Romsey, and I wondered why they bothered making it a state). The house was the ancestral place of sovay and rushthatspeaks, and we were all there for a gathering of their extended family.

I began by making rather awkward conversation with them. “You both teach?” I asked. “Yes, at Yale,” rushthatspeaks replied. I felt a little ashamed of my own humble employment, and in fact after that everything I said sounded whiny, although my hosts were graciousness itself. In particular, I seemed unable to stop myself from making self-pitying comparisons: their huge house, obvious wealth and it’s-just-the-oxygen-we-breathe comfort with same, versus my teeny tiny home back in Bristol and general inadequacy.

They began to show me around that house, the real size of which only now became apparent. (I think nineweaving’s recent inheritance may have had a hand in this.) Not only were there many rooms, but each was vast, built in the days when firewood was plentiful and air-conditioning not yet invented. Everything was very high. sovay was a head taller than me, but even she was dwarfed by those rooms, the ceilings of which were at least thirty feet above my head. The furniture was large, too: massy oak tables, cavernous fireplaces, odd pieces of former agricultural equipment (whether bought for show or simply left over from a previous generation I was uncertain), scattered about the flags. The walls were whitewashed stone, or bare flint – and on one I saw a mural (obviously contemporary with its subject) depicting, in a naïve, folk-art kind of way a group of redcoats, some kneeling, some standing to fire their muskets.

There were at least two other people in the house. One, whom I didn’t actually see, was a kindly but remote paterfamilias, the other a lively young cousin named Magnus, who came in and out a couple of times and was, maybe, thirteen years old. I was given to understand that we would be spending the afternoon keeping “Daddy” company: sovay apologised for the imposition, but I was quite looking forward to it.

Finally, we came to a room in which we found that an antique cup had been broken – evidently a favourite of sovay’s, because she became angry, and called out her cousin’s full name (it turns out that Magnus was only the short version), demanding he explain himself. “Magnitude!” she shouted. “You come here right now!”

And I awoke.

Last night I fell asleep 50 pages short of finishing The Great Gatsby. I'd read it before, but a long while ago, and had completely forgotten what happened in the final section of the book, if anything (action-packed denouements being by no means guaranteed in classic twentieth-century novels).

So. As I may possibly have mentioned here before, ever since I was very young I've had a happy recurring dream about travelling to a seaside resort - by bike through a wooded valley, on foot over a land of short sandy grass and flitting swallows, or even in a small steam train across water meadows. The resort, when I eventually arrive, is modest and old fashioned, and over the years I've judged all real seaside places by how far they resemble it. Last night I had one of these dreams for the first time in a long time. But somehow Gatsby had leaked in, and with it several other fictional characters, including Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby, Arriety from The Borrowers, and not a few Homeric warriors, who proceeded to hack at each other in a recreational way on the beach. Eventually, somebody (and it may have been Toby) suggested that, rather than fight now, they should reconstruct a totally different argument they'd all had years before, and he would take it on himself to distribute parts and scripts. Everyone agreed enthusiastically, and my dream faded out with the final words of The Great Gatsby: "And so they all stayed there happily for ever. Well, most of them."

I awoke shortly after, and quickly ploughed through the last fifty pages to see how accurate my dream had been. At a crude surface level I think I must conclude, "Not very." But for what it's worth, I offer my dream as an honest contribution to Fitzgerald studies.

I remember very little of last night's dreams. The one fragment I retain involves listening to Elvis Presley singing "Always on My Mind", and remarking to my companion: "You know, I always thought of this as a sentimentally dishonest ballad, but now I actually listen to the lyrics I see they have a cold, cynical glitter to them."

Tonight is Midsummer Night, so tomorrow's should (according to my original resolution) be the last of my dream reports. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.

I woke in a strange place this morning. Well, strange, to me - it was actually the clean and friendly Holiday Inn in Bolton, but the point is that it didn't have internet for the laptopless, so the dream diary has had to wait until evening, with the result that I remember very little of the wild phantasmagoria that filled my sleeping hours. However, this remains...

My brother is explaining his ideas about the afterlife.* According to him, everyone goes to heaven and lives in bliss for eternity. Actually, though, there is one proviso. You are not allowed to wonder whether this happiness is ever going to end. If you do, God will notice and be so offended at your lack of faith in the infinitude of his benevolence that he will promptly cast you into the pit.

I'm not very impressed at this vision, which makes heaven sound like a very tense place indeed, and God far too touchy for comfort.


* This is quite out of character.

I didn't sleep as much as I'd have liked last night, considering that I've a longish drive ahead of me this morning, because my next door neighbour decided that 1am would be a great time to start repairing her car - or rather getting a friend of hers to do it, while she provided a running commentary, punctuated with the refrain "I'm not prepared to spend hundred of pounds on it." Having just spent hundreds of pounds getting my own car that afternoon - albeit in working hours - I was less than sympathetic. Eventually I did get to sleep, but I suspect the quality of my dreams was affected.

I am in Paris with my children on a short holiday. For some reason I have to be away from them one day, and we're talking about what they can do while they're left to their own devices. My daughter is keen to see art galleries, and is planning to visit most of the major galleries in Paris, walking between them because she's not keen on using the Metro.* I'm trying to persuade her that this isn't really a practical plan, and at the back of my mind I'm also wondering whether a truly responsible parent would be letting her loose on Paris at the age of 11 anyway, especially as she doesn't speak the language. Would I have been allowed to do that sort of thing at her age?

* NB This is not a particularly likely scenario in real life.

Nothing to report on last night's dreams, which were a big bubbling mess of daytime worries, slightly stirred with a dash of angostura bitters.

I am explaining the plot of The Iliad to my daughter. As I tell it, it's a poem of two halves. In the first, Achilles kills Hector. But then, in a change to our scheduled programming, the second half turns out to be about Agamemnon ordering Patroclus to kill Achilles in revenge. (I know, I know.) Patroclus isn't happy about his commission, and appeals to the gods, but Agamemnon points out that as Patroclus's king it's up to him what orders he gives. As he puts it later (and for some reason I'm now reading this in a book):

This stonied them, for well they knew
I was his king, by descent as trew
As theirs from th'Ash Tree.*

The next two books of the poem are devoted, I explain apologetically, to a lengthy description of Patroclus putting on his armour. Eventually, however, the two heroes fight, in what seems to be (and here I slip into movie mode) a vegetable market. There is much spilling of tomatoes and many topless towers of apples kiss their feet. In the end, Achilles has Patroclus at his mercy, but realises that in giving him the lethal blow he will inevitably destroy a very fine marrow. His hesitation is momentary, but fatal.

I realise that this whole narration has been overheard by a woman, who is looking at me sceptically, but with amused tolerance. I think it is my daughter's piano teacher.

* Yes, wrong mythology I know, but I'm actually very proud of my id for coming up with this, and happy to forgive it for yesterday's nightmare. What Shakespeare had Ulysses say about degree in thirty lines or so, this packs into two and half tetrameters, innit?

I am taking the Isle of Wight ferry with my children. Despite growing up near Southampton, I'd somehow never noticed that the ferries are all designed like little warships, rather like the kind you find on Monopoly boards. I mention it to one of the crew, who explains that this design is dictated by the unusual tidal conditions of the Solent. You learn something every day.

As we approach Cowes, we are invited to lie on a small conveyor belt, which carries us round the ship, down a chute, and ultimately deposits us at the Ferry Terminal. There new arrivals are greeted by a couple dressed as Native Americans (though in my dream the phrase that springs to mind is "Red Indians" - what can you do?). They make a special hand gesture which, as the woman explains patiently, means, "Hello and welcome!" They seem to expect me to make the same hand gesture in return, but a) it's complicated, and I'm not sure I can do it, and b) I feel far too English and embarrassed even to try. But then again if I don't, I'm afraid it'll look as if I'm either Ci) a snob or Cii) racist. Aaagh!

While I'm wrestling with these conundra, the crowd carries us past the couple, out into downtown Cowes.