2543. A bookish tale

Alyah Smithson had fourteen library cards. It all began when the town library’s head librarian would not let Alyah take out more than five books at any one time. Alyah waited until another librarian was at the desk and requested to become a new library user under the name of Delia. Mercy of mercies! Oh the relief! She wasn’t asked for any ID. This was an invitation over time to get another dozen library card under false names and addresses.

It meant she could have seventy books out all at once. The library had several outlets in the town and spilled over into the neighbouring towns in a “library affiliation”. Alyah didn’t have to use the same library and librarians all the time. The scheme was greatly helped once self-issuing machines became common.

A funny little incident happened when Alyah requested “A Snippet of a Snapshot”, a new best-selling novel by Evelyn Snodgrass.  She was told that it was currently out on loan and she would be informed when the book was returned. Imagine Alyah’s surprise when she realized that Samantha Winkworthy who had the book out was in fact herself!

The time came, after about a year, when Alyah decided to move to Thrushton-on-Waverly, a distant town. She went to the libraries in her old town and borrowed five of the most glorious books with each of the fourteen library cards. There were seventy books in all. She packed them in a box for removal. This was the ninth time Alyah had moved house in recent years.

Even though Cecilia Coddington of Thrushton-on-Waverly had an extensive home library, she had managed to acquire fourteen library cards.

2228. I Spied: Margaret Mahy

(Stories posted on Mondays on this blog – at least for a while – will present famous people I once spotted, albeit usually from a distance.)

For those who don’t know Margaret Mahy here is a little blurb copied from somewhere on the Net:

Margaret Mahy is internationally recognised as one of the all-time best writers for young readers, her books having been translated into all the major languages of the world. Twice winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal, she also won the Esther Glen Award five times and the Observer Teenage Fiction Award once.

At the time I “spied” Margaret Mahy I was living in Christchurch, New Zealand. Margaret Mahy (I think) lived in a little township just out of Christchurch called Diamond Harbour. It was easier to get to Diamond Harbour by boat than it was to drive for an hour or so along the winding road around the harbour. I knew that because I would take a boat to see friends of mine, Jeremy and Kate, who also lived at Diamond Harbour.

I was quite well known in Christchurch as a playwright. The Actors’ Company, the Christchurch Shakespeare Festival Trust, the Mill Theatre, and others produced quite a number of my plays. Several thousand schools around the country used to do one of my musicals each year – one school doing a Goodman production nine years in a row! At a one-act play festival, so many theatre companies were performing a Goodman play that they started fondly calling it the Goodman Festival! Believe me, I didn’t mind. Sadly, I have since fallen off the stage and am not even a dim memory. Nothing was ever published except by the photocopier.

I say all this simply because my friend at Diamond Harbour, Jeremy Roake, was also a playwright and was commissioned to write a play for Good Friday by the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral. I was asked to direct it. Each scene would be acted at a different spot in the Town Square and end up inside the cathedral itself. The aim was to make it seem like the “procession” of Jesus to his death on Calvary was actually happening in the Town Square. There were crowds of people at the performance pushing and shoving to get near the front to watch the action. The part of Jesus was played by an Indian actor who was a Hindu. My favourite bit was when the lady who was always in the Square preaching Christianity came up to Jesus, handed him a pamphlet, and asked, “Are you saved?” The Christchurch Wizard – a very popular tourist attraction in the Square at the time – howled with laughter. Anyway, the production was quite moving and the Cathedral Dean was happy enough. The cathedral has since fallen down in an earthquake.

It was during this time of rehearsal that I was asked if I would chair a meeting of the Christchurch Branch of the New Zealand Writers’ Association. (It used to be called PEN but they changed the name because it caused a mild smirk when an announcement was made such as “PEN is having a meeting”). I wasn’t a member of the group because I’d never had anything published! The reason I was asked was because writers sometimes enjoy talking about themselves and they knew I was more than capable of telling them to sit down and shut up. (Nicely of course). One by one at the meeting I called upon various writers to read an extract of their work. But there was a problem: Margaret Mahy was at the meeting as large as life, and I didn’t know how to pronounce the Mahy bit of her name. There was more than one Margaret. In the end, as the very last, I introduced her: “And now we shall hear from the great Margaret!” She stood and off by heart entertained us all with a poem she had written for children. It was a wonderful end to the evening.

In the queue at the cup of tea afterwards, I was standing next to her. In response to one of the things that had been read, and I can’t remember what the reading was about, the great Margaret told me a story. When she was a little girl she went to school one day, and it wasn’t until she sat down at her desk that she realized she hadn’t put on any panties.

And that is how I met the wonderful…

Margaret Mahy

1774. The Perfect Book Tag

Imagine my excitement in having just returned from taking the dog for an extended walk (and in the process collected a bucketful of wild mushrooms) to discover that someone has challenged me to complete The Perfect Book Tag (even though I’m a free spirit and not taggable). That someone blogs at Dumbest Blog Ever; a blog that is self-described as Stu(pidity) on Stareoids. The postings range from the erudite to the enjoyably stupid, from the sublime to the cor blimey. The blog is well worth the visit (I reckon).

This posting sees a departure from the daily story, and is a bit longer than usual. Of course nothing is perfect, not even myself when I was eleven, but these are some literary works I have enjoyed over the years.

Some snippets of these reflections you may have heard before. I’m not averse to repeating myself. I’m not averse to repeating myself. I hope the selection (which borders on the classic and boring) doesn’t show me up to being a tedious snob. I’m not averse to repeating myself.

The Pretty Good Genre
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

This is the title of O’Connor’s collection of short stories, and contains the best short story ever written – also entitled A Good Man is Hard to Find. Even though you know from the start what’s going to happen your hair stands on end as it happens. The writing is both funny and horrifying. I’ve always been a fan of Flannery O’Connor and a big fan of the short story genre.

“She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.”

The Perfect Setting
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and the Yorkshire Moors are the perfect setting for this extraordinary novel – which surprisingly a lot of people haven’t read. The plot IS the setting. The setting IS the characters. The setting IS the theme. Everything in this novel is integrated into the one thing. Perfectly constructed. I guess I’ve read it maybe 50 times or so.

“I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk.”

The Pretty Good Main Character
The Book of Thel by William Blake

Thel is the character in this longish poem by Blake. She is too afraid to come into existence, because that begins the journey towards death. Thel is ephemeral.

Ah! Thel is like a watry bow, and like a parting cloud,
Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows in the water,
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant’s face,
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air.

The Pretty Good Best Friend
A Certain Age by Cynthia Jobin

Many readers will be familiar with the poetry of the late Cynthia Jobin. She took a keen and positive interest in so many bloggers and posted her brilliant poetry on her blog. Her final poem Night Draws Near, Brother Ass is heart-rending. I was unaware she had died when I received in the mail from her a collection of poems by William Stafford called Even in Quiet Places.

Let me down easy
the way hints of winter
fall exquisitely today
scattering icy lacy flowers
from a cloud bouquet

The Pretty Good Love Interest
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

I’m not heavily into love stories, although I have read a great number of novels by Danielle Steel and enjoyed every bit of them. Shhh! But I chose Richardson’s Clarissa because it’s one of the earliest books written in English and I got through the hundreds of pages of love letters never once being able to work out if “they were doing it”. It was all insinuation. Clarissa Harlowe is abducted by Robert Lovelace. That was the gist of it, and I found it pretty riveting really. Besides, I had to read it for exams at university.

“Love gratified, is love satisfied — and love satisfied, is indifference begun.”

The Pretty Good Villain
Richard III by William Shakespeare

I know it’s predictable but it’s inevitable. Richard III is one of my favourite plays. That horrid movie with Ian McKellen missed the point because the film omitted Queen Margaret’s great cursing scene. Each curse comes true, bit by bit.

Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins!
Thou rag of honour! thou detested—

The Pretty Good Family
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My sisters adored this novel in my childhood. Once I grew up I was old enough to be seen reading it. When I studied in Boston, USA, I would go to Walden Pond in New Hampshire. The Alcotts, Hawthorne, and Thoreau lived within walking distance from one another. It must’ve been something in the water.“I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now.”

The Pretty Good Animal
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter

I loved this story as a kid – and still do. I think it was because Jemima wanted to hatch out baby ducklings and I kept ducks as a kid and was forever hatching out babies. I didn’t mind the fox in the story because in New Zealand we don’t have foxes. There is something quite magical about a bird’s egg!

“Quack?“ said Jemima Puddle-Duck, with her head and her bonnet
on one side.

The Pretty Good Plot Twist
The Leader by Eugene Ionesco

This short ten minute play by Ionesco is one of my favourites. Mind you, all of Ionesco plays are my favourites! The leader off stage is watched by fans on stage. They go ape-shit over him/her. They go goo-gar. “He’s patting a pet hedgehog! He spits a tremendous distance.” (Incidentally, the actor who said those lines in a production I once directed became the Prime Minister of New Zealand in reality!) When the leader does appear at the end he/she is headless. “Who needs a head when you’ve got charisma?” Ionesco used to write to me but his letters stopped once he died. Strange.

“Shut up! Shut up! You’re ruining everything”

The Pretty Good Trope
Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame

Janet Frame was a New Zealand novelist and this was her first novel. It tells the story of a women with mental problems, who gets shut away in a mental hospital and watches the mountains through the keyhole in her cell. (The story is a lot better than that). Throughout the novel, Frame creates associations with images, so at the end of the novel she only has to mention all these jolly images and you burst into tears! (At least I did).

“She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those … little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and they go inside and don’t come out.”

The Pretty Good Cover
A Guide to Folk Tales in the English Language by D.L. Ashliman

I bought this book for about $250 around 25 years ago. It has a summary of 2,335 folk tales. Back then I earned a living writing for children to perform on stage so such a book came in handy! I don’t care too much about covers, although for a novel I don’t appreciate an artist showing me what a character should look like. That’s the writer’s task. It’s why I’ve never seen any of The Lord of the Rings movies – they ruin the imagination. I like this cover. It’s plain, and in another life I learnt the skills of a book binder and could create plain covers like this!

The Pretty Good Ending
The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge

I think this is my favourite all-time play (at least for today). At the end Pegeen Mike whispers: “Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only Playboy of the Western World.”

“… it’s great luck and company I’ve won me in the end of time – two fine women fighting for the likes of me – till I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.”

Thanks for reading!

1624. The pension

Errol was excited. Well, not so much excited as pleased. He had worked as an academic all his life, in the field of electromagnetic radiation, so getting excited was little over the top. His birthday was next Tuesday, and the following Monday, exactly at midnight, he should get his first pension payment. His wife, Siobhan, was a little older and had been getting the pension for more than a year.

As had been done for Siobhan, the first pension pay out (it was a little rule the two of them had) was to be spent on oneself! Errol knew exactly what he was going to get with his pension money: books!

In the weeks leading up to his birthday he scoured the internet. In the end he had ordered twenty-six books, and paid for them including postage. He suggested to Siobhan that she collect the mail through the coming days and store the books in a hidden pile. Then on his birthday all the books would be there! What a way to start the pension! What a feast of present opening!

The books arrived in dribs and drabs. Siobhan collected the mail and stored the books in a closet. The morrow saw his birthday! Except, not even a barrage of canon fire could have woken him.