Why you should be afraid of Virginia Woolf

A few months ago I came across a book in a charity shop. I had three reasons to be pleased to find it: Firstly, that it was in English. Secondly, it covered the years 1915 – 1919, around the years of the First World War, a period which interests me a great deal and thirdly, it was the first volume of The Diary of Virginia Woolf.

I didn’t intend to start to read the book straight away as I had others in my ‘to read’ pile already. So I placed it on a shelf with some other books in the bedroom.

A couple of days later I noticed that some books had fallen over, so I straightened them up and thought no more about it. The next day the same happened – and the next. Virginia was always upright next to these books. So, smiling to myself I moved the books around. The following morning I discovered, not only the first books had fallen over but also the new neighbours to Virginia’s diary. Pretty soon no book on the shelves in the bedroom remained upright – except for one. Virginia was always triumphantly upright. In the end I grew tired of this game and left the books as they were.

It wasn’t until I bought some more books; including Earnest Hemmingway’s ‘A Farewell to Arms’ that I decided to tidy up shelves again. I placed the two unread books together.

It seems to have done the trick.

Sleeping with the Enemy

I’ve had the DVD for several years and watched it several times. Starring Julia Roberts the film is about a young woman, Sara/Laura, abused by her husband who fakes her own drowning to start a new life without him. Of course in her new life she falls in love and lives in fear that her husband will find her again somehow…

I went to a charity shop a few weeks ago. They have a foreign books section and I was delighted to find the book written by Nancy Price, that the film was based on. I couldn’t put it down. It had a lot more depth than the film, helping readers to understand why a lot of women stay with abusive partners. There is also interesting detail; the heroine uses the last of her money to rent a modest apartment, she has no belongings because she’s supposed to have drowned. How can she survive until her new job starts?

If you’ve seen the film and enjoyed it, you’ll enjoy the book.

Love and Einstein

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”

I found this quotation in a book. How nice, I thought and went to look for it. It turned out that Einstein indeed wrote it, but not quite:

“Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do – but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”

A Farewell to Arms

I finished the book today. If you haven’t read it I recommend it. I didn’t like Catherine Barkley. I felt that her character was too wishy washy, there was nothing about her that you could get your teeth into. I seem to remember thinking something similar of the leading lady in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

Anyway, this post is about a strange and interesting coincidence. In the book, while Frederic Henry is having his wounds tended to, the doctor says ‘You will have nothing to worry about if it doesn’t infect and it rarely does now’. Amongst our purchases at the auction in Limoges this week we picked up a leaflet written for French surgeons in 1914. The leaflet explains how German bullets are smooth and leave clean wounds that do not infect, are easy to deal with and heal well. Allied bullets however, left a lot of damage and danger of infection, etc. as they shattered on impact. How is that for propaganda? Even your wounds healed better if you were on the right side.

Up the Junction

Back to 1979 we go and a lot of memories. In 1973 I went on my first course in London. As I was underage I stayed at a retired bank employee’s house in Streatham with another girl from Barclays. To get to Teddington every morning, we had to change trains at Clapham Junction. We were both from the sticks and managed not to get too lost. Yesteday, I turned on Radio 4 to a program about how the song Up the Junction came to be written. It’s available to listen to for one week only. Here are the lyrics too.

Is the stuffed dog still on display there?

Wah Wah

Turn up the volume !! Get out the air guitar (or even a real one if you’ve got one)

George is still my favourite Beatle.

I had a lot of problems getting hold of the boxed set of the Concert for Bangladesh when it came out. A lot of shops didn’t stock it because there was no profit to be made from it – it all went to help the people who badly needed it. US$ 243,418.51 was raised.

Hands up if you’ve still got the boxed set

Mighty Eucalyptus from little seeds grow

Nearly 20 years ago I bought a packet of seeds from the supermarket; they were Eucalyptus seeds. It seemed ambitious growing a Eucalyptus tree from a tiny seed, I couldn’t afford a baby tree, so I thought I’d give it a go. At first I put the seeds into small pots they I transferred them into bigger posts and later when they were even bigger planted three of them in the garden.

During the first year I didn’t think that they were growing. I started to measure them once a week – and they were!. They all grew for a couple more years until they were coming along nicely. Especially the one which reminded me of a graceful lady in long skirts. In the mid nineties we had a very cold winter. I knew that the trees could withstand up to -15°C, so I wasn’t too worried. Unfortunately, the end of the winter was very windy and all three of my trees looked as if they had died. The graceful lady in long skirts had been the largest and closest to the street so needed cutting down because as the tree rotted the branches would become dangerous.

One of my kind neighbours said that he would cut the tree down, another would cut up the wood and take it away to use (we didn’t have a fire place). When the tree was cut down we discovered a small shoot which looked alive, so we decided to leave it and see what happened.

The small shoot grew from strength to strength and soon became a big tree, much bigger than we imagined it would ever become. This time the tree was definitely male, strong and straight.

These pictures were all taken this spring