124 comments on “Many Happy Returns”

1. I was wrong to assume that a smug man with a ludicrous bouffant hairstyle could not possibly write a decent novel. What I’ve read of A Place In England so far is very, very good indeed.
2. Bragg will suffice, Blameworthy.
3. They’ll have to wait, GloomLaden. I found two, unread, Melvyn Bragg novels from the Cumbrian trilogy, in a charity shop today. Should keep me quiet over the weekend.
4. Oh, never anything so obvious as Tolstoy, Blameworthy. I advise you try The Earth by Zola, A House and Its Head by Ivy Compton Burnett, Lampadusa’s The Leopard, Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett: I could go on.
5. Yes, but how many stars would you give them, Gloomers? Pratchett is no more than a League 2 author in my new football-themed rating system; a sort of Dagenham & Redbridge amongst writers. I’ve just finished Stonemouth by Iain Banks, which was an enjoyable read despite the repellent nature of the characters. Couldn’t award it more than 3 stars, though. I need more of a challenge now, Dostoevsky perhaps, or Tolstoy. Maybe even another crack at the Vision of Piers Plowman. What would you recommend? Which are your five-star favourites? Come on, spill the beans.
6. I read the first three Pratchett books. I suppose I must have quite enjoyed tham at the time to have proceeded from, for instance, the second book to the third. It won’t happen again
7. In response to your comment about my not commenting on the new doctor has led you to an assumption of my dislike which you do not believe, I would prefer not to comment.

   I’ve only read six Terry Pratchett books and enjoyed them. I plan on reading the rest but cannot yet say when.

   I haven’t read any Alan Titmarsh books and would have to claim ignorance about the subject matter – I will avoid making any gardening jokes in relation to his books. I did consider several but have pruned them back…
8. Good Lord, no, Gloomers! But isn’t that what you were suggesting?
9. Fitrambler, I will take your reluctance to comment on the new Doctor as the dislike I know full well it isn’t.

   Blamers, your football analogy lost me entirely. You seem to be saying that one has to have more than one set of five star rating systems in order to accommodate different levels of excellence. But teams from the Premiership occasionally do battle with much lesser teams (in the FA Cup, for instance) in just the way that bookshelves see books of all kinds and conditions jostling for attention and subsequent rating. Are you really suggesting that Premiership teams should play only one another in order to facilitate a comprehensible rating system?
10. Well, you certainly got a reaction, Fitters! I confess that my comment concerning the books I have just read was delivered ‘tongue in cheek’ purely to provoke a response from GloomLaden. It proves you only have to prod him in the right place to invoke the inevitable knee-jerk reaction. He’s so predictable!

    How would you rate the works of Terry Pratchett and Alan Titchmarsh?
11. I have to agree it’s a funny old system of awarding stars to books or music. I mean why five stars? Goes against the grain because I cannot award 1, 3 or 5 stars comfortably as they are odd numbers.

    But to push that bit of OCD to one side. I’m not one who normally awards stars or gives a review of books, music or any other item. But I was curious about what would happen – as my tweets are seen on this blog – if I did?

    It was the same as tweeting selected types of books I have bought from Amazon. I wondered what would happen?

    I have to have some amusement now that walking anything more than a few hundred yards is no longer an option; certainly for the the short to medium term.

    The new Doctor is something I do not feel inclined to comment on at the moment.

    On my bowl movements I will say no more than I’m on my sixth toilet seat since I moved into this house some 28 years ago; most leave screaming “I can’t take anymore!!” Which is a really strange strange thing for toilet seats to do because as we all know toilet seats take a vow of silence when they are initiated into their profession….
12. And thank you, GloomLaden, for glossing over the fact that, in an earlier comment, I became confused between the two books: Dr. Palfrey Debags An Ombudsman and Dr. Palfrey Debriefs an Omnibus Man. The second of these is a much earlier and – some might say – inferior work by Creasey and, as such, is unlikely to be awarded much more than 50 stars by the Discerning Reader.
13. Let me try to make this simpler for you by employing a football comparison. If we take the first five divisions of football clubs in England and Wales – I’m including the Vanarama Conference here – and give each team a star rating according to which level they are currently competing in – Vanarama teams would, therefore, be awarded one star and Premiership teams would receive five stars – the team at the bottom of the Premiership would still receive five stars despite being, perhaps, thirty points adrift of the top team. Even the team which eventually wins the title at the end of the season would not be considered perfect unless they had won every game and, even then, it would still be theoretically possible to achieve a higher goal difference. So perfection is unachievable even though any team which plays in the Premiership would merit five stars.

    Of course, if one only ever reads books from the lower reaches of the South & West Division of the Isthmian League, one is forced to devise a, somewhat, more flexible system, whereas a reader, like yourself, who only ever selects novels which are capable of qualifying for the Champions League at the end of the season, would, in anybody else’s book, only ever be reading five star books. You could, however, still choose to split those books into five categories, so Jonathan Meades might be Chelsea and Nick Hornby would, perhaps, be Crystal Palace, and would, therefore, be under constant threat of relegation at the end of the season.

    It all boils down to individual taste and preference and, although this may be hard for you to accept – or even to understand – that taste and preference is not always yours.
14. Are you saying that a hypothetical perfect book – The Toff Impersonates A Cathedral, for instance or Dr Palfry Goes Apeshit – would score 318 stars or that it wouldn’t? It seems to me the hypothetically perfect book MUST score 318 for the measure to have any meaning. But I suppose you are saying that a book might just be the best you happen to have read – The Baron Countersigns A Bill Of Lading, for example, so that it is imperative to score it as highly as you can, even though you are sure subsequent reading may reveal a finer novel. Plato had much to see on this subject, though where he believed in the perfection of Forms, I think perfection is unattainable in any form. The fifth star – or star 318 – should therefor never be deployed, should exist only as a marker of a theoretical perfection nothing real can ever actually attain but of which the mind of the philosopher can conceive. ‘But what sort of chance does that give me?’ John Creasy might reasonably have objected. ‘Here I am working away (in the past, obviously: he’s dead) at The Toff Defenestrates Cowdenbeath and The Baron Spoons Clotted Cream Into A Jackdaw in the knowledge that no matter how accomplished the novels, I cannot expect a 318 star review!’ You, Blameworthy, want retrospectively to rob this prolific thriller writer of even the possibility of perfecting his art. Well, what have you to say to that?
15. But, even if you opted for the controversial 318 Star system and then, having read Proust over the next six months decided to award his novel 318 stars, that still doesn’t, necessarily, mean you judge it to be pure perfection. There are nuances within nuances, so to speak.

    And, because I have always respected your judgement in terms of literature, I, personally, would choose to read Dr. Palfrey Debags an Ombudsman first, safe in the knowledge that Dr. Palfrey Eats A Pie would be a better read. Although, regardless of your opinion, given the choice of a pie or a bus, I’d grab the pie every time. Especially if it was venison.
16. Blameworthy, awarding a book five stars might mean anything! Are there only five? Why not seven or three hundred and eighteen? At least with the latter there would be sufficient stars for a more nuanced differentiation of books. Dr Palfrey Eats A Pie might score 117 out of a possible 318 stars while the almost identical Dr Palfrey Debags An Ombudsman could be awarded an 109 stars, permitting the reviewer to express a preference while warning of the narrow margin by the former is preferred and suggesting to the general reader that the choice of which book to read is not going to be as easy as the five star system contrives.
17. Just one additional point, GloomLaden: – and you may need to stop and think about this, because I don’t think you have quite grasped it – awarding a book five stars doesn’t necessarily mean you consider it to be absolutely perfect.
18. Just for once, Gloomers, I totally agree with you. Apart from the bit about asking you, of course; no point asking you about Proust, I had to read all seven volumes myself. The star rating system on iTunes is also entirely pointless. How can you compare Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto with The Fall’s Birmingham School Of Business School, for instance?

    Having said that, your impeccable taste in literature does rather restrict the joy you might have gained from reading, with only three or four books being worthy of any stars at all by your reckoning.
19. Iain Banks is dead indeed. His finest novels came early – The Bridge and Walking on Glass – the remainder of his career a prolific spiral into ordinariness. Oh, and Complicity is all right.

    But giving books star ratings is a crime. Because you give Engleby five stars and A La Recherché de Temps Perdu five stars and both are excellent but their excellence is of such a different order as to make the comparison seem ludicrous. And then someone – Fitters, no less – goes and awards four stars to The Toff Disembowels A Parrot by John Creasey and you start asking yourself how there can be only one star differentiating the John Creasey from Proust and further wondering what each of these stars might be supposed to signify. I mean, is a no star book one you can’t read at all? In which case is a one star book one you can read but really shouldn’t, such as The Phone Book or Beachcomber’s List of Huntingdonshire Cabmen? But if one of the stars is just for being able to read the damned book at all, five stars don’t seem enough for Proust. And if the stars are not awarded for specific achievements, what the hell are they about? An almost mathematical attempt to quantify the vague sense of a book one has as its conclusion? In which case five stars must mean a perfect book in all ways. And since nothing is ever perfect, what is the point of that fifth star? No, if you want to know whether a book is worthwhile, save yourself a great deal of mental strife and ask me.
20. Over the weekend I finished reading The Girl At The Lion d’Or by Sebastian Faulks, and gave it 4 stars. I would have given it 5, but then I would have to give Engleby 6, and I don’t think that’s allowed. I am currently reading Stonemouth by Iain Banks, which has a cast of repellent Scottish characters to whom I am unable to relate. I’ll persevere with it, though; I wouldn’t want GloomLaden accusing me of being prissy again.

    Iain Banks: isn’t he dead?

    Apparently the latest Wallace & Gromit film is to be a pornographic movie with characters moulded from anal plasticine. It is to be called A Faecal Matter of Loaf & Death.
21. William Hartnell died. And then Patrick Troughton. John Pertwee died also. And you say you want to steer the conversation away from death?
22. Now, look here, GloomLaden! When I suggested you might be incapable of producing anything substantial of your own, I wasn’t being metaphorical, I was referring, quite literally, to faecal matter. Of course, it was a quite ridiculous allegation. Had you not passed anything of note for forty-five years the resultant blockage would have been too unbearable, even for a man of your stoical temperament. Fitrambler, on the other hand, has the look of one who is likely to have been monumentally prolific in his lifetime.

    In truth, nobody told me the new Doctor Who had made a good start: I lied in a desperate attempt to steer the discussion away from Death. I wasn’t even aware there was a new Doctor Who until I read your comment earlier. What happened to William Hartnell?
23. And, Blamers, who are these people from you heard that the new Doctor Who made a good start? In the continued absence of Fitramblers definitive opinion, I think we should be told.
24. I meant anal plasticine – if even that is how you spell it. Not that it, or anything, matters now. Nail the lid down, I haven’t achieved a single thing in forty-five years and those are the best forty-five years I’m going to get, quite possibly the only span of that length. I’ve seen too many new Doctor Who’s, there are too many Dr Palfrey novels to start now, Proust is beyond me as in any but the most trivial act of creativity. You complain, Blamewothy, that our contributions were becoming lacklustre. How much more lustre can you want than that of a man who wants extinction in the absence of adoration? Eh? Eh?
25. And! … And, GloomLaden! What, in God’s name is meant by anal plasticise? Are you suggesting I may have had my arse double glazed, or something?
26. So what did you think of the new Doctor Who then, Fitters? I didn’t watch it myself but I’m told he was quite good.
27. You’re right; I’ve produced nothing substantial. I should be – will be – in many senses already am – dead. Dead as Dickie Attenborough whose five plus years of post stroke suffering have finally wheezed to the obvious and inevitable denouement any humane screenwriter would have cut to five years back. In the context of the incontinent, electrically brainstorm-tossed former actor director and philanthropist, what consolation can be got from O! What A Lovely War or Chaplin? None. So why bother? Bring on the redeeming cancer, the inevitable coronary; anything to put the little I’ve done into the nugatory context it deserves. Unloved, barely liked, professionally incompetent and personally wanting, I’d abjure my books for one iota (metric or otherwise) of what you have. A wife to at least share the darkness, a son to at least suggest the possibility that it might – albeit only for him – lift or abate in the empty fullness of Time. I have no-one, nothing, am but a canister of gaseous verbiage going off intermittently to no effect. Where there should be the warm friction of companionship, there is only the cool pulp of books. Kill me, kill me, come on, kill me! It’s what you want, it’s what I want, it’s what the intelligent general reader wants – and who can blame her? – but no. Second by dreary second, life goes on accruing.
28. You can only dream of lobbing faecal matter, GloomLaden, being incapable of producing anything substantial of your own. Your persistent, thunderous rectal trumpeting just doesn’t cut the mustard.
29. Speak for yourself, Blameworthy. My comments have not become lacklustre at all. They continue to scintillate, leavening Wildeian wit with the philosophic rigor of Bertrand Russell, the incisive asperity of Robert Robinson (still dead, btw) vying with the ludic verbosity of James Joyce, all underpinned with the large hearted sentimentalism of Dickens and the wry frown of Samuel Beckett. That I am not lobbing fecal matter about the place is, I should have thought, a positively good thing for all concerned. You’ve always retained something of the Freudian playpen about you; time now to put the anal plasticise aside.
30. It saddens me to note that our comments have become rather lacklustre, dull and dreary, too, GloomLaden. I sometimes find myself harking back with fondness to the days when we could rely upon the occasional contribution from Mr. Gowithit, fuming foully on a faecal theme. Although he may have lacked your literary style and sentence structure, he more than made up for it by demonstrating the sort of passion and conviction that we have always, both, lacked. Ahh, the glory days of bloggery!
31. I find television very educating. Every time someone switches it on, I go and read a good book.’ – Groucho Marx

    I suppose the 1957 GEC BT1155 14 inch Bakelite TV is still in use in the 1950s house. Peter Capaldi must have looked even greyer on it than on my own more modern instrument.
32. It is a little known fact, not reported in the biography of William Somerset Maugham, that, on 23rd November 1963, he sat down to watch the very first episode of Doctor Who on his 1957 GEC BT1155 14 inch bakelite TV. After less than five minutes of viewing he fell into a fit of rage and, storming across the room, manhandled the TV set violently above his head and hurled it through the glass of the French doors onto the terrace, from whence it cartwheeled erratically across his perfectly manicured lawn and into the ornamental pond on the other side of the garden.

    Later that evening, he is said to have changed his mind about death, commenting to a friend that, in fact, he was quite looking forward to it. ‘Doctor Who, on the other hand’ he seethed ‘is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it’.

    He didn’t replace the TV and never watched Doctor Who again. He died just two years later on 16th December 1965.
33. What did you make of the new Doctor Who, Fitters? It’s a point of principal with me that I start liking incarnations of the Doctor only when they are off the premises (Matt Smith was a brilliant choice in hindsight). In an over extended and badly written episode, I thought Peter Capaldi promising, at the very least.

    (Of course, I raise this subject knowing just how much merely doing so willl wind up Blameworthy
34. Maugham’s biography is one of the finest I’ve read in recent years. It is notable for his horrible descent into old age – there are descriptions of the elderly Maugham scuttling like a demented crab about his villa, biting staff – and his even more horrid funeral. His bones did not cremate properly and the funeral director had to smash them to pieces afterwards. There is also the wonderfully English moment when the elderly Maugham, having written an autobiography in which he attacked his own daughter at length, turns up at his London club and all the members at the bar turn their backs on him murmuring ‘Not done, old boy, not done.’
35. I can see where this is going….

    ‘Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it’.
    W. Somerset Maugham
36. Didn’t work out too well for Thurber, did it? He’s dead.
37. Apologies to the Regular Reader who will have heard this one before, but it seemed fitting for one, such as I, who takes a leisurely approach to life in retirement:

    ‘It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all’.
    James Thurber
38. Well done, Blameworthy, I’d not heard that Mark Twain quote before. You can’t go to the top of the class – as Fitters can for taking up Wodehouse – but you can certainly come in out of the corridor.
39. ‘To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology’.
    Mark Twain
40. Baaaaaaaaaaaaa. Baaaaaaaaaaaaah. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
    You see? Terrifying.
41. It’s good to know you’re getting into P.G. Wodehouse, Fitters.

    ‘Good Lord, Jeeves! Is there anything you don’t know?’
    ‘I couldn’t say, sir’
42. During a long Swindon orbital hike today, Fitters, in defiance of my pompous pub snobbery, I called in at the Dockle Farmhouse and forced down a pint of Rampart brown ale from the Bragdy Nant brewery in Llanrwst near Conwy. And very decent it was too. Not like all those half pints of industrial piss-water we sunk in the 1980s. I had hoped for a gallon of Black Sheep Ale with a Lambs Navy Rum chaser, but you have to take what you can get, cheaply, when Wetherspoons is your only option.
43. I’ve seen many sheep, Blameworthy. They’re evil, frightening and wrong.
44. Are you sure you’re not confusing sheep with football supporters, GloomLaden? Have you ever actually seen a real sheep?
45. I don’t like sheep, Blameworthy. I hate the way they seem to have human voices but entirely lack the gift for language and so seem obscurely to be mocking humanity every time they emit their disturbing noises. Ugh!
46. There’s more to sheep than just wool, GloomLaden. Experts on wool merely scratch the surface without ever penetrating the flesh and blood beneath. Gravel enthusiasts may be simpler folk but at least they have something more concrete to chew on.
47. Wrong, Blameworthy! Woolly thinking readers, since they are preoccupied thinking about wool, are liable to be more expert on sheep than, say, gravel thinking readers.
48. I have a vague recollection of seeing Swallow Falls but, apart from that, my memories are all of grey skies, grey stone buildings and lots of grey Welsh slate. Even the cafes and retail outlets in the photograph appear to be housed in fifty sheds of grey. I’m sure we would have been capable of drinking North Wales dry back then but it has to be remembered that much of it was already dry in the 1980s, especially in the afternoons and on Sundays. I had assumed we must have journeyed by car to get to Betws-y-Coed; I don’t think we used the buses much then, and train journeys were usually along the main coastal line, but I could be entirely wrong. Your memory of past events is generally much more detailed than mine.

    I’m sure I would have noted down the names of the pubs as we visited them but, sadly, any written records have long since been destroyed. All I have are a few faded colour prints from our last visit to North Wales. That extensive collection of sheep snaps which I, lovingly, glued to the bedroom wallpaper in the guest house – covering every last inch of wall space – were confiscated by the North Gwynedd Constabulary during the subsequent criminal investigation, and never returned. Baaahhh!

    I do remember exactly how many different pubs we visited during the first holiday week but if I reveal the number it would just be seen as a wild exaggeration thirty-three years later. Even I don’t believe it and I was there. Or was I?
49. A fair bit of information on the sheep there. Any memories of the pub? I really can remember little about our trip there in the 1980s. On arrival there was a sense of familiarity and I suspect we did it by train rather than bus, but I couldn’t really pick anything else that really struck me about the place. Unlike other places in North Wales I went to where the return sparked a few vivid memories.

    The matter of the Goswop – whoever he was – is not yet ended so as they say, watch this space.

    Although to this day his identity is a closely guarded secret….
50. Woolly thinking readers may believe that all sheep are exactly the same but, in fact, it’s the little, subtle differences that make them so fascinating. In the foreground of Fitrambler’s photograph the sheep at the back is much taller but the one nearer to the camera has a thicker fleece and a bigger, more pointy, nose. The smaller ones further back in the field are clearly much younger. These are known as spring baahlamms. Nice grass, too, Fitters; grass is interesting. It’s not all the same shade of green, you know.

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