Underneath the Arches....

This week's Saturday Snapshot hasn't moved far from Tamworth Station, because on this day (August 4) in 1839, railway pioneer George Stephenson drove one of his engines across the newly constructed 19 Arches spanning the Anker Valley at Tamworth. Behind the engine (which was named after the town) were six carriages packed local VIPs and directors of the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway Company. They had left Curzon Street, in Birmingham, earlier in the day, en route for Derby, where they enjoyed a celebratory lunch at a hotel before setting off on their return journey.

But it's the Arches which fascinate me. When I was working I drove through one of them as I went backwards and forwards to the office, and each time I walk into town, or down to the station, I reach out to touch the stonework, and wonder anew at the skills of those Victorian engineers. At the time the railway viaduct, started by Stephenson, but completed by his son Robert, was one of the marvels of the age, enabling the new-fangled trains to cross the river and its low-lying flood plain.

It's 45-feet high (which is, I am reliably informed, around 7 metres), built of huge slabs of rustic-looking rock (though these may be facings on brickwork) and it runs across the landscape for 417 feet (that's more than 200 metres), crossing two busy roads, a park, the River Anker, and an area of open land. One arch is slightly lower and wider than the others, and two have small walls which once formed part of gateways.

It's a Grade Two Listed structure which, hopefully, means it is protected, but that protection doesn't seem to extend as far as keeping it clean and tidy, and some parts look sadly neglected, with weeds and bushes sprouting from the parapet (actually, I think this top bit may be called a cornice, but I'm not very familiar with architectural terms). One year a small tree flourished above an arch, until it was removed following complaints from residents.

The trains still run across the Arches (more correctly known as the Bolehall or Bolebridge Viaduct, but no-one ever calls them this) on their way from Birmingham to Derby on the West Coast Main Line, stopping at the upper level at Tamworth Station. But two major rail lines cross at Tamworth, so there's a lower level providing a stopping place for trains on the Cross Country Line travelling between York and Bristol.

This second route, originally the Trent Valley Line, was started by a new company whose chairman was Edmund Peel, brother of Sir Robert Peel (he and his family keep popping up in Tamworth's history) but they were taken over by the London and North Western Railway long before work finished. That, in turn, merged with other rail companies (including the Derby Junction) to form the Midland Railway in 1844, and it was three years later that the Trent Valley Line opened, along with Tamworth's first station (a gorgeous Victorian Gothic affair) which was demolished in 1961 and replaced by the very nasty concrete block which is still there today, and doesn't deserve to have its photo taken.


For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/


Sources: Tamworth, Past and Present, by John Harper; Tamworth, A History, by Richard Stone.

A Farewell to Maeve Binchy

I am sure thousands of words have already been written in tribute to Irish novelist Maeve Binchy, who died on Monday at the age of 72, but I could not let her death go unmarked, even if other people have already said the same thing, or expressed it better than I can. Many reviewers and literary critic are dismissive of Binchy, regarding her as a light-weight author, churning out cosy, comforting novels about Irish families. But there's far more to her than that.

She was a brilliant story teller, who produced well-crafted, well-plotted tales, which are always character led. She was obviously someone who was interested in people and what made them tick, and it's the people in her novels which hold your interest, for she wrote about them with warmth, compassion and humour. Her characters are rarely two-dimensional: they are fully rounded human-beings, a mix of good and bad, well intentioned perhaps, but with flaws and failings that make it easy to relate to them. Their decisions and actions may not always be right, but they've been shaped by life, and it's always interesting to see how relationships develop as Binchy sets her characters in various situations within the framework of her story, then sits back to watch what happens.

And Maeve Binchy was never afraid to explore serious or controversial issues, or to write about topics generally regarded as taboo. Light a Penny Candle, which remains my favourite, covers some of the same ground as Edna O'Brien's 'The Country Girls', includes alcoholism, sex without marriage, a marriage without sex, abortion, death and mental health issues. Written in 1982, it was Binchy's first novel. In 1940 shy, self-contained, unconfident Elizabeth White is sent away from wartime London to Ireland, where she stays with the large, noisy, boisterous family of her mother's old schoolfriend, and makes friends with exuberant, extrovert red-haired Aisling.

The two girls are very different in personality, but through the years that follow they support each other through thick and thin, though life does not turn out as either expect. There's a cast of memorable characters. In Ireland there's warm, loving, hard-working Aunt Eileen, who draws little Elizabeth into her large, sprawling family and treats her as one of her own. Back home in London we find Elizabeth's cold fish of a father, and sensible, devoted Harry who becomes her stepfather and provides her mother with a few brief years of happiness.

While Aisling marries a wealthy man who drinks and is unable to maintain any normal relationship with a woman, quiet, sensible Elizabeth comes out of her shell and embarks on an on-off affair with the charming, good-looking (but utterly feckless) Johnny Stone, before marrying solid, reliable Henry, an up and coming solicitor who is everything Johnny is not, albeit rather dull. They have a child, but Elizabeth's life with Henry is as unsatisfactory as Aisling's life with Tony.

The novel covers just 20 years, taking you on an emotional journey about love and friendship, families and marriage. It may not be great literature (it's certainly not to be compared to Virginia Woolf''s Mrs Dalloway for example, or anything by Jane Austen or George Eliot) but it's a great read, and I've returned to it many times and enjoyed it just as much as I did first time round.

Anyway, what's wrong with liking different literary genres? Just because I love Woolf, Austen, Eliot and the Brontes doesn't mean I can't love authors like Maeve Binchy and Katie Fforde as well.

Binchy seems to be known mainly for her novels, which tend to be long and a little rambling, but her short stories, surprisingly perhaps, are much more tightly controlled, as well as having a dark edge and being much more thought provoking than you would expect – I think they deserve a much wider audience. 

I've posted this for Carrie K's Ireland Reading Challenge 2012, which you will find here.

Pic of Maeve Binchy courtesy of Jon Kay at Wikimedia Commons.

August Reading

It hardly seems possible that August is here, the shops are already full of 'Back to School' displays, and summer will soon be over – though this year it never really seems to have started. Perhaps we'll get an Indian Summer during the autumn, with plenty of sunshine. Anyway, I always find it comforting to curl up with a book when the weather is bad (mind you, I can curl up with a book no matter what the weather is like). So here I am, trying to plan my reading for the month ahead, after taking a quick look at my my progress during July.

Things went pretty well on the whole, I thought, and I got through most of what I' intended, plus some extras along the way. I didn't get round to Kate  O’Brien’s Without My Cloak, or To The Lighthouse, but I loved 'Mrs Dalloway' so much that after years of being scared to read Virginia Woolf, I'm now scared to read more in case I don't like it as much! And I only read one novel for Paris in July, although I aimed to read more. I think the secret of success with challenges is to read (and write) ahead, so you have something there if reading doesn't proceed as planned. I also read The Provincial Lady Goes Further (EM Delafield), but thought I would wait to write about it until I've managed to find the other two books.

So what am reading in August? Well, obviously I have my two roll-overs to look forward to, and my monthly look at Elizabeth von Arnim's The Solitary Summer, and I've got two books on the go at the moment - Their Eyes were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Pick's Far To Go, which is part of my Canadian challenge. I was going to read along at a nice leisurely pace (13 books over the next year) without actually joining in. However, various people kindly made recommendations and, to my amazement, I found I had quite a number of Canadian authors in the TBR pile without even realising it, so I am joining in.

I seem to have lots of Viragos in the TBR pile so I've selected Rose Macaulay's Told by an Idiot, because 'The Towers of Trebizond' is an all-time favourite, and Rumour of Heaven, by Beatrix Lehmann (Rosamond's sister), and a non-fiction (I don't read novels all the time, honestly), Love Among The Butterflies, by Margaret Fountaine, a Victorian clergyman's daughter, who travelled the world collecting butterflies and married a Syrian dragoman (and no, I don't know what a dragoman is, but when I find out I will let you know).

There's two poetry collections from the library, Alice Oswald's Woods etc, and Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees. I particularly like Oswald's work ('Dart' is fantastic) and I've meaning to read more of Duffy for quite some time, since I only really know her collection 'The World's Wife', which I enjoyed immensely.

And I found a copy of WB Yeats' Fairy Tales of Ireland, which I think is really intended for children, but I couldn't resist it because I love Yeats, fairy tales, and Ireland, so it seems a perfect combination, and it was only 99p, in a charity shop, and I can post it for my  Irish reading challenge.

Finally, the make-over of Elder Daughter's Room to provide us with a book/needlework/music room is proceeding very slowly indeed, and there are lots of things in little heaps all over the flower, which is not what we had in mind at all. The idea, says The Man Of The House, is to put things in boxes, and to put the boxes of shelves, and perhaps I should stop reading and put things away, especially the books. And in case you're wondering what's with the pictures, I was experimenting, somewhat unsuccessfully, and now I can't get them back the way they were to start with.

Canadian Reading

My reading list for July included a self-set challenge to read something by a Canadian – other than Margaret Atwood, Guy Gavriel Kay and Lucy M Montgomery - because I know nothing whatsoever about the country or its writers. So I've started with Runaway, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro, since she was born in July (1931), but the book also fits my aim of reading more short stories, a genre I am not really familiar with. As you can see, I am still determined to try and take my reading in new directions this year.

Munro writes precise, spare prose where there are no unnecessary descriptions or superfluous emotions. Her writing reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting, with people in a domestic landscape, engaged in everyday tasks, yet somehow disconnected from the world around them. There's an air of sadness and slight mystery about these stories, with their failed relationships and lost opportunities. Munro describes moments in time, moments in life. Things happen, decisions are made almost by default, and life drifts on, but there are no explanations, no reasons given, and no judgements made. People are as they are, and life is as it is, and that is how Munro tells it.

The book takes its title from the first of the eight tales in the collection, and to start with I wondered why Munro had selected this as her main title, but as I read on I could see how apt it is, since so many of the men and women within these pages are bidding to escape from something – parents, lovers, spouses, children, life in small-minded small towns, illness, themselves. There are journeys (physical and emotional), moves and re-inventions of self, but despite their travels no-one arrives at a destination, and nothing is ever fully resolved, perhaps because these people never know what it is they want from life, or if they do know they refuse to acknowledge it.

Munro's stories are longer than most other short stories I've read, and she packs so much in that they could almost be short novels, or novellas, especially the three about Juliet, which I loved. I have to admit that for several pages I was a bit uncertain about the first tale ('Runaway') but by the time I met Juliet I was hooked on Munro's writing, and read on and on, although I'm inclined to think short stories are best appreciated when they are read on their own, one at a time.

In 'Chance' Juliet travels to the man she will live with, the account interspersed with an earlier journey when she first meets him. In 'Soon' she takes her baby daughter Penelope to visit her parents at her childhood home. And in 'Silence' she tries to understand why Penelope has left home without a word and never returned. I loved this three stories, and they way they built, piece by piece, to give a picture. From the beginning 'Chance' reels you in.

Halfway through June, in 1965, the term at Torrance House is over, Juliet has not been offered a permanent job – the teacher she replaced has recovered – and she should be on her way home. But she is taking what she has described as a little detour. A little detour to see a friend up the coast.

The friend is the man she met on a train, who has remembered her first name, and where she works, and has written to her at the school, ending with the words:

I often think of you.I often think of you
I often think of you zzzzzz
Who could resist a letter like that? Not Juliet, that's for sure. When she arrives at his home in Whale Bay, on the west coast of Canada 'somewhere north of Vancouver', nothing is quite as she expects, but she never returns home from the 'little detour'.

In 'Soon' she visits her parents in the small town where she has grew up, where people are shocked that she is 'living in sin' with Eric, and that they have a child. Again, Juliet finds that nothing – and no-one – is quite as she remembers. There is the slightly sinister Irene, who has come to help. Her father, a one-time teacher turned market gardener, seems less of a man than he was, while her beautiful, ailing mother is like a spoilt, petulant child, whose mantra when things get too bad is that 'soon' she'll see Juliet. But Juliet is unable to offer the support her mother needs, or to decide whether home is with her parents or with Eric.

But she had not protected Sara. When Sara had said, soon I'll see Juliet, Juliet had found no reply. Could it not have been managed? Why should it have been so difficult? Just to say yes. To Sara it would have meant so much – to herself, surely, so little. But she had turned away, she had carried the tray to the kitchen, and there she washed and dried the cups and also the glass that had held grape soda. She had put everything away.

It's as if she's put her past life away as well, unable to cope with the memories or changes. Then, in 'Silence', she is the one who is left waiting, hoping that soon her daughter will contact her again. She has arranged to meet Penelope at the Spiritual Balance Centre, but when she arrives the girl has gone and a woman tells her Penelope went to them in 'great hunger' because she had been spiritually starved at home.

 For a few years a card arrives on Penelope's own birthday – then nothing. But each time she moves house she takes her daughter's possessions with her, bundled up in a rubbish bag. She even meets an old school-friend of Penelope, who has met her, changed beyond recognition.

She keeps on hoping for a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.

It was the Canadian Book Challenge http://www.bookmineset.blogspot.ca/                                         which  prompted me to search out some Canadian authors (helped by Claire at http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com) and I was just going to read, but not join in, but I've got a year to read 13 books, and I've amassed a little collection which will take me to the half-way point, so maybe I'll give this challenge a whirl.

Rediscovering Rosamond Lehmann

One of the good things about blogging is that not only do you come across recommendations for things you've never read, but you come across things you've read and forgotten. Rosamond Lehmann is an example. At some point in the dim and distant past I read most of novels (I remember being totally knocked out by 'The Weather in the Streets', which seemed so grown-up, and covered things not usually spoken of). So when I spotted a copy of Invitation to the Waltz in a charity shop some months back, I snapped it up. Then I came across her autobiography, The Swan in the Evening, and bought that too, but both books languished in the TBR pile until I saw that Florence at Miss Darcy's Library (http://missdarcyslibrary.wordpress.com/) was organising a Rosamond Lehmann Reading Week, which prompted me to start reading again. I love these happy co-incidences which occur in the blogging world!
Lehmann is every bit as good as I remember but, as usual, I am behind with writing (however did I cope with deadlines when I was working?). So, since today is the final day of RLRW, here are two briefish reviews in one post.

Invitation to the Waltz, written in 1932 but set 12 years earlier, portrays a long-vanished way of life, yet the emotions and concerns of sisters Kate and Olivia Curtis are not so different to those of many young women today. Kate and Olivia's horizons may have been much smaller, but their hopes and fears would, I think, be recognised by my own daughters, and it's the this human touch which gives the novel its strength and makes it relevant.


Like so many other novels of that period (think Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West), the action, such as it is, is internalised. We see things through the eyes of Olivia, the younger sister, poised on the edge of adulthood, curious about the people she meets, but unable to understand them. She seems to be an outsider, just as her mill-owning family does not quite fit in at any level of society, not being fully accepted by either the neighbouring landed gentry, or the village.


The book is written in three sections, covering Olivia's 17th birthday; the early evening before the two girls attend a coming-out ball for the daughter of Lord and Lady Spencer, and the event itself. It is Olivia's first 'grown-up' dance and she worries about doing and saying the right thing, whether she will find enough partners, and her dress (uninterested in clothes though she is, even she can tell that garment made by a local seamstress is all wrong).


Dark-haired, awkward Olivia trails in the shadow of a her beautiful, blonde, stylish sister, but on this evening she is able to fit her steps to her various dancing partners, and finds that people talk to her, even if she does not always grasp the meaning of what they say. There's a kind of fore-shadowing when she meets Rollo Spencer, and we know that at some stage in the future there will be something between these two (apparently this took Lehmann by surprise, but it led to the writing of The Weather in the Streets). The feeling of this being a pivotal moment is underlined by the fact that before she leaves home strange, silent Uncle Oswald, sensing her trepidation about the evening ahead, tells her she will be all right in about 10 years time.


I loved the way the characters were drawn: pretty Kate, who wants nice things and a nice man, and is attracted to the son of one of the local landowners; geeky Reggie, press-ganged into accompanying them to the ball; Major Skinner's wife's, who is not considered to be at all respectable; Miss Robinson the dressmaker, 'sinking, fatally enmeshed, struggling feebly and more feebly as youth slipped from her year after year'.

NB: Forgot to say this was posted to Beth Fish Reads What's in a Name challenge for the  something you at would carry in your bag or pocket category.  I'd certainly put an invitation in my bag! http://www.bethfishreads.com/2012/01/whats-in-name-5-something-youd-carry-in.html

The Swan in the Evening is tells of Lehmann's comfortable, cushioned childhood. Born in 1901, she was educated at home, with her brothers and sisters, and her memories of the schoolroom are quite enchanting – especially the teacher who tells her being the middle one of the family is like being the jam in the middle of a sandwich!


Incidents spring out from the past, like the day she let her baby brother drink Eau de Cologne, or the sad tale of the servant William Moody who had some kind of breakdown when his adored daughter died.


That links into the death of Lehmann's own daughter, Sally, who contracted polio and died at the age of 24, while she was in Jakarta. That death had a profound effect on Lehmann.


Nowadays, I measure my life by Sally, not by dates. There was the time before her birth; the time of her life span; the time I am in now, after she slipped away from us. The decision to write about it has not been easily arrived at....


She writes very movingly about her daughter's life and death, about life with and without Sally – and about and about a mystical experience she underwent after Sally's death when, neverthless, she was with her daughter and knew everything would be all right. It is a book full of hope and a belief that there is something there beyond the here and now, and Lehmann tries to offer comfort to others who have lost a loved one. But this aspect of 'The Swan in the Evening', written in 1967, is very different to the first part, which is much humorous and down to earth.