On the Committee part 1

I was asked to be on the allotment committee and take the minutes by our Chairman, Marie. Marie comes from Ohio or somewhere like that, and is a very petite American lady with a patient, but energetic personality. When I was having a bonfire two days after the end of bonfire season she did come past my plot and tell me not to. I was rather surprised as I thought we had discussed, and passed, a motion to extend the bonfire season by a month, at the Annual General Meeting the previous week, but she said, no. I pondered the fact that it is very important to write things down that happen at meetings or nothing is remembered accurately.

Having agreed to be Minutes secretary, I was approached by the Treasurer of our organisation. He comes into the allotment shop on both Saturday and Sunday to pick up the takings. He is a very reliable man of advancing years. He told me that it is very important to hold meeting regularly and to stop our Chairman, Marie, from overspending, as we need to hold a reserve for fighting legal battles (from property developers). He noted that over the last year Marie had organised 3 expensive rubbish collections instead of the usual 2, and he felt that this had not been agreed by the committee. I agreed to try to get meetings organised and in diaries as soon as possible.

Marie suddenly called a meeting the following week. We had this meeting standing up in the allotment shop. All to the good in a way as nobody was tempted to linger. At the meeting one of our number, whom I will call Vera, volunteered to be the Plot Steward. Apparently she has long told Marie that Marie cannot be both Chairman and Plot Steward, and that she, Vera, is always at the allotments and would be able to take care of everything on a regular basis. Marie said that she had asked Busy Dee (who stocks the shop) to be Plot Steward, and that Busy Dee had agreed to do it. But Vera said that Dee was far too busy to be Plot Steward and put herself forward most vehemently.

After the meeting Marie told the rest of the committee that Vera cannot be Plot Steward because she has an uncontrollable temper and screams and shouts at people, and that she, Marie, cannot work with her. No. Under no circumstances. So Marie said she would get in touch with Busy Dee and tell her to say that she is Plot Steward and Volatile Vera can understudy her when she is not there.

This was very difficult to minute because I had minuted that Dee and Vera were to share the job but Marie did not want me to suggest that that had been agreed.

Then Marie got back to me, about the minutes, about the allegation that there had not been meetings last year, and said that all the meetings had indeed been held, and that she thinks Michael has forgotten that we did have meetings. She thinks he didn't attend/ has memory problems? I asked her to forward me the minutes of previous meetings. This she has not done and she seems to have gone away on a break.

At the weekend I was working in the shop with Busy Dee when Volatile Vera came in and told Busy Dee she wanted to be Plot Steward. The odd thing was that Busy Dee, who should have been primed to say clearly and emphatically, yes, I am the Plot Steward, did no such thing. She said neither yes nor no. It was all very difficult.

A trip to Paris

The Lapin Agile - a long-ago night spot, now looking very tiny

We went away to celebrate our 30th Wedding anniversary. To Paris! We stayed in Montmartre behind the Sacre Coeur, so on our first day we climbed up the hilly streets behind our hotel and approached the lovely white church. I had intended to go to Mass there because it was Palm Sunday but there was a massive queue to go in and we never did. We just admired the view, and went down the hill on the other side and up again. There were masses of people for whom a sunny Sunday is wasted if you don't spend it on Montmartre admiring the view. They take picnics and rugs. We walked a lot that day. It was a shame we didn't have a guide to the streets because I have read Gertrude Stein on the great days of Paris and I would have loved to see where all her arty friends had their ataliers and their adventures. I came home and couldn't find my copy of "The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. But ah! now I have found it.

Outside the Sacre Coeur, with the view from Montmartre

The next day we were going to go to the Musee d'Orsay but that was closed, and we were going to go to the Louvre but the queues were so long we couldn't bear it, and so we went to the Pompidou Centre. There was a queue but we found it was to be searched. We found the same thing on Eurostar. There are very long queues but these are to be frisked and have your bag searched. The fourth floor was closed but that was OK because we spent a very long time on the fifth floor. We had an interesting time.

Inside the Pompidou Centre

 The next day I was completely resigned to the fact that we would have to queue to get into the Musee d'Orsay and it did take an hour of queueing and I generated a lot of hate for queue jumpers, which was uncomfortable. However, when we got our bearings and started to look around I really enjoyed it. We started with the impressionists and I was bowled over to see so many really important and such beautiful paintings, but having finished that we went to see the symbolists and I enjoyed them too, because they were trying to say something. I think we spent the whole day at the musee, apart from dinner.



This picture is by Degas. It is so tempting to think it's by Toulouse Lautrec.

I think the next day we did  the Galeries Lafayette, which is a big shop with a pink and gold dome inside, have you seen it? I wanted to buy souvenirs, but couldn't find anything my loved ones might want in the souvenir shop, which was on the top floor, and having got up there, we saw signs to a roof terrace, so we went out there and had our packed lunch on the sunny roof with all the students and young people who seem to know that it is a great place to hang out without having to pay anything. Then we went to see Notre Dame. Then we sat in the Jardins de Luxembourg.

The dome inside the Galeries Lafayette

The next day we did something in the morning that I can't remember and then did a walking tour, which took in the Left bank and Latin quarter, which was great, as it was led by a student who was very communicative with lots of little stories about the history of Paris and also helpful and told us about a cheap, atmospheric little place to have dinner. We found it difficult to find good places like that.

And finally on the last day on a recommendation we went to the crematorium of Montparnasse, which was pretty and I liked it but Ashley decided that graveyards are not his thing, and then we took a tour of the Seine on a vedette, which we found interesting and good value. Again, it was quite hot. I really wanted to go into Shakespeare & Company's bookshop which is close to the Seine on the Left bank, but I felt shy ! and I didn't go in. I sort of wanted to buy a book there, but I knew they would be far, far cheaper at home.

So we had a very good few days in Paris. At home we were just gearing up for the Council elections,  when Theresa May announced there would be a general election, in the name of stability, which is a laugh, and so the country is in a muddle again. There is information about tactical voting being passed around, but Jeremy Corbyn doesn't let go of his dreams that he will wake up one day and find that the whole country has turned socialist overnight, and voted that way, so he will never enter into election pacts with other parties even though the aim of all the non-Tory parties is to bring in a system of Proportional Representation, which should keep the Tories out forever, so is well worth sacrificing a few seats for. But his dreams...!

And in Paris, we heard something very interesting. A Parisian told us the UK was right to vote for Brexit and a lot of French people want the same thing. I would say "racist" only he was a Algerian Parisian. So we said, will Marine le Pen get in and take you out of the EU? No, he said, because if France left the EU the EU would fall apart. So Mme le Pen, according to him, has taken a huge bribe from high places to back pedal on that one, and not to take France out of the EU. Well, if all that happens, you heard it here first.

My Friend Muriel by Jane Duncan

This book was first published in 1959 and it is a terrific book about sundry British people both before and after the war, and it is very romantic. There are snobbish people (of course) and spivvy untrustworthy people and solid reliable people from Scotland, Scottish being the nationality of the proudly biased writer. OK, the past was not always better, and there were clearly dark times, but it is a great book to go back to for a cheery comfort read. The books (the My Friends series) interconnect with each other, so there is some repetition, but each story focuses on a character who is different, as in, odd or strange or gifted, as though Duncan had the idea for "diversity" long before the rest of the world.

Jane Duncan wrote a fictionalised account of her own life and as such, it is particularly valuable as a record of the time she lived in.

Duncan, being meta before her time, also wrote and published books as_ Janet Sandison -- the very books that much later in the 'My Friends' series her fictionalised self writes.

In 1959, the London publishing house of MacMillan was besieged by reporters interested in a new Scottish writer. Jane Duncan was making publishing history: MacMillan had bought no less than seven of her titles in one go. Duncan had been writing for years, burning many of her efforts before anyone read them, hiding others in desk drawers and knitting baskets in her linen cupboard. Set in her childhood haunts on the Black Isle, the first of her books, My Friends The Miss Boyds, depicted Highland life at the close of the Great War. It was the first of a series of 19 Friends titles. Duncan wrote 32 books in total, including eight for children. Not one remains in print but that is about to change. Millrace Publishing, a small, independent, English publisher, is to reissue My Friends The Miss Boyds next month to mark the centenary of Duncan's birth. The story is told through the curious eyes of nine-year-old Janet Sandison, who is sharp and observant but basically ignorant of, and confused by, strange adult ways. But this is no fey depiction of Highland life. There is warmth and humour but the themes are poignant and, for their time, surprisingly frank. Duncan writes of mental illness, of sexual relationships and illegitimacy, but also of a changing world shadowed by war. There is that tinge of darkness that often marks the best of writing, a hint of fear and impermanency, a present shivering in the shadow of an uncertain future.Her books were semi-autobiographical, drawing on the places and faces of her childhood, particularly The Colony, her grandparents' home in the hills above Jemimaville, which became Reachfar in her novels. Duncan spent much of her childhood there. Her father had moved to Glasgow to become a policeman when there was not enough work on the family croft, but he retired to Jemimaville and Duncan, too, chose to spend her final years on the shores of Udale Bay. Her grave is not hard to find at Kirkmichael, where the silence is broken only by birdsong and the mournful call of distant sheep. "In memory of Jane Duncan (Elizabeth Jane Cameron). Author. Died October 1976, aged 66 years." You would think it would be the other way round, that her nom de plume, Jane Duncan, would be in brackets rather than her real name. It suggests that "author" was the dominant part of her. Death silences us all, of course. But how poignant that a woman who wrote so prolifically, in whom there was such pride, should, less than 40 years later, not have a single book left in print. Only now is she to be given another hearing.

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/jane-duncan-may-be-out-of-print-for-40-years-but-she-is-about-to-be-heard-again-1-475990

Search for Jane Duncan's voice and what rings out clearly is how far ahead of her time she was, how she forged a strong, independent life at a time when women were not encouraged to do so. Her mother died of Asian flu when she was ten and her younger brother Jock was an infant. Jock was sent to his grandparents at The Colony but Duncan attended Lenzie Academy and stayed with her father, who policed the Renton and Alexandria areas. Her father had a housekeeper whom he would go on to marry and Duncan was very unhappy about the relationship. "She didn't like her, to the point that she wouldn't go home if this woman was there," explains Neil. "I think she would have gone to university, got away from home, as quickly as possible. "There weren't many female graduates in the 1930s. "She was a very clever woman," says Neil. "Very strong. She was very pro women and pro women fighting as equals in a man's world. A pretty indomitable character. If she got patronised, she would really go for people." 

Sadly, Clapperton [her husband] became ill with heart disease in Jamaica. Ironically, it was this that catapulted Duncan to literary fame. Worried about the cost of medical bills, she took a manuscript from the linen cupboard and sent it to a London agent. Clapperton died just after she signed her first contract and she came home to Scotland alone to face a new life. "I think she was at a low ebb when she lost Sandy," says Neil. "She was 49 and had no idea how to make a living." Materially, she had nothing. "She wasn't married and obviously had nothing to show for the relationship other than a few pieces of furniture," says Donald. Writing gave her confidence. "I think she had been quite lacking in self-esteem about her writing at the start," says Neil. "But the early ones were best sellers and I think a lot of her character came out then.  

"In terms of social issues, she did not flinch from difficult themes. When the Cameron children demanded to know why Auntie Bet didn't write a book about them, she began her series for children based on an essay they gave her. The youngest Cameron child, Ian, who was born with Down's syndrome, was a special character in these books. We take such a thing for granted now, but at that time, it was a condition people preferred not to talk about. Duncan described Ian as one of the best things to happen to their family. Seonaid remembers that, when Ian was born, her mother was very upset. Duncan came to the rescue. "My parents were told they should send Ian away, that he would hold the other three children back. It was very difficult for them to bring him up but Auntie Bet was very, very supportive and I know she helped financially so mum could get someone in to help in the house. She was very close to Ian really. She was a bit fascinated by him." Neil agrees. "She felt very strongly that Ian's life was at least as valuable as the rest of us – which it is."

She also wrote about lesbians, homosexuals, people with Asperger's or autism, and those disabled by the war. She loved the differences in people and described them in detail, with curiosity and a longing to understand.

It is here that the value of Jane Duncan's voice is underlined. You stand on the remoteness of this hill and wonder how people ever eked out a living here. "I didn't realise until I went back to read the Miss Boyds," says Donald, "what a fascinating historical document it is." There was, perhaps, a certain stiff sensitivity locally at times about the fact that Duncan's work was semi-autobiographical and some characters were recognisable. But to read of those characters now is to bring a generation back to life. "When we look for a picture of Highland life that has now gone, she presents that picture," says writer and broadcaster Carl MacDougall, author of Writing Scotland. She may have been too popular to have attracted many serious literary critics (though she was not without admirers) but, says MacDougall, "what can be overlooked in a writer like Jane Duncan is the actual craft. These novels are well written and very entertaining. I am surprised she hasn't been picked up again before now."

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/jane-duncan-may-be-out-of-print-for-40-years-but-she-is-about-to-be-heard-again-1-475990

News from Syria

You can't accuse Donald Trump of consistency. One day he says he won't get involved in Syria as he is only interested in defeating Isis. Next thing you know, he sends Trident missiles to Syrian airfields because he suddenly feels outraged for the victims of the chemical weapons attack. He is an emotional person, which is not a bad thing. and now Assad knows he cannot act with impunity in Syria and this is a good outcome, I think. It contrasts strongly with Obama, who felt deeply, and did nothing, or at least, nothing effective.

I don't care if that wasn't the Donald's motive - !

Vaessa Bell - paintings - beautiful exhibition at Dulwich

I had to change my judgement of Vanessa Bell ans I had thought her a painter of ugly blobs in unfortunate colours, and an amateurish try hard. But I really loved many of the pictures in this exhibition and now I am full of respect for Mrs Bell for going on and on with her work and experimenting with, for example, Picasso's style or Matisse's style and continuing to plough her own furrow. I can see now that she did deserve the respect her sister gave her (I sort of feel that VW thought VB the true-er artist of the two.)

Not a holiday

Today I want to catch up with myself. I have been reading too much and doing too much and now I feel unsteady, so to hold on to the railings of my life I will enumerate what I have done this week.
1. Went skiffing on Monday and Wednesday.
2. Had bonfire at allotment, 2nd April finished the digging out of the compost bin, spread about the soil from the compost heap (not rich enough to call it compost), and garnished it with manure to give it some body. The manure was still wet from the field (I had stored it in plastic bags) but quickly dried in the sun. It has been a dry, bright, breezy week. We now have a compost heap of manageable size but no fence around it. Husband is too busy to construct this out of the usual pallets.
3. Bean poles. These are up and there are beans in the ground.
4. I had planted seeds in modules of which only the tomatoes germinated. don't know why. Too hot maybe, when I left the heater on by accident? I have potted on 12 tomato seedlings, tried again with beans and mangetout. Pots all over the conservatory floor (a tiny room where I work). Courgettes next.
5. I read a very good book called Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Claire Morrall.
6. I went on to His Bloody Project which I had to read very fast, for book club.
7. Coxed Husband and Helena, Wednesday evening.
8. Went to book club last night and discussed the book. A very good discussion, although, as usual, the old people digress madly, and the most compos mentis people speak less than those without filters. We had a new member much younger than the rest of us, and not at all shy, which was lovely.
9. Spike came round for lunch yesterday (salmon salad) and we talked about the regatta software. Spike is 62, he has looked after his mum for many years and in February his mum died. He said he feels like an 18-year-old because he is free again. I think he might like a girlfriend. Jane???
10. On Tuesday husband surprised me by remembering our wedding anniversary, and we had a sudden whim to go to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, as I had never been there and he was willing to drive. There was a Vanessa Bell exhibition on. Will post pictures separately. We had a fab lunch in Rocco's Italian restaurant in Dulwich village, which is charming and really the most desirable area to live in London, I should think. Then we walked through a park to another area to see the Horniman Museum, because it was not far away and again, I had never been there. There was a huge display of musical instruments from around the world. This interested us far more than the stuffed animals, although I thought they did very well to make the stuffed animals relevant and interesting.