steepholm

To be a one-hit wonder: first, catch your hit. Alternatively wince along with John Finnemore's sketch, starting at 4.58. With a "musical" reprise at 23.46...

And, while I'm linking, RIP Clare Hollingworth.

Chris Broad is one of my favourite J-Vloggers, but in this Christmas special he has excelled himself. If you've ever wondered why I'm hooked on Japan, watch - and wonder no more.



For more information on the village where Jesus spent the last 70 years or so of his long life as a garlic farmer, see this article, linked from the video, which also has compelling evidence for the story in the form of Hebrew survivals in the local dialect. (Okay, Jesus spoke Aramaic, but let's not split hairs.) Oddly, the place has been visited by the ambassador of Israel; but from the Pope? Not a dicky bird.

Also: why isn't Shingou twinned with Glastonbury?

My friend Dru's FB post appears to have gone viral, to the extent that she's now had it made into a T-shirt. In case you want one, here's the link.

She's just the kind of person Trump would probably hate to think of as benefiting from his election, so it's in a good cause.

Chris Wood has a new album out, and I'd like to make two recommendations from it.

First, here's his setting of Housman's poem about Victoria's Golden Jubilee, "1887" - a work that's not as straightforwardly patriotic as may first appear. I mention it here particularly, though, because my brother worked on the setting with him, and accompanies him on the track.

Also, there's "Shallow End", which I heard him perform live a couple of years ago, and loved. It's just as good now.

In default of a proper post, here's my latest Awfully Big Blog Adventure post, which is on "voice" in children's literature, and especially Jacqueline Wilson. I tried to row back on the whole Boothian apparatus in this not-especially-scholarly piece, but even so, the phrases "Milnean voice" and "Christophoric ear" are never entirely absent from my mind when I write on this subject...

Yesterday, the Today programme celebrated the equinox by having Juliet Stevenson read Keats' "To Autumn", which was probably my favourite poem when I was a teenager (when autumn was my favourite season, and when the water meadows near Winchester - which inspired the poem - were among my favourite haunts). I still love it. Has anyone ever made better use of the word "clammy" than in these lines, for example?

to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

But I slightly digress. After the reading, they produced Prof. Peter Swaab of UCL to talk about the poem. At one point he and Stevenson had a slight disagreement about the tone of the final line, "And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." You can hear it from 2.26.00 on the link above, but I've written out the relevant part for your convenience. Swaab was making the point that the final stanza includes positive and livelier notes along with the expected elegaic, and cited the "gathering swallows" (along with the gnats and the lambs) as "assertive and vigorous" voices competing with and counterbalancing the poet's own sense of decline.

JS: I don't know though, you know that "gathering swallows" thing is about departure, it's about leaving, and going south, and heading off to a completely different... It's always about the end of summer, isn't it, seeing the swallows gather, so I don't know that it's... I don't think it is that cheerful, I think it's...

PS: If you're a swallow, though, you're going to summer south.

[Presenter]: You're going to other things, you're looking forward to your holiday.

JS: But it's not written from the swallows' point of view, is it?

PS [audibly trying not to tell Stevenson she's stupid]: Well, it's in there, I think.

Personally I'm with Juliet Stevenson on this. Also, I don't really see "full-grown lambs" as a positive image. They're going to be slaughtered soon, after all! (If indeed we're being asked to look at it from the animals' point of view.) And as for the gnats...

But soft, what's that about the swallows going south for the winter? I mean, yes they do, but isn't that a rather anachronistic piece of knowledge? After all, solid evidence about patterns of bird migration only dates from 1822 (three years after the poem was written), and the remarkable discovery of a stork in Mecklenburg with an African spear through its neck (for pics and the whole story, see here). Where migratory birds went in the winter was, before that date, something of a mystery, as I understand it. I'm sure some people had considered the possibility that they migrated somewhere, but I doubt whether "gathering swallows" would have had the same "package holiday" connotations for Keats that it has for the Today presenter or indeed for Prof. Swaab.

(On the other hand... what if the swallow used a strand of creeper, held under the guiding dorsal feathers?)

I often watch this Youtube channel, first without and then with subtitles, as a way of attuning my ear to spoken Japanese. The topics aren't always particularly interesting, but in this case I did find the answers fascinating, even allowing for possible edits, sampling errors, etc.



That Perry's name crops up a lot isn't surprising, though it's a bit of a cheat when the question is about non-Japanese historical figures, since (as far as I know) he's only famous in a Japanese context. That's a little less true of Francis Xavier - but I'm struck by the happenstance of his being remembered because his picture is on the cover the school history text book in a cool pose. (It reminds me of the fashion-conscious teen who went into a shop and asked for a cross to wear round her neck: "Do you have the kind with the little man on the front?")

Naturally I tried to think of British equivalents, but could do no better than Julius Caesar (Perry) and St Augustine (Xavier). Pytheas of Massalia might do for Marco Polo at a pinch. None, apart possibly from Caesar, is likely to come up in a similar interview conducted on a British street.

About Spanish Napoleon and Russian Shakespeare, the less said the better.

This is basically copied from my FB, but I'm trying to spread the word. This is one of the preparatory steps for turning my ChLA paper into a proper article...

Calling anyone who's watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica!

I'm writing a paper on the Madoka fandom, and as part of that I've written a short survey so that I can get some empirical data about the people who've watched it and what they feel (good and bad) about various aspects of the show. If you've watched the series (i.e. the twelve-episode anime) it would be great if you could answer a few questions at the link below. It shouldn't take more than 8 minutes at most (probably more like three). All answers are completely anonymous.

Also, feel free to share the link.

This month's Awfully Big Blog Adventure post is inspired by a programme I've barely watched, yet feel as if I know well.

In today's Awfully Big Blog Adventure I muse on the joys of unconsciousness and compare childhood to a panopticon. Also hidden away in there is a phrase that I think would make the perfect title for an Adele album, should she ever stop using numbers for that purpose. The only prize for spotting it is a glow of satisfaction.