steepholm

I was talking to a Wiccan recently, and fervently recommending (as I often do) Margaret Mahy's The Changeover to her, a book I love for itself, but also regard - unless you know different? - as the very first YA supernatural romance. I would like to say, "Without The Changeover, no Buffy, Twilight, etc.", but in fact, despite its chronological priority, it doesn't seem to have been that influential, or even widely read outside the world of children's lit - where it did, however, win the Carnegie Medal. My Wiccan friend had never heard of it, for example, despite being (like Mahy herself) a former librarian (a connection I explored in this article back in 2015). Nor is she unusual in this - Wiccans in general seem weirdly unaware of it, at least in my experience.

So, of course, I bought a copy to send her as a present, and of course took the opportunity to reread the book first. I'm glad to report that it's as awesome as ever. This particular edition came with a short introduction by Elizabeth Knox. I thought it very well judged, and particularly appreciated the fact that she picked out the line "Sorry Carlisle is a witch!" for comment, because I've always privately felt that that line was extremely important to my own development as a writer. It crops up in the first chapter, in the course of a conversation between the protagonist, Laura, and her mother, Kate, as they're hurriedly doing the school run. The revelation is assessed, its likelihood or otherwise discussed, and then it subsides beneath the tide of the day's events.

Knox comments, correctly, that this is the kind of revelation that most supernatural romance protagonists would keep to themselves. I'd add that it would probably eventually be used as a climactic last line of a chapter - being far too precious a titbit to be just tossed into the middle of a hurried school-run conversation. When I first read the book, on a long train journey from Aberdeen in 1990, that was what impressed me. Here was an author who had such confidence in the fecundity of her imagination that she could afford to be generous: "realms and islands were / As plates dropped from her pocket."

There's a useful Japanese word, 余裕 (yoyuu), which can be translated variously as leeway, scope, spare capacity, with a side order of sprezzatura. I think that gets across what I mean about Mahy: she gives you a lot, but you feel there's always more where that came from. She doesn't need to hoard or ration, nor does she wish to. The rest of the book lived up to that promise, and reading it, back then, was a key to my loosening up my own style, which had grown sclerotic under the severe influence of Garneresque minimalism.

Sorry Carlisle broke that spell.

Well, I've neglected this journal for a month, so this is a very quick catch-up.

First, I turned 60 and got my first free prescription since before Mrs Thatcher came to power - yay! We (me, my daughter and her boyfriend, plus my brother and sister-in-law) spent a frosty-but-bright weekend in a hay barn in my home town - a wonderful, if indulgent, couple of days.



We also took the opportunity to scatter my mother's ashes on top of my father's, only four years or so after her death. On the way home we drove through the New Forest, and visited the graves of both Alice Liddell (Lyndhurst) and Arthur Conan Doyle (Minstead), so you might be forgiven for thinking it a morbid time, but it was quite the opposite.



Oh, and last week I went to Dublin to examine a PhD (a good one, happily, so it wasn't at all awkward). The viva took place in the house where Oscar Wilde was born, now a part of Trinity College - which was kind of neat.

Last weekend my friend Clémentine visited for a couple of nights, which will be the last time I see her before she gives birth to her second child, due next month. Considering her condition she was incredibly willing to walk long distances, both at Wake the Tiger and the Bristol Light Festival.



And that brings me more or less up to date. Oh, but I'll add that this morning I finally got around to playing with ChatGPT. I wanted to test its political awareness. As I think you can tell from the screenshots below, it's pretty woke:

So, it's been a few weeks since I touched down at Heathrow from my trip to Japan. My final glimpse of the country was rather a special one...



I was prepared to feel rather bereft after my return, but in fact I've been too busy, what with my daughter's graduation (which was the next day), plus various trips (Cotswolds, Lyme Regis, Glastonbury), and of course the fact that the house has two Japanese speakers in it already, which certainly acted as a culture-shock absorber. Rei has since moved to London to start her PhD, but was immediately replaced by Satomi, who's staying here a couple of weeks before travelling to Manchester and Newcastle for her research on time-slip fantasy. (The Lyme Regis trip was inspired by Penelope Lively more than Jane Austen or John Fowles.)

As for my own research, I've got two papers done, and yesterday I submitted my book to the publisher, after 5 years' (admittedly intermittent) work! So all in all, it's been a pretty productive annual leave, if a rather exhausting one. I'm going to lie down, but here are a few pictures of the last few weeks. I'll pick up where these leave off...

Last week was relatively quiet from a bloggable-activites point of view, as I was working on my book and trying get everything sorted out in time for my two-pronged expedition to the north and west of Japan, next week and the one after. I have a two-week railpass, which allows me to travel on Japanese trains as much as I like - a kind 旅放題 if you will (that's for the lovers of Japanese puns) - so I'm trying to make the most of it. Probably I've packed it rather too full, in fact - as you'll discover in the next few entries. I've not yet decided whether to take my laptop with me, though I probably will, but if I'm silent for a couple of weeks, that's why.

Anyway, last week I saw a poster for an exhibition at Suginami Animation Museum, which turns out to be just 25 minutes' walk from TWCU, so I strolled over on Tuesday by way of a break. And a very nice museum - with free entry - it turned out to be, especially if you were exclusively interested in anime made before 2008, which is where they ran of wall for their presentation. (No Madoka Magica, alas!) I had it to myself, too, for the first 20 minutes or so.

The exhibition was on Ginga Tetsudō 999, which I'm interested in partly because it was influenced by Kenji Miyazawa's Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru, which was in turn influenced by the train scene in Through the Looking Glass. Does it make any sense, then to suggest that Ginga Tetsudō 999 was indirectly influenced by Alice? That's something I puzzled over for a while, but I eventually cut the discussion...


Ginga Tetsudō 999





So anyway, the other morning I was lying on my bed, reading, when I heard a voice outside say the word, "Gaikokujin" (i.e. "foreigner"). I was startled - I suppose I've become a bit self-conscious about such things, although I was calmed by its being followed by "Kyoushikan" - which when you put it all together, means "Foreign Teachers' Residence", which is the name of this building. My calm was short-lived, though, for when I looked out of the window it was to see about 40 Japanese schoolgirls standing outside, looking intently up at me, while a woman lectured them on the building's history. (Here they are going away, five minutes later).



That was just a bit unexpected, though it did evoke the silent crowds that Isabella Bird recorded following her about Tohoku. But even making due allowance for paranoia, it's been very noticeable how few foreigners I've seen on this visit, even in Tokyo. My visit to the 'pub' last week was the one exception. This does lead to strange fantasies: the other day, for example, I was walking down quite a narrow street in Kichijouji when two bicycles passed in the opposite direction. A moment later, there was a crash, and I turned to find both riders (both were young men) picking themselves up, having bumped into each other - luckily neither seemed injured. Normally I'd put this down to their being distracted by my refulgent beauty, but in this case perhaps my blonde hair alone was enough to break their concentration? (I realise there are other more likely scenarios, but this seemed such a shoujo manga possibility that I couldn't resist.)

Yesterday I went to Kanagawa, to visit Yuko (Haruka's mother) in her home near Odawara. I saw many, many people over the course of the day, but neither going to Shinjuku, nor on the Odawara train, nor indeed when we went to Hakone in afternoon - a very beautiful but supremely touristy place, where many of the restaurants display English explanations of chopstick use - did I see anyone who didn't look Japanese. I know tourism is meant to be opening up a little (for tour groups only), but it hasn't shown yet.


Hakone Hills Ahoy - and from the mountain railway

All the same, when we went to eat unagi near Odawara station, the waitress asked me if I would rather use a spoon, so some things never change.

This is the season for ajisai (hydrangeas), and we took the mountain railway up to Miya no Shita to look at some of the fine displays there, which were rumoured to be lit up at evening - as indeed proved to be the case. I hadn't realised that Miya no Shita was the site of the famous Meij-era Hotel Fujiya. I remember reading Mary Crawford Fraser's account of staying there at the time, which is what made it of interest to me, and indeed I saw displays of plenty of Meiji era photos, but also of Charlie Chaplin and John and Yoko.



It's strange to think that as we were looking at this forty-four year-old picture, for forty-two of which Lennon has been dead, Paul was tuning his guitar to play Glastonbury with Bruce Springsteen.

We went to a rather eccentric but very delicious sushi place that was soon packed with enthusiastic locals (encouraging), and included many pictures pixellated with origami cranes of barely-believable tininess. A poster on the wall informed us that the owner had been an extra in the film of Thermae Romae - one of the ojisan who are in the onsen when Lucius (is it?) pops out, having slipped over from the time of the Emperor Hadrian. (If you haven't seen the film, I do recommend it.) This of course put Lennon, Chaplin and the rest in perspective. We had a real film star in our midst, making our nigiri! I'm never washing my tongue again.

Miya no Shita station at night was rather atmospheric...



And then this morning we went to Odawara beach, where we found this message warning people to beware of great waves, as only Kanagawa can...



By the way, if you're wondering why I'm not wearing a mask in this picture, it's because there seems to be a general practice of taking them off for photographs. Don't ask me why, but when in Thermae Romae... Not only does the mask mandate continue very strongly, but in restaurants you are often separated from your companion by a plastic screen, which irresistibly conjures a prison visit vibe. On the plus side, there are often little paper pockets provided to hold your mask while you eat.


Yuko chooses her unagi option

Oh, and just because I can, here's Mount Fuji as seen from my bedroom window this morning.