Month: July 2025

Pompeii: Life in the City – 5

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There was a disappointing lack of reference to Caecilius, and I could have managed without either the silly CGI imagery or being informed that Romans didn’t have electric lights, HR departments and pasta; but this was quite interesting in its way.  That was despite the presenters’ rather juvenile obsession with “garlic farts” and toilets.   They went on at great length about how the Pompeiian cleaning services used urine for bleaching and dumped pots outside their premises for people to use, and how the Emperor Vespasian even imposed a tax on urine.  (No-one suggest this to Rachel from Accounts, please.)   When they weren’t talking about that, they were mostly talking about brothels.

In between the brothels and the pots, we heard about how the Romans had no weekends but got 100 days per year off for games.  And how they went to bed for a few hours, then got up and did some work, then went back to bed, then got up again.  Sounds quite sensible to me, especially considering how hot it gets in Campania.   We also heard about the aqueducts, and how many of them still work today.  Romans were so good at that sort of thing!   I bet they’d soon have sorted out all the potholes round here, whereas all that the stupid council have done is put up notices saying that they’re sorting out the roads.  Which they’re not.  Oh, and apparently Pompeii had a one way system, because you can’t put horses into reverse.  And the nouveaux riches had fountains in their gardens.

It was a bit disjointed, and it tried so hard not to be stuffy that it went too far the other way; but, still, this was worth watching.  Very put out that they didn’t mention Caecilius, though.

 

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

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  This is one of the best books I’ve read in a while – the story of an Azerbaijani Muslim boy and Christian Georgian girl who fall in love, and marry during the First World War.  It gives a wonderful picture of life in multicultural Baku at that time, and the feeling of being caught between Europe and Asia.

And no-one actually knows who Kurban Said was.  There are various theories, but no-one knows for sure.

At that time, Baku was only about 21% Azeri, and around 30% Russian and 24% Armenian, with a sizeable Georgian population too.  It’s now around 95% Azeri, with the Armenian population expelled after the pogrom of 1990, and most of the Russians having left.  Yerevan, now around 99% Armenian – although it’s had an influx of Russians in the past few years – was then around 39% Azeri and 5% Russian; and Tbilisi, now around 90% Georgian, was then around 43% Armenian and 27& Russian.   Plus lots of smaller groups.  Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Gregorian (Oriental Orthodox) Christians, Jews (Askenazi, Mountain and Georgian).  So many historical external influences – Russian, Turkish, Persian.  Was this Europe or was this Asia?

The book was published in the 1930s, and some of the language and spelling are now a bit dated – but not so much that a modern reader can’t follow them.  Azerbeidshan, Stamboul etc are easy enough, although it did take me a few seconds to realise that “Tsetshen” was “Chechen”!

Ali is the son of an Azeri warrior family of Persian descent, Nino the daughter of a Georgian noble family.  Despite various misgivings on the sides of both families, they become engaged.  However, Nino is then kidnapped by an Armenian friend of Ali’s.  Ali chases after them and catches them (remarkably quickly) and shoots the Armenian man dead.  He then has to flee to Dagestan, to escape the vengeance of the dead man’s family.  This should make him unmarriageable, but Nino follows him and they marry, and live happily in a humble village in Dagestan.  This was in the days before Dagestan was a place of gang warfare and fundamentalism.  And whatever happened to Anzhi Makchakala.  Ah, they were wound up in 2022.  Thank you, Wikipedia!

Anyway, after the Russian Revolution, the family hunting Ali leave, so he and Nino return to Baku … but, as the Russian irregulars approach, they leave to live with Ali’s uncle in Tehran.  Ali loves it there and feels that he’s a true Oriental (I said that some of the language was dated, OK!), but Nino, confined to the harem and expected to wear a veil, hates it.

Turkish troops then occupy Baku, and Ali and Nino return, and have a daughter.  We don’t really hear about all the inter-ethnic warfare and atrocities which took place at this time, with the focus more on the continued pull between Europe and Asia, and the added complication of the fact that the Turks, whilst mainly Muslims, are mostly Sunnis, whereas the Azeris are mostly Shi-ites.

The war over, British troops arrive – and Nino is in her element, hosting Western-style dinners and mixing with Westerners.  But, when the British troops leave and the Red Army arrive, Ali joins the Azeri forces fighting against them … and there’s no happy ending.  Why couldn’t there have been a happy ending?   Nino and the baby, we assume, live the rest of their lives in Georgia.

It really is a fascinating portrayal of a complicated place in complicated times.  And how, whilst we hear a lot about “multiculturalism” in Western Europe, the three Transcaucasian states, and much of the Middle East, have moved away from it.  The world is a complex place.

 

The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant

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It’s quite positive to see someone making a change from the current focus on Holocaust novels and going back to the sort of Anglo-Jewish or Jewish-American family sagas that we used to get in the ’70s and ’80s.  This one’s a bit like Maisie Mosco’s Almonds and Raisins series on speed.  In the space of 270 pages, we go from a family moving from Latvia (and she does call it “Latvia”, unlike Maisie Mosco who insisted that Daugavpils was in Russia!) to North West England (Liverpool rather than Manchester, this time) in the early 20th century, to the hard-won move from the inner city to the suburbs, to the later generations thumbing their nose at middle-class provincial life and family traditions, and getting involved in all sorts of things which horrify their elders.  But now on into the 21st century, with online genealogy – and, in this case, a postscript in which the original heroine’s great-granddaughter meets up with some long lost relatives.

It would have worked better if it hadn’t all been quite so rushed!  But the book still has plenty to recommend it.

The grammar and punctuation do *not* recommend it.  The author is obsessed with commas, and uses them when semi-colons, colons or even full stops would have worked much better.  The narrative sometimes drops into the present tense.  Some of the English is just plain poor.  However, the story’s interesting, although it would have benefitted from being a lot longer.   There are also ongoing references to how Mina, the original heroine, met some Bolshevik boys in a forest near Riga when she was 14 – hence the title of the book -, went to talk to them, and even kissed one of them.  It’s all meant to be a metaphor for life and choices and so on.  Realistically, she’d have been terrified of what the boys might do to her, and run for her life!

However, as I said, there’s plenty in the book to recommend it.  Anyone familiar with the Liverpool Jewish community will recognise many of the places mentioned.  They’ll also recognise many of the surnames given to the fictional characters: I’m not sure what people’ll make of that!   And the author’s made some interesting points, in interviews, about how the “voice” of Liverpool is usually Irish Catholic, and she’s spoken to people who weren’t even aware that there were Jews in Liverpool.  By comparison, Connie Francis, who sadly passed away last week, used to say that people assumed she was Jewish, because they thought of Newark as a Jewish place, even though so many people there were, like herself, of Italian Catholic heritage.  Some places do become associated with particular minority communities, and I can see how that can make it hard for the voices of minority minorities to be heard.

This isn’t the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s got its good points.  And, as I’ve said, I think it’s positive to see an author moving back towards focusing on the Anglo-Jewish community

The Lily and the Lion by Maurice Druon

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  This is the sixth book in a series.  I haven’t read the other five, but they’re about the end of the Capetian dynasty and the beginning of the Valois dynasty.  The Curse of the Templars, the Hundred Years’ War … it’s familiar enough territory without having read the other books.   However, the author’s cast Mahaut of Artois, the mother-in-law of both Philip V and Charles IV, as a baddie who poisoned both Louis X and his son Jean I.  Mahaut isn’t a major figure in historical texts, but Maurice Druon’s turned her into one in fiction.  Mahaut’s nephew, Robert of Artois, is the hero of the book, although more familiar figures such as Edward III and his mother Isabella also feature.  The book also includes the story that Jean I wasn’t really killed and that he was smuggled to Italy and grew up under the name Giannino Baglioni.  There really was a man called Giannino Baglioni, who did claim to be Jean I, one of many “pretender” stories in medieval and early modern times.

I hadn’t come across these books before, but apparently they’re very well-known in France, and have twice been made into TV mini-series.   I can’t say that I feel that inclined to read the rest of the series, but I would if I had time and could find cheap copies!

The Real Enid Blyton by Nadia Cohen

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Like most kids of my generation, I grew up with Enid Blyton books.  I had the Noddy and Amelia Jane books read to me as bedtime stories when I was toddler, and, once I could read for myself, I went through the school stories, the mystery stories, the adventure stories and the farming stories.  I and the other kids in my class at primary school dreamed of midnight feasts, were rather disappointed when we found out that macaroons and ginger beer weren’t actually very nice, and imagined ourselves having exciting adventures and solving mysteries.  Ahem, there was even a phase of trying to stick notices saying things like “I am the Bold Bad Girl” on each other’s backs.   Enid Blyton gave us all that, and encouraged us to read.  You’d think that teachers would be pleased that kids were reading, but, no.  Teachers in the early ’80s absolutely had it in for Enid Blyton!   One officious teacher even told my mum and dad that they should stop me from reading so many Blyton books.  And such is the legacy of Enid Blyton.  Kids love her books.  Certain other people don’t.

Yes, the language of her books is very simplistic, and the characters aren’t particularly rounded.  But they’re aimed at *young* children.  How sophisticated do people expect the language in Noddy books to be?!   By the time I was 7 or 8, I was moving away from Blyton and on to authors such as Elinor M Brent-Dyer and Antonia Forest.   People aren’t generally reading the Famous Five or even Malory Towers when they’re in their teens, but everyone has to start somewhere.   And it’s quite interesting that the language in some children’s books is now being dumbed down, and yet people still criticise Blyton for being “simplistic”.  The author of this book’s a bit vague about it all, but does make the point that a lot of the books are aimed at very young readers.

And then there was the book written by one of her own daughters, which more or less said that she as a bad mother.   Yes, there were controversies in her private life.  No, the naked tennis story probably isn’t true, but she did hush up the fact that she’d been divorced and remarried.  And, cruelly, she cut her first husband out of their children’s lives.   This book does focus largely on her personal life, rather than on her books, and it tells a complicated story of a woman who never got over her own father abandoning his wife and children, and who became estranged from her mother and brothers, with a lot of elaborate lies being told all round.   Interestingly, although parents in Blyton books are generally sidelined, they are generally around, which often isn’t the case in children’s books.

Then there are the attacks on her just because she churned out so many books.  People have even claimed that she didn’t write them all.  Why *is* that?   Is it better to have been like Margaret Mitchell, who only ever wrote one book?   Or Jane Austen, who only wrote a few?   What’s the snobbery over one person having written all these books?  Is there any admiration for her work ethic, and the amount of time that she put into writing so many books.  Apparently not.  Maybe writers are supposed to starve in a garret, devoting their entire lives to writing one magnum opus.   It’s just snobbery, isn’t it?

And that’s ironic, because the Blyton haters are always moaning that her books are snobby.   Well, they are snobby.  Think of the comments about Jo at Malory Towers, or Ern in the Five Find Outers books.  Not to mention the Famous Five’s constant whingeing about “day trippers”.   As a kid, I used to imagine that I’d be at the heart of the in crowd if I went to Malory Towers or St Clare’s.  Because readers do that.  In reality, the girls there would have made mincemeat of me, a fat kid with a Northern accent.  But do they say anything that wasn’t typical of the times?  These were the days when you couldn’t get a job on the BBC unless you spoke RP!   And, as I’m always pointing out, it worked both ways.  Imagine if someone like Julian Kirrin had turned up at a secondary modern in a working class area.  The other kids would have had just as much to say about him as the Malory Towers girls did about Jo.

Then there are the allegations of racism.   Are the books racist?   Well, golliwogs weren’t considered problematic *at the time*.  They featured on Robertson’s marmalade jars for decades.  The Little Black Sambo book clearly is more of a problem, and the language used in that is unacceptable today and not very pleasant even by the standards of the time in which they were published.  But it’s one book.  And no-one attacks other authors – apart from Laura Ingalls Wilder – for writing in a way that wouldn’t be considered acceptable now.  Dickens (Oliver Twist).  Shakespeare (Othello, The Merchant of Venice).  Jane Austen (the gypsies in Emma).  Charlotte Bronte (St John Rivers wanting to go to India to convert non-Christians).    I could go on and on.  And Roald Dahl was an outspoken anti-Semite.  Teachers don’t tell children not to read their works.  R M Ballantyne’s books are virtually unreadable now, because of their portrayal of “natives”, but there’s nothing in, say, the Famous Five that’s anything like that bad.

So what is it about Blyton?  Well, it probably is just literary snobbery.  Coupled with virtue-signallers’ hatred of the well-to-do middle-classes – a bizarre form of self-hatred, given that that’s exactly who most of these people are.  So leave kids alone, and let them read the books.

I ignored the whingeing teachers.  And I read Enid Blyton’s books until I grew out of them.  I assume that the author of this book did too.  It’s a very short book, and I wouldn’t read it unless you can get it on a Kindle 99p deal.  But, if you can, give it a go.  And remember those days of mysteries and adventures and midnight feasts, and how they got you reading.

 

 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North – BBC 1

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  I’m not a fan of the current fad for dual timelines, and this series (based on a book) had a a triple timeline, which made things rather confusing at first.  However, once you got your head round what was going on, it was really quite impressive – and hopefully it’ll bring the horrors of the Burma Railway to younger generations who probably aren’t familiar with The Bridge Over The River Kwai.

Our hero is Dorrigo Evans,  We don’t seem to find out the reason for his unusual first name.  I was thinking that maybe there was an Italian connection – actually, I think I was thinking of Tony Dorigo! – but there isn’t.   In the 1980s, Dorrigo is a respected surgeon and war veteran, unhappily married to Ella.  In the early days of the Second World War, he’s a young doctor who’s engaged to Ella, a girl from a higher social class than him, and begins an affair with his uncle’s young second wife.  Later on in the war, he’s a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp.  The first scenes in the POW camp were weirdly cheerful, with the prisoners putting on dramas and going swimming, but I assume that that’s going to change.

This has had rave reviews, but I’m not 100% convinced about it.  I think all the jumping about in time put me off.  But this first episode was promising enough for me to stick with it.  We’ll see how it goes.

Three Apples Fell From The Sky by Narine Abgaryan

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  This is a rare example of an Armenian novel that doesn’t focus on the genocide.  It’s a slightly whimsical story of life in a mountainous village, where, despite wars, revolutions, the collapse of empires and of course the horrific Armenian genocide going on in the outside world, and natural disasters and famine affecting the village itself, life carries on, in a small community in which everyone’s interested in everyone else’s business.   Life is both hard and simple.  And we also learn a lot about the mountain traditions and way of life.  A lovely book in its way, and currently available for Kindle download for 99p.

Mix Tape – BBC 2

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  I hate to admit this, but I’ve still *got* mix tapes (er, made by myself for myself, Miss Uncool) from 1989.  One of them’s labelled “recorded from Atlantic 252”, which would have been a novelty at the time!  I’ve got a whole load of them from the late ’80s and early ’90s.  I very much doubt that any of them still work but I haven’t got time to try them; and I can’t bring myself just to chuck them out.

This four part series, set partly in 1989 and partly in the present day, sees teenagers Daniel and Alison bonding over music and becoming each other’s first love.  But, although they see each other at school and at parties and go out together, there’s always a mystery about Alison’s home life.  In the present day, both are married with children, Daniel still living in Sheffield and Alison now living in Sydney.  When Alison writes a bestselling book, Daniel finds her online and they reconnect via Facebook.  And, presumably, we’re now going to find out what happened back in the day.  I was going to say “all those years ago”, but that makes it sound as if 1989 was a long time ago.  And it isn’t.  My brain wanders off there all the time.

I hate to be pedantic (actually, I love to be pedantic), but the first episode shows a derby match between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United.  Er, no.  The Owls were in Division 1 and the Blades were in Division 2!  Maybe there was a Cup match, but I suspect that someone just hasn’t done their research properly.  Points lost for that!  But points gained for the music.  Lovesong by The Cure.  Those were the days!

And please let the mystery be something original!

Oasis From The Settee

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  When Oasis played at Heaton Park in 2009, I was lucky enough to get a ticket.  This time, like zillions of other people, I spent over two hours waiting in the Ticketmaster queue, only to be told that there were no tickets left.  I was not pleased.  But, as it turned out, I didn’t need a ticket; because I could hear every word, loudly and clearly, from my house, about a mile and half from the park.  I didn’t even need to sit in the garden: I could sit on the settee, with the windows open.  Two nights so far, and three more to come.  As the Manchester Evening News put it, “Some Might Pay” … but thousands of us got to hear it all for free.   Cheers, Liam, Noel & co!  It was brilliant.

Of course, holding five mega concerts at our local park hasn’t been without controversy.  It was pretty loud from a mile and a half away, so people living right opposite the park must have had their ears blasted off!   The road closures have been a hassle for residents and businesses in the areas affected, and the Grand Lodge entrance to the park is going to be closed off for weeks.  There’ve been concerns about “anti-social behaviour” – although thankfully, that doesn’t really seem to have happened – possibly thanks to the pink portaloos which have sprung up all over the places!  And there’s a fair amount of needle about the fact that the money made from the concerts isn’t going to the areas affected by them.  Oh, and does anyone imagine that Pep Guardiola, several members of the cast of Coronation Street, Vernon Kaye and various other celebs who were there actually got lucky in the Ticketmaster chaos?!  No, me neither.

But, despite all that, most people have really embraced the occasion.  This isn’t a football stadium or a concert arena, remember.  It’s a public park in a primarily residential suburb.  And, suddenly, the eyes of the music world have turned to our neck of the woods.  How weird to see Sky News interviewing people, some of them from the other side of the world, stood outside the Woodthorpe, one of our local pubs.  And to see people stood all along the side of the walls near my old primary school, to listen in.  One idiot actually tried to climb over the walls, with a ladder!  The security guys stopped him, but it’s a big park, and, in the end, people were allowed in to sit on one of the hills outside the concert area, from which they could see the big screens.   “Gallagher Hill”!  I hope that that’s allowed to continue for the remaining three concerts, without introducing any charges.  It’s not like Oasis need any more money, is it?!

The local branch of Aldi decided to try to be funny by changing its sign to “Aldeh”.  And, somehow, this caught on, and other businesses did similar things.  Cardboard cut-outs of Liam and Noel have appeared in the window of one of the local estates.  My local corner shop’s window currently sports an Oasis-cartoon and a notice saying “We sell cigarettes and alcohol”.  Within the park, the swan boats on the lake have been renamed after Oasis songs; and the two peacocks have been renamed Liam and Noel.  Several venues have put on Oasis parties.  There’s all sorts going on in town as well, but this is in a residential suburb, our residential suburb.  It’s mad (for it)!

The Brothers Gallagher are not everyone’s cup of tea, it has to be said.  I genuinely like their music, even though I’m an ’80s girl and Britpop was slightly too late for me, but I wouldn’t want to live next door to either of them.  And they support City 😦 .  But they’re ours.  After the Arena bombing, in 2017, people started spontaneously singing an Oasis song, Don’t Look Back In Anger.  When Noel walked out on to the stage at Heaton Park, his first words were “This Is The Place”.  For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s a poem by local poet Tony “Longfella” Walsh, written in 2012 and recited at the vigil for the Arena victims.  That was lovely.   On the weekend of the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, it was wonderful to have music bringing people together – and what a contrast to the nastiness at Glastonbury.

And it was hot!   There’s something about hot weather that makes everything feel a bit surreal.  It was Go-Between weather, for anyone who had to read the L P Hartley book at school.

As Liam would say, it was all just … biblical!   Crazy summer nights.  Here in North Manchester.  Bring on the next three concerts!   Some Might Pay, but we’re getting it for free!

 

A Match to Remember by Helen Hawkins

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  I really need to start finding some better books for these monthly “reading challenges”!  So, what happened in this one?  Scatty trainee teacher Lizzie was asked to help out with PE lessons and organising Sports Day.  This meant working closely with the school’s visiting PE teacher … who turned out to be her teenage sweetheart, whom she’d never really got over.  You already know how this ended, don’t you?   “I love you too.  It’s always been you.”

Lizzie also played for a football team, so that fitted in nicely with the women’s Euros; but that plot was a bit naff as well.  The team got to their first Cup Final for 20 years.  And, guess what?  Lizzie scored the winning goal in the dying minutes of normal time!   Yep, a lot of thought obviously went into that!

Also, although the title of the book was “A Match to Remember”, people kept talking about “the game” instead of “the match”.  Ugh.  Match.  The word is match.  We don’t have “Game of the Day” or “Test Game Special”, do we?  The word is *match*!!

Apart from the “game” thing, there was nothing actually wrong with the book, I suppose.  It just wasn’t very inspiring.