Don't Sneer, It's Tougher Than You Think
For one thing, Your Humble Scribe has been at "Revelation Space" again, one of Alastair Reynold's inches-thick novels that clocks in at a smidgeon under 600 pages. Given the plot complexities it's not one of those novels you can put down in January and pick up again in March. Conrad has definitely read it before, though so long ago that I recall little of it. Art!
A 'lighthugger'
One interesting plot point is that nothing travels faster than light; there are interstellar starships as above which travel to within one percent of lightspeed, yet journeys between star systems take years or decades. Fortunately our author has seen fit to allow the development of 'reefersleep' chambers, suspended animation to you or I. Thus it's easy enough for people to be two hundred and fifty years old and only look sixty.
Then there's "Reclaiming History", where I have reached page 350, and Ol' Vinnie is starting to take a hammer and chisel to the conspiranoid loonwaffle theories. Only another 1,150 pages to go!
Finally there's the forbiddingly large volume "The American Heritage New History Of The Civil War" by Bruce Catton. What they mean is the SOUTH CANADIAN Civil Unpleasantness, because we've had our own version here in This Sceptred Isle. Is that clear? So glad we got that straightened out. Art!
This is another 600 page beast, with lots of pictures, maps and photographs, because the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness was one of the first major wars that took place after the development of photography. There were technical limitations, true, yet there's still a plethora of pictures.
Here an aside. 'Plethora'? Where does that come from, Conrad pondered. Sounds like it might have Greek roots. <consults his Collins Concise> Yup. From the Greek 'Plethore' meaning 'fullness' filtered via Medieval Latin <hack spit>.
This is quite besides that jigsaw I've started, and no doubt you want a progress report, which you're going to get, like it or not. Art!
No missing pieces SO FAR.
But wait, what's this? Ah, a folded map. Let's unfold it and see what it's portraying. Art!
Hmmmmm. Okay, so a map from one of my Official History map-sets. Which map-set? <embarrassed silence> There's no date or campaign. This presents a bit of a problem, because I don't want to have this map suffer injury, given that it's probably ninety years old. It needs to be safely housed in a map-set case. There's a couple of clues. Art!
Note that: '53 Brigade'. I've got the Order Of Battle volumes that will allow me to track this unit's parent division down. From the appearance of the battlefield this might very well be from 1918 and 'The Hundred Days', those three months of shockingly ignored victories. We shall see.
Motley! I want you to take that 'Collected Works Of Shakespeare', rip all the pages out and make a bonfire with them, okay? Then pour some chlorine trifluoride on the ashes, ta very much.
Further Info
You should recall that I've been playing my i-pod via the Humungous New (Actually Third-Hand) Telly. I think we can re-use the previous illustration, if Art will shake the silt out of his shoes -
It seems that all the various albums are distributed at random amongst a collection of file folders, of which there are at least twenty. Not sure if it's possible to play by selecting a track from the i-pod itself. We shall see*.
Yes This Is Definitely A Dangerous Lighthouse
This is up there with other wave-washed dangerous daddies, and in fact they could have dropped a couple of the extremely safe and not-deadly-at-all lighthouses that perch hundreds of feet above the waves.
This particular one is part of a group off the Brittany coast, which was finished in 1916, ten years after construction began. Yes, it took that long, because the waters there are treacherous indeed. I've looked for various images and cannot find any that show the shoals the lighthouse is built upon, which means either the tides never uncover them, or only when there's no photographers around. Art!
Yes, that's a wave breaking and reaching the lamp, which is 115 feet high. Not surprisingly, Le Kereon is automated, to the relief of lighthouse keepers, who had to swap over on a line as with the Bishop Rock, with the added complication of a tidal race that hits nine knots at times (ten miles per hour in proper Imperial measures). It did have the compensation of a positively luxurious interior finish, mind. Art!
Of course you have to ignore the thundering waves outside
And Now For Even More Torment
Well, I exaggerate, this bit isn't torment-y at all. What? You can't have it all non-stop horror and weirdness, there has to be plain reality to anchor the plot.
For
a grown man over thirty years of age, Louis felt surprisingly nervous about
meeting the mysterious Father Geoghan.
More akin to seeing Father O’Neill at his high school about an imaginary
transgression –
‘Come in, come in!’ invited the
worryingly eager Reverend Sharples.
‘This is Father Geoghan. Father,
this is Louis McMahon.’
A man dressed in clerical garb
rose to his feet and offered one massive, shaggy paw to Louis. Father Geoghan had a wild shock of completely
white hair and big, bushy eyebrows that complemented his big frame. The other hand held a pipe, which remained
empty during the meeting and which Louis felt only got carried to help
emphasise points in their dialogue.
‘He’s a seer,’ rumbled the
priest’s well-modulated Ulster brogue.
‘That’s what you found different, Richard. Take a seat, take a seat.’
Both clerics directed searching
glances at Louis, who felt highly uneasy.
‘Enough, enough,’ laughed the
priest. ‘You must feel like a butterfly
on a slide. Richard, can you order
refreshments?’
‘I can try,’ drily replied the
vicar. ‘The canteen might protest.’
Fortunately
the canteen didn’t, and they got a pot of tea with a plate of biscuits.
‘Splendid,’ beamed the
priest. ‘Milk or sugar, Mister McMahon?’
‘Call me Louis,’ he offered. ‘We’re a bit past formal titles.’
‘I’ve told the Father what you
told me, Louis. This is more his domain
that mine.’
Father Geoghan stirred sugar into
his tea, dipped a biscuit in and nodded.
The horror! The horror**!
The Vagaries Of Memory
As we have to reluctantly acknowledge, Conrad is getting on a bit, and his memory's not what it once was, not that it was anything special in years gone by. As the blog by-line has it, 'from my rubbish-tip skip of a mind', and that's on a good day.
"What was that book I read decades ago, by a female from Eire who went on a bicycle ride along the border and in Belfast, right in the middle of The Troubles at their worst?"
Of course - obviously! - I couldn't remember the author or title, which is where Google-fu came to my rescue. Art!
Travelling around Belfast was pretty brave, or foolish, as her Southern accent would instantly identify here as Not One Of Us, and Conrad seems to recall that the only times she felt scared were in Belfast. Maybe worth re-reading to see how things have changed.
Finally -
Time, methinks, to cook up another batch of Conrad's version of Bigos, this time with shredded jackfruit and artichoke hearts, and probably spinach as well. Korean noodles or kasza? We shall see.
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!
* I like to keep you informed.
** I mean, come on - dipping biscuits into a cup of tea? Jolly not on!
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