Preoccupations

Dyer’s hand

Garden and kitchen have been claiming their time. We were picking and prepping red currants for a couple of days and now — on to the gooseberries. Sometimes, the garden can feel very bossy (and that’s generally a good thing).

A little while back I had several books on the go, including The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, Alice Oswald’s first collection of poems. In the time I’ve had just recently, I’ve been re-reading it. It’s very beautiful.

The sea had mastered them. They couldn’t make
even the simplest sense of what they had witnessed:
the moon, the birds, the crooked boat. They moved
far out between absurdity and wonder,
rocking like figures in a nursery rhyme,
the waves like great smooth beasts shoving them on.

…

The sea was miles and miles of palish tin
and a small countermoon was floating there,
very clear, very irregular perfect —
an aspirin in the middle of the world

and may the mystery move them now — the sea
cannot be finished with; each layer is laid
co-terminous with light but more than light
and seamless and invisible in water —
cannot be closed or opened, only entered …

*****

As we work, the rhythm takes us over, until we look up, backs aching, hands, t-shirts and shorts part-dyed with berry juice. You and the work and the world immediately around you (and that’s all you are aware of now) have melded.

Monday, stacking wood for a couple of hours, the same with differences: splinters in my hands, a little blood on the wood, and, after a time, the feel and smell of the wood in my head.

 

And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

Lucy straightens up, stretches, bends down again. Field-labour; peasant tasks, immemorial.

… embodied actors interacting in the world, participating in it and acting through it, in the absorbed and unreflective manner of normal experience.

Technorati Tags: poetry, literature, Alice Oswald, embodied, flow, work

Fyfield, towards the Ridgeway

A wonderful afternoon’s walking in the snow, up on Fyfield Down. Wiltshire doesn’t stop amazing me with its beauty.

Technorati tags: Wiltshire, Fyfield Down, Ridgeway

What we hold in our heads

I’ve been remiss in writing up recent conferences, but I’m no longer sure that’s a bad thing. Instead of a summary that then, it seems, gets put away in my memory (here or elsewhere), I find I’m going back to things I’ve heard said, presentations made — and circling and circling. It seems to make for better thinking.

Here’s one thing I’ve been struck by, both when I saw it last month in Richard Sandford‘s geeKyoto presentation (Richard is a Learning Researcher at Futurelab; he’s blogged about geeKyoto here and his presentation is available here),

and when Matt wrote recently:

We see the world in fives: two generations back, our children, and our children's children, and ourselves. Time is a little planet with close horizons.

In his del.icio.us notes on Matt’s post, Rod excerpted and commented:

"And it's my job to carry the torch and god help me if I stumble, because I'm it now [...] and that's the burden of the middle" ... and even after kids arrive too: the burden of shepherding the generations either side on their journeys.

I don’t know for sure whether it’s true that no day goes by without my thinking of my father, who died four years ago this October, but his memory is always close and I often think of him. It certainly feels like not a day goes by without my thinking of him.

I know far too little about my grandparents’ and even, when I think about it, my parents’ lives.

And into my head comes the first part of Auden’s late poem (August, 1973), ‘The Question’. It’s short, so I’ll quote it all:

All of us believe
we were born of a virgin
(for who can imagine

his parents copulating?),
and cases are known
of pregnant Virgins.

But the Question remains:
from where did Christ get
that extra chromosome?

In his almost as brief discussion of the poem, John Fuller draws in Augustine writing about his parents, over 1600 years ago, in the Confessions (IX.xiii): ‘by whose bodies thou broughtest me into this life, though how I know not’.

Technorati tags: generations, time, memory, Auden

End of the summer

I'm told that in Finland they say, 'there are three good reasons to be a teacher — June, July, August'. It was certainly a good, long summer (some terrible weather notwithstanding). I read a lot, online and off, but mostly the focus was on DIY at home, catching up on things left undone for a number of years now. I saw more of IKEA than I think anyone should have to, share Michael Sippey's sense of awe at IKEA's design-and-execution, feel I earned one of these (not sure where I saw this linked to over the summer, but it hails from Onfocus)

and marvelled at the scale of the IKEA "project" (not sure, either, where I came across this video, but I think Ben Hammersley pointed at it):

And my spirits were lifted by Logomotto Gallery ("Logo and motto are mixed at random")

Autumn is now here and the new school year is well under way. My thoughts have turned, inter alia, to a book I'm co-writing with Judy Breck on education in the digital age (to be called, Intertwingled) and to the new IT course we're evolving at St Paul's for the 13 year-olds who joined us this September. More soon about the latter — and more here on other things, too, now that my life is not dominated by either the 10pm check-out queue at IKEA or home decorating. (Unsurprisingly, micro-blogging really came into its own for me this summer.)

On Shaving

I'm curious to see bloggers posting about shaving: here's Alex, Merlin Mann and Euan. Shaving is something I was never taught to do — and I can't think of anyone my age or younger who was.

Years ago (when I was teaching at a school in Devon), a German student, new to the school and in the sixth form, went around for a few days with a good growth of facial hair. Asked about it, it turned out he, too, had never been taught to shave — but then it emerged he didn't seem to know anything at all about shaving. Anything. At all.

Given a brand new razor and sent away, he soon came back, clean shaven and wanting to return the razor. 'No, keep it: you can use it tomorrow — or the next day.' Blank incomprehension, turning to disbelief and then alarm.

Somehow we stumble along, discovering that shaving against the grain of the beard upsets the skin and working out for ourselves whether manual (wet) or electric is best. Like both Merlin and Euan, and for some time now, I'm a fan of Taylor's shaving creams. Like Alex, I now use an M3, but still go back to the Mach3. (I don't think the Fusion has appeared in the UK yet, has it? How expensive will that be?)

And I got what knowledge I have via The Gentleman's Shop at Hungerford: lying between the M4 and my home town, Marlborough, it's a barber-shop I passed several times before I decided to stop and check it out. Glad I did, for Robert's a fine barber and he and Charlotte run a mini-emporium of all that's best in 'gentlemen's shaving & grooming products': American Crew, The Art of Shaving, Edwin Jagger, Trumper and many other famous names, including the legendary Simpson badger shaving brushes — browse the range here (I have one of the … cheaper ones).

There's an amusing Economist article on a Moore's Law for manual razors:

Can we take this shaving business far, far too seriously? You bet. But Robert's Guide to the Art of Wet Shaving is definitely one thing well worth reading.

Meanwhile, head-shavers should look no further than HeadBlade (or so I'm told).

Technorati tags: shaving, Alex Barnett, Merlin Mann, Euan Semple

Time & tide

Despite good intentions, I'm way behind here with things I've been wanting to write about. The last few weeks have been busy: teaching (of course), two conferences, family matters … and a job application. I'm delighted that the latter went well: come January I'll be based in London as Director of ICT at St Paul's (Wikipedia entry; for overseas friends, St Paul's is academically very successful, but do read all of this page — there's rather more to life than league tables).

Many things lured me to apply for this post: in particular, 'There will be plenty of opportunity for the successful candidate to be creative, experimental and innovative'. To this end, the teaching timetable (ICT and Eng Lit) will be around 40–50% of a full load, leaving me with much more time in which to work with departments (faculties) and colleagues on the ways in which the read-write web can be used in education … on the ways in which it will change education (and schools).

It would be an understatement to say that I am really looking forward to this new role. I have benefited greatly from my time at Radley, but this opportunity will allow me to build on and develop so much that I have been working on over the last four years with my colleagues here — in particular, Ian.

A bit of a gap

At my school, the last three weeks or so of the term that's just died are dominated by mock exams for the final year GCSE and A Level groups — and therefore, for us, the teachers, by marking. Hence, in part, my silence. This last week (the start of our holiday), I have been absorbed in things literary: John Burnside came and read for us a few weeks back, and then I wanted to finish his new book, the memoir about his father, A Lie About My Father, before he read from the book at the end of the Oxford Literary Festival (event 136, yesterday).

This is a great book and one that exhausted me: for all the difference between our backgrounds, there is enough in common between my father and John's for the effect to be both illuminating and draining. Blake Morrison reviewed John's book well in the Guardian, but it's to Hilary Mantel in the LRB that I keep going back:

The book ends as it begins, with Halloween, or rather in the light of the day following, as the writer leads his small son along the quay of a small Scottish fishing town on the east coast. We see that this is the child for whom the phantom of fatherhood must be raised. The writer leaves us with a final sharp picture of the man of lies whom the book has transfigured into truth. He sees him, on a distant night, standing on the edge of woodland; white shirt visible against the dark, a cigarette in his hand, he is captured in a moment which holds, on an indrawn breath, all the events and non-events of his life, all that happened and all that ever could. He did not want to die in public, but that was his unheroic fate: collapsing at the Silver Band Club, on his way to the cigarette machine. An ordinary man with an ordinary death, a nameless man with thoughts that few would care to name, he is now one of the ‘spirits’ who ‘feed our imaginations’. To move from the interiority of this memoir back to what passes for ordinary life is like surfacing from under the sea, reshaped by its strong and unforgiving currents. It is a book by a master of language, pushing language to do what it can. Fastidious, supple and unsparing, it is a book about lies that is more true than you can say.

It was a great pleasure to hear John and to have so many friends together: Tim, Colin and Molly, Olly and Ben, Karl, Mark and Georgie … Like that evening when John read at Radley, a couple of weeks back, this one wound up in the wee hours.

The day before, Karl and I had gone to hear Tim talk (event 97; capacity audience) about his latest book, What is the Point of Being a Christian?, and yesterday afternoon we'd taken in Tsotsi, a profoundly moving film — the book of which I'd read over two decades ago. (See also this Guardian piece.)

Tonight, I had the chance to read John's as yet unpublished sequence of poems centred on/inspired by Saint-Nazaire (which he read at Radley a few weeks back). My head is full of these beautiful, resonant poems — annunciation, tradition (Eliot!), the 'actually loved and known' …

On Molly's recommendation, I've just ordered Keeping Mum and am about to start on Memoir — and then news tonight that John McGahern has died. A bit of a gap.

Technorati tags: John Burnside, Molly McGrann, Timothy Radcliffe, Tsotsi, John McGahern

Prospect Books and La Varenne

Light blogging of late (but plenty still going through to del.icio.us) — so much on at school and elsewhere. Many things have had to go on hold. Cooking is one.

Returning home on Saturday, I found a fat parcel waiting for me: Prospect Books' newly published translation of La Varenne's three books, The French Cook, The French Pastry Chef, The French Confectioner. (You can get the index here as a pdf file.)

These three books by François Pierre de la Varenne (c. 1615–1678), who was chef to the Marquis d’Uxelles, are the most important French cookery books of the seventeenth century. It was the first French cookery book of any substance since Le Viandier almost 300 years before, and it ran to thirty editions in 75 years. The reason for its success was simply it was the first book to record and embody the immense advances which French cooking had made, largely under the influence (of) Italy and the Renaissance, since the fifteenth century. Some characteristics of medieval cookery are still visible, but many have disappeared. New World ingredients make their entrance. A surprising number of recipes for dishes still made in modern times (omelettes, beignets, even pumpkin pie) are given. The watershed from medieval to modern times is being crossed under our eyes in La Varenne’s pages.

So important was this book that English cooks of the time immediately bought copies and one (anonymous) even translated it into English in the middle of the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell. This translation, as is the original, is extremely difficult to understand: there are difficult words, omissions, mistranslations, and other opacities. Terence Scully has solved all modern readers’ problems by undertaking a modern translation with detailed commentary of the original French texts. His work takes cognisance of the early English translation, as well as not ignoring contemporary works available to those early cooks for purposes of comparison and contrast. Even French people will want to buy it for what he tells us of the workings of the French kitchen in the seventeenth century.

That's from the publisher's website. It's a tome and a half (628pp):

So, definitely another holiday job pleasure.

It's a (characteristically) beautifully produced book — kudos to Tom Jaine. If you don't know Prospect Books, you can read about Tom and the history of this independent publisher here. And don't miss the Telegraph's profile of him:

Prospect publishes between six and 12 books a year. "We are not talking Grub Street, we're talking micro-publishing. I never expect to sell more than 1,000 books, and some only sell 50. I edit, re-write, typeset, design; the authors get no advances, only royalties. We just keep afloat."

Alan Davidson's entertaining account of the inception of Prospect Books is here — worth reading for the story of Richard Olney's involvement alone.

Technorati tags: Prospect Books, La Varenne, Tom Jaine, Alan Davidson, Richard Olney, publishing, small publishers, independent publishers

The Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust

The killing of Tom on 12 January has affected many people, as Alex said in his comment to my post of 14 January.

The absence of hatred and anger in Tom's parents, as reported today in The Times, and their determination that out of this immense loss will come good, alike deserve all our respect and support:

THE parents of the murdered lawyer Tom ap Rhys Pryce said yesterday that they pitied and forgave his killers.

John and Estella ap Rhys Pryce, who are devout Christians, said that they believed their son’s murderers were “not intrinsically evil”.

The couple have set up a trust as a memorial to their son, a high-flying lawyer with the City firm Linklaters. It is hoped that the charity, which has already received £350,000, will raise more than £1 million to help to educate impoverished children.

Details about The Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust can be found here. Linklaters has a page about Tom here.

Thomas ap Rhys Pryce

The news of the brutal, gratuitous killing of Tom has shocked and upset me greatly. (News reached me via The Times — here and here; the Telegraph — here and here, the BBC and Life Style Extra.)

I knew him during my long period of teaching at Marlborough College, where Tom was a boy in the boarding house where I first tutored (B1). He was a gentle, clever, thoughtful student — someone already forever in my memory as a person of great gifts who carried them with a modesty and shyness that won the love of those around him.

I cannot imagine how devastated his fiancée and family must be. The thoughts of all at Marlborough who knew Tom will be with them.