Keats and my mother.

My mother loved poetry. She had an anthology of English poets - Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, which sat on our tiny bookshelf. It had a dark blue cover as I recall and thin, slightly musty pages.My brother, who has a memory for these things, tells me it was Palgrave's Golden Treasury. In the margins were notes and jottings. When she wrote these I have no idea. In all my 21 years living with her I never saw her pick up that book. Perhaps it was pre me when she had more time - pre kids, pre husband, pre housewife duties, and later pre work. She did occasionally mention her love of English, by which she meant poetry, almost by way of convincing herself and us, that she had had an education beyond grade six and, despite living in a bland suburb of Brisbane and doing her daily washing and ironing chores, she did still have a brain and had once used it in a way that she, perhaps, could only remember and marvel at.

I hated those Romantic poets. At school we were forced to read their works with their fancy and, what seemed to me, convoluted language and words I couldn't understand. I think I was a little overwhelmed by them. They were supposed to demonstrate the heights of the English language and I couldn't get it at all, apart that is for Coleridge's 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner'. It had a bit of derring do and action and some great lines - 'Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink' is almost a cliched phrase today but he wrote it down. When I later fell in love with poetry it was with Bruce Dawe and William Carlos Williams who spoke less about melancholy love and more about my life. Simple, straight forward, grounded.

So I surprised my self when I found myself standing outside Keats House in Hampstead London this week thinking that I'd like to know a bit more about him. Of course the 2009 Jane Campion film, "Bright Star" had piqued my interest. In the film Keats was played by young English actor Ben Whishaw and his love interest Fanny Brawne by Abbie Cornish, an Australian actress. Given that Campion is a New Zealander it was quite a mixed team that put it together. Whishaw played him as a melancholic romantic and succeeded in stopping short of portraying him as the cliched tortured poet.

He didn't have it easy. Father dead when he was 9. Mother died when he was 14 from tuberculosis and brother Tom, also dead in his early twenties from TB. TB or consumption was rife. He trained to be an apothecary, a pharmacist with extra duties as assistant to a surgeon, for five years and then threw it in to write. His poetry doesn't seem to have been influenced by the horrific scenes he would have witnessed in an era before anaesthetics where surgeons were adept at swift amputations; where young Keats may have been restraining the patient at the same time as passing tools to, what by some accounts, were more butchers than surgeons. His poetry was full-on romantic. His betrothed and neighbour, Fanny Brawne, separated from him by only a wall in the duplex he shared with his mate on one side and the Brawnes on the other, was the inspiration for his love poems. At this stage, 1818/19/20, Hampstead was still a village in the tranquility of the hills north of the one square mile of London. He was prolific.

So here I am standing in the parlour looking through the window at a 300 year old mulberry tree (why did my father remove ours at 20 years - I assumed it had reached the end of its natural life). Soaking up the life of a poet I will never read but feeling chuffed that I've been in the same house as him. A bit weird. Am I a celebrity chaser?

There's a lot about Keats here, but very little about Fanny. Apparently his relationship with her didn't get much recognition until after she died when letters they had shared were discovered.  She had married and had three children and died in her eighties.

Keats fell to the family curse, TB, and in an effort to beat it went to Rome for the climate but died there within a year. Fanny never saw him again. I'm beginning to understand why my mother was captivated by him, if, that is, she knew of this hopeless romantic story.

 He was dead at 25.

My connection with him? It's still pretty thin but when I discovered that he was born on the same date as my son I wondered if he, having the same star sign might also be a deeply romantic person. So I sent him a couple of quotes to use when the appropriate occasion arises:

" A thing of beauty is a joy forever/ Its lovliness increases; it will never pass".

And "Parting, they seemed to tread upon the air / Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart / only to meet again more close".

And " It is a flaw / In happiness to see beyond our bourne / It forces us in summer skies to mourne / It spoils the singing of the nightingale".

Tombola - Kentish Town .

On a drizzly London Saturday my sister-in-law woke with some dread. It was my nephew's school's Summer Festival. We'd call it the school fete but this is an aspirational primary school in the still largely working class area of Kentish Town so its a festival.. The change in status of the area is marked by the influx of nannies to service the young monied families buying up the real estate. They can be seen swarming in large numbers at the Hampstead Heath kids pool in summer, prams parked six deep on the hill while their charges maraud across the shallows. The accents of the kids and the genuine mothers is in stark contrast to the broad accents of the nannies. These are kids of young professionals being cared for by the South London and Irish working girls and by recently arrived Eastern Europeans. I am told there is a spot where they gather to gossip known as the 1 o'clock club.

Jo is looking after the tombola stall. Our friend Gerry used to run the St Ita's fete version in Brisbane with great gusto and good humour. She insisted in clearing the shelves of prizes by the end of the day as she didn't see any value in storing them for next year. Most of it was just stuff anyway. Gerry would spend the year saving up jars for the event and wold then have a hundred of them stuffed with lollies or soft toys and trinkets, all very colourful and attractive to young eyes. At the beginning of the day one in five tickets won a prize, in the last half hour one in two and eventually she was giving stuff away with every ticket. She made a killing each year. 

The Kentish Town Tombola is a little more upmarket and not half as much fun. None of which is Jo's responsibility. She was just a volunteer helping run someone else's Tombola for three hours. Most of the prizes were wine and jams (bought, not home made) and barely half were suitable for children. There was too little madness and too much money and the shelves were still two thirds full of prizes with an hour to go. I wouldn't want to be too judgmental about the 'Fete". It was charming, with lots of activities and the kids were totally engaged in painting and making and throwing and bouncing and eating and eating and eating. In addition there was good food for the adults, a bar and plenty of junk, always the best part of a fete. The day befiore I had bought a copy of Treasure Island full price to read to Harry when we're all in Malta and paid 7 pounds for it. Today I picked up 5 books for 2 pounds. I was dreading the possibility of spotting the R L Stevenson classic amongst the pile of books for 50p.

Young  'A', the ten year old electronic genius friend of Harry's, has invented his own game which people paid to play. Called "Beat the Fish" it's the one where your steady hand has to navigate a ring around a wire path without touching the wire - BEEP and you're out, succeed and the prize is a lolly of quality Harry tells me. A "Celebration". 'A' brings it to the fete every year and he's in charge, sitting there for the whole three hours making sure no one cheats.

Jo came home exhausted and went to bed. Even I lay down for an hour to recover. Nothing nicer than an afternoon nap under a doona on a cloudy, sometime rainy, London day.


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Nelson in a Bottle

Nuts about Nelson

Horatio Nelson was a navy man. A bit of a hero by all accounts. He thrashed Napoleon at his own game (boule?)a few times and became a national hero. He also saw Napoleon off in Malta and got rid of the French - replaced by the Brits for 150 years (by mutual agreement apparently).

As you might expect the National Maritime Museum makes a big deal of his exploits (pity the other poor bastards who fought and died for their country - they hardly get a mention) and have a room called "Nelson, Navy, Nation".

In the early 19th Century the merchandising world went mad with Nelson cups, mugs, plates, goblets, beer steins, i Phone covers - you name it. And you can still buy Nelson memorabilia. 

Here's a collection of photos I took at the museum. This is post is dedicated to my friend Paul who has a particular interest in things of the sea and of the British Navy. His father was an Admiral or another similar rank (Petty Officer?). Pick which one is not Nelson.

Nelson in bronze

Nelson wounded and dying - note the halo effect around his head.

Nelson ascends into Heaven - hang on, hadn't someone already done that?

Nelson in China

Nelson in a new hat after eating too many truffles.

Nelson interrogating: "Did you pinch my snuff?".

Nelson selfie.

Nelson pretending to be a Cyclops

Mean Figureheads in Greenwich

                                                         

In all the times I've been to London (he said with humility) I've never been to Greenwich. It's a little away from the main tourist traps and nowhere near Kentish Town where we stay with Jo and Richard. It's a tube ride to London central (Bank) and then a ride on the Docklands Rail Service. About an hour from here. 

What's at Greenwich? The Cutty Sark - the famous English clipper which won the race to the tea plantations in India against firece competition each year. The Royal Observatory and Astronomy Centre and of course the planet's timekeeper, Greenwich meantime. And in the midst of all that the National Maritime Museum.

I spent the most of the day in the library doing some research for my book. I learnt a lot about death at sea and its causes in the 19th Century. About cholera, dysentery, tropical ulcers and the fact that over 50% of deaths on sea voyages were children under 4 y.o. About rank meat and water that smelt like it came from the toilet and Captains who manacled recalcitrant passengers to the mast for days on end and fed them only water only. Cheery stuff.

But after the library came the fun stuff. Figure heads and superstition. Some of them were full of English arrogance, others to remind them of the girls they left behind. One looks like a mother-in-law joke with a castle on her head. Others are just over the top and plain funny..