A little culture to the sheds.

[KevSull Too]

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewoman and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly, rodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed, to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of the birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning, in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's loft like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is tonight in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rose tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with the winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors' Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

 

 

Introduction to "Under Milk Wood" by Dylan Thomas. If you've not read it, shame, shame, shame on you.

 

😬You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same. 😬

 

[Eric McLoughlin]

Is it written in Welsh?

[Meldrew]

You're taking this bardic thing very seriously, Kev.

[not a Postman Pat]

the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams

 

Oh dear - too many "and"s. He needs to vary things a bit.

 

Pat and his not quite black and white cat

[Hibster.]

6/10 see me

 

Although not bad for the rabbit from Magic Roundabout

 

Supercheese R250

 

Edited by - Paul Davis on 30 Sep 2003 12:05:33

[FH]

Tuppenceworth..........

 

I love the lyrical way in which he composes his introduction. However, therein lies the key - at least for me. It is lyrical prose, bordering on free verse and as such, I find it difficult to retain concentration in the way that a "jolly good read" gallops away, urging me to read on, turn the pages and risk sitting up in bed until I've finished the book. 😳

 

I also have trouble with authors such as A S Byatt and never managed to read further than Chapter 1 of her Booker prize-winning book, despite my best efforts Must try harder.

 

Debate. "What constitutes a 'good' book?" We'll restrict our discussion to works of fiction please

 

Oh, and BTW, all those political 'biographies' are, for the sake of this discussion, works of non-fiction

 

FH

[FH]

..... and "Beano" is not a book either Boonie

[scooby dooby doo]

i read it once - seemed pretty boring apart from the bit with mwfawny price.... 😬

 

HOOPY

R706KGU Hoopylight R

[dave hard]

Try a bit of H P Lovecraft.

Now there was a guy who knew how to use the English language.

 

Personally if a book has been put forward for the Booker prize or similar I automatically stay away from it

 

Caterham 21 VHPD - one of the few

[Eric McLoughlin]

Personally, so do I - but I had to read Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clark, Ha-Ha-Ha" which won the Booker in 1993 or 94. It was based in and around my home town (or should I say home "squalid council/corporation estates") in North Dublin and concerned a lad of 10 years of age in 1968. I was 10 in 1968 too so it rang lots of bells for me.

 

Edited by - Eric McLoughlin on 30 Sep 2003 13:24:30

[Tam]

Well, for me a good book is one that you rush to read but don't want to finish, if that makes sense It doesn't have to be a classic, or an award winner to meet the criteria (and in fact they are not always that great - FH - I have never got beyond chapter 1 of Still Life either despite having had it sat on the book case for squillions of years and I have just finished White Teeth which was disppointing in a way.

 

Tam

[Meldrew]

When I had a job with a lot of travel, I read loads of books in airports and on planes.

 

I went through mad, obsessive splurges on individual authors. Went through a Salman Rushdie phase (including smuggling a copy of the Satanic Verses - banned in Singapore, where I lived at the time - in my briefcase), Rohinton Mistry, Philip Roth (now there's a writer - tough going at times, but stunning), Julian Barnes (a bit overrated), David Nobbs (once read the whole Reginald Perrin trilogy on a return trip to London for a budget meeting), Ronan Bennett...

 

I like big, chunky books with lots going on and loads of detailed subplots. Terrible puns are a big plus, too (Rushdie, Anthony Burgess etc).

 

I really enjoyed reading books that were about places I had been to or seen. At one stage I was spending about a week of every month in Bombay, so I read a lot of Indian and NRI novels then, and it made them seem somehow more alive and real to me.

 

Just having time to read now would be a joy.

[not a Postman Pat]

Great debating topic, FH.

 

Tam, with you And I also agree on White Teeth. Some laugh out loud bits, but I have given up half way through. I find time is now too precious to waste finishing a book that no longer holds my attention.

 

Mmmmm, so what makes a good book. For me, any of these:

 

- a book that makes me laugh out loud in public, despite my best efforts (Spike Milligan's ware memoirs series, Woody Allen's Without Feathers, early Roddy Doyle, early Nicholson Baker)

- a book that scares me (Stephen King's The Dark)

- a book that tells me something about human nature (Stalingrad, Battalion 101)

- a thriller that makes me stay up really late to read 'just one more chapter', even though I know I will regret it in the morning (too many to mention)

- a book that makes me think (some of Will Self's books, Ian McEwan, Jorge Louis Borges)

- a book that makes me feel sad (Ian McEwan's A Child in Time, some Holocaust books whose names I can't remember)

- a book that reminds me of myself, or just seems as though it could be about me or how I feel (High Fidelity, Man and Boy [the bits about the father and son relationship, not the breaking up with his wife 😳])

 

Is that enough

 

Pat and his not quite black and white cat

[Meldrew]

Unless I'm very much mistaken, Tony Parsons' wife was Julie Burchill in real life.

 

Not surprising that you might get a jaundiced view of marriage that way.

[not a Postman Pat]

😳 😬

 

Pat and his not quite black and white cat

[Tam]

I count myself lucky that I do get time to read despite the hours - commuting does have its good points

 

So come on then, what's currently in your briefcase / by the bed / in the downstairs loo?

 

For me, its Shadowmancer (a kids book about the Dark Side) in the briefcase and Rasputin (non-fiction) by the bed. Oh, and Evo in the downstairs loo 😳

Tam

[Hibster.]

I read a book once, perhaps I'll read another one one day. 😬

 

Al, do you know what a book is ?

 

Paul

PS I think I'll see if I can find that book then I can tell you who wrote it, it's here somewhere, perhaps I should get one of the those Billy things from Ikea then I wouldn't keep loosing it at times when people ask me what I last read

 

Supercheese R250

[KevSull Too]

Bit of a Sci-Fi addict I'm afraid, currently on 'Consider Phlebas' by Iain Banks

 

😬You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same. 😬

 

[Tam]

Paul - I'm sure my nephew has a john and Jane book you could borrow

[Hibster.]

Mrs C

 

I've always found that Andrex works better than Evo, I find that the paper is a better texture i.e. far less shiney

 

Mr D

 

Supercheese R250

[Hibster.]

Mrs C

 

That sounds like a sex manual or are you refering to Janet & John books

 

Mr D

 

Supercheese R250

[Tam]

Mr D

 

Resent suggestion that I would use Evo for that purpose - had enough of that with school "tracing paper" loo roll

 

Also resent suggestion I have those sorts of books 😳(or at least that I would loan them out

 

Mrs C

[dave hard]

Kev, good choice with Ian M Banks 😬 Currently waiting for him to publish another, having read all his other sci fi.

 

Caterham 21 VHPD - one of the few

[not a Postman Pat]

In my executive rucksack - Running Rings by John McLaren (lots of 'orrible villians named Ronnie and Tommy and slimy management consultants named Rupert and Tarquin)

 

By the bed - Shield of Achilles

 

Loo - Q magazine

 

Pat and his not quite black and white cat

[Meldrew]

Briefcase - Car...don't know why I keep buying it: it's crap

Bed - Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T E Lawrence

Loo - nothing much - it always ends up in Rachel's mouth (my 21 month daughter, I hasten to add)