Snowed in, lion around

I'm sure Arctic countries find the British response to snow bemusing. In Scotland, drivers were stuck on a motorway for fifteen hours, while my commute into London Bridge yesterday took four times longer than usual because of cancelled trains and - this was new to me - trains that couldn't move because their doors had frozen.

Today is World Book Day, and some parents might have felt their effort spent on costumes was wasted after the schools closed because of the weather. But I hope the children still enjoyed wearing their costumes at home. I had a day off work and I stayed indoors and started rereading Gone Girl. Although a lot of it is set in warm weather, there's a key scene in a snow storm.

But the books that I think of the most when I think of the snow are The Snowman (which also reminds me of Christmas), Love Story (which I've mentioned on a previous World Book Day), and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

My wonderful primary school teacher, Helen Baxter, read the C. S. Lewis novel to us over I don't know how many weeks. I probably had books read to me as a toddler, but once I could read to myself I rarely had stories read to me at home. So story time at school was incredibly special to me. And whatever I now think about the message of the book about the four children and their trips to Narnia, I have a strong affection for the novel because I remember the first time I heard those words spoken. 

If you're someone who reads children's books to children, I hope you know what a nourishing thing it is you're doing for them.

Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms. Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops. 

Soon there were more wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers- celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it they found snowdrops growing.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis

The primroses were over

“The primroses were over. Towards the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak-tree roots. On the other side of the fence, the upper part of the field was full of rabbit-holes. In places the grass was gone altogether and everywhere there were clusters of dry droppings, through which nothing but the ragwort would grow.”

Richard Adams, Watership Down

I have been terrible at blogging the past year, but I always do a post for World Book Day – so I want to keep up with tradition. It’s nice to look back and see the books I chose before. 2012 was Nineteen Eighteen-Four (and how many times has that book been mentioned in the last year?), 2013 was Gone with the Wind, 2014 was Elizabeth Barrett’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, 2015 was The Go-Between, and last year was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

A couple of days after Christmas last year, I heard the news that Richard Adams had died on Christmas Eve. He was 96. At the bottom of this post is my copy of Watership Down, which my mother bought me in John Lewis on Oxford Street, back in the 1980s when its children's department included books. Richard was the only person I really wanted to write a fan letter to…but I never knew what to say, so I didn't. I know he had loads of fan mail, so mine wouldn't have made much difference to him, but I felt a huge pang of regret on the 27th of December. 96 is a fantastic age to live to, but death is loss no matter what age, and I think the little girl in me imagined he was as immortal as Father Christmas. I had read interviews with him after his 90th birthday and a couple of years ago, and he was as sharp and eloquent as ever.

I read Watership Down after seeing the 1978 animated film. I fell in love with both. As cute as he was, I was never a fan of Thumper from Bambi; sarcastic rabbits like Bugs Bunny and intelligent, kickass rabbits like Bigwig and Hyzenthlay were more my scene. There was also something Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca about the last two. Now when I watch The Walking Dead, so much of that epic, apocalyptic story reminds me of Watership Down – the constant vigilance against danger, being cautious but hopeful when meeting new characters, the deaths and losses, and the blood. I used to hide behind the curtains the first few times I watched the final showdown between General Woundwort and the dog in the film. Similarly, I used to hide behind my hands when I first watched the zombie scenes in the TV show, before I got used to them.

“When you’re little…you don’t distinguish between fiction and reality,” Richard said a few years ago. “It’s all reality. And thank goodness for that. I do not believe in talking down to children. Readers like to be upset, excited and bowled over. I can remember weeping when I was little at upsetting things that were read to me, but fortunately my mother and father were wise enough to keep going.”

His daughter Juliet urged him to write down the epic rabbit story he’d told her and her sister during long car journeys, and eventually he started writing every evening. ‘Asked if he enjoyed writing it, his response is quick and pithy. “No, I hated it. To be quite frank, writing is bloody hard work. But I did enjoy that I had the guts to persevere with it.”’

I am so glad he did.

Falling (right through the earth) for Alice

You may have noticed that I am a big fan of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. For British Flowers Week last year, I created a tea party of flowers for Alice Day. Last year was the 150th anniversary of the book, and there were celebrations in Oxford and London.

It's World Book Day today (I got confused when I heard people saying it was on Tuesday; I was sure it was usually a Wednesday or a Thursday, but I thought, "Social media wouldn't lie to me, would it?!") and Lewis Carroll's fairytale is the obvious choice. It is our old publishing boss's big birthday (I won't say which) on Saturday, and I made a sort of CBeebies type Mad Hatter's tea party card for him, as he said he didn't want a fuss. Unbirthday cards don't count as fuss, do they?

Last December, I went to the Alice in Wonderland exhibition at the British Library with my old mentor from publishing. She bought me an Alice exercise book to help me organise my various scribblings for my dissertation. I bought a Nursery Alice card for another friend's birthday, and a few days before his birthday, I met him at Waterstones in Trafalgar Square. I looked all around the fiction section, poetry, music, and film, before heading back to the children's section, where I saw him reading the Nursery Alice. The British Library exhibition is on until 17 April and it's free!

I went to an interactive production called Alice's Adventures Underground last summer with my two cousins who were visiting Britain from Canada for the first time. 

The first picture at the top of this post is the programme from this production, and I love how programmes are now playtexts, too. It was the same when I saw The Odyssey at the Liverpool Everyman in October. The London production was a wee bit more expensive than the Liverpool...can you imagine paying £6 for a top tier student ticket on a Saturday night in this heinously expensive capital?!

Earlier this year, I attempted to do Alice/Queen of Hearts nail art. I've not got the steadiest hands, so this was the best I could do.

I'll leave you with the Dormouse and Alice in A Mad Tea Party:

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’

‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’

‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.’

‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters — they were learning to draw, you know —’

‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

The past is a foreign country

It's World Book Day again, which means it's time for another book post featuring another book. The special day seems to be in the news even more this year because of children dressing up as their favourite characters. Our Flower Patch, which encourages children to get stuck in and learn about nature, has written a post about World Book Day and is running a competition to win a copy of Georgie Newbury's book, The Flower Farmer's Year.

Back here, I'm going to share a book and film-inspired trip I went on last year. I travelled to Norfolk for a few days, staying in a small market town, and got the bus into Norwich one day to go on a little The Go-Between tour. I adore The Go-Between. It's a beautiful book about childhood, love, and loss of innocence. It's about a boy called Leo who stays with his friend, Marcus, one stiflingly hot summer, and ends up being the secret messenger for Marcus's older sister, Marian, and her lover, Ted. And it has one of my favourite first lines:

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Leo turns thirteen while he is staying in their huge, grand house, but Marian takes him shopping in Norwich to buy him a summer suit as an early present. They lunch in the Maid's Head Hotel, and he walks around the cathedral by himself while Marian goes off for an hour, claiming she needs to run some errands.

There is a 1971 film version by Joseph Losey, which is beautifully shot by Gerry Fisher, with much of it filmed in Norfolk. Julie Christie plays Marian and Alan Bates plays Ted, both wonderfully, but nothing like I imagined from reading the book (as is so often the case with adaptations). There is a new BBC version which should be broadcast on TV this year.

So when I visited Norwich, I went around the beautiful cathedral, which was still decorated for Christmas as it was the first week in January.

The font used to belong to a chocolate manufacturer!

There is a herb garden too, which is no doubt even prettier in the summer.

Then it started to rain and I took shelter and lunch in the cozy but completely empty Maid's Head Hotel. I'm fairly sure there was a log fire, but maybe that's my romantic imagination.

When the rain stopped, I walked around the city and saw this beautiful sight along Tombland Alley - two red roses (for passionate Marian and Ted) and a white rose (for pure Leo). It was incredible. I sought out the alley because it's a location in the Losey film.

There were other lovely sights in Norwich that weren't related to the film. When I took this photo of floral chairs, a man who was very wrapped up because of the cold said, "I don't know how you're going to get the chairs to smile!" Afterwards I was stood in a cafe, deciding what drink to order, when the waitress said, "You look shifty." I turned around and realised she was talking to her friend, waiting behind me.

On the bus back to my hotel, I saw some things out of the window that lifted my spirits even more:

• A dog chasing a pony, chasing a pony, chasing the dog.
• Flowers proudly on display in the window of a house. They were gerberas - not my favourite flowers - but they still made me smile.
• Two paramedics sitting in a fish and chip shop. 

The next day I got the train home from Downham Market, but not before taking photos of two things: the stunning black and white clocktower, and the old signal box which has Grade II listed status.

Here's one of my favourite passages in The Go-Between, when Leo is wondering whether to carry on being the messenger and Ted is trying to persuade him.

"She counts on having them, same as I do. It’s something that we both look forward to. They’re not just ordinary letters. She’ll miss them, same as I shall. She’ll cry, perhaps. Do you want her to cry?" 

"No," I said. 

"It isn’t hard to make her cry," he said. "You might think she was stiff and proud, but she isn’t really. She used to cry, before you came along." 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Why? Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you." 

"Did you make her cry?" I asked, almost too incredulous to be indignant. 

"I did. I didn’t do it on purpose, mind you. You think I’m just a rough chap, don’t you? Well, so I am. But she cried when she couldn’t see me." 

"How do you know?" I asked. 

"Because she cried when she did see me. Doesn't it follow?"

Barrett, like the poet?

It is World Book Day again, and also Elizabeth Barrett's birthday, so there is an obvious choice for my yearly book post!

I did study her poetry briefly when I did my undergraduate degree, but the poem that has stayed with me, perhaps embarrassingly, is Sonnet 22 from Sonnets from the Portuguese. Why do I remember this poem? Because Ali MacGraw recited it when she played Jenny in Love Story. Jenny Cavilleri and Oliver Barrett's wedding is one of my favourite screen weddings - it's small and intimate, sweet and personal. Jenny's father, Phil, calls it a "do-it-yourself wedding"; in 1970 this wasn't such a well-known idea as it is now. And Jenny's long-sleeved, short dress, and the wild flowers in her hair and bridal posy are pretty and modest.

The short wedding service begins, and Jenny recites the sonnet by the poet who shares Oliver's surname:

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, 
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, 
Until the lengthening wings break into fire 
At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong 
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long 
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, 
The angels would press on us and aspire 
To drop some golden orb of perfect song 
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay 
Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit 
Contrarious moods of men recoil away 
And isolate pure spirits, and permit 
A place to stand and love in for a day, 
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

Afterwards, Oliver recites his vows: the last few lines of Walt Whitman's beautiful Song of the Open Road:

I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Even if you have no intention of seeing Love Story (it has an undeserved corny reputation, I think) or reading the book (which is told in the first person, from Oliver's perspective, making it quite different in tone), I hope you're intrigued enough to read some Elizabeth Barrett or Walt Whitman in the future.

Frankly, my dear

It’s World Book Day again, so it’s the perfect reason for me to get back into blogging (there has been a lot of upheaval over the last few months, so I’m afraid I’ve let the blog grow under my feet. Or more accurately, not grow).

I used to carry around a notebook and write down quotes from books that I was reading. When I read some books, I felt like writing down quotes every other page, because there were so many great lines and thought-provoking passages. I still get annoyed when I’m flicking through a book, trying to find a passage that stood out to me, and I can’t find it!

If the only thing you know about Gone with the Wind is the line ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’, you’re missing out on a treat. A 1000-page, epic treat. Like many people, I only read the book after falling in love with the film. I remember watching different films with each of my parents as a child. With my dad, we watched The Great Escape, Fiddler on the Roof, Casablanca and lots of Laurel and Hardy. With my mum, we watched Gone with the Wind…and as the film was four hours long, there wasn’t much time for anything else. As a child, it’s difficult to identify with an adult sometimes, because they seem so different. I absolutely adored the heroine of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara, and perhaps it was because she was childish, loud, stubborn and wore flamboyant clothes. It wasn’t until later, when I read the book (which took me a long time, by the way!), that I really felt I understood her character. Literature and cinema are full of strong, male protagonists, and it’s so refreshing to find a female lead as full of life and as complex as Scarlett. Unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she’s not sweet and innocent and she’s often not especially likeable, but if you let her character speak to you, then you see her tremendous willpower and physical strength, as well as her vulnerability and honesty.

This is an encounter from Margaret Mitchell’s wonderful book, when Rhett Butler proposes to Scarlett:

'I always intended having you, since the first day I saw you at Twelve Oaks when you threw that vase and swore and proved that you weren't a lady. I always intended having you, one way or another. But as you and Frank have made a little money, I know you'll never be driven to me again with any interesting propositions of loans and collaterals. So I see I'll have to marry you.'

'Rhett Butler, is this one of your vile jokes?'

'I bare my soul and you are suspicious! No, Scarlett, this is a bona fide honourable declaration. I admit that it's not in the best of taste, coming at this time, but I have a very good excuse for my lack of breeding. I'm going away to-morrow for a long time and fear that if I wait till I return you'll have married someone else with a little money. So I thought, why not me and my money? Really, Scarlett, I can't go all my life, waiting to catch you between husbands.'

The Golden Country

Since it is also World Book Day today, I thought I’d share a passage from my favourite book, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Whenever I see bluebells, I think of Winston and Julia on their secret first date.

“The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some partly to pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when they met. He had got together a big bunch and was smelling their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze him, the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking bluebells. It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl, or he might have been followed after all. To look round was to show guilt. He picked another and another. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

He looked up. It was the girl.”